The next step of this development is self-measuring ourselves at a deeper level — bringing the technology from laboratories to our homes and daily lives.
The next everyday thing: measuring our hormone levels
If someone told you in the 90’s that there’ll be a time when you won’t go anywhere without your smartphone, which you’ll use as a map, phone, camera, dictionary, yellow pages, receipt book and a calendar, you probably wouldn’t have believed that.
In the same way just a couple of years ago it would’ve been an outstanding idea to be able to track your activity, heart rate, calorie consumption and quality of sleep with your watch, yet sports watches are now everywhere. The next everyday thing will be measuring our hormone levels and using the data creatively as a tool to improve our health and quality of life.
Everyone who uses health tracking apps knows the benefits: it’s interesting to track your activity, quality of sleep, calorie consumption, and heart rate. It often motivates you to choose the stairs or run a couple of blocks more, doesn’t it?
Measuring your body at a molecular level has the same effect: once you see clearly how your body is doing, it gives you that gentle kick that you need in order to improve your daily routines. Imagine starting a new healthy habit, such as a new hobby that makes you feel relaxed — seeing your cortisol levels going down along your anti-stress actions will motivate you to maintain those healthy habits. And that’s just one of the numerous ways to utilize these new self-measuring technologies.
If you think of it, we already measure ourselves a lot. Steps, body fat, fever, pregnancy, gene tests… the list goes on. It was just a matter of time that biotechnology allows us to measure even more. New, easy-to-use biotechnology that helps us measure our hormone levels simply from the saliva is being developed at the same time as we’re reading this.
From labs to living rooms
The field of health and well-being is a billion-dollar business, and people are constantly trying to become better versions of themselves. And still, we don’t know how the changes we’re making are really affecting our health at the deeper level! This far, it has required an expensive visit to a lab for a blood sample to find out.
It will be interesting to see the impacts of the new, easy-to-use technology when salivary based meters will find their way to our lives, and people can track their stress and vitality levels at a molecular level. How will that improve the daily choices we make? And in the long run, how will this development affect our lifespan?
Whatever the outcome is, this is certain:
In the near future, the human race will be able to learn more about our bodies than ever before.
