Is Enough
Invest in Sleep for Your Future
Take Action: The Welbe Companion App
Appendix A: Creating Health and Well-Being in Organizations
EAT MOVE SLEEP
We are living in a remarkable era when it comes to medical research and wearable technologies that have the potential to improve our health. Every single day, I read new research about specific actions we can take to be healthier and have more energy. With all of the information that emerges come opportunities for us to make better choices. However, the sheer volume of new research can also be confusing and overwhelming.
This new edition of Eat Move Sleep has been updated with the latest findings relevant to these core elements of health and includes a new guide to creating well-being in groups and organizations. I also revised this version considerably to speed things up and make it more concise. While it is always tempting to write more, as some people associate this with additional value, I tried to do the opposite. Instead, this second edition covers the same concepts in about 75 percent of the time it took to read the first edition.
Most important, this new edition is now paired with a revolutionary app called Welbe to help you track the way you eat, move, and sleep in real time. Over the last few years, countless wearable devices have emerged to help track your health and behaviors. Yet one huge challenge is the fact that most of these devices specialize in one area and thus make it difficult to track your overall health and well-being.
This is why the Welbe app is designed to integrate your data from multiple health and wearable devices (e.g. Fitbit, Jawbone) and platforms (e.g., iOS, Android) to provide customized information and advice for improving your well-being. The app will also allow you to compare your health and well-being with that of your friends, even if they are using different devices, apps, and platforms.
My team has worked with the developers of the Welbe app for the last year to build many of the ideas in this book into the app. Our aim was to help readers integrate these concepts with your personalized health tracking information. If you do just one thing to apply what you learn as you read this book or when you have finished reading it, I encourage you to visit www.eatmovesleep.com to register for and download the Welbe app.
Choices count. You can make decisions today that will give you more energy tomorrow. The right choices over time greatly improve your odds of a long and healthy life.
No matter how healthy you are today, you can take specific actions to have more energy and live longer. Regardless of your age, you can make better choices in the moment. Small decisions — about how you eat, move, and sleep each day — count more than you think. As I have learned from personal experience, these choices shape your life.
A Personal Perspective
At age 16, I was playing basketball with friends when I noticed something wrong with my vision. There was a black circle in the middle of my visual field. I assumed it would go away. Instead, it got progressively worse. I finally told my mom, who immediately took me to an eye doctor.
That black spot turned out to be a large tumor on the back of my left eye. The doctor said it might lead to blindness. As if that was not enough, I needed to get a blood test to rule out other medical problems. A few weeks later, my mom and I went back to the doctor’s office for the results.
The doctor told us I had a rare genetic disorder called Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL). While VHL typically runs in families, my condition was a new mutation that affects just one in every 4,400,000 people. This mutation essentially shuts off a powerful tumor suppressor gene and leads to rampant cancerous growth throughout the body.
I still vividly recall sitting on one side of a large wooden desk as my doctor tried to explain what it would be like to battle cancer for the rest of my life. It was one of those moments when your stomach sinks and your mind races for an alternate explanation. My doctor then described how I was also likely to develop cancer in my kidneys, adrenal glands, pancreas, brain, and spine.
While the thought of losing my eyesight was tough, these longer-term issues were even more daunting. That conversation with the doctor forced me to wrestle with much larger questions about my life. Would people treat me differently if they knew about my illness? Was there any chance I would get married and have kids? Perhaps most importantly, I wondered if there was any way I could live a long and healthy life.
Doctors tried everything to save my eyesight, from freezing the tumors to cooking them with a laser. But the sight in my eye never returned. Once I got over this loss, I turned my attention to learning everything I could about the other manifestations of this rare disease.
I quickly realized that the more I learned, the more I could do to increase my odds of living longer. As new information emerged, I discovered I could stay ahead of my condition with annual MRIs, CTs, and eye exams. If doctors caught tumors early, when they were small, the tumors were less likely to spread and kill me. Learning that was a huge relief. Even if it required some difficult surgeries, there was something I could do to live longer.
I have had annual exams and scans for 20 years now and currently have small tumors in my kidneys, adrenal glands, pancreas, spine, and brain. Every year, I “watch and wait” to find out if any of these tumors are large enough to require surgery. In most cases, they are not.
Waiting around for active tumors to grow may sound nerve-racking. It could be, if I dwelled on the genetic condition that is beyond my control. Instead, I use these annual exams to stay focused on what I can do to decrease the odds of my cancers growing and spreading.
As each year goes by, I learn more about how I can eat, move, and sleep to improve my chances of living a long and healthy life. Then I apply what I learn to make better choices. I act as if my life depends on each decision. Because it does.
Small Choices Change Everything
Making better choices takes work. There is a daily give and take, but it is worth the effort. The vast knowledge we have to prevent cancer, heart disease, and
