My health hacks

When my wife got pregnant with our second kid, I was an absolute health wreck. I had constant headaches, migraines at least once a week, back pains, and felt ill often. On top of that, I had yearly burnouts, or depression, accompanied by insomnia, panic attacks, and high-stress episodes.

Fortunately, for some reason I read Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. This book opened my eyes to the fact that we had multiple dead easy ways to improve our health for free. This got me started on a new quest and 12 months later, just by changing a few habits, I was cured of every single problem I mentioned. But that was just the start. I kept going.

I went from running 4 KM in 45 minutes to 12 KM in 1 hour in 2 years. I’m never sick, always prime, do twice as many things in a day, and I feel like a god. In less than 3 years I made it to the other way of the spectrum.

What’s even better is that it was entirely free and surprisingly easy.

Nasal breathing

This is the absolute utmost important change you can make (see books Breath, James Nestor). Always breathe through the nose, even during high-intensity training (source).

If you get into the habit of breathing through the nose, you can start breathing by the mouth during high-intensity training for a short period to give you energy boots. Mouth breathing releases chemicals that increase your stress and awareness but burns more energy. Modulate with care.

Breathing

Most of us breathe poorly. Breathing incorrectly has many detrimental side effects. Fortunately, learning how to breathe properly is easy. It’s also possible to control your stress level in real time by using specific breathing patterns.

How to Breathe Correctly for Optimal Health, Mood, Learning & Performance | Huberman Lab Podcast will teach you all of the above.

Breathing exercises

Doing the Wim Hof (easy, hard) breathing exercises is what gave me the running performance boost. Twice, I did the exercises 3 times a day for a month, and afterward, I got a 15% speed increase.

Huberman Lab - Physiological Sigh breathing technique reduces stress in real time. It takes a minute to complete and does not require prior training. I use it before entering high-stress situations.

Dopamine

This chemical is of prime importance, and you can use it to hack your brain to become highly motivated at all times. What you need to know is that every time you complete a meaningful task or achieve something, your brain releases dopamine, giving you energy, and making you happier. So, the key is to fill your day with very small meaningful tasks and acknowledge you completed them. For me, it’s the morning pushups, the cold shower, brewing my coffee, etc. Divide your work tasks into small iterations, and always see them through.

Source: Andrew Huberman

Willpower: Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex

In your brain, there are these two tiny pinheads. Here’s the thing: these pinheads grow when you tackle stuff you’d rather not do, or when you’re facing something really tough or painful. Those little pins? That’s your willpower. And guess what? You can grow them. But here’s the flip side: if you avoid doing the hard stuff, those pins shrink. And so does your willpower. They need to be fed regularly.

For me, getting up at 5:30 AM to run 9 kilometers in the dark, cold rain really does the trick.

Source: Andrew Huberman - How to Build Inner Strength

Drinking water

Filtering is worth it, even with cheap homemade filters. Even easier is just letting water in a jar, capless to let cleaning chemicals evaporate, and unwanted sediments fall to the bottom (source).

Coffee

Coffee is a powerful and highly addictive substance. It’s very potent, and learning to use it correctly is important.

Here are my simple but important rules:

Drink coffee only between 1.5 to 4 hours after waking up.
Limit yourself to one cup a day of a type, strength, and amount that suits you.
Avoid coffee on weekends unless needed for productivity.

Note worthy:

Excessive coffee consumption decreases performance!
Starting to drink coffee can initially decrease performance.

I drink coffee before a sports competition or during extended study/work sessions, for a maximum of 10 weeks. Beyond that, I start experiencing severe headaches when I drink it.

Source: Using Caffeine to Optimize Mental & Physical Performance | Huberman Lab

Waking up

Once you’re awake, do those in this order:

Get out of bed right away.
Pee.
Drink a small glass of water.
Do a bunch of push-ups.

Then, drink more water during the first half of the day.

Sources: A mash-up of multiple videos from Huberman Labs, and also The Wim Hof Method.

Going to bed

3 hours before, if you drink fluid, just sip it slowly and don’t drink much.
1 hour before, avoid artificial light as much as possible.

Sources: Again, Huberman Labs youtube channel.

Hydration

The basic normal drinking volume is half an ounce per pound of body weight (source). “Normal” means no physical activity, and comfortable temperature. For me, that’s 2.25 liters a day.

After physical activity, drink 125% of the lost weight (source) minus what you drank. During physical activity, drink two gulps of water every 15 minutes.

Alcohol

It’s an absolute poison and you should not drink any at all. That’s it. There’s no caveat, nor expectations, no nothing. (source)

Daily training

Training every day is essential. You can do as little as 3 times 20 seconds of high-intensity training (source).

I started by doing 5 pushups, 5 squats, and 5 pushups routine 4 times a day, then after a while it became 10, 10, 10, 6 times a day. This massively increased my upper body strength. The starting and ending push-ups are positioned differently to work for different muscle groups.

This training fits in any schedule, any physical location. There’s no excuse to skip.

Also, you should train outside as much as you can. Don’t train in a gym if it can be avoided. Training outside in harsh conditions gives you a massive endurance boost and has multiple health benefits.

Cold showers

There is tons and tons of evidence now that cold showers are highly beneficial for health and performance. All you need is to do a 30-second shower on your head and your upper back 5 days a week for 2 weeks once in a while.

The key with cold water is to expose yourself in 3 steps. First, quickly get wet and 30 seconds. Then, shower with colder water for 10 to 15 seconds and wait another 30 seconds. After that, you’ll be ready for longer exposure.

Sources: Book - What Doesn’t Kill Us by Scott Carney. Huberman Labs YouTube channel. The Wim Hof Method.

Nutrition

Immense topic. It was very hard to find my way around but those videos helped me immensely: The “Skinny Fat” Solution, 10 Foods You Never Knew Had THIS Much Protein!, The #1 Diet to Lose Fat, The CHEAPEST Meal Plan to Lose Fat.

As always, I wanted an easy-to-implement solution that required minimal effort. That’s what worked for me: Once in a while, switch your most sugary food, for a protein-rich food. For example, I switched my afternoon honey-added yogurt and my morning yogurt chestnut cereal bowl for an egg and cheese sandwich and nature oatmeals with powdered hemp and a smoothie.

With that simple change, I went from 25% to 19% body fat in 8 weeks and that number is still going down monthly.

Back Pain

If you engage in any level of physical activity, you will experience significant back pain that hinders

your regular movements. Save this video for that time: Athlean X - How to Fix “Low Back” Pain.

Anger

Acting in anger has many downsides and the very few positive consequences are heavily outweighed by all the unforeseen negative ones. What’s even more important is that acting angrily takes a lot of energy, and stresses our body considerably.

Acting in a cool composed manner at all times will allow you to use this energy elsewhere instead of draining your reserves. Depending on how angrily you react in general, this can have a significant impact on you. For me, the difference was massive.

With a single read-through of the book: The Cow in the Parking Lot, I was able to eliminate all my angry behavior. And I felt I had even more energy than before from day to day.

Books

All the following books were life-changing for me. Here are my key takeaways.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor

Chewing food, and breathing through the nose changes the shape of your skull (even if you’re 80 years old) which solves many health issues.

You should always breathe through the nose except during very intense physical activity.

Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

Whatever hell you come from or are in at the moment doesn’t matter. If you get up, move, and work hard, you’ll get out of it.

Whatever excuses you make for yourself are irrelevant and no one cares about them. Just move your butt.

Never Finished by David Goggins

Always give your very best at everything you do. Always strive for improvement.

What Doesn’t Kill Us, Scott Carney

Training outside in changing conditions gives you massive endurance training and accounts for about half of your training. So, train outside whatever the weather! Also, cold showers and breathing exercises will change your life.

The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal

Stress is good! Use it to move forward.

Immune by Philipp Dettmer

By the founder of In a Nutshell. I’ve read it 3 times. It’s just too good (and complicated). That being said, now I know what’s going on when I’m sick or hurt, and I can have a pro/anti-vax conversation and know what the heck I’m talking about.

The Cow in the Parking Lot

This book is so effective. I’ve read it once, and I was able to eliminate all my angry behaviors. It did require some honest introspection.