How To Take Your Daily Biomarkers
Biomarkers Must Only Be Taken Upon Waking
Biomarkers Must Only Be Taken Upon Waking
Biomarkers Must Only Be Taken Upon Waking
Consistency of taking daily biomarkers is critical. Unfortunately, the only consistent time of day for all of us is when we wake up. Needless to say, just one cup of coffee or a phone call can radically influence biomarkers like blood pressure, pulse or HRV.
Sorry about the early morning interruption. But once you start to see key biomarkers improve on GDF11, taking them first thing in the morning can often be one of the best parts of your day!
Waking Blood Pressure
Biomarkers Must Only Be Taken Upon Waking
Biomarkers Must Only Be Taken Upon Waking
Place the blood pressure cuff on your right or left arm (be consistent) and try to relax for 3 to 5 minutes. Either sitting up or lying down is OK, but once again, be consistent.
Once you are relaxed, turn on blood pressure meter, press start, cuff will inflate and deflate and then BP reading will appear. Record systolic and diastolic BP in your daily trending biomarker spreadsheet.
Emfit Sleep Tracking and Monitor
Biomarkers Must Only Be Taken Upon Waking
Emfit Sleep Tracking and Monitor
The Emfit sleep monitor is an amazing piece of biomarker equipment that goes under your mattress. The Emfit measures everything from HRV, to pulse, percent deep sleep to breathing rate.
On GDF11, you should see your HRV improve much more dramatically between bedtime and waking. And you should also see your deep sleep percentage go up.
Note that when you first install Emfit, it becomes its own WiFi hotspot for a few minutes. Connect to it from your computer or phone and tell it your WiFi name/password.
Then go to qs.emfit.com, register it, put sensor under your mattress at heart level and you're done.
Watch this three minute Emit video and it will save you lots of time. Also, if Emfit loses your WiFi login somehow, do a quick factory reset and redo installation.
A really cool feature of Emfit is the "Live Monitor" feature off the main menu. When you lie in bed, it will show you your pulse, HRV, breathing and toss and turn in real time! Please move/adjust sensor to optimize Live Monitor readings.
Emfit is so smart, that it detects when you are in bed and uploads all kinds of biomarkers to Emfit's servers. In the morning, you can login and see an incredible set of graphs that tell you how well you slept and recovered!
Reaction Time
Reaction Time
Emfit Sleep Tracking and Monitor
The reaction time test is done on your computer from www.humanbenchmark.com. Go to the site, hit "Click to Start" and click as fast as you can with your mouse when it says "Click!'. It will go through 5 iterations and you need to record the average of the 5 tests in your spreadsheet.
IMPORTANT: You MUST use the same computer every day for the reaction time test! Input/output speeds vary from computer to computer which can really skew RT results. So if you travel a lot, do the RT test on your laptop and always use the laptop even if you are at home.
Spirometry
Reaction Time
Spirometry
The spirometer will not work until you set date and time. To do this:
- Open the data compartment from the back.
- Press the small time switch next to the clock symbol with a pen or paper clip end, 2002 will blink. Release the switch.
- Now you can press the keys on the front of the peak flow meter <> to decrease of increase the year.
- Press the time switch again to confirm the year setting.
- Repeat this process with the month, day, hour and minutes.
- Press the time switch again to confirm all settings. The monitor will switch to ready.
- Close the data compartment
Push the blue button on your Microlife spirometer, let it show you your last test results and wait for it to beep.
Then blow as fast and hard as you can into the spirometer until it beeps again. It will then display peak expiry flow (PEF) and forced expiry in one second (FEV1). Record both of these in your spreadsheet.
Microlife recommends that you actually do 3 PEF/FEV1 tests in succession and record the best one in your spreadsheet.
If you have time and don't mind a bit of huffin' and puffin', please do this.
CAMRY Digital Hand Dynamometer Grip Strength Measurement
CAMRY Digital Hand Dynamometer Grip Strength Measurement
CAMRY Digital Hand Dynamometer Grip Strength Measurement
Interestingly enough, this hand grip dynamometer is designed for 19 users. Hand grip party anyone?!
The first time you use it, it asks you to set up user #1 by entering your age. After that, just press ON followed by START. Display should say "0.0". Then pull handle down with your right or left hand (be consistent) as hard as you can and record weight in pounds on our spreadsheet in "Handgrip" column.
Bluetooth Body Fat Scale, Body Composition Analyzer
CAMRY Digital Hand Dynamometer Grip Strength Measurement
CAMRY Digital Hand Dynamometer Grip Strength Measurement
The Renpho scale has to be one of the coolest home scales on the market because it Bluetooths all your body comp data to your phone and graphs/trends it for you.
Begin by downloading the Renpho app to your phone. Step on the scale briefly to turn it on and connect to the Renpho using the Bluetooth section of the settings on your phone.
Then fire up the app and note you need to enter your age, height and sex so that it can compute body comp.
Then step on the scale in bare feet and stand on it long enough to have it measure both your weight and body comp.
When it's done you'll hear a whirl sound followed by a bell.
Record your weight, body fat and muscle mass in your spreadsheet please.
Note you can hit the "Trends" button in the app and see how you are trending in terms of weight, body fat, muscle mass, etc.
Szynalski Online Tone Generator
The Szynalski Online Tone Generator is a simple hearing test you can take on your PC. You just move the slider to the right until you can't hear the tone anymore. This is the highest frequency you can hear which unfortunately goes down with age. You then enter the highest frequency you can hear into your biomarker/trending spreadsheet.
After you start taking GDF11, the highest frequency you can hear will go up quite dramatically and your spreadsheet can graph this for you. This will translate into much better hearing that you will almost certainly notice.