There will be a webinar on this very topic on Thursday at noon EDT.

Those who read this blog – regularly, irregularly, or ever – know that I’ve always hated biometric screening.  It’s intrusive, expensive, and ineffective. Hated it.

Until I didn’t.

Enter Hibiscus Health.   Read this and you’ll never look at screenings the same way again.

But first, the Rest of the Story.

Here’s how I got this way.

Hibiscus entered the Shark Tank at YOUPowered in February. As with all our Shark Tanks (and there is still room at this one at Houston BCH in August if you are interested, but SALGBA’s in May is taking only standbys now), there were two $25,000 awards. One is based on the judges’ decision, while the other is the vote of the audience.

I was one of the judges (though in future Tanks, I’ll just moderate, and actual buyers will serve as judges).  I told them in advance how much I hated screening, and that, to be honest, I wasn’t going to vote for them.  I didn’t.

Turned out it didn’t matter, because, while the judges were unanimous on another vendor, the audience overwhelmingly selected Hibiscus.  It looked like I was stuck investing $25,000 in…a screening company???  Wouldn’t that be like Ralph Nader buying a Chevrolet Corvair?

Or would it?

I figured, what the hell, if they just won my money I should at least see what I invested in.  Their booth consisted of a face screen.  They said that looking into that screen for 30 seconds would tell me my blood values.

Yeah, right.

Well, I did look at the screen for 30 seconds and…it did tell me my blood values.  While some were (accurate) ranges, they were shockingly close on my actual Hb A1c.  Due to my sugar-intensive diet apparently not quite offset by obsessive amounts of ultimate frisbee (SPOILER ALERT: This is not me – I haven’t landed on the ground, at least deliberately, since the Bush Administration, and I don’t mean W)…

…I range between 5.5% and 5.8%. (I refer to my Hb A1c as being “borderline borderline.”)  They pegged me at 5.7%. They got it!  With no delay, no needles, no inconvenience, no actual or perceived privacy invasion – and no expense!

Sidebar: there are two reasons I’m so high and you would be too if you lived within walking distance of:

1. LA Burdick  (Dark Drinking Chocolate)
2. Tatte (Chocolate Mousse Cakes)

There simply aren’t enough frisbee games in a day to work off this much sugar.  No, as Quizzify will tell you, dark chocolate is not a health food. There’s a reason it tastes good.  That reason is – get ready –  sugar. Even the more “bitter” chocolate bars are only about 75% chocolate, the other 25% being sugar.  100% dark chocolate by itself would indeed be a health food.  But there’s a reason they don’t sell 100% dark chocolate: no one would buy it.

Hibiscus has just rewritten the rulebook on biometric screening.  If in January a fortune teller had told me that I would become an advocate for screening, I would have demanded my money back. Yet here I am, telling you that screening is now both easy to implement and ridiculously cost-effective.

I can’t wait to do it again, but not until ultimate frisbee season is well underway, so I can improve from borderline borderline at 5.7% to, at a minimum, borderline borderline borderline at 5.6% or better, at least until my next Tatte run.

Learn more in this Thursday noon webinar.