8 Simple Hacks to Improve Your Health

Summary

In this engaging video, Ali Abdaal, a former doctor turned entrepreneur and productivity expert, shares eight simple and actionable hacks to improve your overall health. These hacks are designed to fit seamlessly into a busy lifestyle, covering areas such as sleep, physical activity, stress management, body composition analysis, protein intake, and more. Through a blend of personal experiences, expert insights, and scientific studies, Ali offers practical advice to bolster both mental and physical wellbeing. Each hack is evidence-based and aimed at making health improvements effortless and sustainable for everyone.

Highlights

• Ali Abdaal emphasizes the supreme importance of health over other life aspects like career and wealth. 🌟
• Meet the 321 sleep method: Stop eating 3 hours, drinking 2 hours, and screens 1 hour before bed. 🛏️
• Get moving with a treadmill under your desk – multitask with steps while you work! 🚶‍♂️
• Meditation isn’t just for yogis; it’s a stress-buster and mental booster. 🧘‍♀️
• DEXA scans take the guesswork out of body composition and encourage targeted fitness. 📉
• Protein power: Boost your intake effortlessly with a morning shake. 🥤
• Stay limber and light with daily stretching routines for better physical health. 🤸‍♂️
• Remembering pills can be tricky, but a dose organizer solves the problem! 💊

Key Takeaways

• Good health is vital for a fulfilling life, transcending material wealth and achievements.
• Improving sleep quality can be simplified with the 321 method: stop eating 3 hours, drinking fluids 2 hours, and screens 1 hour before bed.
• Sedentary lifestyles are hazardous; incorporating more steps daily can significantly reduce health risks.
• Mindfulness meditation effectively reduces stress and enhances focus and emotional wellbeing.
• Regular DEXA scans provide precise body composition tracking, facilitating better health and fitness planning.
• Adequate protein intake is crucial for muscle growth and can be automated with a morning shake.
• Flexibility and mobility exercises reduce injury risks and improve cardiovascular health.
• Consistency in supplement intake is made easier with organized pill boxes.
• A simple and evidence-based skincare routine can be life-changing.

Overview

Health often takes a backseat when life's demands surge, but Ali Abdaal sets out to change this narrative with eight practical health hacks. By integrating productivity principles into personal health strategies, Ali shares valuable insights drawn from books, experts, and personal experiments to make maintaining health both manageable and automatic.

For those glued to their desks, Ali proposes incorporating more steps into daily life with simple hacks like using a treadmill desk or opting to walk for local errand runs. This approach not only fights the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle but also contributes significantly to one’s mental and physical wellbeing.

Ali’s journey also touches upon the importance of meditation, regular body composition assessments via DEXA scans, and ensuring adequate protein intake. The combination of these strategies forms a comprehensive approach to health that caters to modern life’s hectic pace while promoting a sustainable and evidence-based health routine.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Health Importance Health is the foundational aspect of life, crucial to enjoying wealth, career, relationships, and hobbies. Despite recognizing its importance, health often becomes neglected when life gets busy. Sleep, diet, and exercise are usually compromised first. The author, a former doctor and now an entrepreneur and productivity expert, is now focusing on applying productivity principles to health and fitness.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Health Improvement Journey In this chapter titled 'Health Improvement Journey,' the author discusses their exploration into various aspects of health—physical, mental, and emotional—by reading books, working with an online health coach, and interviewing experts. The chapter focuses on distilling complex health information into simple, evidence-based strategies that can be easily integrated into daily life. The author intends to share eight effective health hacks that have significantly improved their own life, hoping that readers will find actionable insights applicable to their own lives as well.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Sleep Hack: The 321 Method The chapter discusses the '321 Method' as a simple way to improve sleep quality, as proposed by an online fitness coach. It highlights the importance of not eating 3 hours before sleeping to prevent nocturnal awakenings and improve sleep quality, referencing a study linking late eating with disturbed sleep. This method addresses the common issue of insufficient sleep among adults as reported by the CDC.
• 02:00 - 04:00: Step Count and Physical Activity This chapter discusses how certain behaviors can impact sleep quality. It emphasizes reducing liquid intake, including water, 1 to 2 hours before sleeping to avoid disrupting sleep quality. It also advises cutting out screen usage an hour before bed due to the stimulating effect of bright screens, such as phones, which are designed to be engaging and can make falling asleep more difficult.
• 04:00 - 06:00: Managing Stress and Meditation The chapter 'Managing Stress and Meditation' discusses techniques to improve sleep and reduce stress by making night-time routines more relaxing. It suggests using a Kindle or physical books instead of phones in bed, as the backlight from a Kindle isn't as disruptive to sleep patterns compared to phone screens. Additionally, reading fiction is recommended over non-fiction before sleep due to its ability to relax the mind instead of stimulating it with thought-provoking content. The speaker also shares personal insights, like monitoring steps taken on average as a way of promoting physical activity and managing overall stress levels.
• 06:00 - 09:00: DEXA Scans for Health Monitoring The chapter titled 'DEXA Scans for Health Monitoring' discusses the speaker's personal experience with significant weight gain after transitioning from a full-time medical job to a sedentary lifestyle of making YouTube videos. The speaker notes a correlation between reduced physical activity and weight gain, highlighting the broader health risks associated with prolonged sitting. This situation is reinforced by research that compares sitting to smoking, emphasizing the dangers of physical inactivity as a major health risk.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Protein Intake Automation The chapter titled 'Protein Intake Automation' discusses the benefits of walking at least 10,000 steps a day, which has been supported by various studies. One study, a meta-analysis of 15 studies, indicates that more steps per day correlate with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality. Another study highlights that reaching 10,000 steps daily can significantly decrease anxiety, depression, anger, fatigue, confusion, and overall mood distress in sedentary overweight individuals. Additionally, increasing daily steps by 500 can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by approximately 6%. The author shares their personal strategy of employing simple hacks to consistently meet the 10,000 steps daily goal.
• 11:00 - 13:00: Flexibility and Mobility The chapter "Flexibility and Mobility" discusses simple ways to increase daily physical activity, particularly for those who work at a desk. The author shares personal experience with using a treadmill, specifically the walking pad C2, under a standing desk, emphasizing its significant benefits despite its cost. Having used the treadmill consistently, they highlight the achievement of walking 255 kilometers over several months without needing to leave the house. Additionally, the author prefers taking Zoom calls while walking, promoting the idea that small adjustments like these can contribute significantly to daily exercise.
• 13:00 - 14:00: Consistency with Supplements In this chapter, the author discusses the habit of walking to maintain daily health goals, specifically achieving 10,000 steps a day. The author prefers walking, especially for distances around 40 minutes away, as a strategy to stay active. During these walks, listening to podcasts or music makes the experience enjoyable while also serving as a form of exercise. The convenience of technology, such as an Apple Watch or smartphone, makes it easy to track daily steps. The author notes a conscious effort to increase daily step counts after setting this goal. Additionally, the author mentions getting blood tests done earlier this year, hinting at a broader focus on health and wellness.
• 14:00 - 15:00: Skincare Routine In the chapter titled "Skincare Routine," the narrator shares an anecdote from a conversation with their doctor, who pointed out elevated stress markers during a discussion about test results. Despite not sensing stress in their daily life of creating YouTube content, the narrator's packed schedule and the demands of running a business indicated otherwise. The doctor suggests that their lifestyle might be contributing to stress, contrary to the narrator's perception of having a less stressful job. The chapter might explore themes of self-awareness, the hidden impacts of stress, and balancing health with professional commitments.

8 Simple Hacks to Improve Your Health Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so health is arguably the single most important area of our life without our health we can have all the money in the world the best career the best relationships the most fun hobbies and we won't be able to enjoy any of them because our health is miserable but even though we might know intellectually that our health is important when it comes to how we spend our time it's often the first thing that goes work in life gets busy and the first thing we do is we stop sleeping properly we stop eating well we stop exercising because who's got time for those things now as a former doctor turned entrepreneur and productivity expert I've been on a mission recently to apply the principles of productivity to my health and fitness
• 00:30 - 01:00 and wellbeing so I've been reading a bunch of books about health working with an online health coach and interviewing a bunch of experts on my podcast all about physical health mental health and even emotional health but a lot of the stuff that I've learned can be pretty dense and so I've been trying my best to translate the things that I've learned into simple actionable evidence-based hacks that can seamlessly integrate into my life so that the important aspects of my health are an autopilot so I don't have to think too hard about them and so in the video I want to share eight of these Health hacks that have improved my life and I hope you'll find something to take away from these that you can apply to your life as well now according to
• 01:00 - 01:30 the CDC one in three adults in the US report not getting enough sleep and not getting enough rest in the day I suspect the actual number is higher than this because I very rarely meet people who feel as if they're getting enough sleep now one simple Hack That I Found for improving my sleep in a very easy to remember way is the 321 method which comes from my online fitness coach down and go so the three in the method means to stop eating 3 hours before sleeping this study for example showed that eating within 3 hours of your normal bedtime was associated with nocturnal Awakening which basically means that you're waking up at night and so your sleep quality is reduced so that was the three then we have the two which is to
• 01:30 - 02:00 stop drinking liquids 2 hours before sleep now you might know that drinking caffeine in the evening is likely to disrupt your sleep but actually drinking any kind of fluid even water 1 to 2 hours before sleeping has been associated with lower Sleep Quality as well and then the one is to cut out screen usage 1 hour before sleeping and again there's a bunch of studies that show that if you look at a bright screen 1 hour before sleeping that's likely to affect your sleep quality and especially when it comes to phones and stuff the the over stimulation that we get from our phones which is literally what our phones are designed to do is something that can make falling asleep a lot harder than it necessarily needs to be so the way that I person person Al
• 02:00 - 02:30 combat this is that I try my best to just not use my phone in bed and instead I have a Kindle and also a physical book on my bedside table there was a study that showed that the backlight from a Kindle doesn't really affect sleep very much and I find that generally my sleep is better if I'm reading fiction rather than non-fiction so fiction helps my brain switch off it helps me immerse myself in a new sort of new fantasy land and stuff whereas non-fiction when I'm reading it in bed I'm always thinking about my business I'm highlighting stuff I feel a need to take notes and it's stimulating my brain in a way that fiction really doesn't all right so I've got this graph from 2020 and this shows how many steps on average I was taking
• 02:30 - 03:00 each month and you can see over here in August 2020 there is a significant dip and this was when I first took a break from my full-time job of being a doctor and ended up sitting on this desk all day making YouTube videos now this is a graph of my body weight and you can see that there is a fantastic correlation between when I stopped taking all these steps and suddenly my weight absolutely ballooned and I became really fat so if you're watching this video you probably have a job where you sit down all day and you've heard this before sitting is the new smoking and they've done so many studies about this where basically they show that physical inactivity is this golden bullet that just increases your risk of dying from all sorts of bad
• 03:00 - 03:30 things and as you might have heard taking 10,000 plus steps a day is generally a very good thing this meta analysis of 15 studies for example showed that taking more steps per day was associated with a progressively lower risk of all cause mortality this study showed that in sedentary overweight individuals 10,000 steps a day significantly lowered anxiety depression anger fatigue confusion and total mood distress and this study for example showed that for every 500 steps you increase per day the risk of cardiovascular disease decreases by about 6% and so what I've tried to do is add as many simple hacks to my life to get get to my 10,000 steps a day goal so
• 03:30 - 04:00 firstly the single best thing that I found for this is actually to get a treadmill underneath my standing desk it was about $300 but it was totally worth it it's the walking pad C2 I have no relationship with them at all but would recommend you can check it out and I've had this treadmill under my desk for a few months and I've used it 148 times and walked 255 km in that time in fact today according to my Apple watch I have racked up about 5,000 steps already and haven't really left the house so the treadmill has been a surprisingly simple hack that's actually let me get in more steps in each day secondly wherever possible I like to take Zoom calls while
• 04:00 - 04:30 I'm walking thirdly if I have to go somewhere for dinner or something and it's within about 40 minutes of where I live I'll often choose to walk rather than drive or take the train and usually while I'm walking and listen to a podcast or something but it again it just gets the steps in because 40 minutes there and back basically gets me to about 10,000 steps and it's just been helpful to monitor it with my Apple watch you can do this like basically any phone you don't need a smart Smartwatch but every phone has a step counter in it as well so if you have your phone in your pocket you can see how many steps you've done and since becoming conscious of the fact that I'm trying to get 10,000 steps a day I have increased my step count each day okay so earlier this year I got a bunch of blood tests done
• 04:30 - 05:00 and then when the doctor was kind of talking me through the results afterwards he asked if I have a particularly stressful job and I said well no I don't really have a stressful job I just sit around making YouTube videos and then he said okay but has anyone around you ever said that you need to take a break and I was like yeah everyone around me tells me I need to take a break and he was like I thought so because your stress markers are elevated and that is like really bad for someone of your age I was like wait what my stress markers are elevated I don't feel stressed I don't feel like I have a particularly stressful job but then I look at my calendar and it's like back to back one thing to another to another to another to another and this whole like running your own business thing I thought it would give me more free time
• 05:00 - 05:30 than kind of working in medicine but actually it gave me a lot less free time than working in medicine and there is that nice quote which is that you know entrepreneurs work 60 hours a week to avoid having to work 40 hours a week I think that's very true and again chances are if you're watching this channel I suspect your stress levels are high as well because you're probably busy you like to be productive you've got lots of things going on and what the doctor said is that I should meditate more and I was like meditation like who cares but then I saw some studies and those studies showed that if you meditate it reduces your blood pressure it reduces your cortisol levels which is a stress hormone it reduces your heart rate reduces your cyto kind levels which is a
• 05:30 - 06:00 mark of inflammation it can also increase your self-compassion and your attention and your focus and so there's just like a mountain of evidence saying that meditation is good for you and so I was like okay fine I'll do some meditation and then I thought okay what app should I use for meditation because obviously I want it to be easy and obviously the name headspace came to mind because they basically dominate the space and so we reached out to them and they very kindly agreed to sponsor this video so thank you headspace for sponsoring this video headspace is great I've been slowly working my way through the introductory course and it's nice cuz you can choose different voices to guide you through the meditation and doing just a 5 to 10 minute meditation the first thing in the morning before I
• 06:00 - 06:30 do my journaling and before I get my coffee I've actually been finding is really helpful one thing that it does is that it helps me kind of connect to the here and now a little bit more it's like you're closing your eyes you're imagining like experiencing the sounds of nature around you or whatever that might be and it's just like a moment of respite before the craziness of the day starts and it's becomes something I look forward to after I have my shower I have a hot shower then I turn into cold then I get changed and then I'm like cool 5 or 10 minutes I can definitely find time to do 5 to 10 minutes of meditation on headspace the other cool thing about headspace is that it's very non-judgmental they basically say that
• 06:30 - 07:00 there's no right or wrong approach to meditation and mindfulness you can do whatever works for you and everyone seems to have a different routine a different frequency a different favorite type of content and that's totally fine now if you're interested in trying out meditation and you want to use headspace you can click the link in the video description or use the QR code on screen and that will let you sign up for a completely free 60-day trial so you can literally try it every day for 2 months and you can see if you Vibe with it I've been vibing with it so much that I now pay the monthly subscription for headspace and it's totally worth it so if you'd like to give it a go you can try it out you can see if you like it and you'd also be supporting the channel as well so thank you so much space for sponsoring this video okay this is a
• 07:00 - 07:30 really cool one this is a hack that I've been recommending to literally all of my friends and about half of them have done it and they've said oh my God this was gamechanging and it's going to sound weird but that is to do a dexa scan and a dexa scan is basically a full body X-ray and in hospitals we use dexa scans to measure the bone density of patients who might be having osteoporosis but the really cool thing about a dexa scan is that it can tell you how much muscle you have and also how much fat you have and also the distribution of the muscle and the fat around your body first thing to say is that they are somewhat expensive well you know it's about $120 to get a Dexter scan depending on on where you go
• 07:30 - 08:00 I personally think that is absolutely worth it because any amount of money you can spend on your health if it changes your behavior will pay dividends further down the line but obviously your mileage may vary depending on how much disposable income you have but every single person that I've recommended a dexa scan to who has done the dexa scan has been like oh my God this is the best money I have ever spent on my health because within like 15 minutes the scan will tell you where your body fat is and you might think that you're pretty skinny like I thought I was like in reasonable shape but then turns out it was actually 25% body fat and most of it was in the abdomen it was in the visceral adapost tissue and it's the leral adapost tissue that's most highly
• 08:00 - 08:30 correlated with cardiovascular disease and strokes and like diabetes and all of the bad things that can happen later in life and so since doing that first scan about a year and a half ago I've now been doing Dexter scans about every 6 months and it's been an amazing way of actually tracking my progress in the gym tracking my progress with weight loss and seeing how the numbers are changing over time and yeah you could use scales and you could use those body fat scales you get in the gym but those are never really accurate so after my first excess scan I realized I had all this adapost tissue and we made a plan to lose some weight but then 6 months later later I found I did lose a lot of weight but
• 08:30 - 09:00 most of it was muscle because I didn't have enough protein and because I didn't work out enough and then I was like oh my God like okay I can literally see that I've lost about 2 kg of muscle and only 1 kg of fat that's kind of annoying and then we made a plan based on that Dexter scan and then 6 months later I gained 1 and 1/2 kg of muscle and lost 1 and 1/2 kg of fat which was very nice and for me personally I love the fact that I have access to these numbers and I love the fact that the numbers don't lie and just doing a DEA scan every 6 months has been the single most worthwhile expense I've ever made for my health if you're based in the UK the company I use is body scan SC they've got a bunch of different places around
• 09:00 - 09:30 London if not just search Dexter scan your location I'm and I'm sure you can find a place but genuinely Dex scans are absolutely sick okay speaking of protein intake because that first time around for the first 6 months I didn't eat enough protein and I also didn't work out enough and I actually lost 2 kg of muscle what I've realized is I need to automate my protein intake now the amount of protein you need depends massively on who you ask where you look at the source and there doesn't seem to be much of a consensus in the scientific literature about it the World Health Organization for example says you need 0.83 g of protein per kilog of body weight per day but most personal trainers and fitness experts that I've
• 09:30 - 10:00 spoken to say that that is nowhere near enough to actually build muscle if you are trying to build muscle and so for me I'm roughly aiming for around 1.5 to 2 gam of protein per kilogram of body weight and this is actually annoyingly hard to get in in my diet because I tend to skip breakfast and then like lunch and dinner it's like I have to actively think about protein but one thing that I started to do to automate my protein intake again based on advice from my fitness coach dad go it's really simple it's basically to just have a protein shake in the morning and when I have a protein shake in the morning I get at least 40 gr of protein sometimes 50 depending on which product I use and now
• 10:00 - 10:30 it's way easier to hit my protein goal because if I just have like a 30 G serving of protein for lunch and then a 30 G serving of protein for dinner that's like0 G that's pretty reasonable now the two different types of protein shake that I use are firstly heel I use heel black 400 calories 40 g of protein in the morning if I feel like making it or if I'm on the go and I don't feel like making it I'll use the Optimum Nutrition pre-made protein shake which is 50 g of protein for 300 calories which is quite nice no affiliate relationship or anything with these Brands although heu do sponsor some of the other videos on the channel but they're not sponsoring this one so whatevers but ever since I started automating my protein in Shake by
• 10:30 - 11:00 literally just having a shake first thing in the morning I have actually been hitting my protein goals broadly and I've seen that reflected on the dexa scan you know the the scan I had a year after my first one showed that I gained 1.5 kg of muscle and lost 1.5 kg of fat and in those 6 months I made an active effort to up my protein intake all right next we come to the idea of flexibility and Mobility now I'm not at all very flexible I'm not at all very mobile but there have been some pretty reasonable studies that show that if you do have a baseline level of flexibility and Mobility it helps reduce the risk of injury when you're exercising which is always a thing and for example this meta
• 11:00 - 11:30 analysis found that the benefits of stretching in middle-aged to older adults reduced arterial stiffness heart rate and blood pressure and improved vascular endothelial functioning and so if stretching is good for Middle AG to older adults it's probably good for younger adults as well now I've tried so many ways to incorporating stretching into my life but two of them have so far worked the first one is that every now and then I will randomly put on a stretching routine on YouTube and my favorite channel for this is juice and Toya who have like great videos with stretch routines and things like that so that's great in particular I love their routines for tight hamstrings and hip flexes which are the two areas I
• 11:30 - 12:00 struggle with most and recently I've also started using an app called pliability uh again like no relationship with this app at all they do not know I exist but if pability if you're watching this let me know but basically it's an app that every day just gives you a stretching routine to do and it's like a 20-minute thing that I do in the evening I just roll out my Lululemon yoga mat and for 20 minutes before bed I just Pro my phone up and it's like nice because it's very static stretches it's like you're in each pose and you're just holding it passively for like 3 minutes at a time and there's nice relaxing music and the production value is nice and they occasionally have dog and stuff that go into the frame and it's a very
• 12:00 - 12:30 nice way to wind down for the evening and so it sort of doubles as a bit of a meditative thing as well because I can help switch my mind off but then it's also helping me improve my flexibility and Mobility through these sort of passive stretches that don't take much effort all right the penultimate hack is one of these so I used to really struggle with actually being consistent with taking my pills I take a couple of supplements I take the heights smart supplement which is a big multivitamin thing that has like blueberries and stuff I take the height smart probiotic which is a probiotic and I take a couple of bits of medication like f a minoxidil for my hair loss but I would always be
• 12:30 - 13:00 very inconsistent in taking these because it wasn't built into my routine until I realized that you know when I was working as a doctor we would give these dosset boxes to our patients and it would help them take their pills and so I just thought one day I'm just going to buy one of these from Amazon and so I bought one of these from Amazon and now it helps me stay consistent with taking my pills which is fantastic so if you take any supplements or pills or anything and you're having to bring them up manually it's such a faf it's so nice just being able to once a week just fill this up for the whole week and it's I know I for I forgot to take them yesterday because even then I still
• 13:00 - 13:30 forget sometimes but today is Friday I Che him today this morning and then the final hack is my productive and evidence-based skincare routine and this basically involves just three products I've talked to a bunch of dermatologists and this is broadly the stuff that they recommend and I've got all the details about that in this video over here which is my evidence-based skincare routine so if you're interested then do check that video out and I promise it will change the way you approach your skincare routine so thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye