I recently helped my boss submit a health services research grant and am still suffering from PGSD (post-grant stress disorder) - nightmares about missing narrative pieces, pdf packages, figure formatting, and of course, health outcomes measures. So as an outlet, I wrote up an "assessment" to measure claims that the challenge makes as well as my own personal goals in participating. These include weight loss, skin quality, increased energy and exercise, sounder sleep habits, and a generally better mood (I am especially interested in how the lack of gluten will affect this). I am one of the participants who will likely not complete the cleanse by 100% but say, by 70-75% (heading to Kansas City in the middle of the month!).
I aim to take this assessment tomorrow morning as a baseline and ideally would like to take it at 2 more time points and on the very last day of the challenge. I would also like to see how the challenge affects mental health so I will be taking the PHQ-9, a very common measure for depressive symptoms, every week. This is probably not necessary for most people, but I think it would be interesting for those who suffer from perhaps cabin fever/winter blues, like myself, to observe how food affects our brains/emotions.
Feel free to use this or to expand/adapt it to your own personal goals/research interests. Also, if there are any other research-y people out there, I'd love to hear your suggestions for additions/edits/better measures for some of the goals I have.
I LOVE this idea rose. Thanks for setting getting this together! I was also thinking about getting my cholesterol checked to see how that might be impacted by the cleanse.
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