Why You Should Only Check Your Health Data Once a Week

0:02Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien. A podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

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1:26I've been giving my dog, Chaga, their vitality every day, and it's become one of our most important routines. When something meets my standards, I tell you about it. MycoDog is the freaking real deal. Head to mycodog.com forward slash superlife and use the code superlife for 15 % off your first order. That's mycodog.com forward slash superlife. Well, you guessed it. We measure more than any other generation in history and feel worse than ever. I know there's a lot of factors going on. This episode shows how health data could actually backfire, why a number can change how you actually feel and how you rebuild the sensor you were born with.

2:20You know, we keep it real at Super Life. What if I told you that that number on your wrist, on your phone, whatever, could actually make you tired? Not describe your tiredness, cause it. researchers took a group of people and hooked them up to what they said was a sleeping measuring machine. The next morning, half were told, hey, you got great deep sleep. The other half, they said, your sleep was poor. None of it was true. The feedback was absolutely fake. Then they tested everyone's brains. The people that they told slept well did better. The people that they told slept badly did worse. Same night, same bodies.

3:07The only difference was the story that they handed to them. Your body believes the number over itself. We offload it. So certainly doctors tell us something, they tell us good news, bad news, we take that on. Obviously there's a big placebo here thing, but there's real research around it and I'm getting to a point. And that's where we are as a culture right now, measuring everything. For those of you looking on the screen, I have no smartwatches, no Aura rings, none of these things. Because so many people have rings, watches, apps, scores, all of this stuff. We have more health data. And listen, before I go any further, I am not opposed to data.

3:52I love data to a point and how we use it. Because we have more health data certainly on a risk than a hospital had 30 years ago and on the face of it seems like a good idea and since 2021 the number of people who say their health is excellent has dropped 22 so we are data rich and health poor today i'm going to show you how that happened and the five traps hiding in your health data. Then I'll give you a plan to take back and use the most advanced health technology on the planet. Drum roll. That's the weird drum. It's your body. This is a solo episode of Super Life. I'm stoked you're here. Let's go.

4:44Fatal convenience. It's neon sign outsourcing your body to a number on a screen, on a app, whatever it is. So again, I want to be super clear here because I use technology like crazy too. I am not anti-technology. I've tried these things out. I've looked at these things. These are seductive. They're cool. They're interesting. I love this kind of stuff. I had a diagnostic. I'm going to have this guy on my podcast. I went through a diagnostic that I'll tell you more about at another time of about 200 ,000 data points to get me to understand one thing that I didn't know about my body. And it changed so many things.

5:27So I love data in the right way. But every fatal convenience follows the same pattern. And I've been saying this for so many years now. So processed food gave us speed to eat food at all times, have it show up to our freaking door, and it took our health. Plastic gave us convenience, and now microplastic is showing up everywhere in the body. The wearable gives us some sort of, is it certainty? Is it good information? The price is our trust in our own bodies. Think about how it used to work. You know, think about 30, 40, 50, 100 years ago, 100 ,000 years. Well, maybe that's a little too far away.

6:11But innately inside of us, we're staring at the stars. We're outside. We're circadian balanced because we're up and down with the sun. And we knew when we were stressed because our villagers would tell us, our jaws were tight, our breath was shallow, all of these things. You knew you'd recover because you woke up wanting to move, wanting to stretch, wanting to give yourself space. It was an eight. It was inside of us. Now we wake up with a ring, with a tone, with a notification. And then the ring answers with the score. In this case, you know, a sleep score or whatever. You know, it says readiness, 62, sleep, 71, strain, high.

6:58And we let that number then decide how our day is going to feel before we've even put our feet on the freaking ground because we've underestimated the power of us, right? Our ability to choose into the world, make a vision real, take action and all of that stuff. Okay, so that aside, there's a whole other episode. But you get my point. There's an old rule in economics called Goodhart's Law. When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. That's why vision is so important, meaning goals, goals, like ridiculous goals. Like for me, my main vision that runs everything that supports my podcast and my vision is I see a world that works.

7:48I see you as a working person. I know you that the intelligence that runs through you, that has created you, the God in you, the spirit, the soul, the ability for the cells and the trillions of biochemical processes, the thing that we can't even possibly understand, that it has a desire to live and to have life. So you get where I'm going here. And then all of a sudden, we have a ring on and we have an app that tells us how we are. We stopped chasing the truth. We stopped chasing vitality and started chasing scores. You're not trying to be healthy anymore. You're trying to get a good grade from your jewelry.

8:33Okay, so trap one. Again, I have all the good stuff at the end, so bear with me. I know you know this. You already know this, but part of fatal convenience for me is I'm shining the light onto these damn things that we've done in modernity. We've done in this modern world. So the number becomes a feeling. That study that I opened with is real. In 2014, this Christina Dragnik and Christy Erdile at Colorado College told students that they had either 28.7 REM sleep. The numbers were made up. The students told they slept well scored better on the math and the word tests. The ones told they slept poorly scored worse.

9:21That is how influential we are. In 2018, researchers at Oxford tried it with 63 people who had insomnia, who wore a sleep watch, then got fake feedback, good night or bad night. The bad night group reported less alertness, more sleepiness, and more fatigue. The good night group felt better throughout the day. Their actual reaction times, no real difference. But read that again. The watch didn't measure how they felt. It decided how they felt based on that. You know what? I have a great idea.

10:01Darin Olien:By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Over 500 toothpaste tubes have been thrown away since I've started this ad. You don't think of these small little things, but they add up a lot over time. And we can do something about it. That ends up to be over a billion plastic toothpaste tubes a year alone that ultimately end up in our environment and in our waterways and ultimately ends up in the ocean. Do you want to add to this or do you want to do something different? Plus, maybe that exposure to that plastic, getting the plasticizers and the endocrine disruptors and then putting that toothpaste in your mouth also is not a good idea.

10:49Darin Olien:There's some great solutions. You can DIY stuff. I've got many of these in my fatal conveniences. But the easy ones that I use every day and I'm about to travel a lot more and the traveling makes them really easy, I go to bite. I bite down on a little tablet, which is not interacting with any plastics because it's in a glass bottle. And it's refillable and reusable and sustainable. And there's no unwanted toxic fluorides, flow agents, and solvents in my mouth. So my favorite is this Bite Toothpaste. 100 % home, compostable pouches, subscription models. You don't even have to think about it again.

11:35Darin Olien:You're helping you by putting clean products in your mouth, and you're helping the environment because Bite Toothpaste is one of the best companies I've seen looking at all aspects of their supply chain and their refillable, reusable, sustainable, regenerative practices. So Bite is offering you, all my listeners, 20 % off your first order. Go to trybite.com, T-R-Y-B-I-T-E forward slash Darren20 or just use the promo code Darren20, D-A-R-I-N, and you can get 20 % off your first order with a great new toothpaste without using the tube. Side note, I'm just going to make an app that says today you're going to have the best day freaking ever.

12:22You're going to go after your dreams. You're going to go after what you want. You're going to have powerful, loving conversations with people that matter to you, and you're going to live that way, and you're going to go after every dream possible. That is my new app. I just decided. Trap number two, losing sleep over your sleep score. In 2017, sleep doctors at Rush and Northwestern gave this name, orthosomnia, an unhealthy obsession with perfect sleep data. Yeah, we've done it so much. were now studying how crazy this shit is. Their patients were so worried about their scores that they lay in bed longer trying to fix them.

13:06And their sleep score, of course, got worse. The tool meant to improve your sleep became the thing stealing it. Trap three, the number might not be right. So these devices are great at one thing, telling a sleep from awake. In 2024 study, the Oura Ring, Fitbit, and Apple Watch all matched a sleep lab 91 to 93 % of the time on that. So they all measured sleep. It measured something with sleep, 91 to 90. So they're definitely measuring you at sleep. But deep sleep and REM was a different story. The Apple Watch underestimated deep sleep by 43 minutes, which is huge, huge when it comes to deep sleep.

13:56Fitbit missed it about 15 minutes and Aura did best, but still wasn't perfect. How could it be? So when you woke up upset about only 40 minutes of deep sleep, you may be grieving a number that was never exactly right, which is my point. It's just a number that's kind of just made up, dictating your feelings about yourself and your day ahead. Trap four, the alert creates the alarm. In 2024, Dr. Lindsay Rossman team at UNC studied 172 people with arterial fibrillation. About one in five of those wearing a device felt intense fear when it flagged in a regular heartbeat. Wearable users also called and messaged their doctors far more often, so they got fearful.

14:53Information isn't peace. Sometimes more data just means more to worry about. Again, how you use this stuff. Trap number five. Chasing a target someone invented. Someone invented the score. And I don't know about you, but history shows us we're always getting shit wrong. We only know what we know at the time that we know it. Where did 10 ,000 steps come from? Where the frick did that come from? In 1965, Japanese pedometer called Manopikai. I probably said that wrong. Literally, 10 ,000 step meter. It was then marketed. In 2019, Harvard's Ai Min Li followed about 16 ,700 women, average age 72. Those taking around 4 ,400 steps a day had a 41 lower risk of dying than those at 2 ,700 steps per day.

15:59The benefit kept climbing to around 7 ,500 steps, then leveled off. Millions of people feel like failures every night for missing a number that came from an ad campaign. Here's the good news. You were born with a sensor more advanced than anything on the market ever. Scientists call it introspection. Your brain reading the signals from inside your body. You know where I'm going with this. Your heartbeat. Your breath. Your gut. the tension in your shoulders, the warmth of real hunger. Introspection is your original wearable. It came pre-installed with the development of you. No charging for it, no subscription, no monthly fee.

16:51But like any muscle, it weakens when you don't use it, especially when you offload it to something or someone else. Every time a screen tells you how to sleep, you skip asking yourself. Every time an app tells you when to eat, you skip feeling hunger inside yourself deeply. Do that for years and the signal gets really, really quiet. And it can come back. In 2025, researchers pulled 29 randomized trials with 2 ,191 people. Mindfulness training reliably strengthened how people sense and trust their inner signals. Think about that. Mindfulness, stopping, listening, scanning your body, feeling. And the more that sense improved, the less distress people felt.

17:48Your inner sensor isn't broken. It's just out of practice. So let's train it. You don't need to buy another thing. You can do this 30-day body reboot right here, free. You don't have to throw your gadgets and your ring away. You don't have to judge yourself for buying it. Let all that go. You just have to put yourself back in charge of yourself and your life. What if you took 100 % responsibility for yourself in your life? How would your life change? Here are seven moves that you can start freaking today, tomorrow. Number one, you can play beat the ring. Before you look at any score, if you're still using this at this point, guess it.

18:32Guess the score before you look at the score. Rate your sleep by listening inside your energy, your mood, one to ten. Write it down. Then check your device. Stay in power and then that could be a fun game this is the way you can use this stuff keep score for 30 days have a little journal next to you right how do you feel write it down one to ten you'll learn where you are and the ring whether it agrees or not and you will learn to grow and strengthen in this muscle. Every guess is a rep for your introspection. Make it a game with your partner, your kids, all of that stuff. Number two, kill this morning score thing.

19:18Turn off the daily readiness or sleep score altogether. Look at your data once a week, maybe on a Sunday, if you still want to use this stuff. Again, it's how you use it. One bad night means nothing. What you choose after that is what you choose. That dictates your next steps. So trends are information. A single night's sleep is gossip. Next, number three. Three times a day, waking up midday before bed, close your eyes, put your feet on the ground, feel your belly, feel your jaw, feel your heartbeat, notice your shoulders, just notice. Mindfulness, no fixing. That's introspection training, and it's free.

20:05And dare I say, probably the greatest peace you can find is inside. Number four, find your pulse without a device. Once a day, sit still and feel your heartbeat without touching your own wrist or your neck. Literally, just feel it inside your body. Count it for 30 seconds. Then check it with your fingers. Watch how much closer you get over the month so you can feel this, feel inside yourself. Next, take a naked day every week. That's right, this one's juicy. One day with no ring, no watch, no tracking. Eat when you're hungry, not when it's breakfast or lunch or dinner. Rest when you're tired. Move because it feels good.

20:56move how you want to move your body is your own data and it is powerful number six swap the target for a feeling forget 10 000 steps ask did i move enough today do i feel good does my body want to move through space more do i feel alive did i get outside did i get a sweat on aim for the science It says maybe 7 ,500 steps if you want. But again, let's not put crazy numbers. Number seven, make the device serve you. Keep the tracking that answers a real question. Blood sugar after a meal, that's cool because that helps dictate when you eat something, what you eat. Of course, the idea, whole food always.

21:44Recovery during a training block, a heart rhythm your doctor wants to watch. Drop the rest. Turn off every alert that doesn't need you to act. Turn it off. If a number doesn't change what you do, it's not data. It's just noise. Here's the truth. The companies selling you these devices will never tell you to check them less. Engagement is the business model. Nobody is coming to hand your body back to you. That is on you. Don't wait for an app to tell you how you feel and how your day is going to go. Don't wait for a company to give you permission to trust yourself. Take it back right now. Your body has been talking to you every second of every day your entire life.

22:29Are you willing to listen? Every heartbeat, every breath, every gut feeling, every instinct, every intuition. It's been running quietly in the background, but if you keep shutting it down, you train yourself not to listen. It's waning for you. It's always waiting for you to check in. So check in. So tomorrow morning, I challenge you. I dare you. Before you touch your devices, your notifications, your rings, your phones, all of this stuff, lie there for a minute. Ask yourself, how do I feel? Answer it honestly. Write it down. Then play the game. How do you feel? Use the data if you want to still use it.

23:10Trust your body and never let a number tell you who you are. This is it, man. The whole deal is inside. Are you willing to shut off this world that is trying to program you and take time from you? I dare you, the warrior that you are, the reason you're listening to this podcast is you have a desire to be the best version of yourself to live a super life. I dare you to start listening to yourself because all of this, yes, we talked about health, but more importantly, you'll start listening to your own heart, start listening to your own dreams, start listening to your own vision. And then when you start saying yes to that, you'll have the best life ever.

23:52If this landed, please pass this along, share this. At the core of all of this, my vision is that we take our sovereignty back. This is Darren, this is Super Life, and I am stoked to hear. Peace.