Your Breath Could Reveal Whether You Have Cancer

If a fingerprint can tell someone who you are, a "breathprint" could reveal how you're doing.

That's according to Raed Dweik, the doctor who runs the pulmonary vascular program at the Cleveland Clinic's Respiratory Institute.

For the past two decades, Dweik has been studying the molecular patterns in breath that can reveal what's happening inside the body. In the same way that a pocket of air above the water level in a closed container carries signature molecules that reflect the composition of that water, our breath is directly linked to what's happening in our blood.

"A lot of people just think breath is what's in your lungs," Dweik told me. "We realize now that anything in your body that is eventually in the blood can be measured in your breath." Read more...