Brain Biohacking. Part 1 - 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

Imagine that your mind is clear, your thinking is sharp, and at the same time you manage to do much more. The most difficult things are easy for you. You are 100% confident in your intelligence and don't feel like the dumbest in the room. Don't worry about forgetting something important. You are no longer aware of mood swings, fits of anger, and you are not drawn to sweets during the day. Have you presented? It's real

In this book you will find an effective body pumping program. You will learn what foods should be in your diet and what should be avoided, what types of physical activity should be added to your daily routine, how to organize your workspace, and also about supplements, home and body detox, meditation and breathing practices to allow the brain to do everything to earn 100% in two weeks.

The Brain Biohacking Program is designed for those who want to achieve more, who want to learn how to reach their full potential in order to do what they love better and with less effort, who want to gain an advantage in life, enjoy the fruits of their labor more and sweat less. If you're ready to make a little change to get your brain working at full capacity, this book is for you!

Of course, you want your brain to be healthy. Everyone wants. But what if you need more? What if your task is to have not just a healthy, but a super-productive brain that can work better and longer than nature intended?

Alzheimer's and other degenerative diseases are on the march today, so issues related to brain health are widely discussed. Our friendly doctors advise us to do crossword puzzles and dance to help keep our brains healthy. This is all good and correct. But there is something very important that is overlooked in all these discussions: long before the brain starts to fail, it does not work well.

Let me explain. When I first went to the doctors many years ago and said that I wanted to improve my mental performance, they assured me that my brain was completely healthy, wrote off chronic fatigue and inability to focus on stress, and sent me home. But what is the point of having a "healthy" brain if it doesn't work as it should? Would you like to drive a car with an engine running at half power?

Much of the discussion on brain health revolves around the idea that our mental ability depends on how good our brains are when we are born. That is, either you are initially smart, focused and have a good memory and the ability to quickly absorb new information, or not.

This was considered for a long time, until the end of the 20th century, scientists discovered neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to grow new cells and create new connections between neurons throughout life. Until then, researchers believed that the brain was unchanged until the degenerative processes caused by aging began. And today you can still find medical practitioners who were taught similar things in medical universities!

Everything, really everything happens in your head. How well your brain produces energy determines how you deal with your conscious and subconscious impulses, desires, aspirations, decisions. Your brain is running the operating system on which your life depends, and it's time to make a big upgrade

Brain energy

Let's take a smartphone, for example. When you first got it out of the box, it worked fast and flawlessly, didn't it? I kept the charge for a long time. He performed all tasks as efficiently as possible. And then you started installing applications, filling your memory with pictures and videos. The operating system began to slow down and stopped working as it did in the beginning. Response delays occur and the battery runs out quickly.

The situation is similar with the brain, only it is not packed with selfies and videos with cats. The brain is drained by the wrong diet and elements in the environment that do not belong there. When people think of toxins, various poisons come to mind first. Of course, there are a number of toxic substances that have a detrimental effect on the brain: neurotoxins destroy or damage its cells and reduce the body's ability to produce energy.

But there are other less discussed elements that I like to call brain kryptonite. It's not just chemicals. Kryptonite is anything that pulls needed energy from the brain and directs it to other parts of the body. Certain types of food, substances in the environment, types of lighting, and even some types of exercise can weaken it. Kryptonite for the brain does not kill you - at least not immediately - it slowly and imperceptibly burns your energy.

The brain requires a lot of energy to function properly: it consumes up to 20 percent of the energy produced by the body. It spends more than any other organ in the entire body! So where does he get this energy from? It is produced by our body. Almost all cells of the body contain at least a few hundred small descendants of an ancient bacterium called mitochondria. The energy that feeds us is produced in these mitochondria, and you will be surprised to know how important they are for quality of life. If your mitochondria stop producing energy for even a few seconds, you will die. The number, efficiency and strength of mitochondria determine not only whether you get cancer or degenerative disease, but also how much energy your brain receives at any given moment. Who would have thought,that these tiny organelles (intracellular organs) are the key to how the brain works?

The body produces energy remarkably efficiently and delivers it exactly where it is needed, but any cell in the body can only store energy for a few seconds at a given time. The body constantly reproduces energy as needed, and it is not known where it will be needed at each subsequent moment. When you go to an interview, the cells don't know in advance that there will be bright artificial lighting in the office, which will begin to draw out mitochondrial energy. All of a sudden, your brain has to spend some of the energy available to it to filter out this extra light, and you start stumbling in the middle of a sentence and painfully choosing words. Mitochondria are not keeping up with the energy needs of your brain.

Luckily for you, the prefrontal cortex - the “commanding” part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions - is the most densely filled with mitochondria of any other part of the body (with the exception of the ovaries). This means that your mitochondria devote more energy to your brain than to your heart, lungs, or legs. The brain is the first to capture energy from the mitochondria, with the eyes and heart next in line.

If your body is struggling with brain toxins or kryptonite, or if it is not producing and transporting energy efficiently, the body's need for energy may exceed its production. In these cases, the process of "depletion" of mitochondrial energy begins in different parts of the body. The first symptom that your mitochondria are overstressed is fatigue. Fatigue is a merciless productivity killer. It provokes addictions, mood swings, confusion, forgetfulness and lack of concentration. Yes, most of the things you hate about yourself can be due to brain fatigue. This is not a question of your moral character. This is an energy delivery problem. If you had unlimited energy, you wouldn't have to try to be a good person. And you can learn how to be one, effortlessly,because you would have done so if nothing had stopped you.

Your body has to generate extra energy to flush out toxins. This means that if toxins take energy away from you, your body becomes less and less efficient at processing and removing them, and you have to spend even more energy to get rid of them. This is a vicious circle that can destroy your productivity if you don't break it.

Of course, this does not happen immediately, and this is good, because if it were not so, you would die. (Some fast-acting poisons, such as cyanide, quickly shut down mitochondria.) The daily energy drain we deal with is a classic death from a thousand cuts. We live in an increasingly toxic world and most of us eat toxic food. Our lifestyles (including the same technologies that made us so effective) also drain our cellular energy reserves. Each of these terms takes a little energy from the brain and from life.

To be continued