The best investment you can make in life is in your own health. The earlier you begin the better, but as the saying goes ‘it is never too late’. This need not be complicated nor expensive. Rather than what you eat, the more important considerations are WHQ, when, how and quantity you eat. The digestive system needs to be in optimum condition to extract value from your meal, then you are ready for exercise, rest and other activities that will contribute to your health.
Here are some simple measures for you to keep track of, which will let you know how healthy you are and the direction and speed of your wellbeing.
Seven things to keep the right side of seventy.
Fasting blood sugar levels: Most commonly used as a test for diabetes your fasting glucose levels is an indication of how well your body is regulating glucose (sugar) with insulin. After a fast (no eating for several hours, for me at least 8) your blood is measured for glucose levels. The measurement is scored in one of two ways, I prefer the mg/dl number, milligrams per deciliter. The closer you are to 70mg/dl the better off you are. It is possible to go below 70 mg/dl, but difficult and a # around 50 is considered too low. Seventy to 99 mg/dl is considered normal, once over 100 is pre-diabetic and from 126 up is diabetes. Elevated blood sugar levels is an indication of poor health, it has many bad effects on your body and for me is the most important indicator of health status. By controlling diet and eating habits we can avoid many of the conditions of modern life. Testing is simple and can easily be done at home, some have continuous glucose monitoring, though this is not necessary unless you are diabetic. More on fasting blood sugar levels here and see review of test kits here.
Resting Heart Rate (RHR): This is an indication of your cardiovascular health and is the rate at which your heart beats per minute when you have been in a relaxed state for some time. 60-100 is considered normal, I would say work to keep it under 70.This is done by regular exercise where your heart rate is raised and kept high for 15-30 minutes, depending on how high it has been raised. As your heart gets more efficient the resting rate should lower, provided there are no other complications. Unless you are in fairly good physical shape a rate below 60 may be an indication of problems and you should seek medical help.Measuring your RHR can be as simple as taking your pulse while watching a stopwatch, there are many monitors available, some inexpensive. I use a fitbit, as it provides me with several measures which I find useful, but you can go as simple or as complicated as you like, just stay within your means. More on RHR here and on monitoring here.
Diastolic Blood Pressure #: Blood pressure is measured by two numbers, the first is the ‘systolic’ and is created when the heart drives blood through the body and the second or ‘diastolic’ is when the heart is at rest. A normal blood pressure is considered to be 120/80, if either of those numbers are higher it means your heart is working harder than is ideal. Too low pressure can be just as problematic. A normal range is considered to be 90-119 systolic and 60-79 diastolic. A good target is 100/70, you may never get there but if you are trying chances are good that you will be ok. Again this is best controlled by diet and exercise, things over which you have a great deal of control. More on blood pressure here and here. Blood pressure monitors and how to use them here.
Body weight 70kg/175cm: Five foot nine inches or 175cm is the average height for men across most of the nations where my audience live, for women it is five foot three inches (160cm).If you focus on eating and exercise, you will arrive at your body weight.. Ignore the scale. Keep on track by looking in the mirror. Each body is unique, you will know when you are in comfortable good weight, by sight. Then you can check the scale. See a guide here.
Biological Age under 70, no matter the calendar: Your biological age is a measure medicine has worked out to see how much your condition differs from the accepted norms for that age group. The norms are not exceptional and in many cases pretty bad you can be above or below the norm. You want to be below the norm and as far below as you can get. No matter how long you live you do not want your biological age to exceed seventy years. You will probably need a professional to determine your biological age, it should be able to be done on a regular check up. Fortunately the things which will control biological age are very similar to all the things we have so far discussed for health. See a summary here, if you want to know more on healthy aging read here.
Sleep Score over 70: There are many sleep monitors which you wear to bed and they monitor your sleep. They are able to distinguish between the different phases of sleep and typically give you a sleep score, out of 100 for each night. I use a fitbit and a ‘good’ score starts at 80, which I seldom see. I am satisfied with averaging over 70 with close to 7 hours sleep per night each week. They may not be the most accurate, but are an important ballpark measure for sleep quality, crucial to long term health.
70 Seconds Standing on One Leg (with eyes closed): We have talked about cardiovascular and strength training for health, another crucial measure is balance. Get comfortable standing on one leg, best done by practicing. Once you are able to maintain a single foot stance for a few minutes try closing your eyes while on one leg. You will soon topple over so make sure you are near a wall of chair for support. I find it useful to do this barefoot and then to ‘put my head in my toes’, that is focus on the toes and wiggle them, let them work for balance. I used to be satisfied with 15 seconds on one leg with eyes closed, until I heard about the 90 year old doing 90 seconds. Working my way up to 70 seconds.
These are great indicators