This Week’s Thrive in Five is all about preventative health testing and things you can do to extend your healthspan.
Healthspan is really what Bodyshot (certainly it’s one of our key philosophies) is all about. It’s about putting the priority on healthspan, not life span. What we mean by that is having a long, healthy life, not just a long life, which isn’t necessarily healthy.
Over the next month, we’ll be basing our wellbeing tips on preventative health, before we kick that off we want to suggest that you consider doing some testing. Now we’ve no vested interest in this because the majority of tests are simply services that we use personally. We do think it’s really important to test and measure before you take a supplement for example. Find out where your levels are at, find out what your DNA says about you and the way you respond to foods and exercise and epigenetics – the way that the environment interacts with your genes.
Testing to lead your preventative health strategy
So the tests we recommend thinking about would be:
1. Genetic test
A genetic test, something like a DNAfit test, which will tell you the type of exercise that you respond best to, the type of diet that your genes indicate you’d suit, so lactose free for example, gluten-sensitive, carbohydrate-sensitive, the kind of requirements you have for base vitamins and minerals.
I’ve used it personally, it’s a one-time test, your genes don’t change, certainly not in the context of DNAfit or one of those tests. They can of course be switched on and off by the environment, and that’s the world of epigenetics. So a genetic test would be the first thing.
2. Blood test
The second would be to get some real-time data. If the DNA and genetics are your blueprints for good health, real-time data tells us exactly what’s going on in the gut and in the blood right now.
So a blood test with someone like Forth With Life, that will tell you your real-time levels of iron, vitamin D, B6, B12, cholesterol, liver performance – all the really important metrics. We’ve recently gone vegetarian so I added additional tests into my blood work to make sure that I’m getting everything I need now I’ve cut meat out of my diet. So blood testing is the second thing.
3. Gut test
The third thing to think about would be a gut test. Something like a Healthpath test, that’s one I’ve used personally recently and was really impressed with them. A Healthpath test looks at your gut, it looks at the delicate ecosystem of bacteria in your microbiome, also your gut. It also looks at the type nd diversity of bacteria that you have, whether you have a leaky gut or the potential for leaky gut or there’s inflammation in the gut, whether you have a prevalence of “bad” bacteria, not enough good, or the other way round.
Build a Data led preventative health strategy
The combination of these three tests will give you so much information. They’re all relatively easy tests to do that we really recommend doing. Giving you the information and power so you can shape your health and wellbeing, and your preventative health strategy all around data, not guesswork. I hope that’s helpful, I’ll speak to you next week.
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