Field Notes
A Performance Medicine Physician's take on what the evidence actually says about human optimization.
Field Notes is the clinical record of what actually works in human performance optimization…And what the wellness industry gets wrong about it.
Every post here is written by Will King-Lewis MD FAAFP, a board-certified Family Medicine Physician, Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, and US Navy Senior Medical Officer responsible for the health and performance of 3,500 sailors. The standard applied to every recommendation here is the same one applied in his clinical practice, the Fiduciary Standard.
I read the study, check the sample size, find the conflict of interest, and ask who funded it. If the evidence is strong, you will hear that. If it is limited, you will hear that too. If something is overhyped, you will hear exactly why. Even if that means going against the grain and not recommending the newest hotness, or other popular, profitable, and aggressively marketed wellness junk.
That is what the MD means. That is what Field Notes is.
The Hawthorne Effect
A Field Notes, the SPMD Blog, post title slide on a blog post about The Hawthorne Effect which is how anything measured is aleady subject to change by the act of measuring it. A physician explains why this matters for every fitness tracker, sleep score, and performance metric you are using.