How I Monitor my Health as a Busy Bellingham Realtor
Real estate as a career has kept my interest and attention for 19 years (not counting my 3 years as a home inspector) in part because it's so variable.
No two days are alike in their workload, their schedule, the conversations, the puzzles requiring solving... seriously, every day is a new landscape.
Like any job, it requires its own type of fitness, or "ability to perform the tasks, ongoing, without running out of energy or clarity."
There are chunks of days, sometimes a handful in a row, that call for a 6 a.m. start, a continuous push with endless pivots, and a 10 p.m. finish... then to very possibly repeat the next day, during busy times.
I spoke briefly about this reality at a Compass event earlier in the year.
About how stacking those 16-hour days is only possible, in my experience, if you're eating a clean, high-protein diet, healthily hydrating, limiting caffeine and staying off (or mostly off) alcohol of any kind.
That's an over-simplification -- of course we're all infinitely complex and unique -- but that foundation has proven solid for me, and was echoed by the number of other agents who came up and chatted with me after I mentioned it to that group.
One of the agents asked if I was a user and a fan of Function Health.
I was indeed, I told him, and I consider it a game-changer and also one of the easiest and most accessible health hacks available to everyone.
In this blog, I'm going to share the what and why of Function Health, how I use it, and why I strongly recommend you use it too.
Let's jump straight in.
Your health habits... fact-checked
If someone were to ask you how healthy you are living, based primarily on your diet, your exercise or movement routine, your level of stress and sleep, you'd likely answer based on how you generally feel, and how you perceive your habits.
If you're prone to a confirmation bias, you'll skew your answer to the better side of reality, or vice versa if you're prone to a negativity bias.
Function Health takes your bias out of the equation, cuts straight to the truth, and with an extremely thorough blood panel analyzes and reports to you on over 130 biomarkers.
What you put into your body, your exercise routine or lack of one, environmental toxins, your sleep routine, your mindset... they write a narrative that can be read in your blood.
Function Health reads your story, it fact-checks all your habits and health decisions, puts the report on a dashboard along with plain English notes on every section and category, and gives you a road map for repair and optimization.
This sort of thing is abosolute GOLD if you're someone who wants to know, if you want to optimize, or in general if you're a believer in the philosophy that, "You can only manage what you measure."
One of the first things you see in your dashboard is your Biological Age. This is how old your physiology thinks you are, per your biomarkers, in spite of your calendar age.
If you're doing everything "right", eating clean, exercising regularly, sleeping 8 hours, meditating, all the things, it's theoretically possible to have a biological age 20+ years below your calendar age.
I was happy to learn that I'm tracking at about 9 years under my current age of 53-ish. Of course I want to see that gap grow over the years.
You then get into the meat of the report and recommendations, going biomarker by biomarker -- focusing at first on those "out of range" and in need of improvent.
Each section has actionable advice to get your numbers where they should be, in the categories of:
Why it matters
Causes
Related conditions
Foods to eat
Foods to limit
Supplements
Symptoms
Self-care
Additional tests
Follow-up
And finally, sources of their info, reporting, and recommendations.
For example, my LDL cholesterol is a bit high, my iron saturation is down quite a lot over last year's tests, and -- I had no idea of this previously -- turns out I'm allergic to egg whites.
I didn't believe that food allergy thing for the better part of year after I'd first read the report. Then I decided to quit eggs, which had been a daily staple of mine, and the changes I saw proved to me that I am definitely better off, off eggs.
The narrative on the Function Health website is admittedly just one set of recommendations, but I also shared the 38-page technical report with my naturopath, and any other medical professional I consider part of my "health board of directors."
From the collective wisdom that we arrive at, I modify my vitamin and supplement stack, set the doses, timing, and duration along with some lifestyle tweaks, then set a re-test a few months out to make sure improvement is happening.
The Function Health blood panel costs $499/year all-inclusive, and includes two rounds of tests. For the first, cut supplements three days prior, do a short food fast, then visit any local lab and get 12 vials drawn. You repeat that process 2 to 10 days later, plus give a urine sample.
The reports are published and downloadable on your account page about 3 weeks later. You're also provided one follow-up lab visit and report per year, so you can track your progress.
When I brought my first set of blood test results into my primary doctor in 2024, he looked through it and said, "In my 45 years as a doctor I have never seen this thorough of a report."
What I do with the information is, of course, now up to me.
Regardless of who you consult with or how you currently manage your health, wellness, and monitoring for diseases and conditions that can affect the rest of your life, having an extremely comprehensive blood panel is a practice I think anyone would consider "foundational."
I invite you to start this year, and make it a twice-a-year part of your wellness journey, whatever age or health level you're currently at.
Here's my personal link to their site where you can explore the service.
There are a ton of reviews and blog articles about experiences with Function Health. Here's a thorough review one user wrote.
If you're already a member or if you have a similar, regular analysis you do (high resolution full-body MRI?) I would love to hear from you.
I absolutely geek out on this stuff, and having seen the real results from making some "management decisions," I am a full believer in their efficacy.
I wish you all the best! Here's to your good health for many, many years to come!
