by Dave Korsunsky | Jan 19, 2016 | Self Tracking
Adopting a paleo-based diet and lifestyle can have tremendous benefits on your health. Improved body composition, increased energy levels, improved blood pressure and blood sugar, improved digestion and a diet that can be highly effective for managing chronic conditions (auto-immune, thyroid conditions, diabetes, hypertension and more) are just a few examples.
If you are considering paleo (or have already gone paleo) as a way to improve your health, there’s a number of different metrics you can use to quantify your progress.We will explore the most common metrics in this post.
Heads Up Health provides an app which can be used to track all of your health data. If you are ready to start logging your own data now, click the button below to create your account. Or, read on to learn more about the metrics you should consider tracking as you go paleo.
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Measuring your Paleo Progress
We’ll break down the metrics you should consider tracking into two main categories – the “at-home markers”, which you can measure easily on your own, and the “clinical markers”, which will require blood testing from your preferred doctor or lab testing center.
At-home Markers
- Blood sugar:
With blood sugar you will want to keep an eye on your fasting sugar (no food or drink for eight hours prior to test), which should start to come down on Paleo. Dr. Justin also recommends conducting periodic “functional glucose tolerance tests”. Simply record your blood sugar before, one hour after, two hours after and three hours after your favorite meal. Enter the data into your Heads Up profile along with a description of the meal you ate (figure 1). Much like fasting sugar, you should start to see the results from your functional glucose tolerance tests come down as your blood sugar begins to stabilize on the Paleo diet.
Figure 1: Tracking blood sugar in Heads Up Health
2. Body composition (weight and body fat percentage):
Tracking your weight and body fat percentage will give you a good sense of how your body composition is responding to Paleo. With Paleo, you are in essence re-programming your body’s metabolic machinery from storing fat to building lean muscle mass. Additionally, as your blood sugar and hormonal systems begin to stabilize on Paleo, this should also lead to improvements in body composition.
In some cases your weight may actually increase on Paleo because your are packing on lean muscle, which weighs more than fat. This is why it’s also important to track body fat percentage. If your weight is increasing but your body fat percentage is decreasing, this is a desirable effect as it indicates your body is getting leaner and stronger.
Tracking body composition in Heads Up Health
3. Blood pressure (optional)
A Paleo diet and lifestyle is an excellent starting place for those wishing to embrace a natural approach to lowering blood pressure. We know this because hypertension is virtually unheard of in hunter-gatherer and pastoralist cultures. High blood pressure can often be improved or even completely reversed by returning to a diet and lifestyle that is more consistent with our evolutionary heritage (1, 2).
Tracking blood pressure in Heads Up Health
4. Basal temperature (optional)
Basal temperature is a simple test that can be done at home to assess the health of your adrenal glands and your thyroid. The adrenal and thyroid glands are both critical components of our metabolic and hormonal systems. Among other things, they affect our ability to control weight and to regulate our energy throughout the day. They are also intricately connected with other systems in the body like our blood sugar control, which was referenced above.
When you are working with a trained healthcare professional who uses a Paleo approach to health, optimizing adrenal and thyroid function will be an important part of the process. Basal temperature is an excellent at-home marker you can use to track your progress.
For more information on how to use basal temperature testing to assess thyroid and adrenal health, please see this video.
Clinical markers
If possible, it is highly desirable to obtain lab testing before going Paleo and periodically throughout the process. Combined with the “At-home” markers, the “Clinical” markers help to tell the complete story of how your body and your overall health are changing on Paleo.
Dr. Justin’s top lab tests for Paleo are broken down into seven categories:
- Basic lipid panel: The lipid panel is especially important on Paleo, especially as you start to increase your dietary cholesterol and healthy fat intake on Paleo. The lipid panel will reveal how well your body is managing the new macronutrient breakdown and will also give cluse into whether or not there are other systems in the body (thyroid, adrenal, infections etc.) that need to be looked at.
- Dr J’s lipid markers: Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglycerides, triglyceride:HDL ration, Total:HDL ratio
- Blood sugar markers: In addition to “At-home” testing for glucose mentioned above, these tests will provide further information on how well your blood sugar mechanisms are improving on Paleo.
- Dr J’s blood sugar markers: Fasting glucose, hemoglobin A1c
- Inflammation: The Paleo diet is an excellent choice for reducing inflammation. These markers will help measure the effects.
- Dr J’s inflammation markers: hs-crp, fibrinogen, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), homocysteine
- Protein markers: These tests will look at the function of your liver and your kidneys.
- Dr J’s protein markers: creatinine, BUN, serum protein, albumin, globulin
- Iron levels: These tests will assess for anemia and for excess iron levels in the body.
- Dr J’s iron markers: Serum iron, ferritin, total iron-binding capacity, iron saturation, RBC, hemoglobin, hematocrit (HCT), mean corposcular volume (MCV), mean corposcular hemoglobin (MCH), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC)
- Blood nutrients: Here Dr. Justin will be looking at Vitamin D levels and magnesium levels to test for any deficiencies.
- Dr J’s blood nutrients: 25-hydroxy vitamin D3, RBC magnesium
- Thyroid: Dr. Justin will run a full thyroid panel to assess the overall hormonal and metabolic health within the body.
- Dr J’s thyoird markers: tsh, T4 total, T4 free, T3 total, T3 free, reverse T3, thyroid antibodies
Heads Up Health makes it easy to track your clinical data alongside your at-home data. With all your data in one place, it’s easy to share it with your healthcare practitioner of choice to interpret these results, assess your progress and determine any adjustments that need to be made to your Paleo routine.
Centralized medical records
For those who would like to order their own lab panel, Dr. Justin has put together a package that includes all labs mentioned above (and more) for $299. Depending on your health insurance, you may also be able to submit the expense for reimbursement. Click here to order the lab panel.
Summary
The Paleo diet and other ancestral-based approaches can have tremendous benefits for overall health. Heads Up Health gives you the tools to easily track all your important data to assess your progress. Dr. Justin Marchegiani and other experts in the ancestral health community can be your guides on the Paleo journey. For any questions, please contact support@headsuphealth.com or visit JustinHealth.com. You can also visit www.primaldocs.com to find a local health practioner in your area who treats based on ancestral and Paleo principles.
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Appendix A – Recommended products and services
Glucose tracking:
- Traditional glucometer: Any glucometer should work fine. We recommend the Precision Xtra.
- Wireless: For a wireless model that can integrate with Heads Up Health, we recommend the iHealth BG5 model.
Body composition:
- Traditional body fat scale: The Tanita BF679W is accurate and very affordable.
- Wireless models: The FitBit Aria or the Withings WS50 can both wirelessly sync with your Heads Up account.
Blood pressure:
- Traditional blood pressure monitor: We’ve had good success with the Omron 10 series.
- Wireless models: For a wireless model, we recommend the Withings or iHealth wireless models.
Basal temperature:
- Dr. Justin recommends the iProven DT-K117A thermometer for basal body temperature testing.
Lab testing:
- Please work with your preferred health practitioner to order lab testing. You can contact Dr. Justin or find ancestral health practitioners in your area at www.primaldocs.com.
Appendix B – References
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23414424
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19604407
by Dave Korsunsky | Oct 15, 2015 | Self Tracking
What’s the first thing you think about when you hear “mediation”? Is it the Dalai Lama? A surfer on a beautiful, exotic beach, far far away? Is it a monk or priest reaching deep to a quiet, peaceful place that regular people just can’t get to?
If you answered, “yes,” then good — you’re exactly the person who can benefit from some meditation 101. The truth is: meditation isn’t just for those people.
Who Can Benefit from Meditation?
Everyone. Yep, everyone who has just a few minutes to spare each day. Here’s how everyone can benefit:
Benefits of Meditation
1. Lower perceived stress: According the the Mayo Clinic, even a few minutes can restore calm and inner peace.
2. Regulated blood sugar: Meditation has been shown to lessen insulin resistance and lower blood sugar.
3. Regulated blood pressure: Medication alone sometimes isn’t enough to reduce or regulate blood pressure. A small study found that 40 out of 60 participants who started meditating reduced their blood pressure and eventually reduced their medication dosage.
4. Lower the need for healthcare services (and in return, healthcare costs): A recent study found that meditation, along with other relaxation-response techniques like yoga and prayer, can reduce the need for healthcare services by 43 percent.
Meditation can help lower blood pressure
5. Better sleep: Everyone has trouble sleeping at some point. And, once you get onto the insomnia merry go round, it’s really hard to hop off. Meditation can help fight insomnia and improve sleep.
6. Better food choices: When you’re experiencing high stress levels, your body reacts by craving high-fat and high-sugar foods. It’s been shown that meditation helps combat those cravings, and even reduces binge eating.
7. Increased productivity: Improved concentration + reduced stress = increased productivity. Meditation helps with all that. Google even provides a program that guides employees through yoga and meditation for increased productivity.
Meditation can be a secret weapon for boosting your focus
8. Lessened symptoms of depression and anxiety: This includes enhanced coping abilities and reduced anger/irritability.
9. Slowed aging: Meditation has been shown to increase telomerase, a.k.a. the “immortality enzyme.” More telomerase means slower cellular aging.
10. Regulated cortisol levels: Cortisol is a stress hormone; a hormone that can wreak havoc on your body, including interfering with learning and memory and lowering your immune system, among other things. Meditation, even in super short spurts of minutes at a time, can help lower cortisol levels.
How to Track It in Heads Up Health
If you’re a Heads Up Health user, you can use the technology to track your meditation and compare it against your other health metrics to see how your new healthy habit is making a difference. Here’s how:
- Manually enter your meditation time each day. Just go to the “Add data” button at the top and select “Meditation Time” from the drop down menu. Do it right after your meditation so you know your data is accurate and up-to-date.
Track meditation in your Heads Up profile
- Add it to your Dashboard.
Tracking meditation on your Heads Up dashboard
- Use the Analyze function to create graphs. These graphs will show you how meditating impacts your sleep, weight, blood pressure or other health metric that you’re looking to improve.
Use the Analyzer to explore trends and compare meditation time with other data, like blood pressure
Heads Up Health Recommends
Apps:
- Headspace – This app acts a personal trainer for your mind and provides loads of support for a huge variety of meditation techniques, based on what you’re using it for — better sleep, increased creativity, reduced anxiety, etc . It works on your smartphone or computer.
- Calm – Meditation in its most simple form. This app includes a variety of nature-inspired backgrounds and sounds accompanied by timed meditation or guided meditation. At the end, you can even share your session on Facebook.
Teachers and classes:
- Meditation teachers and classes: Another great way to get started is searching for a meditation teacher who can work with you directly and provide instruction and feedback. You can also look for group training classes in your area.
- Mindfulness based stress reduction: This is an 8-week course with a standardized curriculum developed by John Hopkins University. The course teaches the fundamentals of mindfulness meditation for stress reduction. In many cases you can access this training through your health insurance provider.
Devices:
- emWave2 – Although not technically the same as meditation, this is a handheld device designed to provide heart rhythm feedback in real time and can help you transform your physical and emotional response to stress. One of the challenges when first learning to meditate is you never know if you’re meditating properly. emwave is a great way to get some real-time feedback while you train yourself to relax using the emwave hardware and software. You can then progress into other forms of meditation if you so desire.
Empower yourself by starting meditation and tracking it in Heads Up Health. You’ll look better, feel better and sleep better. Who doesn’t want that?
Get started!
Ready to start your meditation practice? Curious to see how meditation can improve your sleep, blood pressure, weight and other health stats? Sign up below to start tracking!
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by Dave Korsunsky | Sep 12, 2015 | Self Tracking
Here’s a life hack: track your nutrition and see results. Sounds easy, right?
Well, anyone who’s tried nutrition tracking knows that it’s a hard habit to incorporate into a busy schedule. Back in the day if you wanted to do this you’d have to write it down in a journal; a “food diary.”
Luckily, with the rapid advancement of digital health, there are loads of apps for health available. One of the most popular — and our favorite — is MyFitnessPal. It’s free to download, easy to use and loaded with cool features to help guide you as you navigate the murky waters of improving nutrition.
If you’re already tracking your nutrition, or you’re about to start, register for the beta launch of Heads Up Health. If you stick with it, it’s totally worth it. There are many benefits, and you don’t need it to be the New Year to make a resolution to start tracking your nutrition. Here are five ways nutrition tracking can improve your life:
1. You can lose more weight than if you didn’t track — a 2008 Kaiser Permanente study found that people who tracked what they ate lost twice as much weight. This same study found that the more frequently the participants recorded their nutrition, the more weight they lost in the end. Basically, if you’re trying to lose weight, not tracking your nutrition is not an option.
That’s why Heads Up Health is designed to integrate with MyFitnessPal. Once you sync MyFitnessPal with your Heads Up Health account, you can graph your weight and calorie trends. More likely than not, you’ll start to see some correlations between your weight and caloric intake — and you’ll also see that one bad nutrition day will not make you gain tons of weight.
Tracking Weight and Calories in Heads Up Health
2. You can figure out if it’s your diet that’s making you sluggish and cranky — If you frequently feel sluggish or even anxious, start tracking when you feel that way and what you ate around that time. Feeling bloating after eating pasta, bread or other refined carbohydrates? It might be a gluten intolerance. Get the stomach gurgles or allergy symptoms only in the morning? It could be the dairy in the milk in your cereal or creamer in your coffee. In Heads Up Health, you can easily add these feelings as Journal Entries. It’s a quick way to time/date stamp any potential reactions to food, and you can pull them up later when you talk to your physician or a dietitian.
3. You can see if you are, or aren’t, eating a balanced diet — How can you be really sure that you’re eating a balanced diet it you’re not tracking it? You might feel like you have a good grasp on it, but it’s possible that you’re actually getting too much protein (which has been estimated to actually be a problem in the U.S., for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike), too many calories from carbohydrates or not enough healthy fat. You can also start to experiment with different strategies for changing your eating habits. For example, check out this great post from the Founder and CEO of Heads Up Health, David Korsunsky. He packed on 6.3 pounds of lean muscle mass and lost 3.8 pounds of fat while increasing healthy fat consumption and decreasing exercise on the Bulletproof Diet!
Heads Up Health Dashboard
4. You can lower your cholesterol and/or glucose — Let’s say you just went to your annual physical exam and your physician ordered some blood work. And, sure enough, your cholesterol at 225 mg/dL (higher than it should be) and your glucose is around 117 mg/dL — also a smidge too high. The good news is that you can reverse those trends through lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise. The sooner you start the changes, the sooner you’ll lower your cholesterol and/or glucose!
5. It keeps you honest to yourself — Look, no one wants to admit that that one beer or glass of wine is going to put them over their calorie limit for the day. But just because you don’t track it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Tracking your nutrition accurately provides you with a detailed story of reaching your healthy goals. It shows you where you’re doing well (drinking enough water!) and where you’re making mistakes. Once you’re aware of where you’re making mistakes, you can focus your time and energy on fixing them.
Heads Up Health Recommendations
Apps:
- MyFitnessPal — This app is free to download and tracks your total caloric intake, plus your nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, fiber, sugars, fat, sodium, potassium, iron, etc. All you have to do is enter your food (or scan the barcode if it’s a packaged food item) and MyFitnessPal does the work for you by breaking down what you actually ate. If you sync this up to your Heads Up Health account, you can see how your total calories are impacting your weight, blood sugar, cholesterol levels and other important health indicators.
Tracking your nutrition has many more benefits, and with free apps for health out there, you might as well begin tracking, even if it’s just for a week or two. Over time, you’ll learn how much you’re eating and maybe see some areas where you could improve.
If you’re interested in tracking your nutrition, and seeing how it affects your other healthcare analytics — weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose — sign up for the beta version of Health Up Health. Or, if you’re just interested in staying up-to-date with the latest healthcare, fitness and wellness trends, follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
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by Dave Korsunsky | Aug 26, 2015 | Self Tracking
At this point in life you probably know that body mass index (BMI) is used as one indicator of whether or not you’re “healthy.” There’s always controversy around it.
Is body mass index truly a good indicator for health?
What if I have a lot of muscle?
What if I’m pregnant?
How’s my doctor going to tell me my BMI is too high when he/she looks like they have their own higher-end BMI?
Ifs, ands and buts aside, BMI is just an indicator; a mark in the road to tell you approximately where you are in your health, although it’s not the end-all, be-all health indicator. Like many healthcare analytics, it’s actually only one piece of your health puzzle. It’s just one transaction to keep track of in your health bank account.
BMI, coupled with your weight and body fat percentage, will give you a good idea of your body composition.
Weight, Body Fat and BMI on the Heads Up Health dashboard
Once you understand your body composition, you’ll understand how you can improve your body so it’s at a healthy level of fat and the other components. But first, you need to track your BMI, body fat and weight.
We designed Heads Up Health to integrate your BMI, body fat and weight data from a variety of different trackers, including Apple Health and Fitbit Aria, plus it has the capability to accept manual entries. If you’re already tracking this data, or you’re about to start, register for the beta launch of Heads Up Health. Until then, here’s the skinny on body composition and what all those healthcare analytics really mean:
Weight
- What it is: The last few decades have made weighing yourself something you can do in the privacy of your very own bathroom. Your weight is how much all of you — fat, lean muscle and tissue, bones, that spaghetti you just had for dinner, your jeans, your jewelry — weighs altogether. It’s one of the easiest healthcare analytics to track to know if you’re within the range of being healthy or if you need to make some healthy life changes.
- Why you should care: Research has shown that people who regularly weigh themselves do better when it comes to weight loss progress and success.
BMI
- What it is: BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. So yes, it is possible for someone to be outside of a normal BMI and still be healthy and not at risk of developing disease because it doesn’t take into account muscle weight versus fat weight.
- Why you should care: A high BMI can be an indicator of high body fat, which can lead to health problems. Tracking your BMI is an easy way to spot a red flag when it comes to your health — so you can make changes sooner rather than later.
Weight and BMI line graph in Heads Up Health
If you’re a Heads Up Health user, your BMI is auto calculated based on your height (in your profile) and the weight you manually enter or that’s imported from one of your apps or devices.
Body Fat
- What it is: Body fat takes into consideration your body size, weight and height. The basic way to find it is to measure your waist, wrist, hip and forearm and enter it into a body fat calculator. Other ways to find body fat include:
- Why you should care: Especially if you’re losing weight. Keeping track of this healthcare analytic can help you understand what’s going on if your scale isn’t budging; it’s possible you’re losing fat and gaining muscle, and it’s just not showing on your scale.You can easily keep track of this in Heads Up Health. It’s a straight-forward manual entry based off of any of the methods listed above.
Heads Up Health Recommendations
- Wireless scales: These scales connect to your wifi network at home and can automatically update your weight, body fat and BMI in your Heads Up account without requiring manual entry. We recommend the Fitbit Aria or the Withings Smart Body Analyzer.
- Manual scales: If you have a perfectly good scale at home or prefer to avoid the cost and complexity of wireless models, you can use any old scale you want. Just enter your weight and body fat readings manually into your Heads Up account. We’ve found the Tanita BF679W to be a highly accurate scale for measuring weight and body fat at a very reasonable price.
Your body composition is yours to monitor and your health is yours to take care of, so monitoring these healthcare analytics can pay off in the long run. If you’re interested in tracking your body composition data, and seeing how it affects your other healthcare analytics — blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose — sign up for the beta version of Health Up Health. Or, if you’re just interested in staying up-to-date with the latest healthcare, fitness and wellness trends, follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
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by Dave Korsunsky | Aug 5, 2015 | Self Tracking
There’s an estimated 100,000 apps for health out there. Think about that. 100,000 ways to track your weight, nutrition, training progress, blood sugar, blood pressure — you name it, it’s probably available. So, whether you’re an iPhone or Android user, you likely have a health app or two on your device.
If you’re trying to wade through all the choices, let’s start with the basics: Tracking steps and calories burned is one of the easiest ways to get started with monitoring your healthcare analytics. Here’s why:
- The data is incredibly easy to collect.
- The health benefits of meeting daily goals for physical activity are numerous.
- Tracking steps is a gateway analytic that can lead to helping you understand other important numbers like your weight, BMI, body fat percentage, blood sugar and more.
We designed Heads Up Health to integrate a pretty long list of activity trackers so you can track activity with all your other health metrics. Can more activity lower your fasting blood sugar? Improve your sleep? Shrink your waist circumference?
Weight management
Apps for health can produce some impressive — and noticeable — results, especially when it comes to weight management. Say you’ve hit the ripe old age of 30. You’re cruising along: long commutes in the car, working hard at your job, but with your desk job, you’re putting on the pounds, little by little.
Those pounds are creeping on because you’re not active enough. You might feel like you’re active enough, but chances are you’re walking and running around way less now than you were a few years ago, mostly because you’re putting in 40+ hours at a desk.
If you use an app for health or activity device, you can start collecting the data on how much you’re moving. The simple act of having real data on your steps per day can be incredibly helpful for changing your behavior. Only hitting 5,000 steps instead of the recommended 10,000 steps per day? Well, that’s easy enough to fix. Simple things like parking a little further away can be a way to hit your daily step goal and quantify your success each day.
Once you start collecting your activity, you’ll also be able to collect the calories you’re burning each day. And with that, you’ll be able to see some patterns with other information such as weight, body fat and BMI. If you’re not averaging at least 10,000 steps per day, don’t expect any miracles on the scale!
Disease prevention
Beyond weight management, tracking your activity and calories that you burn can help prevent disease — keeping you out of the hospital and feeling good so you can keep up with your busy life. Unfortunately, long commutes, desk jobs and evenings in front of the TV have led to a society where we now spend more time sitting than we do sleeping. One study estimated that between sleeping and sitting, we’re sedentary for 21 hours a day on average!
Excessive sitting time puts our bodies into a metabolically dysfunctional state. In fact, medical professionals are now referring to “sitting” as the new “smoking” due to the increased risk of metabolic and cardiovascular disease from too much sitting.
So, track your activity. Notice when you’re sitting too much. Get your steps in. And help decrease your risk of some pretty horrific diseases in the long run.
Mental health
The phrase “Exercise: Cheaper than therapy” has some truth behind it. Physical activity effectively manages and even improves your state of mind. Walking and running are great for lowering stress, staying productive at work and maintaining an overall sense of wellbeing. Getting up for short walks throughout the day and chipping away at your daily activity goal can do wonders for your mental health. “When in doubt, sweat it out!”
Track your steps, improve your health. It’s that easy. If you’re interested in seeing how your activity impacts your other healthcare analytics — BMI, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, Hemoglobin A1c and more – make sure you have a Heads Up Health account so you can see the big picture when it comes to your health.
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