Your health is your wealth, as the saying goes. So why is it not more of a factor during the financial planning process?
With America’s metabolic health at an all-time low, our healthspans are declining, putting our life expectancy at risk too.
How do we plan financial legacies in the face of this? And what do we do to protect assets alongside our health, and maintain it for the long haul?
I find there’s not much conversation around these points in the public sphere — yet. Today, I’d like to talk about the uncomfortable connection between wealth management and metabolic syndrome.
Article overview
- Poor metabolic health can undermine even the best financial plan by increasing healthcare costs, reducing income and retirement contributions, raising insurance costs, and potentially forcing earlier retirement or impairing financial decision-making.
- The ROI of prevention could be up to $100,000+ for the average person, and potentially several hundred thousand dollars for high-income earners or business owners.
- Metabolic health should be treated as part of wealth protection, specifically protecting human capital. It’s possible to incorporate proactive cardiometabolic monitoring and prevention into long-term planning via Ovadia Heart Health.
The financial cost of metabolic syndrome
Every financial advisor knows that a wealth plan requires two things: the plan itself, and the action that follows.
But this relies on an assumption that the client will remain capable of executing that plan. It also assumes they will live long enough to enjoy the fruits of their labors, without chronic disease, autoimmune disorders, or cognitive decline such as Alzheimer’s.
To put this in perspective, less than 7% of American adults meet the clinical criteria for metabolic health. Some of the markers of those clinical criteria can be measured at home. If you have at least three of the five without taking medications you’re likely one of the 93% of unhealthy adults.
This could cost you many thousands of dollars over the course of your life. It can also throw a wrench into even the best thought-out financial plan.
Here are a few of the ways:
- Difficulty in contingency planning. This one mostly speaks for itself. But to summarize: increasing risks to your health (particularly the ones you cannot see) could change assumptions around longevity, dependents, emergency funds, insurance beneficiaries, income replacement, and more.
- Higher unexpected costs. Serious complications with metabolic health could require a host of unexpected healthcare-related costs. You may need caregivers earlier on in life, which may require a spouse or family member to reduce their own working hours. This doesn’t include more doctor visits, bloodwork, specialist appointments, and medications. If your condition progresses into diabetes, stroke, or cardiovascular disease, your costs could rise even further. Case in point: national healthcare costs associated with diabetes alone climbed to $412.9 billion in 2023.
- Cognitive decline. If your mind degrades due to poor metabolic health, it could become difficult to make wise decisions with your funds. Many studies connect poor metabolic health with poor mental health, which could also incur additional costs as you age.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of the financial impact here. For example, metabolic dysfunction can lead to a variety of conditions that may force you to stop working or even change jobs. This could dramatically reduce your income and ability to invest.
You might also face higher insurance costs, or even lower insurability. If you’re forced to retire early due to a serious health condition, you could throw a huge portion of your financial plan out the window.
But while I realize this sounds like ‘doom and gloom,’ the good news is that metabolic health can be restored.
It’s one of the reasons why I’m such an advocate for adding metabolic wellness to the financial planning process.
The ROI of proactive metabolic and financial care
The most proactive service a financial advisor can bring is to help their clients protect their financial capital. The second most proactive service is to help them protect their human capital — namely, to avoid dying early and losing the mental capacity to effectively tend to their funds.
Avoiding a heart attack at 58 by implementing better metabolic health measures could mean adding an extra seven years to a retirement plan. This makes it easier to hit projected goals, deal with succession planning or business transfers, and ultimately stay present for the decisions that shape wealth and legacy.
Let’s look at this in more tangible terms.
Recent studies show that aggregate labor income losses related to heart disease and stroke in the US reached $266.9 billion in 2023. One study found that the cost of hospitalization alone can run over $23,000 for a myocardial infarction. That doesn’t include follow-up care, long-term complications, time away from work, or early retirement. For a high-income person or business owner, the economic value of avoiding the event could easily be several hundred thousand dollars.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And in the context of financial planning, it might be a little on the nose. Investing in a proactive health plan with cardiometabolic monitoring and quarterly testing is a small price to pay in the big picture of financial health.
Building health equity alongside financial equity
The number of financial advisors and their clients rose to record heights in 2026. More than 73.7 million Americans now employ investment advisors to plan their futures and protect their wealth. If you’re one of the many serving clients this year, let me ask: how else are you ensuring that clients meet their financial goals?
It takes two to work on planning the future. But part of this planning process should include ways to reduce risk and variability — like avoiding an unexpected heart attack. Giving your clients access to better metabolic health resources is an excellent way to help them stride toward a future on their own terms.
It’s also one of the reasons I worked alongside financial advisors to protect the human capital of clients and their families. My team can coordinate comprehensive cardiometabolic baselines, followed by quarterly lab reviews, and regular touchpoints with a dedicated physician. The goal is to act as an extension of financial advice by avoiding costly surgery, reversing risk, and giving clients their lives back.
Learn more about how I help with restoring metabolic health.