One of the most common questions we get at CureTogether goes something like this:
“I’m “healthy” but would be interested in tracking my health online. Not sure what this means, or what a “healthy” person should track. What do you recommend? – David”
Great question. There are probably as many answers to this question as there are people who track 
themselves. But in talking to many self-trackers and through my own experimentation, a few basic measures stand out. Most people will measure:
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- sleep
- weight
- calories
- exercise
People who have an illness or condition will also measure things like pain levels, pain frequency, temperature, blood pressure, day of cycle (for women), and results of blood and other biometric tests.
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It’s a question that the media is starting to ask too:
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- Thomas Goetz, deputy editor of Wired Magazine, wrote this blog post about how we measure health.
- Jamin Brophy-Warren of the Wall Street Journal wrote this article about the phenomenon of personal data collection, which he calls the “new examined life”.
- Writers and visionaries Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf have started a growing movement called The Quantified Self, which they describe in this blog post.
- Self-experimenters are writing books about their experiences – David Ewing Duncan (aka “Experimental Man“) and Seth Roberts (of the “Shangri-La Diet“)
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Another answer came from a Facebook friend I recently met, Karina:
“It’s just something I do, and need to do, and it’s part of my life. So, in a nutshell, on most days I write down what I ate and drank, how many steps I walked, when I went to bed and when I woke up, my workouts and my pain/medication/treatments. I also write down various comments about meditative activities and, if it’s extreme, my mood.”
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Tracking yourself can be as low-tech as a pencil, paper, watch, and scale. Or it can be as fancy as Bayesian analysis of custom spreadsheets with wifi gadgets that stream your health data live to online servers.
My answer to the question of what to track? It depends on what you want to get out of it:
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- Are you looking for greater self-awareness and a way to stick to those New Year’s resolutions?
- Do you want to compare your data to other self-trackers and see where you fit on the health curve?
- Are you interested in contributing your health data to research into finding cures for chronic conditions?
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Whatever your reasons, tracking is fun, helpful, and here to stay. Please keep your questions coming, and let’s continue the discussion. Happy tracking!
