Can Vitastiq measure body vitamin levels using a skin sensor?

Last week Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat wrote a short blurb on the the company Vitastiq which is developing a device that can measure levels of vitamins and minerals in the body using a noninvasive skin sensor (see Figure 1). Will this work?

Probably not.

Why am I skeptical? The Vitastiq purports to use electroacupuncture to "measure the vitamin content in your skin at various acupuncture points that are outlined on your body on the smartphone screen. It does so by measuring the electrical status of the skin." I have never heard of this method before.

Here is the Wikipedia entry on electroacupuncture:

"Electroacupuncture according to Voll or EAV is a device used in alternative medicine. While some may use the device to diagnose ailments, for which there is no credible evidence of diagnostic capability, there are many that use the device for that of which is was designed, the measurement of energy on acupuncture end points. The measurement of energy on acupunture end points was Dr. Voll's initial interest in EAV. It is registered with the FDA as a galvanic skin response measuring device. The American Cancer Society has concluded that the evidence does not support the use of EAV "as a method that can diagnose, cure, or otherwise help people with cancer."

Units reportedly sell for around $15,000 and are promoted for diagnosis of conditions including "parasites, food and environmental sensitivities, candida, nutritional deficiencies and much more." It is promoted for diagnosis of allergies but "results are not reproducible when subject to rigorous testing and do not correlate with clinical evidence of allergy".

So the technology behind the Vitastiq has been approved by the FDA as a galvanic skin response measuring device. This means that it can measure "the electrical conductance of the skin, which varies depending on the amount of sweat-induced moisture on the skin" (Wikipedia). A lie detector machine relies on changes in galvanic skin response (i.e. how much you are sweating) to try to assess whether or not you are telling the truth.

However, it is not clear what the connection is (if any) between galvanic skin response and the amount of vitamins or minerals in your blood, which are not expected to alter the electrical properties of the skin. By comparison, the typical medical test for vitamins, say Vitamin D, is to take a sample of your blood and perform mass spectrometry on it to quantitate the various components in the blood.

The Wikipedia entry above goes on to suggest that electroacupuncture has been proposed to diagnose a number of health conditions, but there is no clinical evidence that it works. Thus, it is likely that Vitastiq is quackery.

Finally, as an aside, with the proliferation of health technology devices and apps one may ask whether they will be regulated i.e. tested for the accuracy of their claims. It is important to note that the FDA needs to approve medical devices. However, a lot of health technology devices including activity trackers are not considered medical devices, but instead are classified as consumer devices. The critical distinction is that a medical device is considered to be a medically approved (by the FDA) way of diagnosing or treating a disease or condition.

It is still the Wild West out there with respect to new types of health technology. Consumers have one additional recourse which is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that has a consumer fraud bureau to protect consumers from products that do not do what they say they are supposed to do.

Figure 1. Visatiq and its "electroacupuncture" in action; I am skeptical that it works.