Three perspectives on how you can take ownership of your own health and wellness
Keep moving!
“We are living in the most sedentary era in modern history.” – Keith Diaz, Columbia University exercise scientist
Diaz continues:
“In a single year, the average adult now spends a full 187 days, over half of the year, sitting or physically idle. The bad news is that our bodies weren’t designed for this. I know because I’ve spent my career as a scientist studying the harms of being highly sedentary.
And what scientists have found is that being highly sedentary increases your risk of diabetes, cancer, dementia, heart disease and ultimately early death. Worse, this is true even if you exercise regularly. Exercise only makes up a tiny fraction of your day.
The toxicity comes from when movement begins to disappear from your life. And this begs the question, why isn’t exercise alone enough? A part of the answer lies in our muscles.”
Diaz explains that getting up and moving around for just five minutes on an hourly basis can have huge positive impacts on metabolic health. Hourly doses of exercise are important EVEN IF you already get in a longer walk, run or workout at some point during your day:
“Our muscles are more than just a machinery that power movement. They’re also really important for regulating things like our metabolism. Let’s use blood sugar as an example.
Our muscles are like sponges for blood sugar. When we regularly use and contract our muscles, they’re like a moist sponge soaking up the sugar from the bloodstream. But when we don’t regularly use and contract our muscle, like a dry and shriveled up sponge, not really good at soaking up anything.
Now, here’s the key. When we exercise, it rewets the sponge. But eventually, that sponge dries out if you get little to no movement the rest of your day.
If our muscles need regular use to function optimally, then outside of any exercise time, we need to be contracting them frequently through movement.
The question that we asked in my lab is, what’s the least amount of movement breaks that we need in order to offset the harms of being highly sedentary? And the answer we found was a five-minute walk every half hour.”
—
Keep track of how your body is reacting!
“You could actually look at someone’s heart rate information and see, wow, it looks like it went off three weeks ago or whenever you can see it because of a jump up. So I think we can pull in information a lot better. And then the physician can make better assessments. And spend less time on the routine things and spend more time on more complex things.” – Genome researcher, Michael Snyder on how biometric wearable devices are revolutionizing the practice of medicine
Snyder, who uses 8 different biometric wearable devices himself, says that wearables enable doctors to match up their advice to the genetics and other unique factors that are relevant for each individual patient.
He illustrates his point with continuous glucose monitors, which enable doctors and patients to collect detailed information on what exactly causes the patient to experience glucose spikes. We have been told that eating vegetables or proteins before carbs will reduce glucose spikes, but this is not true for everyone. For some people, the order doesn’t matter at all, and they need to work with their doctor to find an alternative way to avoid glucose spikes.
This kind of individualized problem solving requires data, and that data is becoming easier to collect with the development of more and more advanced wearables.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of wearables. It feels like just one more thing to measure and worry about. That said, last year I did start using my phone to monitor my steps, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) my phone tells me that I am now taking more steps daily than I was a year ago…
So I guess my step counter is indeed creating a “feedback loop” that is nudging me to be as active as I can be every day – even on days when I previously would have decided I didn’t have enough time for exercise…
—
Pay attention to how you actually feel!
“If an athlete does not have a holistic, balanced life, their performance will fail.” – Lizzie Braicks-Rinker
How do the things you do to keep yourself healthy actually make you feel?
Interoception is the sensory system that allows you to feel and understand what is happening inside your body. (Cambridge dictionary)
We all have the capacity for interoception, including the ability to notice the feedback loops connecting what we experience and do in the world with our internal physical, mental and emotional states. Unfortunately, many of us learn to ignore these signals.
Braiks-Rinker explains how she learned to pay attention to the internal states associated with the “healthy” habits that were not helping her feel well:
“Everything that I did revolved around being healthy and being an athlete. I was arguably at my physical peak. I was obviously working out all the time.
But I also was a really hardcore vegan. I had this elaborate regimen of vitamins and supplements that I took every day. I carried my emotional support water bottle with me wherever I went.
And I was a cliché of a healthy person. However, the reason that I started really thinking about what it means to be well is that despite being super healthy on paper, being an athlete, I felt terrible, my friends. I was having panic attacks almost every week.
I had this really weird chronic pain that no one could quite figure out, and I wasn’t getting my periods. I just felt off, but I was really healthy. Right?
I kept saying something doesn’t feel right, and I couldn’t really articulate what it was.”
Whether you need to perform on the playing field, on stage or in the office, the source of that performance is you. Your performance is informed and shaped by what your learn from the internal and external feedback loops that tell whether things are going well or poorly, whether you should continue what you have been doing or try something different.
Measuring your blood sugar and heart rate variability, exercising, eating well, hydrating, learning to breathe deeply and sleeping eight hours/night – all good ideas.
The missing element is often simply paying attention to what you subjectively experience in association with these habits. While you don’t want to allow yourself to be swept away by what you feel in the moment, your feelings are there for a reason and the trends in what you feel can help you figure out what to continue, what to stop, and what to change.
Together with all of the discipline you have put into being healthy, are you also paying attention to what actually leaves you feeling good?
Adapted from
TED Radio Hour: Tracking what your body needs, Jul 10, 2026
—
Explore・Define・Iterate・Transform
Context ・ Intention ・ Action ・ Outcome
—
Agency (主体性) + Purpose (志) + Growth (成長) + Connection (繋がり) + Contribution (貢献) = Meaning (意義)
Because I am there for myself I can be more for you. By being there for you I find/create more of myself.
© Dana Cogan, 2026, all rights reserved.