The Gold in your Garbage

From biowaste to biosignals.

Your body leaks secrets 🤫

What if your body held all the secrets to your health through the fluids you flush, blot, or wipe away?

From daily blood glucose checks to menstrual tracking apps, we're inching closer to a world where our secretions become signals. A quiet revolution is underway—your urine, sweat, saliva, and even semen are now sources of diagnostic gold. What was once discarded as "medical waste" is emerging as a frontier for personalized, precision health data—readable, interpretable, and trackable in real-time through AI-driven biosensors.

We are not far from a future where our "mess" becomes our message. And where sensors embedded in everything from toilet bowls to tampons to toothbrushes quietly update our inner dashboards.

Because the most overlooked feedback loops… might be the most revealing.

Today’s post looks at:

INSIGHT: an unmet need right now
a need to upcycle our daily biofluid waste into useful health data

INSPIRATION: an existing service in the market 
a smart menstrual pad that holds to key to women’s health

INNOVATION: my new creation/invention that meets this need
a next-gen biowaste lab at home that seamlessly captures your daily fluids

Take a 5 Minute Break…

INSIGHT (what we need)

What your body’s throwing away could save your life.

We’ve been trained to chase answers through flashy diagnostics — DNA swabs, full-body scans, MRI output. But the richest, most dynamic indicators of your daily health aren’t hidden deep inside your genome nor need million dollar equipment to decipher. They’re quite literally leaving your body every day.

Welcome to the era of intelligent excretomics — where your urine, blood, stool, sweat, vaginal fluid, tears, and even semen are no longer seen as medical afterthoughts or biohazards, but as real-time health messengers.

Here’s what’s shifting:

  • Urinalysis 2.0: Companies like Vivoo and Withings are embedding at-home urine sensors that track ketones, hydration, oxidative stress, and protein leakage — offering metabolic snapshots without the clinic visit.

  • Menstrual blood testing: Unlike venous blood, menstrual fluid contains endometrial and immune cell data — revealing insights into fertility, inflammation, and hormonal trends, with startups like Qvin leading the charge. See Inspiration section.

  • Seminal bioanalysis is being reimagined not just for fertility but for chronic inflammation, oxidative stress levels, and even early cancer markers.

  • Sweat patches and tear tests are pushing non-invasive glucose and electrolyte monitoring into the wearable market.

Your ‘living record’ in your living space.
Your body’s "waste" is a dynamic, living record of what's happening inside — not only your hormone levels, but your inflammation state, microbiome diversity, toxic burden, hydration status, neurotransmitter spillover, and metabolic efficiency.

And when paired with AI-powered pattern recognition, these excretions could become a hyper-personalized dashboard of vitality, updating daily — turning the toilet, tampon, or tissue into the new front line of preventive health. We once needed doctor consultations and even telehealth to get a simple diagnostic — now it’s at home, being deciphered by an Ai lab agent with access to our daily biowaste. Eureka.

Democratizing Care
A decentralized, home-based diagnostic system that makes expensive, time consuming tests and clinical visits more accessible — giving marginalized populations real-time access to screenings, giving doctors fuller data between visits, and giving individuals a sovereign understanding of their inner terrain.

Turns out the body already knows — we just need to listen to what it’s letting go of.

How might we design a low-cost way to revolutionize home diagnostics around our bodily fluids to supercharge early indication of disease?

INSPIRATION (what i want)

Qvin: a non-invasive, needle-free diagnostic of women’s menstrual health.

Period trackers, step aside. There’s a bigger sister in town. Gone are the days of inputting when your cycle begins, ends, what color it is, how heavy…just go about your daily business. Qvin is one of the most elegant examples of this future is the smart menstrual pad, an emerging category that transforms periods into powerful check-ins. No extra effort. Just wear, bleed, read.

Top features include:

  • Embedded biosensors that detect hormonal shifts, stress biomarkers, immune markers, and nutrient levels.

  • Realtime syncing with your phone to track mood, pain, flow levels, and data-backed cycle insights.

  • Predictive analytics that help you prepare for PMS, ovulation, or fatigue days.

  • Clinical-grade data for reproductive health tracking, all gathered passively.

The result? Menstruation becomes less about concealment and more about connection — a recurring lab-in-a-pad that helps women better understand their body’s rhythms, changes, and needs — with zero extra steps. All gets uploaded to your personal health file which you can share with whichever doctors you desire.

INNOVATION (what i wish for)

“BioSignal” (Mock Idea)

BioSignal: a next-gen at home waste lab to capture data of all your bodily fluids.

Imagine if every flush, drip, stain, or wipe was a data point — quietly logged, respectfully decoded, and turned into intelligent action. Biosignal is a concept for a full-spectrum, AI-powered biodiagnostic home capture lab that translates your body’s waste into meaningful, everyday health intel.

How it works:

  • Sensor-embedded smart disposables (toilet inserts, tampons, tissues, condoms, band-aids) detect biochemical and cellular markers in real time.

  • Multi-waste input system — captures signals from urine, blood, sweat, saliva, semen, and vaginal fluid — turning everyday hygiene into passive diagnostics.

  • AI-trained dashboard — aggregates your biodata and flags early markers of inflammation, hormonal dysregulation, nutrient deficiencies, organ strain, cancer markers or signs of infection.

  • Privacy-first, opt-in clinical sharing — empowering users to monitor trends and securely share actionable insights with physicians or wellness professionals.

Why it matters:
Modern health is reactive. Biosignal would shift it toward proactive attunement — catching issues before symptoms arise and giving individuals full-spectrum context around their physiological state.

It's time we stopped seeing waste as useless and started seeing it as sacred — the truth serum of your biology, hiding in plain sight.

When you are losing your mind, find your body.

~ Karden Rabin

Are you a founder or business leader who needs to quickly align on strategy, design from insight, or innovate a wellness solution?

Design sprints:
🔍 discover an inobvious insight
🎨 design a unique solution
🚀 launch with starter assets

Coaching sprints:
💎 clarity on your direction
🌊 consistency with your practice
🎯 accountability on your momentum  

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