Optimal Health and Simple Steps to Find Yours

Exactly eight years ago, I lost my father at age 53 to cardiovascular disease. He was in the middle of a cycling class when he suffered a massive heart attack. His passing was a complete shock to everyone who knew him - he was in peak physical condition, practiced meditation for mental health, watched his diet and enjoyed cooking nutritious meals. He was the paragon of health on the outside. Here's a picture of him in his men's soccer league at age 53.

There were many lessons I've learned since this loss - most of which around grief, resilience, and turning pain into purpose. But through this unfortunate situation, I've also learned about genetic predisposition, early biomarkers of disease, and importantly, what "optimal health" means on an individual basis and how that definition may change through life's various phases and stressors. I've personally learned that what once may have suited my health, may later not be in my best interest. For example, as I age and take on increasing work responsibilities, my exercise intensity and stress load may need to adapt.

Since losing my father, I've embarked on a personal journey to understand my own health metrics through routine bloodwork, wearable devices that track my body's daily response to life's stressors, and a diet/exercise/mental health regimen that supports my longevity goals.

Through this research and journey, I've seen loud and clear that today's health system is primarily centered around treating problems after they have started. While this will always be critically important, I believe there is an immense opportunity to educate, inform and provide the population with resources to better understand their baseline health and the individual measures they can take for improvements BEFORE problems arise. I believe when this becomes the norm, we will see disease rates start to decline. This is my passion that I wish to spread to others; this is the fire that's been fueled by my father's passing.

Before I go into what I've done for myself and my personal regimen, if this topic is interesting to you, I encourage you to check out the following list of companies that are making major strides in the preventive health space. I've either spoken with their teams or have tried their products/services, and I wholeheartedly believe in the mission they are all set out to solve:

Levels - a platform that helps you see how food impacts your health
Whoop - a fitness tracker that measures strain, recovery, and sleep
Oura - a smart ring used to track sleep and physical activity
Biostrap - an integrated platform for remote physiological monitoring
Invitae - genetic testing that helps you make better life decisions
Parsley Health - a virtual holistic and functional medicine practice
Inside Tracker - a personalized nutrition system that analyzes data from your blood, DNA and habits
Headsup Health - a data-driven platform makes it super easy for practitioners to track the progress of their patients’ health data in no time

Here's a recent podcast listen with an MD at Levels, that goes into detail on the biology of resilience and how we can use knowledge of our biological response to food, exercise, and unforeseen stressors to improve our health and prevention of disease.

The best way to change the world is to start with ourselves.

The companies listed above (and more) are doing the work to educate and change the health system for the better, but I think we can chip away at the solution if every single one of us takes our health into our own hands. What do I mean by this?

Don't wait for something to feel off before you start to pay attention.
Treat your health like you would your bank account - monitor and have discipline.
Don't wait for the solution to your health to be solved by someone else.

Taking a proactive approach can seem overwhelming and quite frankly unimportant if you're someone that has been fortunate enough to not experience health difficulties. But you should treat your health (and data) like your life depends on it, because it does.

Here is what I've done and some ways you can start to take a preventive approach to your health:

Listen to podcasts and read books to educate yourself and increase your own awareness - see my post here for some examples
Get your bloodwork done for a baseline picture of where you stand today and repeat every 6 months or so to see what has changed (I'll do a separate post on what specifically to look out for in blood tests)
Invest in a wearable device that tracks your biometrics - HRV, resting heart rate, respiratory rate (see post here on the Whoop). This will give you a relative understanding of what behaviors impact your body's ability to adapt and how long it takes for your body (nervous system) to reach homeostasis and a relaxed/recovered state
Pay attention to how much sleep you're getting and your sleep quality - having a wearable to track this is ideal, but you can start by logging your sleep hours and making adjustments
Limit processed foods - a CGM and the Levels product is one way of visualizing the impact that certain foods have on your body's response to glucose, but the easiest and next best action you can take without ever owning a device is to simply limit your intake of processed foods
Exercise, but watch how it affects your stress. We all know the importance of exercise, but what's not talked about enough (in my opinion) is the recovery side and how we should also view exercise as a stressor. Having a routine that gets you to move your body and increase your heart rate is important, but be mindful of the effect of other life stressors and how it may influence your need to refrain from the extra run, bike ride, or HIIT class.

Prevention and building resilience (mind and body) is a topic I could spend days talking about, so I'll keep it to this for now.