The chase begins...

Since my daughter’s diagnosis, the question that haunted me the most was “What after me?” Most of us (spl needs parents) have this questions. So, the next logical thing we do is gear up and prepare our kids for the world. I know, we are not immortals, but I want to live as long as possible. All I want is to live one day longer than my daughter. 

What’s happening is “our kids are growing up, and we are going down (health-wise) & unfortunately, in today’s world its happening much faster. During COVID days, I got scared for my daughter more. So, the desire became stronger. Later, I read an article on Twitter about Dr Peter Attia, mentioning the words “Outlive” and “Longevity” and these words stayed with me. It seemed like now I got correct words to research, and in one of the podcasts I heard the term “Metabolic Health”, that later made me realise not only I want “longer life," I want “healthier life”. And it’s our metabolic health which decides how fit and fine our life is going to be. Let’s understand what “Metabolism” is : “Metabolism is the process our body uses to convert food we eat into energy, which we use for various activities like moving, breathing, thinking, repairing, growing.”

My earlier researches led me to a lot of diets and “nuskhas” but nothing stayed, I wasn’t consistent with anything and my small-small problems stayed as it is. In one of the podcasts, I heard that any desire to live longer must accompany the desire to stay metabolically healthy too, and Diet is a big part of it, “We are what we eat…”. I found couple of contradictory things but somehow they made sense. So, I started changing the way I ate, few things at a time. I did feel better but wasn’t able to pinpoint, as I didn’t have any markers to compare, so we got the markers, and then the bomb dropped. My husband got diagnosed with Diabetes, NAFLD, Thyroid issues, Lipid markers were off the chart. Both of us had cardiac inflammation, and all of us were Vit D & B12 deficient.

What are these markers? To understand better, lets put them in 2 categories :

Unfortunately, We judge our health mostly by weight, though it can be a marker but not always. What I mean by overweight / central obesity is the fat around our stomach-area mainly, as inside our body, the fat starts accumulating around our organs which obstructs in their proper functioning. Imagine, how can we move our hands properly if they get tied. 

We tend to ignore the markers on the left hand side of the image above, like headaches, acidity, snoring etc which leads to the diseases on the right hand side. There is a strong connection between the two. 

We cannot consider lifespan without health-span, and health-span depends on the above markers. Blood tests give us pointers to improve or work on. Optimum blood markers help us stay better physically, functionally as well as better cognitively. We all know that keeping equipments clean is not just about aesthetics, it’s about better functionality and it’s longevity. 

 

After getting the reports, our journey for better metabolic health began. I decided to put our energy on Health-span, & one gets lifespan benefits along the way. 

We made some lifestyle changes & when we did the followup blood tests, things were taking shape. Our inflammation markers were getting down, T2D in remission, LIPID profile in control. We couldn't count the benefits, It was as if we have achieved some miracle. My belief in the changes just cemented and we are still on. I'm much relived as certain things as we age can't be changed but I still has good control over diseases which slow us down and we are in best of our health. What more can a parent ask for? 

The healthcare has become sick care, insurance charges are shooting high. Taming metabolic diseases is the way to go forward. I feel, we owe this much to our kids, NT or ND.