Rapid Lifestyle Prototyping: Assessment of Infrared Spectroscopic Blood Responses for Short-term Lifestyle Interventions

Background - At the present time, optimization of dietary and fitness practices are inadequately addressed in the clinical setting, and poorly documented through research studies investigating response to surrogate disease markers. Identifying and quantifying the personal response to lifestyle interventions requires a new tool and a new measurement metric. Methods - In this prospective observational study, COR.RELATE study, we investigated the effect of four lifestyle interventions, each spanning 21 days and consisting of seven validated practices, in a healthy population. We used a novel at-home near-infrared spectrometer (wavelength 1600-2450 nm), COR console, to measure the spectral blood changes in a cohort of 178 healthy males and females who participated in four 21-day cycles of lifestyle programs. In the first round, study participants also completed dried blood spot cards, provided by omega quant, at the start and end of their program. Results - We analyzed 1,870 infrared spectroscopy samples from 178 participants (131 males and 47 females) who participated in the first four programs of COR.RELATE. We found on average 79.75% of the participants are responsive to one or more of the COR programs. We describe an algorithmic approach, ranking personal responses to different nutrition and fitness interventions. Conclusion - The COR console and data analytics enables the use of a novel near-infrared based metric--which we call the COR Blood Response Pattern (BRP)-- to measure individual response to lifestyle change, and has the sensitivity to discern, classify, and rank the success of rapid lifestyle interventions in terms of the correlated spectroscopic response they produce. Rapid Lifestyle Prototyping is a new concept in consumer life optimization and improvement - the ability to know in no more than 21 days whether a particular single, or set of, lifestyle practices is going to evoke a strong response for an individual and therefore if it is worth continuing that practice in their quest for deep optimization and life improvement.