We are all Patient Zero!
You are young and healthy. Or maybe you used to be young, or you used to be healthy. Either way, we have all now entered the era of Personalized Medicine. It's a time where every choice you make about your health, your diet, and about how you live your life is in a sense an experiment.
We increasingly are all sharing these experiments, and the results we are getting from them, with our caregivers, and with one another.
This is empowering. This puts us back at the center of our own health universe, which is as it should be.
And like Patient Zero, each of us has the opportunity to start something.
Unlike Patient Zero, we can hopefully start (and spread) something very positive!
The Honey Hypothesis
Take the idea that it might be good to take a tablespoon or two of honey right before bed.
It’s a simple technique, an experiment that any of us can try. The theory is that the fructose and glucose blend in the honey helps store glycogen in the liver overnight, so it’s there when your brain needs it. If its missing, “brain hunger” may wake you up, and contribute to insomnia.
It’s interesting to explore how a health idea like this moves through the culture, and I hope to do a post on that soon.
But in one sense, none of that matters as much as whether this is a worthwhile experiment for you to try. If you’ve got middle of the night insomnia, where you’re often awakened and can’t go back to sleep, this could be one more (relatively easy) thing to try.
The Standard of Care
The “Standard of Care” for all its stature, is also still just an experiment. It’s our best guess as to the best treatment. But much of what we do now in the name of health care will seem as barbarous as blood-letting and leeches, probably even in a few short years.
By some estimates, it takes 17 years for some new research breakthrough to make its way into the Standard of Care*. For many of us as patients, this is way too slow.
The good news is that this new era of personalized medicine comes with the potential for dramatic acceleration of health for all fo us.
Citizen Science for Health is dedicated to make that a reality. We believe that by harnessing the results of our experiments, whether they are on an individual level, or within a study or clinical trial, we can all make a difference. By connecting with one another, and with researchers, and sharing our data, resources, and solutions, we can each contribute to fixing our broken health care system, leading to better health for all.
*Reference 1:
