My Self-Tracking Wish List
Right now I am tracking 6 things:
- Sleep. I use a stopwatch and Zeo.
- Weight. I use three expensive scales.
- Blood glucose (fasting). I use Abbott’s Freestyle Lite system. I get the blood by pricking my forearm; it’s painless.
- Brain function. I use an arithmetic test.
- Morning energy. I rate my energy on a 0-100 scale at 8 am and 9 am.
- Productivity. I use the percentile feedback system I’ve described.
I keep crude measures of my workouts (on scraps of paper). Two more things I want to track:
- Inflammation. I would like to measure the redness of my gums. This is possible (take photo, measure redness), but hard.
- The effects of fermented foods, especially their effect on my immune system. I believe fermented foods differ greatly in potency but I am unable to do any quantification.
August 18th, 2011 at 6:11 am
I can imagine that tracking the effects of fermented foods would require some kind of intestine content sampling for the quality and quantity of gut flora.
August 18th, 2011 at 8:14 am
As far as inflammation goes, you might look into whether you could get personal or trial or otherwise informally supplied tests like http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/07/14/supar-power-a-rapid-inexpensive-highly-accurate-method-of-predicting-all-cause-and-disease-specific-mortality/
August 18th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Mine is very similar…
August 18th, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Why three scales instead of on very good one?
August 19th, 2011 at 5:21 am
I have three scales rather than one because if I have one scale and it breaks I am in bad shape. This once happened. If something changes, I want to make sure it’s because I’ve changed rather than the scale.
August 19th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
High sensitivity CRP (c-reactive protein) gauges overal inflammation.
August 20th, 2011 at 1:00 am
There is research showing crp being a reliable marker for cardiovascular health
August 20th, 2011 at 2:03 am
Acid – base balance
Easy to test at home even multiple times a day, with saliva or urin.
It is balanced in ancestral lifestyle. But highy acid today. Reviews on ancestral vs. Modern habits hold that modern people have chronic low level acidosis, causing bad health
It is an independent predictor of mortality. (reference in next comment)
Tests strips are cheap. Saliva and urn. Phion is one brand. Or search ph balabce strips. I can help
It is also easy to trick by supplemeting with potassium bicarbonate.
August 20th, 2011 at 2:06 am
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/164/14/1546.pdf
Uric Acid Level as a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality in Middle-aged Men
A Prospective Cohort Study
August 24th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Glucose levels after (identical) meals. A central predictor of prediabetes illnesses
http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2011/0823-mu-study-links-inactivity-with-risk-factors-for-type-2-diabetes/
August 29th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
“I keep crude measures of my workouts (on scraps of paper)”…
If you have an iPhone/iPad check out My Session Plan in the app store… It was designed to get rid of the scraps of paper and record times and reps.
I use Overtraining Monitor in the app store to track resting heart rate and weight.