Getting In The Green

Health is a spectrum, not a verdict

Most health information arrives as a binary. Normal or abnormal. Positive or negative. In range or out of range.

Biology rarely obliges. A result can sit comfortably inside a laboratory reference range and still be travelling in a direction worth knowing about. A result slightly outside a range may turn out to mean very little. And reference ranges describe what is typical across a population, which is not the same as what is optimal for you.

What actually matters is context, pattern and direction.

Your body already understands this. Blood glucose, blood pressure, temperature, hydration, hormones, minerals, sleep, muscle mass, body fat. Every one of them is a range being actively defended, not a single number being hit. Physiologists call it homeostasis. Goldilocks got there first.

The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is noticing when you’re drifting.

Your body has a dashboard. You just can’t see it.

Imagine driving with no dashboard. You’d manage. But you wouldn’t know your speed, how much fuel you had left, or whether the engine temperature was climbing. You’d spend most of the journey guessing.

Most of us drive our bodies exactly like that. A blood test every few years. Blood pressure when someone happens to take it. A number on the bathroom scales. And whatever data does exist ends up scattered across clinics, labs, apps, PDFs and wearables that never speak to one another.

Your car is your secondary vehicle. Your body is your primary one. It deserves a dashboard at least as good.

Red, amber, green, and the direction of travel

This is one of the ideas underneath Health SatNav, the platform I’m building at Soma Health Life.

Rather than sorting results into “normal” and “abnormal”, the aim is to show people where they actually sit. Red may signal something that needs attention. Amber may say you’re moving away from where you’d ideally be. Green suggests things are going well. Then you watch the direction of travel, because one number tells you something, but a trend tells you far more.

The point isn’t to obsess over biomarkers. It’s the opposite. It’s to make the information clear enough that you can glance at it, understand your position, and get on with your life.

Much like a satnav. It tells you where you are. It shows where you might want to go. It can suggest a route. Your hands stay on the wheel, and your GP remains your GP.

Awareness, acceptance, action

I’ve come to think of personal health as three stages, in that order.

• Awareness. Knowing what’s actually happening.
• Acceptance. Understanding what the information is telling you, without fear and without denial.
• Action. Deciding what, if anything, you want to change. That might be food, movement, sleep, stress, alcohol, medication, supplements, social connection, or simply a conversation with a healthcare professional.

Awareness without acceptance turns into anxiety. Acceptance without action turns into resignation. All three together turn into a better decision, which is the only thing any of this is for.

Prevention starts before you become a patient

We talk constantly about preventative healthcare. But prevention can’t begin at the point someone becomes a patient. By then we’re already managing something.

The space between feeling well and being unwell is where awareness has the most leverage. Could we notice metabolic health deteriorating earlier? Preserve muscle as we age? Catch rising blood pressure while it’s still a number rather than a diagnosis? Understand our glucose, lipids, sleep and fitness while there’s still room to move?

Could we spend more of our lives getting in the green?

That, for me, is the opportunity. Not perfect numbers, just being better informed about the body we live in every single day. Because when you can see where you are, you have a far better chance of choosing where you go next.

What’s the one thing about your own health you wish you could see, but currently can’t? I’d genuinely like to know, because it’s shaping what we build.