- If you go on to social media, you'll see a lot of claims about what makes you healthy. You'll hear opinions from experts and scientists and random influencers. And oftentimes the person with the biggest following makes the biggest impact with their remarks. But what actually makes you healthy? Well, today I'm ranking the things that the internet says are important for your health and telling you what is real and what is garbage. Let's get started. And welcome back to Team Tully, building a lifelong athletes podcast. Thanks so much for stopping by, I really appreciate it. We haven't had the chance to meet yet. My name is Jordan Renke and I'm a dual board certified physician in sports and family medicine. And the goal of this podcast is to keep you active and healthy for life through actual M's form of education. And today we're making my ranking of the things I think really matter for your health. So once again, these are just my opinions. Everyone's list will vary, but this is what I like that. I asked AI to compile a list of what the internet thinks is important for health. And now I'm going to rank them. That's pretty much what I'm gonna do here. So let's see how it goes and let's dive in right now. All right, so the first one we're gonna look at here is alkaline water. These are in no particular order, but we're gonna look at them here. So alkaline water starting off hot. We're gonna start with an F. And why do I start with an F? Well, because this doesn't matter. So the way I'm thinking about this, S tier means like this is super, this is amazing. Like this is a guaranteed way. I know this affects your health and F tier is like, I doubt it does anything for you. That's kind of how I'm thinking about it. Or like doesn't matter, don't waste your time. So alkaline water starting off strong. I'm gonna give that an F because there's so many other things that are much more important than alkaline water. First of all, your body does a fantastic job of maintaining its normal pH in how we live, right? So you're in a very narrow range of like 7.35 to 7.45. And if you deviate out there, your body brings you back in. So like to try to purposely get outside there, you're just fighting against your body and your body's gonna win unless you're just eating massive amounts of like, I don't know, bicarb or something like that. Either way, it doesn't really do anything for you probably. It doesn't really change your pH. It doesn't really do a lot. Save your money, alkaline water, probably not worth it. So that's my opinion. Moving on next is to blood pressure management. Oh man, and blood pressure management, just A tier right away. And the reason why I'm not putting S tier is just 'cause there's probably a couple others. I'm reserving it. I reserve the right to shuffle them around. My blood pressure is so important. This is one that we know. Like we know, know, know that controlling blood pressure improves your outcomes, decreases your risk of heart attacks, strokes, all that stuff having a normal blood pressure, very, very important. That is gonna be very high up there, A tier. Highly recommend, have your blood pressure in check. Moving on next to cancer screening. So cancer screenings, I'm gonna go to B. I'm gonna go B here. Next, I don't think they're important. I do think they're very important. I'm a family medicine doctor by trade. We talk about these all the time. It's just that sometimes they're kind of random and sometimes per person, it doesn't necessarily equate to being as helpful. There's some cancer recommendations that don't really hold up to scrutiny if you look at them over long-term, but either way, I still think they're very important. You shouldn't be thinking about cancer, right? Cancer is one of the top causes of death in America. And so getting your cancer screenings is very, very helpful. Which ones you get and how frequent, that's why I'm putting in that B just 'cause it can vary based on your personal preference. But I would definitely recommend getting cancer screenings. This one matters because this actually can catch cancer or prevent it or prevent long-term mortality or morbidity from cancer. So that's why I'm giving that a solid B tier 'cause it's very, very important, debatable on certain things in terms of how frequent we should get them or when we get them, how early or how late. That's kind of why I'm dropping it down just to level for the controversy. But there's always gonna be controversy there. But that's what I think about that. Next, moving on to cholesterol. Cholesterol, I'm putting that right in with the A tier as well. Cholesterol is super important. I've had entire podcast seasons all about cholesterol. Everyone knows I talk about cholesterol all the time. Very, very important. We think about the things that cause heart disease. We talk about blood pressure. We talk about cholesterol, all those fun things. Really, really important. And so, yeah, that's a big one we're gonna talk about. I definitely give that a high grade. A grade, cholesterol should be important. I have lots and lots of material on cholesterol and how to think about it and tests to get, all that fun stuff. But super important, definitely wanna keep that there. Next, we're gonna talk about fasting. So different fasting reasons. I'm gonna go ahead and give this a C. I'm gonna give this a C ranking because I think it can be helpful for the right person, but it's not this huge thing. Online, people will say fasting is like the greatest thing in the world. Like it is, oh my gosh, it's magical. And from one side of things, for losing weight, it doesn't seem to be special at all. Like if you control your calories, like that's by far and way the most important thing. Fasting doesn't do anything magical, but then people will say like, well, it's like once you get into the ketosis and you start talking about the autophagy and all that stuff, maybe, maybe, maybe there's some merit to that. It definitely doesn't pan out in terms of literature now in terms of like, wow, these enormous benefits you're getting maybe that will come into light later. But right now I would say that fasting can be helpful from a dietary perspective to accomplish the goal you want, which is a decrease in your calories to lose weight or whatnot or maintain. But I don't think it's a magic bullet that everyone talks about and it's not as magical as most people say it is. So we're gonna give that solid C because there's definitely good evidence that it can be helpful, but it's not like the only thing. So that's why I'm gonna go there. Next we're gonna go, oh, juice cleanses. That's it, F tier right away. I think of the parks and artics straight to Joe, straight to F. So juice cleanses, I'm not like anti juices necessarily. I think majority of the time you don't ever need to consume juice in a human diet. That's not necessarily helpful, especially ones that have added sugar. If it's straight up fruit, we can talk about that. Whatever, I'm not like, we're not going there. But juicing fasts, meaning, hey, I'm gonna eat nothing but juice there. That's gonna magically heal me. It's gonna detox me and cleanse me. Like that's not really a thing. If you want to do that as a, like a focused, specific caloric reduction for some reason, for a very, very short amount of time, that'd be fine, but it's not doing anything magical to you. And so thinking that it's gonna magically kickstart your metabolism, you're gonna lose 30 pounds. Like it's not how it works. Although I see people online saying that is what happens. Maybe you lose weight. You definitely lose weight 'cause you're just decreasing your calories. You'll lose weight short term, but then guess what? That's coming right back there. So definitely not magical, F tier in that. I don't want people believing that it's actually gonna do something for them that it's not. Mouth breathing or so, or essentially nose breathing. I'm sorry, mouth taping at night. I'm gonna give that D tier. D tier, man, you look at the optimizers on the internet, you know, it's pretty much make it sound like I need to sleep every night with my mouth taped and that's it. And I'm not saying there's not something to that. I'm gonna step back here for a second. I think you, for some people, you can get maybe a better night's sleep. You can feel more storative. You can do whatever. So I'm not poo pooing it and there's definitely some data that shows it could be helpful. But in like the scheme of things of like where you should prioritize, like this is so low on my priority list. Like sleep is very, very important. We'll talk more about that later. But this specific measurement, people make it seem like if you do this, like you'll transform your life. And I'm not buying it yet. Who knows? Maybe it would have proven wrong and maybe we'll have to redo this again in a couple of years and it'll be totally different. But right now I'd say, hey, I'm fine with it. It's not gonna hurt you. You know, there's a low cost to it. So that's another big thing too. Like F tier things or F tier things because they're gonna like waste your time and money. This I'm not gonna say F tier 'cause you know maybe it does get improved benefit for you. And if you improve sleep, that's a great thing. But overall people making it seem like it's this magical thing that you have to do. I'm not quite there yet. So D tier on that. Next is spending time in nature. And spending time in nature, I'm gonna give that a solid, I'm gonna go B tier. I'm gonna go B tier on that. So spending time in nature is wonderful. I think it has lots and lots of benefits from a mental health perspective. There's something to just getting outside. I think we're made to be outside. And so I love that. I think it's gonna be very beneficial. Do I know like, is there data on this? Absolutely there's data on this. Do I think it's as strong in terms of like, if you had to pick between controlling blood pressure or controlling cholesterol and being outside, like it's not an either or, but like I'd probably pick those other ones first in terms of data I know will help you long-term. But very important nonetheless, being outside is wonderful, right? Everyone loves being outside. It's great, I love that. We're gonna go with there. No smoking is the next one. So quitting all tobacco products, that's gonna be A tier right up there with the other important things, with blood pressure and all that. So A tier, that is super important. And pretty much we know tobacco and smoking is terrible for you. Like smoking is like the worst thing. If you can stop doing that, it's like the biggest bang for your buck you can ever have. So I'm gonna make this A tier 'cause as a doctor it's my job to say, don't smoke, right? If I hear someone smoking, I have to talk to them. It's literally like inside my heart. I have to be like, "Hey, do you want help quitting? Like have you thought about this?" And everyone of them is like, "Yeah, I've thought about it, but it's hard, dude." Well, obviously it is. It's very hard and addictive, but that's a huge bang for your buck if you're smoking. If you're watching this, you're probably not smoking 'cause you're really in your health, but if you are, stop smoking. It's very important. So that's A tier, very important. Next is red light. Red light's gonna go down for me on D tier. D tier just 'cause once again, there is some evidence on there that it can do things. The problem in social media makes you think it can do everything, right? So most people are like, "Oh, red light, it'll cure cancer. It improves your insensitivity to a crazy degree." It says it does all of these things, but what does it really do? Well, there's smaller studies looking at what it is good for and what it's not good for. There are definitely medical uses for it. And I'm not pooh-poohing that saying it's not, that there's nothing there, but it's just definitely not as panacea. It's gonna magically heal you. So D tier 'cause if you go out and buy red light, then maybe I'm gonna go with F 'cause if it's a lot of money, but if you're using it and it was reasonably affordable, then it sets you back too much, then I'm okay with that. Next is exercise. And exercise, oh, exercise is S tier. Exercise is S tier. If you've learned anything by now, it's that I like exercise and I will always, always prescribe it and say it's good for you. We know that exercise is wonderful. And inside of exercise, we also have physical activity. So the physical activity guidelines, I talk about those all the time, right? Physical activity guidelines, we wanna get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 of vigorous with two days of resistance training. That's like the goal. And I would say an enormous amount of people in this world, specifically in America, are not getting nearly enough physical activity. Like if we just can hit the start of those guidelines, we are gonna be so much better off. So people are under-conditioned, they're in terrible shape, they do not get enough physical activity. If you can increase that, that is one of the things where I think we have the biggest impact on people. If we could get more exercise, we would help all our health metrics. If exercise were a pill, it would be the most prescribed pill of all time, guaranteed, just because it does so many amazing things. We wanna talk about blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, mental health, like literally everything, you name it, exercise improves. And so for me, physical activity, exercise, S tier, absolutely. Next, moving on to biohacking. And it has to be very important. I'm gonna go straight to F on biohacking. And so that might give me some hate. And it's not 'cause I don't enjoy biohacking or people talking about it. It's just that I don't want you to think that to be healthy, you need to do a biohacking approach, meaning we have to optimize every single thing. People like that, and some people find that's their hobby. And I'm fine with that. I'm no problem if you love learning about things and trying things, experimenting. The problem is biohacking is kind of like right on the fringe, right? It's cutting edge. And so sometimes you do things that are helpful, but sometimes you do things that are harmful. And so for me, when I'm saying the things that make us healthy, if we do anything that could potentially take us the other way, then by definition, it's gotta be weighed on my list. And so I want people to not be confused by the optimizers thinking that's what health looks like. Health is pretty darn simple, as we're gonna go through here on the list. It's pretty helpful, and you do not need to optimize everything because at the end of the day, you don't know if it's gonna matter anyways. You could get hit by a bus, you can get cancer just 'cause it's very unfortunate. You don't know any of these things definitively. And so I don't want you to think you have to optimize your entire life and be worried about it and be anxious all the time, and then it doesn't matter. And so for me, once again, not saying it doesn't matter, and if people enjoy it, I love it, go for it. You tell me what you did and we'll work together. And if you're a biohacker and wanna work with me, I will do that, absolutely. I'm not anti that at all, but I just think, I don't want people to think, oh my gosh, I have to be at this level of biohacking to be healthy. I just don't think so. So I don't want people to spend hundreds of dollars on a supplement sack, right? Or a supplement sack saying, hey, I need to take these 95 supplements morning, evening, and I'm gonna split them up. And there's a lot of money can be made from biohacking, and I don't want you necessarily to spend a ton of money. So that's another reason why it can be very expensive. So that's what we're going with. Next we have processed foods. So do processed foods make you healthier, the lack, I say avoiding processed foods make you healthy? No, I'm gonna give that, I'm gonna give that an A tier. Actually, you know what diet, let's see here. We're gonna go A tier in terms of avoiding processed foods. So I think there's some good data that the more processed foods you eat, the worse outcomes you typically have, but I'm not gonna give this necessarily S tier because I still think they can be incorporated into a overall health promoting diet. What I mean by that, I think there are some standards that are like, hey, this is what a health promoting diet should look like. And eating some of those things are okay. Avoiding them in general though, and giving them A tier, because if you just avoid those for the vast majority of your diet, that's gonna be really, really helpful. It's gonna make you probably keep a more reasonable weight and it's gonna help with blood sugar, it's gonna help with all these things. And so, yeah, I think that's kind of where I'm gonna put avoiding processed foods up an A tier, very, very good advice, I think helpful. Next we have sleep, sleep is S tier, not just 'cause it starts with S, but because it truly is S tier. So sleep is so important. I don't have to hopefully say that too much here. I've talked about that a lot in the podcast and episodes all about it. Sleep is super important. Sleep is like exercising where if we could put in a pill, it would be prescribed all the time. So, so important. Getting that proper amount of sleep for you, it's gonna vary for every single person, but getting sleep for you is gonna be so, so important. There's not a whole lot I have to say other than sleeping is good, it helps you in terms of your mood, it helps you with your immunity, it helps you with your stress, it helps you with your long-term risk of cardiovascular disease, like literally everything. Once again, sleep is super important. It's like we're designed for it, like we need to get it. So get sleep, sleep is very important, that's an S tier. Next we're gonna talk about social connection. So social connection, I'm gonna go with A tier. So social connection, super, super important. We as humans are social creatures. I know I'm hearing a lot of people right now who are introverts saying, "Oh my gosh, that's ridiculous." Well, I am an introvert too, okay, so calm down, I get it. But you need to have some people in your life have social connection. It's so, so important for a mental health perspective, right, that's why I care from a mental health perspective, is people who have social connections tend to have decreased stress, decreased in diet, anxiety, decreased depression, and just better for you. And so having social connections, very, very important. And it's one of those things where it's almost, sometimes it's hard to put a number on, you know, what it actually does for you, 'cause it's kind of a, you know, a soft science in terms of psychology, looking at things. But I would argue that for some people, having a strong social network might be more important than the other big things I've talked about, even in terms of cholesterol and blood pressure and things like that. So having a strong social network. Now I'm playing the odds here, right? I want you to control your blood pressure and your blood sugar and your cholesterol, all those things, and have social connections. But I bet for some people, that is probably the most important factor for a healthy life, if I had to guess. But we know it's a very, very important thing overall for health and longevity, and so I'm gonna give that an A tier, very, very important. Next, we're gonna talk about getting news and influencers and keeping up with the latest thing via social media. So that's what I mean here. And I'm gonna go with, I'm gonna go with D tier, D tier, not quite F, D tier. Social media in general, I have a love hate relationship with that. I pretty much encourage people just get off your phone. Like don't go on social media, don't have them installed, and I think that's very helpful. Obviously, if you're listening to this or watching this, you're either on YouTube or your podcast platform. So like, hey, shout out to you, thanks for doing that. And it can be used well and appropriate, but having to worry about things constantly is what I'm talking about here. People will go on Twitter or X or whatever it's called, or go on Instagram, and then they get inundated with things. These things they see and hear. What you don't realize is people need to produce content, right, so daily content, like those places that are daily stuff, they need to produce stuff every single day so that they stay relevant, right? I try to go like one time a week-ish, maybe a couple more, maybe a little more, but I'm trying not to do this stuff every single day to not give people anxiety, like I need to worry about this. 'Cause most things don't change, right? Not much has changed in the last couple of years. The fundamentals are still the fundamentals, but people get way too worked up online, they get just this huge amount of health anxiety, and that's what I'm trying to avoid, right? That's like my entire idea behind this channel. I wanna give you like practical information, but not overwhelm you, and that's really where it goes. So if you are worried about always getting the newest information on social media, I'd say give it a break. If you find yourself like physically getting anxious or worried or sad or angry because of the news or social media, like just take a break, like delete it, don't do it, don't watch it, like just see, I guarantee you the world will keep going, and I guarantee you'll find out about what's happening if something big happens, but yeah. So social media can be good, can be wonderful. I love the YouTube community and it's phenomenal, but make sure it just doesn't control your life and you're not physically getting stressed or anxious because of that. So I just wanna include that there. Next are superfoods. So superfoods, people talk about these magic superfoods. I'm putting that D tier. D tier because there are some good benefits for things that are, you know, quote unquote, superfoods. They talk about antioxidants or whatever, and they're all well and good, but I wanna step back and say it's D tier 'cause focusing on these superfoods and it's not gonna do anything, right? So if you have a overall terrible diet, but you eat quote unquote superfoods, it's not gonna matter. It's not gonna matter in the long term. And so that's why when people focus on superfoods or specific diets, right, that's a big thing. Hey, you have to eat this way, whole food plant-based, keto, carnivore, Mediterranean, whatever you name it. I think you have to do that like in focus entirely on that. Do I think there's some commonalities to all those that are helpful? Yeah, absolutely. And we'll probably talk more about that in a little bit, but focusing on specific foods or taking out specific foods, like, hey, freaking out about gluten, things like that. Like, hey, you can't have gluten. Well, if you're a celiac, probably not a good idea to have gluten. If you don't have celiac and you tolerate it well, like is there observable data that it will measure and that will be bad for you? I don't necessarily know. And so I just wanna take the emphasis off of that, but I'm putting it in D and not F because there are some merits to eating some foods that have health-promoting qualities and characteristics. So I'm not gonna say it's completely worthless, but if you're spending a bunch of money, you don't necessarily spend a bunch of money on that. But that's what I'm thinking of superfoods. Next are supplements. And now, okay, all right, supplements. I'm gonna go with C here. I'm gonna go C because it's kind of neutral. So the supplements that I think are appropriate are if you have a legitimate deficiency in something or you don't get it in your diet and you're trying to supplement, I think that's valid and fine. Or you're on creatine or a protein supplement, something like that. I think those are absolutely fine. The reason that I would bring it down is because if you listen to the people who say you need to take 25 supplements a day and you're spending $300 a month on supplements, all that stuff, those are probably not necessary. Can you live a long, healthy life without ever taking the supplement? The answer is yes. And that's why I would never get up to the AT or S or anything like that. But it can be helpful, right? So people who maybe need additional omega-3, they take fish oil, they take creatine for performance. They have a legitimate vitamin D deficiency and they take vitamin D. So there's lots of good reasons for supplements, but also lots of bad reasons. So that's why I'm gonna end up at C. If your supplement stack is costing you hundreds of dollars a month, let's talk. I don't think it's probably gonna be necessary. But yeah, that's what it is. Next, we're gonna go into water with staying hydrated. And I'm gonna go B tier on this, not 'cause water's not important. Clearly water is important. You need water to live. Please drink water, it's important. But I think a lot of times people will say drinking water is this magical thing that you need to drink a gallon of water a day or some arbitrary number and say that will magically make you healthy. Does our body need water? Yeah, all of our bodies are pretty much made of water and we need them for normal chemical processes and all that stuff. But I have a hard time finding a definitive guide for how much water should you drink? Usually it's two titrations to you being thirsty. If you're thirsty, drink. But over-hydrating doesn't necessarily seem to make someone necessarily more healthy. But overall, probably a good pattern to be drinking water and staying hydrated. I think, yeah, from a overall health perspective, probably helpful, but it's just not one that's like a guaranteed slam dunk. Like, hey, if you go from drinking 32 ounces of water a day to 64, like will that matter? I don't know. I don't know on that one. So I'm gonna give it B because I'm very pro water and I like living, so you should drink it. But yeah, I'm sure how much of a difference it makes. Next we're gonna do, ooh, all right, ice baths. So ice baths, I'm gonna go ice baths, D tier. Not 'cause I'm anti ice bath, but because I'm not sure how much that's doing for you long-term. Some people swear by it. Some people are like, I love it. I love the way it makes me feel. Go for it, man. If it's part of your, once again, I could see it creep up if we think about potentially what it does for your mental health, if it makes you feel good and you have community who does it, like I'm fine with that. But overall, like just in and of itself, like it seems to decrease like muscle soreness is kind of the big thing is that it does. And yeah, I don't have a huge list of health things that it does like definitively. And so I'm gonna put D tier just 'cause, yeah, it's one of those things people talk about, like it's this magic thing in the world. And for some people it's amazing and I'm down for it, go for it, whatever you want. But yeah, that's kind of what we're thinking about. Next is saunas. So sauna, I'm gonna bump up to C tier. So C tier, just 'cause I think there's more data on sauna than there is on cold, that saunas can be helpful for people and be health promoting. Once again, it's really hard to tie out or tease out. In sauna, a lot of times there's communal aspect, like in Scandinavian countries, they are in saunas and they're with their friends and all that, who knows. But there seems to be more data for that than I think ice plums for actual like health outcomes. And so that's why I'm gonna give that C tier, but certainly once again, not a thing you need to be healthy, but can be nice. So next is stress. Ooh, okay, so stress management. So stress management really big. I'm gonna go with that, I'm gonna go A tier, A tier on that. So we know stress management, super, super important. I think from a mental health perspective, understanding and managing stress, very, very important. I've always talked to many times that mental health is a lot of times forgotten in these things. In the biohacking world, it's like your computer. And if you tweak things here, it'll get better. But if your mental health isn't there, that's a big thing to worry about. So stress management, very, very important. Next, we're moving on to wearables. So wearable technology, ooh, I'm gonna give that, I'm gonna give it C is what I'm gonna go with. So wearables, do I think you need to wear wearables to be healthy? Absolutely not, absolutely not. But it can be helpful. Some examples, some people like using wearables to determine their heart rate for heart rate training. That's what I do sometimes. I think it can be very helpful. Other people have occasionally caught AFib while wearing their Apple Watch or something like that. And that can be helpful. But on the flip side, we have people sometimes who look at their readiness score, right? And it's not where they wanna be. So they like don't work out when they probably should have worked out that day. And so it can be helpful to get you moving more like step counter. Sometimes people see that and say, "Oh, I need to get up and do more steps." That's amazing. So I've seen it increase people activity, but I've seen the opposite where it's decreased people activity saying, "Oh, I shouldn't work out because of this readiness score." And so I'm gonna put it right at C because it can be helpful, but also can be harmful. And so I think they're good and bad. They're seen more and more every day. And I think it's awesome, but we'll learn more and see what they do. All right, so next is a healthy health promoting diet. So S tier, absolutely S tier. A health promoting diet is one of the most important things you can do. So my S tier is for the things that I know is gonna make a huge impact. And I know that's gonna make an impact. I know that eating a health promoting diet will make an impact. What is a health promoting diet? Well, that is gonna be variable. In general, things they tend to have are minimally processed foods, like I mentioned before, minimally processed. You're having lots of vegetables and fruits, nuts, whole grains potentially. Limiting in terms of sweets and saturated fats are the general ideal. Obviously, there's lots of different ways. So some people who are on a keto diet or a lower carb diet will eat more fats and their numbers are fine, whereas other people are healthful plant-based. For me, when I step back, what is the commonality here is that we're shopping around the outside of the grocery store, right? We are eating unprocessed foods and nothing huge. We're not having things that come from boxes predominantly. It's mostly unprocessed. That's like the biggest thing, I think. As I see more and more, that's kind of the biggest indicator and the commonality between all of these diets is they're minimally processed foods, and that's gonna be really important. But health promoting diet, S tier, absolutely. Super, super important. And the last one here is body composition. So I'm gonna put body composition over at A tier, actually. And so what I mean by body composition is your muscle and fat, those are really, really important. So we know muscle is super helpful, not only for just being strong and doing the things that we wanna do, but as a way of processing sugar and it helps bring in sugar from the bloodstream, lots of really important reasons. And on the other end of the spectrum, we know that increased adiposity or increased fat is actually negative. It's pro-inflammatory, leads to inflammation, lots of negative effects from having too much fat. So having a healthy body composition is really, really important. And so I'm gonna put that A tier. And that's the formal ranked list here. And I just wanna make some comments here. So if you look at the top, obviously I'm biased. I'm me and I have mine. We have exercise, sleep, nutrition, a couple of nutrition there. Don't smoke, smoking's not bad. Have your blood pressure managed, your cholesterol managed. Have your body composition normal, mental health. You wanna throw in with all these things, your blood sugar levels as well. What does that sound like? That sure sounds a lot like my necessary nine. The things that I think are time and time again shown to be helpful. And so, yeah, maybe I'm biased in my brain. I was already subconscious. Like these are the things that matter, but it just pops up time and time again. These are the things that actually matter, right? When someone has to ask me like, "Hey, what's the biggest bang for my buck?" I would point out these things. If you do these things, then you will be healthy or at least giving yourself the best shot at being healthy. Obviously life happens, man. Sometimes you get a bad break. Sometimes you get an autoimmune disease. Sometimes you get cancer. Sometimes something happens. Who knows what inside your control, but for giving yourself the best chance at the lowest expense, meaning like lowest mental stress and anxiety and worry about things, I would say focusing on these big things is like the biggest bang for your buck. Everyone talks about the Pareto principle, which is where you get 80% of your results from 20% of your work. Like that's what this is. Like if you focus on these things, these big top things, SNA tiers, you are gonna get the vast majority of the benefits that you're gonna need. And then if you wanna eke out more, that's fine. And that's where we come here on, you know, going down here, we have these monitors and supplements and red light and cold plunges and all these things that have a place. And I'm not anti any of them. I'm just anti those going ahead of anything on the ANS tier. That's my biggest thing. My whole existence is like pointing people back to the ANS tiers. Like, okay, let's focus. Like I will have people all the time talk about cold plunging or talk about mouth taping or whatever, and they're not hitting 150 minutes a week of activities. Like, dude, I know if you exercise, like I know you're gonna get benefit from that. I guarantee it. I like guarantee it. But you're worried about doing these things and I get it. It takes effort and it's hard to work out. It takes effort for you to do it. Whereas taping your mouth or jumping in a cold water for a little bit of time, I got five minutes. I get that it's easier to do. But man, if people tell me those are the things they wanna do and focus on and they're not doing their, my job is just patiently and carefully and calmly and nicely redirect saying, hey, what about these things? 'Cause I know we're gonna get improvement from there. I talk about the big rocks, right? There's an analogy of the professor who filled up the jars and you gotta have the big rocks in first 'cause those are the most important thing. And then you fill in everything else around there. And the A and S here are the big rocks. Those are the things I want people to focus on time and time again. And I know I sound like a broken record and it's probably not great for social media 'cause having nuanced conversations is not great. But if you just have this crazy, oh, like you need to eliminate all carbohydrates or do this, that's good. But yeah, that's who I am to my core. But those are what it is. And here, none of these things are inherently gonna kill you, right? Alkaline water, oh, and I guess you could if you went to alkaline. I don't think any of these are inherently awful for you, but I just want you to be focused on the prize, right? Which is spending time with your family, being generally healthy, doing the things you wanna do. Like that's what life's all about in terms of like, having purpose and meaning and yeah, and just being spiritually kind of fulfilled. That's really what life is all about. And so it's not about biohacking and getting a sleep score 4% better or your recovery or your telomeres are this much longer. At least that's my personal preference. If that's what you're into and that's your hobby, that's fine. But I'm here for the people who want to live life, be healthy, but also not have it, absolutely own their life 'cause there's lots of other fun things to do in life. And yeah, so that's it. I do appreciate you listening to a little bit different one. I thought it'd be kind of fun to do and just 'cause I saw a bunch of internet videos on this, I wanted to do it, but thank you so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it. If you did like it, it would mean the world to me if you either liked this video on YouTube, subscribe on your podcast platform or choice, or share with a friend that would really, really go a long way. But thanks again. Now get off your phone and get outside, have a great rest of your day.
