Imagine a small boat with just you in it. You're on a journey down a river. The boat is not brand new, it’s been put to good use over the years. Parts of it are rusting, there’s some holes and so, although it does sort of float, it keeps filling with water. You have to keep bailing out the water or else she’ll fill up and sink. You’ve got this!
After a while, it’s exhausting. As fast as you bung up one hole, there seems to be another one you hadn’t discovered before. Many tiny little holes that you didn’t realise were there. You're tired of filling up the holes. And now there’s some rapids and rocks ahead? How do you navigate to avoid the rocks, which would put more holes in your boat, whilst all your efforts are on bailing out the water and fixing up the remaining holes? Including the ones that are probably there that you haven’t discovered yet!
Will you ever get all the holes fixed in your boat?
Sometimes you might be feeling this about your health. You can identify and work on the ‘big’ issues but you still don't feel quite right and it’s these ongoing small problems that aren’t helping you get on top of things again.
Let’s go back to our boat…. Now I want you to imagine that you have some boat plans, marked with all the holes. It even has suggestions on what to fill the holes up with. And shows you where the weak spots are that might become a hole in the future. It seems daunting and overwhelming but your plan shows you where to start. With this plan you can work methodically to fill them up, to make them water-tight. You’ll probably start with the big ones first, the ones that will have the biggest impact to slow the sinking but you’ll still need to get to the smaller ones too. How much easier is that? To have a plan to know where the holes are and what to fill them up with? With the plan you are able to fill up the holes before you get to the rocky water where you need to be fully focused on navigation.
As you look across, you see another boat with your friend in it. Her boat is gradually sinking too. You give her your plans to help her. But then you both begin to realise that her boat is different in design to yours, the boat is made of different materials, the holes in it are in different places. Your plans are completely useless to her. She needs her own set of instructions.
And this is what Precision Health is like! It’s your own unique set of plans, like an instruction manual, to ensure that your body is working well, that there ‘are no holes in it’. It’s a blueprint based on your unique genetics, and it will not be exactly the same as any one else’s, not even your identical twins!
What is Precision Health? Precision Health is an exciting, emerging concept in health care that is being adopted by health and fitness professionals, from GPs to naturopaths, from psychologists to personal trainers. It integrates research from multiple fields of study to provide you with food, fitness and lifestyle recommendations that are tailored specifically to your unique genetic makeup and current health status. It’s personalised health at the next level! No one set of recommendations will be the same as another woman’s recommendations - it’s your genetic-blueprint on how to nourish YOUR body by uncovering the ‘things’ that your body needs to thrive, that it needs to be in balance. Your genetic-based blueprint encompases six areas: food, fitness, relationships, mind, environment and natural talents. By optimising each of these areas, your body will be in balance. It will be able to function and perform as it is designed to so it will be at its best, helping you to navigate your perimenopausal years with ease.
4 benefits of precision heath for women in perimenopause
1. Precision Health is more than just personalised health
Many health professionals, including your GP, will prescribe a treatment plan based on well-researched protocols for your particular illness or your health concern. But your situation may be very different to the man in the waiting room with similar symptoms. Some practitioners, like nutritionists, will personalise standard protocols further based upon your unique circumstances, existing medications, lifestyle situation and other health concerns/goals, providing a personalised health plan but there’s still a lot of guesswork involved. Precision Health is the next level up where your personalised recommendations are based upon your underlying genetics and how these have influenced your body type, your susceptibility to certain conditions or diseases as well as how your current and past lifestyle choices have turned some of these genes on or off.
2. Precision Health provides a clear plan to move forwards.
Everyone is unique with a unique set of genes. Understanding your genetics and the way your past and present food and lifestyle choices affect these, takes away the guesswork in finding the route cause of a health problem. During perimenopause, there may be multiple symptoms with no clear plan on how to overcome them. Some symptoms might not even be acknowledged by your health professional. Precision Health takes away the overwhelm and confusion in knowing which protocol to follow to achieve the results that you want. It provides both a solution to your existing symptom(s) but also acts as a preventative to future health problems too.
3. Precision Health saves time and is more efficient.
Having a clear plan reduces time wasting, procrastination, overwhelm and confusion. Knowing whether your body does better eating small meals regularly or just two-three larger meals throughout the day helps save time with meal planning and recipes. Understanding that your body may benefit less from a 40 minute run than a 10 minute HIIT routine is not only time saving but better for your body’s overall health too. Understanding when you are more in flow increases productivity and ease at work. Precision Health helps you to determine where to spend your time and where to save your energy. It helps create a thriving body and may reduce time spent in doctors surgeries, with health professionals or specialists.
4. Precision Health reduces stress and imbalance
A body that is working hard in a way that it is not designed to will wear out and become stressed. A stressed body often exacerbates symptoms experienced by women during perimenopause. By following your precision health plan, you are nourishing it in a way that it is designed to be. Some women need slowness and are enduring, others need a faster pace and variety. Understanding this and how your food, exercise choices, and your home/work life impacts you, enables you to manage stress (physical and emotional) creating balance and facilitating an easy journey towards menopause.
Precision Health is new but has many benefits to managing your health now and in the future. It’s time saving and reduces confusion and overwhelm by providing you with a clear plan to reduce stress and find balance through your perimenopause years. If your boat is slowly filling up with water, it might be worthwhile to adopt a precision health approach to filling up your boat’s holes.
If you want to learn more about how precision health can help you through your perimenopause years, then book a discovery call with me.
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