All the ORANGE really gives you pause, doesn’t it? At least it did when I first saw the results. I’m just imagining little cholesterol molecules floating in my bloodstream. I have elevated levels of LDL (Bad) in conjunction with high levels of HDLs (good).
Last week, I visited WellnessFX, a San Francisco based startup focused on giving consumers more information about their health through performing regular diagnostics on blood draws, setting you up with a phone consult to review your results, and the ability to track your progress online. It covers cardiac, metabolic, liver, kidney, electrolytes, bone, blood, vitamin and mineral levels. As a not terribly old person (yet!) with what I thought to be non-horrible habits (don’t smoke, or eat beef, no soda or fast food), I was horrified by my lipid panel results. During my phone consult, we talked through interventions to make to improve my results. No genius prizes here -
- Reduce carb intake (but I love rice and noodles!)
- Pick chicken (over duck, or pork! – less saturated fats to reduce the “bad”cholesterol in my diet”
- Work out more
- Add a daily multi-vitamin (results showed slightly low levels of Vitamin D, and East Asians are prone to osteoporosis, so better get on it!)
The more interesting thing for me was the next level down results – decomposing LDLs in sdLDL and IDL components.
This looks pretty terrible too. sdLDLs are the bits of cholesterol most likely to clog your arteries and possibly not just heart disease, but also neural degeneration as the vessels to your brain also become blocked. Fortunately, I’m still relatively young, and can take steps to correct these issues. So today I’ve taken my multi-vitamin, and studiously avoided toast =). The exercise routine is 30 min each day, alternating cardiovascular workout with weights. The goal is to do the interventions for the next 90 days, and then check back in to see if it made a difference to my stats. Public statements are supposed to improve adherence – so here it is!
For those of you in the SF Bay Area, WellnessFX is offering a
Baseline package for $149 which is a pretty good deal. The other packages are rather pricy and offer more tests. I sent my physician a copy of my results, and will be triangulating between her thoughts and those provided by the Wellness MD.
Now if only I could integrate my WellnessFX recommendations with my
Pebble Watch. More on how to make health management platforms easier to use in another post…
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