Self Testing

Resting Heart Rate

Our resting heart rate measures how often our heart beats per minute when we are completely relaxed and lying down. Our heart can only be optimally supplied with oxygen and nutrition when in its resting state. Since the "beat" itself always takes the same amount of time, an overall lower heart rate corresponds to more time in the relaxed state, less stress, and thus a better supply.

Optimum Resting Heart Rate: ≤ 50 bpm

The resting rate can be tracked easily with the iPhone's built-in camera. Several apps are available in the app store. 'Sleep Cycle' comes with an integrated camera-based heart rate monitor. This makes it possible to turn off the alarm and measure our heart rate simultaneously.

See more: SleepCycle (sleepcycle.com)

Blood Pressure

The pressure that our heart generates in our cardiovascular system as it pumps blood is a good indicator of the health of the system itself. Hypertension, that is, elevated blood pressure, is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Blood pressure can be easily measured at home or by our physicians, e.g., when we are in for our quarterly blood draw. If we want to have frequent measurements and easy tracking, we use the WiThings Blood-Pressure Monitor, which connects wirelessly to our smartphone.

Optimum Blood Pressure: 115 / 75

Hypertension is not caused by too much salt, as is often reported. Too much salt usually goes together with a bad diet, which is the true culprit here. On a balanced diet, there is absolutely no need to control salt intake.

Additionally, hypertension is usually a result of too little exercise, bad detox, and low mental well-being. By implementing the foundation building blocks of nutrition, exercise, detox, and mental well-being, we can usually revert our blood pressure to optimum ranges.

See more: Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor (withings.com)

High Blood Pressure (Hypertension) (lifeextension.com)

Weight & Body Composition

Being overweight is a significant risk factor for almost all degenerative diseases that haunt us with age. The good news is that both our body weight and our body composition will automatically normalize once we implement the foundation building blocks of nutrition, exercise, detox, and mental well-being.

Tracking our body weight is easy, using a connected scale like the "Withings Smart Body Analyzer" that conveniently tracks its measurements in a web portal and a mobile app. Every quarter, we have our body composition analyzed as well. Unfortunately, we find the Withings built-in fat measurement (just as all other cheap fat measuring scales) very erratic and unusable.

To obtain reliable measurements, we need to employ professional tools like the Inbody Analyzer used by fitness studios and professional nutrition or sports consultants.

Seeing our weight go down and our body composition improve can be very motivating on our path to optimum health and well-being.

As a rule of thumb for desirable % body fat:

women: 12 - 16 %

men: 10 - 14%

See more: Withings Smart Body Analyzer (withings.com)

Inbody Analyzer (e-inbody.com)