motivation Archives - Fusion Health and Wellness

What is a Bio-hack? Plus 3 Simple Hacks You Can Use Today

What is a bio-hack? For one thing, it’s a buzzword and one with no real clear cut definition. But for our purposes, a bio-hack is any method, technique or substance that one can use and apply that improves efficiency and a given output.

The concept of bio-hacking is all about adjusting and tweaking your own biochemistry, biomechanics or your outlooks and beliefs, in order to greatly improve a given outcome, whether it be enhanced focus, greater fat burning, faster learning, less anxiety, or any combination of things.

Bio-hacking can range from the very simple to the outrageously complex; from everything from swallowing a pill to hooking electrodes up to your brain in order achieve certain mental states; even using a bright light to beat depression and entrain circadian rhythms.

Here are some of my personal favorite forms of bio-hacking that you can start using right now to improve your performance.

Hack Focus with Caffeine + L-Theanine

This is hands down the easiest and most bang-for-your-buck bio-hack you can use, and one that has great potential to enhance your focus. It’s also the easiest way to get into the field of nootropics, or cognitive-enhancing substances.

We’re all familiar with that glorious little molecule called caffeine – it’s the world’s most used drug, helping us suffer through otherwise intolerable morning meetings, and improves both cognitive and physical performance.

The common protocol for many people is that they will sit down to work on their given project and slam 3 shots of espresso before hand to give them the energy to do so. What so often happens, however, is that 3 hours later, they’ve done a hell of a lot of texting, cruising through Facebook, and calling their Aunt Trisha, but have accomplished very little actual work. They had the energy, they had their materials right in front of them, but.. What happened?

This is where L-Theanine comes in. It’s an amino acid that is only found in the leaves of Camellia Sinensis, the plant that we get green and black tea from. Green tea has high levels of L-theanine, and it is what’s responsible for that calming, focusing effect from a good quality cup.

L-Theanine on it’s own is able to enhance focus, reduce anxiety and alleviate stress, and also has anti-depressant effects. A 2009 study concluded that L-theanine facilitated “longer-lasting processes responsible for sustaining attention across the timeframe of a difficult task”.

The real magic comes when L-theanine is paired with caffeine, however. The combination has neuro-protective effects, improves cognitive performance and increases alertness, and enhances the ability to switch between tasks and ignore distraction. It also enhances the activity of Alpha brainwaves, which correlate to a relaxed state with enhanced creativity.

A 2008 study states “In addition to improving RVIP (Rapid Visual Information Processing) accuracy and ‘mental fatigue’ ratings, the combination also led to faster simple reaction time, faster numeric working memory reaction time and improved sentence verification accuracy.” Groovy.

Most dosages use a 2:1 L-theanine to caffeine ratio – so 200 mg L-theanine to every 100 mg caffeine. You can buy caffeine + L-theanine in an encapsulated form that already come in this ratio off of Amazon, or buy straight L-theanine to mix with your caffeine of choice – I simply put some right in my morning coffee.

Build more muscle, become smarter and live longer using Saunas

Who would have thought that sitting in a hot box a few times a week could have such wide and varied benefits?

Use of “hyperthermic conditioning” contributes a wide array of benefits to those willing to sit in a sauna for 20-30 minutes a few times a week.

A big shout out to Dr. Rhonda Patrick for bringing a lot of this information into the limelight.

Benefits include –

enhanced muscle growth;
a strong release of Human Growth Hormone, a muscle-building, fat-burning, anti-aging hormone (a 16-fold increase in one study!);
improvements in insulin-sensitivity and glucose utilization (prevents fat gain and helps ward off diabetes);
improves resistance to stress by releasing heat shock proteins (this also just sounds cool);
increases longevity;
increases brain levels of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that promotes alertness, focus and attention;
helps to increase levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that promotes neurogenesis, enhances learning, and helps ameliorate depression.

Most gyms and health clubs have saunas that you can use, if that’s within your price range. And remember, more is not necessarily better. Make sure you are in good health before doing so, and drink plenty of mineral water before, during and after to rehydrate.

Hack motivation by optimizing Dopamine

Lovely, beautiful dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter most involved in feelings of pleasure, energy, drive and motivation. That buzz you get from a cup of coffee? Mainly from a combination of dopamine and norepinephrine. The feelings of pleasure involved in eating a nice meal when hungry, or engaging in sex? More dopamine. The sense of exhilaration and accomplishment when you finish a big project or hike a mountain? Dopamine, my friend.

The most over-used photo when it comes to neurons firing — The most over-used photo on the web when it comes to neurons firing

The unfortunate thing is, much of todays world is constructed to hack into your dopaminergic system, with the intent of being addictive. Facebook. Tv. Social media. Texting. Overly-palatable foods. Coffee, sugar, nicotine. All of these provide hits of dopamine.

And like moths to a flame, we are drawn repeatedly to things that give us any hit of dopamine we can get. Unfortunately, over time, the brain begins to rewire itself, a process called neuroplasticity – dopamine receptors desensitize, meaning we need more frequent and stronger hits of dopamine. Ultimately this leads to a brain that is dependent upon fast-paced and overly-stimulating experiences, leaving very little will power or drive to get the actual important things done.

Don’t believe me? Try going 3 days without any social media. Count how many times you unconsciously check your phone throughout the day. Eat a diet of plain foods with little to no salt or seasoning, and see how you suffer. Give up sugar, coffee, nicotine and/or alcohol for 2 weeks. Tell me if you aren’t just slightly irked after a few hours of any of the above.

So whats the fix? Reclaim your will power by reclaiming your brain.

First, cut back on any and all repetitive, highly-stimulating and meaningless input. This means overly-palatable junk foods, incessant web browsing, social media, constant texting, excessive coffee and alcohol, or games like Candy Crush or swiping through Tinder. Stop gossiping so much. Try to limit social media to ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening, and thats it. Give up social media for an entire day, then the next week, for two. These are very minor tweaks, but ones that if held to over time, provide huge benefits.

Second, actively train your focus, attention and motivation. There are many ways to do so –

Set goals each day, and just get them done. Do the worst ones first. Best of all, you’ll get a hit of dopamine each time you complete and cross that goal off your list. This will train your brain to seek its rewards by getting productive stuff done, not from seeing how many likes you got on that post about cats. Read up on decision fatigue – the more often you have to choose between two things, whether it’s what clothes you’re going to wear or how you’re going to spend your time, the more you drain your willpower.
Practice meditation – one study’s results suggest that “meditation produces long-term increases in the efficiency of the executive attentional network“. This means being able to direct your attention where you want it to go – towards being a boss and getting stuff done. Remember the concept of neuroplasticity – “neurons that fire together, wire together”. This will change the wiring of your brain for the better, and will make accomplishing goals second nature.
Embrace the Indian concept of Tapas – one of the branches in the traditional system of Raja (Royal) Yoga is that of the Niyamas, which are beneficial habits, behaviors and observances – one of which is the concept of Tapas. As I’ve posted before, Tapas is the friction and heat created by spiritual practices that burn away negative qualities of the mind. I’m all for spiritual enlightenment, but you can use the concept of Tapas to improve your motivation as well – long story short, learn to embrace and even welcome the uncomfortable into your life. Your muscles won’t grow unless you stress them. You won’t learn a new language without being completely confused at first. You’ll never get a date without overcoming those butterflies in your stomach. Eleanor Roosevelt was quoted as saying, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” I’d like to modify that to, “Do one thing every day that gets you out of your comfort zone,” and preferably towards something productive. Feel that uncomfortableness and just plow through it.

Finally, there are always a few supplements that can help out as well.

The first is an herb called gynostemma, and comes with a multitude of benefits – being a superb antioxidant, an immune booster, a strong adaptogen and a regenerator of dopaminergic neurons. I enjoy it in tea form, though it is available encapsulated as well.
Inositol is able to actually increase dopamine receptors within certain areas of the brain – the more receptors available, the more effective dopamine is, the more you’re able to get done and experience pleasure. I would go ahead and buy bulk powder, as it has a pleasantly sweet taste.
Lastly, supplementing with the precursor to dopamine itself will improve motivation – stick to DL-Phenylalanine, which is also a precursor to endorphins (natural feel-good molecules), and which should provide a nice boost in mood and motivation.

In Conclusion, bio-hacking is a relatively simple concept, one of hacking into your own biology in order to achieve a given result. There are plenty more options out there, suited to a huge variety of needs and goals. And as always, feel free to contact me to learn more ways to enhance cognition, de-stress, burn fat faster and beat depression and anxiety.

Tapas and Embracing the Uncomfortable – Keys to Success

There’s no doubt about it, I’ve lived a pretty comfortable life so far. That’s great for a little bit of personal enjoyment, but you know what it isn’t so great for? Moving up in life. Why strive for greatness, risk losing things and do a whole lot of work along the way (in short, get uncomfortable), when I can just comfortably stay where I’m at?

Turns out I needed to embrace the uncomfortable – I needed to roll my sleeves up and dive head first into discomfort. The truth is we’ll never really get anywhere unless we embrace the uncomfortable, unless we actively seek out discomfort.

The Stoics of ancient Greece, the Yogis of ancient (and modern) India and many others along the way welcomed discomfort into their lives, because they knew that if they weren’t experiencing some level of discomfort, they were likely stalling, not making progress in life, and wiring their brains to play it safe.

You aren’t making progress if you aren’t getting uncomfortable.

In fact the Yogis have a word for this very concept – Tapas. Tapas is one of the Niyamas, or Observances, needed in order to transcend the ego, which is the actual goal of Yoga. Tapas is the heat or fire needed to burn away the dross that covers and dulls the mind – examples of Tapas could include meditation, fasting, vows of silence, asceticism or even sexual abstinence. The physical postures, or asanas, are a form of Tapas as well.

When I first got into Yoga I was very drawn to Tapas, and in the course of about a month went from being lazy and hedonic to drastically cutting back on everyday pleasures. I went long periods without using social media, stopped aimlessly browsing the web, starting eating simple, plain food, fasted every Monday, and essentially cut out all “time wasters”. At the same time I read plenty of books on a variety of subjects (no fiction though) and did yoga and meditated daily. And by God if I didn’t notice the biggest increase in clarity of thought, calmness of emotion and a huge boost in productivity.

The reason I bring all this up is to help you realize that in order for you to reach your goals, whether it’s losing weight or making your first million dollars, you have to be willing to put in the time, work and effort and be uncomfortable.

Want to lose weight? You’re likely going to have to give up a few comfort foods, start eating new foods you’re not used to, start exercising with more intensity and regularity, etc. The good news is that not only will you start losing weight, but you’ll start adapting to these new discomforts – at which point you’ll have to adjust your regimen so as not to plateau.

I recommend getting uncomfortable every day – train yourself to embrace discomfort.

Maybe you fast on Mondays. Start your morning off with a cold shower. Pick up meditation and meditate 15-30 minutes each day. Do a hundred pushups every Tuesday. I highly recommend fasting from social media for one day once a week, or a few days in a row each month.

Do this toughness training along with the discomfort that comes with aspiring to achieve your goals. This way, when the going gets tough and you need to buckle down for the big storm, you’ll pass with flying colors because you’ve been preparing this whole time.

Train your brain to accept and welcome the uncomfortable, and recognize it as a sign of growth, progress and enhanced resiliency. Neurons that fire together wire together, so make sure your neurons are wired to embrace the uncomfortable.

Leave a comment below and tell me about how you’ve had to embrace the uncomfortable in the past to get where you are now.

Fear and Failure

When was the last time you did something that scared you? It could be anything – confronting someone at work, letting go of something important in your life, skydiving or swimming with sharks.. When was the last time you embraced fear?

Fear obviously serves a very important purpose, namely keeping us alive. If we didn’t have a little bit of appropriate fear, be it of heights, wild animals with huge fangs or even of social faux pas (being ostracized from a tribe often meant death), the human race wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have.

Fear not, the creepy crawlies – just kidding, this thing’s disgusting

But what happens when we succumb to the little fears? The fears that are holding us back in our life, that keep us from reaching ever new heights? These are the fears that must be embraced and overcome if you’re going to truly thrive in this world, and almost all of them can be boiled down to just three things – fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and fear of success.

Fear of the Unknown has obvious implications – just what is in that deep, dark forest? Lions, tigers, maybe bears?

We fear the unknown simply because we don’t know whether it’s dangerous or not. However, most of our fears in the modern world in regards to the “unknown” aren’t life threatening or even any sort of substantial gamble. That new job you’ve been offered? It might be awesome, or maybe it will suck, but it’s not gonna kill you and you’ll likely bounce right back if things don’t work out.

Fear of the unknown stems from being too attached to comfort. The antidote? Get comfortable shaking things up, get comfortable being uncomfortable – actively seek out the unknown every day, or at least a few times a week. Go ahead and start small – strike up a conversation with people you don’t know, explore new hiking trails, try Ethiopian food or a new cuisine that is radically different from what you’re used to. Take bigger bites as time goes on – travel to a new city, a new country, move to a new state, take up a new job doing something radically different, or anything that fully submerges you in the unknown.

Summed up – Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Once you embrace the unknown, it loses it’s power over you.

Fear of failure is probably the most prevalent type of fear in today’s world. Who hasn’t felt that tinge of panic when attempting something you’re not sure will work? I’ve got news for you, it’s time to embrace failure.

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. – Stephen McCranie

Nothing great ever came from comfort zones! No progress is ever made without some discomfort, so go out there and get uncomfortable! You’ll succeed more than you thought you would, and each time you don’t is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes.

You have to reframe failure as a positive thing, or maybe even erase the word failure from your lexicon. Reframe “failure” as such – each time you attempt something and get a different result than you expected (which most would call failure), you recognize that something simply needs tweaking in your methodology. Become a scientist and think of things as an experiment – they don’t get their feathers ruffled when their experiment gives them a result different than expected, so why should you?

Further, failure is a sign of progress. How many times did you fail before you took your first step? How many times did you fail learning to ride a bike, or hit a baseball, or learning your multiplication tables? My sevens still get me.

“Failure” is simply a sign that you’re getting closer and closer to success.

One of the first tricks you learn on a skateboard is a kickflip, and it took me easily a full year to land my first kickflip. That’s a whole year of trying one trick every day and messing up again and again and again. But if I gave up I never would have found one of my first true passions, had a chance to film in videos, compete in contests or get an all-expense-paid trip to San Diego to compete in an Amateur world finals competition.

0M1vvDK8qh_1402473201070 — The Man, Elon Musk

Summed up – Reframe failure as evidence that you’re getting closer and closer to success. You’re simply a scientist, and each time you get results different than expected, just tweak your methods.

On the flip side of fear of failure is fear of success. Fear of success is insidious because it’s so hard to spot – we think we want success and think we’re doing all we can to achieve it, when in actuality we’re still stuck in our comfort zones. With success comes change, and so fear of success has an element of fear of the unknown in it as well.

Success may also contradict a deep held belief of yours – that you don’t deserve anything good. How so many of us got this belief in the first place is beyond me, but it’s very common.

Long story short, figure out what you want, plan out how to get it, and take action. Every so often take a step back and ask yourself if you’re really doing everything you can to achieve your goals, and figure out what your weak spots and sticking points are.

Summed up – Believe, deep down, that you deserve the best. Figure out what you want, plan out a course of action, attack, and constantly assess and tweak. As Tai Lopez would say, finding and consulting with mentors doesn’t hurt either.

The bottom line is to train your brain to embrace discomfort, to embrace fear, and to reframe failure as a positive thing. Remember, neurons that fire together wire together – the more you feel that twinge of fear and back down, the stronger those neural connections will be in your brain, and the more likely you’ll back down in the future. Rewire your brain to embrace fear and move through it, and watch as it loses all it’s power.

Now go get uncomfortable.

Supplements Everyone Can Benefit From, Pt. 1

A lot of people think that given today’s nutritionally poor food, combined with mineral depleted soils, that it isn’t possible to meet all of your nutritional needs through food alone. The truth is that we most certainly can get all the nutrients we need in our diet, but you have to be willing to go out of your way to consume plenty of seafood, seaweeds, dark leafy greens, organ meats and fermented foods – things that in America and many parts of the western world aren’t exactly common place.

Luckily we live in a time and place where we can easily buy a few supplements to fill in the gaps. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should eat foods that completely lack nutrition – one should still maintain a healthy diet, exercise regimen and practice stress reduction if you want to look and feel great.

So without further ado, here are a few supplements almost everyone should be taking.

Vitamin D – Boost immune function, improve cognition, improve hormonal status and bone health, fight off depression

Vitamin D is not just a vitamin, but an important hormone that has a plethora of uses within the body – it helps the body absorb and utilize calcium, magnesium and zinc, boosts the immune system, and affects more than 2000 genes! This means that if you aren’t getting adequate Vitamin D, you’re not functioning properly at the genetic level, which can lead to many problems down the road.

dna-genes-1405932776 — Your Genes on Vitamin D

Vitamin D is also an important neurosteroid, up-regulating amounts of Nerve Growth Factor within the brain and central nervous system, which helps to repair damaged neurons and even to grow new ones. This has implications for learning, memory and even depression, as there is a strong correlation between low levels of neurotrophic factors (of which NGF is but one) and depression. It’s estimated that 1 billion people are deficient in Vitamin D, and it seems to be that the lower the levels of Vitamin D, the worse the depression.

How much Vitamin D do we really need? Recent research is suggesting that the current RDA of Vitamin D – 600 IU for ages 1-70, and 800 IU for 70 and up – is far too low. It’s best to shoot for blood levels of around 50 ng/dl of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, something you’ll have to get your doctor to test for. Aim to ingest 2000 IUs of Vitamin D on days you aren’t getting sun exposure. I personally use this brand, as it gives well over a year’s supply and is mixed with the next supplement on the list, Vitamin K2. Vitamin D also needs to be balanced with Vitamin A – as I stated in my post for vegans and vegetarians, vegetables are unfortunately a poor source of true Vitamin A, so if you aren’t willing to consume plenty of liver, cod liver oil, or eggs from pasture raised hens, I’d use this Vitamin A supplement if you aren’t vegan, and this one if you are, one pill every other day.

Bottom Line – Vitamin D may improve your mood, decrease the likelihood of you getting sick, improve the expression of positive genes while silencing ones that can cause disease, and even help you remain mentally sharp.

Vitamin K2 – Essential for Bone Health, Prevention of Calcium Deposits in Soft Tissues and Improving Hormone Status

Vitamin K1 is ample in the diet, and most people know that it plays an important role in blood clotting. Few people have heard about Vitamin K2 however, and it’s much harder to come by in the diet, only being present in fermented foods or foods coming from grass fed animals.

Vitamin K2 is a critical factor in the process of calcium utilization – more precisely, it makes sure that the calcium you do consume goes where it’s supposed to – mainly in the bones, and not in the arteries, kidneys (kidney stones) or other organs.

Therefore Vitamin K2 is crucial in preventing atherosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries. Studies have shown an inverse relationship between Vitamin K2 levels and atherosclerosis. It may further prevent cancer, improves insulin sensitivity, and improve prostate health.

As stated earlier, Vitamin K2 is solely a product of fermentation – without bacteria, there would be no K2. The best source is a Japanese dish called natto, a rather stinky smelling food made out of fermented soybeans.

Other sources include certain aged cheeses from grass fed animals, especially gouda, as well as other dairy products from grass fed animals, especially fermented ones such as yogurt, lassi and kefir, eggs from free ranging hens, and organ meats from healthy, free range animals. All of the K2 present in these animal foods are produced by the healthy bacteria in the animals’ guts, which finally make their way into the organs, eggs, meat and milk of the animal. Most fermented vegetable dishes contain K2 as well – sauerkraut, kim chi, unpasteurized pickles and miso should all have some K2, and be sure to consume them with some fat as K2 is a fat-soluble vitamin.

Don’t like fermented foods? You should really work on developing your palate, but in the mean time don’t hesitate to use the Vitamin D/K2 supplement listed above – I make sure to consume plenty of fermented foods but choose to supplement as well. Scientists are still debating how much K2 we should be getting, but a good recommendation is anywhere from 200 to 1,000 micrograms a day – two drops of the Thorne Vitamin D/K2 supplement is 200 micrograms.

Bottom Line – Vitamin K2 helps prevent osteoporosis, prevents atherosclerosis, improves insulin sensitivity and may even improve prostate health

Magnesium – Important for Bone Mineralization, a Healthy Relaxation Response, Improved Hormonal Status and Improves Drive and Motivation

Ahh, magnesium.. Easily one of most crucial minerals to get, yet so few of us are – only 25% or so of Americans are getting adequate amounts of magnesium.

“Magnesium is involved in over 300 biochemical reactions in your body. It affects everything from your heartbeat to your muscles to your hormones,” – Dr. Danine Fruge, Associate Medical Director at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Miami, Florida.

Feeling stressed? Rundown? Are you overweight? Achey, especially after workouts? Do you have restless leg syndrome, or worry about osteoporosis? Having difficulty focusing or staying motivated? You may be one of many who are deficient in magnesium.

Magnesium is another critical nutrient for bone health – magnesium is required to activate Vitamin D into its active form, to allow calcium to find it’s way to the bones. In fact magnesium is required for all of the enzymes involved in Vitamin D metabolism.

Feeling stressed? “Mg deficiency, even when mild, increases susceptibility to various types of neurologic and psychological stressors in rodents, healthy human subjects and diverse groups of patients. Repletion of deficiency reverses this increased stress sensitivity, and pharmacologic loading of Mg salts orally or parenterally induces resistance to neuropsychologic stressors.” In English, this means having adequate levels of magnesium buffers you to feelings of stress. Magnesium is crucial to the relaxation response, helping your muscles and nervous system to relax.

Magnesium has been shown to increase learning and memory, especially the form Magnesium-L-Threonate.

Turns out that dopamine, that wonderful little neurotransmitter that is involved in motivation and feeling pleasure, is a magnesium-dependent molecule :

“Dopamine has been called the ‘pleasure neurotransmitter’ and evidence shows that dopamine is a magnesium-dependent neurotransmitter. It is possible that low levels of magnesium trigger low levels in dopamine in the brain.”

Magnesium also improves hormone status, at least in middle aged men. This study concludes :

In a cohort of older men, magnesium levels are strongly and independently associated with the anabolic hormones testosterone and IGF-1.

This is great news, as we’ve seen national levels of testosterone plummet, likely due to xenoestrogens in the environment, and is also beneficial because these hormones decline with age. Please note that magnesium supplementation brought these hormones back into a healthy range. Magnesium is not a steroid and won’t make any of you ladies grow a beard.

Soda, caffeine, alcohol, refined grains and sugary foods, as well as stress, intense exercise and sweating all increase the need for magnesium.

The Recommended Daily Amount is around 400 mg, but remember, you may need more depending on how much you exercise, how stressed you are or how poor your diet is.

Magnesium is found most abundantly in pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate and raw cacao, bone broth and dark leafy green vegetables. At the center of every molecule of chlorophyl in plants is a magnesium ion, so the greener the plant, the more magnesium-rich it is.

It can still be difficult to ingest adequate amounts daily, especially if you’re stressed or exercising regularly, and for this reason it’s wise to supplement with magnesium in addition to eating magnesium-rich foods. Magnesium citrate is a great choice that is cheap and has the added benefit of helping improve digestion. Two rounded teaspoons is just short of 400 mg – I’d suggest consuming two teaspoons in times of stress or if you don’t have a healthy diet, or one teaspoon if you eat plenty of magnesium rich foods.

Bottom Line – Magnesium improves bone health, reduces stress, calms the brain and improves alertness, improves the functioning of the motivation and pleasure molecule dopamine, improves hormonal status, can help with constipation and may even improve learning and memory.

Stay tuned for the rest of the list of supplements everyone should probably be using, leave a comment if you have any questions, and contact me to learn more about how to fit all this together and taking it to the next level.

A Few Effective Hacks

I’ve mentioned in passing before that people use “bio-hacks” to stay ahead of the curve (or in my case, just stay on the curve). A bio-hack is anything that improves health and performance in a quick and easy, and often unconventional way. The term is adopted from the cyber community – just as a computer programer hacks into a computer program, we too can “hack” into our own biology. These practices range everywhere from using certain supplements, to brain training, either through games, devices or meditation, or even hooking yourself up to expensive technological devices to improve your cognitive performance.

Zapping your brain with a Transcranial Low Level Laser Therapy device..?

I must admit, some of these bio-hacks are a bit far out there, even for me. Between LLLT devices, which are said to improve the mitochondria in your brain by zapping them with infrared light, to tCDS, or transcranial direct stimulation devices, which literally apply electrical currents to your brain to strengthen neuronal connections, I currently neither have the funds nor the guts to try some of these, despite how effective the research makes them out to be. However, there are quite a few bio-hacks I do personally use, and while the cream of the crop are going to be saved for my one-on-one clients, I’m more than happy to share a few here with you.

Hack your focus with L-Theanine

L-Theanine is a rare amino-acid like compound found only in a few plants, most notably in green tea. Ever wonder why a cup of quality green tea has that wonderful calming and focusing effect? Yup, that’s L-Theanine at work.

L-Theanine reduces feelings of stress, boosts cognitive function, improves mood and even boosts brain levels of BDNF, a compound that helps protect and grow new brain cells. Further, researchers have yet to be able to determine a toxic dose (but please be reasonable).

L-Theanine has been proven to increase the brain’s alpha waves, which correlates to a state of relaxed alertness. This study states –

“L-theanine significantly increases activity in the alpha frequency band which indicates that it relaxes the mind without inducing drowsiness.” See? Told you so.

Further, L-Theanine and caffeine are a match made in heaven. Need to get some studying done? Need that brain focusing in peak condition, but also need to stay focused? Pairing L-Theanine with caffeine is the way to go – caffeine gives you the mental boost you need to plow through work, while L-Theanine negates the negative effects of caffeine, and increases your focus to keep you from constantly checking your Facebook and email. Most people recommend a 2:1 Theanine/Caffeine ratio, but I do better at a 1:1 ratio. Play around and see what works for you.

Start with just one of these pills per cup of coffee or whenever you’d like some relaxation, and play around until you find your sweet spot. You can also just drink green tea, with gyokuro and white tea being highest in L-Theanine.

Boost motivation and accelerate fat burning with Gynostemma and Green Tea

We all know what green tea is, and how it’s loaded with antioxidants, and you now know it’s got that lovely L-Theanine in it as well. But most people haven’t heard of Gynostemma Pentaphyllum, or jiaogulan in Chinese.

Gynostemma is a delicious adaptogenic tea hailing from southern China. Researchers stumbled upon it when they noticed a village that had an unusual amount of octogenarians who remained quite active and involved in the community. Upon further questioning the researchers discovered that almost everyone in the village regularly drinks a tea made from a plant they called “Miracle Grass”, or what we call Gynostemma.

Jiaogulan

Turns out Gynostemma is one hell of a plant. It has over 80 different saponins, the molecules that give it it’s adaptogenic properties, beating the previous record holder, ginseng, four times over. It’s immune-regulating, boosts energy, improves cellular function and delays fatigue.

But what I really like about it is that it improves your sensitivity to dopamine. Dopamine is that wonderful little neurotransmitter that everyone loves, released after a nice cup of coffee, during sex and when eating tasty food, the one involved in motivation and feelings of reward and pleasure. It’s important that you have ample amounts of dopamine and that your dopamine receptors are sensitive, or else you’ll be going through life unmotivated and without feeling much pleasure, a state known as anhedonia.

This is key in my eyes – if you want to be motivated enough to accomplish your goals, you need to have your dopaminergic system running in tip top shape. There’s a lot more to this topic than simply drinking gynostemma tea, so be on the lookout for upcoming posts or possibly even an ebook. I recommend Dragon Herbs’ Spring Dragon tea, or their Gynostemma capsules.

Gynostemma also improves insulin sensitivity, making it a great addition not only to diabetics but people in general, as improving insulin sensitivity also improves weight loss parameters. Green tea is also a fantastic choice for people looking to lose weight. Green tea is high in an antioxidant called EGCG. EGCG has a three-pronged effect on weight loss. First, it increases the rate at which stored body fat is released to be burned as energy. EGCG also sensitizes your muscles’ cells to insulin, while decreases your fat cell’s sensitivity to insulin. This means that the food you eat after a cup of green tea is more likely to be burned for energy in your muscles than stored away as fat. Finally, EGCG is actually able to destroy fat cells altogether. See, when a person loses weight, they don’t actually lose fat cells – those cells remain, they just release their stored fatty acids. If a person gains that weight back, those fat cells simply fill back up. EGCG is able to actually destroy those fat cells, something that is very rare in a natural compound.

If you want to maximize all these benefits, just combine gynostemma and green tea together and drink a few cups a day. You can also use a high quality matcha green tea, which contains significantly more EGCG than regular green teas.

Shade-grown, stone-ground, Theanine and EGCG rich Matcha

Hack your circadian rhythms with Melatonin and Full Spectrum Lights

Having a proper circadian rhythm is paramount to feeling and looking your best. Nothing is more rejuvenating than a full night’s rest, and it’s easy to see how much performance is affected when you either go to bed late or have to get up early. Nothing is as surefire to improve mood and energy levels as consistently as being well rested, so making sure you have this aspect of your life down is critical.

“Maintaining synchronized circadian rhythms is important to health and well-being,” says Dieter Kunz, director of the Sleep Research and Clinical Chronobiology Research Group at Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin. “A growing body of evidence suggests that a desynchronization of circadian rhythms may play a role in various tumoral diseases, diabetes, obesity, and depression.”

Eeesh.

Naturally, there are ways to hack your circadian rhythm to get more bang for your buck. Start by avoiding blue light 2-3 hours before bedtime. Blue light is emitted from phones, tablets, laptops, computers and tvs, and has been found to suppress the release of melatonin within the brain. Melatonin is the circadian rhythm entraining hormone in the body, and is the main hormone involved in you falling asleep. As the meta-study linked above states “The blue wavelength suppressed melatonin for about twice as long as the green.”

While some bio-hackers like to wear red-tinted glasses to completely block out blue light in the evenings, I simply make sure to avoid phone, tv and computer light exposure as much as possible after sunset – granted, sometimes this is a futile effort. You can also download a free program on your computer and smart phone called f.lux, which will automatically tint your screen more and more red as the sun sets, naturally blocking out the blue light emitted from your devices.

A few nights a week I like to hit the hay early. Not only does this make me feel like a million bucks the next day and improve everything from my metabolism to optimizing my hormone levels, it helps to keep my circadian rhythm in balance. A few times a month, when I’m going to bed early, I’ll take 1 to 1.5 milligrams of melatonin, to “entrain” my circadian rhythm to falling asleep at that hour, usually around 9 or 10. When I take melatonin early at night, I’m basically telling my body, “Now is when you should naturally be falling asleep. This is when you should start releasing melatonin.” Melatonin is also great for jet lag or adjusting to a new timezone – just take it the first few nights to entrain your circadian rhythm to the new timezone.

Quick note – I do not recommend taking melatonin every night, or using big doses. This is a hormone after all, and it’s not to be taken lightly. Just how bodybuilders produce very little testosterone after using steroids, using too much melatonin for too long can shut down your body’s natural production of the hormone. Please keep this in mind.

In the mornings when I wake up, especially in the winter time, I’ll throw on my Verilux HappyLight to signal to my body that the night has ended and it’s time to start producing all the hormones I need to naturally wake up. Photorecptors in our eyes send signals to our hypothalamus that help to wake us up in the presence of bright, full spectrum light, whether from the sun or from a full spectrum bright light. Let’s allow Wikipedia to get real nerdy for us –

“They [Intrinsically photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells] play a major role in synchronizing circadian rhythms to the 24-hour light/dark cycle, providing primarily length-of-day and length-of night information. They send light information via the retinohypothalamic tract directly to the circadian pacemaker of the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus. The physiological properties of these ganglion cells match known properties of the daily light entrainment (synchronization) mechanism regulating circadian rhythms.”

Long story short, a nice dose of strong, full-spectrum light in the mornings sends all the right signals to your body to fill you with energy and wake you right up. It’s not critical to use a full-spectrum bright light, but if you’re the type that has a difficult time waking up in the mornings or experiences the winter-time blues, it’s a great investment. I’ve personally gotten great results from mine – more energy in the mornings and no winter-time moodiness.

Hack your hormones with Yoga

Be prepared for many posts to come in the following weeks and months on yoga, as I’m a huge fan and there is a lot to cover. One of the biggest benefits of yoga that is rarely touched upon is how yoga is the best way to naturally improve and regulate almost all the hormones your body produces. Proper hormone levels are vitally important to vibrant health, as hormones regulate your physiology and behavior. Throw even one hormone out of whack, and a chain event of disastrous consequences occurs.

All the twisting, bending and stretching of the postures in yoga have many beneficial effects, one of which is to squeeze and massage all of the endocrine glands within the body, the glands that produce and release your hormones. This squeezing and massaging pushes stale blood and toxins out of the glands, and when the twist or bend is released, fresh blood rushes in like water to a dry sponge. This revitalizes the glands and improves their functioning. Inverted postures, especially shirshashana, the headstand pose, improves the functioning of the pituitary, the “master gland” of the endocrine system, which has downstream effects on all your other endocrine glands and body systems.

As you can see, “bio-hacking” is actually a pretty easy and accessible concept, and we’ve barely just scratched the surface. Keep your eyes peeled for future posts on various bio-hacks, including how to use cold to burn more fat, how to use heat to build more muscle, make you smarter and recover faster from workouts, and multiple ways to improve cognition and even grow your brain. Contact me to find out more.

Keys to the Good Life – The Investor’s Mentality

There are a lot of great things that come out of adopting a healthy lifestyle, and many of those things come quickly. Change up your eating habits and exercise routine, and you start losing weight. Eat clean foods, manage stress and get enough sleep, and your mood and energy levels improve. Do a few fasts and cleanses, and your skin becomes clear and eyes more vibrant.

That’s all well and good and an excellent reason to start paying a bit more attention to your health and wellbeing, but you should also consider the benefits that come further down the road. It’s important to drop the consumers mentality and adopt an investor’s mentality, not just with money but with health as well. A consumer thinks, If I do x, y or z now, then I’ll be happy/rich/lose weight/fill in the blank. Investors have a very different thought process. An investor says to themselves, If I do x, y or z now, then in a few weeks/months/years, my efforts will be multiplied a hundred-fold. A consumer is a slave to instant gratification. An investor is in control of his or her desires, and plants a seed now so that he or she can have a field of rewards later.

If you instill healthy habits now, you can more or less coast on autopilot, making tiny adjustments along the way, adding things as needed, and remain healthy for the rest of your life. If you cut out junk food and focus on eating a whole foods, plant-based diet and make that your normal, think of all the problems that will be avoided down the road.

How much money will you save in hospital bills, doctors visits and insurance?

How much will your quality of life improve and remain elevated due to being fit, strong, happy, healthy, emotionally balanced and self-reliant?

How much will a little self-love go towards improving your relationships with others?

Problems in general and health issues in particular have a nasty habit of snowballing out of control. This is easily prevented by just putting a little bit of effort in now, while you’re ahead. Put a little effort into eating cleaner and expanding your pallet. Find a few forms of exercise you love and that don’t feel like work. A few times a week, go to bed early, by at least 10 pm, and make sure to have a few stress management techniques up your sleeve. These few things alone are powerful enough to keep you thriving well into your 90s and beyond. Even if health issues have already cropped up, it’s never too late to take charge and start to fix things.

I do one-on-one and group health coaching, so if you’re looking for specific solutions to your individual health problems, contact me. Adopt an investor’s mentality, and put time and effort into yourself now – you can thank me later.

Into the Abyss – Sensory Deprivation Tanks and How the Internet is Ruining Your Brain

Yesterday I treated myself to something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time – a session in a Sensory Deprivation Tank. Sometimes called floatation tanks, they’re basically a pod filled with water that has been super saturated with epsom salts – in my case, 1000 pounds of epsom salts in just 10 inches of water. You hop in, turn the light off and shut the lid. Inside it’s pitch black, the water and air is body temperature, and while the pod itself doesn’t make things completely sound proof, the addition of ear plugs do. So you’re literally floating in what feels like nothing, with no sights, no sensations, and no sounds other than your own breath. It’s just you and the infinite abyss of your mind.

My floatation tank at Regenerate

Why would anyone voluntarily do this? Not only is it quite relaxing, it helps decrease inflammation, reduce stress, lowers blood pressure and may help one recover from strenuous workouts or other stressors. It also helps top off your body’s magnesium stores, as Epsom salts are simply magnesium sulfate. This is important as magnesium is critical for over 300 reactions in your body and the majority of Americans are deficient in this crucial mineral.

But that’s not why I’ve been wanting to try one.

I’ve been big into meditation for a while now and am always looking for ways to further explore my mind. Once you begin any meditation program or just take some time to investigate your mind, you’ll come to realize what a strange, ephemeral beast it really is. It’s hard to control; it’s constantly hungry for new stimuli; it’s able to be aware of and observe itself; and strangest of all, it seems to disappear if truly examined.

Here’s a little exercise for you – observe your thoughts as they come and go, and the accompanying feelings, emotions and sensations. Notice how your mind sometimes has pictures that accompanies thoughts, and sometimes doesn’t. Notice what the sensation of boredom feels like, or the desire to go do something else. Now go back to observing your thoughts, and as you observe them, ask yourself, Who is it that is observing these thoughts? Are “you” your thoughts, memories, desires and habits, aka the content of your mind, or are you that silent observer that watches these thoughts and feelings come and go?

So anyway, it’s been posited that while in a sensory deprivation tank, your mind, deprived of it’s usual bombardment of signals, starts to open up a bit, with thoughts and images flowing up from your subconscious. This can be very therapeutic, enlightening, frightening or some combination therein. You may remember things from the far past that you’d forgotten, or perhaps insights into a problem you’ve been trying to solve may suddenly flash into your mind. I personally didn’t notice much more than a profound relaxation and a sense of exhilaration as my body floated in what seemed like zero gravity, but I suspect that after a few longer sessions I may have more success in the psychonautics department.

But this session in the tank made me think; how many of us can handle an hour plus of pure black, silence and even a complete lack of physical sensations? In today’s world, my guess is very few, and we have technology and society to thank for that. In the West we’re literally trained to live a fast-paced lifestyle, to constantly seek out immediate stimulation, and we’re told that what we already have isn’t good enough. Just look at the ads on tv – your car could be better, your body isn’t up to par with this model’s body, and you’d attract more “babes” by drinking Bud Light. Instead of living a relaxed life, content with what we have, it’s being drilled into us that we never have enough.

Social media, the internet in general and even texting on cell phones further amplify our discontent. Take Facebook for example. Unchecked usage literally rewires your brain, causing a shorter attention span, decreased self worth and the desire for constant, immediate updates.

See, we’re biologically built to seek out rewards, and in the past these rewards were wholesome, they mattered, they meant the difference between life and death, and they were much fewer and more spread out. Quality over quantity can best sum up the difference in rewards in the past versus current times. When you achieved a goal, whether its eating food when hungry, or having sex with an attractive partner, or getting some physical activity, or experiencing something novel, or basically doing anything that ensures your survival and the survival of the human race, your brain releases the neurotransmitter dopamine in order to reinforce that behavior. Dopamine is a molecule that plays key roles in goal-oriented behavior, pleasure, focus, mood and energy levels. Next time you’re hungry and take a nice big bite of some tasty dish, pay attention to how satisfying it feels – that’s dopamine at work. That pleasurable feeling you get from coffee or chocolate? Dopamine.

The problem is that the internet and social media in particular are hacking into this system of reward and using it to their advantage. These things are intentionally designed to be addictive, to keep you coming back multiple times throughout the day. When you see that little red number for the notifications of all the likes you’ve gotten on your new status, you get a nice little hit of dopamine, which encourages you to keep updating your page and checking back to see how many likes you’ve gotten. Why is your brain rewarding you for this? Because to be a social outcast in the past meant to be ostracized from the tribe. A tribe can defend itself out on the African safari. A single person? Not likely.

Facebook is further compounded by the novelty factor – if you keep scrolling long enough down your Facebook feed, you’ll eventually find something interesting and novel. BAM! more dopamine.

But perhaps most addictive of all is that Facebook is ego-based and takes advantage of intermittent reward. It’s well known that the best way to train lab animals is not to give them a reward each time they do something correctly, but to give them rewards only some of the time, at random. This keeps them guessing and in suspense, and more eager for that next hit of dopamine.

Facebook makes good use of intermittent reward. When you make a status, you’re never exactly sure how many people are going to like it, or who out of your friends will like it (will your crush like it??) And when you open your Facebook app, you’re never sure what kind of notifications, if any, you’ll have. Did someone friend request you? Did someone post something funny on your page, or did nothing happen involving you at all? Poor you..

Over time this behavior reshapes the brain, due to neuroplasticity.

Neurons that fire together, wire together

Neuroplasticity is the term for how the brain will reshape itself according to the stimulus it receives. So the more often you get angry when someone insults you, and the more often those certain neurons fire together in the brain when this occurs, the more likely it is to happen in the future because you’ve already laid down the neural network for this to occur. So when you’re opening your Facebook app 10, 20, 30 or more times a day, you’re actually rewiring your brain to crave this constant immediate reward, which makes it a bitch to stick to longer tasks that don’t have these immediate rewards. Unfortunately those tasks are usually the ones that matter, whether it’s paying attention to your kids, getting your school work done, or finishing that big project that’s due at work next week.

One more doozy from all of this – overusing social media actually damages the brain. See, the brain, like the rest of the body, is always trying to maintain homeostasis, it’s always trying to keep thing in a state of balance. So if the brain starts getting bigger releases of dopamine more frequently, it will compensate by desensitizing the receptors that are getting the extra dopamine – this makes them less sensitive so they don’t burn out. However, if elevated dopamine levels are sustained, eventually the brain starts destroying some of those receptors to compensate for the extra dopamine. This is the basis for drug addiction.

The red square of dopamine

Let me give you an example. Remember the first time you had a cup of coffee? Caffeine has quite a few effects in the body but a major one is a nice big hit of dopamine. It likely lifted your mood, enhanced your focus, improved your sense of well being, and you may have gotten giddy and excited about things, possibly even euphoric.

I remember my first cup vividly – I was in the 10th grade and my teacher prepared us some cheap Folgers coffee. I had one 5 oz cup of very weak coffee. It was the last class of the day, and I left school laughing maniacally on the bus, and then promptly crashed a few hours later. Now what happens when you drink coffee? You may feel like a zombie prior and feel just “normal” afterwards, but certainly not euphoric or giddy. This is because your brain has adjusted to the extra dopamine by becoming less sensitive to it.

So whether this desensitization occurs through caffeine, other drugs or things like social media, it leaves you with a brain that is less sensitive to dopamine, the main neurotransmitter involved in pleasure, reward, and goal oriented behavior.

This doesn’t mean you should delete your Facebook account, it just means to practice some moderation. If you’re going to use social media, try to limit it to just checking once in the morning and once in the evening, avoid the mindless scrolling, and turn off the notifications from your phone so you’re not getting those constant pings and buzzes. Try a going a few days or a week without it – I promise you’ll be able to function just fine. If, while on your sabbatical, you find yourself constantly checking your phone, or wanting to, to see if you have any updates, you may need to be a bit more strict with your usage.

Remember, there’s a reverse side to everything. Some things leave you less sensitive to dopamine, which makes you less motivated and lead to experiencing less pleasure. But there are also ways to improve your sensitivity to dopamine, and thus increase your drive, motivation and the pleasure you’ll get out of life. If you’d like to know more, contact me.