15 Weirdest Health Habits Backed by Real Science

0:02Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien. A podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

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2:35Darin Olien:Hey everybody, welcome to the show. This is Darren Oleen and this is the Super Life Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about 15 weird things you're not doing for your health. But there's research behind them and it could create some powerful shifts in your life. no one's going to tell you to hum today. No one's going to tell you to hang on a bar necessarily today. No one's going to tell you to ice the back of your neck or squat on your bathroom floor like it's 1800 BC. But I'm about to because the research backing these is real strong. And it is real. And I will tell you if it's really backed in science or if it's kind of just coming online.

3:24Darin Olien:So this is rapid fire. 15 strange, researched, anchored things you're probably not doing for your health. But it's no fluff, no 10-minute setup, just the mechanism, the study, and what to do about it. So let's freaking go. Okay, so the rule here is everything I say has a real citation behind it. I'm not going to hand you a trust me bro biohack. I'm over that. I think you are too. It's just ridiculous what people say. I'm going to tell you where the evidence is solid. I'll say so. Where it's early or mixed. I'll say that too. Because half of getting healthier is knowing the difference between proven and promising.

4:15Darin Olien:15 items, roughly a minute each. The clock is running. Let's get to it. Number one, in no particular order, grip strength. Here's a stat that should scare the shit out of you just a little bit. In a study of 140 ,000 adults across 17 countries published in The Lancet, for every 15 kilogram drop in grip strength, So your inability to hold like 10 pounds, every time you lose the ability to hold that 10 pounds and 10 pounds less and less and less, was linked to 16 % increase in all-cause mortality. And it out-predicted systolic blood pressure as a mortality marker. Grip strength isn't just about your hands.

5:06Darin Olien:It's interesting. It's a proxy for your total body muscle quality and your nervous system function. And it quietly declines for decades before anyone notices, especially if you're not using it. The decline can start as early as in your 30s. If nothing in your life changes, your hands go down under load over time. nobody trains directly grip strength unless you're lifting and you're pulling heavy things all the time but it's here and there's a fix the dead hangs are the easy ones 30 to 60 seconds and then increase over time if you want off of a pull-up bar off of anything you can just hang safely you do that once a day because it decompresses the spine builds forearm strength shoulder stability, and it's the easiest way to start moving that number in the right direction, increasing your overall body strength, as well as retraining and training your nervous system.

6:16Darin Olien:So to be clear, nobody's run a trial on dead hangs and mortality specifically, but grip strength is a biomarker and it's validated as it gets. So you can dead hang and that's the simplest way to increase your grip strength and increase your overall longevity. Number two, the deep squat rest. That's right. Not just talking about squats here. We're talking about resting in a squat. Most of the world actually sits in a full squat to rest, to eat, or just wait for the bus. The industrialized world has created chairs. And by 40, most of us have lost the ankle mobility, the knees mobility, the hips, all of that while in a deep squat.

7:16Multiple biomechanics studies use deep squat depth as a clinical marker of ankle dorsiflexion range.

7:26Darin Olien:it's a real trainable metric of joint health not just a freaking party trick so here's the practice spend two to three minutes a day resting as deeply down in a full squat as you can if you need to start with the heels up on something then do that but the heels down chest is up basically your ass to your heels. So you can do it in a lot of different ways. If you're on a phone call, do it then. Instead of scrolling, do it then. It restores ankle hip mobility while bleeding away all of this stuff that happens with us sitting in a chair all the time. Easy. You can do that today. Single leg balance as coming in number three.

8:16Darin Olien:This one's wild because a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine followed over 1 ,700 adults ages 51 to 75 for a decade, 10 years. The test, can you stand on one leg unsupported for 10 seconds? People who couldn't do that had an 84 % higher risk of dying from any cause over the follow-up period. 84 % from a single testing of testing your balance for 10 seconds. So you can do that. You can start firing that up now. This isn't causal proof of dying. It's a marker, not a magic fix. But balance is one of the first things that also quietly erodes with age over time and almost nobody trains it until they've lost it.

9:15Darin Olien:So brush your teeth on one leg, switch the other leg, do both sides, go back and forth. Once you've gained the strength on the flat ground, or maybe it's already, you've got it. You can stand on a pillow, a little more challenging. You can close your eyes, a little more challenging. You can do this and it's powerful. Number four, humming. That's right, humming hum this one wild cool study small study but a striking number researchers published in the american journal of respiratory and clinical care medicine found that humming increased nasal nitric oxide production roughly 15 fold compared to just quiet breathing so the act of actual humming, increase nitric oxide production by 15 times.

10:14Darin Olien:Nitric oxide in your sinuses helps kill airborne pathogens, bacteria, and improves your overall efficiency for your lungs and the uptake of oxygen. This is a physiology study, not a humming cures disease trial. So I'm not going to oversell it on that side but it's a two-second practice with a measured 15x effect on your molecular level the molecule for your airways to actually increase so what humming does it naturally slows down the exhale which in its own quiets the nervous system creates a reset But hum in the shower, hum while you're annoyed in traffic. It's free, it's powerful, and you can increase your nitric oxide and you don't have to buy a supplement.

11:09Darin Olien:Number five, mouth taping. Okay, so there's some caveats here. So I'm going to be straight with you on this one. I assumed that there was more and more studies that were as compelling. But there is some solid studies. Mouth taping at night. So you're forcing more nasal breathing during sleep. This was a small clinical trial showing it can reduce snoring, which is helpful for your partners without a doubt. A 2024 systematic review of about 10 studies found that the overall evidence is limited and flagged real safety concerns. That's really where it comes up. People freak out when I'm taping my mouth.

11:53Darin Olien:But if you have nasal congestion, not a good idea. A deviated septum, not a good idea. Or moderate to severe sleep apnea. But a little hack, you can put the tape vertically so that if you really needed to breathe, your body really needed to breathe at night, it would just pull in air through the sides of your mouth. That's an easy one. So here's the honest version. If you're a chronic mouth breather with clear nasal passages and mild snoring, it definitely can help. And the mechanism, the nasal breathing, improves oxygenation. This is vital. You can also do this while you exercise. Increase your body's ability to uptake oxygen by just breathing through the nose.

12:40Darin Olien:This is powerful. This is easy. This is safe. All of those things. If you want to do it at night and you have no issues, just put a tape vertically on your mouth and give it a go. Number six, cold water face immersion. You don't need$2 ,000 to$4 ,000 to$5 ,000 for a full ice plunge. You need a bowl, you need ice, and put your damn whole face in it. This triggers what's called the mammalian dive reflex. A real, well-documented piece of physiology. Studies show heart rate variability drops around 21 % at 15 seconds of your cold face immersion. That's right. Take a deep breath in, put your face in it, and slowly breathe out if you want.

13:31Darin Olien:If you feel safer that way, 15 seconds. And if you really want, increase of 29 % of lowering your heart rate by doing it for 30 seconds. 30 seconds, face in cold water, exhaling slowly as you go. This amplifies the effect and you're triggering this measurable parasympathetic downshift in your nervous system. lowers, slows down your heart rate, calms your nervous system, like I said, and you don't have to put your whole body in it. Okay, number seven, icing the back of your neck. A randomized control trial with 61 participants tested cold applied to different spots. The cheek, the forearm, the side of the neck, the back of the neck, all these things measured heart rate variability.

14:23Darin Olien:The side and the back of the neck clearly outperformed all the other sites four and two raising the vagal tone and lowering the heart rate that's your acute stress button so if you're feeling wound up before a meeting an argument a fight if you had one put ice in the back of the neck down regulates you cold pack that works well for 60 seconds and there you go it changes your heart rate variability calms you down, switches you from stress to lowering into parasympathetic. Number eight, before we continue the pod, I want to share something. I've tried so many supplements. I've been in the space for 25 years and every so often something really pops out.

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15:59Darin Olien:Every formula is frequency charged to promote balanced energy immune system and cellular renewal. And the wild part, the more consistently you take it, the more you feel everything in your body. It's the same with me. The more I use it, the better I feel. My sleep improved. My skin glows. My stress goes down. My testosterone goes off. It's like my whole system is humming again. So if you're tired of low energy, brain fog, and or just not feeling the same and like something's missing, check out Mana. Go to www.manavitality.com. That's M-A-N-N-A vitality.com. Use the code Darren and you get 20 % off your order.

16:47Darin Olien:This isn't about health. It's about living in harmony with your greatest and highest potential. So number eight, getting bored on purpose. That's right. Getting bored on purpose. Two studies stacked together make this one solid. First, the researchers had people do a genuinely boring task, copying numbers out of the damn phone book. That's right. Before a creativity test, this is really interesting. So the boredom group generated more creativity, creative output, than people who skipped straight to a task. Boredom triggered daydreaming and the daydreaming fed creativity. Second, more recent one that's even better.

17:37Darin Olien:Scientists directly stimulated the brain's default mode network. I know it's like just this one and how to do it. The network that activates during your mind wandering so they can measure it using these implanted electrodes. I don't know who's volunteering for that one. It's not correlation. This is cause and effect. The overall translation here is unstructured, phone-free, staring out the window time isn't wasted time. It's when your brain does its best background processing. The next time you reach for your phone in a checkout line, that's exactly the moment to put it away instead. Schedule boredom in your life.

18:25Darin Olien:It is purposeful. It is creatively inducing. It is opening up the brain. Number nine, scheduling silence. A study in the journal Heart had people listen to music with silent pauses inserted between the tracks and the silence dropped heart rate. That's right. the music to silence, dropped the heart rate, blood pressure, and the breathing rate below where they started. Lower than during the music itself. Silence wasn't neutral. Isn't that wild? It was actively restorative. On the flip side, a growing body of research, including recent work in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology links chronic environmental noise exposure to elevated cardiovascular disease risk.

19:23Darin Olien:The World Health Organization now rates traffic noise as a real contributor to heart disease and stroke risk. So, a few minutes to an hour a day. No music, no podcasts, including this one. Maybe after you listen to it. No notifications. Just sit there. So I'm going to do this tomorrow, my commitment to you. I'm going to do this tomorrow. I'm going to do my meditation. And then before I do my journaling, I'm going to sit in the boredom, staring out the window, not doing anything. Number 10, chasing awe. That's right, A-W-E. Researchers measured seven positive emotions against inflammatory markers in the body.

20:11Darin Olien:And out of them, awe was the strongest predictor of lowering the interleukin-6, which is a key inflammatory marker linked to chronic disease. People who reported more awe, and I'll tell you what that is and what can induce that, in their daily lives have measurably calmer immune systems and stronger immune systems. this was based on how much awe people naturally experienced not a controlled we showed people a canyon experiment so i want to be precise about that but the takeaway seek out vastness so if i look out here and i look at the mountain or i look up at the night sky or i look up at the sun as it rises or I look at the moon sitting in the sky or I look at when the sun lowers in the sky.

21:08Darin Olien:Looking at a bee do its work. Just observe the nature around you in its awe-inspiring, incredible, life-affirming power and this is powerful for you. This increases your immune system response, lowering your inflammation, and it can be absolutely crazy in its ability to awe-inspire your body coming online to its best version. Number 11, getting your hands dirty. The hygiene hypothesis has been around since 1989 when a study in the BMJ found kids from larger households had less hay fever, meaning kids that were exposed to more bacteria, fewer infections early in life, less allergic diseases later.

22:00Darin Olien:The modern version of this is called the old friend's hypothesis. It's not childhood illness that matters. It's exposure to the specific microbes we evolved alongside. Dirt, soil microbes in particular that trains our regulatory immune cells to stay calm instead of overreacting. This is well established. Mainstream framework in immunology. Still evolving but not fringe. Translation, garden when you can without gloves. Get your hands dirty. Pick up some rocks. Play with your dogs. All of the above. This will increase. Even a house plant. Interact with dirt. Don't be afraid of it. Improves your hygiene.

22:51Darin Olien:Improves your immune system. Improves your overall exposure to increase your immune system at a whole other level. Number 12, chewing like you mean it. Real human trial published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people chewed almonds either 10 times, chewing 25 or 40 times per bite. More chewing meant more mechanical breakdown of the plant cell walls, which meant significantly more fat was absorbed and other nutrients passing straight through instead of the undigested if we don't chew enough. This is not vague. Chew more, digest more. Get it? This is measurable difference in what your body actually pulled out of the food.

23:46Darin Olien:It's food specific. Nuts, plant cell walls are special cases. Chew more, it breaks them down more. But the principle is clear. Mechanistic chewing is less work that your digestive juices and enzymes and bacteria have to do to break down the food to absorb it. So, this is easy. Start with 20 plus chews per bite for anything that isn't already soft. and slow down. This is powerful. Number 13, squat when you go poo. Squat when you go poo. Why are we just sitting on the crown? Why are we just sitting on the throne? We need to be squatting on the throne. This is the Squatty Potty Study, and it's real.

24:38Darin Olien:Published in Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 28 healthy adults timed their bathroom visits sitting versus squatting. So squatting cut the time to finish the evacuation of your poo about 130 seconds down to 51 seconds, which is markedly less straining. The mechanism is anatomical. Squatting straightens the angle your body uses to hold things in. So when you squat, the angle opens. Small study, one research group, but it's the best human evidence that exists. And it lines up with basic anatomy and what our ancestors have done and are doing. It also shortens that visit and allows for your body to evacuate a lot better with less and less pushing.

25:35Darin Olien:Number 14, get sunlight in your eyes before you get it from your phone. hear me now this is textbook circadian rhythm biology you've heard this this is built on decades of light exposure research light is the primary signal your brain's master clock and it uses it to set the timing of your hormones the cortisol the melatonin melatonin is released later in the day so that you can go to sleep and the melatonin is a master hormone for the pineal gland so and all of these other downstream processes sunlight exposure morning light actual sunrise range light outdoors no sunglasses produces a measurable phase shift in when your body releases that melatonin so you can sleep the night away you've heard get outside in the morning we'll get your ass outside do it do this it's not just about vitamin d it's not just about the vibes It's your direct signal to your supra chromastic nucleus, the clock that governs your entire hormonal day.

26:47Darin Olien:A cloudy day still works. Still get outside. Do it. Ten minutes before the phone. Let's go. Let's create the cascade of sleeping better and our health. Number 15. Love this one. My favorite. Besides the last one. Besides all of them. I love them all. But the sun on your actual skin. not through the window. The study out of Southampton and Edinburgh published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology exposed people to UVA light equivalent to about 30 minutes of southern European summer sun. It lowered systolic blood pressure and increased blood flow. And here's the interesting part. Independent of vitamin D and independent of any change in body temperature, the mechanism, your skin stores nitric oxide.

27:42Darin Olien:Here we go, nitric oxide again. And the UVA exposure releases it into circulation, relaxing the blood vessels. This is real, specific, measurable cardiovascular effect from sunlight and has nothing to do with the vitamin d story even though that's important too 10 to 15 minutes of midday sun on your arms and legs listen arms and legs that they say that safely i'm saying get your whole damn body as much as you can get it use the caveats don't let yourself burn don't stay outside so long you don't have to freak out don't freak out but get your skin exposed to sun come on it's so powerful 15 things.

28:27Darin Olien:Here we go. Dead hangs, deep squat, standing on one leg while you brush your teeth, humming, mouth tape, cold water on your face, ice pack on the back of your neck, getting bored on purpose, one hour of real silence, chasing awe instead of scrolling past it on a damn screen, getting your hands in the dirt, chewing like you mean it, squatting when you go poo, sunlight in your eyes before your phone, sun on your actual skin. Let's go. None of these are exotic. None of these cost money. And every single one has a real study behind it, which is more than you can say for most of what's trending on your feed right now.

29:15Darin Olien:That's it. You can start today. You can start one, you can start two, you can start three, you can start these. If you have done some, do some others. This is my protocol today. That's Super Life Solo Podcast Rapid Fire. I'll see you next time. If you like something on here, well then like it. Share it. Pass this on to people that you care about. Helps me, helps you, helps them so that they can get information and apply it to their life. That's what Super Life is. community. Let's support each other being the best versions of our freaking self. Love you. Peace. I'm out.