Self-monitoring networks for personal and societal health: Dietary patterns, activities, blood pressure and Covid-19.

ABSTRACT

The contributors to and consequences of disordered health are increasingly complex with sociodemographic, ecological, economic and food system change. But there are opportunities for any adversity to be mitigated by advances in the understanding of human, especially nutritional, ecobiology and in its more accessible and affordable evaluation and monitoring. Viral pandemics are on the rise with climate change and loss of ecosystems. They threaten human civilisation and planetary habitability. Human security is dependent on sustainable livelihoods of which food and water systems are a vital part. We are socioecological beings and depend for our health on biodiversity and the food diversity that ensures; and on connectedness and communication, made more difficult in pandemics. Rapid and accessible point-of-care (POC) tools are now becoming available to compliment other selfmonitoring network approaches, whether checklist or questionnaire, physical, chemical, or biological, for healthcare and nutritional health. They can provide information as several complimentary and interdependent health indices to facilitate personal, group and community action and management plans. This applies to indices of both communicable and non-communicable disease which problems separately and together are compromising health prospects. These indices include ones of physical and mental activities, dietary patterns, metabolites, blood pressure and now the presence and severity of viruses like Covid-19.Of imminent relevance and promise are optically- readable biosensor based strips for nasal, pharyngeal or salivary samples to check viral presence or finger prick blood for immunoglobulins and interleukins. These should allow less socially prohibitive measures to curb viral transmission and promote personal and societal wellbeing.