Chapter Content
Okay, so, like, let's talk about understanding your body. It's, like, way more important than most people realize. You know, we're so used to just kinda going through the motions, but our bodies are actually constantly giving us signals.
So, I wanna tell you about Emily. This is a great story. So, she was pregnant, right? And she did the usual glucose test, you know, the one where they make you drink that super sugary drink? The doctor said she was fine, "all clear" and everything, but here's the thing: Emily was wearing a continuous glucose monitor, a CGM, on her arm. And what that showed was a totally different story. It showed that her blood sugar levels were actually, like, way high, even hours after the test. If she hadn't had that CGM, she would've walked away thinking everything was fine, when really, she had gestational diabetes. And you know, not managing that can cause all sorts of problems for both mom and baby.
It's wild, isn't it? That's why it's so important to, like, actually listen to your body and get the data you need. You know, Emily even said that before she had the CGM, her body was a complete mystery. She wasn't connecting what she was doing to how she was feeling. But after, she could see, "Oh, if I'm feeling tired or stressed, it's probably because of what I ate in the last 24 hours." Food became a tool for her health, not, like, an enemy.
It's kind of crazy that we know more about how our cars or computers work than we do about our own bodies. We have to jump through hoops just to get a basic understanding of our health once a year. And, like, in some states, you don't even own your medical records! It's all kinda backwards. We're often told there's "no such thing as bad foods," which, come on, is totally bogus.
And, you know, how many times have you gone to the doctor, and they either say, "Everything looks fine!" when you feel terrible, or they say, "This is a little off, we're gonna put you on medication," without really explaining why or what you can do about it. The truth is, most doctors just don't know how to really interpret lab results in a meaningful way. They follow the rules, but they don't really, like, see the whole picture.
But, fortunately, things are changing. We're entering this new era of medicine where we can actually, like, observe our own biology, thanks to wearables, continuous monitors, and direct-to-consumer lab testing. Levels CEO calls it "bio-observability." You shouldn’t blindly trust anyone. You gotta trust your own body! It can "speak" to you through accessible testing and real-time data from wearable sensors that help you understand how individual symptoms are connected to overall metabolic health.
It's an exciting time, you know? We have the potential to live the longest, healthiest lives in history, but we have to take charge of our health. You might have been taught to distrust your own common sense and outsource your health to others, but that stops now. There's a movement of people who want to understand their health data and use it to live better. And you can join that movement too!
So, a big part of understanding your body is paying attention to your symptoms. You know, a lot of people say they "feel fine," but then you dig a little deeper, and they have, like, ten different symptoms. And their doctors just chalk it up to "normal." But, like, neck pain, sinus infections, eczema, acne, bloating, low energy, PMS… that's not normal! You can and *should* feel amazing most of the time! So many of us have just normalized feeling, well, kinda crappy, that we can't even imagine what it would be like to feel great.
So, the first step is just taking stock of your symptoms. I even have a symptom questionnaire on my website that you can take, just to get a baseline. It's adapted from the Institute for Functional Medicine.
We're taught to fear symptoms and immediately treat them. But they're actually a gift. Think of your cells as, like, 37 trillion infants in your care. They can't talk, so symptoms are their way of wailing to get your attention. Every time a symptom pops up, ask yourself, "What is my body trying to tell me?"
Okay, so let's talk about standard blood tests. We've all been there, right? The doctor rattles off triglycerides, cholesterol, and stuff, and we just nod along, but we don't really know what it all means. These numbers have limitations: they are a single snapshot when our body is highly dynamic. But they can still give powerful clues to metabolic health and cellular energy management when interpreted together properly.
The question you're trying to answer with standard blood tests is whether you are part of the 6.8 percent of people in the United States who meet the normal criteria for the five basic metabolic biomarkers without medication. To answer this question, you will need to obtain your lab results and vital signs from your most recent annual physical and get a measuring tape. Among your life’s top priorities should be making it into that 6.8 percent.
If you don’t achieve that goal, you’ll almost certainly experience more conditions like depression, acne, headaches, and deadly chronic diseases in life. If you’re a woman, you’ll be more likely to pass metabolic dysfunction on to your child in utero, be infertile, have a miscarriage, experience worse menopausal symptoms, and develop Alzheimer’s.
So, let's go through the five basic metabolic biomarkers: triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, fasting glucose, blood pressure, and waist circumference. And after that, we'll calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio. Trust me, it's not as complicated as it sounds.
First up, triglycerides. This basically tells you, "Am I overwhelming my cells with glucose?" When you eat too much sugar and carbs, your liver converts the excess glucose into triglycerides and ships it out into the bloodstream to be stored as fat. Now, that was useful back in the day when we were constantly fasting, but in our modern world, these triglycerides just pile up. High triglycerides are almost always a warning sign that you're eating too much sugar, refined carbs, and alcohol, and not exercising enough. The normal range is under 150 mg/dL, but the optimal range is actually under 80 mg/dL!
Next, we have HDL cholesterol, often called "good" cholesterol. HDL helps remove cholesterol from your blood vessels and carries it back to your liver. Basically, high HDL is good for your heart. The normal range is over 40 mg/dL for men and over 50 mg/dL for women, but the sweet spot seems to be between 50 and 90 mg/dL.
Then there's fasting glucose, which measures your blood sugar after you haven't eaten for eight hours. High fasting glucose is a sign of insulin resistance. The normal range is under 100 mg/dL, but the optimal range is 70-85 mg/dL.
Then blood pressure. High blood pressure is a huge risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The normal and optimal range is less than 120 systolic and less than 80 diastolic.
Finally, waist circumference. This is a marker of fat around your abdominal organs. Too much fat there is a sign of excess energy being deposited where it shouldn't be. The normal range is less than 40 inches for men and less than 35 inches for women.
Okay, so now that you have those numbers, let's calculate your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio. Just divide your triglycerides by your HDL. Studies show that this value correlates with insulin resistance. You want to shoot for less than 1.5, and ideally less than 1.
Okay, so those are the five basic biomarkers. But there are some other tests that can give you an even more complete picture. These are also relatively inexpensive and can be run at almost any lab: fasting insulin, high-sensitivity CRP (hsCRP), Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), uric acid, liver enzymes (AST, ALT, and GGT), and vitamin D.
First up, fasting insulin. This is the most valuable test you can get. High fasting insulin is a red alarm that your cells are under siege and Bad Energy is at play.
Then there's hsCRP, which measures inflammation in your body. You want this as low as possible, certainly below 0.3 mg/L. Chronic inflammation is one of the three key hallmarks of Bad Energy.
Next, Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) measures the percentage of hemoglobin in your body that has sugar stuck to it. The optimal range is 5.0 to 5.4 percent.
Then we have uric acid, a metabolic by-product of fructose and purine-rich foods. You want to keep this under 5 mg/dL for men and 2 to 4 mg/dL for women.
Then there are liver enzymes: Aspartate Transaminase (AST), Alanine Transaminase (ALT), and Gamma-Glutamyl Transferase (GGT). Elevated AST and ALT are associated with increased risk of fatty liver and metabolic disease. Research suggests that all-cause mortality starkly increases when AST and ALT levels rise above about 17 U/L. For GGT, lowest risk for men is about <25 U/L and women <14 to 20 U/L.
Finally, vitamin D. This is a hormone that serves dozens of critical biological functions. The optimal range is 40 to 60 ng/mL.
Now, I know that's a lot of information, but it's so important to understand these numbers and how they relate to your health. There are deeper layers of lab testing that can give you an even more nuanced picture. If you want to receive full blood work to target where Bad Energy is brewing in your body and a specific plan of how to reverse it, I recommend searching the functional medicine doctor database.
Okay, now let's talk about real-time tools that you can use to monitor your health. And I really think the most impactful of these is the continuous glucose monitor, or CGM.
I believe CGM is the most powerful technology for generating the data and awareness to rectify our Bad Energy crisis in the Western world. A CGM is a biosensor that can alert us to early dysfunction, coach us on how to eat and live in a way that promotes Good Energy in our unique bodies, and promote accountability. Wearing a CGM as part of a journey to understand and optimize health has so many benefits. It can improve your glycemic variability, reduce cravings and anxiety, help you learn your reaction to individual foods and meals, help you train your body to be metabolically flexible, and motivate behavior change. It’s like having a personal health coach on your arm 24/7.
It tells you so much: morning glucose, if you have a dawn effect (that’s a rise in glucose that happens naturally before we wake up), how your glucose spikes after meals (that’s postprandial glucose), helps you spot reactive hypoglycemia (those post-meal crashes are usually the result of your blood sugar spiking and then crashing below normal levels), and reveals the impact of stress and exercise on your glucose. You can even tell how sleep impacts your glucose!
Aside from CGM, a food journal can be helpful, too. It’s a powerful tool for accountability. What’s more, research has shown that people on diets who keep food journals lose twice as much weight as those who don’t.
And don’t forget sleep data. Wear a sleep tracker to see how much you’re really sleeping, and what your sleep quality is like.
Of course, activity data is great to track, too. Aim for at least 7,000 steps a day, but ultimately work up to 10,000.
Finally, there’s heart rate variability (HRV). This is a metric that indicates how much variability in time there is between each heartbeat. Counterintuitively, more variability in the time between each heartbeat is indicative of better health status and outcomes. Under times of more stress and strain on the body, the cardiovascular system will act like a metronome with regularity in the time between each heartbeat. What matters most is determining what lifestyle factors seem to bump or crash your personal HRV levels compared to your baseline, so you can make lifestyle adjustments to raise HRV.
So, we're really entering this era of bio-observability, where we can use blood tests and real-time sensors to get a highly personalized understanding of our bodies. This can't be crystallized in a fifteen-minute doctor's visit. So now that we know how to measure Good Energy, let's jump into the specific mindset shifts and steps we can take to optimize it.