Being cooped inside a high-tech chamber may not be everyone’s idea of fun – but it’s the most exact device yet for unlocking the mysteries of our metabolism.
It’s a cool, grey morning in Melbourne’s Fitzroy, where I’ve just been locked inside a vacuum-sealed, temperature-controlled chamber, a lab rat for health data collection. For the next 24 hours, the minutiae of my metabolic inputs and outputs will be measured in real time while I live inside this two-by-three-metre room.
I’m free to move around the chamber as the machine pumps in and filters air from outside, and measures the volume of oxygen I breathe and the carbon dioxide I exhale. As I pedal on the exercise bike, eat the lentil bolognese and other dietitian-approved, ready-made meals, and sleep on the fold-out bed, the gases I breathe out are captured in samples. These samples are then dried and processed by a fridge-shaped analyser sitting outside the Scandi-blond walls of the chamber.
The new metabolic chambers could be considered an extension of our obsession with wearables. We use smartphones, smart watches, smart rings and bands to track our steps, our sleep, our heart rate and heart rate variability, our menstrual cycle, our cardio fitness, our recovery. While the data from wearables is driven by algorithms based on Mr and Mrs Average, the data from the chamber is based on each individual.
While at the University of Cape Town, Hawley studied with Professor David Costill, an American exercise physiologist who is something of a legend in the field. Costill’s research in the 1990s established that pushing athletes too hard – overtraining them – was counterproductive. In fact, while at Ball State University in Indiana, Costill concluded that half the training load led to the same or greater improvements among university swimmers.
In my report, which is emailed to me 10 days after my stay, I learn that I have a high ratio of lean mass to fat mass and that during my chamber stay I burnt about 2600 kilojoules while sleeping for seven hours as well as about 4450 kilojoules over 15.5 hours just working on my laptop compared with 2290 kilojoules during three relaxed, 30-minute sessions on the exercise bike.
Burke wants to look at the impact of low energy availability on bone density, reproduction, body temperature, the immune system, protein synthesis and whether the effects are the same for males and females.
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