Western Lifestyle Index

The Western Lifestyle Index measures how much a person's biomarkers deviate from optimal reference ranges across three domains. It is a composite impact-points score built from your own results, not a questionnaire and not a lifestyle survey.

The three domains are diet, sleep and stress. On your report they appear as Dietary Alignment, Recovery Reserves and Stress Adaptation. A single biomarker can contribute to more than one domain, because a marker like magnesium is affected by dietary intake and by stress-driven urinary loss at the same time.

Lower is better. The index counts distance from optimal, so a score near zero means your results sit close to their optimal ranges and a high score means they sit far from them.

Each biomarker included in the index gets a deviation score between 0 and 1, reflecting how far it sits from its optimal range. Those per-marker scores are then summed, each weighted by one half, to give the overall index.

Per-domain contributions are calculated separately, weighting each marker's deviation by that domain's weight. This is why a person can score well overall while one domain stands out.

The index needs at least ten distinct contributing biomarkers to return a result. Below that threshold it reports insufficient data rather than a score, because a handful of markers cannot represent three domains.

The scales differ by domain. The overall index runs to a maximum of 10, dietary to 10, recovery to 4 and stress to 5, so a domain score should be read against its own ceiling rather than against the others.

Results fall into four bands. Least impact is the best band, then Less impact, then Pay attention, then Great impact.

For the overall index the thresholds are 4.6 or below for Least impact, up to 6.5 for Less impact, up to 7.5 for Pay attention, and above that for Great impact. Each domain has its own thresholds scaled to its own maximum.

The useful reading is comparative rather than absolute. Which of your three domains carries the most impact points tells you where a change would do the most, and that is more actionable than the headline number.

Because the index is built from biomarkers that move on their own timescales, a retest is worth taking after a season rather than after a few weeks. Red cell markers in particular reflect roughly the previous 120 days.

The index is an educational tool. It does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition, and it is not a medical device.

It reflects the markers on your panel and nothing else. A domain can score well while something the panel does not measure is going in the wrong direction, so an in-range index is not a clean bill of health.

It is a composite, so it hides detail by design. Two people can reach the same score through completely different marker patterns, which is why the per-domain view and the individual markers matter more than the single number.

It is not scored out of 100, and a higher number is not better. Both are common misreadings of an index of this shape.

The index exists because the ordinary Western pattern moves many biomarkers in the same direction at once, and no single marker captures that. Refined grains lower magnesium and zinc. Seed oils displace omega-3. Indoor work lowers vitamin D. Short sleep and chronic stress raise cortisol and accelerate mineral loss.

Reading those one at a time makes each look like a small isolated finding. Read together they describe one pattern, which is what the index is built to show.

The dietary domain responds to the changes that affect several of its markers at once: oily fish for the omega-3 markers, whole grains and seeds for magnesium and zinc, and reducing the seed oils that compete with omega-3.

Because markers overlap between domains, a single dietary change often moves more than one domain. Magnesium contributes to both diet and stress.

There is no supplement for the index itself. It moves when the underlying markers move.

Work from the domain carrying the most impact points, then from the individual markers inside it. Each marker page sets out the forms and doses relevant to that marker.