Bizarre Mind-Blowing Health Tricks

Bizarre mind-blowing health tricks that are backed by science. The first one is dark chocolate. When you start eating dark chocolate at 80% cacao, there's going to be a lot less sweeteners. It borders on kind of bitter chocolate. This is from a study in 2017. A meta-analysis showed that it can significantly decrease the systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure comparable to certain medications. Dark chocolate decreases cortisol by 14%. That's the stress hormone. It's the flavonoids in the chocolate. It actually increases nitric oxide. So that's going to lower blood pressure. Just realize that you don't want to take this too late in the day because it has something similar to caffeine, which can keep you up at night. So I wouldn't have any past lunchtime. The next one is from the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. This trick significantly improves your sinuses, increasing nitric oxide by 15 times. Nitric oxide gives you more oxygen. This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which will help relax you, lower your blood pressure. And it's basically the action of humming while you're exhaling. So you sit or lie down somewhere, maybe on your bed. You inhale through your nose very, very gradually. And then you exhale while you are humming. Mmmmm. So you can feel the vibration in your face and your chest. And you want to do this for several minutes a few times a day. I mean, this is pretty wild. Humming could actually help your sinuses by basically restricting the airflow in your sinuses, which increases nitric oxide. The third one is pretty wild because it just involves standing on one leg for 30 seconds. And then you're going to stand on the other leg for 30 seconds. You're practicing your balance. And this is from a 2014 study in the journal Stroke. And maybe you want to do this while you're brushing your teeth or shaving or something like that. But what they found is it actually increases your gray matter volume, which includes hippocampus, which is all about memory, increasing your cognitive score by 13%. So I guess the way that it works is you're basically forcing your body to balance on one leg, which sends information up to your brain, exercising that part of the brain, and improving that part of the brain. The next one is also very interesting. And this is sniffing something. In a research paper in 2013, there was a study that showed that you can increase your cognitive function memory by just under 8% by sniffing rosemary oil. Wow. And apparently there's something in that oil that increases acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter in your brain. I also found three more papers, 2013, 2021, and 2017, showing that sniffing lavender oil can significantly lower your anxiety and increase your mood, as well as increasing your sleep quality, decreasing daytime sleepiness, and even reducing post-surgical pain. But when you sniff peppermint oil, you may find an increase in sustained attention, better reaction time, better respiratory efficiency, and less tension headaches. And then you have eucalyptus oil. When you sniff that, apparently you have the most potent effect on your respiratory centers. Significantly decreasing coughing, improving COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, as well as decreasing mucus in the respiratory areas. And then lastly, with frankincense oil, they found that it can actually decrease neuroinflammation, inflammation in your brain, which can directly improve your memory scores, as well as decreasing anxiety. I mean, you don't need to consume it. You can just smell it. It'll probably last longer. This next one is actually interesting. You might want to try it. This was a study in 2018 in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology. By wearing dry, warm socks to bed, you can actually increase your sleep 32 minutes longer, and improve the quality of sleep just by dry, warm socks. And I'm sure that would really even work better with someone with cold feet. Then we come into something else called forest bathing. I did a video on this a long time ago. So just by being out in the forest 20 to 30 minutes, smelling the trees, touching the leaves, listening to the birds, significant improvement, 26% increase in natural killer cells in your immune system. Those are the cells that not only kill cancer, but they kill viruses. Your mood gets elevated. The blood pressure comes down significantly. Your cortisol can decrease by 27%. And I think the results are based on certain volatile vapor chemicals that come off of trees, as well as just being in that environment. You're kind of extracting all this stress when you put your attention in this new environment. The next one is actually singing in the shower. Now, a lot of people sing in the shower, but they don't realize the health benefits of singing in the shower. By singing loudly in the shower for 5 to 10 minutes, and this is from a paper in 2018, European Journal of Applied Physiology, you can actually increase a certain immune cell by 37%. I'm not going to get into the technical name of that immune cell, but I will say it strengthens your immune system and it's comparable to taking vitamin C. And at the same time, it shows that it can decrease your cortisol by 19%. That's the stress hormone. And increase your lung function by 14%. So the next time you're singing in the shower, realize you're improving your immune system and you're reducing your stress. If you found that interesting, I have more health hacks in this video right here. Check them out.