Limitless Mindset

In this podcast series, I read and comment on Biohacker-extraordinaire Serge Faguet's exhaustive article, How to biohack your intelligence — with everything from sex to modafinil to MDMA

Discussing...Classifications of intelligenceSleep hackingPharmaceuticalsSSRIsMeditationSexual deviancyNarcoticsTranshumanism

Mentioned in Part 1 (above): A Lifehacking Extremist's Manifesto

Essential email lifehack: Boomerang for Gmail

Serge's App: Mirror emoji keyboard - your personal emoji!

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert B. Cialdini

Body Language Analysis: Body Language Ghost's analysis of Trump

Biohacking Sleep with Lighting, Beverages, and Mindset, chapter 10 from my book "How to Be Cross Eyed"

Are you a fast or slow caffeine metabolizer? Get personal genotyping from Sequencing.com

Book Review of “Stealing Fire” by Steven Kotler - an ecstatic manifesto

Part 2: Salacious Sex and Social Intelligence Lifehacks

Outsource Your Online Dating Service

Articles about monogamy: I was promised a sex slave and Against Cucks

Eating one meal a day every day is not a great idea, see my review of Fast This Way

Etymotic earbuds for focus

Ketone Supplements: Ultra Keto + MCTs

"Trust me, I'm Lying" Book Review: The Internet killed the News. Duh. What to Do about It...

Coach.me - for habit tracking

Part 3: MDMA & Trippin' on Transhumanism

Modafinil: The Military-Grade Smart Drug and why it made me hallucinate...

Read: Modafinil is Problematic.

About Adderall vs Nootropics: Adult ADHD Cured! The Four Pillars of Maintaining Focus, Motivation and Memory

Biohackers should be skeptical of Psychedelics

My trenchant critique of transhumanism, Transhumanism is a Trap

The Best Intelligence Hack

Serge's article does not mention the most clinically efficacious way to boost intelligence broadly: Dual N-back brain training.

A 2017 meta-analysis analyzed 33 published dual n-back experiments from independent labs worldwide. It definitively showed that dual n-back training significantly increases the broad abilities underlying IQ, including fluid intelligence (Gf), working memory, both verbal and spatial (WM), and attention control (cognitive control).

Having tried over 200 different Nootropics and smart drugs (along with almost every weird and wacky personal growth thing you've heard of), take it from me: Dual N-Back training is the low-hanging-intelligence-hacking fruit.

Share this with someone intelligent…

Support me on Substack? For $7/monthly?

Yesterday someone reminded me of a thing I once said...

"I don’t believe in love."

Which might sound terrible. Or ridiculously nihilistic. Sometimes I intellectually have a deer-in-the-headlights moment when confronted with how my opinions and outlook on life have changed over time. We were slightly different people a year ago and we certainly were five or ten years ago. In the last year, I’ve experienced greater depths of and previously unknown dimensions of love, yet I resisted the temptation to just respond:

I was wrong. I now believe in love.

When I said that I didn’t believe in love I was grasping at a more nuanced point which is that “love” is a poor word to describe a very complicated aspect of human psychology and motivation that has both light and dark sides.

Fundamentally, love is a phenomenon of evolutionary psychology. It’s easy to think of how love is evolutionarily useful and would result in one’s genes thriving and surviving…

* Love motivates us to invest heavily in our offspring; spending sleepless nights and the majority of our income and precious resources on these cantankerous, greedy little human beings that are so often a totally unintentional side effect of an inglorious, sweaty moment of adult hedonism.

* Love motivates us to invest heavily in our offspring; spending sleepless nights and the majority of our income and precious resources on these cantankerous, greedy little human beings that are so often a totally unintentional side effect of an inglorious, sweaty moment of adult hedonism.

* Love inspires us to serve one another in a selfless and not clearly beneficial way to serve a purpose greater than ourselves. To uplift our community. To build something that will outlast us.

* Love seems to tame the unruliness of youth. Love for one’s child or spouse transforms juvenile, self-centered, and impetuous young men into socialized and productive members of society.

* Love inspires soldiers to live a life of arduous sacrifices leading up to and maybe including the ultimate sacrifice for their nation, their people, their leader, or their cause.

Love is an expression of what V.P. Skulachev called Phenoptosis, our selfish genes are not chiefly concerned with our well-being. They want us to reproduce as early and often as possible. But they ultimately want us to get out of the way of genetic progress, they seem to intentionally poison us with various diseases of aging and they have programmed us with an unwavering martyr complex that motivates us to suicidally give up our own lives for the greater good of our tribe.

Love as a concept is a spectrum; it’s an umbrella concept that motivates a very wide range of human behavior, not all good. In fact, a feeling of love can result in some incredibly selfish and destructive behavior.

The problem I have with love is that it’s universally held in very high esteem and universally thought of as good. In fact, most people regard love as the most good thing. I blame pop culture mostly for this. The lyrics of most of the songs that we listen to and the themes of most of the movies that play on the silver screen reinforce this idiotic idea that doing whatever feels right in the moment results in true love and love always results in a happy and meaningful life.

In the fictional Star Wars universe, the characters respect the power of The Force yet they understand that The Force has a light side and a dark side. The Force is also not something to be toyed with — it’s a skill that should be learned from a master and practiced with discipline.I think that’s more of how we should see love. A force for great good but also a dangerous force of destruction.

Storytime...

I had just arrived in Barcelona. I was tired from a day of traveling and I didn’t know anybody in Barcelona BUT it was my first night in Barcelona so, of course, I wasn’t going to waste it lying in bed. I ventured out into the Gothic district, visited a few bars, and made a few friends. As I strolled over the cobblestones through the darkened streets a scantily (and skankily) clad black Spanish woman grabbed my elbow rather firmly (If you like black women, you might be surprised that you can find quite sexy black Spanish women on the southeastern side of Spain) she held onto me and repeated insistently…

Bebe, te amo! Te quiero! Te amo! Vamos…

Not particularly interested in hiring a hooker, I responded

No. Gracias.

Rejected, she stormed off into the night and called me a maricón.

Isn’t it something that this working girl began her very indecent proposal by telling me Baby I love you…?

You might say…

That’s not real love! That’s just VERY transactional sex! To her, you’re just a walking dollar sign (or euro sign) with a penis attached to it!

Yeah…But who are you to define love? Or prostitution?Are sex and love not extricable intertwined?Isn’t love subjective?Don’t we all ultimately pay one way or another for love and sex? Why not make things uncomplicated and just pay directly for it?The hooker uses the word love when she seduces a lonely, desperate man because she knows that it invokes a deeper longing for companionship.

Hopefully, not a lot of us would be fooled into believing that a prostitute loves us BUT how many close friends and loved ones have you known who made idiotic, self-destructive, and expensive decisions because they were in love?

The four-letter L-word is a language/psychology/persuasion hack, the player or womanizer uses it when he promises a naive girl that they have a future together after just a couple of dates.

There sure are a lot of songs and movies about how love makes us crazy and silly BUT very few prescribe a disciplined and respectful approach to yielding this powerful force.

The Dancing Couple…

I’ll share another story that I’ve been contemplating for the last few weeks, you might not want to read this if you’ve just eaten…

It comes from a well-educated Croatian man who lived through the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.The educated Croatian man was serving as an English interpreter between the UN monitors of the conflict and the Croatian militia. At a particularly hot point in the conflict, the guy has to choose between a helicopter ride back to a safe zone and marching off into the woods with a tough bunch of his fellow Croatians. He goes with his countrymen.

After a long hike, they come to a clearing in the forest where the Croatians are holding three Bosnian Muslim prisoners — a father and his two sons.The Croatians had found the Bosnian brothers guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt of a heinous war crime. Apparently, the two brothers slaughtered a number of their catholic neighbors in their town with AK-47s and stole their valuables.

The Bosnians are badly beaten. Then the Croatian commander turns to the father and informs him that the last thing he’s ever going to see is his sons dying. The sons’ two wrists are tied together. Then they are doused with gasoline and set on fire and the brothers, bound together, writhe in the flames for a few horrific moments. The father is forced to watch. Apparently, this is a very old Balkan punishment for a pair of criminals that do something really bad — it’s called the dancing couple. After the father has just witnessed the worst thing a father can witness the Croatian commander blames him for leading his sons astray. Then he burns out the father’s eyes with a butane torch and they leave him in a very private living hell there in the clearing in the woods with the charred remains of his sons.

The educated Croatian man, years later explains this morbid episode to an American. He muses philosophically and prophetically…

“The problem with my people is that they are still too romantic to know the difference between proper justice and a punishment but that is also the reason why we will still be around when your people are but a distant memory…”

* So the Muslim prisoners rec…

Your inbox floods with tempting deals,From attire to home appliances - each one's a steal.Each pitch insists, “It’s the best you’ll find!”But is it worth the clutter in your closet and mind?I, too, have bargains—no shame to confess,But these aren’t just gadgets to add to your mess.They’re investments in health, a sharper brain,A body renewed, free of stress and strain.So, shop with wisdom, avoid buyer’s regret,The best gift is wellness—don’t forget!Happy hustling this Black Friday spree,But prioritize you—you’ll thank yourself, see?

Yep, it's that time of the year. Here I'll direct your attention to the sweetest Black Friday deals that have come across my desk. (And, if you're a Biohacker ballin' on a budget and can't afford much or any of this stuff, jump to the bottom of this...)

​20% off with my favorite red light therapy device​ - The FlexBeam - with coupon code: earlyaccess

This device is a surprisingly simple, yet effective application of red light therapy. The advantage is that it wraps around almost any part of your body to get the medicine red light as close as possible to exactly where you need its rejuvenating effects. The FlexBeam is a more intense and penetrating red light application because of the design of the mirrored bulb housings.

What I freakin' love about my FlexBeam: I don't have to pay $9 monthly for it to continue working. It doesn't have software that needs to be updated, and I don't need to worry about Bluetooth misconnections with it. It doesn't need permission to my smartphone's location services settings, and it doesn't have a username/password that I need to keep track of. I just plug it in, flip it on, and it works.

​50% off Brain.FM - Algorithmic music for focus, sleep, meditation, and more

Years ago, I paid for a lifetime Brain.FM membership because it's THAT GOOD (and very affordable). Their sublime holo-sync style tunes are somewhat to thank for my relentless productivity and inexhaustible creativity; penning nearly a thousand articles, creating my magnum opus course for men, and two books - expect my third one, a novel, early next year!

$299 Whole Genome Sequencing with Sequencing.com

If you've thought about getting your personal genotyping or ancestry done, jump on this! What else is included...

Rare Disease Screening (15,000+ Conditions + EDS)Carrier ScreeningCancer RiskAutoimmune DisordersDigestive Disorders & Gut Health

I researched the different personal genomics providers quite a bit before choosing Sequencing.com for our whole genome sequencing here in the Roseland household, check out why...

(I'm actually NOT an affiliate of these guys, just the best all-around deal on personal genotyping, I think).

15% off Infopathy devices - Mindblowing Frequency Tech - with coupon code: LimitlessFriday

For years, I've been using Infopathy to "download" homeopathic remedies into my drinking water with this device...

I estimate that it saves me at least $122 monthly on hard-to-get/pricey supplements and medicine. My subjective estimate is that the ICs have about 1/3 - 1/4 the effect of the actual supplement or drug. I surveyed other Infopathy users and they tended to agree with me, ICs tend to pack a third of the punch of the real thing.

And some are going to hate this because it's a homeopathy thing (they should look at the evidence for homeopathy). I don't blame you for being skeptical of this tech if you haven't tried it. But, if you're open to evidence check out my interview with the inventor.

PureBulk.com - The best prices on the purest supplements

In my nearly 14 years of trying hundreds of different Nootropics, anti-aging supplements, and health products this American operation really stands out for its commitment to quality. I take their stuff every day and have reviewed a number of their supplements. They haven't announced their Black Friday specials yet so no coupon code, just the best values you'll find for lab-verified pure supplements. From ascorbic acid and vitamins to keep you sniffle-free this winter to NAD boosters to keep your epigenome happy, they've got you covered with their truly compendious product range.

Double Wood Supplements - The Best on Amazon​

You're probably going to be dropping some coin at Amazon.com this season, and these guys are one of the few legit vendors of COA-verified supplements on The Zon.

​35% off at ModafinilXL (with BTC and Crypto payment)

Judging by my traffic metrics, some of you seem to really like Modafinil (while I've thoroughly voiced my concerns about it). If Modafinil just so happens to be "NZT-48" to you, this is the best deal I've seen in a while from one of the few credible sources.

Finally...

Is my course for men or the flagship Limitless Mindset program, Anakainōsis, discounted for Black Friday? No, these are never discounted as they are tremendous values as they are for the right action-takers. But, I can offer...

33% off my premium Substack membership - $56/Year Until Dec 1​

While all Limitless Mindset content will be forever on my website and video channels, I offer paid Substack memberships so you can get sunk-cost motivation working for you - if you're paying even a small amount for edifying educational content you'll take it more seriously and implement it more. Substack is a little different than this newsletter, on my Substack, you'll find my complete pieces of content; articles, videos, podcasts, and the occasional infographic. I recommend their excellent free (and ad-free) app for consuming this at your leisure.

33% of my books in the Limitless Mindset Store - Until Dec 1

Pick up my digital + audiobook packages: Either my lifehacking manifesto or my deep-dive (and deeply pragmatic) guide for the modern man on game, personal growth, relationships, and seduction. Or pre-order my upcoming novel (which includes 14 chapters of the current manuscript - you'll see, this one is going to get me even more "canceled" than I am already!)

Biohackin' on budget...?

If Bidenflation has got you scratchin' your head, wondering how anyone can even afford to Biohack these days, good news: Some of the best Biohacks are free (or very cheap). In this deep-dive presentation, I break down 33 for you. Also, sometimes, you don't need more products or information to consume - you need clarification, which can come from a conversation with a knowledgeable good listener...

Get a free BREAKTHROUGH Biohacking/Lifehacking consultation call with me

​My VERY FAVORITE part of my job as an Applied Neuroscience Strategist and professional Biohacker is doing one-on-one VOIP calls with folks, listening to what their challenges or goals are, and then usually I'm able to give them some crucial pieces to the puzzle for them to make a MAJOR breakthrough in their health, mindset, relationships, productivity, or mindset. It's one of the things that makes me feel truly alive and I'd like to do a call with YOU.

Complete this form with some details about yourself (your goals/challenges) so that I can make the nuanced recommendations you need...

[All details you choose to share are absolutely confidential - you may record the call if you want]

In case you're wondering...

On our call, I have nothing specific to pitch you. You'll make a new friend and get value out of this even if you have ZERO money to spend! But I am the internet's "smart drug dealer" so if you're interested in Nootropics and Biohacking I can clarify some things for you and save you time and money in trying things that might not be ideal for your goals. I can only do about ten of these free consultations weekly, so if you're ready to break through a glass ceiling in your Biohacking, health, or personal growth, don’t hesitate – fill out the form today and we'll schedule a call sometime soon.

Important point

Gratitude is free. And before Black Friday comes Thanksgiving, the holiday where we gather and try to dwell on what we have to be thankful for. If you don't have some sort of gratitude practice (true spirituality, I argue) you'll forever be consumed by what you don't …

So you're about to invest in a 30, 60, or 90-day supply of a high-quality Nootropic, like those by Ultra Human, to maximize the ROI on that investment I suggest that you plan a simultaneous productivity sprint of equal duration.

Hopefully, you're reading this just prior to (or just after) splurging a not-insignificant chunk of change on some high-quality Nootropics. If you're going to spend your hard-earned money on Nootropics there's an important question you should be asking...

How can I make more permanent the mindset and enhanced powers of cognition that this Nootropic imbues?

You should be pondering what you can do in the short term so that using a not insignificant dosage of potent smart drugs for 30, 60, or 90 days not only enhances your performance in the medium term but also benefits you in the long term.You should be thinking about how you can use a medium-term pharmacologically enabled boost in motivation, memory, and cognition to build escape velocity momentum toward your goals.

The American oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is famous for saying something to the effect of...

Your first million dollars is the hardest to make.

In a humorous exchange across a wide generational gap, in a Twitter exchange with the rapper Drake, he added a zero to the amount in his original axiom.Drake tweeted: The first million is the hardest. To which T. Boone Pickens responded:

The first billion is a helluva lot harder

The point that T. Boone is making (in a very hip-hop fashion) is that momentum really matters.

If you don't have momentum life sucks! You keep repeating your mistakes and sordid history. Your laborious efforts barely pay off. You're unlucky. You keep getting screwed over and betrayed. The system keeps holding you down. You feel like you are just bashing your head against the wall.If you do have momentum life is good (and gets better!) The more money, resources, and notoriety you accumulate the easier it becomes to accumulate even more. Your time and opinions are respected. Investors, banks, and strategic partners beg for the opportunity to invest in you. You are desired; both in the bedroom and boardroom. Even when you make mistakes and screw things up people forgive you and you continue to profit.

In my life, I've had brilliant momentum and I've also been utterly stuck like a broken-down old locomotive sitting in the middle of nowhere with its iron wheels rusted to the tracks. Unless you're ok with living a life of quiet desperation you must be prepared to kill, steal, or do whatever the hell it takes to attain and maintain momentum. Luckily we live in civilized times where you don't actually need to kill anyone or steal anything to get ahead but I use this language to evoke the degree of visceral, mental intensity that you need to bring to bear to build momentum (especially if you're wholly or partially lacking in momentum!)

In the past men amassed vast fortunes primarily using violence, it honestly did not take much smarts or brains. Nearly every male member of the Mongol Khan dynasty who didn't die on the battlefield or by the assassin's blade killed themselves with alcoholism. These guys were intoxicated nearly all the time, yet they managed to conquer and rule nearly half the known world.Today the primary tool of the successful is a mindset of vigorous, focused ambition.

It's very in vogue to bemoan wealth inequality and complain about economic mobility. Yet had you been born in any other epoch of human history, your economic destiny was, with almost total certainty, predetermined from the moment of your sweaty, smelly, inglorious inception.Furthermore, in the past true free will and agency were only fully taken advantage of by a small proportion of any given society. Only the top 5%, 10%, or (maybe as much as) 20% of the most intelligent people got to accumulate any resources and freedom to chart their own course in life.Yet today, if you're reading this, chances are that you're residing in a country where virtually everyone gets to determine if they end up in the poor house or in a big house.

But it's not as simple as saying...If you work hard, you'll get ahead! You just need to work hard, take responsibility, and you'll achieve the American dream (or whatever kind of dream you have...)

Technology has radically transformed the landscape of our society and culture and success is not the predictable linear thing it used to be:Go to school, get good grades, go to college, graduate, get a job, work hard, get a raise, get married, buy a house, have kids... Success.

In today's economy and the economy of the near future, success is still predictable (even almost guaranteed) if you have two things

1. Intelligence2. Focus

These two things matter more than where you're from, what you studied in college, what kinds of grades you got, or if your dad is a politician. Today's economy rewards you primarily for your intellectual labor and inventiveness.

Intelligence (or generalized intelligence or G) is a factor mostly determined by genetics. It's mostly predetermined by factors outside your control. Although, there are some things you can do to optimize and cultivate your innate intelligence.

Focus is an increasing rarity in our digitally distracted age. We have extraordinarily, astoundingly distracting technology within arm's reach nearly every waking moment that many of us are engrossed with nearly every waking moment! This technology blunts our working memory's capacity to problem solve, our ability to think deeply, and cuts down our attention span along with hurting our capacity to instill long-term memory and skills. I've argued that chronic Internet and technology use affects our minds similar to chronic heroin addiction.And focus really matters, nobody achieves success without focus. Unfocused people are chronically unhappy and frustrated.

Professor Jerry Muller, the author of The Mind and the Market, articulated it best:

“…a period of growing equality of access to education and increasing stratification of marketplace rewards, both of which have increased the importance of human capital. One element of human capital is cognitive ability: quickness of mind, the ability to infer and apply patterns drawn from experience, and the ability to deal with mental complexity. Another is character and social skills: self-discipline, persistence, responsibility. And a third is actual knowledge. All of these are becoming increasingly crucial for success in the post-industrial marketplace.” (March 2013, Foreign Affairs)

You might be saying: Making money isn't everything. I would rather be happy than rich.

Well, you might not have your sights set on being an executive in a corner office but the same types of personality traits and mindset that make you economically valuable are absolutely the same things that also make you a good friend, parent, leader of your community, or entrepreneur. If you want to contribute meaningfully to society, intelligence and focus really matter.

So what does this have to do with Nootropics and Biohacking? Nootropics and Biohacking give you a significant unfair advantage in intelligence and focus. In the remainder of this article, I'll describe the tools, habits, and strategies for making more permanent high performance intelligence and focus. And I'll prescribe a usage protocol for them...

The Sprint

So you're about to invest in a 30, 60, or 90-day supply of a high-quality Nootropic, like those by Ultra Human, to maximize the ROI on that investment I suggest that you plan a simultaneous productivity sprint of equal duration.

I suggest that you commit to a month or two or three of discipline; doing all the things you know you should be doing and none of the self-defeating, indulgent, silly things.

How long should you sprint? If this is a new idea for you but you're ambitious and confident, I'll suggest 2 months. If you already have solid dis…

Anyone considering using cognitive training apps is faced with a difficult question…

Is the evidence compelling enough to commit a few weeks of time to it? Does it work beyond placebo effect — or practice effects on the standardized tests?

Consider how you might answer this question?

* Online reviews?

* A recent publication in the popular press?

* A peer-reviewed scientific paper?

Highest Grade Evidence: Meta-Analyses

What is the highest grade evidence possible for any kind of intervention?

The answer: A meta-analyses

A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple, independent scientific studies in different labs around the world — all those which have been published (or unpublished) looking at the type of training in question.A meta-analysis sifts through conflicting results in different publications and finds the overall statistical effect (if there is one).A meta-analysis is a part of a systematic review procedure. In developing medical interventions, for instance, a meta-analysis may be conducted on several clinical trials of a medical treatment, in an effort to obtain a better understanding of how well the treatment works.

Most Studied Cognitive Training Types

For cognitive training, two types of cognitive training have received the most scientific scrutiny — with the most peer-reviewed studies and publications — by far:

* Working memory (WM) training (e.g. dual n-back)

* Attention control training (also known as executive control training).

Both types of training have been studied enough by independent labs to provide a wealth of high-quality data for conducting meta-analyses to look for the overall effect sizes on different aspects of IQ and cognitive functioning.

Dual N-Back Meta-Analyses

The most recent and most authoritative meta-analysis of the effectiveness of DNB training was published by Soveri and colleagues in 2017 (full paper here). It analyzed 33 published dual n-back experiments from independent labs from around the world.The study shows definitively that dual n-back training does significantly increase different broad abilities underlying IQ — including fluid intelligence (Gf) and working memory (Gwm).

Moreover, in case there was any lingering doubt, the results of this latest meta-analysis are completely consistent with the previous meta-analyses on the dual n-back (e.g. ref 1, ref 2). All meta-analyses of dual n-back training have said essentially reporting the same results (See Table 1 of the Soveri study).

So dual n-back is effective — but how effective is it?

Effect Sizes

The Soveri meta-analysis found the following significant effect sizes (Hedge’s g) for non-verbal fluid intelligence (Gf Non-Verbal), verbal fluid intelligence (Gf Verbal), working memory- verbal and spatial (WM), and attention control (Cognitive Control).

These effect sizes are shown in the table below (from their paper).0.00 means no effect compared to control groups. If all the dots fell on the zero line, it would tell us that dual n-back training has no effect or simply based on a placebo effect.Note that the ‘active’ studies control for placebo effects — so we are not looking at placebo effects here. These are genuine ‘far transfer’ effects on IQ and attention.(Although interestingly there is no significant training effect on verbal fluid intelligence (verbal reasoning skills) — just as we saw in the recent cognitive training plus exercise study.)

If anyone questions whether dual n-back training has a real effect beyond placebo and test practice, the table above can be considered the final word on the data!The question is not whether DNB training has an effect on IQ — it does. The question is whether the effect is large enough to be practically useful. On that question see the follow-up e-mail.

Attention Control Training Meta-Analyses

The other major type of brain training investigated by scientists is attention control training.The meta-analysis for this area of research combining 15 individual studies was published in 2015: Does attention training work? A selective meta-analysis to explore the effects of attention training and moderatorsThe abstract from this meta-analysis is shown below. It is the best evidence we currently have for this type of brain training.

This meta-analysis found (averaging over all studies):(1) a significant training effect on attention skills (g = 0.25)(2) attention training significantly transferred to non-trained tasks (academic and cognitiveskills) (g = 0.24)The non-training tasks were not differentiated, and averaged over “wordreading, writing, comprehension, working memory, visual skills, reasoning, dual-task performance, meta-cognition, executive function skills, and nonverbal IQ.”Interestingly, the study also found the following larger effect sizes if studies were segregated into different types of attention training and different groups:(1) Training attention orienting works better than other types of attention training(g = 1.18!)(2) Attention training improves attention very markedly for ADHD (g = 0.52)However, because the number of studies is relatively limited, these results should be interpreted with caution.

Attention Orienting Training

The most effective type of attention training was found to be attention orienting training — with a very large effect sizeWhat is attention orienting? It is selective attention — the selection of specific targets among multiple stimuli. It is also also the ability to disengage attention from one stimulus when needed and rapidly switch to another.This kind of attention training, combined with dual n-back training, is implemented in i3 Mindware or HighIQPro). It is also implemented in what is called ‘Useful Field Of View’ training which is now known to be another effective brain training intervention for improving cognition generally.

Effect Sizes. How To Interpret Them.

How should we interpret these ‘effect sizes’?An effect size (Hedge’s g) is the difference between the intervention/training group and the control group in standard deviation units. Effect sizes are conventionally interpreted as follows (with examples from the meta-analyses we’ve been looking at):0.20: Small Effect Size (e.g. dual n-back effects on fluid intelligence)0.50: Medium Effect Size (e.g. attention training effect on ADHD)0.80: Large Effect size (e.g. orienting attention training effect on attention skills)So the effect sizes on IQ for classic dual n-back training in laboratory settings are typically ‘small’ — around the 0.20 to 0.25 mark.The effect size of dual n-back training on working memory(Gwm) gains is 0.24. Let’s take another kind of intervention to give this some context. 0.24 is virtually the same effect size of antidepressants such as Prozac in treating depression (ref). See the diagram below from another meta-analysis, this time looking at multiple studies on the effectiveness of anti-depressants.

When we consider that the dual n-back is a highly constrained type of brain training adopted by individuals who are often not very motivated in lab settings, and start to look at combining dual n-back training with attention control training (as in the IQ Mindware apps) and fitness training (see this article as reviewed in the previous e-mail messages), we are now looking to be on very firm footing for answering the original question:

Is the evidence compelling enough to commit a few weeks to? Does it work beyond placebo effect — or practice effects on the standardized tests?

Certainly compared to the standards of pharmaceuticals we can answer this in the affirmative!And of course, this explains why studies investigating cognitive training continue to proliferate exponentially rather than fitter out — as you’d expect if there was no useful effect.

This was written by Mark Ashton Smith, Ph.D. - originally published in his excellent newsletter for IQ Mindware.

My rather attractive research assistant began working on this article around her second week without a cigarette. As she watched dozens of YouTube vlogs and perused hundreds of anecdotal reports on forums she became increasingly alarmed that it seemed like almost everybody who quits smoking gets (at least a little) fat!

None of the choices seemingly presented were appealing...Quit smoking and lose her thin, girlish figure.ORContinue smoking, stay thin but eventually suffer for years with a disease like lung cancer or emphysema.A kind of depressing dichotomy, especially if you’ve been smoking for years or decades! 

Her dilemma makes me thankful that I was born and raised in the very health-conscious state of Colorado where smoking cigarettes kind of makes you a social pariah (a little bit of social ostracization sure works well to incentivize good health decisions!) As opposed to some of the countries I’ve lived in where NOT smoking makes you the social pariah!

The good news...

Is that you don’t have to get fat as a side effect of quitting smoking! This article will thoroughly explain several biohacks and lifehacks that will make your metabolism great again, if you’re willing to apply a modicum of discipline and attention for 3-6 months you can avoid undesirable weight gain while kicking this most kick-worthy of bad habits.

Why you get fat when you quit smoking

If you eat the same as you did when you were smoking, your body will end up using less and storing more (as fat) of the food.

* Nicotine suppresses the appetite and causes the liver to release glycogen, which raises blood sugar slightly.

* With nicotine out of your system, you may feel hungry more often.

* Smoking artificially elevates heart rate and increases metabolism.

* When you stop smoking, your body has to readjust to a lower metabolic rate.

* Smoking dulls the taste buds. Food begins to taste better for new nonsmokers; this can increase food intake.

* And maybe there's oral fixation... Unless you’re a workaholic pornstar you may find yourself eating and snacking all day compulsively just to fill the void left after quitting cigarettes (which sounds like a really bad joke but - I used to hang out with pornstars and they all smoked! So... oral fixation... Might be a real thing!)

Supplement Nicotine

Most of the weight gain happens as a result of going off Nicotine, so don’t go off the Nicotine! You don’t have to smoke to get Nicotine, you can supplement Nicotine with...

* Nicotine lozenges

* Nicotine patches

* Little Nicotine spray bottle

* Liquid Nicotine USP drops (my personal favorite!)

* Nicotine gum

It sure doesn't taste pleasant but Nicotine is a real smart drug that powerfully stimulates creativity and focus. Scientists debate whether Nicotine itself is actually carcinogenic, the hundreds of other toxic chemicals being burnt in cigarettes and tobacco are what cause cancer. If Nicotine is carcinogenic, it’s a lower health risk than obesity.

You probably know that if you go cold turkey off Nicotine you’ll likely have lifelong nicotine cravings anytime you see anyone light up that will make almost every social evening an exercise in willpower for you. If that doesn't sound fun, it would be a really good idea for you to reprogram your serotonin pathway by getting your Nicotine from an alternative source for 2-6 months.

If you notice that you’re still gaining undesirable weight despite Nicotine supplementation, you could try switching to vaping.You can’t say that vaping is “healthy” but it’s certainly better than smoking cigarettes or being obese (and cheaper than lung cancer!) It can be an effective way to taper down your Nicotine intake while you instill other positive habits.

Lifestyle Matters

If you fail to plan healthy lifestyle changes concurrently you can plan on failing to quit smoking.If you hope to successfully quit smoking you need to be very strict about your diet and fitness for 3-6 months.

A couple of gym rats on Bodybuilding.com have some insights...

I began both my workouts, clean eating and quit smoking on the same day. I am down from 233 to 209 in the past 2 months. You will have much better strength and will see pretty good improvements with your cardio in a couple of weeks after you quit. I never saw a weight gain as I started a very healthy diet of whole foods, veggies, fruits, poultry and fish...

Stay busy!

I have quit smoking, well, numerous times but this time is it. I have been smoke free for 9 weeks and have not gained any weight. You just have to have it in your head that when you want that food when you have a craving, just don't do it. Keep yourself busy and take some deep breaths because the cravings go away faster than you think they will...

Not everyone who quits gains weight, some lose weight...

I don't have any personal experience but from what I've seen with my friends who quit...Those who watched what they ate, stayed the same or lost weight. Those who didn't, gained.;

I am quitting smoking, I am on the patches, but I really dont gain weight, I been losing weight. I just decided to change the way that I eat overall. I try to eat clean foods and think that, what I eat, is what I am. When I smoke, its putting nasty toxins into my body and makes me feel nasty. Dont get me wrong I still have one from time to time.I normally bring something to munch on with me to work during the day, I dont take breaks and go outside anymore, instead I eat carrots or something healthy.;

Snack healthily (and frequently!)

Ive been trying to quit smoking for months now...i have noticed that it makes it easier to lose fat/ put on muscle if you eat cleanly. I dont know if its the fact that i can breath better and therefor do more cardio wise or if my body just functions more efficiently or what. I think that people just eat a lot more in place of smoking and thats why its commonly thought to cause weight gain. I find that i snack rather than smoking, but i keep my food really clean so it ends up working for me.

Snacking?

Caveat snacking is a double-edged sword when quitting; snacking can relieve some of those cravings but snacking can result in weight gain.

If you’re going to snack, you need to commit to burning those calories. Get on the exercise bike, hit the weights, try Bikram yoga, or take a cardio class.

Snacking on junk food is an absolute no-no while quitting. It’s crucial to plan your snacking as opposed to just impulsively purchasing snacks at a gas station or grocery store checkout. Pick up a week’s supply of...

* Raw or whole nuts

* Berries

* Carrots

* Raw coconut

* >80% cocoa dark chocolate

Sorry, tasty dried fruit is not a healthy snack (it has way too much fructose - it’s not much healthier than a Snickers bar!) Actually, any “healthy snack” that contains much sugar is NOT so check those nutrition facts diligently.

Some more insights from successful quitters...

20 minutes of cardio can help!

October 11 will be my one year anniversary as a non smoker, after 15 years of 2 packs a day.... did not gain a pound!!!! If you increase your cardio by 20 minutes, it makes up for the loss of metabolism (smoking increases your metabolism by 7%, so an extra 20 minutes on the treadmill will make up for this)... if you do this, you wont' gain weight.. unless you go nuts eating, but with the extra cardio, you help to curb your appetite as well... ;

A three-pronged strategy:

Smoking reduces metabolism by about 10% - for a few months. It's not permanent, though. During those few months you can do three things guranteed to raise metabolism to compensate for that 10% - possibly even push you over that.

1) Lift weights. You want lean muscle. It takes approx 50 calories to feed a lb of muscle. Muscle's favourite food? Your body fat. BTW, it takes about 7 calories to feed a lb of fat.

2) Eat frequent smaller meals. It's called TEF; the Termogenic Effect of Food. Digesting food takes energy. The very act of eating keeps metabolism raised.

3) Drink / take green tea. 7-…

Every year around January 1st many millions of people take on the valiant goal of quitting smoking and shockingly few succeed. The vast majority will relapse and wallow in self-loathing as they shamefully billow second-hand cigarette smoke, having failed yet again to quit.

If you’re serious about kicking this bad habit and avoiding all the pain and expense of the numerous deadly illnesses which are a virtual inevitability if you continue smoking you’re going to want to consider some of these Nootropic and smart drugs.

Rhodiola Rosea

Two Italian studies conducted in 2011 and 2012 indicated that it may be a (literal) lifesaver for smokers, the studies showed it alleviated some of the depression and physiological symptoms that are associated with Nicotine cessation - quitting smoking.

The potential benefits of Rhodiola for one who is quitting smoking are many.First, Rhodiola may reduce withdrawal symptoms. In a study done on mice who had formed a nicotine dependence, the extract of Rhodiola Rosea was shown to decrease signs of withdrawal exhibited after cessation of nicotine administration. While this study was not done on humans, it does show promise that Rhodiola will aid in the reduction of withdrawal symptoms after quitting smoking.

Second, Rhodiola may also help to counter the effects of weight gain associated with quitting smoking. Not only does it reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol (high cortisol levels increase belly fat), but it also helps to burn existing fat. Rhodiola does this by mobilizing fatty acids from adipose tissue and activating adipose lipase, an enzyme needed to burn stored fat.

Personal anecdote, my researcher has a few words to say about her own experience with Rhodiola: I have been smoking cigarettes for sixteen years but have recently decided to give it a try and quit. I have never been such a heavy smoker...mostly up to five a day so...why should I smoke at all? I started a few weeks ago using Rhodiola, one little 200-milligram pill per day and have cut smoking down up to one cigarette per day. I haven’t experienced any withdrawal symptoms so far and my cravings for nicotine have been really insignificant. It seems like Rhodiola has been helping me a lot and I will eventually quit smoking for good, thanks to its properties.

Dosage & Usage: 200 - 600 milligrams daily

Oxiracetam

The Discipline Molecule, this subtle smart drug is not very stimulating but it gives you a noticeable boost in willpower for 4-6 hours. If your smoking relapses occur at the end of a long when you’re tired and your willpower is sapped, dosing some Oxiracetam in the afternoon may make a big difference.

Oxiracetam is one of the racetams and is structurally different from Piracetam due to a single hydroxyl group. It is also used for nootropic purposes such as enhancing learning in students or preventing cognitive decline. Like all other racetams, it is a synthetic molecule that is not found in food sources or nature.

This Reddit.com user reported on Oxiracetam’s helpful effect:

Smoked around a half a pack a day for the last few years, and ive taken a collection of nootropics for about the same amount of time. I have noticed a significant reduction in cravings while using oxiracetam and am currently using that while I attempt (again) to stop smoking completely.

Another Redditor added:

For about 6-7 solid years I was a half-a-pack/day smoker, and had tried to ween off into vaping a couple of times. While tripping with the girlfriend and some friends, I was able to officially stop smoking on New Years Day, 2014 (The whole tripping thing really helps to kick bad habits, as anything unhealthy for you just starts to feel 10x worse). I was able to substitute smoking with sub-ohm vaping, as the clouds and potency were enough to finally satisfy that part of the habit. It didn't take long to wean down to 2-3mg juice, and I have since been a regular sub-ohm vaper, because nicotine.Recently, I've added Oxiracetam and Alpha-GPC to my stack, and it seems to have unlocked an underlying motivation to make positive changes in my life.

Dosage & Usage: 500 - 1000 milligrams daily

Piracetam

Is a similar smart drug to Oxiracetam, it’s a safe, cheap, and effective stimulating drug that improves willpower - often in as little as 45 minutes. It has a synergistic effect on willpower with Oxiracetam, you would want to combine the Piracetam and Oxiracetam at a 4:1 ratio, so4 grams Piracetam1 gram OxiracetamOr2 grams Piracetam500 milligrams Oxiracetam

Piracetam has also been demonstrated in clinical trials to have a nice synergistic effect with another Nootropic in this article, Rhodiola Rosea. If you have a limited budget to invest in quitting smoking, I’ll narrow my recommendations down to:

* Piracetam

* Oxiracetam

* Rhodiola

Piracetam can also restore healthy award-arousal mechanism. Chronic use of vice can numb you to natural healthy pleasures; a conversation with a friend, dinner with loved ones, or sex with your partner, and Piracetam can restore your joy in these things.

Here’s what Biohackers are saying...

A Reddit.com user:

Piracetam and aniracetam helped me quit smoking. Sounds kinda weird but smoking was a good amount of times something I did when I was either stressed or was just kind of something I did when I wasn't being productive doing anything else. Taking piracetam has really helped me to become much more proactive and productive, I sometimes find it hard to pry myself away from things I could possibly be getting done ahead of time.

Another biohacker on Reddit.com

I was able to quit smoking cigarettes (5 year habit) after unsuccessfully attempting cold turkey a couple times. No joke, piracetam really did the trick for breaking nicotine addiction. Any withdrawals or cravings were dramatically reduced.

American User on Longecity.com:

I am a 23 y.o. male from the U.S.A. and I began taking piracetam (and choline bartartrate) recently to help me quit smoking. Piracetam has worked well for me for this purpose. I have never heard about or seen any articles about using nootropics to assist in quitting drugs, but I decided to give it a go after not having good results with wellbutrin (stopped taking after several weeks, a month or so prior to starting piracetam).I feel like the piracetam helped me avoid, or at least not notice, the withdrawal symptoms I typically receive when not smoking for a few days (e.g., adhd, anxiety, insomnia, lethargy). This is not even mentioning the other benefits I have received from this nootropic. I also did not gain any weight, but I am skinny, have a fast metabolism, and was not a "heavy" smoker, so this was most likely not related.

Dosage & Usage: 2 - 4 grams daily

N-Acetyl Cysteine

A small pilot study of 12 heavy smokers conducted in the Netherlands in 2011 was quite optimistic about NAC as a quitting hack:

Relapse is the rule rather than the exception in smokers aiming to quit smoking. Recently, evidence has emerged that glutamate transmission plays an important role in relapse. N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a cysteine prodrug, restores glutamate homeostasis and appears to be a potential new treatment for substance dependence.It is concluded that the results of this pilot study are encouraging and suggest that NAC might be a promising new treatment option for relapse prevention in nicotine dependence.

If you peruse the anecdotal accounts of NAC users you’ll frequently hear it described as a willpower aid for abstaining from various vices, ranging from cigarettes and marijuana to cocaine and overeating.

An Australian user on earthclinic.com articulated how NAC effectively detoxifies your lungs which makes it a great idea for former smokers and those trying to quit:

If you smoke or used to smoke and want to clean out your lungs try NAC, this is an indispensable product.Aside from increasing your body's production of glutathione, essential for liver protection, NAC is particularly effective in clearing your lungs of d…

The enigmatic smart drug, Piracetam, remains the subject of ongoing scientific research, with dozens of scientific papers and human clinical studies completed every year. This is especially impressive because it's not an expensive patented drug.

There's not the perverse financial incentive of a pharmaceutical company sponsoring science and trying to get researchers to skew their data. The perpetual research on Piracetam speaks to its potential as a Nootropic.

The Science

It would be an understatement to say that it's been thoroughly studied; in total over a thousand pieces of published research on Piracetam can be found on Pubmed, with over 200 human clinical trials.This article will summarize the science that's been done on Piracetam in the past 12 months along with some salient insights and knowledge coming out of the Biohacker community online.

Why 2017?

More often than not science does not always age well. In anything related to neuroscience, which is a pretty innovative domain, you should have some preference for recentness (which is a word!).Interestingly, in 2017 62 scientists and physicians along with some United States senators called upon the National Library of Medicine & National Institutes of Health to change their rules and make public the funding sources of studies, before 2017 researchers could more or less obfuscate the funding sources of their science. This makes science more honest.Surprisingly, American politicians every once in a while take a break from their sex scandals, virtue signaling, golfing, cashing lobbyist's checks, and suit shopping to do something good for science! America f**k yeah!

To summarize some of the more interesting published scientific findings about Piracetam in the past year...

A delicious five-flavored Adaptogen that has been used for thousands of years to Biohack Yin and Yang.

Schisandra Chinensis is a notable herbal cofactor that enables the body to process other supplements and drugs.

This article is mostly going to focus on finding parallels between Traditional Chinese Medicine and what more recent research is saying about Schisandra and how this squares up with the self-experimentation reports coming out of the Biohacking community online.

Scientific Research

When it comes to Schisandra Chinensis research, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is an Armenian placebo-controlled, double-blind study of the stress responses of 71 athletes. From its abstract:

These results correlate with an increased physical performance in athletes taking adaptogens versus athletes taking placebo. In contrast after treatment with the adaptogen heavy physical exercise does not increase salivary [nitric oxide] and cortisol in athletes, whereas athletes treated with placebo heavy physical exercise increased salivary [nitric oxide].

Athletic Performance Enhancer

Schisandra is a hardcore athletic Biohack as it increases circulating Nitric Oxide in the blood. Nitric Oxide has been called the “master signaling molecule” that optimizes cardiovascular function. But before, you mega-dose Nitric Oxide supplements before hitting the gym, listen to my deep-dive interview with Mark Sloan, Nitric Oxide has some dark sides you should know about.

Flowstate Hack

It's popular with joggers and anecdotally potentiates runner's high, the flow state induced by extended endurance exercise. Author Steven Kotler talks about the hippie speedball - which is a cocktail of marijuana, espresso, and jogging - for getting into a sublime flow state. I've video blogged about getting into really profound flow states after combining marijuana with Heart Rate Variability training.So when I get back to Colorado, I will self-experiment with an adaptogenic hippie speedball by adding Schisandra. I bet it will be pretty rad!

The Vine

Referred to as Chinese Magnolia Vine, it grows around trees and is native to Central China and Eastern Russia.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

On the Traditional Chinese Medicine herbal spectrum, it's a 'Qi-Invigorating' agent in the Yang family of herbs because of its potent anti-fatigue effects. Schisandra berries themselves (Wu Wei Zi as it's referred to in China) have five distinct tastes; salty, sweet, sour, pungent, and bitter.

There's some debate online as to whether the Schisandra berry contains more Nootropic qualities than extracts of its bioactive agents, whether the whole is greater than its parts.It's a Tonic, which I was at first a little confused by, a tonic in Chinese Medicine is nothing like the tonic water you order at a cafe or mix with gin in your cocktail, it's a rather wide category of herbs that have been used historically to energize different dimensions of the human experience.In Chinese medicine, there are two categories of Qi tonics; Yin and Yang which correspond to...

* Yin - Parasympathetic nervous system

* Yang - Sympathetic nervous system

Schisandra is a full spectrum tonic herb that...

Enters all 12 meridians

* Lung (肺)

* Heart (心)

* Pericardium (心包)

* Triple Burner (三焦)

* Small Intestine (小肠)

* Large Intestine (大腸)

* Spleen (脾)

* Kidney (腎)

* Liver (肝)

* Gall Bladder (膽)

* Urinary bladder (膀胱)

* Stomach (胃)

Nurtures all five elements

* Heart

* Digestion

* Lungs

* Kidneys

* Liver

And tonifies all three treasures in Traditional Chinese Medicine

* Qi (Body)

* Jing (Mind)

* Shen (Spirit)

100 Days of Schisandra

Schisandra has a cumulative effect and some authors (who were perhaps reincarnated as Internet Marketers) of some of the seminal texts of Traditional Chinese Medicine recommended taking Schisandra for 100 days straight.

This seems to be an antidote to anhedonia; it turns up the volume on reality, it turns up the brightness on existence, and it puts life in high definition. To quote one herbal enthusiast:

i've been doing these tonics pretty heavily for the past few years and i have seen pretty dramatic results... i feel as tho i am getting my jing back. like in taoism they speak of returning to being like a child... i feel like this is happening with my health and vitality. the herbs really work, but the more you work on yourself, the more they work with you.

Energizing Nootropic

As an adaptogen, it modulates the hormones up and down, so sometimes it will make you more energetic, and sometimes it will make you more relaxed and tranquil. It makes your nervous system more permeable in its responses. A herbal enthusiast, Thorsten2, on Longecity reports:

Schizandra is best taken chronically and will enhance sleep, libido (to some extent), well being/mood and cognition (to some extent). All in all it just feels brain healthy and if you can handle Rhodiola with it, awesome.

And goes on to say...

Shizandra is supposed to enhance sleep and it did for me even after chronic use. I never noticed anything fatiguing about it or particularly energy enhancing...

On Pubmed

We find over 200 articles of human research, since the turn of the millennium for Schisandra Chinensis, which includes a total of 11 clinical studies. One of the criticisms of adaptogens as a category is that they lack a significant quantity of human clinical studies, compared with, say, the Racetams or B-Vitamins. The explanation posited for this is that since the adaptogens come from the natural world and have been used for thousands of years, it's more difficult to patent their pharmacological components. So there's a whole lot less profit motive for researching them.

Keep in mind that a decent double-blind, placebo-controlled human study, costs about as much as a new Ferrari. In between the salaries of the scientists, paying the volunteers, the lab time, the equipment, and what the scientific journals charge for publication - clinical trials run into the six or even seven-figure range. There's a lot of potential to cut the fat - hack away at the unessential - I'm sure, but it costs about the same as a Ferrari. Unfortunately, there's a whole lot less motivation to spend that money when you're dealing with natural medicine. Anyone can plant some seeds in their backyard and grow their own.

Cognitive Enhancer?

There appears to be some debate as to whether it actually improves cognition or whether as an adaptogen it just attenuates negative stress hormone-related effects that retard cognition. The one double-blind, placebo-controlled study that indicated a positive effect on human cognition was done using the Adapt-232 formula of which Schisandra Chinensis is just one-third.

The Soviet Formula

Schisandra is one-third of Adapt-232, which I call The Soviet Formula as it was developed and refined behind the Iron Curtain as a performance enhancement solution by the Soviet Union for its military, athletes, and space program.

Dr. Victor M. Baranov of the Ministry of Health in Moscow wrote in regards to the goals of herbal adaptogens in the space program...

The search for ways to maintain high mental and professional working capacity of cosmonauts at all stages of a long-term flight is the most important task of space psychology.

Dr. Valeri Polyakov was the scientist, cosmonaut, Russian hero, and all-around consummate badass in life, who spent 437 days on the Mir space station to prove that man could survive a trip to Mars. In the tradition of scientists reaching the olive branch of peace out to former rivals in the form of shared research, he shared some of his findings at a seminar in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1996. From the abstract of his paper, The Use of a New Phytoadaptogen under Conditions of Space Flight:

It [Adapt-232] also optimized their ability to endure the changes in…

'Tis the season to feel a little under the weather.

Every year as the seasons pass and the leaves change colors most people anticipate getting sick but getting through it anyway...

* They will be sniffling and dabbing their runny nose frequently.

* Their stomachs will grumble with nausea.

* Their sinuses will get blocked up with mucus.

* They'll toss and turn in bed for hours before finally sleeping badly for a few hours.

* They'll be tormented by migraines.

* They'll cancel their weekend social plans so that they can sleep extra.

* If they get sick they'll double or triple dose on the DayQuil, NyQuil, or Paracetamol.

* They'll maybe even spend some long hours kneeling before the porcelain throne.

I'll suggest you can avoid this suffering this winter if you spend a bit of attention (and money) fortifying your immune system.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

In this article, I'm going to give you some effective Biohacks for staying healthy this winter. If you hate getting sick during the winter and losing productive days, you're going to want to implement these Biohacks.

Immune Biohacks

The most effective, most economic supplements are toward the top of this list. I really, really hate getting sick and losing days feeling miserable so I use all of them to stay healthy. If you have a limited budget and time get the ones towards the top of this list.

Siberian Ginseng (Eleuthero)

Siberian ginseng (which I think is a cooler name than Eleutherococcus senticosus) is probably my favorite immune biohack because of its effectiveness, safety, and low cost along with pleasant taste and aesthetics. The Soviets in Russia utterly failed to build a socialist utopia but luckily for you, they managed to do some good herbal science and identify this immunity-promoting supplement which was badly needed in a country where the weather sometimes gets as cold as on the surface of the moon. It worked so well that they gave it to everyone from their Olympic athletes and soldiers fighting in Afghanistan to cosmonauts and supersonic aviators.

But its research is not limited to the Russosphere, you can find over 20 human clinical trials done all around the world on Pubmed.

Usage and Dosage: I take this almost daily, personally I enjoy taking it as a nice tea. I just dump a few hundred milligrams of Eleuthero powder into steeped hot water.You can vary the dosage, if you feel like you're going to get sick take up 900 milligrams daily but the immune maintenance dosage is going to be 250 - 500 milligrams.

Ashwagandha

Staying healthy or getting sick during the wintertime has a lot to do with your levels of stress and testosterone. Your testosterone will naturally lower during the cold months when you are spending more time inside and getting less natural sunlight. As your testosterone lowers you're much more likely to get sick.Chronic stress is testosterone's biological nemesis. Probably the most effective way of optimizing your testosterone is to be vigilant about your stress management; Ashwagandha is an Adaptogen that powerfully modulates your autonomic nervous system to better manage stress.

It's frequently praised by Biohackers for the productive state of relaxed arousal and modicum of tranquility it delivers.

Usage and Dosage: The research indicates that it is a medium-term biohack for stress and testosterone - taking 8 weeks - 3 months for the benefits of supplementation to really take effect. So you want to make a little more of a long-term commitment to it. Although, a lot of Biohackers do report an instantaneous effect on their mindset and subjective stress level. The recommended daily dose is 300 - 1500 milligrams daily.

Zinc

An essential nutrient for healthy immune function. A publicly published 2008 American paper exhaustively documents its essential role

The zinc-deficient patients had severe immune dysfunctions, inasmuch as they died of intercurrent infections by the time they were 25 years of age. In our studies in an experimental human model of zinc deficiency, we documented decreased serum testosterone level, oligospermia, severe immune dysfunctions mainly affecting T helper cells...Zinc affects multiple aspects of the immune system... Zinc is crucial for normal development and function of cells mediating innate immunity, neutrophils, and NK cells.

Usage and Dosage: Take about 25 milligrams of Zinc with a meal every day. If you feel a cold coming on Zinc lozenges are a great idea and you may want to up the dosage to 45 milligrams.

Vitamin C

Another VERY affordable vitamin that belongs in your Biohacker cabinet. From the research of Linus Pauling

...in comparison with a placebo, [vitamin C is effective] in decreasing the incidence and integrated morbidity of the common cold for subjects exposed to cold viruses in the ordinary way and without colds when the test period began.

It's an especially good idea to supplement if you do high-intensity or endurance exercise frequently.

Usage and Dosage: The recommended daily dose is 100 - 200 milligrams but it's fine to mega-dose to avoid illness, as much as 2000 milligrams.

Vitamin D

During the winter months, it's especially important to supplement Vitamin D, specifically D3. Over a hundred clinical trials have been done in the past 10 years researching the connection between this crucial vitamin and the immune system.

However, for it to effectively biohack your immune system and keep you healthy it requires an essential cofactor; sunlight.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she explained that when UVB light hits your skin, it converts vitamin D into its activated, sulfated form. Thus it’s not enough to just pop a vitamin D3 supplement. You have to activate the vitamin, and that requires exposure to real sunlight (or a high-quality UVB lamp). (p. 159)

So if you can bundle up and get 10-15 minutes of sunlight during those short winter days, it will make that Vitamin D3 all the more effective. If you can't you may want to consider a tanning salon membership or investing in an ultraviolet-B light.

Usage and Dosage: The recommended daily is 5,000 IU, if you're Vitamin D deficient (which you likely are if you spend the majority of your time indoors and are maybe a little tired and depressed during the wintertime) you'll want to take as much as 8,000 IU. To make it even more potent also supplement it with Vitamin K2 and Vitamin A.

Rhodiola

This is probably my favorite Adaptogenic herb because of the noticeable dual effects it has of alleviating stress and energizing you.Again, anything that improves your stress management has a downstream effect on improving your immune system.Rhodiola will put some pep in your step about 15-30 minutes after you consume it. It's a wakefulness agent, some researchers even regard it as an herbal alternative to Modafinil, I'm not sure if I go that far but for me, it is an alternative to coffee.

From a book that exhaustively details the fascinating medicinal history and numerous usage case studies of Rhodiola

Long before research established that Rhodiola rosea enhances immune defense mechanisms within cells, people in the mountain villages of eastern Russia and Siberia— as well as in central Asia and Scandinavia— relied on the herb to help fight infections. During the harsh Siberian winters, villagers brewed Rhodiola rosea tea to treat colds and flu, while Mongolian doctors prescribed it for tuberculosis and cancer. In Norway, doctors routinely used the herb as a treatment for scurvy, lung disease, and intestinal worms.As animal studies show, Rhodiola rosea can stimulate the natural killer cells that protect against infections. (3520-3526)

So its strength as an immune supplement is fighting infections.

In 1998, Andrey Yaremenko— then an enterprising graduate student at the I. P. Pavlov St. Petersburg State Medical University in Russia— presented “The Complex Treatment of Severe Infectious Diseases,” his Ph.D. dissertation in medicine. Through his research, he had determined that Rho…