In his fourth blog of his personal health challenge series, our Chief Executive Professor Ben Bridgewater focusses on his wellbeing using online assessments and digital surveys.

So far on my journey towards health and wellness empowerment I have used free apps to screen my health, assess my risk of diabetes and build myself a targeted exercise and diet plan. I have also spent a small amount of money (£14.99) on purchasing a blood glucose monitor to screen myself for diabetes and pre-diabetes. It seems that overall I am in reasonable shape, but so far I have focussed on health, not wellness.

There is no generally accepted definition of wellness, however it is increasingly accepted that wellness is an important part of health. If something is important, you need to be able to measure it to get a baseline assessment, focus effort for improvement and to track changes, both from an individual and population-based perspectives. An analysis of a reasonable sample of patients across multiple ethnic backgrounds in Santa Clara County, US have defined 10 domains of wellbeing:

This seems comprehensive and the researchers believe that these domains are consistent across their sample of interviews, but that the relative importance of a specific domain compared to others will vary across individuals and ethnic groups. Overall social connectedness is the most significant driver of wellness – and not surprisingly this could be both a positive driver – good company, support, identity – and a negative one – responsibility, criticism and burden. Other researchers have used 5 domains – physical, emotional, spiritual, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual. Searching around on the internet for a few minutes I have found people claiming that there is anything from four to 12 domains of wellness. There is no consistency on this as far as I can see.

As I have been preparing this blog, a paper has come out in the BMJ suggesting that women can gain ten years and men seven years of life free of cancer, heart problems and type-2 diabetes from a healthy lifestyle which has added fuel to my fire and suggest I am barking up the right tree.

As a consequence of thinking this through, I have gone back to my use of apps on my phone and added more things around the Apple wellness app – I now have my steps and my nutrition, and have added in a mindfulness app (Stop, Breathe and Think). Using these apps has driven some “daily rituals for me”, which include always using the stairs at work, a mindfulness walk each day to drive my steps and mental wellbeing (and pick up something healthy to eat for lunch) Last night I needed another 2,000 steps to complete my target and persuaded my teenage son to walk to the pub with me for a chat and a quick beer (my one so far this week), which was an unusual experience for us but a deeply rewarding one all round.

So a few weeks into the year I know what action I need to take on various aspects of my wellness, I have complied with the targets I set myself, I have expanded my concept of wellness, I have lost 2lbs and definitely feel better and more optimistic.

I will monitor progress but I might need to get more sophisticated with my approach to diet and exercise. I intend to decrease my risk of diabetes on the online tools, which of course in reality is not a binary thing, but the way the specific algorithm works once your BMI flips to normal rather than overweight, your score changes dramatically so as far as that is concerned losing 2 lbs is irrelevant, I need to lose 9lb.

I have spent some time researching, assessing myself and writing this up, but I have only spent an additional £14.99 on my glucose monitor. I think have taken this as far as I can on my own and next I am going to go and see my GP – this is because I want to take a view on the risks and benefits of screening myself for the key high risk diseases, cardiovascular disease, prostate and bowel cancer. More on this next time.