Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the healthiest of us all?
As 2017 comes to an end, I wanted to reflect briefly.. on my data. I have tracked my steps, heart rate, weight (AppleWatch, Nokia SteelHR…
Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the healthiest of us all?
As 2017 comes to an end, I wanted to reflect briefly.. on my data. I have tracked my steps, heart rate, weight (AppleWatch, Nokia SteelHR, iPhone) and other more invasive and therefore much less frequent vitals like blood glucose level with One Drop. I had my uBiome sequenced (twice), did an EveryWell blood test and hung up the smart Mango Mirror on my wall so i can see my #healthkit data every time I look in the mirror. That was all fun! Data Everywhere!
I walked over 2.3Million steps, I ran 107km (only), checked my weight 144 times, apparently visited 24 cities and checked into over 1860 places oh and I had an 113 day headspace streak till i lost it on my trip to Japan. Great, right?
Well… I finished off 2017 with my weight at 105.3kg vs in January with 105.7. My gut microbiome is heavily infested with Firmicutes with 77.87%. My LDL-C, Cholesterol and Triglycerides are all in check at least back in March when I got it done.. Mentally and stress-wise feeling good and I think Headspace helped significantly but that is a qualitative measure.
When I hung up the Mango Mirror just two months ago, I thought that because I have my smart phone and all of my #healthkit data right in the palm of my hand, that would be enough and was a bit skeptical. As you saw from above, I have multiple applications notifying me what I should be doing:
“You can make it, only 600 steps to go”
“Sleep more”
“Last week you ran 3.2km. lets do it again”
“Breathe”
“Close your exercise circle”
I am fascinated with tracking my own health data and as the #quantifiedself movement has entered mainstream few years back, we are all trying to figure out how do we change our own behaviors in order to improve the longevity and quality of our lives with our loved ones.
I will also admit that I have not been successful (as you can see from above)… I go in cycles of running, exercising and eating healthy, and then I fall off the bandwagon due to a sudden change in schedule or many other excuses.
So as I stood in front of the mirror, I was pondering maybe we, as human beings, need more reminders in more places to disconnect ourselves from the physical nature of a smart phone or the next best thing, of a SmartWatch. Whether it’s a mirror or any other visual neuron-invoking surface, at the end of the day it comes down to behavior change, which is the hardest thing to hack!
But as I reflected on 2017, few things came to mind on what 2018 holds in store for us — and its not more data…
2018 will bring us more interfaces to record but more importantly make sense of all the data our body generates
2018 will be the year of holistic coaching with combination of real coaches & chatbots with artificial intelligence to help us structure our busy lives towards recovery, wellness and mental health
2018 will help us redefine Digital Health into leveraging technology to hack our behaviors, as more evidence (based on outcomes and data) comes in and Digital Therapeutics will lead the way.
I hope next year, when I am staring into my Augmented Reality MetaGlasses, I see the new me :)