How I’m Building a Better Health Check (And What I’m Learning)

Part 3/3 of Proxies and Better Metrics for Health

Disclaimer: This is my personal story (n=1). I’m not a doctor. This isn’t medical advice. Work with qualified healthcare professionals for your health decisions.

Here’s Part-1 and Part-2.

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What ₹15,000 Taught Me

₹15,000. Three hours. Genuine fear.

That CT angiogram taught me more than 15 years of blood tests.

Not because of what it showed (clean arteries, no blockage).

But because of what it revealed: most people can’t do this.

Most people can’t afford that test. Or don’t know to ask for it. Or trust the single number their doctor gives them because they don’t know what else to measure.

That’s the gap I saw.

And it’s the gap I’m trying to close.

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The System I Wish Existed

After refusing statins and proving my doctor wrong with comprehensive testing, I kept coming back to one question:

Why doesn’t this exist for everyone?
Something that communicates in simple English.
Something that empowers people, rather than confounds them.

Not the ₹15,000 CT angio. But a comprehensive assessment that:

• Measures the right proxies

• Tells the full story

• Helps people make informed decisions

• Doesn’t require biohacker-level obsession

• Doesn’t default to medication for single numbers

There are a lot of people who are solving this or a similar problem in fascinating ways. Levels, Inside Tracker, Twin Health, Ultrahuman etc.

It is my opinion that foundational excellence across all pillars is the way to go. Rather than hyper-optimisation of one. Can we work on our GPP? Let’s get from 4/10 to 8/10 across insulin sensitivity, sleep, movement, stress, and nutrition. This creates compounding. And now, you can hyper-optimise.

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The 80/20 Metabolic Panel

I’m partnering with a doctor who specialises in metabolic health. We’re designing an annual assessment (at our clinic for metabolic health) that measures the vital 20% of metrics that drive 80-90% of health outcomes.

Not a biohacker protocol. Not a pharma prescription. Something in between.

Here’s what we’re including:

Comprehensive blood work (metabolic health focus)

• HDL/Trig ratio, ApoB (contextualised), Lp(a)

• Glucose regulation and insulin resistance

• Inflammation markers (hsCRP, homocysteine)

• Liver function (GGT)

Body composition analysis

• InBody as DEXA alternative (98% accuracy, 2 minutes, less expensive)

• Ultrasound for visceral fat assessment

• Waist-to-height ratio

Cardiovascular assessment

• ECG, treadmill test

• Doppler

• Resting heart rate, HRV, blood pressure

Functional assessment

• Strength tests (can you squat your bodyweight? press half?)

• Movement quality (toe touch, sit-to-stand, balance)

Lifestyle audit

• Sleep, nutrition, training, stress

• The effort metrics you control

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What You Get

But a bunch of that might sound like gibberish. Or well, sure, some important numbers. What do you do with it? What do they mean?

This isn’t just data collection.

What you receive:

• Clear scores across all categories
  More importantly, clear explanations

• Which proxies are excellent

• Which proxies need attention

• How to improve them i.e. the effort involved from you.
  Getting you from here to there.
  This means discovery - what are you doing currently, and relevant questions around that.

• Escalations i.e. which medical experts to consult based on your numbers and data

Partnering with a doctor with over a decade of metabolic experience to close the loop.

No fear-mongering. Just: here’s your full picture, here’s what to work on.

DIY. Or work with us. Or use our map to work with whomever you’d like.

To better your health.

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What We’re Learning

We’re still figuring this out.

Here’s what we’re grappling with:

Challenge 1: Accessibility How do we make comprehensive assessment available to people who can’t come to a lab? How do we create a DIY version that’s useful without hands-on testing?

Challenge 2: Context Without Fear How do we deliver results that inform without terrifying? Single numbers scare people. Full context empowers them. But explaining context requires nuance.

Challenge 3: Actionability Data without guidance is just noise. How do we give people clear next steps based on their unique constellation of metrics?

Challenge 4: Results The guidance will provide results but how can we track them? How can we help them steer, in real time?

Challenge 5: Consistency People need to keep working on their lifestyle. And keep monitoring things - daily, weekly. But people don’t. How can we design this differently?

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Why This Matters To Me

I control my health. That’s been transformative.

But the landscape is confusing. Biohackers on one side, pharma on the other, and no middle ground.

A friend once told me: “You need to know your money well enough to tell your auditor what to do.”

I never applied that to finances. But I believe it about health.

You need to understand what’s happening. Figure out interventions. Have informed conversations with experts. Be an active participant, not a passive recipient.

You need to take control. You need to be part of the conversation.

That’s what I’m trying to enable.

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The Bigger Belief

Here’s what I believe: most people don’t need medication as a permanent subscription.

As you improve lifestyle, as you improve proxies, as you improve actual health … can you reduce medication? Wean off?

Pharma wants lifelong customers. Fuck that shit.

Let’s do the right thing.

With AI, we are going to see a world of personalised nutrition, fitness, and health care. Maybe there will be a day when we don’t need to be in the driver’s seat and good things are automatically taken care of. But for now, we need to be under control.

And for that, there are simple heuristics. A better lifestyle is needed. And the lesser (elective) medication you can take, the better.

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The Framework (Quick Reference)

For those who’ve been following this 3-part series, here’s the framework in one place:

Step 0: Take Stock Get baseline data on all proxies. If there’s no medical emergency, just record and move on. Don’t obsess. Don’t try to fix anything yet.

Step 1: Start With Effort If lifestyle is broken—poor sleep, no training, high stress, processed food—that’s where you start.

Work on effort. Get it trending right. The numbers will follow if you’re measuring the right ones.

Step 2: Use Composite Proxies One number tells you nothing. Multiple proxies tell a story.

My cholesterol: elevated for 15 years. Every other marker: excellent and stable.

When my lifestyle slips, my triglycerides spike. When I dial it back in, they drop. When stress peaks, inflammation markers rise. Then they fall.

The pattern tells the story. The single number doesn’t.

Step 3: Track Trends, Not Snapshots Are you trending right over months and years? Or yo-yoing on one number while actual health stays the same?

Step 4: Question The Proxy When Context Doesn’t Match If one metric is elevated but everything else is excellent, you’re looking at an incomplete proxy.

Doesn’t mean ignore it. Means investigate deeper. Get better measurement tools. Look at the full picture.

Step 5: Know When To Escalate Some blood tests now use traffic lights: green, yellow, red. That’s a start.

What’s missing: someone who weaves the story. Someone who connects proxies to effort and says, “You’re not sleeping, and that’s why this marker is elevated. Let’s fix sleep and retest.”

And sometimes you need escalation. If numbers are concerning and lifestyle factors match, see specialists. Cardiologists. Endocrinologists. People who’ve seen thousands of cases.

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What I’m Asking

I’m building this in public. Which means I’m figuring it out as I go.

If you want to follow along as I learn—or if you have insights that could help:

1. What’s worked for you in getting comprehensive health data?

2. What’s been frustrating about “health checks”?

3. What would actually be useful in an annual assessment?

Reply and let me know. I’d value your perspective.

I’ll share updates as we build this. If you want to follow along, reply and I’ll keep you in the loop.

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Final Thought

That CT angio didn’t just clear my arteries.

It cleared my thinking.

I stopped fearing the wrong numbers. I started measuring what matters. I moved from scared patient to informed participant.

And that shift—from passive recipient to active owner of my health story—changed everything.

That’s what I want for anyone who’s been scared by a single number. Anyone who’s been told to medicate without understanding why. Anyone who wants to own their health but doesn’t know where to start.

We’re measuring the wrong things. Let’s fix that together.

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References & Further Reading

On Ancel Keys & The Diet-Heart Hypothesis:

• Nina Teicholz - “The Big Fat Surprise”

• “The Sugar Conspiracy” - The Guardian

• Gary Taubes

• Malcolm Kendrick

On Cholesterol as Incomplete Proxy:

• Peter Attia - “The Straight Dope on Cholesterol” (9-part series)

• Dave Feldman - “The Cholesterol Code”

• Ivor Cummins

Key Studies:

• Gaziano JM et al. “Fasting triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein, and risk of myocardial infarction” - Circulation 1997

• Brito et al. “Ability to sit and rise from the floor as a predictor of all-cause mortality” - European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 2012