Creating My Digital Twin
“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” — Robert Pirsig
The pandemic and its required lifestyle changes inspired me to begin pursuing endurance sports, specifically triathlons. I grew up swimming competitively and playing water polo through high school, which gave me my initial inclination toward endurance athletics. During college at Stanford, running became a hobby to stay in shape, and I completed my first half marathon in San Francisco during the Summer of 2017. Biking was my final unexplored sport in triathlon, and the pandemic pushed me to purchase a road bike. To motivate my interest in triathlon, I committed to race in an Ironman 70.3 (a Half Ironman), galvanizing my obsession with endurance sports and the optimization of my body for peak performance. These athletic efforts pushed me to try a variety of technologies such as: the Whoop Strap for tracking fitness and sleep, 8 Sleep Mattress Cover to control temperature during sleep, and the Zero app to track intermittent fasting.
I will take my endurance racing to the next level in 2022 with 4 big races: 1) USA Triathlon Age Group Nationals in Milwaukee, 2) Triple Bypass 110-mile bike race in Colorado, 3) Half Marathon in Sydney, Australia, and 4) New York City Marathon.
Over the next few months, I am going to challenge myself to track my body and health with careful attention. Leveraging a variety of new technologies that are unlocking new ways to understand and analyze our biological biomarkers, I will create what’s now being called a “digital twin.” A true human digital twin would be a near exact digital replica of our body’s biology, which can be achieved through full-body MRI scans and other high-tech tools. Perhaps some day I will do a full-body MRI, but my digital twin will focus on easily accessible biomarkers—data from markers in our blood, saliva, genetics, microbiome, heart-rate, etc. that give us insights on our health. Below is a breakdown of the tools I will use and the data each provides:
Whoop Strap 4.0 — Heart rate tracking which is processed for exercise and sleep metrics and scores.
InsideTracker — Blood testing on 43 Blood metabolites, giving insights on various health markers. InsideTracker also offers a genetic test to correlate my genetics to my blood test.
Elysium’s Index — Epigenetic Testing, which estimates of your “biological” age based on DNA methylation markers as compared to your “chronological” age.
January.AI — Continuous Glucose Monitoring, providing insight on your body’s response to food and drink consumption.
Thryve — Microbiome Testing, which tracks the microbes in our gut.
As I begin to receive the results from these tests and tools, I will create a digital dashboard for these metrics and track them over time and repeatedly update this journal with lessons learned from this challenge. I am hopeful that these tracking efforts will help me to improve my vitality and energy to achieve goals in athletics, career, and overall lifestyle.