Limitless Mindset

The definitive guide to adaptogenic herbs, formerly known as “tonics,” that counter the effects of age and stress on the body.

I purchased this on Kindle after finishing The Rhodiola Revolution. After reading the previous book, perusing at least a couple hundred studies on Pubmed along with digesting the questionable grammar of numerous self-reporters posting in various forums there were just a few things this book enlightened me about...

The Adaptogens are hepatoprotective

Fortunately, many adaptogens are hepatoprotective and help protect against liver damage and dysfunction. (p. 107)

Schisandra is the most beneficial adaptogen for the liver. It is hepatoprotective and helps regenerate liver cells and increases the presence of hepatic glutathione, an essential liver nutrient. In animal studies, it has been shown to significantly protect against chemical- and drug-induced liver damage and promote the healing of existing damage. (p. 108)

This is particularly important to Biohackers who are throwing a bunch of strange molecules at our neurobiology that are likely stressing our livers.

There are a couple of things that add an air of mystery to the Adaptogens, like the nature of the autonomic nervous system...

It consists of two physiologically and anatomically distinct, mutually antagonistic components: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The two subdivisions function in a dynamic balance aiming at homeostasis. (pp. 68-69)

Irreducible mechanism of action

The belief that each herb has a single active constituent is usually false. (p. 127)

There was an interesting case study where they thought they had isolated the individual Gensenoside that was the active ingredient and when they used it alone it had zero effect.

When this substance was isolated and extracted, it was found to have no activity. Interestingly, when researchers tried giving the herb minus this specific chemical to animals, it no longer worked either. The active constituent of hawthorn turned out to be the herb itself. (p. 30)

The mechanisms of the Adaptogens don't quite fit squarely into our logical cause-and-effect scientific models.

"Bad science"

Part of the book makes the (debatable) point that published scientific research is an unreliable source of information. To quote John Ioannidis, Ph.D...

“The great majority of published research is so deeply flawed that it should be considered essentially worthless.” (p. 54)

Ioannidis singled out the following types of studies as being particularly likely to lead to a worthless result: Studies with a small sample size; Studies that consider a small number of possible effects; Studies whose outcomes are poorly or subjectively defined; Studies in which financial conflict of interest is a factor; Studies in which the researchers are prejudiced by being unduly wedded to a particular outcome; and Studies of a topic that is currently “hot.” (p. 55)

For example:

Dr. Ronald Siegel’s theoretical “ginseng abuse syndrome” continues to be mentioned even after being discredited more than twenty years ago. In Siegel’s study, all subjects who had the “syndrome” consumed ginseng together with caffeinated beverages and developed symptoms of elevated blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia. What he described had little to do with ginseng and everything to do with excessive caffeine consumption—it was actually “caffeine abuse” not “ginseng abuse.” (p. 57)

A final takeaway from the book

Medicinal traditions and the consensus of anecdotal reports about a drug or herb should be weighed equally with what the studies on Pubmed are saying. Which is kind of interesting, see my article with a methodology for spotting bad science.

The book itself is quite a dry read, it put me to sleep on more than a few nights. I don't really recommend reading it unless you are tremendously curious about Adaptogens.

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NMN is a game-changing anti-aging Nootropic, in that it's a powerful Mitochondrial fuel and epigenetic hack that reverses many markers of aging and anecdotally is described as a Nootropic by the majority of its users.

But, it's not cheap, so this protocol will maximize the longevity bang for your biohacking buck and outline some self-quantification steps.

This article will also outline some dosage and usage guidelines. Human clinical trials of NMN are not numerous so we'll derive our recommendations from the not-insignificant body of rigorous anecdotal reports from those who have been experimenting with NMN along with the recommendations that come from expert anti-aging researchers like David Sinclair.

Scientists and researchers often don't use the drugs and medicines that they are researching and developing, so it speaks to the credibility and safety of NMN that some of the most knowledgeable anti-aging scientists take it daily. There's no strict usage protocol, NMN affects different people differently, so you'll need to experiment with different dosages, track them, and journal the effects to figure out what's optimal for you.

Selecting an NMN Source

Importantly, as with any supplement you want to make sure it's the real thing before pressing the buy button. You want to purchase from a source that provides a certificate of analysis that verifies the product as being above 97% pure and free of toxins.

Several NMN vendors adulterate their powdered products with sweeteners to make them more palatable. I would avoid these as NMN doesn't taste that bad on its own and you don't really know how it might affect the metabolism and absorption.

Dosage Guide

Biohackers take a pretty wide dosage between 250 milligrams and 3.4 grams and as high as 7.2 grams. If you're taking NMN to reverse aging or address a chronic condition like Alzheimer's, diabetes, or obesity you want to experiment with a higher dosage, several grams daily. If you're using NMN as a nootropic or just to support general health you'll want to start with the kind of dosage that David Sinclair takes 500 - 1000 milligrams.

Some of the biohacker reports indicate that if you're using it to reverse aging, you'll want to start with higher dosages of 2 - 3 grams for several months until aging symptoms diminish and markers improve and then tapering the dosage down. Use a gram for several months, while being mindful of the aging symptoms, and then lower the dosage again. As the decades pass, mitochondrial dysfunction tends to worsen, which NMN addresses. Thus, long-term usage of NMN will remedy a lot of the maladies of aging and the health benefits can be maintained with a lower dose than what might have been used initially.

A number of biohackers report that it enhances their general energy, motivation, and workout performance at a 500-milligram daily dosage, this is probably the optimal dose for biohackers and was recommended in the Japanese study. Taking grams daily you'll go through the stuff quickly.

Can you overdose on NMN? Unlikely, its toxicity was determined in an animal study to be virtually non-existent, NMN safe and well-tolerated and does not cause any obvious deleterious or toxic effects at 300 milligrams per kilogram, that's the equivalent of 19 grams for a 65-kilogram (about 140-pound) adult which is a whole lot more than what you'll be taking with this protocol. A 2019 Japanese human clinical trial concluded, NMN is safe and effectively metabolized in healthy men without causing any significant deleterious effects.

Usage Guide

Biohackers find that dosing two or three times daily produces a better effect than a single daily dose.

With NMN you'll want to implement a long-term cycling strategy as opposed to short-term cycling. With Nootropics that upregulate certain neurotransmitters like caffeine or Modafinil, you want to take frequent breaks to avoid building up a tolerance or exhausting a neurobiological pathway. NMN works differently, it just feeds your mitochondria what it needs. You'll want to use it daily, you don't need to take breaks and after several months you'll want to take a month or two off and be mindful of how it affects your health.

The majority of biohackers report that the effects of NMN become noticeable after a couple of days or a week of dosing. So don't expect fireworks the first day but you probably won't have to wait weeks or months before you notice something. 

Most biohackers take NMN sublingually, leaving the capsule or powder beneath their tongue so it dissolves and absorbs more directly. It's water-soluble so you don't need to take it with food or a fat source although, David Sinclair sometimes mixes his NMN with yogurt which is probably a tastier way to dose. Still, the NMN itself doesn't taste bad.

There are a couple of NMN cofactors, that you might want to add to take the anti-aging effects to the next level. Notably the antioxidants Resveratrol and Pterostilbene (the better option really) along with Alpha Lipoic Acid. The anti-aging infoceutical that I take daily includes NMN and Pterostilbene.

It can be stimulating so like many other Nootropics it would be a good idea to take it earlier in the day well before bedtime.

Self-Quantification

If you're using NMN as a Nootropic, you'll want to do some cognitive self-quantification. The best way to do this is by using a brain-training task like Dual N-Back, which is a hardcore working memory exercise.

NMN is an inconsistent sleep hack, some biohackers report that they needed less sleep on NMN while others reported that it sometimes hurts sleep quality. You'll want to quantify your sleep with something like the Sleep Cycle app and be mindful of how it might be affecting your slumber. If it seems to hurt your sleep, cut down on the dosage.

If you want to take the self-quantification to the next level you'll want to get some biomarker blood testing done before using NMN and at 3 or 6-month increments. Medical professionals advised a group of NMN self-experimenters on Longecity to quantify...

C-Reactive ProteinCardiac riskTNF-αInterleukin-6 Plasma (IL-6)Glucose, SerumCreatine, SerumBlood urea nitrogen (BUN)BUN/Creatine ratioeGFRAST (SGOT)ALT (SPGT)HgB A1C (Diabetes)Cholesterol (Total)TriglyceridesHDL CholesterolLDL CholesterolTestosteroneTumor Necrosis Factor AlphaPSA

That's a lot of biomarkers to test, if you can't do all of them, the bolded ones are more important.

Finally, the majority of NMN hackers report Increased physical energy (enhancing workout performance). So hit the gym or treadmill before using NMN, and log your workout performance to establish a baseline. After you go on NMN, take note of any uptick in performance.

NMN is a Placebo Hack

There's a fascinating book, You Are the Placebo, which documents a bunch of fantastic cases of the placebo effect healing (deadly!) serious health issues. The placebo effect is so powerful that it's the one thing that every good clinical trial controls for. As opposed to crediting this to some pseudo-spiritual, nonscientific phenomena the book explains that the placebo effect is likely a manifestation of epigenetic function. If we believe something will cure us, that belief via neuropeptides will turn on or off the crucial genes that we need working to heal us. One of the major causes of aging is that our genes get stuck turned on or off, and NMN is recognized by the top anti-aging researchers in the world as an epigenetic hack that empowers our sirtuins to switch on or off genes. Thus, it stands to reason that the placebo effect would be all the more potent if you've been using NMN. 

If you're a rational, materialist I don't blame you for being skeptical of the healing power of belief, as it's almost always described in silly, metaphysical terms. But, considering the emerging science of epigenetics, I urge you to take NMN and believe in it!

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I had promised something new and innovative in the Biohacking/personal growth space this year that I'd be offering - not another supplement, app, gadget, or AI thing - but a strikingly beautiful and enduring thing. It's a book, but a book unlike any you've ever read, a book specifically for you.

And when I say for you, I mean you in a much grander sense.

I mean your legacy; which is the exponential network effect reverberating into the future of the dedication, excellence, loyalty, wisdom, knowledge, presence, and love you bring to your work, family, relationships, and community. And of course, I also mean the beautiful young life you create, raise, and sacrifice for. The genetic essence of you that will outlast your corporeal form by many thousands of years. The everlasting you that echoes for eternity.I'll describe shortly what kind of book this will be and the unique program from which it will be derived, but first...

On beauty and truth

Beauty is not vain or shallow, beauty has the most pragmatic philosophical value because time destroys almost all beauty (with the exception of a book like this) that is not maintained. Beauty is the most striking reminder that we shouldn’t procrastinate, we have limited time to pursue what we want in life. We should take risks and go after what we want because we’ll be dead one day. When my wife's beauty brings heavenly fire to every cell of my body, that lust is my genes whispering: Memento Mori - "You're going to die one day. Take a chance on love and create new life in your image." You've certainly succumbed to that same whisper if legacy matters to you as it matters to me.Beauty and truth are a particularly potent combination because, like beauty, the most profound and empowering truths are evident a prima facie - they change minds and hearts at first glance.

A snapshot of my life from one of the most beautiful places I ever visited - Valencia, Spain. Great beauty is captivating, unmistakable, undebatable, clarifying, and inspiring - it's a silver lining to life that makes hardships endurable like truth. But beauty is often the result of hard work; the generations of labor that produced the awe-inspiring architecture there in Valencia or the countless grueling gym sessions it takes to build and maintain a heroic physique. Similarly, uncovering the truth, embracing it, and living by it can be one of the hardest things you'll do in this life.

For these reasons, the book I'll write for you will be the most beautiful book you'll ever hold - created by a master artisan to last 200 years.

What kind of book will this be?

A nonfiction work of literature unbound by traditional genres, unlike anything found on literal or digital bookstore shelves. It will be a combination of...

* A biography or memoir

* A holistic health guide

* A philosophy book

* A powerfully pragmatic lifestyle manual

* A family history chronicle

How will the truth within the book equal its exterior beauty?

In the past 12 years, I've written two nonfiction books and over a thousand articles on Biohacking, anti-aging science, lifehacking, and full-spectrum antifragility philosophy, but I'll need your help as the book will capture and enshrine your lens on truth. The 6-month Anakainōsis program, which for you will be a transformation that authors a legacy that echoes in eternity begins with four deep-dive discovery conversations (60-90 minutes each)...

* Your Biohacking and Nootropics regimen - what biohacks you've tried, what's working, and what isn't.

* Current state of your life - goals, relationships, fears, vices, addictions - what challenges you are struggling with.

* Your life experiences along with your values, principles, beliefs, and faith - what drives you on a deep level?

* What is your exponential 10X blue ocean - what might you do better than anyone else on Earth? Where are you limiting yourself?

These conversations are the foundation of the transformative program and from which I will derive the grand narratives underlying your unique and original ​Anakainōsis book​.

Then I get to work writing. Impactful nonfiction writing is built on three critical elements, without them a nonfiction book will suck and people will not finish it or get much out of it; anecdote, theory, and data.

* A compelling story that captures attention.

* A cogent theory; causal, scientific, or philosophical.

* And data to back that theory up; scientific studies, well-documented facts, or history - usually.

The four deep-dive conversations will give me the first element, stories, and some of the second, your worldview and life philosophy. From those conversations, I'll get the grand narrative themes underlying the book. For data; we'll derive much from the analysis of your whole genome sequencing (this is an important part of the program) and then I dive into Pubmed (the Google of scientific literature) and ClinVar - the database on the relationships between human variations and phenotypes.

You're probably wondering how much the book and Anakainōsis program will cost...

That and many other questions you may have about this one-of-a-kind program are answered in the Anakainōsis announcement video...

And here on the FAQ page on Anakainosis.co

I had a classic ADHD childhood

I had boundless energy that I channeled into serial passion projects; reading everything I could get my hands on about dinosaurs, aviation, World War 2 history, and even studying Islam for a while. I designed spaceships, created amateur action movies, and wrote science fiction stories as a creative outlet. I practiced Tae Kwon Do, Karate, swordsmanship, and breakdancing.

Perpetually a starter, rarely a finisher.

The only thing consistent was my bad grades. I was moved from special ed program to special ed program. I lacked social calibration though I constantly tried to ingratiate myself with the most elite social group I could find. I was constantly trying to upgrade my social circle, but I didn't have what it took to be one of the cool kids, and frequently found myself an outsider and a loner.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 8 and given Ritalin.

It helped a lot. Without it, a younger version of myself found it nearly impossible to focus for more than five minutes on the lessons and educational material my grade school teachers presented.In an age when ADHD (back then they called it ADD) was misdiagnosed and the pharmaceutical solutions were overprescribed, I think I was a legitimate case. In high school, I switched to Adderall, which seemed to imbue a longer-lasting focus, along with a more relaxed and tranquil mindset. I wasn't in such a hurry to impress people, which helped me make more genuine friendshipsMedication is probably one of the main factors that allowed me to attain a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and graduate high school.

As a young adult

I was very ambitious and a voracious student of success, yet I had a nearly five-year streak of non-stop career failures. I had been fired more times than I can count on two hands; I just couldn't quite cut it as a waiter, car salesman, mortgage broker, banker, or in Yellow Pages sales. I had a lot of trouble paying my bills on time; I was constantly late on rent and I even managed to get in some real legal trouble over some unpaid speeding tickets.

While my social life was a whole lot more lively (thanks partially to my side hustle as a nightclub promoter), my dating life was inconsistent and I could not hold onto a girlfriend. I would occasionally get my hands on a bottle of Adderall, which seemed to make quite a difference in my performance at work, but crushing personal and career disappointments were always just around the corner.

I was constantly reading inspirational books and trying to apply what they said about business ethics and providing value but it never paid off. I was perpetually a minute late and a dollar short; late to work, late to meetings, late on rent, and not hitting sales quotas. While I was building a large social circle and social media "friend count" through my nightclub promotion, the relationships were shallow. Also, being a nightclub promoter, I was hungover and underslept half the time which took a toll on my real career in corporate America. I was having fun and learning a lot but my prospects for the future were pretty bleak. My mediocre career and personal life were a case study of lack of focus, follow-through, and my equivocations of standards in every domain of life.

Fast forward to my 30s

Now I'm really a different person; I'm one of the most disciplined and consistent people I know. I'm a long-term strategist, not a short-term opportunist. I'm more focused and motivated than I've ever been. I have developed a work ethic that's pretty rare in my generation. My fleeting obsession with passion projects has been replaced with a long-term commitment to processes. I've cured my adult ADHD.

There are four pillars that I have to thank for this transformation...

Nootropics

Smart drugs have replaced Adderall and Ritalin as my pharmacological enablers of normality. The popular ADHD drugs are demonized quite a bit now, and I realize that their amphetamine-driven mechanisms are bad for a lot of people but the truth is that I never experienced anything negative from them, all they ever did was help me. My subjective experience of Nootropics closely matches that of the popular ADHD drugs and the beneficial effects are the same...

* Motivation

* Focus

* Imperviousness to distraction

* A kick of energy

* And a positive mood

I've tried over 80 different types of Nootropics over 6 years now (update: over 200 in 12 years) and have figured out that what works best is to cycle Nootropics, rarely taking the same thing more than two or three times a week to avoid building up a tolerance to a particular cognitive enhancer or burning out a neurobiological mechanism.

The Racetams are a pretty good place to start, this is the most proven category of smart drugs. There's a particular self-experimentation process, called the Piracetam Protocol, that I recommend highly for optimizing the dosages for your own neurobiology of five different synergistic smart drugs.

The Adaptogens, are a category of Nutraceuticals that come from the natural world, which Biohack our hormones and nervous systems to help us respond more robustly to the demands of life.

I've used most of the popular Nootropic stack products - and a few are quite good. Although you'll need to take them in higher quantities, which will end up probably being a $40-$80 a month habit.

I think that Nootropics are superior as a promoter of more holistic thought, you'll hear a lot of people say things like, I did some Adderall, got super focused, and then I cleaned my house for several hours, and got it immaculate!To me that is silly, I would never waste the enhanced cognitive horsepower on something like cleaning the house! Nootropics make me focused on what I'm doing at the moment, impervious to distraction but at the same time allow me to focus my mental energies on solving important problems.

ADHD medication is pretty inexpensive, especially if your insurance helps pay for it, if you want to get your Nootropic habit down to the same cost, you'll probably need to order powdered Nootropics in a little larger quantities. It's doubtful that your insurance is going to cover Nootropics, so the only disadvantage of switching to Nootropics is economic.

Brain Training

I know what you are probably thinking; my brain already gets enough training from my challenging job, intensive studies, or demanding family life!

Do you get the same exercise from walking to work as you do from a CrossFit class? Is a guy who works for a moving company lifting furniture every day going to be able to compete in a bodybuilding competition with a guy who spends hours a week doing sophisticated exercises with kettlebells under the watchful tutelage of a personal trainer? Doubtful! We've all known waiters who were totally out of shape despite spending all day on their feet running from the front of the house to the back of the house carrying armfuls of plates. The brain is like any other part of the body in that it will adapt and grow if you apply acute, exerting demands upon it and that's exactly what brain training does.

I've self-experimented with multiple brain training games, software, and apps (including Lumosity) and there's one that I think is worthwhile, it measurably (and noticeably) improves working memory capacity after about 2-3 weeks of training. It's called Dual N-Back, as it challenges visuospatial and auditory memory simultaneously. It essentially upgrades the RAM of your conscious mind by forcing you to be ultra-focused on keeping track of visuospatial and auditory matches, it gets progressively more difficult as you improve and it is one of the most mentally challenging things I've habituated.

My subjective experience of Dual N-Back has been that it improves my ability to emotionally compartmentalize and stay focused. Before I made a habit of daily Dual N-Back, I didn't realize how much my internal dialog of thoughts affected my quality of focus. I'm not saying that I'm Mr. Positivity all …

This book is a real black pill (a grim truth) for those who are optimistic about medical science delivering cures to disease.

Too often we imagine that scientists and the institutions of medical science are like the benevolent clergy of the church and idealized organized religion - that they are on an uncorrupted, principled mission with the purest of intentions to uplift humanity, empowering us all with the truth we need to live better. Unfortunately, this is pretty far from reality, often scientists and especially the institutions of science, are more like politicians and the institutions of politics. They are motivated a lot more by selfish personal enrichment and self-aggrandizement than an unflappable devotion to the truth. When they learn that they are wrong, they double down on their assumptions, retreat into dogmatic positions, and staunchly ignore evidence of their errors instead of correcting the record - this lack of humility has an astronomical civilizational cost to all of us.

But don't despair! In this book review, I share some guidelines for biohacking in this era of bad science.

Rigor Mortis

The book's title is a clever double entendre, the death of the rigor in science causes actual death.

I live in the bustling center of a European capital city. It’s wintertime and there’s constantly ice and snow on the sidewalk, it’s quite an inconvenience. Every time I shuffle along the slippery sidewalks I have the same thought…

Why the hell doesn’t the government give the refugees (who are cared for at the taxpayers’ expense) shovels and have them clear the sidewalks?

* The refugees are able-bodied guys just sitting around bored in their centers.

* It would engender goodwill towards the refugees because everybody would see them being helpful.

* The refugees could probably use the exercise.

* It would make life a whole lot easier for the people slipping and sliding on the pavement.

It’s such a bloody obvious solution to a couple of different problems, yet the government doesn’t do it. I’m not saying that the government should enslave the refugees to do manual labor, but I bet if they just asked them nicely a lot of them would be happy to pick up a snow shovel and make life a little less slippery for the European taxpayers providing for them.

It would not require any great organization, planning, or management — just a couple dozen shovels and a bus to bring the guys downtown. This is a quintessential example of the government’s profound incompetence and wastefulness when it comes to managing resources.

Statism

If the government can’t even do something as obvious as having the refugees shovel the snow it really is a tremendous Indiana Jones stepping out into the abyss leap of faith to think that the government could effectively and honestly re-distribute resources to solve the tremendous challenge of technological unemployment.

This great undeserved faith that people put in the government is what we call statism. Karl Marx said that "religion was the opium of the foolish masses," but really Marxism is the opium of foolish intellectuals.

You never knew how important your elbow was to life until you messed it up, right?

Elbows often don’t get the respect and care that they deserve as a joint upon which so much that we do hinges.

The bad news is that elbow injury can be a vicious cycle of re-injury and deterioration lasting years or even decades. A slightly bothersome elbow micro-injury can be exasperated and develop into a costly full-blown injury. The mainstream advice and approach to elbow injury often make it worse, and the conventional wisdom of resting and immobilizing the elbow is counter-intuitive.

When you complain about your elbow issues to your doctor they will not hesitate to prescribe you drugs, send you to physical therapy, or book you for surgery but some low-hanging fruit solutions are well worth trying first. Whether your elbow is achy, strained, or sprained from pushing it a bit too hard in the gym, a bike crash, or a foolish attempt at breakdancing the following tips will give you pain relief and shortcut recovery from tennis elbow.

To Immobilize or Not to Immobilize

The typical response to elbow injury is to rest, immobilize the elbow, and take time off from playing tennis, training, or weight lifting. This often doesn’t help much. Your elbow and tendons need a modicum of action and stimulation to heal. Using an elbow strap or brace is a low-tech measure used since time immemorial to alleviate ailing elbows. You can wrap your troubled elbow to pad the painful spot and stay active.As a rule of thumb, if playing sports or continuing training is painful, take a break.

Acupuncture

Next, a wuwu measure (that’s not actually wuwu) which world-class athletes and powerlifters swear by. There’s reason to believe that an acupuncture session could help, at least with the pain, unlike the mainstream approach to elbow injury there’s no downside to acupuncture and it’s quite affordable compared to surgery.

Self-Massage

The Tennis Elbow guru and physical therapist, Allen Willette enthusiastically advocates self-administered manual therapy. Massage stimulates the tendons to heal, any massage is good, but there are two notable methods...

YouTube is your friend here, repeatedly watch the techniques demonstrated and spend a few minutes daily doing self-massage.

Let Inflammation Do Its Thing

The mainstream approach to elbow injury is attacking inflammation but this is often misguided. Tendons need inflammation to heal, they need extra blood flow, this is why cryotherapy, cold therapy, or icing your elbow may actually be counter-intuitive. For the same reason taking a bunch of anti-inflammatory supplements or herbs may not be best.

Avoid Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI)

Many of us now spend the majority of our days using computers and technology in very repetitive motions, this can result in classic carpal tunnel, nascent tendonitis, gamer’s wrist, or even selfie elbow. Try to change things up...

* Move your mouse over to the other side of the computer and use your non-dominant hand.

* If you spend a lot of time writing, try using dictation software to give your hands a break from making thousands of keystrokes a day.

* Maybe pick up a habit that doesn’t involve so much damn clicking and swiping.

Stay AWAY from Steroids

Probably the most problematic way to address elbow injury is the injection of exogenous steroids. Cortisone shots, especially are bad news that are well-demonstrated to cause weakened tendons in the long term.

Supplement the Building Blocks

Vitamin C, Vitamin D, clean fish oil and collagen supplements provide the molecular building blocks that your body needs to rebuild tissue and connective tissue for recovery.

BPC-157 - The Wolverine Drug for Rapid Healing

Disclaimer: BPC-157 is not actually a drug, it’s a synthetic peptide, derived from peptides secreted by the gut that’s a game-changer for healing. It works so quickly and consistently that bodybuilders have come to call it the Wolverine Drug referring to Wolverine’s capacity in the X-Men movies for rapid self-healing.

Try capsuled BPC-157

Around the internet, you’ll find BPC-157 sold as an injectable peptide. This involves using a needle and going through the tricky process of mixing the powdered peptides in bacteriostatic water very carefully to avoid compromising the very molecularly fragile peptides. When buying peptides online you also have to be wary about Chinese-sourced peptides, which are sometimes not the real thing. Several clinical studies including one published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research demonstrated that oral BPC-157 is likely equally effective as injection.

What athletes are saying about BPC-157...

Eric R

“I went to my ortho after 2 weeks of severe rotator cuff tendinitis on both shoulders as well as a touch of tennis elbow and wrist tendonitis... Within 24 hours of the first injections, I started to feel an appreciable reduction in pain, but I still had a way to go. For that first week, day after day my pain level went down and my strength and my range of motion improved to the point now 8 days later where I am at 100% with zero pain and I actually now have better range of motion than I’ve had in both shoulders in the past decade.”

Bekim a Green Belt

“I used BPC 157 [for tendonitis], had it in both elbows from Thai Boxing over the years. It worked very well... even cleared up an issue with my knee.”

John Juan

“I've used BPC-157 to heal persistent elbow tendonitis, and several minor muscle tears. 250mcg injected daily at the site of injury is very effective. BPC-157 produced much faster healing results than TB-500. Both are excellent antinflammatory peptides, and both work systemically in higher doses, but with localized injections, BPC-157 is very effective at low doses.”

Ben Greenfield

“I initially began to use BPC-157 for golfer's elbow (inner elbow pain also known as “climber's elbow” or “medial epicondylitis), and I personally, based on the majority of the research studies in humans, settled upon a self-administered subcutaneous BPC-157 injection of 250mcg in my left elbow on one day, then 250mcg in my right elbow the next day, for a total of two weeks. At this point, my elbow pain had completely disappeared, so I stopped.”

Russell Symes

"I'm a skeptical person when it comes to alternative meds and stuff. I train in boxing and had injured my knee. I didn’t want to quit training to let my knee heal so I tried BPC 157. Literally, in 3 days the pain was gone from the day I started taking it. This had been an ongoing injury and I had felt the pain for 3 weeks. BPC-157 healed it in 3 days."

Noah

“I’m running my third week of BPC for severe tennis elbow on both sides and it’s really worked great.”

Siveshen

“Hi... just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to BPC. It has completely healed my shoulder injury and is healing my golfer’s elbow and torn knee ligaments.”

Share this with someone who spends a lot of time on the computer….

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You may be thinking...

Oh, meditation... That's like thinking about not thinking, right? I already tried meditation, I suck at meditation! I just get irritated with myself for thinking when I shouldn't be thinking.

Well, you probably haven't had success with meditation yet because your mind needs to warm up, your mind needs some foreplay to meditate. The Blue Sky Protocol is a process that will lubricate your mind like it's in a candlelit, jacuzzi filled with KY jelly with a Barry White album playing in the background.The Blue Sky Protocol will give your mind the foreplay it needs.

You've probably heard of the myriad benefits of meditation elsewhere; antiaging, memory, neuroplasticity, stress management, and "being present" in social interactions. But what are the immediate, day-to-day benefits? If you are going to devote 10-20 minutes a day to a mindfulness practice you probably want to know what you can expect to get out of it in the short term...

Transitioning to a social mood

If you are like me, you have a job or work that fills your day with hardcore, logical-faculty demanding tasks. You probably work with computers. However, you want to have an active social life after work, to enjoy the life you are working so damn hard for! A lot of times you intend to go out and do some fun social thing after work, but by the time you get home at the end of the day, you are in such a non-social mood; going out and getting into a social mood just seems like so much work that you say, Fuck it; I'm just going to stay in tonight! Netflix.

Let's say you do find yourself in a social environment after hours of soul-destroying work, there is just a big hump to transitioning into a social mode, isn't there? The first couple of conversations you have are awkward, your jokes and witty remarks are a little off, and maybe you run out of things to say in a conversation. Most people have NO other way of getting into a social mood other than just spending a couple of hours drinking (but you don't have to be one of them).

The good news is that meditation is effective at priming your mind to get in a social mood.

This makes such a difference for me that I will frequently show up a little late for social engagements and dates just because I insist on doing 15-20 minutes of meditation before going out (I'll explain later on in this article how I time my meditation.)I will come home from work, exhausted, and not in the mood to talk to anyone, but I'll make myself do my meditation, and I will feel about five hundred percent better. Then, following the principle that emotion follows motion, I will leave the house. Start walking, breathe the fresh air, and I'll reach whatever social event or just get into a social interaction sporadically. So 20-25 minutes previously, I was like this zombie borg drone with zero personality, and now sober, I'm being witty, articulate, playful, and taking social risks.

It's remarkable how permeable meditation makes your mood. You have to try it to believe it.

Mid-afternoon exhaustion

A lot of times in the mid-afternoon, I will find myself in the trough of decision fatigue. It's like my mind is a web browser with way too many tabs open; I start thinking slower, jumping unproductively from task to task, and even making bad decisions. However, if I do 10 minutes of meditation around 1 PM, It brings me incredible clarity about what I should spend the rest of my day doing, I will get right back into that focused zone I was in at 10:30 AM.

Relaxing before bed

I'm passionate about my work and at the same time, my work is technical, logic-demanding stuff, which is a recipe for insomnia; tossing and turning in bed for hours before falling asleep. I'd say that for the first 10 years of my business career, I have suffered from at least mild insomnia. For a year I self-medicated with alcohol, I went through a phase when I just could not fall asleep without a couple of drinks. But alcohol screws up sleep, a lot of times it will help you fall asleep but then it spikes your blood sugar and wakes you back up in the middle of the night.

A lot of people smoke marijuana or look at porn to relax before bed which is probably better than drinking alcohol but certainly have their own issues. In my obsessive exploration of the Nootropics and biohacking rabbit hole, I've found some even better tranquilizing agents like Ashwagandha, Phenibut, and red Kratom strains, that have the same effects as alcohol but with almost none of the negatives.However, the really good news is that whatever your vice is that puts you to sleep,15-20 minutes of meditation right before bed (or even in bed) will do pretty much the same thing. My sleep has never been better after long, demanding days.

Pleasure

Good meditation is like good sex in that if you are doing it right it should feel really good. The first time I finished doing meditation following the Blue Sky Protocol, I got up and thought to myself; Wow I feel great! It can be a pleasurable leisure activity like eating ice cream, sipping your favorite cocktail, smoking, or getting a massage - on some days meditation is the most pleasurable thing I do!

So other than all the other long-term benefits of meditation that you hear the gurus, CEOs, and celebrities talking about those are the four short-term benefits that you can expect within your first ten sessions of meditation.

The Blue Sky Protocol: 6 steps

1. Bodyweight - You start by just focusing on your body weight, feel where your body weight is concentrated on the chair or bed you are resting on.

2. Listening - Open monitoring of the sounds around you. Don't focus too intensely on a particular sound but just let the sounds pass through your mind. Be aware of them. You could even try to count the number of sounds you are hearing simultaneously.

3. Body scan - You are going to begin a body scan by asking what is the overall mood of your body. It could be tired, sore, restless, relaxed, or even excited. Then starting with the top of your head you want to scan down, part by part asking yourself if that part of your body feels tense or relaxed. You'll start at the top of your head and eventually reach your toes.

4. Counting breaths - You will begin to breathe deeply in and out, as you do, just focus on saying in your head:

InnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnOutttttttttttttttttttttttttttttVery slowly and you breathe profoundlyThen begin to count to 10InnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnOneeeeeeeeeeeeeInnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnTwooooooooooooo

You get the idea...Try to focus your mind just on the counting, occasionally another thought will pop up, but refocus your mind just on the counting and breathing.

5. Blue sky - After you reach ten breaths, imagine your mind as a big beautiful blue sky. Imagine yourself somewhere in nature just enjoying the sight of the tranquil blue sky. That's what you are doing here, just enjoying how beautiful your tranquil mind is. Occasionally a thought will pop up, at this point, it's important to be able to laugh at yourself...

How silly that I worry about that bill right now!How silly that I would compare myself to that person!While I'm just enjoying the view of my tranquil mind...

The thoughts that pop up at this stage we are not going to judge, we are just going to laugh and let pass.

6. Empty mind - Now we have finally reached the stage where we are going to "think about not thinking." Start by imagining your mind as a bubble floating in a dark vacuum. Then move into the bubble; imagine running your hands along the bubble, feeling how smooth it is. Feel the emptiness. If any thoughts pop up, just smooth them over, and feel the emptiness. As you do this repeatedly you will feel your head throbbing, you'll experience almost a rolling or falling sensation as your increased gamma waves bring you more into a flow state. You may even have some low-level hallucinations, sometimes I will see weird eyes and geometric shapes at this stage.Then you're done; return your focus to your body and breathing. T…

Anti-aging is about reaching escape velocity, living long enough for science to give you the option to live as long as you want (in brilliant health).

A central piece to the puzzle of longevity is the telomeres, the caps on the ends of your chromosomes that, as the decades pass, shorten.

As the telomeres are worn down, the gene replication and cell division processes suffer and disease and cognitive decline ensues. Luckily, there’s a lot that we can do to prevent that...

Avoid Air Pollution

Unsurprisingly, toxic big city air is awful for our telomeres. A 2009 study of, a statistically significant, 134 Italians compared office workers to traffic officers who worked in downtown Milan and concluded that pollution is a real factor in telomeres' health. Look up how Milan’s pollution severity compares with your city, and perhaps consider moving someplace with better air. If that’s not an option, an air filtration system is a pretty smart investment, or at least get some green plants in your home that naturally soak up air pollution.

Manage Stress

What your telomeres hate is lingering, unresolved chronic stress. Employ a multi-pronged approach to stress management...

* Use adaptogenic herbs that safely soothe the autonomic nervous system.

* Eat home-cooked meals with loved ones.

* Regularly physical touch, if you don’t have a virtuous person in your life to make love to, get massages.

* Ample, quality sleep.

* And, crucially, a daily mindfulness practice.

Meditation

This may sound wuwu and pseudo-spiritual but the evidence is in; after a University of California paper explored the question Can meditation slow the rate of cellular aging? a 2016 Spanish study extracted and measured genomic DNA telomeres of both meditators and healthy non-meditators - two regression analyses were conducted revealing that meditation makes a difference. Yet another reason to spend 15-20 minutes daily seeking the tranquility within.

Test Your Telomeres

Maybe you don’t need to worry about your telomeres, but maybe you really do. You don’t know if your telomeres are in great shape or if they are in sharp decline until you get them tested. Sequencing.com includes Telomere testing with their $400 personal genotyping kit which will provide an informative snapshot of your genes and longevity biomarkers. Apparently, TeloYears™ used to offer a telomere testing kit for less than $100, but they discontinued that offering in lieu of (more lucrative, no doubt!) COVID-testing kits. This is disappointing to see but Sequencing.com's PROFESSIONAL TELOMERE TEST + WHOLE GENOME SEQUENCING is actually a pretty good value in comparison, along with Telomere status it provides the full raw data from all of your +30,000 genes.

TA-65

If you’re a millionaire or (just have $600 burning a hole in your wallet) TA-65 is a promising molecular activator of telomerase, which at least in animal studies, elongates telomeres.

Vitamins and Nutrients

Before you splurge on high-end supplements, pick up some fancy biohacking gear, or book a spot at a meditation retreat you want to make sure you are not deficient in some of the basic nutrients that your Telomeres need to do their thing; omega-3 fish oil, Vitamin C and Vitamin E.

Healthy “Paranoia” of Toxins

Modernity is an awful soup of industrial toxins that interfere with our telomeres. Many will say Nowadays everything gives you cancer! Why even worry about it? It’s probably impossible to live a totally toxin-free life but being a little more attentive about what you are consuming makes a difference. Read labels and avoid products that contain a bunch of hard-to-pronounce chemicals, spend a little more to get organic products, avoid crappy Chinese-made products, and demand to see COAs of health supplements before you buy them.

Don’t Be Obese

A 2009 study of 767 people demonstrated, unsurprisingly, that obesity is awful for your telomeres. Your best bet for losing weight is not the latest fad diet or a $79/month gym membership, start by habituating fasting in two forms:

* Intermittent daily fasting - Do all your eating and snacking within an 8-hour window, typically noon - 8 PM.

* 24-hour fasts - from lunch to lunch. Do this at least once a month, perhaps weekly if you have some pounds to lose.

Do Some cardio

Exercise is important of course, a 2017 study out of the University of Massachusetts found that 45 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise three times weekly will get your telomeres in the same shape as those of marathon runners.

Like many, perhaps you’ve implemented a lot of these sorts of health and lifestyle hacks and they didn’t make that much of a difference. When biohacking doesn’t work, it’s often because our genes are unresponsive. We spend a not-insignificant amount of money and time on these things to signal to genes but without sufficient amounts of the NAD+ molecule, the genes don’t get the signal. It’s like trying to make an important phone call with your phone in airplane mode.

NMN - The Epigenetic Vitamin for Telomeric Tranquility

Taking Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) is the most direct, practical way to supplement the NAD+ molecule.

* NMN is an accelerator of health. As an epigenetic signal booster, it multiplies the effect of the other good things you are doing for your body as it empowers the Sirtuins to turn on or off the right genes at the right times.

* NMN is far from the fringe of questionable health and anti-aging tools, it’s used daily by some of the world’s top anti-aging authorities, like eminent Harvard anti-aging researcher David Sinclair.

* It’s been the subject of over a hundred scientific papers. Absent, crucially, from the scientific literature is evidence of risk and incidences of concerning side effects.

What science says about NMN...

* NMN is currently undergoing a human clinical trial in Japan, the esteemed journal Nature is optimistic about findings on cell senescence (cell death) and telomeres.

* A 2019 study out of Baylor College of Medicine published in the journal Cell Metabolism, demonstrated the causal effect of NAD+ administration in maintaining telomere length while mitigating damage.

David Sinclair, Ph.D. tweeted

What people are saying about NMN’s antiaging effects...

57 going on 30 years old - D. Speight

“I may be the "youngest looking" 57 year old in Florida, but my body rarely feels like the 30 year old it resembles. When I read a few of the reviews about how quickly one could feel the results, I was skeptical. Not anymore! So the supplement option was already appealing to me. While I don't expect this to be an instant "fountain of youth," I'm optimistic it might come close in the long term.”

Want to feel younger with a boost of energy? - Angelo

“Infinite Age's PURE NMN supplement should be included in anyone's supplement regimen. I noticed clearer thoughts, increase energy levels, and improved recovery time. I am half a century old and being able to keep pushing throughout the everyday grind, it allows me to reach my goal of retirement much sooner; Infinite Age PURE NMN is one supplement to give a try.”

Fantastic Product, Great Effects - Logan Tibbetts

“I have many years of experience trying a broad range of supplements, and so I have a lot of experience testing for effects and avoiding placebo, as well as many points for comparison. When starting, I was expecting a slight increase in energy or mild effects on my cognition. Instead, I have felt a substantial boost of (non-stimulating) energy, meaningfully improved clarity and quality of my thoughts, brightened mood, and most surprising to me, a pretty noticeable reduction in the day-to-day aches and pains that I, unfortunately, live with. Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised and impressed with Infinite Age's NMN.”

Didn’t expect it to work so quickly!! - Eric G

“I have tried many supplements over the years and have yet to come across something as profound as this!!! Within about 1 hour out of nowhere, I felt this sense of positivity and just overall felt great. Something I couldn't explain as I never just felt "good" without…

The relentless seeker of wisdom and knowledge is sometimes rewarded with a "Satori experience" - a powerfully transformative moment of TOTAL spiritual clarity about your life and what you are in the world to do. In the past I was skeptical of such things, but no longer because this happened to me this year. It was pretty mindblowing, and while I'm still processing it, I'm ready to talk about it. But in describing this I prefer to use the Greek word Anakainōsis, which means a renewal, renovation, or complete change for the better.

ἀνακαίνωσις

I like this word more, I'll tell you why a little later...

I was reading this entrepreneurship book, 10x Is Easier Than 2x, about exponential growth hacking in business and life. And I was getting really uncomfortable as I read it because it was calling out all the things I've been doing wrong with Limitless Mindset. All the ways I'd been limiting myself and the good I could do for you. It showed me how small I've been thinking. I've long prided myself on being a rule-breaker, a dissident, and an innovator but this book showed me how I'm falling far short of my potential because mostly I'm unoriginal in my endeavors. This book reminded me that I must find what I can do uniquely well that virtually no one else on Earth is doing.

After closing 10x Is Easier Than 2x one night, as I was going to the bathroom before bed, it hit me in one moment! In one of the few epiphanies of my life, I knew how to align my strengths with my mission in life - which is to give individuals the means to reclaim their divine right to free will. Free will is that spark of Promethean flame in us all and the one thing that makes us really special as a species on this planet. Yet so few truly yield it! And so much about modern life deprives us of our free will, that the only way to truly take it back is by Biohacking; using the kinds of transformative tools that I've obsessively studied and self-experimented with for over 12 years now. That's my mission, and in that instant, I knew how to take it to the next level by combining my strengths to offer something truly unique to a small number of very special people - to you perhaps!

And I'll tell you shortly exactly what that was, but first I wanted to tell you about January 6th, THE most MIND-BLOWING day of my life as a Biohacker...

The day after I had this epiphany was weird. I did my Nootropics and sat down to brainstorm this new way that I can fulfill my mission and I experienced this wild neuroplasticity event, I could feel my mind just expanding to new frontiers. I had, simultaneously, great creativity and expansive thinking but also perfect clarity. I knew everything I had to stop doing to focus on my mission.For most of that day, I was in this sublime flowstate where I could tell my cognition was overclocking, my mind was processing so many things so quickly that I needed to limit the sources of sensory input. In the evening, I was exhausted by this eruption of ideas out of my mind so I told my wife (who was a little freaked out at this point) I was going to just sit down and play a really engaging computer game to quiet my mind. I tried but I realized after playing for a little while that I needed to quit computer games totally until I'd made some meaningful progress on this new thing. So I've cut out various distractions during this crucial phase of taking my mission to the next level - which I will call Anakainōsis.During that day, I was jacked into some form of higher intelligence (if you're skeptical of that I'm just telling you what it felt like!) I got two messages from God. One was about my marriage, about something I had to tell my wife and didn't want to; I did and it was kind of a breakthrough moment with a private marriage issue we've had for a while. The second is something I need to keep private for a while, it was a message about the future of mankind on this planet. It's one of those things that I need to articulate very carefully at the right time to the right people because otherwise, I'm really going to be thought of as a total madman.And at the end of the day, my wife and I had mindblowing passionate sex, the most intense sex we've had in recent memory.It was a weird day, but it gave me an incredible sense of clarity about a lot in my life.

If you're curious, the Nootropics I was on that day were...Alpha GPC (2 capsules - 600 mg)Nicotine (single strong dose)Homeopathic PiracetamTiger Milk mushroomTribulus terrestris (1 capsule)Turkey TailVitamin B3Vitamin D3 (5000IU) + K2 (100MCG)

About aligning my strengths with my mission

I have a few real strengths...

* Writing - It's something I've loved doing since childhood. Since then, I've honed and refined my writing; doing it almost every day. I've figured out how to yield creativity hacks like mnemonics, nicotine, caffeine, l-theanine, and binaural beats to enhance my innate talent. At this point, I've written two books and over a thousand articles on Biohacking, anti-aging science, personal growth, and philosophy.

* Listening, understanding, and coaching - This is my favorite part of my job as an Applied Neuroscience Strategist; sitting down on VOIP with someone, listening to what they are struggling with, and then giving them a bespoke Biohacking/lifehacking action plan for a breakthrough. Few things make me feel as alive as doing a 90-minute coaching session with someone where I'm able to give them some powerful transformative tools and knowledge for getting what they want in life.

* Research - Reading is another lifelong passion of mine. I genuinely enjoy diving into dense nonfiction books on niche topics exploring health, longevity, genetics, performance enhancement, and mindset. Along with pouring over studies, anecdotal evidence, and theories to crystalize a nuanced and holistic understanding of a topic.

So here is how I'm going to align these with my mission in life while doing something new and innovative to take YOUR Biohacking, personal growth, and legacy to the next level...

I'm going to start writing books specifically for my individual coaching clients.

Instead of writing books and articles just for the general public or for a niche crowd, I'm going to write books for individuals - coaching/consulting clients of mine whom I can go on an edifying odyssey of transformation with. Here's how this would work...

I'm going to offer a one-of-a-kind 6-month transformative coaching program...

With not just myself but a team of experts (I'm still in the process of building this team) providing insight and guidance in...Advanced mindset transformationBiohacking, anti-aging, and nootropicsExercise and fitnessLife-purpose discoveryProductivity hackingJungian psychology and shadow workSpiritualitySexualityRelationshipsAnd this is going to include...Comprehensive and prescriptive analysis of your personal genotyping results. The program is going to include a genotyping kit and our team will design a bespoke Biohacking and anti-aging protocol for you based on a full genome sequencing of your 30,000 unique genes.

And I will be spending a lot of time with the client I'm writing the book for. The first month of the program we will have four discovery conversations, 60-90 minutes each, going deep into...

* Your Biohacking and Nootropics regimen - what biohacks you've tried, what's working, and what isn't.

* Current state of your life - goals, relationships, fears, vices, addictions - what challenges you are struggling with.

* Your life experiences along with your values, principles, beliefs, and faith.

* What is your exponential 10X blue ocean - what might you do better than anyone else on Earth?

Based upon all that and 6-months of follow-up coaching and consultation (this program is going to be called Anakainōsis), I will write a unique and original book inspired by your self-discovery journey in the 6-month program; crystalizing your values and principles along with the edifying gu…