One key trait I've identified as essential for a strong leader is a high level of personal resilience. This encompasses a robust and healthy body that can power through projects and resist falling ill, as well as a sharp mind capable of maintaining focus, making sound decisions, and possessing heightened mental agility for effective communication with teams.
In my blog post “How resilient are you?” I shared an overview of personal resilience, and the importance of knowing how to measure it. Today I want to deep dive into key performance indicators (KPIs) and give you a glimpse of a few important ones for personal resilience.
Since you can measure it, you can improve it!
Here I summarize a few important biomarkers that I found to be quite helpful, when it comes to measuring your personal resilience.
Oura Ring (and other tech devices)
The first 3 can be measured using tech devices. I recommend the Oura Ring for it:
- Heart rate variability (HRV): The higher, the better. If your HRV is low, you’re likely to be stressed or even sick. Use relative improvements over time for guidance. As HRV represents how balanced your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system is (homeostasis), it is a primary marker for overall resilience. Optimizing your HRV can be quite tricky, as everything you do (or not do) is impacting your HRV. It is the art to find the perfect balance between performance and recovery. Therefore there is no silver bullet, when it comes to improving your HRV, but a combination of lifestyle interventions, (micro) nutrients, exercise, meditation, and tech devices (e.g., Pulsetto, Nurosym)
- Sleep score: Represents several factors of your sleep (deep sleep. REM sleep, etc.) On a typical scoring system (0-100) you want values at least well above 85, I target for 90s, as sleep is the primary source of recovery, and therefore a strong indicator of your personal resilience. Optimizing sleep can be a challenge, but there are plenty of tips for good sleep hygiene out there. For example, check out Bryan Johnson's sleep hacks. Similar to HRV, optimizing your sleep boils down to a combination of lifestyle choices and can be supported by a targeted (micro) nutrients protocol.
- Resilience score (Oura): This is an attempt from Oura to aggregate all the data (sleep, HRV, activity, daily readiness score etc.) into one biomarker. The algorithm uses key recovery and stress metrics to evaluate how you're coping with stress. It is relatively stable and in my experience a good overall predictor of your personal resilience. The ratings are Exceptional, Strong, Solid, Adequate, or Limited. Personally, I target “strong” (or better),
- Blood Pressure (Aktiia): This one is a great representation of your cardiovascular system. I use a 24 hours continuous system from Aktiia, which is very precise and easy to use. You have to calibrate it once a month. You want values below 135/75 mmHg on average, Normal blood pressure is usually considered to be between 90/60 mmHg and 120/80 mmHg. The topic of optimization is quite complex, and there are dependencies on certain gene variations as well. Optimization requires several lifestyle interventions (diet, exercise), a personalized (micro) nutrient protocol combined with technologies such as hyperbaric oxygen (HBOT). The foundation is proper measurement, which can be done with a device like Aktiia and improvements take some time. It is helpful to set quarterly milestones.
Blood markers
These are a few important blood markers, that are good proxies for your resilience:
- Vitamin D: We measure 3 key values (Vitamin D 25 OH > 60 ng/ml, Vitamin D 1,25 OH < 50 pg/ml and the Vitamin D ratio < 1, ideally 0.5). As this topic is quite complex, I want to point out here that optimized vitamin D metabolism supports your immune system and optimizes your gen regulation. Via activating the VDR, vitamin D has direct effects on the epigenome and the expression of more than 1000 genes in most human tissues and cell types. Optimizing vitamin D is NOT about taking simply a supplement and hoping for the best. A supplement protocol can be quite tricky depending on the different markers above. Therefore this deserves a separate blog article.
- HbA1c: A hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) test is a blood test that shows what your average blood sugar (glucose) level was over the past two to three months. Levels below 5.7% are good. Since HbA1c represents your glucose metabolism, it is important for your personal resilience. Levels above 5.7% are already considered pre-diabetes, and values above 6.5% diabetes. I highly recommend experimenting with a continuous glucose management (CGM) device, like the one from Freestyle libre 3. It calculates an index (GMI, glucose management indicator), which approximates HbA1C and the level of data helps you start experimenting with different food choices, diet, and fasting.
- hsCRP: The high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) test is a blood test that finds lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP). This protein measures general levels of (silent) inflammation in your body. I target values < 0.5. Values between 1 and 2 are already in the “gray zone” and worth investigating, if you would like to boost your personal resilience.
For optimizing these blood markers I use a system based on functional epigenetics. All of them are quite complex to manage.
There are plenty more biomarkers related to improving your personal resilience. But this should give you a flavor. Personally I track more than 100+ biomarkers and check my epigenetic age once a year (this is a topic for another blog post).
For those driven to enhance their performance, consider a mentoring program that integrates functional epigenetics, biohacking, and personalized (micro) nutrients. This data-driven approach aims to optimize resilience and overall well-being for highly motivated individuals.
You can learn more about Resilience++, an advanced mentoring program for tech leaders and high-impact individuals here:
Over the years I worked with many executives and tech leaders to help them boost their personal resilience. I encourage you to review the testimonials. If you are looking for a systematic approach to boost your resilience, and are ready to take action, consider a complimentary discovery call.
Yours,
Reiner
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