My experiments with quantifying personal health through sensors

Preventive health care has always lagged behind curative care. Even when people have focussed on preventative health, it concentrated on vanity metrics such as weight loss or a pedometer for a corporate wellness program. However, the mind dizzying array of tools available now can really make a big dent in one's physical well being.

To experiment and learn about my own lifestyle, I dabbled with several of these devices and evaluated their impact on my personal health. What triggered this? Primarily, it was intellectual curiosity. So often, one has focussed on using external devices or even coaches/nutritionists as a?psychological?aid to drive behaviour change. Instead, I wanted to see if understanding and direct view of?physiological?and near-real-time clinical data would further help me adapt better. While the promised land is afar, I was amazed at what I could learn about my body and how data had a much more material impact on my well being than any other test.

Before I start, I must credit Nickhil Jakatdar (https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/nickhiljakatdar/), who piqued my curiosity in a conversation about his own lifestyle and his new startup GenePath Diagnostics.

WHY: Broadly speaking, I was trying to understand if there are any low hanging fruits that one can find that can help one better understand and improve one's nutrition, exercise and overall lifestyle?

WHAT did I actually do?

I wore a Continuous Glucose Monitor (a CGM) for 14 days. An intrusive sensor that is "attached" to your body measures your blood glucose response continuously (every few minutes). So if you ever have a Blood Sugar test (HbA1c) or a fasting blood sugar, this is doing that but almost every minute. The sensor gathers the data and periodically updates it on the cloud, which you can then surface through a mobile app or a website.

Simultaneously, I paired my existing Dozee (a Remote Vitals health monitoring) company that non-intrusively tracks Sleep, Heart Rate, Respiratory Rate and even Blood pressure. (Full Disclosure: My firm Prime Venture Partners is an investor in Dozee https://www.dozee.health/).

Gathering Data and Understanding:

The way the program was structured required me to track my food and exercise in a timeline manner. I was not to count calories eaten or burnt but just the details of what I consumed or burnt. The app had a simple interface where I could take pictures and upload them. The first 5 days were structured just to live my "normal" lifestyle and report on it. Likewise, I also had to track my exercise routine quite regularly - Brisk walks, Yoga, Tennis, Badminton, whatever.

The good news is that broadly I was generally in good shape basis the first time period.

Of course, there were some surprising odds and ends. For example:

• Despite eating a very healthy and complete breakfast late in the morning, I would get a sugar low at around 1130am. This pattern persisted through most days. Clearly, my body was crashing. In the latter part of the period, I would take a few nuts or fruit at this hour.
• The plate method works that we often teach to kids actually works better for us!

Balanced meals - and in particular had "protein" - showed a very balanced sugar response. Also, my oft-dreaded indulgences - dark chocolate, an ice cream scoop, or the occasional alcoholic beverage-were not as bad as I thought. To be clear, the nutritionists I worked with nor I am encouraging this, but whether you "eat to live" or "live to eat", it behoves one to understand what it is doing to your body, not to mention your psyche.

• Another not so surprising finding was that if you late a snack late at night (who knew watching Cricket was injurious to health!), your blood sugar would rise and stay elevated through the night, often causing sleep disturbance. This errant metabolic behaviour was also quite visible if one had an alcoholic beverage in the evening, let alone late at night.
• Last but not least, heavy exercise, whether cardiovascular or strength-oriented, spiked one's blood sugar. I was not expecting this. No wonder having proper nutrition before and after your workout was very critical to have a balanced.

SUMMARY:

Digital intervention for physical health is here to stay and help us hopefully live longer lives and higher quality ones! The medical fraternity has made it very easy and accessible for us to understand our own body responses better. This will help us enjoy what we like without feeling guilty and at the same time maintain good health! If you are a curious reader, I encourage you to consult with your Doctor or Nutritionist to try this out! If you are an entrepreneur seeking to build some applied health solutions to help people live better quality lives, drop me a message!

(Amit is a Managing Partner at?Prime Venture Partners , an early-stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category-creating, early-stage companies founded by rock star teams. We have invested in companies like MyGate, NiYo, Sunstone, Quizizz, mFine.ai, Dozee and more).

Prior, Amit held leadership positions in Product and Engineering at Makemytrip, Google, and IBM in India and the US. Find my other?blogs ?on LinkedIn & my?tweets ?at?@amitsomani )