Future of health data is hormones
The world has changed overnight:
It’s April 2020, in under two months there has been an unprecedented global change. Since the pandemic caused a global lockdown, people are focusing on their bodies and minds like never before. Health is the new wealth and health data is daily headline news, from death tolls to R0. This global shift in focus has highlighted some huge flaws in Western health care systems, flaws that cannot be ignored. Our systems were set-up to treat symptoms and illnesses as they arrive. The problem with this symptomatic system is you simply cannot treat illness on mass. The pandemic has brought to light the weak spots in every nation’s ability to treat and support its people. The first response from the world’s leaders was to simply stay inside and wash your hands — an effective short-term fix to delay the spread, but without a vaccine and the global economy being brought to its knees, this is not a long-term solution to a problem that, without a vaccine, will continue to reoccur. This means three very important things for the present and future world of health:
1- Prevention is critical
2- Data and health-tracking by the individual is a new normal
3- People become more educated on how their bodies and minds work
What these three points have in common is their power to irreversibly change the world’s view of wellness. Over the past six weeks, the digital wellness space has boomed both in engagement and spend, with ‘immunity’ becoming a globally trending search term.
Move into a new preventative health world:
The move from wellness as a luxury; from a ‘nice to have’ when you’re trying to get fit, improve your appearance or relax, to being the central pillar for a new world, has happened overnight. Suddenly, everybody is focused on how to keep themselves fit and healthy. The big question is how to connect this health-tracking with effective solutions for everyday wellness and prevention where possible? This is where hormones hold the key. I now want to share how the above data and personal growth is all hormonal, how hormones are not just something that makes us moody or helps us to achieve (or avoid) becoming pregnant. Hormones are the internal data that connects our minds and bodies. They are the keys to a healthy body, mind and immunity.
The basic immune response can become dysregulated in long-term stress states and lead to lowered immunity. Stress states are hormonal, as the body releases adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine from the adrenal glands.These stress responses can be managed and supported by food and exercise. This is where mind/body wellbeing makes itself of increasing value as part of disease prevention. Finding the tools to help us reduce stressors and adopt behaviours that potentiate immune health, can be seen as a during and post-pandemic paradigm shift for the masses rather than the few.
Hormones are the biological signals realised from our endocrine glands across the body. These cells are a cornerstone for keeping our immunity regulated. As they keep our whole body regulated and on rhythm. From how well or badly we sleep, how fast or slow we metabolise food, when or what we are hungry for, even whether we feel in the mood for sex or not. What is true of all these hormonal cycles, is they are data that is already being tracked within our phone, such as steps via health kit or apps for fitness, sleep and cooking. However, this ecosystem is also divided and fragmented, with no central space for someone to get personalised support for mind and body. When we optimise our hormonal cycles, they have a direct impact on our overall health and immunity. Optimisation comes from the choices we make around our diet, our exercise regime and even our relationships and sex life.
For women, metabolism, energy, memory, focus, sex drive and sleep are all affected by the fluctuations of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone on a weekly and monthly basis. The cycles of these hormones in women have been well-researched for decades and the symptomatic system has provided drugs — such as the hormonal contraceptive — to control these cycles. We can now use this science as a way to unlock the ability to optimise our everyday health and immunity based on knowing how to read our bodies and biology.
Moody month ovarian hormone cycle graph:
Re-education and health enlightenment in the new world:
Previously, the world focused on hormones as biological chemicals for fertility, but they have a much bigger role to play in a new world of preventative solutions. Our everyday health is prevention in itself. Knowing what to eat and when, how hard to exercise and at what points in the month and how to support our natural highs and lows — it all has a hormonal impact and, subject to our cycle length and variability, can also have an impact on our health and Immunity. Immunity is not just built from exposure to pathogens, it is also built from a balanced state of multicellular organisms having adequate biological defences to fight infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion, which can be built from food and health choices.
In March 2019, we launched the MVP of Moody, Moody Month, a hormone tracking tool, that allowed women to track their monthly cycle and provided wellness solutions to support their monthly hormone cycles. This app was a tool for us to begin to gain more insights and data on how to best support women in their everyday health and wellness for personal optimisation. A tool that in the future will allow every woman to have a nutritionist, personal trainer and wellness expert in their pocket. The vision is to democratise preventative health for women. This future vision is fast-becoming a present need and we now have some of the data to help us get there quickly.
This pandemic has created a ‘new era’ for data and health tracking and with it a new world of responsibility to provide proactive advice and support people in making sense of their data. Imagine a world in the next few years where you simply open your phone and it delivers a daily, weekly and monthly wellness courses to support the moods and symptoms you have. No effort needed and all the advice is personalised for you and your biology.
Endocrinology provides the science behind this future world. In March 2020, civilisation as we know it suddenly changed course and, along with the unthinkable impacts of a global pandemic, the tide on preventative health changed too. Hormones, our internal data, can be tracked externally through moods, symptoms and cycles, providing the keys to deliver a future world of personalised wellness.
That is not to say preventative health should take over from our current medical system. There is a very important role for both, not just in the immediate need for a vaccine. Modern medicine is a cornerstone of modern civilisation. The new world of ‘health is wealth’, marries the power of tracking and prevention, with the added benefit of patients and people becoming more aware when their body’s cycles and patterns are not right. Identifying the anomalies in overall health quicker means the pace of diagnosis and any further medical solutions needed by experts can be faster and clearer.
What has been a very dark phase of data connected to hacking, fake news, Big Brother controls, death tolls and impending fear and doom can also be a positive phase, a new wave of human health education, a reeducation on how every person, through access to information and tracking, can make proactive choices on what to do to keep themselves healthy. Hormones are about to take centre stage in a new era of prevention as power.
