Feeling a squeeze? Ask better questions about your health

Financial squeeze has been on my mind lately as I read the news. In the July Context Matters workshop at my office with Gina Whitlow, a Personal Credit Coach, we talked about financial stress lingering in the body.

But there's another kind of squeeze trend I'm seeing in my office: people noticing their waistband getting tighter even when they didn't change anything.

Turns out stress can disrupt blood sugar regulation and sleep and contribute to unintended weight gain or retention. Though it feels like your body is working against you, it is really just trying to help.

That has me thinking about this broader question:

Sometimes the most useful question isn't "What else do I need to add?" It's "What am I already spending money, time, and energy on, that might be too much for my body to keep holding?"

Are you taking in things you don't actually need?

💊 One place to start: If you have a cabinet full of supplements, you probably know how easy it is for them to accumulate and to spend quite a bit a month to maintain your stash.

You add one thing here, one thing there... Six months later, you're still taking everything because, well, when exactly were you supposed to stop? Or your friends or social media feed convinced you that everyone suddenly needs something you'd never heard of a month ago.

But does it actually make sense for your body, and your context? Without understanding why something is supposed to work, or what dysfunction you're actually trying to address, it's easy to keep adding instead of getting clearer.

I have a 1:1 session to address this: Supplement and System Evaluation.

Bring in what you're currently taking (yes, all those bottles!) and we'll evaluate it together to identify what may be worth reconsidering or simplifying. Let's figure out what you can eat to get your nutrients, too, so you can feel a little less squeezed. Let's work together to understand your system a little better.

I've realized I have this thought about a lot more than supplements.

A little over a year ago, I was wrestling with how I was working. I thought the problem was insurance contracts. Or administrative work. Or the fact that the obvious way to grow seemed to be seeing more patients, which created more administrative work. It felt like a constant scramble.

Then I took a training on using AI to think through all aspects of my work. It quickly became clear: Insurance was not just affecting what I was being paid. It was defining a ceiling and operating model for my business. It was creating tension with the way I wanted to practice: treating a person as a whole being rather than a collection of body parts or pain diagnoses.

That was a very different problem than streamlining or automating a workflow. AI helped me see the system I was standing inside more clearly. That experience changed a lot more than my relationship with insurance.

If you've been following me this past year, you've basically had a front-row seat to this evolution.

What started as me trying to figure out how AI could fit responsibly into my own work turned into something pretty unique for a healthcare provider: I want to help other people think about how AI fits into their lives.

Then I completed the AI Bootcamp from The Uncommon Business, which I honestly can't recommend enough when I look back on what this year has launched for me.

Disclosure: I'm an affiliate for The Uncommon Business. I mention them in my emails because I've personally gone through the Bootcamp twice plus Automate to Accelerate (A2A), and they have had a significant impact on my life and work. A2A was one of the best trainings I have ever taken. If you decide to register, I'd love for you to use my link. TUB pays me commission for each person I refer, so you're also directly supporting the work I'm doing.

Now I'm building AI systems into my business and healthcare work, working through the very real questions of privacy, security, and responsible use, building my own tools, and sharing what I'm learning with other healthcare providers and people outside healthcare too. I'm finally starting to document more of that work at drstefaniekrupp.com, if you're curious about what I've been up to beyond my practice.

My work has always been about systems, patterns, learning, technology, and helping people understand complicated information well enough to do something useful with it.

AI gave me an entirely new place to apply all of that.

🎁 See it for yourself: If you register for The AI Bootcamp through my affiliate link below, I'll give you access to my new Tech for Your Health mini-course for free. Just reply to this email when you sign up.

Tech for Your Health covers health data, wearables, continuous glucose monitoring, and heart rate variability (HRV), with the same underlying idea that has become so important in my work:

Technology is most useful when it helps you understand something well enough to make better decisions.

This was not on my business plan a year ago. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 🙏🏻

This AI Employee Bootcamp includes three live 90-minute sessions on September 29, October 1, and October 6. The early bird price of $47 ends this Sunday, September 13. The Bootcamp shows you how to build AI employees, and I've found this really applies to any area of your life where you need some assistance. I just built myself a "House Manager."

If your version of "something's off" is happening in your health...

Sometimes the next step isn't adding more.

It's finally being able to see what you're already working with. This concept is becoming a really big part of my work.

More to come! Thanks for joining me in this evolution.