What Would You Do With a Little Feedback?

Admittedly, it has been a long stretch since my last blog. In a nutshell, I’ve spent the last 4 months healing from the many side effects caused by the Radiation and Chemotherapy treatment I completed. But I am happy to report that I am feeling great, eating extremely “clean,” exercising nearly every single day and ensuring that I get ample sleep. From all the reading I’ve done, my best bet is to keep my immune system in excellent shape, and all of these things help that to occur.

But there are mental side effects too….I asked my physicians and nurse practitioners – “What can I do differently to make sure the Cancer doesn’t come back?” Those of you who know me know that I have been a very healthy person – I have always exercised, eaten really well, and tried hard to manage my stress. And their answer was “We don’t know, since we don’t know why you had this kind of cancer.” Given my action-based, over-achiever personality, this did not sit well. Surely there is SOMETHING I can do other than wait, feeling like a ticking time bomb, between every check up and CT.

Enter the FitBit. It’s a little sensor that you wear on your body day and night and it can tell you how many steps you are taking (10,000 per day is the goal), how well you are sleeping (your sleep efficiency score), how many calories you are burning and taking in, and how many flights of stairs you’ve climbed.

I ordered the FitBit after attending the Institute for the Future (IFTF) conference in San Francisco a few weeks ago, where I was blown away by some of the self-monitoring technology that is close to becoming a reality. Blow into you tube connected to your iphone and see if you have an infection? Yep, it’s in the approval process with the FDA. Use your iphone camera to scan a rash and then have it diagnose it for you? Yep, that too is at the FDA for approval. Take a personalized pill to ensure your "gut flora" is in optimum balance? Not so crazy, scientists have just finshed cataloguing the hundreds of thousands of microbes that exist on and in your body. It excites me that in the not too distant future we will actually have access to some amazing tools to help us take more control of our health, and our health care.

But back to the FitBit. This type of sensor-driven feedback technology is showing up in more and more places. Ever see one of those speed signs by a school that tells you how fast you are going? Research shows that this almost always causes a driver to slow down, when a “SLOW” sign in the school zone barely gets noticed. Since wearing my Fitbit, I am consciously more active all day, reaching for that 10,000 step goal. I watch my sleep habits throughout the week, and can also see the nutritional breakdown of the foods I am eating. It has changed my behavior, and helped me develop new, healthy habits. But more than that, it has given me some peace of mind, because I get immediately feedback of what I can control – how much I move, what I eat, how much I sleep.

Friday is a big day for me. I will undergo a battery of tests to ensure I am remaining cancer-free. I am going into that day feeling much more hopeful, much more in control, much more certain that I will be given a clean bill of health.

But I also am not about to count only on myself, so my dear family and friends, I’ll ask you to think of me in your prayers, and send hopeful, healthy thoughts my way.