You’ll learn a tonne from ‘The Bulletproof Diet‘ by Dave Asprey. He is well known as a biohacker from Silicon Valley and for his brand ‘Bulletproof’. He has spent 15 years and $500,000 of his own money biohacking his brain & body, and working with medical staff to figure out the best diet and biohacks for optimal physical and mental performance. This Book will delve into biohacking your brain through the use of nootropics/smart drugs (like modafinil and racetams) by business executives and university students. It will follow up with ways to biohack your body with the 5 best bodybuilding exercises with an insane cost:benefit ratio, and explain the advantages of high-intensity interval training.
LESSON 1: Nootropics [Racetams & Modafinil]
It is also known as smart drugs. Nootropics can increase your memory, concentration, motivation, creativity and mood. Nootropics affect everyone differently. If you decide to take some, make sure you do your research and listen to your body. The most common ones are piracetam, aniracetam, oxiracetam, pramiracetam and phenylpiracetame. Excess Phenylpiracetam is banned in sports by the world anti-doping agency. Modafinil is a next step up from most. It’s also known as Provigil-the limitless pill. It’s a wakefulness promoting agent used for treating sleep disorders. However university students and business executives are using it to increase focus and alertness. I’ve taken Modafinil twice and it worked for me. I felt like I was in a highly focused flow state for eight hours with minimal distractions. I completely updated my website and finished a whole video summary in one session. Long-term use of Modafinil is controversial as considering it’s an off label product and only meant to be obtained if you have a prescription from your doctor. Let me tell you that it’s easier than you think to get your hands on these.
LESSON 2: Exercise Hacks [High Intensity Interval Training & Bodybuilding]
When done correctly exercise improves bone density, mood, insulin, sensitivity and lean muscle. It can also decrease inflammation and help you sleep better if it’s done more than two hours before bed assuming you’re not having to be as ripped as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Exercise should be brief, intense, infrequent, safe and purposeful. Weight training is the most bulletproof form of exercise because it meets all of these requirements. It increases your lean muscle mass, boosts your insulin sensitivity and metabolic rate and increases your testosterone and growth hormone levels. More muscle is good for your health because it makes you more resilient to fatigue diseases and toxins.
The five most beneficial weight training exercises are the seated row, chest press, pulldown, overhead press and leg press. Do these five exercises within 20 minutes and don’t exceed two minutes between exercises. Asprey also argues choosing the stairs over the elevator as it isn’t really exercise but there are benefits. They don’t give you the full hormonal effects of real exercise. Typical cardio workouts like running or cycling aren’t efficient. The most efficient is something called high-intensity interval training. Sprint as fast as you can for 30 seconds and rest for 90 seconds and then repeat for 15 minutes. You’ll produce more HDH, the performance enhancing anti-aging hormone your body makes to keep you young and healthy. This exercise will supposedly give you more cardio benefits than a daily one hour job for non-athletes. Asprey recommends weightlifting for 20 minutes once during week one, sprinting during week two and then repeating that only for workouts per month. Here is a video showing High Intensity Interval Training.
LESSON 3: Sleep Hacks [Earthing, Acupressure, Flux, Polyphasic Sleep & More]
Asprey claims that a University of California study revealed data from 1.1 million people and determined that there is no statistical reason to sleep longer than 6.5 hours per night. If you are 20 years old and live to 100 you could save five years of your life by sleeping for six and a half hours instead of eight. This sounds great, right? However Asprey mentions that the study doesn’t say anything about the day-to-day benefits of getting an eight hour sleep. It only talks about the effects of sleep duration one life span. Here are 10 sleep acts to enhance your brain and body functions:
1. Put your phone on flight mode as it will disable the electromagnetic field which interferes with sleep quality.
2. Use a sleep tracking app like sleep cycle. You put your phone under your mattress and set an alarm once your sleep has been tracked for a week hence you can use an alarm that will wake you up at the ideal time of the sleep cycle which will help you feel refreshed.
3. Use amber night lights. Traditional light bulbs disable your natural melatonin. Amber bulbs are better because your body responds to amber light the same way it does to darkness.
4. Download flux. Five minutes of white light from a screen disables your melatonin production for hours and can ruin the quality of your sleep. Flux is an app that makes the color of your screen adapt to the time of the day and your screen becomes warmer at night which reduces bad light that keeps you awake.
5. Earth yourself more. Research needs to be done but the idea is that our bodies produce a positive charge and the earth itself is negatively charged. Sleeping on an earthing mat grounds you by allowing the earth to balance your positive charge with a negative charge. Studies show earthing increases resilience because it speeds recovery, lowers inflammation and normalizes cortisol.
6. Sleep on an acupressure mat. They stimulate muscle relaxation by using acupressure points. It will feel painful for the first minute but as your brain realizes its safe, your sympathetic nervous system will relax. You’ll feel a surge of endorphins and a wave of relaxation.
7. Meditate. Simply doing some breathing exercises before bed can help you sleep better.
8. Avoid bright lights, violence, exercise and caffeine before bed.
9. Eat fatty foods and try supplements. How you eat has a direct effect on body. Asprey recommends you fill up with fatty foods for dinner and try having fish oil, protein or raw honey. You can also try supplements like magnesium, potassium, L-theanine, GABA and many more.
10. You should try polyphasic sleep. It’s a technique where you sleep for 20 minutes every four hours for 24 hours which totals to two hours of sleep. Asprey has experimented with polyphasic sleep but found that the massive inconvenience and strict schedule didn’t make up for the few hours of sleep.
The content has been grasped from here.
Also published on Medium.
