Behaviors

Get a once-a-year skin screening from a reputable board-certified dermatologist, with a true head-to-toe exam that includes moles, hair-bearing areas, between the toes, and the genital region. This helps catch suspicious lesions early, and people with many moles or higher family/genetic risk may need more frequent checks.

Let acne lesions resolve on their own instead of squeezing or picking at them. If a spot has a small white tip and is only mildly tender, a warm compress can help it drain naturally; otherwise, hands-off care reduces trauma, inflammation, and the risk of permanent scarring or indentation.

If cannabis starts causing paranoia, anxiety, or another bad reaction, do not try to “push through” by taking more. The recommended protocol is to stop escalating the dose and avoid additional consumption, because more THC is likely to amplify the same adverse effects rather than relieve them.

This recommendation is to avoid cannabis use in people who have schizophrenia or who are at elevated risk for psychotic disorders, especially if they have a first-degree relative with schizophrenia or psychotic bipolar disorder. The rationale is that cannabis can worsen or trigger psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and psychotic episodes, increasing the chance of symptom flare-ups in vulnerable people.

A plyometric push-up variation performed by driving explosively off the floor and clapping between reps. It’s used to build upper-body speed and power by training rapid force production, making it a useful accessory when the goal is athletic explosiveness rather than maximal pressing strength.

A cycling-based workout done outdoors, often including mountain biking, with a mix of longer steady rides and shorter sprint efforts. It serves as both cardio and lower-body training, building aerobic capacity while also challenging leg strength and power.

Insert brief, random pauses during teaching, reading, or skill practice—typically around 5 to 10 seconds, with a few pauses per hour. These micro-breaks appear to help the hippocampus rapidly replay and consolidate what was just learned, improving retention and understanding.

This practice is to deliberately reinterpret a stressful or anxiety-provoking situation in a more useful way, such as reminding yourself that some problems are outside your control, viewing pressure as a challenge, or using self-talk to stay focused. The goal is to interrupt spiraling worry and reduce emotional reactivity by shifting attention from threat to agency and possibility.

Prefer foods and drinks packaged in cans with BPA-free linings, or skip canned products when that option isn’t available. The goal is to reduce exposure to BPA, which can leach from can linings into the contents and is a common source of this chemical in the diet.

If you wake up in the middle of the night, keep your phone out of reach and avoid opening social media or other stimulating apps. The idea is to prevent a brief awakening from turning into a longer alert period, since bright light and engaging content can make it harder to fall back asleep.

When you’re working through a problem or trying to reframe a situation, talk to yourself using your own name and second-person language, as if you were advising someone else. This small shift creates psychological distance, which can make your thinking more objective and reduce emotional reactivity.

When you’re upset, deliberately project the problem into the future and ask how it will feel tomorrow, next week, next year, or even in 5–10 years. This mental time shift helps put the issue in perspective, which can reduce the intensity of the current emotional state and make the distress feel more manageable.

Deliberately expose yourself to awe-inspiring sights or ideas—like giant trees, sunsets, the night sky, or remarkable feats of innovation—especially when you feel emotionally bored or stuck. The point is to trigger a brief sense of wonder that can feel destabilizing but positive, helping your mind zoom out, shrink everyday problems, and expand perspective.

Notice intrusive thoughts as automatic mental events rather than messages or commands, and let them pass without assigning them special meaning. The key protocol is to acknowledge them briefly, avoid arguing with them or treating them as actionable, and then return attention to what you were doing. This reduces fear and reinforcement, which makes the thoughts lose intensity over time.

Treat physically demanding work or routine activity as legitimate exercise by consciously labeling it as such and focusing on the health benefits it already provides. In the hotel-worker example, this simple mindset shift was linked to weight loss, lower blood pressure, and better body metrics without changing diet or adding workouts, likely because it changes how the body and brain respond to the same activity.

A focused meditation where you bring a specific person to mind and deliberately wish for something good to happen to them. The practice trains attention toward benevolence and self-transcendence, helping shift you out of self-focused thinking and into a more compassionate, expansive mental state.

On waking, pick up a heavy kettlebell and do a suitcase carry down and back in the hallway, then repeat on the other side; one version uses about 70–72 pounds and a couple of passes per side. The idea is to start moving immediately with a loaded, unilateral carry that wakes the body up, reinforces posture and bracing, and helps cut through morning grogginess.

Temporarily turn off or delete social media apps for a few days or weeks when the feed starts feeling exhausting or outrage-driven. Creating a deliberate pause reduces constant exposure to triggering content and interrupts the habit of reflexively checking updates, which can help reset attention and mood.

When tinnitus is present, deliberately avoid monitoring it and shift attention to something else, often using distraction or background noise. The idea is that repeatedly focusing on the sound can amplify awareness and reinforce the neural circuits that make it feel louder, while redirecting attention can reduce its perceived intensity.

Keep the sleep environment cooler at the start of the night, then gradually warmer toward morning. The idea is to support deeper slow-wave sleep early and more REM sleep later, since warming the bed or room in the last couple of hours was described as boosting REM.

Use an automated cuff to measure blood pressure at home on a regular schedule, typically morning and afternoon, for about two weeks. Taking repeated readings at the same time of day helps smooth out random variation and gives a clearer picture of how well an intervention is working or whether readings are truly controlled.

Do sustained, lower-intensity cardio sessions rather than brief all-out efforts, typically for about 45–60 minutes at a pace you can maintain. Common examples include easy jogging, cycling, or swimming laps. The goal is to accumulate more total work while staying in a zone that is easier to sustain and may improve fat oxidation and overall calorie burn.

A baseline aerobic routine done about two to three times per week, often framed as three scheduled cardio sessions. The idea is to keep a steady weekly cadence rather than training sporadically, which helps maintain cardiovascular fitness and makes exercise easier to sustain as a habit.

Build the glute medius once acute pain has settled, using targeted strengthening work such as standing, no-equipment movements. The goal is to improve pelvic stability, address underlying weakness, and reduce the chance of recurring back pain.

Use mouth breathing when your ventilation demand spikes, especially during hard exercise or sprinting, rather than as your default breathing pattern. The larger airway lets you move more air more easily, which can help meet high oxygen demand and support performance when nasal breathing becomes limiting.

When you feel a craving, temptation, or surge of excitement, deliberately imagine how the choice plays out all the way to the end instead of stopping at the immediate reward. Walk through the likely downstream consequences, especially the negative ones, so the short-term urge is replaced by a more realistic forecast. This helps interrupt impulsive decisions by making the future costs feel concrete in the moment.

Prepare the majority of your meals yourself rather than relying on packaged or restaurant food. This gives you more control over ingredients, portion sizes, and added sugars, salts, and oils, which can make it easier to build a healthier food environment and reduce exposure to ultra-processed foods.

Use sauna in a fasted state, ideally leaving 2–3 hours after your last meal and especially before bedtime. The idea is to keep glucose and insulin relatively low around the sauna session, which may help maximize growth hormone release.

Have intercourse during the fertile window, especially the two days before ovulation and the day of ovulation, when conception odds are highest. A common protocol is every other day starting about 3–4 days before ovulation, which helps ensure sperm are present when the egg is released.

During jet lag adjustment after westward travel, avoid taking a “quick” nap that can accidentally turn into a long sleep episode. Staying awake helps preserve sleep pressure for nighttime and makes it easier to shift your body clock and settle into local sleep on the new schedule.