Blue Zones

♣:  What's that you're wearing?
☼:  It's a health monitoring band given to me by one of those Seventh Day people. They're handing them out for free downtown.
♣:  They're giving them away? Why are they doing that?
☼:  Something about "your body is you temple" and not taking care of it is an insult to God. That's what the guy told me, at least.
♣:  And you're wearing it?
☼: Yeah, why not? Check it out - it's great! I just read the manual. It monitors about a dozen hormones, suggests what I should do when they get out of whack, and then monitors what I actually do. Every day, my data is anonymously reported back to the company, or church, or whatever, where they combine my data with millions of others and updates it's suggestions based on real empirical data. They're fanatical about health.
♣:  Yeah, I've heard... So, what does this thing tell you, "Go to sleep"? "Eat more veggies"? Ha ha.
☼:  I guess it probably does, but I haven't had it for very long. I read that if I get less than seven and a half hours of good, solid sleep, then the suggestion that I get more sleep is high on the priority list.
♣:  What else does it tell you?
☼:  What foods to eat, I think. What exercises to do - like to get up and walk around for two minutes.
♣:  What foods to eat?! How does it tell you that?



☼:  Oh, that's the cool part. There's a little sensor that fits in the back of my mouth like a retainer. You can't even see it, but it monitors the concentrations of carbs, fats, proteins, minerals, and whatever else, and then matches them to known foods in their databases.
♣:  Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. So does it ever tell you that it's time to eat a big juicy steak grilled over an open flame?
☼:  No, I doubt it. But advanced glycation end products is one of the things it checks for. Apparently it has a strong effect on blood pressure and oxidative stress.
♣:  Really? So what do you eat? Pretty much everything will kill you.
☼:  Well, everything I eat is supposed to be either boiled or raw... or slow cooked - low heat, especially protein.
♣:  So... It's soup and salad, all day, every day?
☼:  Maybe, I don't know. It doesn't tell me everything I'm supposed to eat. It just looks at what I do eat and I can see how it affects me when I log in and look at my history.
♣:  Cool. If I had that, I'd be eating hamburgers with fries and a coke and sitting around watching cat videos on YouTube!  It'd probably tell me I need fast for forty days and meditate on the oneness of the universe or I'll be dead in a year! Ha!
☼:  Watching cat videos probably isn't too bad. It's probably relaxing and therapeutic.
♣:  Well then I'd watch Fox News. That ought to spike my cortisol!
☼:  Sounds like a heart attack cocktail.
♣:  Perfect! That's what I want - to die young and fast! Being healthy is just the slowest possible way to die.
☼:  I don't know what to say. You're clearly not from one of the Blue Zones.