We have never had more information about our health.
We count our steps. Track our sleep. Measure our protein. Watch our glucose. Monitor our heart rate. Count calories. Calculate macros.
Before we’ve even decided how we feel in the morning, a device on our wrist can tell us whether we slept well.
And yet, with all this information, are we actually getting better at understanding our bodies?
I’m not convinced we are.
Don’t misunderstand me. I love data. Modern technology gives us extraordinary insight into what is happening inside the human body. Genetics and epigenetics have transformed what we can understand about individual health. Wearables can reveal patterns we might otherwise miss.
But there is a problem.
We’ve started confusing information about the body with understanding the person living in it.
We’re surrounded by health rules.
Some of that advice is supported by very good science. But there’s a question we don’t ask nearly often enough:
Ten thousand steps may be wonderful for one person and completely inappropriate for another whose body is exhausted and desperately asking for recovery.
Intermittent fasting may work beautifully for your friend and leave you anxious, depleted and unable to sleep.
A food can have an impressive nutritional profile and still leave you bloated, sluggish or uncomfortable every time you eat it.
And eight hours in bed doesn’t necessarily mean you woke up restored.
The recommendation isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s incomplete because it doesn’t include you.
Long before smart watches and continuous glucose monitors, human beings had another remarkably sophisticated feedback system. The body itself.
Ayurveda has been paying attention to those signals for thousands of years.
These aren’t vague wellness questions.
They’re data.
The difference is that they’re your data.
Ayurveda recognized something remarkably sophisticated: the same food, routine or treatment does not produce the same result in every person.
Modern science is increasingly giving us another way of understanding why. Our genetics differ. Our environments differ. Our circadian rhythms differ. Our histories, stress loads, exposures and behaviors differ. Of course our health needs differ too.
I think we’ve created a false choice in health. Either trust science and the numbers, or trust your body. Why would we choose?
I want both.
Give me the labs. Give me the genetics. Give me the research. Show me the sleep data and the glucose response.
But then tell me about the person.
How do they actually feel?
A number can tell us something important. It rarely tells us the whole story.
Years ago, when I gave my TEDx talk, I called it Context Is Everything.
I believe that even more strongly today. Because health doesn’t happen in a laboratory. It happens in a human being.
So perhaps the next time an app, headline, influencer — or even an expert — tells you something is “healthy,” don’t immediately ask yourself how you can fit it into your life.
Ask a different question.
And then pay attention.
Your body isn’t something you need to conquer, control or optimize into submission.
It’s giving you information all day long.
Modern technology can help us understand that information.
Ayurveda can help us see the patterns within it.
And when we put those things together — science, observation and the context of the individual — we can stop chasing somebody else’s definition of healthy and begin understanding what health actually looks like for you.
Your constitution is only the starting point. Understanding your individual pattern can help you begin to see why something that works beautifully for someone else may not work for you. If you don’t already know your Ayurvedic constitution, that’s a good place to begin.
Because “healthy” isn’t one size fits all.
Context really is everything.
The Holistic HIghway integrates traditional Western medical practices with Ayurveda medicine, creating a focus on prevention through nutrition, diet, and exercise; use of the latest genetic testing and other diagnostic techniques; and prescribed combinations of botanical medicines, supplements, therapeutic diets, detoxification programs, or stress-management techniques.
Integrative Health Expert | Ayurveda Practitioner | Author | Speaker
Kerry is a globally recognized leader in integrative medicine and the science of health known as Ayurveda. She is passionate about raising awareness of the need for a change in contemporary medicine that focuses on patient empowerment and a health-based (rather than disease-based) medical system.
Kerry is connected with The University of Pittsburgh Center for Integrative Medicine and remains a pioneer in the field of integrative medicine where she has developed a personalized system to manage chronic disorders by incorporating fundamental changes in diet, behavior, and stress while focusing on genetics.
This individualized program is so successful that many of her clients have achieved maximum healing and vitality after years of chronic problems!
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