Wearable developed that focuses on wearers hydration level
Texas-based Dr. Dustin Freckleton has created a simple wearable that aims to help people lose weight and reduce the risks of stroke by monitoring levels of hydration. The LVL is worn on the wrist and uses red and infrared lights to monitor hydration levels, as well as "activity, sleep, mood and heart rate", sending data and recommendations back to a connected device. To finance the development of the wearable, Freckleton has raised more than $820K on a crowdfunding site, far surpassing his initial target of $50k.

Dustin Freckleton MD knows well that the human body is made up of mostly water, and he’s concerned that people aren’t getting enough and staying hydrated. It’s something that seriously altered his life and gave it new focus, in the form of developing a potentially lifesaving wearable, mainly focused on hydration, an issue not necessarily thought of on a daily basis.

“Even a one per cent difference affects you in a huge way,” said Freckleton on his Kickstarter page for the LVL device he is developing.

What interested a medical doctor to want to go into wearables is less important than what happened to Freckleton in medical school.

Austin, Texas-based Freckleton had always dreamed of being a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon to be specific. He went to medical school and was in his first year when his life was completely altered – he had a stroke at age 24. With no family history and considering he was in good health, the stroke was even more baffling.

The direct cause? Dehydration — something even a budding doctor didn’t realize could happen.

“I had become severely dehydrated in an acute period of time. What that did, now in hindsight it's 20/20, is it put my body in a predisposed condition for stroke formation because my blood was thicker; it didn't flow as well,” said Freckleton.

He went on to explain that while he slept, the thickened blood allowed a clot to form and when he got up, the clot dislodged and went up to his brain, which responded with a stroke, giving him a one-sided paralysis.

“For weeks I couldn't wiggle a finger or a toe on my left side. It happened almost instantaneously. As I went through an extended period of rehabilitation and regaining my strength and my abilities, the first question was what in the world caused this? I was shocked when I found out that it was caused by dehydration. I thought that was sort of a benign thing that happened to people, but wasn't really a concern,” he said.

He questioned why his body didn’t warn him, like a low fuel gauge. What he eventually concluded was that a vast majority of people may be chronically dehydrated because our bodies aren’t good enough at keeping the tanks full, so to speak.

“The absence of thirst doesn't mean that you should stop drinking. This condition has led to 70 per cent of the American population that's chronically dehydrated. In elderly populations, where that thirst drive is poorer and the access to fluids is somewhat more difficult, that can go up to 90 to 95 per cent. It's rampant,” he said.

Freckleton also stated that the effects of dehydration could be as severe as a stroke, but much more frequently the result is poor exercise performance, which is central to weight management and helping people to lose weight and keep the pounds off, and staying hydrated can lead to a better night’s sleep, clearer cognition and better earning potential. He said that there have even been studies that show that drivers who are under-hydrated performed as poorly behind the wheel as intoxicated drivers.

All this made Freckleton an entrepreneur and inventor. He was fortunate enough to be at the Texas Medical Center in Austin, one of the largest in the world, and he had badge access to every clinical and research laboratory, so he set out to solve the dehydration problem. Four-and-a-half years later he finally came up with the solution.

“LVL is a wearable hydration monitor that gives you the complete picture of your health by also tracking activity, sleep, mood and HR,” said a description on his Kickstarter page, which has raised $828, 193.00 so far, with 5,282 backers and 17 days to go. This is way beyond his initial goal of $50,000, so we should expect to see great things from the first hydration wearable.

Helping Freckleton in his efforts is his partnership with a small non-profit, the Kendrick Fincher Hydration for Life Foundation. Kendrick Fincher was a sporting 13-year old who was playing football in Arkansas when he experienced heat stroke. After 18 days in intensive care, Fincher died of complications from heat stroke. His parents set up the foundation in his memory, dedicated to promoting proper hydration and preventing heat illness through education and supporting activities.

The LVL is one of the things the foundation is supporting, which gives his efforts credibility and a public voice.

Creating a viable wearable

One thing that helps the LVL stand out is that it uses red and infrared lights to help monitor your vitals, which is more efficient and accurate than the usual green lights that other wearables use, according to Freckleton. While he sees the benefits of Fitbit and other trackers, especially as it comes to tribal marketing – the feeling people get when they are part of a tribe, of which Fitbit wearers are a part of – he notes that they only track a few things and not very well.

For the LVL, Freckleton simplified the hydration monitoring experience to include four levels – high, medium, low and very low. The crew designed an animation that is able to monitor the change in a body’s hydration levels, even in the process of rehydrating. All the information is presented on a single screen on the device, making it easy for the wearer to view at a glance during exercise.

The LVL is worn on the wrist and communicates with a connected device like a smartphone to give a richer experience and to give recommendations on what actions the wearer needs to take, even saying that the wearer is a few ounces low. Freckleton gives an example.

“You’re 21 ounces low right now. We know that you're going to go workout this afternoon and because LVL also is measuring your heart rate and your activity, we can tell you that you're going to perform 7 per cent better today if you hydrate now rather than starting your workout dehydrated. That's not a fictional number. That's about on average what we've shown starting just a workout well hydrated the benefit that you can get from starting the workout well hydrated,” he said.

The LVL also measures sleep quality, using heart rate and motion to measure quality, duration, sleep stages and how hydration can help the quality of sleep.

The LVL, like many wearables, is about changing behaviors for the better. Freckleton has seen interest in the product from athletes, which they will be basing a lot of the branding and positioning efforts, but he was surprised to see so much interest in non-athletes. People who are on weight loss programs are being told they need to hydrate, and the LVL will help them monitor that. People with kidney disease need to be very attuned to their hydration levels, and the LVL can help there, too, as can those who have had serious medical conditions brought on by dehydration, as he did.

“I think that universal need, almost primal drive that we have for hydration, is really what's allowed us to skyrocket past our goal so quickly and to be where we are now,” Freckleton said regarding the Kickstarter campaign exceeding expectations.

“One of the exciting things for us about using crowd-funding as a platform is it allows us to engage with early adopters. We go out and we do intercepts and talk to consumers to try to understand what we can do… ‘I'm going come in now before the product even exists. I'm not only going to give you my money and my enthusiasm, but I want to participate and be a co-creator with you.’ You can't artificially create that type of group and environment. We listen very closely. Using Kickstarter allows us to understand what jobs people are hiring their wearable to do for them and how can we help them to do that better?”

The LVL team is using the initial funds to continue to hone the product and make it work as best as possible. Then, the marketing efforts will kick in to help more people learn about the product and have it benefit their lives positively so no one has to have a severe medical condition brought on by dehydration.

“Our focus is twofold. One is continuing to expand the capabilities of our platform. Doing just the raw science development. Then secondarily is interweaving that into a complete picture that, not only for consumer electronic devices, but even consumer medical devices will be beneficial to the individual wearer and their health care providers to be able to make better decisions in the moment and over the long run,” he concluded.

Additional reporting by Doug Zanger.