Improve your health with self-guided experimentation

After graduating from high school, I set-out on a decade-long personal development quest to finally put an end to my anxiety. I chose to start by improving my sleep because that didn't require going to a doctor which shows you how far I've come. At the time, I was staying up late and waking up before sunrise to go surfing before work. I was so tired during the day that I would crawl into the bed of my truck and take a nap at lunch.

My search led me to an article titled “How to Become an Early Riser” by blogger Steve Pavlina, who said all you have to do to be well-rested is wake up at the same time each day.

Here’s Steve:

“The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.”

I was attracted to the idea that all I had to do was a simple experiment to potentially change my energy and settle the debate on whether or not poor sleep worsens anxiety. There was little to lose, and a lot to gain. Flash-forward a few weeks and I was consistently waking up at 6am, and, although still tired because I was 19, I felt an improvement in my energy as my body adapted to a consistent routine. In fact, the improvement to my sleep was so beneficial that I still use this technique 17 years later (at least until my son was born and my whole routine changed).

Have you ever wondered how you would feel if you perfected your sleep routine? Or ate differently, or drank more water, or tried one of those new meditation apps? The simplest way to answer these questions is through self-guided experimentation, which, by the way, can also establish the foundation for your health.

Where to start

Self-experimenting with your health may bring up a vision of an armful of supplements or an expensive fitness-tracking watch, but I’ve found it helpful to start with the fundamentals and adjust the things you’re already doing on a daily basis.

Your sleep, movement, diet, and hydration each play an important role in how you feel today, as well as your likelihood for remaining healthy in a decade from now. They’re also the simplest areas to adjust.

Here are some adjustments to get you started:

• Sleep: amount, timing, room temperature, pets off the bed, avoiding blue light an hour before bed, avoiding caffeine after 1pm, avoiding eating 3 hours before bed, nervine tea blend, a pillow with more support, journal to release your monkey-mind.
• Diet: avoid processed food, add more produce with a variety of different colors, decrease eating window, consistent meal times, eat more fiber, eat more fish.
• Movement: change the type (aerobic, stability, resistance training), increase the daily amount, increase intensity, change the number of reps, increase the number of steps, focus on your breath, sit less.
• Hydration: more water, less of everything else.

How to draft an experiment

Your experiment needs to begin with a question that’s based on a health trend you find interesting, or a part of your life you want to improve. It can also be sparked by any vague symptom you're experiencing, especially fatigue, allergies, IBS, or mood swings.

Here's an example of an elimination diet I did

• An observation: The food I’m eating might exacerbate my eczema
• A single* intervention: Eliminate all the common food allergens
• A defined time period: 3 weeks
• Predicted outcome: Less inflammation in my flexor surfaces
• Measured response: I’m itching less than before I changed my diet

The parameters of the experiment are simple. The challenging part is seeing it through to the end.

(*Note: Start your experiment with only one change. That way you can isolate the thing that is working, while not overwhelming the system. Attempting too many changes simultaneously contributes to all the failed New Year’s resolutions you hear about.)

Thoughts on timing

Timing is mission-critical here. You don’t want the experiment to be so short that you don’t see results, but neither do you want to embark on some god-forsaken, year-long quest where you get burned-out after one week. The sweet spot is a two week commitment. Also, you aren’t doing yourself any favors by making lifestyle changes during the holidays or during your birthday week.

In terms of motivation, some people find January 1st as a good starting point because it’s a definitive beginning. It’s true. I think tomorrow morning can be equally exciting if you acknowledge the opportunity of a new day. My wife, Mary, says the hardest part of exercising is lacing up your Nikes, suggesting the obstacles don’t seem as daunting if you just get started already.

An example on timing: To improve your energy, experiment with a two week period where the only change you make is to wake up at the same time each morning, even on the weekends. To assess for improvement, measure your energy throughout the day and compare it to what it was like before the change.

Example where timing won’t be as effective: Going to bed early tonight to see how you feel in the morning. Although beneficial short-term, this won’t lead to useful knowledge, including what your ideal sleep schedule should be or how many hours of sleep you need to function optimally.

Is this Biohacking?

When I was exploring the triggers of my eczema I chose a three week period for my elimination/challenge experiment, strategically away from holidays where there would be too much temptation. The elimination diet has you avoid all foods that potentially exacerbate your symptoms, and then reintroduce them one at a time to see if there’s an obvious culprit. It’s intensive, but has a high potential for insight.

After drafting a plan, I went to Trader Joe’s and stocked up on the “allowed” foods, which wasn’t much, but I didn’t care because I was officially a biohacker. At the time, being a “human guinea pig” was gaining interest thanks to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast and books by author Tim Ferriss. These guys popularized the concept of citizen science through self-guided experimentation with supplements and lifestyle modifications.

Here’s Tim on his sleep habits:

“I have found I function best across the board physically and mentally if I get around seven and a half hours of sleep at night and then another 90 minutes around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m., whenever possible.”

Obviously this wasn’t a prescription from a doctor, or a generalized recommendation from the CDC. This tells me that Ferriss cares about his health enough to create a sleep schedule that matches his body’s demands.

Dave Asprey, host of Bulletproof Radio and self-described “Father of biohacking,” encourages his listeners to explore “do-it-yourself biology” in order to “be the absolute best version of yourself” which is something I preach, too.

That said, experimenting requires time, planning, and discipline, so I no longer call these “hacks.” Other than being born with good genes, there’s no shortcut to living a long, healthy life, so I encourage you to focus on the little things you do on a daily basis that combine to create your lifestyle.

All this DIY healthcare may sound a bit bizarre, but in some ways you have practiced health-related experiments since childhood, as you subconsciously gravitate towards food with the calories and nutrients your body needs. You also know to avoid the pizza shop down the street after a bout of food-poisoning. Trial and error is partly how humans evolve. These experiments are just more structured.

Examples outside of the biohacking world

Entrepreneurs are another group of strategic experimenters we can learn from. They know that success in business comes from persistence plus experimentation, so they use tools like A/B testing, for example, as a way to analyze different variations of an ad or a webpage before launching. Similarly, it’s common for a start-up to create multiple prototypes in order to test their product, or create a beta version to fine-tune software before releasing the final draft. All of this work is intended to allow creators to focus their energy on the stuff that works while ignoring everything else.

Back to my elimination experiment

I hit a wall on day seven of my first elimination diet. I was hungry all the time, and reduced to scarfing handfuls of raw almonds and cashews because nuts were one of the few allowed snacks. It took a turn for the worst when a new symptom appeared: pruritus ani (which I can confirm is as uncomfortable as it sounds). In retrospect, it’s obvious I could have avoided this if I was working with a doctor.

If you think the hunger and unwelcome itching suggests that the experiment was a failure, you’d be wrong. It only took two weeks before my IBS symptoms eased and my eczema started to heal. It sounds too good to be true, but after 3 years of suffering with daily symptoms, the improvements were life-changing (and ultimately inspired me to become a naturopathic doctor).

It was also empowering to know that my health was affected by my behavior and, at 25, I was finally an active participant in improving my situation. Once again, to this day I still maintain the dietary changes I learned during that experiment.

If you’re stuck, change your identity

Accepting the responsibility for your health can feel overwhelming. Do I join the gym? Stop eating meat? Get some essential oils on Goop? (Answers: Maybe; Maybe; No)

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, suggests you ease into new habits by adjusting your identity.

“Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve,” Clear writes. “This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.”

If you’re looking to prioritize yourself going forward, observe how other healthy people around you behave. You might notice they solidify their identity as a health-conscious person based on the food they eat, what they do on the weekend, or how they prioritize their time. You might also notice they are constantly evolving through self-experimentation.

Get to work

“Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.” —Randy Pausch

It used to surprise me when a patient would tell me they don’t have a consistent sleep routine, or they eat whatever they want, or they exercise when they’re motivated. In my experience, few people take the time to master the fundamentals of health, despite the evidence that this is how long-term health is created.

The good news is that experimenting is inexpensive, you can start it today, there’s low risk of side effects, and you get results that are curated to your individual needs, which are the most useful kind. Plus, one successful experiment is often all the motivation a guy needs to get the ball rolling for the next one, and before you know it you have established a game plan for a healthier life. You are building your house on concrete instead of sand. You are sacrificing energy today, to show respect to your future self.

If you’re looking for more motivation I suggest you check out David Goggins and his book “Can’t Hurt Me”. Here’s a preview:

“It’s a lot more than mind over matter. It takes relentless self discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day.”

And here’s the template I use for my experiments:

“My [symptom] might be exacerbated by [association you’ve made] and I suspect that [an intervention] for [amount of time] will [possible outcome], which I will assess as [how you monitor progress].”