About Your Biometric Numbers

Employees often do their worksite wellness screenings, get their numbers, and walk out of the door feeling like this whole exercise was one big FYI. “Huh, yeah that’s interesting or whatever.” But it is important to understand your biometric numbers for a couple of reasons.

Chronic Diseases Sneak Up On You

Most chronic diseases do not have any symptoms. In other words, you won’t realize that the condition is progressing until it is too late. That is why knowing your numbers helps you to be proactive with your health. Those biometric numbers may be the only warning sign you have.

Then, once you know your values and see that you are in the Medium Risk category, or the High Risk category, you can do something to head off an incident before it happens. For example …

• If your blood glucose is elevated, this indicates a risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
• High triglycerides, blood pressure or cholesterol indicates a risk for heart disease.
• High BMI is a predictor of heart disease and diabetes as well as certain types of cancers

The good news is that common lifestyle habits can help you target the numbers that put you at risk.

You Can See Your Own Improvement

The other important aspect of biometric numbers is that you can see your trend over time. Not all solutions are equally effective for everyone. If you are working to improve your numbers through a special kind of dietary intervention or exercise regimen, how do you know if it is working?

If you have your first biometric numbers, and then applied your own solution, you can compare those numbers over time. Then when you test again, you can see which variables have improved and by how much!

During this month we will talk about biometric numbers, why they’re important, when you should be skeptical enough to ask your doctor, and what to do about them.