Articles

What can we say about our health in general? The answer is obvious. It’s good not to get sick. Some people are concerned about their health even if they consider themselves healthy. Others think that it’s too early to worry about it. Often people don’t feel that the disease is on its way but hidden processes in their organisms lead to the disease. Early detection of the problem and immediate action can prevent the disease from developing or at least diminish its negative impact. Numerical evaluation of your health status can help you in this regard. Personal health tracking is beneficial for everybody. No matter what the existing condition is, we offer you online health measurement to start your health assessment at home. The earlier you start the better the chances are to detect the signals of a hidden disease.

The journey from health to disease is often unnoticeable and uncontrollable. We strive for disease prevention to make that journey more controllable. Controllable means that we can do something to predict the disease's development and as the next step, to prevent it. Regular health and wellness tracking will allow you to monitor your health and help you to determine the most probable starting point of the disease.

How can this be done and who can do it if the health care system is focused primarily on disease management? Our task is to act in advance. Here, we are trying to answer these questions and offer solutions before the disease seizes you.
Before describing health measurement, we have to clarify the meaning of the word “health”. There are dozens of definitions of this term. This stresses the fact that the problem is complicated and no one definition is good enough. We will not offer another one. We will just mention a few ideas on which our concept is based.
In everyday life, when people are talking about health, they are in fact talking about diseases or their absence. Here, we don’t think in terms of health or disease. We are talking about the whole spectrum of states with different degrees of health and disease. Disease is not an antonym of health. Disease is a special state.

Individuals have been born with different health statuses depending on many factors from genetic to social. In a lifetime, health status changes. Individuals go from health to disease, from a better state to a worse state, and sometimes back. These changes are the consequence of internal development and reaction to external factors. The ability to resist negative changes, and physical and emotional stresses is the essence of the term “Health”.

What happens when the organism becomes less sufficient in this resistance? What we first notice is that regulatory mechanisms become less effective. If we can detect and assess this effectiveness, it will give us a picture of health status. We are going to implement a complex of parameters reflecting the health situation, and we are going to monitor these parameters. In a similar way, we will evaluate the reserve of the organism, the ability to resist to a disease's development for certain period of time in advance.

The organism is a complicated, self-regulated system. If all processes in the body are balanced and internal regulation can easily and effectively respond to external factors, the organism can be considered healthy. If something goes wrong in the body, we can assume that the regulatory mechanisms are working less effectively. If we can detect these changes and measure them, we can, in a certain way, assess health status.

In the life-time journey from health to disease, every individual is at a specific point on this journey, which indicates their current status. The current status of an organism and its reserve define the expected period of time to a so-called “trigger point”, the point where the disease's development inevitably leads to disease.

As the years pass, an individual's health status changes. Since the health status of an individual is unique, it is very important to observe personal changes in health rather than compare it to a statistical norm. All assessments are based on personal status monitoring including a personal regulatory mechanism pattern.

With age, people lose their health. This transformation doesn’t happen suddenly; the organism encounters “problems”. Most people feel these changes because the body sends signals. These signals are sometimes so subtle that people don’t notice them. However, they always remember that they used to perform an action easily, but it has since become a problem. These long-term changes go through certain stages. The stages, can be classified as follows:

Stage 1: optimal regulation: what people often refer to as the "norm";
Stage 2: moderate effort regulation: the organism responds to stress but not easily;
Stage 3: significant effort regulation: the organism responds with mobilization of all          resources;
Stage 4: break of adaptation mechanism: even with mobilization of all resources, the          organism can’t respond adequately to the stress; this stage is closest to direct disease          development.

Through health level measurement, we define the stage at which the individual is and how the status has changed. There are a few aspects of these measurements:
1: What has to be measured? As was previously mentioned, we need to assess a regulatory mechanism which reflects health status. There is a traditional method of making this kind of health risk assessment consisting of an examination based on several parameters in a special laboratory. It is a complicated and expensive process and hardly affordable for ordinary people. However, health status as a reflection of the quality of regulatory mechanisms can be assessed with some accuracy in a simpler way. A typical example of a regulatory mechanism of the body is that of heart rate change. It is relatively simple to measure heart rate and analyze data using special algorithms. The pattern of variations of the heart rate represents the quality of regulatory ability of the organism, and this ability represents the health status of the organism. Other parameters can also be involved such as blood pressure regulation and blood microcirculation to name two of the most important. A combination of parameters can make a health risk assessment more precise.
2: When must these measurements be started and how often must they be repeated? When do we start thinking about our health? Very often, not until we start losing it. Does it make sense to start thinking about it earlier? It is always good to know what your situation is in order to predict and hopefully to prevent the disease's development. The earlier you start, the better the chance you have. So start right away. How often depends on many factors and we will offer you a special schedule adjusted to your personal health status.
3: Who can perform these measurements? Imagine a situation in which you have some concerns about your health and you go to the doctor. The doctor is focused on the symptoms of disease but you are not sick and no disease can be diagnosed. Your doctor will then give you a number of general recommendations. Even if you don’t have any symptoms, it doesn’t mean that a disease is not developing. It can be without symptoms at that point. There is no sense in addressing your concerns with the doctor at this stage. The doctors' tasks are different. We consider health as the reserve of the organism, so measuring health when you are sick is also important. This information can be useful for the doctor. Even in a situation when you are in contact with the doctor, nobody is going to measure you health. Therefore, you don’t have a chance to delegate health measurement to anyone except yourself.
Is this possible? You probably think that this personal health tracking is complicated and that only professionals can perform these measurements. Sometimes it’s difficult, sometimes it's quite feasible for the individuals, and sometimes there are good ideas yet to be converted into technologies which can be used without specially-trained staff. In all of these cases, the main problem is that nobody except you is designated to do this, so the solution is clear.

As we mentioned, one of the simple methods of health status measurement is analysis of heart rate variation. Regulation of heart rate is an integral system of the organism. If there is a problem in an organism, in a certain way it reflects on the system of heart rate regulation and we can see that as variations in the heart rate. Heart rate variation analysis allows you to detect changes in regulation. Quantifying these changes gives you information about the stages of your health. Technically, this measurement is easy. Using a small device with an ear or finger sensor, we take the pulse wave for a certain period of time, 5 minutes for example. Then we calculate the interval between 2 sequential heart beats and collect the array of these intervals for 5 minutes. After that, we analyze this array using special algorithms and present the results in digital and visual forms.

We don’t need an advanced laboratory to perform health level measurements, but we need a small HomeLab consisting of a few small devices and quizzes integrated in a system of health and wellness tracking. We have in mind a lot of different medical technologies which could be used in HomeLab. Some, such as blood pressure monitor, scale and thermometer, are used by many people on a regular basis. HomeLab consists of devices having special features which provide collection and storage of information in a special place. We would offer to start building your HomeLab with heart rate variability, blood pressure, and sleep disorder monitors. All measurement data is automatically received by HomeLab using appropriate technology such as blue tooth.

The main tasks of HomeLab are to input, store and analyze data, make personal schedules, track changes, and calculate trigger points based on long-term measurements and analysis, and of course manage all of these processes. The first step is to build your personal HomeLab and start building your home health testing data base.

What are the outcomes of your HomeLab use? First, you have an opportunity to measure your health and access the results in a convenient format. Repeating the basic health measurement alongside other measurements and collecting these data will form your personal health profile. Unique information about your health status collected repeatedly over a long period of time by monitoring health at home gives you an opportunity to identify health changes and analyze this information more thoroughly. The major outcome of HomeLab use is the determination of a trigger point for hidden disease, the moment in time when you have to go to the doctor for a detailed examination.

You and your doctor are the main beneficiaries of HomeLab. You know when to go to the doctor, even if there are no symptoms of a certain disease. The earlier the diagnostics, the better the chance for early detection to prevent a disease's development or at least diminish its negative impact. The earlier you go to the doctor, the sooner the detailed diagnostics and treatment will start. The other advantage of HomeLab use is that you go to the doctor more prepared. From your own wellness tracking data, you have answers to a number of questions which the doctor normally doesn’t have time to ask. Quite often you have problems that you forget about at the moment or are too shy to address.
I believe that you are ready to start.
Let’s build your HomeLab now!
Let’s expedite the path from disease to health!
Invest in yourself! It’s the most reliable and quite possibly the most beneficial investment of your life.