Ep 412: What to Track to Optimize Your Health – With Marcell Hanson

What health metrics are key to track for your health and fitness?  With so many health and fitness trackers on the market how do you know which one will give you the most information for your health goals?  After experiencing some health challenges, Marcell Hanson started tracking her health metrics and after 30 years she’s learned some valuable information that she’s sharing with her clients.  Marcell is an entrepreneur, a metaphysician, cat mom and the founder of My StableTable, a proven wellness framework that has helped thousands improve their metabolic health, balance, hormones, and end stressful habits.  In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause interviews Marcell Hanson on the importance of tracking health metrics for accountability and awareness. 

Resources From The Show:

• Marcell’s Podcast – Small Habits Big Changes
• Marcell’s Website

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Podcast Transcript

JANNINE: [Intro] Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast where health junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds and fit physics or life. Hey, Health junkies, Dr. Jeanine Krause here. I am looking for some help from you all. And what I’m looking for is some inspiration, some inspirational stories that I can share of men and women, defying aging and defying it by crossing things off their bucket list that maybe they thought they could never do, maybe coming back from an injury, starting something new, like skiing at 40 years old. Whatever it may be, I want to know about these stories and I want to interview folks. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone you know, doesn’t matter. I want to help inspire folks out there that you don’t have to follow social aging norms. You can defy stuff. You can get better as you get older. You can make so much progress at any age. You can build muscle at any age. You can have a stronger heart at any age and you can crush all those things you want to do on your bucket list. Just because your older doesn’t mean you have to give up on yourself and your dreams. And this is something that I want to share and inspire folks with. And so if you have a story or someone you know, email us at info@doctor spelled out. So d-o-c-t-o-r-j-k-r-a-u-s-e-n-d.com. Let’s spread the word about how amazing life can be as you get older and all the cool things that you can do. Alright, health junkies. I’m counting on you. Let’s get some emails in and let’s get some awesome stories on the podcast. 

JANNINE: Hey, health junkies. On this episode of the health fix podcast, I’ve brought back Marcell Hanson. She’s an American Canadian entrepreneur, metaphysician. She’s a cat mom and she is the founder of My Stable Table, a proven wellness framework that has helped thousands improve their metabolic health balance and hormones. And so Marcell and I are going to be talking about something that’s near and dear to my heart, tracking and really the importance of tracking certain things in your life to know where you stand, health wise, and where you can make interventions as well. And we go deep into how I’m tracking how she’s tracking and how it’s made impacts in our lives, but also giving us the clues to what we need to stay healthy for life. And both of us want to live well into our 100s. So if you’re looking to do that as well, the secret podcast for you. So let’s reintroduce you to Marcell Hanson. 

Hey, health junkies. I have Marcell Hanson back on today and we are going to be talking about something that I get a lot of questions on and I’m really excited about this because I keep kind of subliminally hinting it to all of you that this is something very important to do. And so I decided to bring the expert in tracking on Marcell. So Marcell, welcome to the health fix podcast again. 

MARCELL: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Good to be here. 

JANNINE: Hey, you know, I mean, our first podcast we talked all about tracking and since then it has seemed to be a theme in my world in addition to my patients world. And now I’m just getting questions from folks like, well, what do I track? How do I track? How do I get started tracking? What’s relevant tracking? So I thought, well, what’s better than bring the tracking expert? So here we are. So tell us, tell us a little bit about the tracking thing. How long ago did you start? I know it’s been a while. And back in those days, what was your intent? Kind of give us the scoop of like getting into tracking. How does one dabble in tracking? 

MARCELL: I know. It’s good question. You know, for me, my journey started in the mid 90s and what I thought as a 20-some year old is that I could just track in my head. I mean, that seems you know, if you’re walking and you’re counting blocks, you can kind of keep track like on your finger in your head like, okay, I’ve walked 10 blocks. Great. After a very short amount of time, I realized that that actually was too subjective and that I would lose count or get distracted. And then the data, which we’ll talk quite a bit about today, is invalid. I mean, if you don’t have accurate data, then you’re making decisions and off of bad information. So it was probably 2002 when I first started tracking on a paper log. And to this day, I still have a very similar paper log to that. And I have a notebook full of monthly tracking sheets since then. And I have found that to be the easiest. There are ways to track digitally. I think that it may be a generational thing, but there’s some kind of power in hand to the pen, to the paper, to the brain. There has been a lot of science on that actually, yet the newer generation, newer couple generations, maybe more digitally bound and feel that that’s more applicable to them. So more power to them if they can make it work for me. I like to see it on paper. And I like to not have to depend on a device to access that because part of my tracking has always been it’s about self care. That’s always been a hundred percent my goal. And so part of that self care is not being on my phone as much. So if I have to rely on my phone to get the data for myself care. So I can assess it. I feel like I’m going a little one step forward, one step back. So for me, I have transitioned to a different type of form, if you will, that I just created myself. But I have listed out the things that are important to me that I’d like to track that are relevant to my goals. And I have kept it on paper for the last, you know, 20 plus years. 

JANNINE: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. Because I know I have not done that long. I’m probably about 10 years in, but not 20 because you know, I grew up in that world of like if I write it down in my mom finds it. I don’t know why. I don’t know why because she was, you know, loved her to death, but she was nosy, right? And I was like, whatever I write down, she’s going to know. And so somehow I track that I had that my head is like, you were doing, you know, tracking things in your head. And then finally, I was like, okay, I can’t remember everything. I got to do this. And so yes, I too am a note paper. I have multiple little notebooks like stacked of things. So I think, you know, the next thing that folks are probably thinking like, okay, right, we got it tracking. Do we do it on the phone? Do we do it on paper? I can see the paper benefit for not being on the phone. Now it becomes okay, you had mentioned health goals. And obviously that’s probably where you’ve tied like you mentioned your tracking into it. So what, what do you advise your coaching folks to do in terms of their goals and what to track? How do you get folks started with the first processes of tracking? 

MARCELL: Yeah, great question again. With my clients, the biggest and the most important thing that actually, if you don’t do, if we don’t do, then we don’t continue is we must know, I must know what you want. First and foremost, like your legacy, your North Star, whatever’s driving you, your passion, if you know it, great, if you don’t, let’s explore it. But if you know it, then what’s going to get you there? We kind of reverse engineer. I always like to say that lots of people are like so happy to have a plan for their day. You need to have a plan for your life. And then your days actually define themselves like going from day to day like, oh, that was good Monday. Shoo, if you know, how does that relate to on your legacy, on your deathbed, are you going to look back and be like, wow, I had a great Monday back then in the 20s. No, it’s it’s it’s a superfluous information at that point. It’s just kind of a little piece of the puzzle, but you have to know what that puzzle is and what that goal is. And that will really determine what you track. I was just thinking this morning actually, how my tracking has changed like one, it’s influenced by current wearables and biometrics that are available to us now that we’re not in the 90s. I would have had to been a multi-millionaire in order to sneak into someone to get some kind of CGM or because even people with diabetes were not or diagnosed diabetes were not using them then. I mean, there this is a lot of technology has boomed in the last decade to to 20 years. And so those influence a little bit because they give me ideas like, oh, should I be tracking my resting heart rate or should I be tracking my HRV? So those are things that maybe 20 years ago, I honestly, I was not thinking of tracking my HRV 20 years ago. I had no idea what it was. Most people didn’t, most doctors didn’t. So the amount of information and the amount of potential that we have now to track things that could be relevant and could be helpful to our health is immense. And so I was noticing that I’ve changed kind of what I’m focused on given that I’m getting more information about myself. So the more I know, the more I can know. And so I think that it really, I don’t remember your question actually.

JANNINE: I mean, it’s good info because we’ve talked about where you’ve come from in the 90s and now to where we are today because yeah, in the last decade, the explosion of data tracking and to tech huge where both and stuff is so huge. And so what I was looking at is how do we dabble in that? 

MARCELL: Oh, how do we dabble? 

JANNINE: Yeah, how do we get started? And definitely, you hit on it, like we have to have a goal. And we have to have a goal or a metric where, you know, this is our are either like short and long term. What are we doing for the long term? And so someone finding their purpose, someone finding like, why am I tracking all this? Why do I want to be healthy? 

MARCELL: Yeah. Yeah. And do you want to be I think that it’s funny that that people I assume that people want to be healthier. I assume that yet I also have coached and witnessed for years and something I believe in that’s called value-based living. So if Jannine, if I were to just follow you around all day, you didn’t know I was there, but I was following you around by your activities, who you interact with, what you do, what you eat, what you say. And obviously, I don’t have privilege to your thoughts, but I’m going to see that in your behavior. That should reflect what you value. Now think about that. And imagine your average person. There’s no congruency there whatsoever. They get up, they eat, they feed the kids, feed the dog. Yes, that’s important. Okay, we’re showing some value. They care about the dog, they care about the kids, and they get in their car and they drive 40 minutes. Hmm, do they like that? Do they enjoy that commute? Is that good time for them? Are they learning things? Are they listening to podcasts? Are they just cursing the traffic? They get to a job, they sit at a desk. It’s like, okay, does this, is this your livelihood? Is this what you’ve always wanted to do? Most people would be like, no, I don’t want to sit in front of a computer screen for six or eight hours and worry about blinking. Having to get out and go to the bathroom, come back. And it feels very, to me, it feels like a prison. 

JANNINE: Yeah, 

MARCELL: There’s probably very few people that are like, I love this. This is fantastic. I love every part of it. So that incongruency leads to like, a lot of, a lot of layers of the onion need to be peeled back in order to find what someone really wants if they are continually doing these same actions over and over again, these routines, this normal schedule, if you will. And it’s not incongruent, it’s not congruent with what they desire, what they want to do. They’re their contribution to the planet, you know, how they show up. And as a result, because most of that takes most of their day, those other things like feeding the kids or feeding the dog or feeding themselves or getting a massage, lots of those things just become mundane routine acts. Instead of something that you can really put yourself into, like, if you really want to cook for your kids, because you really love to cook, you’re not allowed to do that really in the schedule that you’ve created, because you have 12 hours of commute, work commute, and maybe a gym session, if you’re lucky. So really self-assessment is the biggest self-awareness and self-assessment is the biggest indicator of how successful you’d be tracking at all. And to be honest, if you’re not looking to be extraordinary, don’t track. 90% of people zombie walking through life, maybe they don’t want more, maybe it’s too much. I always say it’s, and I’ve heard this said by someone else, I’m not sure who said it originally, but the things that are easy to do are also easy not to do. So I think it’s easy to track. People are like, “Oh my gosh, you track so much.” You know, 15 to 20 things metrics that I’m currently tracking takes me like three minutes. I spend triple that time on breath work in the morning. Like writing down my metrics and collecting them is an absolute cinch, but I wouldn’t advise that to anyone who just wants to do it as a fad or something. It has to have purpose. Like you need to have something behind it or you will, it’ll grow stale when the app needs updating. You’ll forget when the wearable starts to get uncomfortable or it’s stretched out. You’ll be like, “Ah, I should order another one.” You know, things just happen because you’re not committed to it and tied into the legacy piece. So for me, if you know where you’re going and you know, and it’s a strong enough why, like Tony Robbins says, you know, what’s your why? Then tracking the simplest things to start is great. If you have fitness goals like walking a certain amount or hydrating a certain amount, which also are determined by you, you know, you’re going to walk maybe more than I am or you’re going to drink more water than I am or hydrate differently. Maybe you like teas more, I don’t. I drink just water. So we’re going to hydrate a little different even. And so take those basic stable table, you know, hydration, movement, nutrition and sleep and start tracking those. Track, when you go to bed, you can just write it down. Did I get to bed at 930? It’s a check or no. You know, it’s a blank or a smiley face or whatever you want to do. But don’t make it too difficult to begin with because it is gradients like what I track, you know, these, I think it’s, I haven’t even counted. It’s 15 to 20 metrics. What I track is an accumulation of 25 years of tracking. It’s not going to, if someone else did that off the get go, they’d be like, whoa, just doesn’t apply to them. For me, I want to live to 150. So I need to aggressively daily, consistently know what’s going on with my body. So I can make micro corrections. And I don’t know if we mentioned this the first episode, but certainly like any pilot would understand this. Like when you’re on a trajectory, you leave Seattle and you’re flying to JFK in New York City. I mean, the pilot’s paying attention. You do have an auto pilot, but it auto corrects. It like micro corrects every, you know, few seconds a minute. It doesn’t go five miles off course, 10 miles off course, 15 miles off course, then go back five miles, 10 miles. That would be like the most inefficient way to get to New York, right? It’s going to follow this plan, this trajectory, the goal is New York, and it’s going to micro correct as it gets there. And it’s going to waste the least amount of fuel. It’s going to be the most efficient. And it’s going to, it’s going to get to where it’s going 99.9% of the time. So if I was an airplane, if this, if I was a pilot, I want a micro correct my life. I don’t want to be over Arizona and be like, Oh, shit. I am, I am like 155 miles off my route. Like, and then go and that’s what happens in our life is like we, we get on a path like, I’m going to Seattle. I’m going to get in the airplane. I’m going to fly to New York. So we get to Seattle and then we’re distracted and go, what were we doing here? Oh, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. New York, New York. Okay, we’re in the cockpit. We’re like pushing buttons like, Oh, I forgot to eat breakfast. And we’re just distracted by all these things. Like, who’s that? Shiny, shiny thing. And by the time we even get up in the air, we’re like, where are we going? Oh, East. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to New York. Okay. And and this whole sort of drama plays out in how we’re getting there. And it ends up being very inefficient. I don’t have that amount of time. I don’t have a thousand years to figure out what’s going on with my body. At a certain point, I will be backpedaling if I put this off. Now I feel, I feel real fortunate that I started in my 20s. But at 51, I’m looking at it like, wow, I’m super lucky. If I were just starting right now, I might be like, knowing what I know, I’d be like, wow, this is a lot. Now if as the 51 year old out there listening, going, ah, shit, then I might as well not know because you still have lots of time. It’s your trajectory, right? It’s never too soon and it’s never too late in my opinion to start tracking and learn things about yourself for the better, right? We’re not trying to collect data to beat ourselves up that has that doesn’t ever even play into the picture. It’s a learning curve. And it is about learning about where you are right now. And that’s why I can’t, I can’t give a a blanketed statement to someone because like you know, everybody’s different. It’s no one size fits all. And that’s kind of the excitement of it. It’s exciting to learn about yourself and to be able to apply that knowledge and help yourself feel better, to have more energy, to sleep better, to have better relationships, to feel calmer, to like just be at peace. Cool thing. 

JANNINE: It is. It is. And it’s cool to be able to kind of go, okay, I’ve got my, I’ve got my mission. I know what I want to be tracking. I know what I want to improve about my health, you know, even just starting there. But like you said, the trajectories and seeing like where, where things have gone off the rails. This is where, you know, I’ve caught some pretty cool things and been like, oh, wow, you know, with my tracking, I could literally see where I started getting into peri-menopause. I could see where cycles were off. I could see where certain things started to happen. And I think for a lot of women being able to be on the front end of those kind of shifts or switches within the body can be huge. So tell us what are some of like huge learning experiences you’ve had to keep you, you know, that you’ve been like, well, I’m off trajectory a little bit. I got to move myself back in. Like what kind of things have you discovered? 

MARCELL: You know, the Jannine, it’s interesting because it happens almost daily now because I, because of what I’m tracking, but I, I’m floored by what certain physiological things are going on in my body without my knowledge. I am literally like, it is amazing to me. An example, I can in a couple months back, I had a really physical job and I was, I was what I call, humping gravel. So you’re scooping gravel, heavy three quarter inch gravel into a wheelbarrow filling up the wheelbarrow. And then you’re running the wheelbarrow back 30 yards, dumping it, coming back and repeating that again and again and again. I did 18 tons. So anybody out there who knows, not 18 tons, sorry, 18 yards. I was like 18 yards. So anybody, no, no, you’ll see 18 tons, 40,000 pounds of gravel, 20,000 tons. So it’s pretty remarkable, but one wheelbarrow at a time. I did that over several days. And what I would notice in my bio tracking is that my heart rate would increase, my heart rate would increase. And I would get into like a zone two, a zone three, depending on how much I was really, you know, humping that gravel. And these wheelbarrow’s probably way about 275, they’re close to 300 pounds of gravel every time. So I’m lifting that up. So it’s leg workout. It’s a back, it’s a back workout. I got it in my lat. So I work with a trainer. So I’m not doing anything that’s going to harm my body or injure me. So these are heavy loads. One right after the other, I’m wearing like a barefoot technology shoe. So it’s like walking barefoot. And I’m going back forth, back forth. I notice at the end of the day when I’m tracking my strain using the whoop, which is a wearable, that my strain is really high. Like it’s up, it’s up there. Pretty good. And my heart rate has, it shows me the zones that I basically have worked out. Right. I go home, I have a good meal. I go to bed at my normal time. I wake up. I have fantastic recovery. I have perfect sleep. I have the most restorative sleep 30 40% restorative sleep. I’ve spent like almost two hours in REM. I mean, it’s really amazing. I’m like, wow. And if I can do that again. So I do it again the next day. And I do it four days in a row. And I start to look at like, wow, this is interesting. So if I were tracking, just for example, I’ll get back to the comparison of what else I learned physiologically. But if I were tracking how much restorative sleep I got just as a random metric, it’s totally dependent on how much exertion I have throughout the day. So I’m not going to get a ton of restorative sleep if I didn’t strain that day. I don’t need that much restorative sleep because I’m fairly restored. So it’s a small little mental shift of like, why did I get so much restorative sleep? Like restorative sleep. And I felt great. And I felt invigorated. I felt strong. Maybe I should focus on restorative sleep. And that will be my metric. Well, if I did that, I would fail miserably a lot of the time because if I’m not exerting that much energy, my body doesn’t need to recoup that much energy. So these are my metrics that are really important when you’re looking at your strain and you’re looking at your recovery. It gives you this little peak into the like, oh, that’s okay. It makes sense. I needed more restorative sleep. I exerted myself. So I got it, which is good. And I woke up ready again. But how come when I did less work, I got less restorative sleep and I didn’t feel as good. And then I started thinking, this is just a few months ago, I started thinking, is it really that I’m not doing enough? Like I’m not exerting myself enough. I’m like, I thought, maybe I needed a rest day. So I took a rest day and then I recovered yellow. And I was like, wait a minute. Is this like a rebound from those four really exerted days? Or is it because I stopped doing that exertion that I didn’t sleep as well? Because I wasn’t as tired. And then my numbers were lower. And I was like, okay, this is an important metric. It’s not important to me because I’m like, this doesn’t make sense. So then I started looking at resting heart rate. Like, wow, my resting heart rate is quite low. It’s 40. And I thought, that’s great. That’s like marathon runner, right? And so I was tracking my resting heart rate and noticing like, oh, wow, sometimes it’s 38, 39. I thought, oh, how low could this go? I actually read that there’s a guy that I think it’s Unwupper Aura. There’s clocked it having like 20s like a seven time champion of some swimming or diph, capillons, something. And he has his resting heart rate is 28. And I thought, I don’t even think I don’t even think I’d be alive. I feel like he’d be dead. But I thought, okay, 40 is good for me. This is what I learned over this summer because I actually had a really strenuous job a couple months later after this. I thought that was enjoyable. Humping gravel was actually really fun. It was beautiful. It was springtime. The air was fresh. The trees were popping. The birds were chirping. I was just like, I was listening to Alabama, you know, and I’m just like back of board. The rock and roll was so good. Then a couple months later, I did a very strenuous indoor renovation. It was kind of a time crunch, very long hours, but not the physical exertion in the same way. It wasn’t high heart rate. It was mid heart rate zone two once in a while, but it was long hours on my feet kind of like. And what I started to notice with the metrics there was that my recovery was fine. I was green almost the whole time, which I was like, oh, okay, I’m doing good. I’m sleeping enough. I’m eating well. I’m, you know, burning what I need to burn. My resting heart rate started to creep up. And I was like, hmm, that’s interesting. It wasn’t 40. It was 42. And I was like, that’s not that big of a deal. And then what happened? And this, and I, this is someone who tracks, right? I go back now and I look at and I go, oh my gosh, it steadily went like 42, 42, 42, 42, 43, 43, 43, 43, 43. And because it started to creep up so slowly, I kind of had forgotten where it normally was. So it kind of became my new norm. Oh, 42 is kind of my resting heart rate now. And I didn’t think, I didn’t think that was a big difference from 40. And then all of a sudden it was 44. And then it was 46. And then it was 48. And then it was 49. And then I was like, wait a minute. And then it hit 50. Like a couple months back. And I was like 50. Wait a minute. I pulled back my sheet, look back in previous months. I’m like 38, 39, 40 for two months. Then wait a minute. Here it starts creeping up 42, 43. How did I miss this? Well, I wasn’t focused on it. That wasn’t what I was looking at until hindsight. Now I’m looking at it going, okay, what do I need to know about this? What’s going on? I worked really hard for pumping that gravel took like three weeks. It was like six yards. I would do in four days. Then I’d get another six yards. I did it four days and another six and I did those in three days. So it’s 18 yards over the course of like two, two and a half weeks. But this was like steady working every day, not taking a break, eating well, going to bed. Something was going on. And what I started to put together was that it was cortisol. That was a different kind of stress. Like when you’re working out, yes, you get that. You get some cortisol running through your body. But there was no, I was happy humping gravel. I wasn’t, I was having a good time. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and my barefoot technology shoes and I’m in the sun and it was beautiful. And here I’m indoors. It was stressful. I was under a time limit. And my heart rate reflected that. It started to show like you are getting more and more stressed. But because it happened slowly, I was like the frog in the boiling water. I was like, yeah, this is, yeah, I’m still okay. And when it hit 50, 50 as a resting heart rate. Now most people, this is the one size fits all. Most people would be elated with a 50 resting heart rate because I think the average now is 70. Yeah. So 50 is like great. For me, I started to feel a little flutter in my chest. I could feel it. I was like, oh, wow, this is, this is stressful. And that’s when I like realize like, I’m doing kind of less work physically. But in my mind, I’m up late at night in my brain. I’m still sleeping, but I’m ruminating about what’s going on with this project. And it’s kind of consuming me kind of like raising a child. It’s like you’re sleeping, but are you? Because you’re listening for a breath down the hall. Like, did he stop breathing? And then you’re like, okay, he’s okay. There. Did you hear him breathe? You know, it’s a not, it’s not something that you can control. And this stress, which was the cortisol build up, and I wasn’t letting it out. And I wasn’t being as physical. I felt like I was being physical. That’s where it’s tricky. And even I have to look at the numbers because my mind will distort and delete and kind of subjectively twist information. That’s why it’s really important to track your top like this is somebody who has like paid attention to what’s gone on with their body for 20 plus years. And these three to four weeks that I worked over the summer just slipped into a little time capsule and like evaded my awareness, even though I look at it every day because I wasn’t pinpointing right there. So now I do pay attention. And I took about, it took two months to be honest. This is very, very recent. I usually don’t, I don’t, I’ve never told anybody. But I tried everything. I tried a little bit of going to bed earlier to get that resting heart rate back down. I tried working out pretty steadily like I, like I was two months ago. I was walking in the morning, walking sunrise and sunset. I’m eating still good. I don’t snack during the day. I do a time restricted eating. So everything’s good. I haven’t lost weight. I’m gaining muscle. But that resting heart rate was stubborn. It was still telling me, you’re missing a piece of this puzzle that you have not put enough attention on. And had I not tracked, I think I would just kind of fumble around with that like, oh, headed towards Arizona. But I get even a month, it feels like a long time to me. But to most people, if you could solve the issue that’s going on for you right now in a month for life, and that would be the knowledge that you could take forward and apply to future goals and future like emotional fitness and physical fitness, a month is not very long. 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

MARCELL: So I look back and go, thank goodness, I found it. And of course, if anybody can guess what brought me back because this morning back to 42, I got it, I got it back down to where it’s, it’s trajectory the last— and I’ll tell you six days. 48, 46, 45, 44, 43 today, 42. Any guesses? 

JANNINE: Nope. You guys tell us. You guys tell us what did you do? What did you do? 

MARCELL: I went back to another tracking piece that had fallen off my list. There are many, many things on my list that I want to track. And then sometimes they just, there’s too many things sometimes. And so I’m like, okay, focus on this, this, this. I went back to my breath work. And for anybody out there, and that’s not to say that the breath work will like revolutionize your life. It will make a huge difference. And if you are committed to the impact that it’ll make like positively, there is a free app. It costs no money. It is the best app I have ever encountered. And it is done by the man himself, Wim Hof. And it’s Wim Hof Method like I said, the app is free. There is opportunity that you can buy things, but you can track your breathing in there. You can track any cold exposure you do and you can track your physical exercise. It’s a really sweet little app. And somehow I got away from it because I did a different type of breath work. And literally in six days, my, my heart rate has dropped every single day. I’m sleeping, I sleep a little bit better. I sleep pretty good already. But I’ve noticed a little bit of a reduction in my latency, which is how long it takes once you lay down. But it’s really sweet to see a fast effect. And the reason I saw a fast effect is because all my other ducks are in a row, I think. So I’m not like push breath work though. I don’t think anyone would suffer from breath work if done properly. I think that the majority of us, in fact, I’m fairly safe to say if you’re not conscientiously doing breath work every day, you are breathing incorrectly 100%. And the power of our breath, the power to do that, it just has, it can have massive effects on our physiology. It does. It controls the balance between our parasympathetic and our sympathetic nervous system. And that stress that I’d built up over weeks of kind of doing just constant work, not overly physical work, but just constant like mind on, mind on the whole time. There wasn’t much that could get me back out of that because you, we work off kind of like that inertia, right? So when you’re running down a hill, it’s hard to stop. Not because it’s just downhill, but it’s like because you’re like going, your body’s like, okay, we’re going. And when you’re driving a certain speed, you stay at that speed, you know, we have the habit of kind of sinking into kind of a routine. And for me, I think that, I think that you can track anyone out there can start tracking almost anything. Because what happens is the more you know, the more you grow. So like as you track those few things, like did I get my hydration in today? Did I get to bed before 10 o’clock? Did I spend time with my kids? Did I have a bowel movement? JANNINE: Yeah, big ones. 

MARCELL: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it doesn’t have to be a big one, but it does have to be consistent. 

JANNINE: Yes. 

MARCELL: It’s amazing how many people out there are constipated or that don’t have regular movement every day. It’s like, this is essential. This is, it’s not normal. Like people need to know. And people, I studied traditional Chinese medicine. So all we talked about for months and months and months is poop. So, and as a naturopath, and there’s, yeah, lots of talk of that. And people want to go eww, it’s like, you can learn a lot. You can learn a lot by just taking a minute, taking a second to look and see what your body’s giving you. And it needs to be letting out. You need to be peeing multiple times a day. You need to be going to the bathroom multiple times. That’s how we detox. It’s, it is essential. But just tracking those like four simple things. If you had nowhere to start and putting it on a piece of paper on a calendar, checking it off with a highlighter, crossing it off with a pen, whatever floats your boat, because it will change. It will change. And then as you know, those four things, you’re like, Hey, you know what else I want to know? How consistent I am with? I want to know how consistent I’m exercising. I feel like I should be going to the gym twice a week, but I know I missed that last week. And then I wasn’t feeling good. So I didn’t go again. So, how many weeks has it been now since I’ve been? Like you lose track. So like just tracking those things back. Did I do it? It’s no shame, no blame. I’m not a big go to the gym. I work out in the living room, right? And I hump gravel. It’s like if you’re outside pulling weeds, that is exercise. If you’re doing it properly, if you’re mowing the lawn, if you’re raking, you’re using your back muscles. If you’re lifting a wheelbarrow, you are using your legs, you are using your arms, your shoulders. That is a workout. That is nature’s workout. That counts. You don’t have to go and lift a piece of iron in order for it to count as exercise. And walking. Did I walk? Did I get out in fresh air? Did I see the sunlight? These very simple things that sound like, why would I track that? It’s like, because you know what? You’ll find if you’re not tracking it, you’re not doing it. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. These are things that seem so rudimentary. And even I had a aha in this last two months where I was tracking my temperature because I was gifted a temp drop and I started playing with it. And I realized that I was under 98 degrees consistently. And I was like, oh my god, my temperature had dropped. So hypothyroid situation going on here that I wouldn’t have caught because I wasn’t paying attention in that respect. And none of my other symptoms matched my heart rate, like yours is very low too. So that I wouldn’t have caught because I always had a low heart rate. It didn’t shift. And so I was like so fascinated by that along with, you know, other of the hormonal stuff that kind of came together. And I was like, wow, you know, how I wouldn’t have guessed it. But now it makes sense. 

MARCELL: So that was that daytime temperature or the night time? 

JANNINE: So they check nighttime. It’s nighttime. So you only put the temperature, the thingy on at night and it collects throughout the night and it gives an average of temperature throughout the night, which is crazy. Yeah. And our house is pretty temperature controlled. So MARCELL: Yeah, it’s actually, I mean, check your thyroid for sure. But it’s actually, if you follow Brian Johnson at all, he’s kind of brought a little bit this to the forefront. Is that that you’re actually really good to sleep at a cooler temperature. My eight sleep tracks that as well. Like it, if you’re familiar with the eight sleep pod, is it will track kind of where your body is. And then it will adjust like you should be warmer. Like when you go to sleep, you don’t want to have cold feet. And you’re like, oh, I’m freezing. Then your body temperature, your core temperature, is beneficial to drop because it allows your body to get into a deeper state of rest and rejuvenation. And then as you start to come through your little cortisol pump in the morning and your early hours, it will raise the level of the temperature of the bed. So you’re getting ready to get back out into the world and then your temperature will go up. That’s funny because I found, I track my temperature as well, not with the same wearable, but I have seen you using that. And I noticed my sleep is significantly more restorative, not necessarily restorative. The latency is better. And the, what do they call it on there? The consistency is better. There’s one other tracking. When I’m cooler, when I’m warm at night, if I’m say plus 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit, I’m restless. I start to get restless. Now I’m peri-menopausal as well, but I’m just nearing menopause. If I go a couple more months without [inaudible], then I technically will pass the threshold. I might as well embrace it. There’s not going to be a lot at this point I could do to alter that. But it is fascinating to see that because sometimes you have too much covers on. You’re too many covers on and sometimes you have not enough and you shouldn’t be too cold at night because you can obviously lead to circulation issues, but you got to kind of know your baseline. So again, tracking it, knowing what’s normal for you, and then seeing, oh, this is a little lower than it, than it has been. Is this a good thing? Is this working for me? Or should I look into my thyroid and see what’s going on? Am I running the way I should? Unfortunately, not all of us are privy to having a great insightful naturopath at our disposal, but you have to do a bit of self-discovery to figure out what is warm for you. What is cool for you? Because the doctors are not going to know that. 

JANNINE: Right.

MARCELL: Let’s just sleep next to one. 

JANNINE: Well, there’s that. Some people might have that advantage, but yeah, having that compared with the Oura Ring and now knowing my sleep and knowing quality and that, yeah, it’s fascinating to kind of put this information together. And so one of the things that I can geek out on forever is all the different readiness scores and all the things out there. I came to the conclusion of thyroid since nothing else had changed, but at the same time, you know, guys, that’s why you do this. That’s why you track. So you know, like, hmm, well, not nothing else changed. And I’m noticing some hormonal shifts. So could that be? 

MARCELL: Yes. 

JANNINE: And say go hand in hand. What are you doing in terms of? So are you tracking in terms of, like you said, heart rate, heart rate variability? Are you looking at it more on the trajectory of like per week per month versus day to day on it? Or do you do you I’m curious on your your and do you look at the day to day HRV? So like readiness scores or things of that nature? 

MARCELL: Yeah, 100%. I have a few wearables. And I basically they run quite different. The Oura is quite a bit different than Whoop. And I have them both as you can see. And so there’s certain metrics that I follow on certain ones. And then I counter check them on the other to see like, okay, is that consistent? And lots of things that influence that where you put your hand at night. So I get just as as an aside, my Oura Ring picks up a warmer temperature because I have it tucked into a warmer place while my whoop is on my right tricep. And it’s usually out of the covers. So it is even though my arm is closer to my heart than my fingers, they do read differently on resting heart rate HRV. Also the Oura Ring does it HRV, you know, consistently, like it will give you the whole snapshot as opposed to Whoop just collects that data and gives you a read out every a.m. I also have another app that I use that tracks the deeper intervals of HRV because it interests me like the PNN 50 and how often your heart is actually pinging 50 mega milliseconds, milliseconds, greater each interval. So really like techy stuff because I’m curious because it’s still new. I want to see like how well I can wrap my head around it. So I do get pretty deep into the HRV. I track under four different things technically track my HRV and I kind of look at them and how they’re getting to that answer or that data. And for me, the HRV is kind of a big one because I spend a lot of time for those Whoop users to have you can look at the communities in there like I’m in Victoria, British Columbia. So I can see all the people that wear their Whoop in Victoria, all the people that are in British Columbia, all the people that are Canada, I do Seattle, I do the UK, Australia. So I compare myself like I think it’s interesting to see like what age group I can if you showed me something like a snapshot on the Whoop in the community of somebody’s HRV of their resting heart rate and their strain, I could tell you how old they are. 

JANNINE: Wow. 

MARCELL: And it’s not hard to do and you can extrapolate like the people that have a better sleep score than me, sleep more than me. They don’t have a better sleep score. I have 100% sleep score for months. I don’t mess around with my sleep. Like Brian Johnson’s like I’m six months. I’m like, that’s not hard at all. It’s not hard at all. You go to bed at nine, you sleep until you’re rested and you wake up. Now I spend more time in bed than I’d like because at my latency still a longer and I wake up for a cat in the middle of the night. So I spend nine plus hours in bed, but I sleep seven out seven and a half hours. That’s my rest. Now there’s people on there that are sleeping 10 hours, nine hours, eight hours. I’m like, wow, that’s a lot. 10 and a half hours. I look, they’re all in their 50s and 60s. You look at who sleeps the least and has the greatest sleep debt. They’re in their 20s. They’re 30. Who has the lowest HRV in general, the 20 year old athletes, the 28, the 30 year old athletes. When you get over 30, so many people, their HRV is tanked. So my HRV is actually right there with like an 18 year old male athlete. 

JANNINE: Nice. 

MARCELL: And when I saw that a year ago when I started tracking, I was like, okay, I want to see how this goes through stress. Where does my HRV go? How sensitive is my heart in its influctuation between this rest state and this go state? And how is it maintaining itself? Now it plummeted during that very stressful time. It’s skyrocketed during humping gravel time. I don’t know, 135 or something. And then I see other people in there that are like super duper triathletes and their HRVs over 200. I’m like, I get excited. But they have a very different structure than me. So I try not to compare myself. But I also look and say like, there’s something going on here. There’s HRV is going down, excuse me, as we age, if we are not taking care of ourselves, if we are not one, exerting ourselves to recovering and three taking care of ourselves. So that meditation, that breath work is just as important as lifting weights or playing frisbee with your kit or your dog. This is just as important in what I realized another piece that I realized other than that physiological part, that cortisol is like that stress hormone is actually really stressing my heart. More than strenuous activity. That was a big aha. But the other one is that that rest, massage, acupuncture, raky, just meditating or breath work is every bit, every bit as valuable as that exertion. And I think we have this really mixed up. I think that we feel like five into the gym five times this week like, wow, it’s like, okay, then you better have meditated five times this week because otherwise you just threw yourself out of balance. There’s not very many people that can go to the gym and then they’re back into like peaceful environments and they’re eating whole foods and they’re sleeping early and resting well and meditating doing breath work. Like you have to balance those things out. Because that’s where that that parasympathetic and that sympathetic nervous system they’re working like in harmony. They’re bouncing off each other and that HRV is going to increase. And I think that they will come back in 20 years and say that HRV is a pretty good indicator over time. Like you said, not looking at it every day, but if you looked at it as a week, like that was a stressful week, what happened to my HRV? Hmm, it went down. Wow, this was a great week. We went on retreat. I was eating good food. What happened to my HRV? Well, it’s shot up. It’s like, and then you continually look at that and you kind of make notes and you notice like when I’m taking care of myself, that HRV goes up. Interesting. And when I run down, it goes down. Well, okay, then two and two. Let’s put it together. And so I think it will become some people say the VOC, there are other tests that are showing important for longevity. But I think that there’s no one answer. And we need to get away from dichotomous thinking like either need to go to the gym or I’m a loser, you know, or like making like grand statements about ourselves because we’re not as consistent. Consistency gets built over daily action. Like and you just have to just put one foot in front of the other. But I will say going back, circling around to the beginning of why, how we get this going is like need to know what you’re here for. Like what are you doing? Like what do you want to leave? I mean, that’s the whole thing is like do you want some people like, I don’t care about that when I’m 60. I’m like, I’m like nine years away from 60. I ain’t going at 60. I got too much to do. I got a lot. There’s lots of there’s people to me like I just met somebody yesterday. I hadn’t seen any of you here. And I was like, wow, you know, I have I’ve lost two friends that were my age right now, my 51 that didn’t make it past 51. I thought, no, I want to be here for like another 100 years so figure stuff out. Like if you’re not growing, you are dying. And like that curiosity that is stemmed from like, hey, what does that even mean that HRV? What does that resting heart rate mean? And how do they, how do they reflect what’s going on for me? That curiosity is what keeps you alive. It’s a it’s a thriving towards life. It’s not towards a mundane like do do do. And it is the most important thing you can do is to figure out and to take care of your body because that allows you to get into a space. It is allowed me to get into a space to see what I want to do with my life and like where I want to go. And it just opens up this huge bandwidth where I’m not feeling bogged down by like a nine to five or you know, a commute or all the stresses of the Joneses. It’s like, who cares what other people are doing? Like you’re here for you. And the better you can be for you, you will be available for other people, your community, your family. It’s not about how far I can drain my system down. See if I could get it back up. It’s like it’s important to teach our kids and the next generation like self care is important. It is probably the most important thing. And for them to see that you sacrifice other things for taking care of yourself will only be you know, a good example towards them. And we need the younger generation right now to be doing some serious self care. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Oh yeah. I’m glad. I mean in a way, I’m kind of glad for the technology because that brings in a lot of the younger folks. I find that what I can definitely, you know, bring that in. And I agree wholeheartedly on HRV. I think it’s been the thing for me that’s really, you know, second to discovery with the temperature lately. But really for me, HRV is kind of in my clue is to like when I’m doing good one, I’m not. And boy, do I find it tanks hard if I’ve had a lot of mental stress going on. It is incredible how how hard it tanks and I find it just fascinating. So it definitely, you know, encourage folks who are listening as and wanting to get into tracking to to look into that. And like like you said, you you have the Whoop. There’s the Oura Ring. There’s Garmins. I use something called Morpheus, which is something I put on every morning before I work out. And it does a scan to tell me how I’m doing. There’s many different ways to look for HRV out there. So, you know, I’d love to sum up all of this in terms of of things. I mean, you kind of already did, but you haven’t, you know, teach the younger generation, you know, to do this too and really get moving there. I think the best way to sum this up, I would say, is like, okay, out of all of your devices, because I think a lot of people ask me a lot, like, what’s your favorite? What is your favorite tracking device right now that’s out there out of all of the gadgets? Which one would you say is your favorite personally? 

MARCELL: Me. I think it might, I’m sad that it hasn’t changed because I just started with the eight sleep. So I can’t say that yet because I do have hope for that. But hands down, it’s the Whoop. 

JANNINE: Yeah, [inaudible]. 

MARCELL: So yeah, it’s just, it’s, it just tracks the most. And it is that I find it the most user friendly. It’s easy to find things, you can customize what you want to look at. And I can attest that after a year, plus of using it and using other wearables that it’s, it’s pretty accurate. I also check my blood pressure and my lipids and my ketones on other devices. So I can relate those statistically kind of towards the Whoop. And it looks like it is, it is the most comprehensive and really reasonable. I think it’s quite reasonable. In cost, to be honest. And if you refer other people, you get like a free month. I didn’t even know that. And then I sent somebody else there and I got a free month. I’m like, 

JANNINE: Well, tell folks your, tell folks your referral codes because I don’t have any for it. So you might as well hit the folks up right now. What’s your code? 

MARCELL: Yeah, if you’re interested in Whoop for sure. And I aim to share more about it too. But you can find me on social anywhere under Marcell Hanson. You can follow the podcast. And that gives you our, our texting community is the Seattle number, the 2064832960. You can send any questions there that actually comes directly to me. It is my texting number for the wellness community. And I’m happy to send along any referral links or anything. I think it’s a fun thing. I only promote things that I use. I never would push anybody towards something that I haven’t like really used at Great length. And and you can pop on to my Whoop at any time and look at my data because it’s public, which I think is great. Can’t really fib 100% sleep score if someone can just pull it up and look at it. So—

JANNINE: That’s awesome. 

MARCELL: I am I am there Marcell Hanson in Canada. So you’ll find me. 

JANNINE: There you go. So accountability on your own coach guys. And that’s awesome. I guess maybe I need to get a Whoop so I can show up like that too for folks since mine is more tracked via the more fierce at this point with the HRV. But oh man.

MARCELL: Do! Because we can we can make our own little community too. You can create your own community by space. So we can hold each other accountable. 

JANNINE: You know— 

MARCELL: I got to tell you I’m working I’m working on my HRV too. So if you’re not if you’re not going to bring your A game, you don’t want to mess with me. 

JANNINE: Oh man, that’s that’s that’s tempting. All right. Well, there’s challenge challenge thrown down now. So folks—

MARCELL: That’s right. There you go. 

JANNINE: You’ve you’ve heard how to find Marcell how to get into a community all those different things and definitely your podcast. Let’s talk about your podcast of folks can hop over there and check it out as well. 

MARCELL: Yeah, the the the Small Habits Big Changes. I just it’s I don’t have a ton of guests on there. I’d love to have this one here. She’s if she’s ever willing. But or available such a busy schedule. But I do drop drop that information and that data that I it’s it’s really a personal documentation. I don’t talk a lot about the coaching clients or coaching program and not selling anything on there. It really is just the insight that I’ve gained from my wellness journey. And for that matter, I recommend everyone doing a podcast to be honest. It it is a self awareness task in and of itself. And it does, you know, it builds consistency and commitment, self awareness and just like tracking. And that’s kind of why I like it. It is tracking is a documentation of your journey, right? And as much as we like to believe that we I have a great memory for the most part, especially for numbers. But I have to say that the brain is built to like I said, delete and distort things for our safety. And it just puts things together and that subjective information is is sometimes just just a waste. So having it on paper or in your data collection, however you do that is is really valuable. And uh, yeah, I I just can’t say enough about tracking because I really think that it has. I don’t know where I’d be without it to be honest after this long of doing it. I feel like some at least once a week someone says to me, why do you even do that? And I don’t know, I don’t know why they say that. I think they’re just surprised that I haven’t stopped doing it. 

JANNINE: Yeah. 

MARCELL: That they’re thinking they’re thinking this is a fad or a phase that I’m going through. It’s not. I will track for the rest of my life. And as long as whoop continues to provide the service that they are, I will wear a Whoop for the rest of my life. And I and I love that. Um, I think it’s so much fun to feel. Not just accountable and responsible for my body, but but in connection with it to know what’s going on for it. So I can serve it better. Like my brain wants to treat my body better, but it didn’t know how for so long. Like it didn’t know when I needed more rest. And when I— and now my, my, my big awareness that goes along with that physiological awareness earlier is that I don’t need that much rest. I, there’s times where I like rest and self care. Quote unquote, like a lot. Like to the point of being almost too much like get your ass out and be more active in this realm. And I’m pretty active, but there is a balance. I like self care. I like massages. I like acupuncture. I like, I like doing those things. But you can only do those things as much as you do the other things. That’s what, that’s what that integration and that balance is. And I’m learning about that still. Like I, I still learn about that. There’s weeks where I, I push too hard physically and I don’t rest enough. And then there’s the next week where I rest too much. And I’m like, can I find a place where I can rest and exert myself in a balance sort of way five out of seven days a week? And I’m getting there. But it, but I don’t know until I can see, see what that is. I mean, if you’re not tracking, you don’t know. That is, that is my statement of truth. Like you just don’t know. So just track. And then you’ll know. 

JANNINE: Track, then you’ll know that you can get a guide if you need some help for adjustments. And, and docs like me and coaches like myself, the more information you come to the table with, the more we can help you. And really, my goal is to have everybody become their own best doctor, because that’s where it’s at. It’s just more of a, I can guide you and, you know, give you the insights. But boy, the more you can track them where you, you can be your own best doctor. That’s hands down, hands down. 

MARCELL: Yeah. And then you can, you can join our Whoop group. 

JANNINE: Yeah. You can join our Whoop group. I gotta join the Whoop group. Oh, man, Marcell. Thank you. Thank you for putting down the challenge. Yes. Of course, I’ll come on your podcast and hang out. And yeah, I gotta get my Whoop now. All right. Challenge. I gotta get a Whoop. 

MARCELL: And I’ll send you the link. 

JANNINE: All right, deal. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on again. We’ll get all of your details in the podcast notes at doctorjkrausend.com. Thanks again for coming on. I’m sure we’ll do more of these, especially with this challenge going. 

MARCELL: Thank you so much. 

JANNINE: [Outro] Hey fellow health junkie. Thanks for listening to The Health Fix Podcast. If you enjoyed tuning in, please help support me to get the word out about the podcast. Subscribe, rate, and review. And just get that word out. Thanks again for listening.