Limitless Mindset

There’s a dichotomous old dogma I’m sure you reject: that you can develop your mind or develop your body. The mind/body split that the dweebest of philosophers and academics once espoused.But there’s another dichotomy that might be limiting you: the belief that fast equals rushed and “quantity has a quality all its own” when it comes to your time commitment to your health, fitness, and personal growth.“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” right?That’s a saying as old as, well, Rome, I’m sure.But might it now be... wrong?Might you actually have all the time you need to elevate your mind to the divine frequency it’s intended to receive and chisel your body so that every mirror refracts greatness?

That’s a question that I’m going to get really pragmatic on today with PJ Glassey...

PJ is an author, serial entrepreneur, and the creator of the revolutionary high-intensity protocol behind X Gym in Kirkland, Washington (which boasts an almost perfect 4.9-star rating on Google Maps). He’s going to tell us how to fit 7 hours of traditional fitness into two 21-minute sessions a week, along with the neuroscience of neuro-centric movement, brain typing, and how high-efficiency biohacking can rebuild your physique without taxing your schedule.

Mentioned in the interview

PJs Timehacks

7 hours of fitness in two 21-minute sessions - With continuous time under tension. Explained here...

“Exercise snacks” - Doing 1 to 2 minutes of exertion every hour (e.g., using stairs or air squats) to transform metabolism.

Variable resistance training - from the book Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time by Dr. John Jaquish. But continuous time under pressure beats pricey home gym workout gear or products.

Jonathan’s Timehacks

In my first year of parenthood, with a new baby, I managed to run my business, write a book, work out 61 times, do date nights with my wife, and managed to stay in touch with family because I don’t use the “too busy” excuse.

Philosophy: Let small bad things happen. Mundane things: do them fast enough that you make little mistakes.

Workouts and fitness: 10-20 minutes; I would do them at home, squats holding the baby, and I would pair them with whatever knowledge I needed to acquire. For me, any workout time is professional development time. There’s always some topic I need to research: it could be a podcast guest’s book or how to keep my unvaccinated child safe from mumps. So I listen to audiobooks, podcasts, or whatever you can do now--if there’s a topic you need to learn about. Find like 4-5 sources on it: web pages, books, etc. Load these into a Google’s GEMINI AI Notebook, then prompt GEMINI to create a podcast about the topic, BUT in the prompt be very specific about your specific situation and goal. And it will do a scary good job of pinpointing what you need to know from those sources.

Memory hacks: Mnemonics + SuperMemo app - remember more of the knowledge you absorb from books.

Picking the right spouse: My wife knows Jonathan will not wait in a line to buy something.

Buy an hourglass as a reminder of the preciousness of time.

Brain Type Test

Might you be failing to break through glass ceilings in your health, fitness, and life because you’re using the wrong lifehacks for your “brain type?”

About X Gym - “The Timehack Gym”

X Gym is a personal training and small-group training studio in Kirkland, WA (also serving Bellevue and the Eastside), founded in 1998. Using proprietary high-intensity protocols, clients train just 21 minutes, twice a week in studio or online.

Check out their informative YouTube channel or PJ’s blogs on Zone Two cardio, exercise snacks, and more.

XGYM Video Workout App

Built just for people who want to do workouts whenever and wherever they like!

Dozens of Workout Videos! And more videos added every month

PJ Glassey, X Gym Founder, Is Your Trainer! - (It will feel like he’s in your head - yet not in a creepy way)

Filter Your Xercise Videos! By muscle focus, Xercise method, equipment, and more

Xercise Videos Formatted For Any Device! - Watch on your phone, tablet, computer, TV, etc.

Xtra Fast And Intuitive! Log in and GO - even if it’s for just one Xercise!

My conversation with PJ inspired this song about time management...

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Magnesium Breakthrough is my favorite supplement from BiOptimizers; it contains seven different forms of Magnesium...BisglycinateChelateCitrateMalateOrotateSucrosomialTaurate

I’ll tell you some about my experiences with it and break down some of the recent science on these seven forms.

Sleep hack

After dosing Magnesium, I consistently drift off to sleep quickly and slumber profoundly. Some report that Magnesium makes them calm or drowsy; their pillows become downright irresistible. And that’s not the effect it has on me - it doesn’t make me so drowsy that I can’t read a book or finish watching a movie. I just find that I go to sleep easily when the time is right.

Purely pleasant pooping!

A major benefit of Magnesium that I’ve recently discovered: it makes me a SUPER POOPER. My morning movements are MARVELOUS if I’ve taken 2-3 capsules of Magnesium Breakthrough.

Going back to the gym, I’ve been upping my protein intake. However, one day, in front of the full-length mirror at the gym, I said to myself, “You look a little fat!” Indeed, I was bloated because I had not had a proper poop all day. That evening, my wife had prepared an even more succulent meal for my consumption. But after teasing me about plumping up a bit, she insisted that I take the full range of BiOptimizers supplements with dinner and before bed. And, I’m happy to report, I had a most satisfying poop the next morning before even a drop of coffee had passed my lips. And this pattern has been consistent; if I take Magnesium before bed, I have a great, bowel-emptying poop.

Magnesium Science Overview

In the past year alone, there have been over 1100 articles of scientific research published specifically about Magnesium and 55 human clinical trials. For each of the seven forms contained in Magnesium Breakthrough, I’ll share a recent piece of science that drew my attention...

Magnesium Bisglycinate - we all know that Vitamin D3 is pretty important for staying healthy and surviving all the microscopic nastiness after us in this world; you also probably know about D3’s cofactor, Vitamin K2. But Vitamin D has a lesser-known cofactor key to its absorption and utilization; Magnesium, as established by a recent American randomized double-blinded controlled trial.

Magnesium Chelate - A Brazilian randomized, double-blind, clinical trial of hypertensive women found that 600 milligrams improved blood pressure and endothelial function.

Magnesium Citrate - Do you ever suffer from migraines? A Swiss-Austrian systematic review suggests 600 milligrams of this form as a safe and cost efficient strategy for prevention.

Magnesium Malate - The Scottsdale Magnesium Study identifies this form plus B-vitamin cofactors as ideal for addressing the magnesium deficiencies that so many suffer from.

Magnesium Orotate - It’s a Microbiome–Gut–Brain Axis hack according to a 2022 Romanian paper

Recent studies have shown that magnesium orotate is an important nutrient and adjuvant in the modulation of the microbiome–gut–brain axis. Important coincidences were found between microbiome–gut–brain axis physiology and magnesium and orotic acid metabolic features. As such, the importance of [Magnesium Orotate] and probiotic supplementation and adjuvant therapy in dysbiosis and gut–brain axis modulation is emerging

Sucrosomial Magnesium is a special formulation that boosts bioavailability, according to an Italian double-blinded repeated crossover study in healthy subjects.

Magnesium Taurate - Another American study suggests Magnesium Taurate and fish oil for the prevention of migraines.

BiOptimizers Review

We have been using the other BiOptimizers’ products for a few months now, and the Magnesium Breakthrough is my favorite - it’s the one I’d like to have permanently in my biohacker armamentarium. With the others, it was hard to say what difference they made for me; at least, I’ve had pretty good digestion for as long as I can remember. My wife, on the other hand, has significantly less-than-delightful digestion sporadically - we were hoping that BiOptimizers would be the digestion breakthrough she needed. But after taking these supplements for a few months, there is still some room for improvement with her digestion.

Magic pill?

There are some people out there looking for a magic pill solution to their digestion issues, and that may or may not be BiOptimizers’ lineup. Before you splurge on high-end digestion supplements like these, here are a few cheaper solutions to turn to...

Eat raw coconuts - This is one of my top cheap Biohacks/lifehacks, which I mentioned in the 500th Limitless Mindset Podcast. Coconuts are delicious, nutritious, and very easy on digestion - if you struggle with digestion, you can replace a meal a day with a raw coconut that’s going to cost about a dollar.

Read The Plant Paradox - This is one of the best diet books I've read and is worth a read by anyone who wants to improve their digestion and health. Dr. Gundry explains why people sometimes suffer from poor health and chronic conditions even though they "eat healthily" - it has a lot to do with something you may have never even heard of: plant lectins.

You deserve delightful digestion - for more empowering diet hacks…

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Creatine is one of the most well-known health supplements. It’s often caricatured as something just for gym bros because it helps them build muscle...

But actually, it’s a veritable Mitochondrial Nootropic for all-around human awesomeness.

This article is mostly going to focus on decoding what the human studies are saying about Creatine and how this squares up with the anecdotal experiences of Biohackers online.

Biohacker Review: The Swiss Army Knife of Mitochondrial support supplements

Creatine was one of the first supplements I used out of the behemothic box I received from PureBulk.com because it’s the Swiss Army Knife of Mitochondrial support supplements. I use it as both a Nootropic and workout performance enhancer, which I’ll describe here along with summarizing the most recent science and research done on Creatine.

As a Nootropic

While I won’t call it a smart drug, it does have subtle Nootropic effects; I notice myself being a bit more energized, optimistic, and motivated after taking a few grams of Creatine in the mid-morning. I did stack it with about 800 milligrams of N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine (NALT), which enhanced the Nootropic effects and kept me alert on a few days when I was a little underslept. I did take a heart rate variability measurement with my HeartMath device on this stack and achieved a coherence score of 1.2 while working on my laptop, which is a little of an uptick over my baseline.

Creatine and the Brain

Because the brain and nervous system require such high amounts of energy , it’s logical to assume the neurological system can benefit greatly from creatine — and this is being corroborated by clinical research . A growing number of studies have found that creatine can protect the brain from neurotoxic agents and certain forms of brain injury . (2650-2652)

Mitochondrial Nootropic

Head Strong by Dave Asprey makes the case that optimizing your Mitochondria is the ultimate performance-enhancing Biohack because your Mitochondria are the fundamental energy generation mechanism that underlies everything else. From the book:

Creatine has been a workout staple for decades, but the guys in the weight room probably don’t realize that creatine works by increasing ATP production in your mitochondria. This is what gives your muscles an extra boost of energy. Creatine also benefits your brain. In one study, creatine supplements caused a significant increase in working memory and intelligence. (p. 263)

On the two-week Head Strong program, I recommend the loading phase so that you can feel the creatine’s effects right away. If you do this, be sure to drink a lot of water. (p. 264)

Vs Sleep Deprivation

A 2024 randomized trial found that a single high dose (about 0.35 g/kg) increased brain phosphocreatine and buffered the cognitive hit of overnight sleep loss.

If you’re underslept, reach for some Creatine (and don’t be shy about the dose). It assuages sleep deprivation, jet lag, stress, and fatigue generally because: “The more the brain is stressed, the more Creatine comes to rescue,” according to Dr. Candow.

Creatine stacks well with one of my long-time daily driver Nootropics: L-Tyrosine. My first year as a brand-new dad was surprisingly productive thanks to this stack (and some other lifehacks).

Workout Performance Enhancer

One of the most reliable effects of Creatine is that you’ll be able to push yourself a little harder in the gym. You’ll walk home from the gym a little sorer than usual, but with a proud smile on your face for the gains you’ve made: pushing more weight, achieving more reps, or sweating it out more doing cardio. I stack it with one of my other favorite workout performance enhancers, HMB, for epic workouts that I’d be sore from for days if it wasn’t for the recovery hacks I employ: red light therapy on my muscles, healing PEMF frequencies, and a before-bedtime massage from my lady.

The other thing I like about Creatine is the muscle pump; it does make your muscles look bigger if you take it and work out consistently. HMB has a complementary effect; it essentially preserves muscle mass if you’re slacking on your workouts. So a vain yet economically-minded Biohacker would want to use them both; take 5 grams of Creatine and HMB on workout days to build muscle, and then if you need to take a few weeks off the gym for travel, work, or over the holidays, take just a few grams of Creatine daily as a Nootropic and HMB to preserve your strength gains.

A caveat on workout performance enhancers...

As Jeff Cavaliere of ATHLEAN-X preaches, you earn the right to take workout supplements. You probably shouldn’t be cramming supplements in your mouth your first week or month in the gym - you should put in the work for a couple of months building up foundational strength and competence before turning to supplements. The kinds of performance enhancers I name here do unlock an extra reserve of power and motivation. They can make you overconfident in the gym when you shouldn’t be, risking an injury that will ultimately set you back in your fitness.

A Muscle-Building Biohack

Ben Greenfield, in Boundless, breaks down why Creatine belongs in your bodybuilding armamentarium

With increases in exercise or muscle damage, your physiological need for creatine is increased. Research suggests that creatine supplementation can increase your muscles’ work capacity and power output while enhancing your lean body mass and physical endurance. Outside of the athletic population, creatine has been shown to reduce muscle breakdown and even to support cognitive function, especially in the elderly. Because creatine stores high-energy phosphate groups in the form of phosphocreatine, it releases energy to aid cellular function during stress. This effect causes strength increases after creatine supplementation and can also benefit the brain, bones, muscles, and liver. I recommend 5 g per day, preferably in one to three doses and mixed into warm water or another warm liquid to maximize absorption. (p.581)

History

Creatine was isolated in 1832 by Michel Eugène Chevreul from a water extract of meat. He named it from the Greek kreas, “flesh.” Justus von Liebig confirmed it as a normal constituent of muscle in 1847 and noticed that wild foxes killed in the chase had far more Creatine in their flesh than caged animals, an early hint that work and Creatine travel together.

Factoid: Performance enhancement effects were first noticed giving Creatine to a racehorse named Jolly.

Overview of Creatine Science

In the past decade, over 11,000 articles of scientific research specifically on Creatine have been published on PubMed, including over a thousand clinical trials. Let’s take a look at several of them that jumped out at me...

A Spanish study compared Morning versus Evening Intake of Creatine in Elite Female Handball Players. It concluded that while circadian rhythm certainly affects performance, it didn’t make much of a difference after 12 weeks in terms of performance and body composition. However, unless the evenings are the only time you can make it to the gym, I would only take it in my mornings or early afternoons, as it is a stimulating Nootropic that might mess with your sleep.

A Canadian-Italian study looked at the synergy of Creatine and caffeine. Gym buddies have occasionally looked at me funny when I showed up to the gym with a coffee in hand, but caffeine indisputably increases power output. And in my experience, black coffee doesn’t mess with my stomach during a workout. However, the study reports that the uptick in performance from the combination was negligible. A recent systematic review evaluated ten different studies combining the two, and the conclusion is that there’s no clear answer on whether the two actually complement each other. You’ll have to try the stack for yourself and see if you like it.

Another Spanish study gave it to 23 basketball players for 8 weeks, which resulted in an improvement in both the Abalakov jump power test performance and A significant interaction effect was also observed in points per game.

A shorter Canadian-Iranian study administered Creatine to Twenty male military personnel for a week and noted an uptick in cognitive performance that could make all the difference for warfighters.

Moving beyond the “squat rack” science...

Vs Alzheimer’s

A 2025 single-arm pilot in people with Alzheimer’s disease used 20 g/day of creatine monohydrate for eight weeks. Brain creatine rose about 11 percent on spectroscopy, and scores improved on total cognition, fluid cognition, working memory, and oral reading recognition.

Vs Depression

A 2026 narrative review of five randomized trials (238 people) found a mixed but non-trivial signal: 5 g/day of Creatine added to escitalopram in women with major depression produced a large additional drop on the Hamilton scale (Cohen’s d 1.13) and roughly doubled remission versus the SSRI plus placebo. Promising adjunct. Not a replacement for treatment.

For Recovery

Impressively, there are over 280 human studies on Creatine and recovery.

Dr. Candow appeared on Rhonda Patrick’s podcast and spoke highly of its effects on recovery (both post-workout and between sets of a workout), in a deep-dive discussion worth a watch...

Vs Inflammation

A recent review sheds light on its anti-inflammatory effects...

Accumulating research also suggests that creatine supplementation has anti-inflammatory and anti-catabolic properties, which may help create a favorable environment for muscle and bone accretion and recovery from exercise. Creatine supplementation has the ability to decrease markers of inflammation and possibly attenuate cancerous tumor growth progression.

And it does strengthen your bones, but only if you’re actually working out. So get grandma Creatine and some pink dumbbells for Christmas!

Another European study suggests that it also improves anaerobic athletic performance; it increased power output during repeated sprints for Sixteen recreationally active males. It concluded...

[Creatine] supplementation improved the mean power and speed in the second half of a repeated sprint running protocol, despite the increased body mass. This improvement was due to the higher power output and running speed in the last 5 [seconds] of each 10 [seconds] sprint.

So if you’re hiking in the woods with a buddy, DON’T SHARE YOUR CREATINE WITH HIM just in case the two of you are chased by a hungry bear! The verbal fluency-enhancing effects of Creatine will surely enable you to deliver a moving eulogy at his funeral.

On Sleep

There is no good clinical evidence that it causes insomnia. What the recent trials actually show is closer to the opposite, especially when the nervous system is under load.

* A six-week trial in menstruating women taking 5 g/day found about 45–50 more minutes of sleep on resistance-training nights versus placebo, measured with an Oura ring. Placebo sleep got shorter after lifting; Creatine appeared to blunt that hit.

* A 2025 seven-day loading study in men (20 g/day) improved subjective sleep quality and pulled bedtime earlier, without changing total sleep time or efficiency.

The insomnia reports you hear in forums usually travel with a caffeinated pre-workout, a 10–20 g late-night bolus, or just training later. If Creatine itself is keeping you up, move the dose to morning or with a meal.

For Baby Makin’

Sperm run on Creatine. A 2025 eight-week pilot (5 g/day, with or without ubiquinol) found 60% of men on Creatine improved sperm concentration versus 20% on placebo, and every oligospermic man on Creatine improved. Small study, right direction. Pregnancy research is early and clinical, not a DIY prenatal stack.

Post-pregnancy, my wife took Creatine daily, and we think it helped her energy levels (also, at 41 years old, she is still nursing daily after nearly 15 months. Bravo, babe!)

Forms of Creatine

Marketing loves a new salt. The ISSN-aligned critical review of alternative forms is blunt: there is little to no evidence that newer creatines are more stable, faster, more effective at raising muscle creatine, or cleaner on side effects than monohydrate.

* Creatine Monohydrate (especially micronized). Gold standard. Near-complete oral bioavailability. Micronized just mixes better.

* Creatine hydrochloride (HCl). Truly more water-soluble. That is real. What is not real is the “38× more bioavailable, so take 750 mg” claim. Solubility in a glass is not the same as muscle uptake. Qualifying head-to-head muscle-creatine trials are thin to nonexistent. Fine if your stomach hates monohydrate grit. Not an upgrade on efficacy

* Buffered creatine / Kre-Alkalyn. Sold as pH-stable, so it will not turn into creatinine in the stomach. A 2012 randomized trial found no advantage over monohydrate for muscle creatine, strength, or body composition.

* Gummies and chews. Same molecule in a worse format. Independent tests have repeatedly found products underdosed. Only worth it if the brand publishes third-party assays showing a full 3–5 g of actual Creatine per serving.

Verdict: If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it--buy patented Creapure or another third-party-tested monohydrate.

Mechanism of Action

From Dr. Lee Know’s recent book

Creatine is directly related to ATP . When a cell uses ATP , it loses a phosphate molecule and becomes ADP , which must be converted back to ATP for useful energy cycling . Because creatine is stored in the body as creatine phosphate , it can donate a phosphate molecule to ADP to regenerate ATP . This process is very speedy and is the main source of cellular energy production at the start of high - intensity anaerobic activity ( such as a 100 - meter sprint or lifting heavy weights ) . Having a large pool of creatine phosphate means this fast pathway of ATP regeneration can be sustained longer , which is exactly why creatine has been so beneficial for athletes . (2640-2645)

Sources

My go-to source is PureBulk.com--what makes their product stand out is that it’s verified as pure with a certificate of analysis from an accredited American lab. This evidence of purity is something you should demand from your local gym supplement shop or the sellers on Amazon, which likely can’t provide it.

BulkSupplements.com in the USA is also a decent source for Micronized Creatine Powder. If you prefer capsules, I recommend Double Wood’s purity-verified supplements.

In the EU, where I live, my go-to source is Jotunheim Nutrition.

Any product with patented Creapure® (or Creapure) is a good buy.

Downloadable Creatine?

You may be interested in taking it as an infoceutical - a non-pharmacological, side-effect-free version of the supplement that takes advantage of the phenomenon of water memory - which is imprinted on water via quantum collocation and electromagnetism using this device...

Infocueticals typically have 1/3 or half the effect of the actual medicine being imprinted. If you're skeptical of Infopathy, that's understandable; it's a game-changing application of a little-known scientific phenomenon. But I'd urge you to evaluate the scientific evidence (presented in my biohacker review) that downloadable medicine is no longer science fiction...

Usage and Dosage

Recommended daily dose

* 5 Grams - for maintenance of general health

* 10 grams - The middle-ground performance optimization dose for stronger muscles, bones, and brain.

* 20 grams - for aggressive muscle growth, or days when you are particularly stressed, fatigued, or underslept

Some experts contend that with Creatine, more is more--”Get crazy with +20 grams daily!” There’s no real risk to experimenting with mega-dosing, so if you buy the stuff in bulk powdered, why not?

Some advocate a...

“loading phase” in which you take 20 g daily (four doses of 5 g) for a week, then 5 g daily to maintain after that.

Others contend that’s unnecessary. A suggestion for absorption...

Creatine gets into your muscles more effectively if you pair it with a tiny amount of glucose. You don’t need much, so I recommend taking it with a quarter of a teaspoon of raw honey. (p. 264)

Capsuled vs Powdered

I appreciate having both the powdered and capsuled Creatine. Many mornings I’d mix a couple of grams of powdered Creatine (which has a not-awful, tangy taste) in a beverage or yogurt with other supplements. Then, before rushing out the door to the gym, I’d drop a capsule or two for extra energy in the domain of iron.

Side Effects

Not much to worry about here. “If our body doesn’t like it, our body just excretes it,” according to Dr. Candow.

* Intracellular water weight - Typically 1–2 kg in the first weeks. Water is pulled into muscle, not under the skin as “bloat.” Scales jump. That is the mechanism, not fat.

* GI distress - The only consistently reported nuisance. Almost always from a large single bolus (loading 20 g, or 10 g+ on an empty stomach). Split the dose, take it with food, use more water, or drop to 5 g. Micronized powder helps some people.

When I first started taking Creatine years ago, my wife was worried that it might cause hair loss (she really LOVES my hair) because of a small study she had seen that noted that effect among Spanish soccer players. I looked at this and found the statistical effect unconvincing. Since there’s better research done on this, Does Creatine cause hair loss? A 12-week randomized controlled trial--of 45 men.

This study was the first to directly assess hair follicle health following creatine supplementation, providing strong evidence against the claim that creatine contributes to hair loss.

Here’s my hair--on Creatine...

Risk Grade: A-

* One of the most studied supplements in existence. Short- and long-term use (including up to 30 g/day for years in some clinical cohorts) has a clean safety record in healthy people.

* Real downsides are GI upset at clumsy doses, a confusing creatinine lab value, and intracellular water weight. Those are nuisances, not organ toxicity.

* The practical risk that actually bites consumers is product quality: under-dosed gummies, proprietary “advanced creatine” blends on Amazon, and stacks that hide 1–2 g of Creatine behind a $50 label. Buy monohydrate with a certificate of analysis.

Main risk of Creatine: Being dangerously sexy

Cofactors

The Mighty Muscle Growth Dream Team Stack: Creatine, Collagen, Whey Protein & HMB

If you’re serious about putting on muscle, stack these three on with Creatine...

Collagen

Since it’s a crucial component of our muscles, it’s an exercise or muscle-building hack. There are 12 clinical trials evaluating its effects on exercise. You’d want to take at least 15 grams daily.

Whey Protein

30-60 grams of whey protein and 3 grams of HMB is a body composition hack for healthy adults, according to a recent resistance-training study, which showed increased fat-free mass over twelve weeks. You might be wondering about the clinically validated difference between whey protein and Collagen; a Brazilian study of lifters found that Collagen had a greater effect on power output, while whey protein resulted in larger muscles. Good to know for... Swimmers (both will make you tastier to sharks!)

HMB

I did find a meta-analysis specifically on the Creatine and HMB stack that I’m taking that evaluated six papers and concluded...

In summary, the combination of 3-10 g/day of [Creatine] plus 3 g/day of HMB for 1-6 weeks could produce potential positive effects on sport performance (strength and anaerobic performance) and for 4 weeks on body composition (increasing fat free mass and decreasing fat mass).

Here’s a handy chart for the Mighty Muscle Growth Dream Team Stack

Practical stack on a training day: 5 g creatine + 15 g collagen in one drink, 30–40 g whey around the session, 3 g HMB split or with a meal. Drink water. You do not need 20 g of Creatine every day just because the stack is “aggressive.” Muscle creatine saturates; extra mostly ends up as creatinine.

Cordyceps

I would like to stack it with Cordyceps; a combination highly recommended by my friend Dinnin.

Shrooms

Biohacker (and large human) Thomas DeLauer suggests as Nootropic cofactors for a multiplied neurogenesis effect, Lion’s Mane or Reishi mushroom.

Creatine--It’s what your Mitochondria crave!

If you’re interested in supporting your Mitochondria but a little confused by the dizzying number of supplemental options to do so out there, just start with Creatine, which is very affordable. Creatine is a no-brainer...You can take just a little or as much as 5 gramsYou can take it just on workout days or every dayStack it with other performance enhancers or don’tYou don’t need any fancy form of Creatine - just go with Creatine MonohydrateRegardless, it will benefit your myriad Mitochondria - you’ll feel (and likely look) better!

I made an (AI) song about Creatine...

Support me on Substack? For $7/monthly?

We've got a bevy of questions here ranging from arresting cognitive decline, new dad lifehacks, and old English inquiries to Reddit randomness that we'll get to, but I have a direct ask for you: if you've gotten some transformative value from my work--this is your chance to shape it in the future--participate in the...

[This should take you less than 10 minutes to complete]

Disclaimer

What you find here is NOT medical advice. I’m not a doctor. I’m just an experienced, unlicensed self-experimenter practicing free speech by talking about my own extensive experiences and my interpretations of published science. Please see my guide on How to Biohack Smart and Safe. You should consult a doctor about any biohacking you’re doing and, ideally, also get a second opinion.

#46 Questions

Q

A 38-year-old former tunneling worker based in Sydney with a 5-month-old son, with due to deep concerns over potential early cognitive decline, citing word-finding difficulties, memory lapses, executive dysfunction, a history of shift work and fine silica dust exposure, and a APOE3/4 genotype with his mother, who has early Alzheimer’s at 66. Additionally struggling with chronic mild irritation, elevated anxiety manifested in hair-twisting habits, and persistent mild neutropenia alongside recurring skin rashes, he has already stopped past heavy partying and alcohol use and is actively managing his health through an extensive supplement regimen, 40 Hz light/sound therapy, and vagus nerve stimulation.

A

Recommndations

For mind and memory

Piracetam - The best smart drug for memory

Mnemonics Practice - Because "even average memories are remarkably powerful when used properly"

Working memory rehab protocol - for restoring brain power and focus

Add neuroplasticity stimulators: Semax, Selank, and Lion’s Mane

Stress management

Are you an MTHFRer? Do 30 minutes of meditation a day; if not, reframe as “ustress”

Parenting hacks

New dad life will mess with your cognitive powers - peaceful parenting makes life easier. 1) no vaccines 2) no yelling in the house 3) no circumcision 4) no corporal punishment 5) no daycare

For much better sleep as a new parent: alternate nights sleeping with the baby

Supervised detox protocol is a good idea - THIS is out of my wheelhouse; hire a good functional medicine doctor

Empirical Zinc protocol - detailed in my Zinc meta-analysis: Targets his persistent mild neutropenia (1.6 × 10⁹/L) and recurring skin rashes. Regulates NMDA receptors, supporting synaptic plasticity and executive function without overstimulating anxiety.

Q

Responding to Defying dire destiny: born dead, breaking world records & thriving despite cerebral palsy 🎙️ with Mikael Avatar

I was initially going to skip this podcast because I didn’t think it had anything to do with biohacking, but this truly fits the definition. The intro is excellent and I literally had to pull over from driving and delve into this. I haven’t looked to see if there’s a transcript but if not, I’ll generate one and it will be something that I reflect back on and share often. Very meaningful and life-changing which is the essence of biohacking. Thank you.

A

Not sure if I’m going to start adding transcripts -- is that something that more of my audience would like?

Q

Jonathan, random question: I see you swaying side to side in your videos: do you have restless leg syndrome by chance? Or perhaps just have excessive energy during peak energy parts of the day?I sometimes do the bobbing knee when sitting, and sometimes when having insomnia, I find that if I shake my legs it helps my muscles to relax, so perhaps I have it somewhat myself.

A

Recommndations

Sitting is the new smoking, so I have long used an adjustable laptop stand - the poor man’s standing desk.

Do Soleus Push-Ups

Q

I vaguely recall from the years when i was more nootropics obsessed that some biohackers had started to consider racetam nootropics as having some higher risks/more moderate side effects, and thought folks were more moving away from them? Am I mistaken in this?

A

Racetams are one of the safest classes of Nootropics. Consider the safety evidence for the Racetam-rich stack I created, Caballo.

Q

Picture two identical twins over the next decade: twin A takes the absolute gold-standard nootropic stack every morning but lives in total behavioral chaos, while twin B takes sugar placebo pills but maintains absolute stoic discipline and laser focus. Who wins in the long term ??????

A

The one taking the placebo, of course! Might this hypothetical question be referring to the fictional Biohacker twins in my novel series Hourglass?

Q

A subscriber forwarded an email from David Tomen (Nootropics Expert) warning about a 2021 Seoul National University Hospital study where +100,000 Alpha-GPC users aged 50+ showed a 46% higher relative stroke risk compared to over 11 million non-users—with the risk increasing in a dose-dependent manner among those taking it daily for up to 10 years—leading Tomen to label it one of the “most dangerous supplements.” Will Alpha GPC KILL biohackers?

A

Association of L-α Glycerylphosphorylcholine With Subsequent Stroke Risk After 10 Years - The study highlights that long-term, high-dose Alpha-GPC use in elderly populations with existing vascular vulnerabilities carries potential cardiovascular trade-offs. However, claiming it is “one of the most dangerous supplements on the market” for a healthy adult using moderate doses is classic headline alarmism.

Recommndations

CDP Choline (Citicoline) - Alpha GPC alternatives like Citicoline follow a different metabolic pathway and generally do not raise TMAO levels to the same degree.

Q

What manner of bodily rite or daily custom, seeming on the scroll as dry and unlovely as a plunge into icy waters or the blocking of the blue light, yet in the secret chambers of the home, brings forth the most wondrous and desirable fruit? As it is written, “The glory of young men is their strength, but the beauty of old men is the gray hair,” yet here the true glory lies in the unseen work.

A

Recommndations

Tantric practice is one of the awesomest ethical hedonism hacks--watch the first module of the course, 9 Steps to Becoming a Tantric Man

Q

What should I do with 40 cans of oysters?Guys and ladies, I made a small blunder (long story) and ended up with 40 cans of oysters — Crown Prince Natural, Whole Oysters, Packed In Water, 8 oz (226 g) ordered from iHerb.Ideally, I want to sell them to get my money back... but where? If that doesn’t work out, or if you have good suggestions, I could also donate them somewhere... but where??Give me ideas on what to do with them.

A

Recommndations

Start a career/hobby as an “oyster cook” vlogger or “oyster influencer”

Prepping supply of oysters (for the Zinc!)

Your questions inspired this catchy Limitless song...

INVEST at least $300 in your own mind with these recommended sources and get a Biohacking consultation

Lean Life Coaching biohacking consulting

As mentioned in the podcast, this is a very lean biohacking consulting/life coaching program. Here’s how this would work...

* The Biohacking Consultation is 1 hour and 45 minutes total - which is actually two consulting calls.

* First Call 1 hour - Discovery & Strategizing call, I need to ask you some questions, we’ll discuss your history, and outline a biohacking strategy and action plan to overcome your issues.

* Second Call 45 minutes - Follow-up call in 30 or 60 days to see how you’re doing with the plan we outlined; how you’ve improved, what you’re struggling with, etc

There are a few important reasons we split the time up into two calls

* It’s a significant motivation hack for you to follow through on the biohacking habits and plan we’ll outline because you’re accountable to me in 30 or 60 days.

* I’m incentivized to come up with a really effective biohacking strategy for you because I have to talk to you after you’ve been following it for a month or two.

* It timeboxes us with a deadline of 30 or 60 days for you to make improvements and accomplish your goals.

Your skin is in the game here, that you’re paying good money for this, and you’re accountable to me on another call in 30 or 60 days. You’ll have to explain your lack of action if you fail to follow through.

Take a few minutes to answer a few questions. If your issues are far outside my areas of expertise, I’ll decline the consultation. My time is finite and very valuable, so I only want to spend it consulting the people I can really help. Thanks in advance for your understanding!

Support me on Substack? For $7/monthly?

I’ve been fasting for years; in fact, it’s a major economic lifehack, so I decided to read Dave Asprey’s recent deep-dive book on the topic, Fast This Way. The book is a bit of a memoir, actually; it’s punctuated by vignettes from a grueling (and transformative) 4-day fast that the author did alone in a cave in the Arizona desert.

Why does fasting work?

How can fasting do so many good things for you? The answer is simple: your body is already packed full of repair and rejuvenation mechanisms. Thousands of years—no, millions of years—no, billions of years of evolution have shaped them inside of us. Your ancestors have run the gauntlet of death and extinction. You and I are the survivors of an inconceivably brutal winnowing process. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have all of those health-preserving cells and molecules. All that fasting does is remove the dietary impediments we put in our own way and allows us to take maximal advantage of the gifts evolution has given us. Fasting puts us in control of a 4-billion-year-old evolutionary process. (pp. 97-98)

there’s a fundamental difference between hunger and craving. Hunger is a biological message, and it is something that you can control. Craving is a psychological psychological need, and it is something that tries to control you. The truth is, you can go a long time without eating, and you won’t suffer for it. In fact, you will thrive. (p. 4)

Fasting is an amygdala hack

But as essential as the amygdala may be, it can also be a source of irrational, destructive fear. It’s a major contributor to that voice in your head that says you might just die if you do something you’re afraid of—such as going on a job interview, ending a bad relationship, speaking in public, or simply skipping a few meals. Intermittent fasting enables you to put the amygdala and the whole reptilian part of your brain in its place, so that you can be more fully human, more fully yourself, less burned by your fears. (p. 7)

Fasting is really the best spice!

When you end a fast from anything, it makes that substance or that experience much more appreciated. It causes heightened pleasure and brings easy gratitude into your life. (p. 13)

I’ll second this! Fasting is reliably a hedonism hack; before I eat a meal I know I’ll love, I’ll fast to multiply the pleasure.

Fasting for COVID resilience

Adrienne Barnosky, an endocrinologist at Duke University School of Medicine, and her colleagues confirmed that intermittent fasting helps prevent insulin resistance. (p. 16)

As explained in Dr. Mercola’s recent book, insulin resistance is a major risk factor that puts you in danger of a catastrophic case of the wu-flu.

Bulletproof coffee is recommended relentlessly throughout the book...

Which I don’t have a problem with; it can be a game-changer for fasting. I drink Bulletproof-style coffee almost every day, and it powers me through my intermittent fast.

Wake up in the morning and drink a cup of Bulletproof Coffee: black coffee, a dollop of grass-fed butter, and a teaspoon or more of C8 MCT oil. It’s the best latte you’ll ever drink. (p. 18)

And you don't have to buy Bulletproof products; just add butter and MCT oil to quality organic coffee, and your fast will be a whole lot less arduous.

On dieting

Are you addicted?

Two of the most common biological addictions are to wheat (gluten) and dairy products. You may think you don’t have to worry about them because you’re not allergic to either one. Truth is, you probably have no idea what effect they’re having on you. How many times have you gone three days without eating wheat or dairy protein? (Butter contains a negligible amount of protein.) Both gluten and dairy products have known inflammatory effects. (p. 48)

Fasting vs dieting

Here’s another example of the stark difference between dieting and fasting, based on an experiment I ran on myself. Ten years ago, while I was doing research for my 2014 book The Bulletproof Diet (the first big book that described ketosis with intermittent fasting), I decided to test my theory that the effects of fasting are more powerful than the effects of calorie consumption. I intentionally did everything wrong from the standpoint of the calorie-counting police. I ate a staggering 4,500 calories a day and kept doing it for a month, but for breakfast I had only Bulletproof Coffee with tons of butter to raise the number of calories in it. I cut my sleep to less than five hours a night, which triggers obesity. I stopped exercising. But I continued my program of intermittent fasting as I did all those things. By the straight, Ancel Keys–style accounting of the CICO diet, I should have gained about 20 pounds. I was hoping I’d gain only 3 pounds or so. That would have poked a big enough hole in CICO that I’d feel vindicated. The results were even more startling: I actually lost weight. I felt amazing. (p. 65)

CICO (Calories In, Calories Out) diets

The goal of diet culture is to make you feel as though a better you is just out of reach. That’s one of the many reasons why the “calories in, calories out” model, commonly abbreviated as CICO, should be relegated to the dustbin of failed science. This approach treats your body as though it’s a meat robot when in reality it’s a dynamic system that responds to calories differently based on their source, the time they’re consumed, and the unique physiological makeup of the person consuming them. Yet the myth lives on, leaving obesity, shame, and suffering in its wake. (p. 61)

The “eat small meals” myth

A great many diet plans advise you to eat every three hours to keep your metabolism humming along at warp speed so you can lose weight. If you follow that advice, the minute you hit the three-hour mark and you start feeling the slightest bit hungry, you answer the ghrelin response and eat something. If you don’t, cravings kick in, your blood sugar level starts to drop, and you yell at someone nearby because you feel like crap. (You are feeling hypogly-bitchy!) Your biggest question at three hours isn’t whether to wait a few more hours before eating but what type of calories you’ll be putting in your body for your next meal. This is a bad idea because your body never gets a break, and the constantly high blood sugar level created by constant snacking ages you. (p. 68)

Fasting is primal

The history of human evolution is also the history of food. Believe it or not, it’s the history of fasting, too. Our bodies and brains are inherently adapted to it. (p. 81)

Fasting—either with no food or with a vanishingly few calories from plants—was simply a part of our ancestors’ lifestyles. They had no choice. This habit of eating and then fasting continued for not just decades or centuries or even a few millennia; humans have lived a lifestyle of feasting and fasting for almost 290,000 years. (p. 82)

Interestingly...

The modern routine of breakfast, lunch, and dinner is less than two centuries old. (p. 85)

Starting in the early nineteenth century, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, people in the Western world all began eating more or less on the same schedule. Before that, the concept of time wasn’t as regimented. You didn’t need to know exactly what hour of the day it was; farmers just cared about when the sun rose and set. After the Industrial Revolution, though, a pocket watch became an incredibly valuable item, because it told you when the trains were going to arrive and depart. Trains ran on precise schedules. Then factories and stores ran on precise schedules. Our new connection to time, which was driven largely by train schedules, led us to start planning our meals for specific times each day. We scheduled our food around trains, not our actual hunger or the needs of our bodies. (p. 85)

The three types of fasting

Intermittent fasting

The most workable intermittent fasting schedule for all but the most extreme is to skip breakfast, then eat lunch and dinner. It seems extravagant to call such a straightforward guideline a “biohack,” but that’s really what it is. Create an eating rhythm that supports your sleep rhythm and the circadian rhythm that underpins all of it. Don’t consume your nightly meal too late. The breakfast-skipping approach to fasting is very pragmatic. (p. 110)

The book repeats something I learned from Dr. Mercola’s EMF*D...

Ideally, you should always leave at least three hours between your meal and the time you go to sleep. (p. 106)

It’s actually a muscle-growth hack

Keep fasting just a few hours past the time when you wake up, and your body significantly reduces the secretion of insulin while it increases secretion of human growth hormone, or HGH. This is important, because HGH aids in cellular repair, encourages fat burning, and assists in the development of lean muscle mass. To maximize the benefits of this process, you should wait at least six hours after rising before you eat your first meal. (p. 105)

24-hour fast

OMAD is just a twenty-four-hour fast: you have a meal, and you don’t eat until you have a meal at the same time the next day. (p. 70)

OMAD is a cornerstone of my intermittent fasting regimen, and it should be for yours, too. You might be surprised, then, by what I’m going to tell you next: doing OMAD every day is a terrible idea. Fasting purists get their hackles up when they hear that, but after ten years of answering people’s questions about fasting on my blog, I’ve lost track of the number of people who feel great on OMAD-style intermittent fasting, vow to do it every day, and regret their decision two to four months later when they have to climb out of a health hole they dug for themselves. Intermittent means intermittent! If you do OMAD every day, expect to see your sex hormone levels fall (this applies to both men and women), your sleep quality drop, and your hair thin. (p. 71)

I’ll add, OMAD is an especially good idea if you’re of Northern or European extraction and live somewhere that you get four seasons; your ancestors for tens of thousands of years went without frequent feeding during cold winter months. The echoes of their deprivation reverberate through your genes as the cold fingers of winter caress the back of your neck, and you’ll benefit from seasonal signaling of scarcity to your biology.

36-hour fast

The thirty-six-hour fast is my favorite because it is vanishingly easy. I go to sleep (that’s eight hours of fasting), then have Bulletproof Coffee for breakfast so my energy is high and my blood sugar is low. Lunchtime rolls around, and I’m not hungry. I tell myself I might have dinner, which makes my body stop thinking about food. But at dinner, I tell myself, “Hey, skip dinner and sleep on it, and you’ll get another eight hours of fasting—that will be thirty-two hours!” When I wake up, I find that I don’t even want breakfast. I have no hunger at all. By the time I eat lunch, I really only had to skip one meal: dinner the night before. A thirty-six-hour fast without feeling denied or even very hungry is entirely possible. (pp. 72-73)

Perhaps you’ve tried multi-day fasts before and found that you had a lot of trouble getting to sleep or woke up in the middle of the night anxious - Dave’s solution: eat a very small amount of carbs (white rice or sweet potatoes) or honey before bed.

Switch things up

For maximum impact, I recommend regularly changing not only the duration of your fast but also the style. You might try a high-protein breakfast with plenty of fat on Monday, OMAD on Tuesday, intermittent fasting on Wednesday, OMAD on Thursday, intermittent fasting on Friday. On Saturday you eat whatever the heck you want, then on Sunday you circle back to OMAD. You are making your body stronger by cycling into and out of lipolysis and ketosis. (pp. 71-72)

An economic hack

If you’ve ever thought...

Biohacking is SO expensive! All these products, supplements, and organic food - how do you afford all this stuff?

Habituating just two types of fasting, intermittent daily fasting and once-a-week OMAD, cuts the number of meals you eat a week nearly in half. This can free up a surprising amount of money (and time) that can be invested in high-quality, organic food, supplements, or, heck, Bitcoin (and then you’ll be able to afford all the Biohacking luxuries your heart desires after the next halvening cycle).

Fasting is a Nootropic

When you skip eating for a whole twenty-four hours, your senses sharpen, and your focus increases. The less toxic material you have in your bloodstream and lymphatic system, the higher your ability to reason. This is because the tremendous amount of energy that your internal organs normally require for digestion is now being shunted to the brain. (p. 93)

Speaking of sleep

There is some evidence that sleeping on your left side can reduce pressure on the stomach, which is a good habit when you go to sleep on a full stomach. The rest of the time, sleeping on your right side is better for your heart. (p. 119)

Fun fact

If you want to impress your friends with an argument for drinking alcohol, here it is: alcohol causes a short-term increase in body temperature and raises your heat shock proteins. That’s why snow rescue dogs used to carry a little cask of brandy on their collars—so that hypothermic people could get a quick burst of heat from drinking it. (p. 122)

Fasting is a spirituality hack

The simple act of denying your body food can be a significantly more expansive spiritual act than meditation or solitude alone. If you use fasting to deepen your faith or expand your consciousness—or even if you just keep yourself open to these possibilities—you will achieve much better results than if you focus narrowly on goals of weight loss or longevity. When you approach fasting this way, there is also a wonderful humility to it. (p. 153)

Try holotropic breathing

In fact, I’ve seen more through holotropic breathing than I have through experiencing ayahuasca. You can have experiences like that, too. Some people practice it alone, but that’s not for the faint of heart. I recommend that you find an expert in holotropic breathing and try it when you are doing a spiritual, contemplative fast. You won’t be sorry. (p. 161)

Fasting is lucidifing...

Go for a walk in the forest when you are immersed in a fast, and observe the woods around you. Everything is a different color than you remember it being. The leaves on the trees are vibrantly green. Your senses are wide open. Most of the time we sit with our senses partially closed off, because we don’t need all of the information they have to offer. We already have more food than we need and more information—more distractions—than we need. When you do a spiritual fast and you spend some time in nature, the whole world’s a different place. (p. 164)

Sex and fasting

Good news...

expect an epic orgasm, because your brain will be powered by ketones and you will be in a slightly altered state. It’s just that you’ll regret it in the morning. If you’re a woman and you have sex during an extended fast, your orgasms will likely be more intense as well. You don’t read about it often, but both men and women can have intense spiritual visions during orgasm. Sex and fasting together make it far more likely. (p. 157)

Gents, how would you like to experience the BEST ORGASM OF YOUR LIFE?

In the course of my nearly 10 years of experimentation and research of Tantra, I’ve developed a six-step 24-hour protocol for having the BEST ORGASM OF YOUR LIFE. I reveal that in the second module of my magnum opus course about all things “sex hacking” for men, Master Mind Master Body Master Her.

Fasting and supplements

Many will question: Can I take supplements while fasting? Dave suggests that’s generally okay, although there are a few supplements you’d want to avoid: B vitamins, Multivitamins, fish oil, and iron or multimineral supplements.

What supplements might you want to take on fasting days?

ACTIVATED CHARCOAL

This is the number one supplement I suggest taking during a fast, yet most people overlook it. It isn’t sexy, I guess.It traps toxins and chemicals in your gut, preventing them from being absorbed into your bloodstream. Instead of these poisons becoming a part of whatever fat you’re carrying around, they leave your body as waste products.Here’s one more really cool thing about activated charcoal: it will reduce the severity of your cravings during your fast. It’s startling: you get cravings, you take charcoal, and now you don’t feel hungry anymore.Daily dose: 1 to 10 1,000 mg capsules, away from medications, fewer if you get constipated. (p. 180)

You can take most vitamins and medications that say “with food” with a Bulletproof Coffee because the fat helps absorption and you will still be fasting. Even a small amount of fat (1 teaspoon of C8 MCT oil plus 1 teaspoon of grass-fed butter) is often enough. (p. 194)

Take a “supplement fast”

Regardless of whether you’re fasting or not, there’s a case for occasionally mixing up or skipping what you take. It’s that you don’t want your body to get metabolically lazy by downregulating its own production of protective compounds; this is another example of how the body hates consistency. (p. 175)

Dave is no fan of BHB Ketone salts

I believe that taking ketone salts regularly is not a good idea. In the last interview he gave before he passed away, Richard “Bud” Veech, the world’s most experienced ketone researcher, who studied ketosis for more than four decades, told me that ketone salts cause mitochondrial harm. Are they safe for short-term use, as during a race? Almost certainly. Do you want to take them regularly? Probably not. (p. 138)

I’ve tried a BHB ketone supplement and... I loved it! It tasted amazing, assuaged my hunger some, and was energizing, but I wouldn’t take supplemental ketone salts often.

During fasting, I sip infoceuticals

Non-pharmacological, side-effect-free downloadable derivatives of supplements and medicines that take advantage of the phenomenon of water memory - which is imprinted on water via quantum collocation and electromagnetism using this device...

Infocueticals typically have 1/3 or half the effect of the actual medicine being imprinted. The uplifting effects on mindset and mood are even more noticeable while fasted. If you’re skeptical of Infopathy, that’s understandable; it’s a game-changing application of a little-known scientific phenomenon. But I’d urge you to evaluate the scientific evidence (presented in my biohacker review) that downloadable medicine is no longer science fiction...

For the fairer sex

The good news is that all available evidence suggests that women have just as much to gain from fasting as men do, especially when it comes to disease prevention. (p. 200)

But...

On the other hand, even without fasting, unending ketosis suppresses menstruation! It is not an appropriate diet for women over long periods of time unless you cycle into and out of it on a regular basis, at which point it is fantastic. (p. 202)

This is hugely important: NEVER FAST WHEN YOU ARE PREGNANT! (p. 207)

Don’t let fasting stress you

Remember that fasting can cause more than just physical stress. This is true of all types of fasting, but especially of OMAD because it is the longest fast you can do in one day. Restricting yourself to one meal a day can be taxing to your mind if you obsess over food all day. Take care of your stress levels by practicing yoga, meditating, exercising—really, whatever helps you find your Zen. (p. 221)

Point taken: when fasting, stack other stress management hacks; meditation is great and will often relieve food cravings.

Dopamine fasting

The purpose of a dopamine fast is to abstain from anything that causes your body to secrete dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is closely associated with our pleasure sensors and can play a role in reinforcing addictions. Eating spicy or sweet food causes a dopamine spike. So does having lots of social interaction, in person or on social media. Just about all of life’s pleasures give you a dopamine hit: gaming, watching TV or pornography, gambling, shopping, and having sex. Oh, and drugs and alcohol. The intent of a dopamine fast isn’t to make yourself miserable, it’s to allow your dopamine receptors to take a break so that when they come back online, they’ll become more sensitive to dopamine. When you stop the fast, which normally lasts two to seven days, you will find that everything you do feels more pleasurable. (p. 225)

Dopamine fasting is a great idea for biohackers who use Modafinil often, which can desensitize dopamine receptors.

Cool fact

According to one famous estimate from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 98 percent of the atoms in your body are replaced every year.1 Almost all of your cells are replaced every seven years. Matter moves through you, energy moves through you, yet somehow you remain you—ideally, a steadily improving version of you, but you all the same. (p. 213)

The mind-blowing book, WHY SCIENCE IS WRONG... About Almost Everything delves deeper into the epic question of human consciouness. Check out my book review of it...

The book is surprisingly philosophical at points...

Are you going to let [fear] run you, as if you were still standing defenseless on the savanna in front of a hungry tiger? If so, as Seneca says, there will be no limit to your miseries. Find the thing that is the most important to you, the thing that is the most scary, the thing you honestly believe you could never go without for any length of time. Then fast from that. Go without, even if for just one day. Just long enough to make you uncomfortable. Then look in the mirror and see if you like the person who’s there. I promise you that you’ll like that person better than you did before. That is the magic of fasting. (pp. 241-242)

The book gets 5 stars from me. It captures the state-of-the-art science on the ancient practice of fasting, is packed with pragmatic takeaways, and the storytelling is compelling. I put it down wondering where I could do a 4-day spiritual fast in a cave, like Dave!

Need a laugh during your next fast? Listen to this song about fasting...

For more deep-dive book reviews…

Support me on Substack? For $7/monthly?

Perhaps you’re enticed by the idea of sex hacking but just a little confused about where you should dive in: taking libido-enhancing supplements, practicing tantric semen-retention techniques, or experimenting with some of the questionable tech and gadgets you’ve seen advertised. I’ll simplify things; start by taking the herb Epimedium, which also goes by the name Horny Goat Weed. What can you look forward to from it...

* Stronger, harder, longer-lasting erections. You could sort of think of it as herbal Viagra.

* Sensation enhancement; your dick is going to feel better when you give it what it wants. You’ll be a bit more sensitive but if you’re like many herbal hackers, counter-intuitively your ejaculatory control won’t totally go out the window.

* Mood enhancement: 20-30 minutes after taking enough, you’ll be taken by a bit of rowdy adolescent excitement and anticipation about the romp to come.

* Taken regularly, it will have an uplifting effect on your testosterone and male essence. You’ll be a bit more interested in the fairer sex and unapologetically masculine.

A caveat: Horny Goat Weed is not exactly herbal Viagra, and it should be used as part of a holistic manly health regimen. If you eat too much, drink too much, don’t get enough sleep, or watch too much porn, Horny Goat Weed may not save you from whiskey dick.

A romantic getaway essential

I like it so much, it’s one of the few supplements that I make space for in my luggage anytime Mrs. Roseland and I are getting out of town for a change of scenery. Recently, we celebrated our fourth anniversary in a beautiful historical town. We found a restaurant that we fell in love with where we dined daily, enjoying each other and the breathtaking view from their terrace.

And I indulged in fine food and drink a bit more than I usually do, which is often not the greatest prelude for epic sexy time. But stacking PureBulk.com’s Horny Goat Weed and Tongkat Ali, our passion burned hot (so hot that we literally started a small fire in our AirBNB - fortunately the fire brigade was not needed!)

Capsuled or powdered?

I prefer powdered as I like to take it as a hearty pre-coital tea. In my extensive experience with herbal adaptogens, the effect is a lot more acute from them when steeped in boiling water. However, as a monogamous dude, I have the privilege of usually knowing when I’m going to get laid and the time to leisurely enjoy an Epimedium tea. Single guys might want to bring a few capsules along on dates just in case things are going really well, and they’ve had a bit to drink.

Featured in Fiction

This performance enhancer made it into Hourglass, my novel about Biohacking, philosophy, and seduction...

He also needed Nicotine; in the bathroom, he discreetly took a .25 milliliter hit of USP solution from a minuscule vial. It cleared his mind yet burned in the back of his throat. I need a drink to wash this down! But I’ve already had some to drink… Tonight I close the deal with Astrid, and I’ve had some to drink - I don’t want a repeat of my floppy cock in the IR sauna! Might as well take Horny Goat Weed, too. He took a dropperful of the Epimedium tincture he’d also brought.

She took a thoughtful bite of a cracker, “Xavier, you made me feel like I was in a movie tonight - with a helicopter, the champagne, and the car - but these are not the things I care about in life. And I don’t want them if they come with guns, violence, and you going to prison for these crimes that you say are in the past…”

“I’m NOT going to prison. I’m going to solve the Goldbach conjecture, marry you, and we’re going to be free.” His certainty was supreme, buoyed by the PDE5-inhibitory mechanism of the Icariin, the active constituent of Horny Goat Weed - that made the herb live up to its name.

Purity-verified with COA

The final thing I like about PureBulk.com’s libido-enhancing supplements is that they’re verified as pure with a certificate of analysis from an accredited American lab. This evidence of purity is something you should demand that your local vitamin shop or the sellers on Amazon likely can’t provide.

Gents, for more little-known tips, tools, and tricks to take your sex life to the next level…

Support me on Substack? For $7/monthly?

“I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

That is the famous declarative prayer of Thomas Jefferson. You have heard it a hundred times before on podcasts; it gets repeated endlessly across the pro-freedom dissident sphere online.

But cowardice remains one of the most powerful forces in human history, and too many of the political influencers you follow and support are ultimately flaccid in the real fight for human freedom.Why? Because the pen is mightier than the sword, BUT the penis is mightier than the podcast.

Let me explain...

Cast your mind back to the early 2020s...

The height of lockdowns, mandates, media propaganda fracturing families, and state apparatuses crushing dissent with a heavy boot of censorship. Yet the technocrats severely underestimated how furiously the flame of freedom burns in the human heart. You can now get on a plane, get a job, or enter a grocery store without a vaccine passport, because of courage (the virtue that gives all other virtues their potency)--because of the courage of those who brought sharp words of truth to the globalists’ propaganda fight and the courage of all of you who simply refused to comply.

That dark chapter proved that when enough people simply say “no” and speak unvarnished truth, tyranny falters. We can score that as a battle won.

But the fight for a freer future is far from over. And truth warriors can only do so much for the fight for freedom with their words. In fact, I’d argue that we are about maxed out on the impact we can make with our words. Here’s why...

Most people don’t have minds, philosophically speaking

I’m not saying they don’t have gray matter between their ears...

The argument is that what we philosophically call a “mind” is something most people don’t actually possess: the capacity to take in sensory data about the objective world, process it rationally, construct a coherent worldview, update that worldview when new evidence arrives, and translate it into deliberate action.

Most people don’t actually do this. Most people don’t have anything approaching a coherent worldview. Their beliefs rarely update in response to new evidence. They’re largely an amalgamation of programming and indoctrination absorbed years or decades ago, driven by basal instincts and remarkably susceptible to propaganda.

That’s most people. They’ll comply when the next plandemic comes around because their “best friend”--an AI chatbot--tells them they should. There’s NO getting through to them. They are too mired in their slavery to the screen.

The next battle will not be like the last...

Those who seek to enslave us all are changing tact; bringing more seductive and insidious weapons to bear. I suspect that the globalists' plan to enslave us all is simply the slow annihilation of the kinds of genes which carry the Promethean flame of free will. Not all of us carry them equally. The globalists want the Idiocracy future. They want less of us; they want the coming generations of tax livestock who will happily accept their chains.

So how do we win?

This brings us back to Jefferson’s oath: “I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

The crucial word in that pledge is eternal.

Memento mori. You are going to die one day. How do you wage an eternal war?

Stop bringing mere words to a cock fight. Stop bringing mere memes to a gene fight. We’re fighting tyranny with our words, because “the pen is mightier than the sword.” But it’s time to also fight tyranny with another body part because the penis is mightier than the podcast.

There are a lot of influencers and public personalities- I was one of them- who publish a lot of content exposing and pushing back on “globalism.” And, at times, this certainly takes courage--we faced censorship that did substantial damage to our abilities to make a living. But at best, it’s a short-term strategy in the fight for a freer future.

And...

At worst, it decays into a comfortable online grift—preaching to an established choir for superchats and view counts. What once took courage can all too easily become a comfortable “lifestyle entrepreneurship.”

How much real difference will another outrage podcast or commentary video make in 10, 50, or 100 years? Practically none.

Baby-making for the win

Something that doesn’t get emphasized nearly as much as it should is the decisive role of heritable genetics in the fight for human liberty.

If Thomas Jefferson’s prayer resounds with you, that’s because your ancestors were warriors; they sharpened swords and rebelled against feudal tyrants; crossed treacherous oceans to build something freer; they stormed ships and threw tea overboard. If “declaring eternal hostility” resounds powerfully for you, you’re the kind of person who should absolutely have as many children as you can.

Podcasts, media, books, and even IRL protest movements make a difference for maybe a few years.BUT passing on your freedom-loving warrior genes--having children and raising them with love and devotion, imbuing them with your values--is almost certainly the most significant thing any of us can do for the fight for freedom. THAT makes a difference for CENTURIES.

So share this around because too many online personalities and influencers--in the broader dissident sphere of the internet--bring only their words to a fight that is futile if good men remain, not-so-metaphorically, flaccid. The pushback on the COVID tyranny was a single victory in a war stretching many millennia to determine whether or not humanity will be a slave species. And that war is not over. It demands more from us than publishing “content” at this point!

I’ll quote from my book, Hourglass, a philosophical novel...

“...the structure of an hourglass is timeless in contrast to the sand that passes through it. Your genes draw you to her shape because through it, eternity beckons. Through a woman’s beauty is the only way we can achieve genetic immortality in this world. Through her shape, we cast our essence into the future; the only way that we defeat death, practically, and become like God, metaphorically, creating new life in our own image. Your legacy, in the truest sense, is the exponential effect of your genes striving for the future. But if you fail to plunge into womanly beauty and leave a part of yourself there, then in the grand arc of history - no matter what you accomplish in this life - you will be like a spear falling from a great height into a dark pool. Your legacy, barely a ripple.”

So if you are a man with testosterone coursing in your veins, the Promethean flame burning in your chest, and the star seed of a thousand supernovas in your loins—thrust, with keen aim, into the soft places that will take it!

“I’d love to fight for freedom with penis and cast my essence into the future through the beauty of a woman, BUT I’m single, and I never meet women with whom I really see a future...”

You might be saying, at this point. Tough love, gents: You probably have met her, but you hadn’t done the right personal growth to deserve her, or you lacked the seduction skills to get her (and keep her). Perhaps I’m underestimating you, but you may lack the specific seduction skills to set up such a relationship for long-term tranquility. That’s why you need to move to the top of your reading list my 500-page book, Don’t Stick Your Dick in a Blender: How to meet a nice girl instead - from a tantric husband with a better sex life than you!

You should get the print edition (printed near you via Lulu) because this is a book worth turning your phone off for--it includes the downloadable audiobook and digital book via a QR code.

And if you’re a woman, your role in this fight is no less important; nothing will ultimately make you happier than succumbing to it.

So hopefully that leaves you inspired to fight for freedom in the most meaningful and joyful way!

People sometimes ask why I don’t do more “meta-political” content--that would certainly get more clicks than the kind of health/personal growth content that I do. That’s because I’m busy fighting for a freer future in the most meaningful and joyful way, as a devoted father of a 1-year-old...

Here’s me, operatic and off-key, singing a song I wrote to my son, Aria of Ethical Hedonism...

Share this with any dissident meta-political podcasters or influencers you follow (and really anyone passionate about a freer future!)

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I watched a very well-produced documentary by, obviously, a very critical and thoughtful filmmaker. It certainly stimulates the spine-tingling cognitive dissonance that exploring the details of 9/11 should trigger for anyone who’s able to think for themselves.

I’ve watched (what seems like) ALL the 9/11 documentaries and WAY too many Alex Jones videos about 9/11. This has drawn me down a rabbit hole of Internet weirdness, exploring conspiracy theories about…

* JFK Assassination

* Climate Change

* Pizzagate

* The Flat Earth Theory

* The Mandela Effect

* The Nazis and the Holocaust

* The Rothschilds and Illuminati

* The Jews and Zionism

* Faked Moon Landings

* Vaccines and Big Pharma

For me at least, most of these conspiracy theories are pretty unimpressive, even though they all contain a nugget of veracity. The level of evidence for the 9/11 conspiracy is so high that the rest of the conspiracy theories are pretty underwhelming. The case for a malicious conspiracy with 9/11 is so strong that, in comparison, there are just gaping holes in the reasoning of these other conspiracy theories.

Yet after watching this most recent documentary, I come back to this question…

Why does it matter?

Let’s say “hypothetically” that…

9/11 was an inside job, traitors within our own government planted bombs in the building, all as part of a grand plot to erode American freedom, drawing us into endless wars that would ultimately usher in a New World Order where we would all serve as unwitting slaves of the Rothschilds, the Illuminati, or whoever.

What should I do about that?

They have (literally) almost all the money and military might in the world.

I’m just a 41-year-old web developer and writer. I just have my laptop, my green tea, and my coconuts.

What can I do?

If such a diabolical force exists in the world, wouldn’t my attacking it really be tantamount to a mosquito attacking a Tyrannosaurus rex?

If you are rational, you will conclude that there is not a lot that you can do about it. This is why a lot of people categorically disregard conspiracy theories — why waste the cognition on them?

Some people might say: Don’t be so defeatist! Make a website, write a book, make YouTube videos, or try to wake up people around you!

There are a lot of other, more capable people fighting the information war like…

* Alex Jones of Infowars

* Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain

* James O’Keefe/Project Veritas

* Tim Pool

* David Icke

* Mike Adams of Natural News

* Del Bigtree of The Highwire

* Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change

I’m not going to do a better job of disseminating information than these guys — who I don’t agree with on everything, but they are clearly very effective at pushing back against this statist global world order that is being imposed on us without our consent.

Instead, I think we should ask...

What is a rational response to a diabolical cabal of globalist elitists who conspire to commit terrorism, start wars, and enslave us?

I think it’s…

* To be a highly disciplined critical thinker who questions everything mainstream.

* Building a tribe both locally and on the Internet of like-minded people.

* To free oneself of wage slavery by becoming an entrepreneur.

* Biohacking with smart drugs, Adaptogens, anti-aging supplements, or longevity tools and tech.

* Make myself financially antifragile by using cryptocurrency or investing in gold.

* Avoiding toxic foods and products of bad science.

* Preparing for disaster and calamity.

* Being highly skeptical of politicians - even the ones that tell you the things you want to hear.

* Training my body to be physically robust.

* Getting into and maintaining a supportive long-term monogamous relationship.

* Healthy skepticism of institutional, entrenched power structures and establishments.

The rational response to a malevolent conspiracy is the personal development that you should be doing anyway.

Of course, 9/11 matters.

Truth matters. Justice matters. Those nearly three thousand people who lost their lives that day matter. The first responders still suffering matter. What I’m getting at in the title of this article is that I’m not sure if the conspiracy theory matters anymore. I fail to see the personal development takeaway or actionable value from conspiracy theory documentaries if I already accept that…

The government is immoral.The government is an organized criminal syndicate.The government is fundamentally structured for corruption and moral hazard.The government can and likely will spy on you.The government will always betray you.The government is in the business of inventing problems that it pretends to fix.The government should be shrunken, and its power should be limited.The government is NOT to be trusted at all.

If my friends and family accept the above, is there any reason to try to convince them that 9/11 was an inside job?

I’m pretty sure that almost everyone who could be convinced by the evidence of the 9/11 conspiracy has been. By continuing to talk about it, I’m not sure if we are doing more good than harm. I don’t think I’m going to try to red-pill people anymore with 9/11 truth.

What I will do is remind people that they don’t deserve freedom.

Freedom is not owned; it is rented, and rent is overdue.

I suspect that in the coming decades, the truth about 9/11 will bear itself out, and it will turn out that bad actors in the US government played a part. And it will be met with a collective shrug by the country and the world. People just won’t care that much. The limited investigations that the authorities will do will find that the conspiracy was limited to very few bad actors who have already passed away. The ultimate I told you so moment for millions of red-pilled 9/11 conspiracy theorists will be a Pyrrhic victory.

Changing people’s minds is notoriously hard...

Especially when it comes to political and ideological matters; however, the wake of upsetting events is actually the best time to try to red pill people. The day after the Barcelona terrorist attack, when everyone else was doing the formulaic virtue signaling with the hashtags and the flag filters, I lost some Facebook friends with this vitriolic invective…

And my own mother scolded me for not being more compassionate and sensitive to people I have casual digital acquaintances with who may have lost loved ones. I responded that it was not that long ago that I myself strolled the Ramblas in Barcelona — it could have been me run down by that truck or you.

If I lose a few Facebook friends over it, I couldn’t care less. I have real-life friends. I’m desired, cherished, and loved in real life because I’m the kind of guy who stands up for things. The best time to wake people up is when they are reeling from the cruelty of reality.

I have a degree of enmity for the conspiracy theorists because, in my view, they failed.

Despite…

Their YouTube documentaries being viewed billions of times.All the books and white papers they wrote.All the 9/11 truth conferences and activism that happened.All the friendships and Thanksgiving dinners made awkward by that one guy who insisted on talking about 9/11.

…the governments of the world were still able to use 9/11 as a pretext for this decades-long war on terrorism that has burned trillions of dollars and lives and accomplished very little. Without 9/11 and the resulting geopolitical events, Europe would likely not have developed all of its Islamic problems that have resulted in Draconian anti-free-speech hate speech laws being enacted. Through Google, the government can spy on our every word and deed through technology that has seeped into nearly every aspect of our lives.

It was said in the Soviet Union that the only time you could actually freely speak your mind was to your wife, in your bedroom, with the lights out, in bed in low tones under the covers. Well, now that we all use our damn smartphones in bed, you need to worry about the government spying on you even there!

I’ll add that YouTube is RUTHLESS about censoring content - the fact that the documentary above accrued tens of thousands of views and wasn’t censored off YouTube makes it clear that shedding light on the 9/11 conspiracy doesn’t really challenge neoliberal, globalist power.

The 9/11 conspiracy theorists failed to prevent the government from doing that which is in its nature: constricting freedom. If George W. Bush was right and “the terrorists hate us for our freedom,” isn’t it clear that…?

The terrorists won.

What to do about it…

There’s not much silver lining to 9/11; it was an atrocious and preventable act of terrorism followed by decades of losing the war for freedom. But I’ll try to end this article on an upbeat note…

For over 10 years, I’ve quite aggressively pursued personal development. I’ve spent a lot of time with like-minded men (mostly) who were on the same path to mastery. These guys are busy: working on their small businesses, honing their seduction skills, hitting the gym, raising their families, or doing meditation. Men who are practitioners and doers, not theorists.

Almost categorically, they subscribe to philosophically robust freedom; I can predict their politics within a few seconds of sitting down with them. I’ve never met a serious political leftist who took cold showers, was passionate about personal growth, took Mitochondrial enhancement supplementation, or woke up early to hit the gym.

As Dr. Jordan Peterson said in an interview…

“The well-developed man is the antidote to tyranny in society”

I suspect that the conspiracy theorists tried to right the great injustice of 9/11 without equal devotion to personal development. You can do better.

Share this with a 9/11 truther in your life and…

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The Epigenetic Vitamin is Tasty!

But that’s not the only thing that makes NMN the best NAD+ source...

I was pleased to receive our package from Youth & Earth promptly (and without any customs fees or paperwork!) NMN was the first supplement my wife and I took. After reading and hearing so many good things about NMN, I was excited to try it. We began by taking just one little scoop once daily. Apparently. the ideal way to take NMN is sublingually, but like Dr. David Sinclair, I just dumped mine in the tasty Bulgarian probiotic yogurt that I enjoy every day.

Got EMFs?

I strongly recommend doing a supplemental cycle of an NAD+ precursor (like NMN) if you, like me, don’t plan on giving up your smartphone to mitigate EMFs. As we learned in the book EMF*D, the non-ionizing radiation from your smartphone and wifi is toxic; it hurts your sleep quality and causes DNA damage. If you live in a city, there’s no way to get away from these EMFs; you can get rid of your wifi router, but will your neighbors? Unless you’re going to go full Into the Wild and flee from society, your biology will have to deal with toxic EMFs, so do a cycle once or twice a year of an NAD+ precursor-like NMN to fuel your PARP system that repairs DNA damage.

Sip NMN cofactors

NMN has two important cofactors: Resveratrol and Pterostilbene. NMN is not cheap stuff, so you would want to take it with these two to maximize the biological bang for your biohacking buck - I created the Epigenetic Awesomeness Protocol for cycling the three. But if you know much about red wine, you’ll know that grape skin is a concentrated natural source of both Resveratrol and Pterostilbene. So, having just completed 3 months of no boozing, NMN gave me a great excuse to have a glass or two of vino daily! Contrary to what the mainstream media told you, red wine is not “healthy,” BUT Youth & Earth also sent me a bottle of tasty mango-flavored Liposomal Glutathione solution, which is renowned as a boozing biohack. The master antioxidant keeps hangovers at bay and does much to repair the damage wrought by the acetaldehyde that alcohol metabolizes into.

If you’re a puritanical biohacker, supplement Resveratrol and/or Pterostilbene alongside NMN, BUT if you’re an ethical hedonist like myself, supplement Glutathione, and tip back a bit of red stuff guilt-free!

NMN fits into the overlapping categories of anti-aging biohack and perhaps Nootropic, but not Smart Drug. It didn’t have any classic energizing Nootropic effects. At a dosage of 250 milligrams daily, the cognition-enhancing effects are very subtle, if noticeable at all.

Having now tried both NMN and NR (Nicotinamide Riboside), NMN is my favorite for the simple reason that it doesn’t taste bad at all (as many powdered supplements do).

Overview of recent NMN science

A few years back, I did a deep-dive meta-analysis article and podcast about NMN; here I’ll summarize the more recent studies and scientific findings. Four clinical trials with NMN have been completed at this point, totaling 191 human participants...

* The virgin trial was completed in 2019 in Japan and gave the epigenetic vitamin to healthy men in dosages ranging from 100 - 500 milligrams and deemed NMN safe.

* A more rigorous randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial with 25prediabetic American women was published in 2021 in the esteemed journal Science. Its abstract concludes: NMN increases muscle insulin sensitivity, insulin signaling, and remodeling in women with prediabetes who are overweight or obese...

* A 2021 Chinese trial evaluated NMN as an athletic performance enhancer, giving it to 48 young and middle-aged recreationally trained runners in 300-, 600-, and 1200-milligram dosages. And it improved aerobic capacity in a dose-dependent manner, so the runner got more power out of the 1200-milligram dose than the 300-milligram dose, as you would expect. With the exception of the single-leg stance test - apparently, 600 milligrams was significantly better than 1200 milligrams if you’re going to stand like this.

* A second clinical trial was done in Japan in 2022, evaluating its effects on Sleep Quality, Fatigue, and Physical Performance in Older Japanese Adults with over 100 human participants. Its abstract concluded: NMN intake in the afternoon effectively improved lower limb function and reduced drowsiness in older adults. These findings suggest the potential of NMN in preventing loss of physical performance and improving fatigue in older adults.

The very most recent peer-reviewed review article published in 2022, a collaboration between Chinese and Kiwi (New Zealand), looked specifically at the Promises and safety concerns of NMN and compares NMN with other NAD precursors, and it comes out looking like the king of the category...

In regard to DNA damage

...nicotinamide supplementation induced DNA damage and oxidative DNA damages in various tissues of the body such as renal and hepatic tissues... NMN has been proven to reduce DNA damage and accumulation of ROS

And insulin sensitivity in comparison with Nicotinamide Riboside

Shi et al. have shown that excessive dose of NR generated white adipose tissue dysfunction and heightened insulin resistance in mice. However, contradictory results have been reported with NMN supplementation as it reduced adiposity and enhanced insulin sensitivity

But

recently, NR has been granted Generally Recognised as Safe (GRAS) status by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is yet to be achieved for NMN.

And the 2022 review underlines NMN’s safety; up to 1500 milligrams per kilogram (a pretty extreme megadose) a day for 3 months was found to be entirely non-toxic.

Importantly, this NMN is COA-verified as pure and free of toxins or additives by an accredited UK lab, as are all of Youth & Earth’s products.

This proof of purity is what you should demand when supplement shopping, especially when it comes to a product in this price range. Because of their commitment to quality Youth & Earth makes the cut to be included as a recommended Limitless Mindset Secret Society, pick up over £200 worth of their products and you’ll be eligible for a 30-minute biohacking consultation and membership in our elite biohacker community.

Update: I remain a huge fan of Y&E! Check out this recent deep-dive interview about lifehacking longevity with Edward Van Harmelen of Youth and Earth...

For more informative Biohackers reviews breaking down the science you need to know…

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I write this with a sense of accomplishment, having just finished Ben Greenfield’s +1000-page magnum opus, Boundless. I’m something of a superfan of Ben’s - I read and listen to nearly everything he puts out - and I do recommend this book enthusiastically, but I’ll begin my review with some criticisms...

The book begins with a grandstanding introduction to Ben. He lets you know just how AWESOME he is - how amazingly athletic he is, how successful he’s been in business, how happy his family is, etc. Apparently, he finds time to read “a book every day” while maintaining the physique of a Greek god, being a CEO, and a devoted family man. The implication is “do what I’ve done, and you’ll be like me,” which is not totally misleading: the more you invest in your health, the better your life will get. Biohacking really does broaden your horizons; it’s the most surefire way to wield true free will, rise above mundanity, plot your own course, and take your destiny into your own hands.

But I read the introduction, not thinking Ben was wildly exaggerating, but that he has won the genetic lottery in a major way and then stacked on a bunch of hacks, resulting in his awesome life.If you’re red-pilled on genetics, you know that religion encourages evolutionary fitness; in general, more religious people are more evolutionarily fit. You would expect a tall, good-looking, fervently religious guy descended from American pioneer stock, like Ben, to have a good life because of the special evolutionary pressures put on his ancestors. People often compliment me on my intelligence and intellect, and that’s NOT something I take full credit for; my grandfather was one of the top NASA engineers responsible for getting men to the moon and back. I too have been gifted some by the genetic lottery - which I think Ben should have given some more credit to.

I have to deduct a star for the relentless pitching throughout the book, a criticism that many other reviewers make. Obviously, biohackers need to spend some money on products and supplements to optimize health, but product and brand recommendations are made so frequently that it’s clear that Ben Greenfield & Co did a lot of sponsorship sales pre-publication. There are a couple of issues with this other than the obvious one - a book should NOT be an advertising platform (especially a $55 one!)

* The book will not age well because health companies and brands go out of business, rebrand, discontinue products, and sometimes even sell out to multinational chemical corporations. Napoleon Hill’s iconic Think and Grow Rich would not be such a timeless book if it were urging readers to mail-order Cocaine Tooth Drops from the Sears Roebuck catalog!

* Some of the products are only available to the American market, and (NEWSFLASH) not everyone lives in America.

* It makes it seem like biohacking and healthy living are only for rich people who can afford to spend hundreds of dollars a month on supplements and thousands on fancy biohacking devices and tech. If you’re a biohacker ballin’ on a budget, check out my deep-dive podcast, 33 IMPACTFUL free (or cheap) biohacks & lifehacks.

But I won’t be as harsh as some of the book’s reviewers on this point because the book contains just as many free or cheap things that people can do to optimize their health. Each chapter has an exhaustive recommended resources page on the book’s website, and THAT is the place for affiliate and sponsor recommendations, not in the pages of a pricier book (even the Kindle ebook is $30) that is going to sit on people’s bookshelves for decades!

With those two criticisms out of the way, Boundless belongs on your bookshelf.

I’ve read a few podcasters’ books where basically what they did was copy and paste transcripts of interviews - they book-ified their podcasts - and it just doesn’t translate great; if I wanted interviews, I’d just go listen to the interviews. Stop doing this, podcasters! Thankfully, Ben didn’t do that with Boundless - it’s a real book that follows the compelling format that educational and edifying nonfiction should: Story, Theory, Data, and Pragmatic Takeaway.

How I hack my forgetting of book knowledge

If you’re going to spend hours and hours of your precious time reading nonfiction books for edification, you’re kind of wasting your time if you eventually forget 90% of what you read. The way I hack this is by highlighting passages and facts that I want to commit to memory and then, after finishing the book, adding those with hints to the SuperMemo app. Then it takes me just 15-30 minutes of memory practice a week to stay savvy with hundreds of pieces of semantic memory that I’ve picked up from books (even books I read years and years ago).

To take this to the next level, combine it with mnemonics practice. Using my own creativity and phonetic number pegging, I committed to memory a factoid from every chapter of Boundless. Read some books on Mnemonics because even average memories are remarkably powerful when used properly...

Nootropics vs Smart Drugs

There is a difference...

If a drug is strongly felt on a consistent basis whenever you use it and it makes you high, wired, or sedated, it is acting more like a smart drug or performance enhancer and is likely not a natural nootropic. Nootropics are sustainable for long-term use, while smart drugs are not. (p.127)

Many people use the terms nootropic and smart drug as if they mean the same thing, but they’re actually very distinct. All nootropics are technically smart drugs, but the opposite is not necessarily true. A smart drug is any substance that enhances memory, mood, concentration, or another aspect of cognitive function. Nootropics target the same functions, but by definition they must also be neuroprotective and nontoxic, and they are usually derived from natural, nonsynthetic sources. (p.146)

So Modafinil would be a quintessential example of a non-Nootropic smart drug.

I recorded this podcast/vlog on Zamner Joice and Brain Flow from Nootopia.

Weight training and minimum effective dose of exercise

Quite simply, strength training is one of the most effective anti-aging tools in the aspirational immortals’ toolbox - lift heavy stuff, and you’ll live longer.

A 2007 study demonstrated that six months of progressive resistance training, otherwise known as “lifting heavy stuff,” made the gene expression of aging mitochondria appear to be significantly younger. (p. 318)

The researchers reported: “Healthy older adults show a gene expression profile in skeletal muscle consistent with mitochondrial dysfunction and associated processes such as cell death, as compared with young individuals. Moreover, following a period of resistance exercise training in older adults, we found that age-associated transcriptome expression changes were reversed, implying a restoration of a youthful expression profile.” Yes, you read that right: when it comes to mitochondria, strength training reversed nearly forty years of aging! But exercise doesn’t only affect mitochondria. It also promotes the growth of fat-burning fast-twitch muscle fibers and even protects DNA from the wear and tear of aging by acting on telomeres, the end caps of DNA molecules. (p. 319)

If you want the minimum effective dose of strength training that will help you find the sweet spot between longevity and muscle, you can get away with as few as two strength workouts per week—one with slow, controlled heavy lifting and one with high-intensity bodyweight movements. (p. 328)

Blood Flow Restriction Bands (which you can get for under $50) are a real time-saving shortcut for fitness and strength building...

Kaatsu bands, also known as blood flow restriction (BFR) bands or occlusion training bands, long used as potent training tools by elite athletes, law enforcement agencies, militaries, and Japanese martial artists. Much like a tourniquet, a Kaatsu band (the name is a mash-up of the Japanese words for “additional”—ka—and “pressure”—atsu) places pressure around your upper arms and legs. (p. 339)

When you combine Kaatsu training with bodyweight exercises, a suspension strap, or an elastic band, you can create a massively effective yet wonderfully simple workout. (p. 339)

Take an upper-body bodyweight exercise, such as a push-up or pull-up, and a lower-body bodyweight exercise, such as a lunge or squat, and perform the movements as slowly as you possibly can—it should take at least thirty to sixty seconds to get to the top of one rep and thirty to sixty seconds to return. Repeat to total exhaustion. This technique, known as eccentric, negative, or super-slow training, is a fast-track method to build strength and mass. For an additional bonus, do this workout with BFR bands (p. 355)

What I learned about myself

From the book...

If you are dopamine dominant, you are likely strong-willed, fast on your feet, and self-confident. You tend to be highly rational and more comfortable with hard facts and figures than with emotions and feelings. You take pride in achievement, strategic thinking, problem-solving, and inventing. You are overly alert, often hyperactive, and you may need less sleep than others. You likely get bored with frequent cardio, and you love explosive workouts and heavy weights.

Sounds a lot like me. Also, I’m an under-methylator

Because it can keep serotonin levels low, undermethylation can cause you to be a dopamine-seeking, hard-charging high achiever. It can lead you to pursue perfection and achievement and has been associated with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, a low tolerance for pain, and ritualistic behaviors. If you are prone to undermethylation, you will do well with a high intake of muscular meats.

My sleep chronotype: I’m a...

WOLF Wolves have a hard time waking up early and are most energetic in the evenings.

Breathwork

A cool biohack for state management...

Breathe in through whichever nostril correlates to the part of the brain you want to activate (keeping in mind that the left side of the brain is associated with the right side of the body, and vice versa). For example, if you have a more left-brain, analytical, logical task to accomplish, precede it with one to two minutes of inhaling only through your right nostril. If you need to accomplish a more right-brain, creative task, then inhale only through the left nostril. Breathing only through your left nostril is also an effective way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system before bed or a nap. (p.71)

THE CONTROL-PAUSE TECHNIQUE

CP is a breath-hold after a normal exhalation of air until you experience the tiniest desire to breathe in. CP provides excellent feedback about your ability to efficiently raise your carbon dioxide levels and engage in nasal breathing. To obtain an accurate measurement, rest for ten minutes before the exercise. Next, begin to breathe through your nose. After exhaling normally through your nose (not a full, deep exhalation), squeeze the tip of your nose with your fingers and look at a stopwatch. If you experience even the slightest inclination to breathe in or gasp air at six seconds, immediately let go... If you have to take a big breath at the end of the breath-hold, then you held your breath for too long. A good CP is thirty seconds, a very good CP is forty-five seconds, and Buteyko claimed that if someone had a CP of sixty seconds, then “he or she is insured against illness.” A CP lower than thirty seconds indicates room for improvement, while a CP lower than fifteen seconds is indicative of symptoms such as respiratory issues, disordered sleep breathing, anxiety, and stress. (p.82)

Nasal breathing - a beauty hack (for babies)

nasal breathing enhances smell, improves oxygen absorption in your lungs by increasing nitric oxide production in the sinuses, warms and humidifies the air you breathe before it reaches the lower airway, and helps filter impurities from the air via the hairs and cavities within the sinuses. (p.754)

What happens when we are not taught to nose breathe...

When the jaws are set back and the airway is smaller, there is poor definition of the cheekbones as the face sinks downward, the nose becomes asymmetrical, and upper back and neck postural changes occur that result in decreased muscle strength, less chest expansion, impaired breathing, disrupted sleep, and even subpar athletic performance. When kids develop a mouth-breathing habit instead of breathing through their noses, the tongue isn’t in the correct position to act as a natural form of braces and cause the teeth to grow straight. (p.755)

This totally describes me!

Grounding

Is another awesome free ancestral biohack...

Then there is grounding, which is so important for releasing accumulated positive ions from your body. Also known as “earthing,” grounding is the practice of exposing your body to the natural magnetic frequencies produced by the earth. When you have your feet firmly planted on the ground, you come into contact with negative ions, which are produced by turbulent, crashing water, such as waves at the beach and waterfalls, and in forests, mountains, and other places affected by rainstorms or thunderstorms. When you are exposed to negative ions, your body releases positive ions that accumulate via cellular metabolism. Accumulated positive ions reduce the natural electrochemical gradient across your cell membranes. This gradient is responsible for allowing compounds in and out of your cells, so when excess positive ions disrupt the gradient, they also disrupt cellular metabolism and increase inflammation. (p. 265)

For more information on grounding, watch the documentary entitled, fittingly enough, The Grounded. It tells the story of Haines, Alaska, where lives were changed and health dramatically improved (p. 266)

Whenever I vacation on the Black Sea coast, I do a lot of grounding; however, I struggle to do grounding regularly as I live in a bustling city center, nowhere near anywhere that I'd want to walk barefoot!

Grounding made it into Hourglass, my magnum opus novel about Biohacking and philosophy...

It was Sage, shirtless again, wearing (oddly) a camouflage-print kilt and (of course) no shoes. “Good morning, friend!” He greeted, overly chipper for the hour. “Would you join me for some forest bathing, sungazing, and grounding? Best way to start the morning! Also, I thought you’d like some coffee…” He offered a thermos.

Coffee sounds good. The least he could do was bring me coffee!

“Uhm… Sure.” Xavier responded groggily...

They entered a clearing where the morning light, shining through the woods behind them, cast long shadows.Sage continued, “Aristotle said: I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. To which I’d add, the part of self that is hardest to master is lust. Great men, since time immemorial, built empires, yet they were wrecked by their lust. And last night, Xavier, you mastered lust.”

Okay… Still not happy about it!

Sage gestured for them to sit on some rocks before the rising sun. “You’ll want to remove your shoes and socks and place your feet on the ground to experience negative ion exchange with the earth. Get that Gaia energy!”The morning sun hit his eyes, and he sipped the coffee.

On diet

Thou shalt chew more...

Here is a simple strategy to help your digestive system that you can begin immediately: every time you eat a meal, chew each bite of food twenty-five times. Yes, twenty-five. Your mouth, like your stomach, is full of digestive enzymes, such as salivary alpha-amylase, so by taking your time and chewing, you are giving those enzymes a chance to do their job. You’re also allowing optimum time for your gallbladder to release bile into your stomach. (p.551)

The red meat question

observational studies cannot prove causality, and scientists are still not entirely sure if high red meat intake itself is harmful or if other factors related to high red meat intake are responsible, such as an overall lower-quality diet, low consumption of fruits and vegetables, or high intake of heavily processed meats or fast food. Nevertheless, certain components of red meat, especially those found in processed or overcooked meat, are indeed linked to adverse health effects. While researchers have hypothesized that eating plenty of herbs, spices, fruits, and vegetables may partially offset the harmful effects of high red meat intake, this doesn’t justify a 16-ounce rib-eye steak every night for dinner just so long as you have a side of kale. (p.578)

The problem with the vegetarian diet

certain nutrients can only be acquired via the consumption of animal products, including these: • Creatine, which increases muscular power output and enhances cognitive function • Vitamin B12, which maintains healthy myelin sheaths to protect your neurons • DHA, which is vital for proper cognitive development and cell membrane function • Carnosine, which enhances antioxidant activity in the brain to protect it against oxidative damage • Taurine, which plays a role in preventing heart disease If you are a vegetarian, you are likely missing out on at least one of these critical nutrients (p.579)

On psychedelics

By integrating the correct doses of psychedelics into your weekly routine, you can achieve greater creativity, more energy, improved mood, increased focus, and better relational skills. There is a growing body of research that suggests that microdosing can improve depression, anxiety, PTSD, and emotional imbalance, help with alcohol and tobacco addiction, and mitigate ADD and ADHD behaviors. (p.181)

But...

There are a variety of websites that sell psychedelics, but not all sources contain good-quality ingredients, nor is there any guarantee that the substance you purchase is not laced with undesirable compounds. (p.181)

Furthermore, I personally feel that anyone who strikes out upon a quest to “find themselves” via a hedonistic, ego-dissolving journey involving plant-based compounds such as ayahuasca, DMT, marijuana, psilocybin, or ibogaine should instead first engage in a comparatively stoic immersion in the spiritual disciplines of fasting, solitude, study, meditation, and prayer—even if that means delaying, say, a five-day trip to Peru for the alternative of a five-day solo journey into the wilderness near one’s home. I suspect that many people will discover they can experience intense physical, mental, and spiritual breakthroughs via a bout of fasting, silence, and nature immersion, and that this experience can rival or even exceed any benefits derived from a plant-medicine journey. (p.192)

Interestingly, Ben has since changed his song on psychedelics. Which I welcome; I detail my objections to psychedelics in this documentary-style video series, Psychedelics are Problematic...

Biohacking tech and tools

On Heart Rate Variability

In my experience, low HRV primarily arises from a poor diet, poor breathing, relationship and work stress, overtraining, poor air quality, excessive artificial light exposure, electrical pollution from WiFi and Bluetooth signals, or impure water. When I addressed each of these variables in my own life over years of cleaning up damage, I achieved a consistent HRV of 90 every day (p. 294)

I’ve done over 300 HRV training sessions myself, and my standout finding was that Nicotine most dramatically improves my coherence score.

Biohack your breathing...

Like a training mask, the PowerLung is a small, handheld resistance-training device for the lungs, not an altitude simulator. But the best way to build fitness in your diaphragm and inspiratory and expiratory muscles is—just as with any other muscle in your body—to train them. I’m often asked why one wouldn’t just save some money and breathe through a straw to create this effect. It comes down to the concept of threshold resistance: when you breathe in and out through a PowerLung, you are working against a threshold of resistance that is the same for every breath. You are not breathing through a restricted orifice where the load can be reduced just by changing the way you breathe. (p.396)

Should you slip on this sleep hack?

the Oura ring has not only taken the world by storm but has also impressively upgraded its tracking capabilities, making it the number one tool I now use to track my readiness to train, using a built-in algorithm called the readiness score.

I have mixed feelings about this product; Oura has succumbed to the odious subscription service business model.

Get a handgrip trainer

Grip strength is highly correlated with both full-body strength and, surprisingly, overall longevity. I cannot recommend highly enough that you add a high-quality handgrip trainer, such as the aircraft-grade aluminum Captains of Crush devices (p.394)

A fascinating historical anecdote...

The original brain-biohacking wearable was an electric ray, also known as a torpedo fish. Yep, you read that right. In AD 46, the personal physician to the Roman emperor Claudius applied a live electric ray to the emperor’s forehead to successfully relieve his migraines. (p.212)

Quantify thyself

What you need to know about laboratory reference ranges...

Here’s the first reason why reference ranges can be problematic: there’s no universally applicable range for most lab test results. Different labs can use different ranges, so if you go to one lab for, say, a blood test, you might get results that suggest you’re perfectly healthy, but if you get the same test at a different lab, your result might be “abnormal.” Most labs don’t even carry out their own research to establish reference ranges but instead use those provided by test manufacturers. Labs are supposed to perform twenty sample tests to verify that the manufacturers’ ranges are accurate, but most labs don’t even perform this step! (p.689)

The second reason why laboratory reference ranges need to be viewed with a wary eye is that they don’t necessarily reflect levels that would help you go from good to great; they simply reflect the absence of disease. (p.690)

Bottom line, you need to do your own research on everything you get tested for. Also, if you’re wondering what self-quantification tests you should get done...

Here’s what the ideal, simple self-quantification scenario would look like:• DNA test: Once in a lifetime • Comprehensive blood test: Once per year• Gut microbiome test or stool panel: Once per year or whenever the gut seems to significantly change in function or health• DUTCH test: Once per year or when feeling fatigued with no explanation, particularly if libido is low• Food allergy test such as Cyrex: Once per year or whenever the gut seems to significantly change in function or health• Readiness and sleep tracking: Daily • Ketones and glucose testing: Optional, but ideally performed on a daily basis when adopting a new diet or when attempting to evaluate how different food groups affect glycemic variability or ketones• Micronutrient test: Optional, but to be performed if concerned about energy levels or health issues, or when you want to dial in supplementation and diet protocol even more thoroughly (p.736)

Stay reproductively useful

Based on the theory that reproductive uselessness can accelerate aging because we are no longer able to propagate the population, it is important to maintain regular sexual activity with age and even utilize many of the sexual enhancement biohacks...

The “child-free” crowd should heed this warning; if you’re not having children or at least have sex regularly, your selfish genes will start to see you as a useless eater and undermine your health.

On the faith-longevity connection

Interestingly...

One study analyzed the relationship between religious practice, stress, and death in middle age, and controlled for socioeconomic factors, health insurance status, and healthy behaviors. The researchers found that churchgoers have a significantly lower risk of dying, and after adjusting for age, sex, race, and chronic medical conditions, churchgoers were 46 percent less likely to die in the follow-up period after the study compared to non-churchgoers...

The Blue Zones validates this further: people are religious in the world’s longevity hot spots. Ben has a scriptural recommendation for biohackers...

If I had to choose just one section of the Bible that best explains to how to optimize your health and longevity through simple religious practices and commonsense morality, it would be Proverbs 3.

Conclusion

You’re probably not going to read the whole thing cover to cover as I did, but it’s well worth picking up to read individual chapters addressing the health area (sleep, sex, longevity, exercise, brainpower, etc) that you want to work on. While I wish I had the hardcover edition to weigh down my coffee table in the event of a tornado, the digital book may be a better option, as you can Control-F and search for whatever you want. What Ben and I wish for you...

...live a life immersed in an odd yet highly thrilling marriage of ancestral wisdom and modern science, tapping each day into what it means to be fully human and reaching into every nook and cranny of full mind, body, and spirit optimization. (p.802)

If you need any further inspiration to do so, here’s country/hip hop song about Biohacking...

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