Setting a health baseline to refer to

Hi guys,

Long time listener, first time caller.

I’ve been tracking different measurements for a while now - currently I am measuring everything from weight, blood pressure, sleep, daily activity, room temperature (through devices from Withings, Basis and Netatmo) to annual Dexa scans and quarterly blood testing. And now I’m getting into lifelogging as I use the Narrative clip along with Moves along with other misc such as Money Spending though Pocketbook (an Australian based service since I put everything on wireless payments here and therefore can track it) and Rescuetime.

Point is, I’ve done all this to establish a baseline of health where it can be used for both preventative health reasons even if there seems to be no point in doing it at the moment - and I only use devices that require very little effort so I don’t skew the results. And I’m lazy. It’s great to have medical and physical tracking but one thing I lack at the moment is the ability for mental health tracking but that is another question for another forum.

Question is - what are things that you guys would regularly or semi regularly gather data on that doesn’t take much effort and you may not think is worthwhile at the time, but could help in the future so you at least have a baseline to look back at should something come up?

My health is extremely poor for a 29 year old (well established before I started tracking, I just know much more about the scope of the issues and I’ve had some wins with my data along the way which I will explain on the forums sometime about what I found and ultimately prevented a cancer) and I will soon start an intervention that will throw all my data into chaos which is why I am interested in to see what other people track in their general health that may not seem like anything at the time but could be handy to refer back to in a few years.

Cheers!

You can measure body temperature, which is pretty quick and easy with a simple thermometer (it would probably be easiest to make it apart of your blood pressure measuring routine). My understanding is that body temperature is related to your metabolism(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1415692). I have also read that it can be signifier for thyroid and adrenal system health.

Another option to consider is taking weekly or monthly “body” photos. Having the visual record can be really valuable when making interventions.

I would love to hear about the wins you have had with your data.