A Path to Personal and Planetary Well-Being

Author:

Oliver

As the Minister of Social Affairs and Health in Finland, Pirkko Mattila rightly points out, "the very foundation of our societies and economies is human potential" [1]. But what is required to elevate this potential?

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First, we need to realize that when we are well, we have a greater opportunity to do good. Improving our health and well-being has many “co-benefits”, ultimately leading to progress in reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [2] and economic growth [3].

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Second, what does it even mean to “be well”? The WHO defines health as physical, mental, and social well-being and not only the absence of disease or injury [4]. This paradigm is implemented in various holistic health approaches and salutogenesis, a concept that focuses on health (as opposed to disease) and the development of individual resilience [5] [6]. Ultimately, “holistic health” means looking at the person as a whole, considering physical, emotional, mental and energetic levels, as well as the influence of environment and community [6].

Data shows that holistic approaches prove effective for a range of lifestyle diseases, ranging from cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal pain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome, stress, depression, anxiety, and a range of other complex chronic conditions. Holistic methods are also associated with reduced cellular stress and longevity [7] [8].

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Any given individual sits on a continuum ranging from disabled, diseased, disbalanced, to well, flourishing and vibrant [9]. Experts in public health, workforce well-being and sustainability initiatives agree that this continuum needs to be shifted towards higher levels of well-being.

Achieving this for a significant part of society would accelerate the shift towards a sustainable economy and the UN's vision of "planetary well-being" [10]. Although the change starts with each individual, we should soon see changes in the family and the professional life. Latest research found that it takes only 25% of people in a given sub-group to initiate a complete system shift [11]. Once a critical mass of people in a state of empowerment is reached, we will inevitably see improvements for society and the planet at large.

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In summary, the ability to take care of oneself in a holistic way is among the most fundamental capabilities required for humanity to “flourish.” Access to these self-care skills should not be a luxury for the privileged few but a birthright accessible to everyone, regardless of their income, background or education.

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From a whole self, to a united we, towards a better planet.

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Empowerment Beyond the Individual.

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A holistic approach, by definition, needs to tackle layers beyond “individuals.” Once we build a strong foundation within our own “self”, we can translate this into greater well-being on a collective level.

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Layer 1 - The individual: Empowering people for better self-care and healthier behaviors sets the foundation and catalyst. Emphasis is given to healthy diet, movement, recovery, mental health, healthy behaviors, and inner work. Such behaviors have long been known to improve “Quality of Life” and to prevent or slow down the rate of conditions with high morbidity, mortality and health related economic impact, such as cardiometabolic diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and mental disease [12] [13] [14].

Layer 2 - Relationships & Families: The healthier and more mindful we are, the less friction we encounter with the people closest to us, especially with our partners, children, parents and siblings. Dedicated support for couple well-being, relationship coaching,, mindful parenting and communication skills lead to better emotion regulation, more connected thinking, more secure attachments, as well as less stress, exposure to micro-trauma, and relationship issues [15].

Layer 3 - Organizations & Communities: As our well-being is heavily influenced by our doing, our workplaces and communities also play a critical role for overall well-being. These environments influence emotional burden and stress level, financial health and particularly our sense of purpose, belonging, joint learning and access to nature. An ecosystem of conscious enterprises and public bodies, solving societal challenges while providing their employees with a platform for human flourishing, seems like a distant, yet much desirable future [16].

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Amplifying the Impact of Self-Care Through Data-Driven Personalization.

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In disease, a leading paradigm is the concept of “precision medicine”, which essentially means using data to personalize treatment plans and to empower care teams and patients to make better decisions. In well-being, however, such “precision” or “personalized” approaches are less developed and studied. While high-touch proprietary models, such as on-site scanners and own holistic practitioners lack scalability, current online marketplaces for health lack the element of precision and user empowerment which are required for long term habit change and real-life impact.

Modern health-promoting concepts, such as “medicine 3.0” [17] and “4P medicine” (Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, Participatory, [18]) started translating the “precision medicine” paradigm to health and well-being. However, we currently lack a system which is able to tell us, at scale, which set of solutions might be most likely to benefit a given person with a specific set of holistic needs, goals and personality traits. This system could be called “holistic precision well-being” and is exactly what constitutes Holofy Health’s mission. We aim to empower individuals and society with the most scalable platform for holistic precision well-being.

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Making Holistic Assessments More Actionable.

The first challenge is the analysis of people’s holistic well-being, needs and goals, in an attempt to personalize solutions and ensure a bespoke user experience. To capture the full picture, it is necessary to analyze these needs on both a subjective and objective level. Bearing in mind scalability, initial focus should be on “easy-to-measure” subjective analysis and low-friction digital biomarkers (voice, imaging, etc).

Although a great deal of theoretical frameworks for well-being have emerged recently and provide a vital foundation, current assessments lack the ability to both easily score individuals, and to relate individual parts of the respective frameworks to a potential root-cause [19], [20] [21], [22], [23], [24].

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Below, we propose a new longitudinal framework for assessing holistic wellbeing, called the “Holistic Wheel.” It is supposed to be a living meta-system - an attempt at curating, expanding and unifying the most suitable frameworks, spanning physiology, psychology, neuroscience, spiritual science and socio-economic science. Everybody stands on the shoulders of giants. We see it as an effort of collective intelligence and decentral science to iterate this tool until society has a scoring system which is truly capable of representing our entire beings. We welcome all feedback and invite all holistic experts and practitioners to put this working hypothesis to a real-life test.

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Self-scoring with the Holistic Wheel can be repeated periodically to yield a longitudinal baseline. Once objective biomarkers are mapped to respective domains of the Holistic Wheel, it will be possible to correlate changes in subjective well-being and objective changes in biochemistry, driven by simple experiments everybody can put in action. These so-called “n=1 studies” represent a specific form of evidence-based medicine which will help us to move from population-based data to understanding individualized responses [25].

The individual baseline can then be considered alongside the health and well-being goals of an individual when developing a personal action plan.

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Combining AI with the Power of Human Connection.

Once enough data is available, an algorithm (human or tech) may determine the most suitable set of interventions for a desired outcome. This may seem like a formidable use-case to harness the augmented capability of recent AI models, but comes with clear caveats. Given the sensitive nature of the required data and the implications such recommendations might have for individuals, we need to carefully balance decentralized data governance, responsible & open AI, and the role of humans in decision making in this process. When precise recommendations are paired with human-driven support mechanisms to ensure long-term healthy habit formation, we indeed may see the shift towards the vision of planetary well-being.

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Join us on our mission of making well-being a possibility for everyone!

#WellbeingAsBirthright

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[1] https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/the-economy-of-wellbeing/59441/

[2] https://eurohealthobservatory.who.int/publications/i/making-health-for-all-policies-harnessing-the-co-benefits-of-health

[3] https://www.bcbs.com/the-health-of-america/articles/healthy-communities-mean-better-economy

[4] https://www.who.int/about/governance/constitution

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK435854/

[6] https://bhma.org/what-is-holism-in-healthcare/

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6389764/

[8] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnint.2022.913573/full