Biohacking habits to increase your performance that you can implement today!

in #health7 years ago (edited)

Biohacking habits to increase your performance that you can implement today!

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In this article, I want to cover the habits that help me deal with daily routines, challenges and achieve my goals. I called them biohacking, because it refers to making changes to your lifestyle to feel at your best and become a better man.

If you find hard to implement all of them or at least a few, start small. Choose one that is easier to implement into your life, and as soon as it gets a part of your life and don't require your attention to do it, proceed with another one. I am an adept of easy and minimalistic life, so to proceed you will not need any special equipment, or wait for anything to be delivered to you - all you need is your body and desire to get better.

Sitting is the new smoking, quit it

Researchers have found that prolonged sitting dramatically increases the risk of developing heart diseases, type 2 diabetes and various type of cancer. A good upgrade for your workplace would be a standing desk, which were proven to increase productivity. Google offers standing desk as a part of their employee-wellness program, Facebook has more than 250 employees using standing desks, and many other companies implemented standing desks as an alternative to the traditional sitting desks.

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Although standing is proved to be the winning habit over sitting, it is inevitable to sit, and when you do you want to make sure you have a good posture. There are numerous risks associated with a poor posture:

  • Poor posture can impede the ability of the lungs to expand.
  • Poor posture is the main risk factor in many athletic injuries.
  • Increases the stress on the ligaments.
  • Causes Scoliosis which might require a expensive and dangerous surgery.
  • And many more, trust me you don't want that.

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    Try avoiding sitting in same position for more than 30 minutes, take breaks and stretch.

    Intermittent fasting

    Intermittent fasting(IF) is one of the most popular trends in health and fitness industry. It is meant to help loose weight, improve health and simplify one's lifestyle. Numerous studies has shown that it can have strong impacts on your body and brain (1, 2, 3).

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    Intermittent fasting does not restrict which foods you should eat, but rather when you should eat. The two most common methods are daily 16 hour fasting, or 24 hours fasting twice per week. I personally keep the 16/8 fasting schedule. I move my breakfast to 12:30, and take my last meal at 20:30 so I have an 8 hour eating window. It is very convenient for people who have a lot of things to do in the morning. You can have some extra sleep and extra energy before your first meal.

    Here are some main heath benefits of IF :

  • Weight loss: IF can help you loose belly fat without having to restrict your diet.
  • Hormone Regulation: One of the most appreciated effects is the increase growth hormone, which is crucial for our bodies.
  • Cognitive function: IF increases the secretion of a hormone called BDNF and also protects from Alzheimer's disease.
  • Cancer: Several studies on animals show that fasting may help prevent cancer.
  • Insulin resistance: Fasting is helping prevent type 2 diabetes by lowering blood sugar and fasting insuling levels.
  • The list is incomplete, but I will cover more about intermittent fasting in a separate article as it requires more attention!

    Avoid blue light before bedtime

    Did you know that blue light harms your natural sleep cycle? Artificial blue light emitted from LED & LCD light bulbs are quite a problem for your sleep and health overall.

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    Is very important that our circadian clock is synchronized with our sleep. Studies have shown that blue light suppresses melatonin which can cause a circadian delay. Modern phones and laptops have blue light filter out of the box, which can be set to start with sunset and stop with sunrise, according to your location. If you want to go more advance, there are glasses that block blue light, which are meant to be worn in the evening.

    Cold showers

    For some, it might sound wild, but cold showers are a pretty good habit to adopt.

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    I will simply list a few benefits of a cold shower, and you make conclusions:

  • Reduce Stress: Cold showers are increasing your adaptation to stressful situations, lower uric acid and boost levels of Glutathione in your blood.
  • Hair and skin health: Hot water is drying our skin, when cold water helps tighten your cuticles and pores, will "seal" the pores in the skin and scalp preventing dirt from getting in.
  • Weight loss: Our bodies contain white and brown fat. Brown fat is considered good fat which generates heat to warm our body, respectively cold showers will activate brown fat activity.
  • Testosterone increase: According to this study, heat affects our DNA, RNA & protein synthesis in the male testes. This is the reason men testicles hang outside of body when it's warm, to stay cool.
  • Improves blood circulation: When exposed to cold, our body sends blood down to our organs to keep them warm. This stimulation is good for your overall cardiovascular health.
  • These are the main reasons to take cold showers, but the list goes on. A shower is something we already have implemented in our lifestyle, we just need to adjust the right temperature. You can start little, decreasing the temperature over time.

    I will cover these and more healthy habits in greater depth in future series. Appologize for the use of upvoting bots, but I want to get my articles seen to the community to gain some followers, and when I will have a followers base I will not need it.

    Stay hydrated and be helpful to the ones around you!

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    Great article. Thanks for the tips!

    I can vouge for the cold showers for sure.

    Yeah !!!
    Great Post I have been resteem your post.
    dont forget to upvote my latest post on @muhammadzainijoi and resteem my post

    iam also same filling about

    When you want to Flag them but see their Steem power lol

    Great stuff @krood! While I didn't necessarily learn anything I didn't already know, it's always great to have a friendly reminder of how many variables there are that affect your health.


    Here is some new health information you may or may not have heard before.

    gah dam gah dam

    I like your screename so you get an upvote, your reply however is not fully computing in my brain...

    Lovely advice. I've already followed it for years.

    Alternative on sitting; if you can squat on the floor instead in a natural position

    I was thinking about an alternative to sitting all day. Is good to have some ideas to implement as soon as possible. I think that some kind of mobile table that we can move up and down depending on if we are going to be sitting or standing could be useful.

    Great post. I find myself falling short in many of these areas.

    Great article and I agree with all your points.

    I'd like to recommend adding conscious breathing techniques to your list as it's, in my opinion, the #1 Biohacking habit.

    I've been doing the Wim Hof Method breathing techniques over the last few months and it's an absolute game changer.

    More energy, less stress and it can even augment your immune response! Add that with cold showers or even better, cold baths, and wow, undescribable.

    For more info I highly recommend visiting: https://www.wimhofmethod.com/

    I'm just getting into it, and I don't have much personal experience with breathing techniques. I am freediving now, therefore I do CO2 tables to train static apnea.

    I definitely think it's beneficial for free diving. After doing a couple of rounds of the Wim Hof Method I feel like I can hold my breath forever.

    That's really interesting. Makes sense though. Oxygen feeds the brain, after all.

    wim hof is a bit crazy but there is so much reason to his madness.
    His cold therapy is also so powerful. Brown fat production is so beneficial.

    Yes, agreed, he's crazy, but the gold baths and breathing techniques are not crazy, they work!! He has even proved it on many occasions.

    Incredible human being.

    Great post. Didn't know about the cold showers or blue light... def gonna start taking cold showers.

    krood is good.
    krood is part
    of the neighborhood.

    Are you a doctor?

    I agree with your last sentence. "Stay hydrated", that is great advice.

    I would also like to add that butter is healthier than margarine.

    the fasting is a cool thing, I do absolute fasting(dry fasting) once in a few months for about 36 hours, super beneficial

    Most experts don't agree on dry fasting. Water fasting is much better you actually need fluids to remove toxins..

    Yeah, that sounds risky to me. Water is nothing but beneficial to the body, being dehydrated is really damaging.

    Apparently, one dry fast day is equal to three water fasting days!

    Check this guy explaining some benefits.


    I never tried dry fasting, but I will give it a shot

    Wow, and I thought I new it all, I am aware of the benefits of autophagy, intermittent fasting and water fasts and went through it a couple of times, but soft dry fasting and hard dry fasting was a new for me. I knew from Mustafa Mohammad who attended Mr. Olympia a couple of times that he dry fasted before every competition for 3 days and told me how crazy you get, but I thought it was just to loose the remaining water in the skin. Thank you so much for this eye opening video, this was my missing link! If i knew earlier I wouldn't go for a 7.5 day water fast but for a 3 day dry fast which would be equivalent to a 9 day water fast!
    Saw the ads of this guy for his program on instagram, didn't know he had such an informative youtube channel too.

    Yes actually

    I'm guilty of sitting down too much. I really ought to get up and walk around every hour or so.