What’s the secret to health? Is it the latest popular diet or supplement? Is it a new exercise routine? Could it be we just need to spend more on our health care system?
You are the secret. WellnessFX’s model is simple, put the “patient” in charge of their health. You would not dare give a financial advisor complete control of your money—by their title, they are an advisor. Ultimately you are in charge and make the decisions. Why would you give up control of your body to your physician, as who can know your body better than you? You may not feel you are giving up control, but most just nod their head when they are told to eat better and exercise more, knowing they will do the easy passive stuff and take a pill, but pass on the active lifestyle change. Others try to live a healthy lifestyle, but do not control their own biomarkers and diagnostic data so never truly understand what they can change.
When we give up control, we feel disempowered, and this is reflected by the low level of health maintenance and disease prevention in society. Yes, you can trust your physician’s recommendations, but your doctor may spend a couple hours with you per year if you are lucky, while you spend the entire year with you. Who will know you better and therefore can get you more engaged? WellnessFX, by giving control to members, with practitioners acting as advisors, allows you to take control of the health. We have seen this health empowerment for as long as WellnessFX has existed. What we have not known is the impact of this engagement, until now.
One of the most valuable benefits of WellnessFX is the ability to trend biomarkers, which allows you to see what works, and adjust plans based on what is successful for each individual. As such trending has become more popular among our members, we now better understand the actual effects being engaged in one’s health has on biomarkers.
Looking at some of the basic lipid and inflammatory biomarkers, we see universal improvements in health. For example, the average LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, level decreases approximately 5%, while the HDL, or “good” cholesterol, increase averages 2%. This translates to a fairly significant reduction in cardiovascular risk, or the risk of a heart attack and stroke, two of the leading causes and disability. Interestingly, when we look at our patients with the worst biomarkers, those that are often written off as “the hardest to motivate”, we see the greatest change. The impact on their biomarkers is nearly double the average, with LDL decreasing approximately 10% and HDL increasing approximately 5%.
If these numbers do not sound like much, remember that cardiovascular disease is the leading devastating disease in our society, costing tens of billions of dollars annually. Ten-percent of that could do a lot for the world. If you were diagnosed with a terminal disease, and a medicine gave you a 10% increase in survival, what would that be worth?
Unlike most medicines, though, with their many challenging side effects, the side effects of being engaged in your health, and therefore making healthy dietary and lifestyle changes, are improved energy, mood, and reduced risk of other chronic diseases as well.
Overall, the impact of engagement cannot be under-stated. We now clearly see that such engagement can increase the quantity of one’s life, and by adopting the healthy habits that cause this impact, increase the quality as well.
WellnessFX 