Test Breath Ketones without a Ketonix (using a cheap breathalyzer)

[yogipete]

I’ve wanted a ketonix for a while but am not going to fork over hundreds of dollars. So I followed some advice and got myself a cheap breathalyzer on ebay. Apparently they don’t distinguish between alcohol and acetone.

IT WORKS!

Now I can measure easily whether or not I am in ketosis anytime I suspect I may have dropped out. The ketostix stopped working for me a long time ago as my body is very well adapted and I don’t excrete a lot of measurable ketones.The breathalyzer is not much good for finding your millimoler value of ketones, but then again, by all accounts neither is a ketonix itself. The breathalyzer cost me $12 and you can get them cheaper. In fact, it’s only the cheaper ones that work. You can get these breathalyzers as cheap as a few dollars.

Here’s the one I used below

That reading above is while fully sober… * I swear * Only trouble is it beeps like crazy when it detects 0.05% or over (the legal alcohol driving limit in australia). I’m sure other models wouldn’t beep.

[BillJay]

Thanks @yogipete! This is both interesting and worrisome at the same time!

I may get a cheap one myself, but in the meantime I’d love to see if others can replicate your results.

[yogipete]

My pleasure.

I might also add that the reading is consistent regardless of my method of blowing etc… which is a problem that haunts the ketonix. I’ve done a few baseline tests on my partnerr who always blows 0 (she’s currently non-keto) while I generally blow between .04 and .05 (but in any one moment of the day the reading is always identical regardless of my personal clumsiness in using the meter). I’m looking forward to testing some more non-keto friends.

[yogipete]

I may get a cheap one myself,

Do you have a ketonix? If so we could start to try to find a correlation between the acetone reading on a breathalyzer and breath ketone levels. It would be rough but a start. Or even better if someone has a blood ketone meter as well and could start to make a correlation chart between breath acetone and blood ketone levels.

Ideally we could publish a cheap measuring process for everyone who is fully adapted to test their ketone levels… at least to the “low”, “medium”, “high” grades that the ketonix measures.

[Jean1]

I just got my cheap breathalyser a few days ago. I am getting readings of .4 g/l or .04 bac and some .5 g/l or .05 bac. I have seen the formula “g/l x 10÷2 = ~ mmol”. If any old timers would like to clue the newbies in on all this please do. I am sure there are a lot of us who really can not afford the Ketonix.

[yogipete]

Hey thanks. Though something is wrong with that formula. Firstly, it reduces to simply g/l x 5 = mmol, but more importantly Michel Lundell has given a presentation that shows it isn’t a simple linear correlation. It might be somewhere else in his channel also. Maybe I’m missing something on that. Maybe we need to decide whether we’re talking mmol in the breath or mmol in the blood.

[Jean1]

And both of my children are mathematicians! They would be so embarrassed!

[Daisy]

There is some good info re correlation between blood sugar/blood ketones and breath acetone somewhere. I looked for ages and couldn’t find anything but then someone on here I think gave me a link. Pretty sure it is here somewhere if you search through all mentions of ketonix.

[roxanna]

Interesting - bought it for $6.98 at Walmart so will see how it goes!

[betsy.rome]

Recap please. I recall there are 3 kinds of ketones, and that long-time keto’ers have issues with the pee strips because it doesn’t measure the right kind for them. I consistently show the pink “small” (a “wee” bit more than “trace” - sorry!) on the pee sticks, never in the purple. Would the cheap breathalyzer measure a different kind of ketone?

[yogipete]

Would the cheap breathalyzer measure a different kind of ketone?

My understanding is a little shaky. Here it is. There are 3 ketone bodies you use as fuel. Acetone, Acetoacetate (AcAc), and BetaHydroxyButyrate (BHBA):

• Ketostix (pee sticks) measure AcAc leaving the body
• Ketonix and (other breathalyzers) measure Acetone in the body
• Blood monitors measure BHBA in the body (I think)

Over a few months a well adapted ketoer will pee less AcAc, effectively making the pee sticks meaningless. Most of their ketone bodies will now be the desirable and highly effective ketogenic fuel BHBA, and they won’t be wasting a lot of ketones by excreting them in their urine (which is perhaps what’s going on with you). At this point most peeps I know pass their ketostix onto a newbie.

So you need a more direct measure of what is actually happening in the body (not what is being excreted). That means, either breath or blood.

I’m not sure whether you can infer the BHBA levels from the Acetone levels but suffice to say that if you have a lot of Acetone in your breath / blood you are in ketosis. A lot of ketoers find it so obvious when their breath is funky that the whole measuring thing becomes moot. i.e. if your breath is funky you’re in ketosis.

Ketonix is an effort to get a bit more refined than that. I dare say it’s pretty primitive so far, but holds a lot of promise. You get three lights, low, medium, or high. The device gives you an estimate of your mmol of ketones (perhaps inferring BHBA from AcAc). The big problem is that the ketonix isn’t at a price point that fits with the technology that’s in it (IMHO). It’s a breathalyzer, with a conversion matrix and 3 LEDS. I’m sure a lot of work has gone into developing it but I believe we can hack together the necessary data and breathalyzers for a fraction of the cost.

So, the short answer, is YES, a breathalyser would measure a different ketone. But more importantly it would measure it in your breath, which correlates more closely with the ketones in your blood.

[BillJay]

My understanding is a little shaky. Here it is. There are 3 ketone bodies you use as fuel. Acetone, Acetoacetate (AcAc), and BetaHydroxyButarate (BHBA):

One correction, Acetone is a byproduct of Acetoacetate.

Emphasis added by me:

Ketone bodies are three water-soluble molecules (acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and their spontaneous breakdown product, acetone) that are produced by the liver from fatty acids during periods of low food intake (fasting), carbohydrate restrictive diets, starvation, prolonged intense exercise,[2] or in untreated (or inadequately treated) type 1 diabetes mellitus.

Ketone bodies

My problem with measuring acetone in the breath is from the excerpt below which states that acetone is the modified form of acetoacetate, so to me this means that measuring this way does not take beta-hydroxybutyrate into account at all.

Acetone is the decarboxylated form of acetoacetate which cannot be converted back into acetyl-CoA except via detoxification in the liver where it is converted into lactic acid, which can, in turn, be oxidized into pyruvic acid, and only then into acetyl-CoA.

I don’t think we know enough about the keto-adaptation process yet to conclude that acetoacetate has any correlation to beta-hydroxybutyrate throughout the adaptation process across all people.

I suspect that some people adapt in such a way that they produce more acetoacetate and others produce more beta-hydroxybutyrate.

[yogipete]

Thanks for the clarifications @BillJay

acetone is the modified form of acetoacetate, so to me this means that measuring this way does not take beta-hydroxybutyrate into account at all.

Acetone is also derived from BHBA. See your earlier quote:

acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and their spontaneous breakdown product, acetone

So, yes Acetone is directly related to BHBA as well as AcAc. But, as you say, knowing which ketone body is the origin of the Acetone is speculative. I’m sure there must be a ballpark that most people fall into. And I assume that ballpark is accurate enough to determine the low, medium, high levels that the Ketonix uses (otherwise the whole thing is a bit scammy).

Overall though, yes, working out how to measure BHBA more directly would be amazing.

[Brook]

I tried this before buying a ketonix. Did not register anything even when sticks were strongly positive, Maybe $4.99 was too upscale.

[roxanne]

Interesting…my spouse is a a cop and doing keto with me - i’m going to ask him to check himself at work!

[Andy_Hanson]

I’m very confused by this! Would I fail a breathalyzer test if a police officer administered one just because I’m in ketosis?

[yogipete]

i’m going to ask him to check himself at work!

I’d be surprised if it shows up on professional quality breathalyzers as they differentiate alcohol and acetone.

[roxanne]

Bummer!

[Greengo1]

I just took a breath test for alcohol which required to work in refineries and I was so worried I would fail because my breath was very acetone but it showed zero😀

[BillJay]

Acetone is also derived from BHBA. See your earlier quote:

BillJay:
acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and their spontaneous breakdown product, acetone

I think that’s just the introductory wording of the article lumping acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate together.

Don’t forget the other section of the link that specifically identifies acetone as “the decarboxylated form of acetoacetate”, unless there’s something missing about it’s association with beta-hydroxybutyrate.

Acetone is the decarboxylated form of acetoacetate which cannot be converted back into acetyl-CoA except via detoxification in the liver where it is converted into lactic acid, which can, in turn, be oxidized into pyruvic acid, and only then into acetyl-CoA.