Hey guys,
My name is Jordan and I love this site’s mission. I have been involved in bodybuilding for 7 years. Every competition I dieted for required daily monitoring of food, exercise, and a few other variables. Each contest prep involved a minimum of 6 months of daily data logging, so I became pretty use to data logging applications like myfitnesspal and Jefit.
At 21 I fell ill to bacterial pneumonia. After being treated, I broke out in a severe rash which nearly killed me. I was moved to critical care and asked if I wanted a pastor to come. Since then my lungs have never been the same, and allergies seem to be triggering severe panic attacks. I’m attributing it to some form of ptsd. At a doctor visit 2 years later, I was told to stop trying to work out so much because I had developed calcific tendonitis, which would just get worse. No one had answers to the root causes of my problems… I became fed up with the US healthcare system, and now believe (along with a bunch of others) the future of healthcare is going to be driven by quantified selfers.
I entered college to become a pharmacist, but after receiving my ASc, and a ton of interviews with pharmacists who hated their lives, I decided to go on to get my bachelors in Life Science (biology). I also believed pharmacists were going to be a thing of the past, once we have automated dispensers and change the laws and regulations regarding pharmaceutical dispensing.
Currently, I am dual majoring: 1 semester from finishing my Life Science degree, and 1.5 years from finishing my Applied Mathematics degree. I struggle with a fair amount of health issues and want to know myself more without becoming side tracked by gizmos. As a scientist, I totally understand the complexity doctors face in making diagnosis, and as a QSelfer, I am well aware of the insane task it is to successfully run meaningful n=1 trials, but with the technology now a days, there is no reason a computer with an input of variables can’t make health decisions on par with doctors (after all, medicine and science wouldn’t exist as we know it without computers doing pretty much all the work). I want to help advance the medical/fitness area any way I can. After many weeks of research, I came across P4 by Lee Hood MD, PhD and have decided that type of method is where I want to invest my future (so if any of you have ins, hit me up!). I have known about this site, but never really explored it. I wanted to finally introduce myself in hopes of partnerships developing with all of you like-minded self-trackers!
I’m currently developing meaningful surveys (to me) to analyze my health and hopefully arrive at some conclusions, and eventually treatments for my ailments; I feel like I’m just reinventing the wheel though… I live in AZ, and just joined the Eric Hekler Meetups group, so if any of you are in it, send me an email!
-Jman