New biosensory tattoo can help athletes avoid the "wall"

There’s good news for athletes as a new biosensor tattoo, created by a team from the University of California, could help athletes from suffering energy crashes.

The tattoo monitors the lactose build-up in an athlete’s body in real time, thus warning the athlete when he/she over-exerts.

Lactose gets built up in the muscles due to sustained physical exertion, which in turn causes fatigue and over-exertion, also known commonly by runners as “hitting the wall”. The biosensor tattoo helps check levels of lactose in the sweat of the athlete. This allows him/her to slow down before lactose levels become so high that they cannot continue.

The team also believes that “such skin-worn metabolite biosensors could lead to useful insights into physical performance and overall physiological status, hence offering considerable promise for diverse sport, military, and biomedical applications.”