I Tried 7 New Ways to Get Healthier; 5 Worked

From intermittent fasting to red light therapy and a gut health diet, here’s what I learned

I’m always curious about new ways to improve my health. It’s not that I have so many ailments. It’s just that the idea of living a long and healthy life really appeals to me.

So I tried a total of seven different ways to get healthy over the past few years. Here are my results.

1. Egoscue

It started with an excruciatingly painful back problem. One minute I was totally fine. The next, I was doubled over in pain and barely able to walk. I was sure I broke something or suffered some kind of horrible injury.

Yet it turned out to be “merely a narrowing of the spine,” according to the orthopedist. Though he was unimpressed with my symptoms, I was suffering — a lot. I couldn’t move a millimeter without wincing in pain.

That led me down a rabbit hole of treatments, both traditional and alternative, ultimately ending up with an effective, non-invasive and surprisingly simple solution that worked beautifully: Egoscue.

Egoscue is basically a series of exercises, not unlike yoga, but with an emphasis on alignment of the body. And it truly worked wonders for me. I went from being in excruciating pain to resuming my normal life in a week.

Bottom line: When anti-inflammatories and cortisol didn’t work, when acupuncture and physical therapy proved only mildly effective, when herbs and hypnosis offered little relief, Egoscue did the trick. I still do 15 minutes of Egoscue exercises every morning.

2. Intermittent Fasting

The first time I heard that fasting was a great way to lose weight, I thought, “uhm…duh?” I mean I’m no dieting expert, but I do know that when you don’t eat, you don’t gain weight.

Except intermittent fasting isn’t about not eating. It’s about limiting your window of eating so that you give your body’s fat storage mechanism a break. It’s kind of genius, actually.

Intermittent fasting is also called time-restricted eating, and there are a number of ways to do it. I tried a 16:8 fast, where I ate during an 8-hour window and didn’t eat during a 16-hour window. I basically stopped eating around 9:30 p.m. for the day and didn’t start eating again until 1:30 p.m. the next day.

When I first wrote about my intermittent fasting experience, I was having trouble going the full 16 hours without getting hungry. Since then, the problem has resolved itself. As long as I keep my average overall carbohydrate intake pretty low, I’m fine. Some days I have more carbs — mostly low starch — and I compensate by eating fewer carbs the next few days. I also make sure to combine my carbs with fiber.

For me, this works well.

Bottom line: Although I’ve never been grossly overweight, and I don’t have any chronic illnesses, I’ve always carried an extra 5–20 pounds on my small frame. Intermittent fasting is an easy and effective way for me to stay at a healthy weight and feel good.

3. ION*Gut Health (formerly called Restore for Gut Health)

The microbiome is having a moment. A diverse and well-functioning microbiome is supposed to be the key to preventing everything from Alzheimer’s to depression.

But it turns out that merely drinking kombucha or taking a probiotic supplement isn’t going to significantly improve your overall gut health (at least not in a way that has been proven with scientific research). As with all trendy health ideas, the solutions are a lot more nuanced.

ION*Gut Health is a liquid mineral supplement developed by Dr. Zach Bush, a physician specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology and hospice care. It’s designed to strengthen the tight junctions in the gut lining, which in turn, boosts immunity, enhances mental clarity and promotes digestion. It’s also supposed to prevent the ill effects of pesticides, particularly RoundUp, which are so prevalent in our environment.

I choose to try this supplement after hearing Dr. Bush on a podcast. I liked the fact that he was emphasizing the need to get to the root causes of disease. I liked the fact that he started out as a cancer researcher, and I liked his explanation of the effects of glyphosate (RoundUp) on our microbiomes and the need to restore the integrity of our tight junctions, not just add a probiotic.

Bottom line: I’ve been taking this supplement (with my doctor’s blessing) for nearly five years now. It seems to have improved my gut lining (see the Viome section below). It also had a surprising side benefit: It eliminated my allergies. Like completely.

I’ve had allergies since I was a toddler. I’ve gotten allergy shots for decades. Even with the shots, I still had to take an antihistamine pretty much every day in the spring and fall, and I suffered horrible allergy attacks whenever I was around cats or dogs.

Within a month or so of taking this supplement, I didn’t need the antihistamines. Within a few months, I’d ditched the shots entirely. That was nearly five years ago. I can now be around cats and dogs without breaking into a sneezing fit or wanting to scratch out my eyes. I can also go out in allergy season without the need for pills. As I understand it, the histamine reaction is related to the gut. I don’t know how it works, but it works great for me.

4. Red Light Therapy

In search of a wrinkle cream, I stumbled on a few red light therapy facial devices that were supposed to turn back the hands of time.

I did some research and found that red light therapy (sitting or standing in front of a panel of red light and/or near-infrared light) is supposed to do everything from promote healthy skin to reduce inflammation, improve blood flow, optimize sleep and speed exercise recovery.

I ended up buying a rather expensive panel of red and near-infrared lights and spent 15–20 minutes a day in front of it for nearly a year.

The result: My face looks the same.

Did I expect to take 20 years off my face? Yes, I did.

Did I get that result? No, definitely not.

Were those expectations a little unrealistic? Well, sure. But a girl can always hope.

In fact, they were not unlike the expectations I’ve had with every face cream I’ve ever bought. And like those face creams, red light therapy likely produces very subtle that take a long time.

Bottom line: I’m willing to concede those points, and I’ll also say that sitting in front of the red light is quite relaxing, almost meditative. However, I wouldn’t buy one of these panels in the hope that it’ll give you the same results as Botox, fillers or cosmetic surgery.

5. Keto

You’ve seen the washboard abs on Instagram, heard the stories of quick and dramatic weight loss, perhaps even watched friends and family load up on bacon and eggs while losing tons of weight.

You’ve also likely heard that it’s a fad and not for the long term. That’s because keto is a very low carbohydrate, high-fat diet. Ideally, on keto, you’ll get roughly 75% of your calories from fat, 20% from protein and 5% from carbohydrates.

I wanted to try keto as a way to get over my post-breakfast sugar crashes, mid-afternoon fatigue and inability to shed 15 pounds no matter what I tried.

Now, I admit I’m not a nutritionist or doctor. If you have research that proves keto is not a good idea, I will enthusiastically read it. But from what I’ve read about the role of fat in our diet, I’ve determined that fat isn’t the evil nutrient it’s been made out to be.

Yes, a few types of fat, like hydrogenated oils and other highly-processed fats, are terrible for you. The rest seem to range from being benign to downright beneficial.

I emphasized healthy fats (grass-feed beef, pastured eggs and butter, wild salmon and avocado) while on keto.

Bottom line: Keto is a fabulous way to lose weight quickly, and it makes you feel great. I was full of energy, had no hunger pains and eliminated those mid-morning sugar crashes completely.

Is it good for the long haul? I think it can be, especially if you have diabetes or metabolic syndrome. I switched to more of a low carb diet, because I don’t have any more weight to lose, and it’s hard to be social when you’re doing keto.

So much social activity centers around food, and when you can’t have anything at a party or while eating out with friends, it’s lonely. I find that low carb works just fine for me now, so that’s what I’m doing. Yet I would go back to keto in a heartbeat if I needed it.

6. Quench plan

When I was 12, I was hospitalized for dehydration. Ever since, I’ve been laser focused on drinking water. Yet I’ve found that just drinking lots of water doesn’t do the trick. How can I tell? My lips get very dry and chapped when I’m dehydrated. I also get very thirsty.

I experimented with drinking electrolyte water and even adding electrolyte drops to my water (like endurance athletes do). But that only helped marginally.

Then I read Dr. Dana Cohen and Gina Bria’s 2018 book Quench: Beat Fatigue, Drop Weight, and Heal Your Body Through the New Science of Optimum Hydration.

I discovered that rather than drinking water, I should be eating my water. The authors studied people who live in desert climates and discovered they get most of their hydration from plants.

It turns out that there is a fourth phase of water, sometimes called gel water, that is found in plants like cucumbers, lettuce, celery, radishes and berries. And it is even more hydrating than liquid water. Namely, it does a better job of getting hydration into the cells than regular water.

I also learned that I was also probably drinking too much water, causing my body to flush the electrolytes and nutrients I so desperately needed.

The book offers a simple hydration plan that includes drinking lemon water and green smoothies made with chia seeds. That’s because chia seeds are one of the most efficient ways to hydrate. The authors also recommend incorporating other hydrating foods into your diet.

And they emphasize the importance of simple micro movements throughout the day to stimulate fascia, which is crucial for moving hydration through the tissues into the cells.

Bottom line: My results are pretty darned good. It’s only been about two weeks since I started this program, but I am drinking far less water and feeling far more hydrated. Although I didn’t need to lose weight, I can see how that’s possible, since the chia seeds are very filling.

The authors recommend drinking a smoothie within two hours of waking, which I haven’t done, since I’ve been doing intermittent fasting. Next, I will experiment to see if that produces any different results.

7. Viome

Viome is a private company that offers to test your poop to see how your microbiome is functioning. You get scores for everything from metabolic function to inflammatory activity, protein fermentation, digestive efficiency and gut lining health. You also get a list of foods to eat and avoid.

When I told my family I was having my poop tested to see what foods I should and shouldn’t be eating, they enjoyed a hearty round of belly laughs, punctuated by various “elimination” jokes for 10 solid minutes. The fact that I chose to do this voluntarily without a doctor’s prescription or even suggestion seemed to fuel the mirth even more.

I was not deterred. I thought it seemed like a cool idea, and I had a few bucks left in my health savings account to spend.

Viome bills itself as a gut intelligence test. You send the company a tiny sample of your poop (it’s easier and less gross to collect that you’d think), and Viome not only identifies all the types of bacteria taking up residence in your belly, it tells you whether or not they’re playing nice with each other and what you can do about it.

Specifically, you get a list of foods to eat, foods to avoid and foods to minimize. It also gives you the exact names of all the bacteria identified in your gut (presumably in case you want to drop that knowledge at cocktail parties).

In researching this product, I found that most of the people who took the test were suffering from some sort of gut problems — either difficulty digesting foods, food sensitivities or other symptoms that couldn’t be resolved easily.

It’s important to note that I didn’t really have any of those problems. I was after optimum health, not resolution of a chronic gastrointestinal problem.

That may be why my results showed only five foods to avoid: cashews, lobster, coffee, wild rice and shallots. I had a much bigger list of foods to minimize, many of which were obvious to me, like sugar, potatoes and white rice.

What did surprise me were some of the superfoods on my list, which included black beans, bananas (pretty high in sugar), cheese and beef. Since I had been following a keto diet for about nine months before my Viome test, I thought I was eating too much meat and cheese. Turns out no — at least according to Viome.

Because of this, following the Viome diet was pretty easy for me (except for the coffee). I tried to go without it for a day or two, but gave up.

Bottom line: I did a pretty good job of sticking to the Viome diet, except for the coffee. I was delighted to discover that my gut lining was in fantastic shape. Gold star for ION*Gut Health!

Overall, I think Viome is an interesting tool, especially if you have gut issues or other chronic illnesses that originate in the microbiome. For me, though, it’s hard to say just how effective it really was.

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