10 Easy Biohacks of 2024

swellgalveston
Oct 7, 2024
6 min read

If you’ve watched my videos, you know that these are some of my favorite things, but not only are they my favorites, these are things that are evidence-based and proven over and over again to be effective for your overall mental, emotional, and physical health and longevity.

So yes, you may want to look better and feel better, but ultimately you want to be able to do the things in your life that you want to do, right? You don’t want to be held back, and therefore, we cannot take our health for granted. All of the things that I’m going to mention today are so easy to integrate that there’s really no excuse not to do them.

I’m not asking to spend hours a day, rather, focus on these simple strategies that you can easily integrate into your life and make huge improvements in your health.

10 biohacks you should try this year:

1. Track your heart rate variability

Track your heart rate variability. Essentially, this you’re tracking your vagal tone. There are many options: Whoop, Oura, Fitbit, or an Apple Watch, just to name a few.

These allow you to assess your heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and readiness for the day. This allows you to make very intentional changes in your life. Did I sleep well? Did I eat well? How much stress am I under? You can track the trends of your overall health and how it is affecting your resiliency day to day. This is one of the best objective measures that we can use to assess vagal tone, track your overall health, and be able to ultimately make changes accordingly.

2. Optimizing your sleep

Sleep should be a non-negotiable, but I’m going to give you my quick tips for optimizing your sleep.

Number one, get blue light blockers. You want to wear them after 7 PM because, realistically, you’re going to be using your phone or your TV, so get blue light blockers to eliminate the blue light at night. The blue light is ultimately stimulating the receptors in your eye to signal that it is morning.
Number two, when you wake up in the morning, you either want to get 20 minutes of natural sunlight within the first 20 minutes or if you can’t do that and that’s not realistic, get a SAD light that has at least 10,000 lux and set it up as you’re getting ready in the morning or brushing your teeth. You want to optimize your natural cortisol peak in the morning and, ultimately, your melatonin production that night.

This is really important for sleep optimization, and of course, there are many other sleep tips, but these are critical.

3. Vagus nerve stimulation

There are MANY ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, but one of my favorite ways Is the one and only diaphragmatic breathing. When we are breathing diaphragmatically, we are stimulating the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve runs right through the diaphragm, and we release a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, creating a relaxation response.

You can tap into breathing anywhere, anytime, and for most people, it is a very effective tool in regulating your nervous system. Theren are countless exercises that you can do that are extremely effective. Nonetheless, you want to think about how you can regulate your nervous system as we approach the New Year. Never too early to make a change!

4. Lymphatic drainage

This is one of the easiest things you can do because you can basically do it anywhere, including in the shower. You can do it right before or after you get out of the shower. It’s such a gentle and quick technique. You can do dry brushing, vibration plate, rebounding, or all of the above!

5. Strength training

This is something that I will say repeatedly; strength training is the best aging-gracefully strategy you can do! We want to think about how our muscles are influencing our longevity because as we get older, we lose muscle mass; that’s called sarcopenia.

Strength training and optimal protein intake are what allows us to maintain that muscle mass, optimize bone density, and be able to generate force, and adapt to life’s demands without injury. It is one of the most important things that I suggest and doing so in a safe program that includes mobility, strength, and stability all wrapped up in one so it doesn’t take a lot of extra time.

6. Walking

Walking always gets overlooked. It is one of the best forms of exercise that we can do. It is a low-intensity exercise that is great for fat loss, aerobic capacity, and emotional regulation because of its rhythmical nature. It’s what we’re designed to do from a movement perspective.

Work towards a movement mindset. Figure out how many steps you’re taking a day right now. Get your baseline and try to work towards getting 8,000–10,000 steps a day.

If you’re working out of the gym in between sets, take a few laps. If you are parking at the grocery store, park farther away. There are many ways to increase your steps, movement, and overall activity and stimulate your fascial tissue.

There are so many amazing things about walking. It’s often overlooked, but it is one of the most beneficial things you can do for your body.

7. Xlear

This is one of the best things that you can have in your toolbox, especially if you’ve suffered from more immune issues this year. This is such a great preventative and treatment that you could use.

I recommend the Daily Rinse, which you would do twice daily. If you are exposed to someone that’s sick, you’re in larger crowds, or if there’s some for a particular reason why you may need a little bit more of a boost — you’re at an airplane or you get sick, then you want to use the Rescue. Saline alone can actually dry out the nasal cavity so where the xylitol helps to kill bacteria and moisten the nasal passages.

8. Oral Health

Many toxins can be leeching into our bodies slowly from prior dental work or poor dental health. Step one is to remove all metal from your oral cavity, ceramic is better. There are a number of oral probiotics that will prevent further damage to enamel and reduce bacterial growth. You can start biohacking your oral health routine today and here's how:

First, do oil pulling with a quality coconut oil, this will draw debris and plaque away from the teeth. Use a fluoride-free nano toothpaste as most people are consuming fluoride in high amounts in the foods and water that are readily available to us. Make sure you start tongue scraping! Scraping your tongue can improve your oral hygiene will reduce bad breath, bacteria remaining in the mouth, and improved digestion.

9. Eat Like Our Ancestors

I talk about this all the time, but REAL food does not have ingredients, it IS the ingredients. It is so important to have the optimal amount of protein per day, organic and grass fed at that, to increase muscle mass, prevent sarcopenia, help with bone density, and help with lean body composition. We want lean muscle versus increased fat tissue because fat tissue is actually inflammatory. Almost every patient I’ve ever worked with is under-eating protein.

For women, the ideal body weight is a hundred pounds for the first five feet and five pounds per every inch after that. So if you were 5’3”, it would be 115 pounds. (115 g Protein/day)
For men, it’s 106 pounds for the first five feet and six pounds per inch after that. So, if you were 5’10” as a male, your ideal body weight would be 166. (166 g Protein/day)

This will vary among people depending on their goals and their activity, but this is a really good start.

10. Community and Connection

We are the sum of the five people that we spend the most time with, take a look at who you are spending your time with and ask yourself if this is who you would want to become. Build relationships, show up in support of people, accept people where they are, skip the drama. If you find yourself lonely, as most of us Americans are, find places to plug in. Show up even when it's awkward, show up authentically, and be consistent, you'll get there!

I hope you found at least one tip that you can apply as we are nearing the end of 2024, the best time to start is NOW!