What would your wellness screening reveal? A journalist's sobering wake-up call

I have reported on health for nearly six years, yet I walked into a wellness clinic recently and left questioning how carefree I have been with my own body the whole time. The numbers did not lie, and neither did the specialist who read them out to me.

My curiosity had started a fortnight earlier, at a conference on post-partum haemorrhage, where I met Dr Mymoona Mohammed, the chief executive officer and founder of Taria Health, a wellness clinic. As she presented what her clinic does, I found myself thinking less about the conference and more about what healthy ageing actually means, and whether I was doing anything to earn mine.

That is how I ended up at the facility’s head office in Westlands, Nairobi, at midday, together with our photographer, Francis Nderitu. I had been slotted in for the session both as a patient and as a journalist. Dr Mymoona and a nurse were waiting for us when we arrived.

She began by asking me what my health goals in life were. It took me a minute to answer. "Every year, I write down my vision board, but rarely do I pay attention to what I wish my well-being to be like that year," I told her. She rephrased the question.

"How long do you want to live?"

I said 80, the first number that came to mind. I had never really sat down to think about how long I wanted to live, even though the latest data shows that Kenyans now live to at least 70 years old.

Also read: I went for a full body wellness check-up. This is what I found out

Dr Mymoona reminded me that ageing should be beautiful, but that its beauty is tied to how healthy a person is.

"You need to be a functional 80-year-old. It's not just about getting to 80, but getting there standing, going to the bathroom on your own, walking, understanding people and having a conversation with them," she said.

The alternative, she added, is living as an assisted 80-year-old. From there, the conversation picked up pace.

"I want us to think about your outcome, and then we can map out the journey," she told me, before assuring me that at this stage, I did not need any invasive tests. She handed me over to the nurse, Ann Wanyoike, who checked my blood pressure, weight, height, waist circumference, muscle mass, body fat and visceral fat.

We started with blood pressure, and I learnt something new: when your readings are being taken, you are not supposed to speak.

"You are supposed to be relaxed. If you speak, your readings may be inaccurate," Ann told me.

My blood pressure was normal, at 125/74. I already knew what the systolic and diastolic numbers meant, but it was the first time anyone had explained them to me in a hospital setting. The systolic number, the upper one, measures the force when your heart beats, while the diastolic number, below it, measures the force when your heart rests between beats.

Ann then took my height, weight, body fat and waist circumference. Back with Dr Mymoona, she asked whether I knew anything about Body Mass Index (BMI), and what it means.

"Your skeletal frame, which is like your suitcase, can only carry a certain amount of weight. If you weigh too much, you are going to put pressure on the suitcase. When it is less, we worry that you are not feeding your body exactly how it needs to function. That is how we know where your BMI stands," she explained.

A normal BMI, based on weight and height, should be below 25. Above 25 to about 29 counts as overweight, 30 to 34.9 is obesity, and anything above 40 is morbid obesity. My own calculation came to 36, placing me under obesity class II.

I had been worried about my weight before I got to the clinic, but I had not expected to be classified as obese. By the standards of what most people picture when they think of obesity, I appear only slightly overweight. It turns out my height had been working against me. Dr Mymoona asked how much I had weighed just after high school, and I realised I had gained nearly 30 kilograms since then.

"That's the weight I want you to be in. At that age, that is when a human being's metabolism starts to go into adulthood, and it is the most ideal weight to target," she said.

My waist circumference, an indicator of how much fat surrounds the internal organs, was normal. Dr Mymoona said women should keep their waist circumference below 80cm.

"Sometimes we tend to see this because of the African shape. Africans' waists may be small, even when someone's BMI is high," she said.

She then turned to more personal questions about my health goals, and it was here that I realised something uncomfortable: despite being a health and science reporter, I had been living a fairly sedentary life, a classic case of preaching water while drinking wine. It seemed to concern Dr Mymoona, though she raised it gently.

"I need you to look at fitness like something you have to do every day, just like brushing your teeth. Sometimes, when you do it as the first thing when you wake up, it could change the rest of your day forever," she said.

She wanted to know what kind of physical activity I would still be comfortable doing every day in 40 years. I told her walking.

"Walking is actually one of the most traditional forms of exercise that our great-grandparents did. That's why, in a way, daily walking, like golfing, is a recommended sport, because it is all about walking, and can be done well past 90 years," she said.

Walking for fitness, she explained, is different from casual walking. For it to count as exercise, it should be brisk enough that I would struggle to hold a conversation.

"You need to breathe faster when walking. You don't even need to walk outside. You can just walk on the spot like a soldier. You can use videos online and have a minimum of 30 minutes daily to meet the World Health Organisation's threshold of 150 minutes of exercise every week," she said.

This, she added, should become a habit, particularly for anyone in the red category, as I was.

"Sometimes you will not be able to do it every day, but you need a rule, and that is no two days should pass before exercising," she advised.
Next came questions about my diet. I told her I try to eat a balanced diet, and she said that while that may be true, I needed to pay closer attention to the measurements to match my health goals.

A nutritionist, she advised, would guide the exact proportions, but she offered an overview of what my plate should look like: more vegetables, more protein, and a fistful of carbohydrates or starch.

Also read: Why early detection of diabetes could save your sight

If you sleep late, like I often do, and wake up feeling tired, your sleep pattern is probably unhealthy, and it will leave you with less energy through the morning. On average, I sleep for less than five hours a night.

Dr Mymoona asked me to work on this too, and flagged it for a separate session on sleep.

The other metric she checked was how I handle stress, which prompted her to recommend that I also see a psychologist for better guidance.

"Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems, whether it is a catastrophic event or you win a lottery. You need to look at your life through a 100-year lifespan. This means that in the event that you lose your job today, it is just an event, and life will move on," she advised.

"Live a minimalist lifestyle, way below your means. When you have those foundations grounded, catastrophes will not derail you. What you need is a physically fit body and a mentally resilient mind. That is the true wealth," she added.

She summed up her concerns: my weight, sleep, energy and mental resilience all needed attention. After about 30 minutes of basic pre-screening on the facility’s health compass, I was handed a prescription. I had landed in the red.

She reassured me that she had seen patients move from red to yellow to green within about a year, as long as they stuck to the prescription, which comes with a graph to track daily progress over six weeks.

"Red means that you have to take action today. This is not to scare you. A number of people live this way, and mostly, they feel okay because age is on their side," she said.

"This is why we see conditions that affected earlier generations in their seventh decade, affecting the current generation in their fourth decade," she added.

The recommended pace for sustainable weight loss is about one to one and a half kilograms a month. Anyone losing weight much faster than that, she said, is likely relying on extreme diets or prescriptions that are not sustainable in the long run.

She also spoke to me about meal timing and the value of fasting. The longer you extend your fasting window after waking, the more time your body has to lower insulin levels and burn fat. For my metabolic category, she recommended a 16-hour fast, which leaves an eight-hour window for eating. My first meal of the day should ideally start around midday, with healthy snacks allowed in between.

"When you fast, you are not likely to feel hungry. People get that feeling after they eat because of a glucose spike, which makes you want to eat more," she said.

"Always listen to your body: are you actually hungry, or is it just in your head that it is time to eat?"

She also recommended cutting back on caloric drinks, particularly soda, and limiting sweetened tea to one or two servings a day.

Our conversation moved to body composition and muscle mass, which revealed that my metabolic age is 60, more than double my actual age.

Dr Mymoona said women need to build muscle mass, especially as they approach menopausal age. She compared it to a car: from the day you buy it, wear and tear begins. Everyone ages, but how much inflammation the body carries depends on how well it is looked after, and today, we are exposed to more inflammatory triggers than before, from processed foods and excess sugar to smoke, pollution, stress and poor sleep, all of which speed up that wear and tear.

The desired metabolic age, she said, is about five or more years younger than one's actual age.

"The more muscle you build, the younger you become. It helps in maintaining your youth," she added, noting that bones grow frailer with age, and that stress accelerates the process too.

"Stress triggers the release of cortisol, and when cortisol remains elevated for prolonged periods, it can contribute to processes associated with premature ageing. This is why you have to work on what is within your control, such as building mental resilience, staying physically active and reducing inflammatory triggers," she explained.

To arrive at my metabolic age, the machine used bioelectrical impedance, sending a safe, low-level electrical current through sensors on my hands and feet to measure body water, body fat, muscle mass, visceral fat and bone mass, then combined these with other personal data.

Body fat and visceral fat, I learnt, are not the same thing. Visceral fat surrounds the organs, while body fat sits underneath the skin and subcutaneous tissue. Doctors recommend visceral fat stay below 10, and body fat for women stay below 33 per cent. Mine came in at 38 per cent.

Dr Mymoona said abnormalities picked up during basic wellness checks work as an early warning system.

"This is like an SOS signal from a ship before a crisis occurs. They give us an opportunity to identify health risks early and act before they progress into disease. If you are currently well, that is the best time to make changes that can protect your health in the years ahead," she explained.

She said that, based on what she has observed among colleagues, more Kenyans are presenting with conditions linked to cognitive decline, such as dementia and Parkinson's disease, earlier than before. Changes in cognition, she noted, can be among the earliest signs of health decline, sometimes appearing before any physical symptoms do.

"Cognition is actually one of the early signs. When you start taking care of your health, you will see a change in your mood, you will feel energetic, and you will likely have better sleep. It is never too late to start," she said.

Much of this information already exists, yet most people remain unaware of it. Dr Mymoona said the average client who walks into their facility already knows something about healthy living, usually someone enrolled in a gym or already physically active.

"The people I see are already challenging their resilience at macro levels," she said. "I have seen people change. It is possible to reverse. Health is a mind-set."

Explainer

Not everyone who looks healthy is healthy, and you do not need a diagnosis before you start paying attention to your body. We put some of the most common questions about wellness to Dr Mymoona, to find out what the term actually means, who it is for, and what it costs to check where you stand.

What is wellness?

People often only take wellness seriously once something has gone wrong. It has also been reduced to the gym, green smoothies, and little else. In my view, wellness is about retaining your cognition and physical capacity into your sunset years. It is a personal blueprint for health that you keep for life, not a temporary fix but a long-term mind-
set.

When is the recommended time to start on wellness?

People often see wellness as simply a test to check whether they are healthy. Tests matter, but the ground rules remain the same: avoid toxins, maintain a healthy lifestyle, and sleep well. Wellness is for everyone, and you can start at any time.

How often should someone go for wellness checks?

It should be annual, in the same way you would see a dentist twice a year. If anything is flagged, a doctor will schedule follow-ups based on the specific condition, since different metrics need to be monitored differently.

How much does it cost?

Basic checks, costs Sh3,200 and does not include laboratory tests or blood work. A comprehensive assessment, including blood work, costs Sh16,500, while further support from a psychologist, nutritionist, or diabetes follow-up is charged separately.

How do people react when they find out they are not healthy, even when they appear to be so?

Based on someone's metabolic profile, we may suggest laboratory tests to build a fuller picture. Some people feel challenged by the findings and want to start making changes immediately, while others need time to process the results.

Who exactly should come for wellness checks?

Everyone can benefit from regular wellness check-ups, even when they feel healthy. Changes such as persistent fatigue, poor sleep, changes in mood, or reduced physical capacity can be early signals that something needs attention. Ideally, preventive health checks should begin in childhood and continue throughout life, with at least an annual review with a healthcare professional to establish and monitor an individual's health baseline.

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