Nano Health Habits: How Small Changes Deliver Big Results
Jules Walters • Updated October 15, 2024
It’s tempting when we’re not feeling our best to think we need to make a radical change. We want results now and decide we have to start all over again.
But humans are creatures of habit and research shows that small changes made over time are more effective than radical change.
What are Nano Health Habits?
The concept of making nano or very small changes over time has gained traction in the last decade.
James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, codified three laws of change: make it obvious, make it attractive and make it easy. For example, if you’re going for a walk first thing in the morning, put your walking shoes next to your bed so you put them on as soon as you get up; automatically.
James’ work built on the work of Dr BJ Fogg, a Stanford University researcher. BJ’s book, Tiny Habits, described the power of stacking habits: linking a desired, new habit to another that’s already in place. For example, after I clean up after dinner, I will make a herbal tea.
We can think of habits as something we do automatically, having formed a link between the habit or routine and a particular reward. I go to the gym: I feel better. We’ve repeated the behavior so often that we don’t even have to think about it. It becomes effortless.
Nano Health Habits builds on that research and suggests practical examples we might consider adopting to improve our health, nano step by nano step
Do nano changes in health accelerate over time?
We may be more familiar with the concept of accelerating returns from the world of financial investment.
As life coach Leo Babauta summarizes in Zen Habits, if you saved $5 a day in an index investment fund, at the end of 20 years you would have almost $70,000 at a six percent interest rate. If the interest rate was closer to eight percent, you’d have more like $90,000.
The same compound effect works in health. We now have multiple studies showing how one small change made a big difference, not just to health, but to our risk of dying. For example, walking just 2,500 steps a day resulted in an eight percent reduction in death from any cause. More steps delivered even more benefits.
We also know that eating regular amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish like salmon and sardines, increases learning, memory and blood flow in the brain.
It’s been estimated by James Clear in Atomic Habits that if just one new tiny habit delivered a 1% improvement every day for one year, that cumulative effect would deliver a 37 times better result over a year. (1.01365 = 37.78)
Imagine the even greater compounding effect if we adopted four nano health habits over a year, say one tweak every three months, rather than just one in a year? Maybe we replace that morning donut with a protein shake.
A personal story of a nano health habit
About six months ago, I gave up gluten, a protein commonly found in wheat. So, no bread or pasta. Not the regular kind anyway.
That might sound like a big change rather than a nano change – but, for me, it was an easy adjustment. I had just received the results of a report on my DNA, as I was curious about how my genes were affecting my metabolism. The results were pretty clear. My body treated gluten as a low level toxin.
More than 90 percent of people with celiac disease have my genetic make-up.
My health decisions are driven by data, and that data was pretty clear. So, that was it: gluten was off the menu. Thankfully these days, removing gluten was a relatively easy adjustment to make. I found the gluten-free section of my grocery store, and a world of new options opened up.
The power of lifestyle medicine and nano health habits
It’s estimated that up to 85% of spending on healthcare in the US pays for the treatment of conditions rooted in poor lifestyle. That could be poor food choices, lack of exercise or sleep, or too much stress.
The future of our health literally rests on the daily decisions we make. We are the CEOs of our health.
Doctors are an essential part of our health team, particularly when we tip into disease, but for 99.9% of the time our doctors are not by our side. We are the ones in charge of our daily lifestyle decisions.
Nutrition is rarely discussed in conversations with our doctors. They don’t have time in an average consultation; and in four years of medical school doctors report spending fewer than 20 hours on nutrition.
Change is coming to traditional clinical learning
The first LifeStyle Medicine Interest Group started in 2008 at Harvard Medical School. Since then the number of interest groups focused on the power of lifestyle changes has reached 165 across US medical colleges. Emory University also includes lifestyle medicine in preventive and family medicine.
Some clinicians have written about the power of small changes for decades. Dr Dean Ornish published one of his first books Stress, Diet and Your Health back in 1982. He has also been building the evidence for lifestyle changes through his non-profit, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, for over four decades.
New book on nano health habits
So, right now, the power of lifestyle medicine is up to us. It can be hard to know where to start even with small steps.
My first book, Nano Health Habits, has just been published. I hope they’ll give you a little inspiration and a guiding hand along the way.
Remember: no nano change is too small to make a difference