INSPIRATIONAL STORY 

Helene’s story: how feeling better breathes air into new life projects

Hélène’s story is both common and extraordinary, it could happen to any of us. Several months ago, Hélène decided to take care of her health and learn more about some symptoms like fatigue, light sleep and a few others, which are pretty common for a young, active mother of 2 little girls holding down what amounts to almost 2 full-time jobs as a freelancer. After a few tests and a personalised programme, Hélène started to get better and, despite some ups and downs, she was extremely rigorous and determined to be in top form as soon as possible. What’s more, thinking about her optimal health and performance brought her into broader reflections about her dreams, and she realised that it was time to bring alive the amazing projects she had put on standby for too long.

She bravely quit her jobs, which she realised weren’t satisfying, and started to grow her own projects. One of them was launched a few days ago, a podcast called “Dessine moi Munich”. (I’ll let you discover it, it is an original guide for Francophones who are moving to Munich.) Others will see the day soon!

She deserves our full round of applause, and I hope you’ll be inspired and remember that any big project starts by taking care of yourself, since you are the most important tool in achieving your dreams.

YOUR APPLE WATCH and YOUR HEART

Stanford University released the Apple Heart Study at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology last week-end in New Orleans (USA).

The study enrolled over 400k participants who had an Apple Watch, using its optical sensor to detect the wearer’s pulse. “Apple and Stanford created this study to evaluate Apple Watch’s irregular rhythm notification, which occasionally checks the heart's rhythm in the background and sends a notification if an irregular heart rhythm appears to be suggestive of atrial fibrillation (AFib). Once users received an abnormal heart rate notification, they received a telemedicine consultation and an electrocardiogram patch to wear for additional monitoring. When these users have another arrhythmia episode, the Apple Watch identified correctly a fibrillation in 71% of cases compared to ECG patch, with having notifications sent only after 5 measurements that were showing irregular heart beats.”

These important findings are encouraging, since there were early concerns about potential over-notifications and unnecessary patient anxiety, which finally turned out to be negligible.

Although still in its infancy, this is another exciting example of how consumer-facing technology will change medicine, both in clinical fields and research, as we learn more about how to design digital health trials.

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Few health snaps of my week:

LEARNING:
       -  book: I am (re) reading The Confidence Code by Katty Kay & Claire Shipman

       - movie (on Netflix): “Losers” about perseverance, courage and humility; amazing stories about how losing meant growing for many elite athletes : “In a "winning is everything" society, how do we handle failure? This series profiles athletes who have turned the agony of defeat into human triumph”

FOOD:

• I’ve gotten obsessed with salmon roe, I really like the taste and, lucky me, they are very rich in DHA phospholipids (Omega 3) very good for the brain. It also reminds me that I need to re test soon my erythrocyte fatty acids to check my levels of Omega 3, 6, 9 etc.

• I’m sticking with my 16h time restriction on food

SPORT:

• Rumble- Having travelled a lot during the past weeks, I couldn’t go boxing for quite a while, and I realise how much I miss it, even if I am far from being good at it. But hearing the bell ring and the music with its contagious “are you ready to fight”, it all reminds me that yes, I am ready to fight anything! Fears, obstacles and anything that wants to stop me, let's rumble!