Brain Biohacking. Part 3 - Reviews, Self-development

• Brain biohacking. Proven plan to maximize your brain pumping in two weeks
• Dave Asprey
• Mann, Ivanov and? Ferber. Moscow, 2018

Publishing excerpts from Dave Asprey's book

Brain biohacking

Brain work in light, fresh air and frost

Biohacking is the art of changing the environment outside and inside a person in order to achieve complete control over the body (and the brain). One of the most important environmental factors is one that you hardly pay much attention to. This is the light. Research shows that light is critical in transmitting signals to mitochondria. Light feeds them, tells them what to do and when - different light frequencies send different signals to mitochondria. Light has been used in medicine for hundreds of years, so we can say that it is also a medicine

The human eye contains many mitochondria, so the eyes are very sensitive to anything that can interfere with the mitochondria's energy production. And light of a certain frequency is one such factor.

Read also:

• Brain biohacking. Part 1
• Brain biohacking. Part 2

Now you are probably thinking: “Why do eyes need so many mitochondria? They are so small! " The answer is simple: it's all about the income and expenditure of energy. Processing visual information consumes up to 15 percent of our energy budget. And if the flow of energy to the mitochondria in the eyes is unstable or the mitochondria in general do not work well, this can lead to blurred consciousness, headaches, and even a loss of the ability to perceive subtle shades of gray. Changes in the perception of shades of gray (there are actually more than fifty) can be used to find out how exposed you are to mitochondrial toxins.

At every moment, our eyes perceive a huge amount of information about the world around us, and the brain needs a lot of energy to process it. When the eyes are forced to operate in an unnatural spectrum of light, mitochondria are stressed, energy production slows down, and more free radicals are released. As a result, it is more difficult for the brain to process the visual information that the eyes receive. This can be a big performance hit. In addition, mitochondria communicate with each other, so the stress mitochondria in the eyes experience can weaken mitochondria in the brain, heart, and in the body in general. Fortunately, in most cases we can control the type of lighting in our environment.

Trash light is just as harmful as fast food

Today we are exposed to more unnatural light than ever before. Let's call it trash light. Once we inadvertently ruined our health by playing with nature and transforming food into fast food. Now we spoil our health by altering natural light sources and creating trashy light. Mitochondria do not tolerate it well, because they evolved in a different light.

Our cells and mitochondria need sunlight. But in an understandable desire to conserve electricity, we, unfortunately, created a combination of optical frequencies of artificial light, which our bodies do not recognize. We removed the infrared radiation needed by most living things, including the mitochondria.

In the last thirty years, we have begun to completely avoid ultraviolet A and B rays (UVA and UVB rays), which has not happened before in human history. But they affect our biology. We block this part of the spectrum with the ubiquitous filter glasses - in cars, in sunglasses. We protect the skin from it with creams. As a result, our entire body suffers, because the eyes are not the only organ that perceives light. The skin also absorbs light, saturating cells and mitochondria with it. Our great-grandfathers did not have special glasses, they wore sunglasses less often, did not use protective creams, while they were less likely to develop skin cancer, and their mitochondria were better than ours.

Yes, there are good reasons to filter out some of the UVA and UVB rays. This is a very strong light, and it makes sense to worry about its relationship to cancer. The result of strong exposure to ultraviolet radiation on the skin can result in sunburn, and on the eyes - their irreversible damage.

It would seem that since too much ultraviolet radiation is harmful, then we should completely avoid it, which is what we did. But it turned out that the body needs ultraviolet rays to function properly. Ultraviolet B rays activate the production of vitamin D and help balance your circadian rhythm, the physiological process by which you know when to sleep and when to wake up. Dr. Stephanie Seneff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explained to me that ultraviolet B rays convert vitamin D to its activated, sulfate form. So it's not enough just to buy vitamins for yourself, they need to be activated, and for this to be under real sunlight (or under a high-quality ultraviolet lamp).

New artificial light sources such as white light-emitting diode (LED) and compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) do not create the light our bodies and brains need. Artificial lighting has robbed us of most of the infrared, red and violet spectra that are present in natural sunlight. At the same time, we increased the blue part of the spectrum to the limit, but we are not able to transfer it (more on this in more detail a little later). Humanity has done a great job in creating energy-efficient lighting, but the same innovations have created an energy crisis in our mitochondria.

This is garbage light. We got rid of some of the biologically important parts of the spectrum to conserve energy, and we increased the light, which causes stress in the body.

There is much more blue light in fluorescent lighting than in incandescent or sunlight. This is why no one on Earth likes to live under fluorescent lighting. The new white LED bulbs that have flooded our cities and homes appear white, but they emit five times more blue light than natural light, and are devoid of infrared and red spectrum altogether.

To process blue light, mitochondria spend a lot of excess energy, which burns oxygen and provokes the release of free radicals in the cells of the eyes. Recent studies have shown a link between blue light and cell damage. For example, in 2005 it was found that blue light "is capable of provoking cell dysfunction due to the release of reactive oxygen species in DNA, which causes aging of cells, provokes the appearance of pathologies associated with aging, and oncogenesis [the formation of tumors]" 113. Another study showed that blue light alters the shape of mitochondria and causes the formation of stress proteins in the eyes, which appear to be associated with macular degeneration (damage to the central part of the retina, which often leads to loss of vision).

Macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in developed countries. It affects more than a third of people over seventy-five years old, including my father. This side effect of garbage lighting seems especially daunting to me. I am confident that a vast and unprecedented change in indoor lighting and mobile screens could trigger a huge wave of macular degenerative changes at a much earlier age than now.

Modern lighting designers have not given much thought to the biological implications of replacing street and home lighting with LEDs. They were faced with the goal of ensuring the durability of lamps and saving electricity, for the sake of which they had to abandon more expensive incandescent lamps, and humanity had to pay for it with health.

Many people think they get enough sleep if they go to bed at eleven and get up at seven. That's eight hours of sleep, right? So why aren't they overwhelmed with energy? Because the main thing is the quality of sleep, not the quantity. Exposure to artificial light after sunset slows down melatonin production, prevents you from getting quality sleep, and also contributes to weight gain. Sleep deprivation and weight gain work together to inhibit mitochondrial performance. Well, if there is no energy - the brain is bad. Simply put, trash light is equal to trash sleep.

There are two ways to limit the harmful effects of trash light, which I'll cover in detail in the next parts of this chapter. The first is to reduce your exposure to blue light. The second is to increase exposure to high quality light sources to compensate for the excess blue spectrum. Sunlight is best suited for this purpose

If you spend all day in the office under trashy lights, I recommend that you purchase inexpensive red LEDs, switch to halogen lamps if possible, and try to go out during the day. Remember, the skin must be directly exposed to light, so at least roll up your sleeves. Another way to increase your exposure to beneficial light is to use an infrared sauna.