The Blood Work Wake-Up Call: Why I Write About Health
Seven years of startup grind left me with scary blood work. Here's how I brought my hsCRP from 1.6 to under 0.5 in one year.
Seven years of startup grind left me chubby, unfit, and with blood work that genuinely scared me.
High cholesterol. Critically low vitamins. And an hsCRP of 1.6.
If you don’t know what hsCRP is, it’s a marker for inflammation - and inflammation is basically aging from the inside. Anything above 1.0 puts you at elevated cardiovascular risk. I was at 1.6.
That was my wake-up call.
The turnaround
Within a year, I brought my hsCRP from 1.6 to under 0.5. Lost the extra weight. Got my vitamins in range. Actually started feeling good for the first time in years.
This wasn’t about becoming a fitness influencer or doing anything extreme. It was about taking the same systematic approach I used in business and applying it to my body.
Measure. Experiment. Iterate. Repeat.
The longevity rabbit hole
Once I started optimizing, I couldn’t stop learning. I went deep into the work of Peter Attia, David Sinclair, and yes, even Bryan Johnson (though I draw the line at some of his protocols).
The science of longevity is still emerging, but the fundamentals are clear: exercise is the most powerful intervention we have. More powerful than any drug, any supplement, any biohack.
Sleep, nutrition, movement, stress management - these aren’t sexy, but they’re what actually moves the needle.
The Vegetarian challenge
Here’s something the longevity bros don’t talk about enough: getting adequate protein as a vegetarian is genuinely hard.
Most vegetarian diets are carb-heavy. Dal and rice is delicious, but the protein math doesn’t work for optimal health. Figuring out how to hit protein targets without eating chicken breast three times a day has been its own journey.
What I believe
I’m not trying to live forever. That’s not the goal.
The goal is living well for as long as possible. Having energy. Avoiding preventable disease. Being able to play with my future grandkids. Not spending my last decades declining.
Peter Attia calls it extending “healthspan” - not just lifespan. That framing changed how I think about all of this.
Big setbacks
Being on this journey, I faced a few professional and personal health setbacks. Those are times where the health journey went off track for months on end. But that is okay, the important thing is to realize that restarting it is super easy - just have to wear shoes and get out of the house. That’s it. It restarts as easily as it pauses.
What you’ll find here
In the Thrive pillar, I’ll share:
- Peter Attia’s Framework - Why exercise is the most powerful drug we have
- David Sinclair and Longevity Science - What’s proven vs. what’s promising
- Bryan Johnson’s Protocol - What’s science, what’s experimental, what’s excessive
- The Inflammation Markers - hsCRP, homocysteine, and the blood work that actually matters
- Practical Protocols - What I actually do, adjusted for vegetarian constraints
I’m not a doctor. I’m just someone who got scared by a blood test and decided to do something about it.
Let’s thrive.