Michelle St Jane 0:01
Welcome to Life and Leadership. I believe in creating community and creating space to be curious. This podcast aims to take you on a conscious journey to quality, diverse, innovative content in a conversation. My hope is that we create a circle of influence, transcendency of compassionate leadership in the world, and the wider universe.
0:30
From Symptom Suppression to Biohacking.
I believe in creating quality, diverse content in conversation and service to my listeners, I aim to make a contribution through sharing wisdom, strength, and hope and combining my gained knowledge and experiences with yours. Let's become healthy, robust, and vibrant leaders.
0:55
In my personal Manifesto, I believe in:
* hearing the wildness of my heart and living with great humor.
1:03
In the 21st century, the patient is the doctor. I do not recall who said this.
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If this is the case, then how important is it to understand your body?
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In this episode, I'm sharing from the heart about my journey and experience in 2019. What came clear to me was that it is critical to know my stats so I can know myself better. In today's world, I believe in utilizing intelligent data-driven ways as the new gold. In this episode, I'm going to share my experience of new technology, the hour ring, and the daily insights that helped me track my quality of life, and statistics. Enjoy.
1:49
Welcome to Life and Leadership: A Conscious Journey. I am your host Michelle St Jane. This podcast is going to talk about deep insights into your health statistics.
1:59
Consider if “the patient is the doctor in the 21st century” (source unknown). Then how important is it to understand your body? When a health event happens is difficult to empower yourself while in pain, confusion, or despair. I believe it's critical to know your stats to know yourself better in today's world, and it is possible.
2:21
The Daily insights from Ōura has helped me track my quality of life and statistics. Imagine if you could track your sleep, and improve sleep quality, to the insight of your own stats, like your REM sleep time, your deep sleep time.
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Perhaps follow the impact of fasting. The impact of a new exercise regime? Or how about training for a marathon?
2:51
As Ōura puts it, sleep gives me superpowers. Imagine if you could track your heart rate, your average resting heart rate, your heart rate variability. Imagine if you could track your respiratory rate. Like how many breaths you took while you were asleep.
3:10
Or explore the impact of taking a mindful break, like meditating. Seeing how this may lower your Heart Rate Variance (HRV) or stress.
3:21
Imagine being in sync with your own circadian rhythm. Being able to track your body temperature deviations. Monitor your immune system, give it a break when it's stretched.
3:32
Why is this important? Today, more than ever, I find my mind is busy, busy, busy, and myself doing … doing … doing.
3:42
Serenity when I do enjoy it. That is with a major effort on my part. I have to find balance in my work life, or being as a human being. And often it feels like I'm in the eye of the storm. And it's rather like my norm.
4:00
The 1980s was the decade of the body. The 2000s a decade of the mind and mental health.
4:07
I believe the 2020s will be about listening to your body in an IN-volution. Growing into mindful consciousness around your inner space.
4:18
Proactively stepping away from drama and not being subsumed by mindlessness and outside direct distractions. This will be key to wellbeing in my mind.
4:30
I am dedicated to the quality of life by tracking my data. This provides me with an early alert, on symptoms and illness. Being a type-A personality, I'm fast to act and slow to relax.
4:43
And one day my world took a tumble. Yes! Against my best efforts. I tripped up a step and found myself face down in Child's Pose. Those who do yoga will know exactly what I mean. I was stunned. I picked myself up and kept moving.
5:00
This is my 2019 story. How my intuition combined with digital abundance allowed me to avoid being bullied onto medication. That equated to symptom suppression, not a solution, or addressing the root cause, to raising my awareness engaging strategic thinking, and stepping into my courageous self. I went on a journey to find the root cause, the best tech, and health providers to help me with this.
5:29
I learned to bio-hack myself. When the unexpected happens like that 2019 fall I was in the busy-ness of daily life. I promptly got up and kept going and forgot about the fall and got on with the next demand. My journey from falling into a child's pose to bio hacker took a long, windy path of weeks.
5:52
Not long after I had that fall, I had a routine doctor's appointment. Much to my surprise, surprise my blood pressure was elevated. I didn't understand this was not an area I'd had issues. The doctor immediately, and not unexpectedly, started a discussion around a blood pressure medication. First up, comments, “like at your age you should be on a medication life.
6:18
Then I found out once you're on a BP meet your own for life. Considering the side effects I was quite put off. The balancing act began. Trying to access good advice, information, and direction, while being impacted by pain and my rest at night being badly compromised, made this journey quite a struggle.
6:40
Fortunately, a good friend of mine reminded me about my fall into the child’s pose and suggested I should check my neck as this might be the root cause of the elevated BP, not heart disease. Good advice I thought and booked a scan.
6:55
The results of that 2019 scan showed a big change in the area of my neck from the 2018 scan.
Those results directed my mind to figure out the root cause. I immediately took proactive steps to bring a team together to address my neck as a priority.
7:13
Another learning point, using blood pressure on the top of my arm, for me is very painful. Plus it was giving me all sorts of readings that left me unsettled and my doctor convinced a BP med was required.
7:27
I felt rather equivocal, and as I tried to make decisions that were my best interests based on my current medical status and needs. Things got complicated by my trying to manage pain. And those kinds of remarks saying “at your age, you should be on a BP.” Or loving people saying “you can't afford to have a heart attack or stroke just go on the meds.”
7:51
So rising with the Ōura ring. Fortunately, at this time in 2019, I'd been developing a program for emerging and re-emerging leaders around quantifying yourself. On my dashboard I had been exploring, researching, and writing about digital abundance in the area of precision health.
8:10
Furthermore, as a futurist, I often have my eye on different leading-edge technologies. Ōura, a small startup out of Finland I'd been following for a couple of years. They had developed this wearable ring, our designed a ring that tracks your health data. And this included your BP.
8:30
Clearly, now was the time for an investment in such a device that would provide me with the best knowledge and help me track my BP and make a decision around a BP med.
8:39
My ring arrived in June 2019. Wearing this device enabled me to make health decisions evidenced by my own biodata, not just my age. The immediate laser-like focus was on my blood pressure. And the range of readings from the cuff was resolved because the ring has infra-red leads that measure blood volume pulse directly from the Parma arteries of the finger. This put me in position, with immediate laser-like focus, on my blood pressure and the range of readings from the cuff was resolved because the ring has infra-red leads that measure blood volume pulse directly. This put me in the position of accurate BP readings from day one. Heart disease was not an issue. And focusing on the root cause was my next step.
9:12
As the Ōura CEO, Harpreet Singh Re put it, “unlike arm placed vanity wearables, the ring provides valuable, accurate, immediate data that drives meaningful change.” I appreciate Ōura’s mission to empower people to their own potential.
9:30
Health is the first wealth in the digital age data may be the new oil. I would extend this to your biodata.
9:38
According to authors Sheila Holt and Frederick Sandvall “Trust is the new currency.” The medical profession is invaluable in that hour of need. But not infallible. It's important to know your data and ensure the medical advice and treatment given considers your profile as closely as they rely on research.
9:58
Some of the other things I use my Ōura ring for:
* the 3d accelerometer and gyroscope check my activeness and inactive time during the day.
* monitoring my resting heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) shows me how my body recovers from exercise, stress, and fatigue. The Ōura ring shows the heart rate variability through the night, together with average maximum and minimum average values.
* the mediation app Moment links the mind and body with meaningful data. I can stop anywhere anytime and soothe my busy mind and/or reduce my stress levels. That's what I call aligning goals and health positions and keep ticking along at an optimal level.
10:41
Leading by being is at the center of my practice. In the role of the trusted advisor serving leaders who wish to make a real difference by engaging and enhancing their authentic legacy as stewards of truly human leadership in the world of business, community, and family. This forms my compass.
11:00
Being human, we are both fragile and learn by failing. In my case, falling into a child's pose.
11:07
Living and loving a legacy construction as a Conscious Stewart in this world, you bet sleep is my superpower. I mean to keep an eye on it and see where I can improve my daily doing … doing … doing to avoid being drained and depleted.
11:22
The data in my position allows me to accurately access what is contributing to my health and wellbeing. Today I take no medication because I have had the opportunity to carefully assess, with medical supervision, what was symptom suppression, and whether there were any material benefits.
11:37
Now I have good data on what's in my best interests. Where to focus my energy on improving and maintaining the quality of life.
11:45
In this episode, I'm going to talk about my journey and experience with the Ōura Ring. I am a big believer in wellbeing and as often as I can I like to go to the beach and have a walk and a swim. And it's a plan I have to do all year round, although the swimming gets a little tougher.
12:02
So the Ōura Ring gives me insights that help me create a better quality of life because I can track my biodata. So off to the beach I go on this day. I'm happily walking and on my way back down the beach. I see this great big beam that had come in on the incoming time possibly that morning. And this gentleman comes down and takes his shirt off, folds it up very nicely and puts it on the beam, and trots into the water for a swim.
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Just before I go into the water I tie my Ōura ring on my phone strap and drop it back into my beach bag and went for a swim. And I'm thinking wow, I wonder how long that beam is going to be on the beach. Is the tide going to get it? Or is the tractor going to get it that comes in clears all the debris off the beach like seaweed?
12:53
And I'm thinking what's coming next? Is the tide gonna float in and take his shirt, or is the tractor going to come? Around the corner comes the tractor and the tractor driver races around lines up, picks up this beam and takes it up into the sand dunes, and lays it back down. Then backs the tractor up and pops off the tractor races around the front picks up this gentleman’s lovely white shirt folds it, places it back on the beam. And then off, he goes to do the beach, the beach raking that he does with the tractor.
13:27
So anyway, I’d had a lovely swim and when I came out of the water, I'm like, I really want to catch this moment, it is so delightful that public servants are so so kind to us beachgoer.
13:39
I pull my phone out and I take a photograph of the tractor. I take walk up and I take a photograph of the beam with the T shirt nicely folded back up on the beam on the sand dunes. And then I turn around and the tractor goes by. And then I realized my ring has come off the strap of my phone. So I whip around and I'm looking everywhere. And all I can see are the rake marks from the tractor. I'm thinking … Oh, that seemed of me and my ring, having a very, very upset moment. So I went off and set at one of the park benches and journaled my thoughts out, thinking, Okay, we'll have to rethink budgets and how we get back so that I can have my Ōura ring insights. And YES! I was feeling, feeling quite down.
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Lo and behold, about maybe two or three weeks later, I get an email from the support team and our saying, somebody has found my ring. And I'm like, seriously. I'm sure it's pretty buried. I gave them permission to hand over my contact information. And I am a very happy person to have my ring back. And this is how it happened.
Anastasia 14:52
Or what the lovely story Michelle. So very funny. But that day, I'm not sure whether it was the same day or the next day, I was at the beach with my family with my toddler, and we were playing with the sun. And suddenly I see something that looked like a ring. It was half-buried under the sand. And then I went in the picked it up. And I was like, Oh, what's this, and then I looked at it, I observed a bit more and to realize that inside the ring, there was something that look like microchips and small lamps. And maybe this is as part of the first small device that fell off. This is what our initial thoughts were that this was a small part of another device. But I kept it. That was my beach back. And then I went home. And I actually, I forgot it. I forgot it inside the beach bag. And I found it after two weeks after. And I had a better look at it. I was like I said to my husband, this is not a ring. This is another common ring. But I doubt that it's also a part of a device because it looks like a ring. So I looked at it a bit better. And then I saw inside the ring, the name Ōura. And I saw a small code. And then I realized that this was something else. So I googled the name Ōura and it took me to this site about this rink that measures your blood pressure and your sleep patterns and how many calories you burn and how many steps you do every day. And I was pretty impressed because I've never seen or heard about this in my life. And then the next thing I did I read the specs about the ring, and I saw that you have the possibility to locate the ring. But I'm afraid since I had it for too long in the beach bag and the were the battery and the battery was off and was over and there was no way for you to locate your ring. So what I initially did, I posted on the public group for people from Bermuda belong to and I said if somebody has lost his or her Ōura ring, please contact me and send me a picture to convince me that this is yours. And nobody replied I don't think they didn't like not even alike nothing. So what they did, then I went to the site Ōura. And then I wrote to the customer service and said “Well folks, maybe you can help me. I found this ring and I really want to return it to the owner.”
17:32
Ōura Customer Services told me “Oh, can you please send us a picture of the code inside the ring.” There is a tiny code. So after 10 pictures, I captured the code as clearly as possible. They came back to me and they told me that They have located you and that they had shared my info with you and that we should contact each other so I can return the link to you and I was so happy that I finally found the owner of this special ring. And this is how my story ends here, Michelle.
Michelle St Jane 18:08
There is much to be learned, lived, and shared among our communities of leadership in terms of our experiences, and the essence of our strength and hope.
My wish is that my journey and realism will spark a conversation and improve lives for leaders who can emerge or re-emerge leaning into their expression, passion.
Use this information to guide where you might find technology to help you live well and vibrant.
18:52
I'm not a promoter or paid for talking about the Ōura Ring.
People like, comment, and share if you found this episode or post helpful.
Thank you.
The information in this publication is provided for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Do consult with your own health care practitioner. The author is not responsible for individuals who choose to self-diagnose, self-treat, or use the information in this publication without consulting with their own health care practitioner.
Reach out. I am interested, do you have a topic you'd like to explore? It would be great to have your feedback.
Dr. Michelle St Jane
Podcast Host: Life & Leadership: A Conscious Journey
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