Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size 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 will need to wee into a container (plumbing the toilet would compromise the seal of the room) and, god forbid, if I need to do a number two it will be instantly frozen in the plastic bag-lined loo to extinguish the odour. I will then suffer the indignity of passing the hazard bag to one of the researchers waiting outside, through a double-door waste-hatch.
As only the second person in Australia to be tested in this $5 million, high-tech chamber, the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere, I will learn first-hand what it can do. The hope is that these chambers (there are only about a dozen around the world) will revolutionise research into metabolic health, including obesity and type 2 diabetes, and provide new insights into sleep patterns, circadian biology, exercise and sports nutrition. The chamber’s technology, which includes a machine that controls temperature and humidity and can be used to imitate living at altitude, was .