Every week, The Lemur’s editors-in-chief handpick a few things worth holding on to. Consider this your quick break from the incessant pull of Instagram Reels.

After a week-long sabbatical, we’re back to tackle a prescient and complex topic. We know an increased focus on self-optimization is proliferating, but is it actually wrong?  This week, we’re studying David Wallace-Wells and Dr. Rachael Bedard’s NYT Opinion piece on bio-tracking in conjunction with Lemur Campus Editor and contributor Lauren Blake’s essay, “Autonomymaxxing: The Morality of Self-Optimization.” Lauren helps us assess whether we should care about Dr. Bedard’s picture of a shifting zeitgeist.

Lauren’s opinion is more interesting than a yes-or-no answer. Many self-optimizers hand over control to an external metric, unlike a person “improving themselves” by, say, wearing glasses. Yet, it’s these minute distinctions that render it hard to assess the substance of self-optimization itself. When 10,000 steps shift from a description of your day to a verdict on it, the trouble starts: such a metric transcends its function as a useful, yet inexhaustive, tool. Glasses don’t fulfill that role. A Garmin can. You don’t always notice when your Oura ring stops serving you—“much like a frog in a pot of ever-warming water,” in Lauren’s words—the shift is quiet. Her verdict isn’t to quit the ring, but to pay attention to who’s holding the cards. Read Lauren’s full essay here.

Recently, this seemingly innocuous shift in American lifestyle has flooded social media and prompted Americans to spend, sometimes lavishly, on a more health-conscious lifestyle. Or so it seems. At a time when anxiety is high and happiness is lower, what does this mean for society?

AND: This shift in a health-conscious lifestyle has many benefits: improved quality of life, longer lifespan, and, in my opinion, genuinely happier individuals. However, when I see these lifestyles romanticized on social media, I sometimes wonder if this health-conscious lifestyle is missing an integral component: community. It seems that what appears to be a self-care routine often devolves into a self-centered ritual, veiled as a vain attempt to gain society’s appreciation rather than to connect with them (take looksmaxxing, for example). 

I can appreciate Dr. Bedard’s pragmatic approach to this situation. Technology and optimizing health tracking can come with tangible benefits; however, there is real cause for caution. As someone who loves data and draws conclusions from it, there is simply no reason to totally dismiss this, as we have not yet seen the profound benefits.

CE: I’ll play devil’s advocate: for some people, access to wearables and self-directed health data can genuinely improve quality of life. The healthcare system is far from infallible—and often inaccessible or ineffective—and people who feel failed by it may find useful forms of agency through personal health technology.

That does not mean these users represent the population at large, nor does it erase the lavish costs of many devices and treatments. But I reject the idea that this technology is a net negative. For people with the resources, knowledge, and consistency to use it well, health data can make care feel more immediate, intelligible, and responsive.

That said, to address the NYT article we’re using as a springboard, I appreciate Dr. Bedard’s conservatism as a physician. The issue is not whether tracking is always helpful or always harmful, but how it affects a person’s relationship with their body and whether that information enables meaningful action. I am wary of the vanity and self-obsession bio-tracking can foster, though I suspect some of its present intensity results from novelty. As technology becomes less culturally charged, we may learn to preserve its genuine benefits while wresting ourselves free from obsessing over its metrics.

Given the topics covered within the article, from AI tracking steps and calories to cryogenic therapy for youth, which one concerns you the most? And which one gives you the most optimism for the future of human wellbeing?

AND: There is as much concern as there is optimism, but I will make the case that there is much more optimism to be found here. The general rise in conspiratorial thinking and deferring to so-called health influencers and “experts” concerns me. However, as health information becomes more democratized, language and its manipulation will matter greatly. When Wallace-Wells explained the case of South Korea screening for thyroid cancer, finding that a fifteen-fold increase didn’t increase mortality, mentioned that despite its innocuous increase, many people are anxious “because the word ‘cancer’ scares people into treatment.”

This relates to how language can shape people’s internal perception of medical standards and criteria. It used to be that doctors and the local community shaped one’s standards of health. Now the whole globe is shaping them. Just like Lauren, this sets a potentially dangerous backdrop for people to make “standards the default lens through which a person understands their own success or failure.” I am concerned that we will not be able to distinguish between real medical advice and layman advice.

However, as NYT’s Dr. Bedard lays it out, I am very optimistic that technology and AI will alleviate diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and sickle cell disease. There are already proven strides in improving them, such as the rise of GLP-1s and gene therapy for sickle cell disease, which was recently approved by the FDA.

CE: I’m most concerned by the possibility that people will conform their sense of self to technology’s results: retroactively reading their past, family, body, and identity through data that may be partial or outright wrong. Wallace-Wells’s account of DNA ancestry testing stayed with me: “We all spit into those tubes, we got some information about where our families come from—which turns out not to be all that reliable.” The results can then become part of our personal narratives, despite the possible unreliability of the underlying information. The same principle can apply to other forms of bio-tracking. If we begin using a metric as self-observation, it may very well end, as Lauren describes, as self-verdict.

On the other hand, I am most optimistic about health-monitoring technology when it offers immediate therapeutic benefit to people managing existing conditions. The NYT article identifies diabetes, early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, and suspected abnormal heart rhythms as contexts in which monitoring may meaningfully guide care.

 I’ll reveal my bias. As an epileptic whose seizures have, for some reason, always occurred when I was alone in public, I have had to rely on strangers’ presence and kindness to get help. My neurologist recommended a medical ID bracelet, which may make assistance easier, but a discreet piece of metal feels primitive and largely inadequate. I am therefore eager to explore newly developed wearable devices designed to detect possible tonic-clonic seizures and alert caregivers. 

This technology will not solve every problem for people living with these conditions, and I’m only one person with one particular condition. But even a modest increase in safety and peace of mind for people living with precarious conditions, and the people who love them, seems to me a genuine advance in human well-being.

Does Gen-Z’s health obsession mask a deeper underlying issue within our communities? If so, what should conversations look like in the near future?

AND: I do not believe our health obsession is masking our underlying issues with communities. There is truth in Gen Z being both the healthiest and one of the most socially detached generations. I believe that our health problems and our obsessions with alleviating them can be effective interlocutors within our daily conversations about health. One of the benefits of such a globalized network of health services and advice is that it removes the stigma of those conversations. With health being such a sensitive issue, the unwritten taboos are still very prevalent, especially among ethnic groups. Traditional medical institutions will see their role dramatically changed. The high costs of medicine will be reduced, so long as technology advances and innovation drives prices down. Online services will complement, but not supplant, the value of face-to-face medical services. They will need to provide service at both the online and interpersonal levels. Take the emergence of telemedicine, a wonder for both patients and overstaffed and undersupplied institutions. 

Healthcare is at a juncture right now. An institution as old as time has advanced with the tides of time. Now it seems time is pushing ahead and leaving institutions, including healthcare, behind. The future will be determined by whether healthcare institutions, new and old, can ride the waves of technology and adapt or crash and sink into the annals of medical history. 

CE: I do think personal health obsession can function as a surrogate for confronting problems at their source. We can use technology to address widespread health afflictions such as obesity, but we should also ask how a society produces widespread health disparities in the first place and what structural conditions make healthy living difficult for many.

Health data can be useful if it opens those conversations. Telemedicine, tracking tools, and more accessible testing may help people better understand their bodies and minds; ideally, they may also help people recognize how their health is shaped by their environments, resources, work, food access, stress, and community. But data alone cannot answer those questions, nor can it replace doctors, nurses, and public health workers.

Health should not be gatekept. If self-directed screening or testing is the alternative to receiving no screening or testing at all, broader access is beneficial and empowering, especially for people alienated from, priced out of, or underserved by traditional medical institutions. Of course, an informed public needs more than devices: it needs trustworthy (ideally, person-to-person) medical guidance, affordable care, and a real role in shaping the public health conversations that affect it. Power to the individual, but as much as I’m bullish on personal health technology, a strong community cannot ask individuals to bear the full burden of their own health. Health is personal, but it is never merely private.

There’s your Monday. Keep an open mind and let us (or, better yet, a friend!) know if anything resonates. No Lemur is an island. We’ll see you next week.