Top 10 Unique Ways to Maximize Your Health

Let me guess: you’ve scrolled past a dozen articles today promising life-changing health hacks. Maybe one swore that eating the fruit of the mystical Jkobibi tree from the Amazon would add 15 years to your life. Or another claimed smearing sea moss all over your body would make you glow like a skincare ad.

Yeah…I’ve been there. 

Once upon a time, I was that person—the one obsessing over every shiny new biohacking trick. Extend your telomeres with this rare Amazonian herb? I’m listening. A peptide that helps you glow in the dark? Sign me up. But eventually, I realized I was majoring in the minors; pouring my energy into shiny new things while ignoring the basics.

So let’s simplify. These are 10 ways to maximize your health that don’t involve obscure ingredients or questionable rituals. I’ve come to realize that the simplest of way to go about your health will reap the most bang for your buck. 

1. Take Yourself Offline

Social media is the junk food of the digital world: Fun in the moment but leaves you feeling icky after. The dose makes the poison, and for many of us, social media is a full-on overdose. Here’s the thing: our brains weren’t designed to process an endless stream of tweets, reels, and TikToks. Every notification gives us a dopamine hit, creating a cycle that’s hard to break. Social media use has been linked to anxiety, depression, and even insomnia. You don’t have to delete your accounts and live in the woods (unless you want to). Just set boundaries. Try a weekend detox or use apps to limit screen time. You might be shocked at how much lighter you feel. If you’re a Highly Sensitive Person, there’s an even bigger reason why you may want to limit your time online.

2. Get Down on the Floor

Consider this your permission to lay on the ground and do nothing for 15-20 each day. Meet the Constructive Resting Pose (with an Alexander Technique twist). By practicing this simple exercise every day. You are decompressing your spine, relaxing your psoas muscle, and helping your body get into a more parasympathetic state. 

Here’s how to do it: lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor, and your head supported by a small cushion or book. You want to make sure your neck isn’t too low (causing strain) or too high (causing strain). You can also rest your lower legs on a chair if you want to have an elevated experience. Then just breathe. Let gravity work its magic and release all that unnecessary tension. I personally love doing this on a yoga mat (or two stacked on each other) or outside for some added grounding. Trust me, it’s the most restorative part of your day. Want to see it in action? Double points if you use this time to pop on some noise-canceling headphones, a blindfold, and meditate.

3. Give Yourself a Tap Tap Taparoo

Meet your new best friend: EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), or tapping. What is tapping? Tapping is a series of literal taps that you perform on specific meridian end points on your body while saying specific messaging to help release what you set your intention to. The idea is that tapping clears energy blockages and helps calm your nervous system. For me, it’s been a game-changer for anxiety and panic: Especially when the panic slaps, literally. I use The Tapping Solution app to guide me through tapping rounds. Whether I’m in the car, doing my Constructive Resting Pose (two birds, one stone!), or wrangling my kids, it’s a quick, easy, and surprisingly effective tool to have.

4. Ctrl+Alt+Del Your System

Remember when your old PC would freeze, and the only solution was to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del? Your body sometimes needs the same reboot. How do you do that: Meet the Salamander Exercise.

What is the Salamander exercise? It is a limbic system reboot to help signal your body to simply calm down and get back to neutral (and to free up your neck and diaphragm to promote deep breathing). This exercise was developed by Stanley Rosenberg; in alignment with polyvagal theory (insert blog link) and it’s healing affects on the body. It’s a gentle movement that helps regulate your vagus nerve, which plays a huge role in stress and relaxation. By resetting your nervous system, you’ll breathe easier and instantly feel more relaxed. You can feel the difference before and after in your diaphragm, and how you can breathe easier and deeper after performing this short exercise. Here’s a video on how to perform this. 

5. Address and Test for Hidden Health Issues

Let’s face it: We all have something going on with our bodies. Whether we are aware of it or not, is an entirely different story. What am I talking about? Meet heavy metal toxicity, Lyme Disease, Lyme co-infections, mold toxicity, Epstein-Barr Virus, etc. A lot of these ailments are either underreported or severely under-tested here in the United States. What is the reason for that? It’s a combination of a lack of awareness from conventional physicians, symptoms mimicking each other, issues with false negative and positive testing, proper testing costs, and improper testing (serum vs. hair tissue). For example, according to the CDC, Lyme disease is significantly underreported, with estimates suggesting the actual number of cases could be up to 10 times higher than the reported cases, meaning many people with Lyme disease never get diagnosed or report their illness to health authorities. Along that Lyme vein, you may have been bitten years ago, and never made the connection between symptoms you experience years later to a tick bite you had years prior: All the while, you are living in a moldy home and experiencing symptoms from that. Connecting with a practitioner who can help guide you through the process of getting to the root cause of your issues will be key.

6. Balance Your Minerals

This is an area of health and healing that is so critical, so simple and yet severely overlooked because, quite frankly, it isn’t sexy and shiny.  Minerals are the unsung heroes of health, period. You need minerals for everything from detoxification and energy production to countless other biological processes. To put it simply: If your minerals are out of whack, your body’s systems can’t function optimally. Minerals are what you need in order to detox at the cellular level first and foremost. If that isn’t happening, then all of the other detox pathways ( organs and tissues, lymphatic system, liver and bile, etc) will not function properly. Enter the HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis), a test that reveals your mineral levels in relation to each other, the level of heavy metals in your body (and which ones), your oxidation rate, and more. Working with a practitioner to replenish what’s missing can be a game-changer. Think of it as fine-tuning the engine of your body.

7. Drink Clean Water

This is another area that really isn’t terribly sexy to talk about, yet is so critical to your health. Water is life, period. You can go days without food, but water, forget about it. As important as this is, a lot of us don’t think twice about what we are consuming. Whether your water comes from a public source, a well, or a bottle, it could be hiding contaminants that impact your health. Unfortunately, here in the United States, we are increasingly seeing more and more reports about the poor state our water is in (either due to aging infrastructure, run off from flame retardants, hidden pipelines bursting, etc.). That’s why testing your water is crucial and not relying on anything outside of yourself to tell you what you are consuming. I recommend using Tap Score kits as a starting point. They’re easy to use, they have a great user-friendly dashboard and they offer a range of tests tailored to your needs. Once you know what you’re dealing with, you can invest in a filter or other solutions to ensure you’re drinking the cleanest water possible.

8. Energy Matters

Everything is made up of energy. I firmly believe that this concept will become more mainstream in the coming few years. Energy has always been a part of healing; whether it’s in the form of your body’s meridians as noted by Traditional Chinese Medicine, or a part of Quantum medicine. This concept of energy is even more important if you are a part of the 20% of the population that are Highly Sensitive People. A highly sensitive person (HSP) is someone with a finely tuned nervous system that processes stimuli more deeply than average, often due to increased activity in brain areas linked to empathy and emotional processing (aka mirror neurons). These neurons allow HSPs to deeply sense and "mirror" the emotions and experiences of others, making them incredibly empathetic and attuned to subtle social and environmental cues. This heightened sensitivity extends to physical and emotional factors, meaning they may feel overstimulated by loud noises, strong smells, or chaotic environments. While their deep emotional resonance and empathy can feel overwhelming at times, it also gives HSPs the ability to notice details, foster strong connections, and bring unique insight and care to their relationships and work. If this sounds like you, limiting your exposure to negative people, circumstances, places, and media (especially social media scrolling) will be crucial to your health and well-being. 

9. Plan It on the Planets

Thankfully, more and more people are becoming aware that astrology goes beyond the horoscope you read in a magazine. The position of the planets currently, and also at the time of your birth, can influence your personality, health, and even your timing for certain decisions. Curious? For starters, you can run a free natal chart online to discover what your natal chart says about you. All you will need is your date of birth, time of birth, and location of birth (city, state, country). At the very least, knowing your Sun sign, Moon sign and Ascendant will get you farther in knowing yourself than just saying, “I’m an Aries.” Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, it’s an interesting lens through which to view your life. As Argyle from Stranger Things would say, “Don’t deny before you try.”

10. Sleep: The Ultimate Health Hack

A staggering 30% of Americans suffer from insomnia, turning bedtime into a stress-fueled battle. But here’s the thing: sleep is everything. It’s when your body heals, your brain detoxes, and your energy replenishes. it’s the ultimate health upgrade your body desperately needs. Skip out on good sleep, and you’re setting yourself up for a domino effect of issues: Low energy, mood swings, a tanked immune system, and even bigger health concerns down the line. How can you maximize your sleep to minimize your issues? Check out this blog post on some of the ways you can improve your sleep.

BONUS - Just Breathe

Something that we are grateful that our body does unconsciously for us, so we don’t even have to think about it. However, whether it’s due to restricted diaphragm muscles (from poor vagus nerve tone, years of panic attacks, poor posture, traumatic brain injuries, etc), or other factors, the majority of us simply don’t pay too much attention to our breathing. Thanks to Wim HoF for putting breathing on the map, however, even his method has holes for some of us. Breath is literally the one hack we have to calm ourselves down at a moment’s notice, or get us out of being frozen or shut down. For a quick on the go anxiety buster, try this:

1. Practice 4,4,8 breathing, with an upbreath and exhale using “vooooo” - It’s harder to write it out than to practice. The goal is to always inhale for half the time you exhale (hence why box breathing sometimes doesn’t work for anxiety). When you inhale for a count of 4, take a second inhale for 2 (thank you, Huberman Lab for this tip), then hold for 4, then exhale while saying voo for a count of 8. By saying “vooooo” when you exhale, you are vibrating your vagus nerve and quickly sending calming signals to your brain. You can always skip the “vooo” if it’s too complicated.

The Takeaway

Health and healing doesn’t have to be complicated for the majority of people. Sometimes, the simplest changes can have the biggest impact: Work smarter, not harder mentality. Start small, experiment, and find what works for you. Lastly, I highly recommend finding a practitioner or few that can help you along your journey. Going at this alone, while reading blog posts and mega-dosing on random supplements and celery juice may make things worse in the long run. Everyone has different needs and requirements, so make sure to honor your unique journey.