[JumpCrisscross]

How much energy could a device extract from blood sugar?

[rhcom2]

"One single implanted GBFC device of 0.24 mL volume (2.4 mL for the whole implant) produced the power required to operate, using a specially designed electronic circuit to charge a capacitor, two types of electronic devices: a LED and a digital thermometer."

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01516

[Pfhreak]

I'm waiting for someone to invent the implantable chip that converts blood sugar into heat/light purely with the intention of wasting that energy.

Grab enough power to monitor blood sugar, to make sure you aren't putting someone into a coma, but otherwise just try to burn an extra few hundred calories a day.

[booleandilemma]

Why waste this energy? Couldn’t they devise a way to mine bitcoin with it? :)

[delecti]

Oh god, just what the world's food distribution problems need.

[pazimzadeh]

Good idea, but I’m guessing you’d have fever as a side effect ;)

[agumonkey]

orgasic

[eeZah7Ux]

Then you need to radiate heat somewhere. If you heat up the blood the body will spend less energy keeping warm leading to no benefit.

If you generate a lot of heat... it goes really bad.

[ClassyJacket]

Easy, simply install a venting port in the patient.

[oh_sigh]

The first patient should be a congressman then, because they already have a hole they blow hot air out of.

[cleong]

It would be an enormously complex device, most of the sugar we consume gets converted into fat as we quickly cap out our "energy blocks".

[craftyguy]

Alternatively (and arguably much less complex and much cheaper): 1) eat less, 2) exercise

[oh_sigh]

You're thinking too fancy - with our technology today, we could install a bypass valve at the pyloric sphincter that just dumps chyme into a stoma appliance/bag.

[robotrout]

That's interesting. Seems like a low tech solution would be to give blood every day. I wonder if somebody has already invented the blood donation diet.

[simcop2387]

Problem with that is that we don't replenish it fast enough for that to work. Maybe with plasma donations but I'm not sure there either.

[rtkwe]

The real question is can that conversion be done in an efficient enough way with materials that are safe to put inside someone and in a small enough package.