# Health

**How you live** affects **how long** and **how happy** you live. So, don't [maximize misery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o). Your health has an impact on everyone around you too. You get healthy, and more importantly stay healthy, by accumulating significant, but livable, [[Life Advice|improvements to your lifestyle over time]], and building on that.

- Run experiments and try new things. This will make you explore the world so you can exploit it later. Go for variety and surprise. Don't keep doing the same thing. [Most things in life have diminishing marginal utility, so maximizing utility implies doing a lot of things a bit](https://twitter.com/mattsclancy/status/1415470466047827968).
- [Algernon's Law](https://www.gwern.net/Drug-heuristics): your body is already mostly optimal, so adding more things is unlikely to have large positive effects unless there's some really good reason.
- Although [[time]] is the ultimate resource, the lack of energy will always be the first limiting factor. Therefore prioritizing health (like it or not, you're a physical object), [[Sleep]], [[Fitness|exercise]], and other such aspects will always pay off far more than what you sacrifice on them. [These areas should take priority over anything else](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QTkij5fmPXPd7GD4Z/review-of-scott-adams-how-to-fail-at-almost-everything-and).
- Our bodies and minds are built to live in a tribe in 50,000BC, which leaves modern humans with a number of unfortunate traits (fixation with [[Social Media Issues|tribal-style social survival]], attracted to [[Nutrition|energy dense food]], ...).
- Build [[Systems]] to take the right actions effortlessly through [[Habits]].

## Blood Markers

These are some of the blood markers that could be useful to measure and monitor.

- Cortisol: Stress marker.
- HbA1c: Glucose/diabetes marker.
- hsCRP: Inflammation marker.
- LDL: Bad cholesterol.
- HDL: Good cholesterol.
- AST: Liver function.
- Ferritin: Indicates inflammation, obesity, excess iron.
- Vitamin D.
- Vitamin B12.
- CK. Monitor for muscular injuries and diseases.
- Testosterone.
- SHBG: Sex hormone binding globulin.
- Sodium, magnesium, potassium, folate, blood cell counts.