When your mitochondria finish using electrons, the “used” electrons normally attach to oxygen molecules. However, extra electrons can flow to any electrical ground, including the earth itself. That’s why you feel more energized when you walk barefoot on grass or on the beach, and it’s why electrically earthing yourself can reduce inflammation, improve sleep, and fix jet lag.
try jumping for five to ten minutes every day. This will shake all of the water in your cells, which can increase your levels of EZ water. You’ll experience less inflammation, more mental clarity, and a big boost in energy. Nikola Tesla actually pioneered it in his laboratory about a hundred years ago. It’s a technology that works well, but most people just don’t know about it.
I expect cryotherapy to continue to grow in popularity around the world because it works so well. A positive side effect of cryotherapy is that it stimulates collagen synthesis in your skin, which means fewer wrinkles and skin that heals better. I’ve received a lot of comments about how my skin looks. The cold helps! And so does eating a lot of the collagen protein I created so that my body has the building blocks to grow healthy skin.
Daily
Any time of day
• Cold shower or facial ice bath * • deep breathing lying on your back * • Meaningful movement
In the Morning
• Get natural sunlight—at least ten minutes
In the Afternoon
• Get natural sunlight or violet light
• 1 teaspoon of honey
Once/Twice a Week
• HIIT-Back Exercise
Hack Your Sleep with Honey. Have up to 1 tablespoon of raw honey before bed on an empty stomach. Your brain uses liver glycogen (carb storage) at night, and raw honey replenishes this supply better than other carbs, so you can create stable glucose levels for hours. Stable glucose means happy mitochondria, as they are busy repairing at night. Many people take the honey with Brain Octane Oil so that your brain can burn glucose (from the honey) and fat (the ketones from the Brain Octane Oil) while you sleep for maximum efficiency.
Recommendation: Three to five times a week, move your body meaningfully but not super-strenuously, for twenty to forty minutes. Bonus points for doing it outdoors in the morning without sunglasses to get a full spectrum of natural light at the same time.
Every morning at the end of your shower, turn the water all the way to the coldest setting for the last thirty seconds. Stand there and let the cold water hit your body, especially your face and chest, which are two big activating areas for cold thermogenesis. Yeah, you’re not going to like this, especially during the winter. Sorry. But it’s only for two weeks, and you will like the amazing burst of energy you get as a result. If you don’t shower every day (hey, it’s none of my business) or if you want to take it up a notch, try sticking your face into a bowl or sink full of ice water for as long as you can stand it. At first, it may only be for ten seconds. That’s okay—you can work your way up. By the end of two weeks, you’ll be able to tolerate it for as long as you can hold your breath. This allows you to have intermittent hypoxia and cold thermogenesis at the same time! An easy way to do this is to fill a shallow pan or dish with water and put it in your freezer. When the water is frozen solid, take the pan out, add water on top of the ice, and stir it up to chill the water. Hold your breath and put your face into the pan until you can’t handle the discomfort from the cold anymore. While this is energizing, it’s also very relaxing. In fact, performing this trick before bed every night will drop your body temperature and help you fall asleep faster and sleep deeper. I noticed profound changes within a week when I started experimenting with this a few years ago.
To do a box breath, sit down in a comfortable chair with your feet on the floor and your hands in your lap, or do it in bed lying flat on your back. Close your eyes, close your mouth, and slowly breathe in through your nose as you count to four (or more). Hold your breath for another count of four (or the same number as your inhale), and then exhale through your mouth for an equal final count. Finish up by holding your lungs empty for the same count. Then repeat several times. You can watch a video tutorial at bulletproof.com/headstrong. An ujjayi breath is used in yoga, tai chi, and Taoism and is sometimes called an “ocean breath” because of the sound it makes. It’s hard to describe it in writing, but I’ll do my best—and you can visit bulletproof.com/headstrong to watch a video of a properly done ujjayi breath. Sitting comfortably, or lying down, breathe slowly and deeply through your nose, filling your abdomen first. Tighten your throat as you inhale, almost like you would if you were going to snore or snort. It should sound like the ocean in your ears. When your lungs are full, breathe out through your nose the same way, with a tightening of your sinus area to make the sound, as if you’re trying to fog up a mirror. Do either one of these breathing techniques for four minutes before bed, and you’ll sleep the relaxed sleep of a very tired baby.
Just taking a cold shower for one minute in the morning is often enough to stimulate cold thermogenesis. So is putting your face in ice water, which I should have stuck with longer. Your body will become less inflamed, your mitochondria will get stronger, and you might even lose some weight!
I encourage you to try cold therapy yourself, but before you do, let me offer a note of caution: safe cold thermogenesis protocols involve gradually increasing your exposure to cold over time. Start off by simply putting your face in cold water for a few minutes, then if you choose you can graduate to using soft-gel ice packs that won’t freeze your skin, and then sitting in an ice bath for up to an hour. You have to be very careful not to overwhelm your body too quickly, or cold thermogenesis backfires. In fact, traditional Chinese medicine mostly looks down on using cold like this because it can weaken you over time.
Wim Hof, who holds twenty Guinness World Records for withstanding extreme temperatures, has climbed Mount Everest and Mount Kilimanjaro in only shorts and shoes. Wim is best known as “the Iceman,” and you may have seen him on TV swimming among glaciers without a wet suit. He has developed a breathing technique that provides short bursts of oxygen to cells, training them to use oxygen more efficiently.
Here’s how to do it: First, sit down, get comfortable, and close your eyes. Make sure you’re in a position where you can freely expand your lungs. Wim suggests doing this practice right after waking up since your stomach is still empty. Warm up by inhaling deeply and drawing the breath in until you feel a slight pressure. Hold the breath for a moment before exhaling completely, pushing the air out as much as you can. Hold the exhalation for as long as you can, and then repeat this fifteen times.
Next, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth in short, powerful bursts, as if you’re blowing up a balloon. Pull in your belly when you’re exhaling and let it expand when you inhale. Do this about thirty times, using a steady pace, until you feel that your body is saturated with oxygen. You may feel light-headed or tingly, or you may experience a surge of energy that’s literally electric. Try to get a sense of which parts of your body are overflowing with energy and which ones are lacking it—and where there are blockages between these two extremes. As you continue breathing, send the breath to those blockages.
When you’re done, take one more big breath in, filling your lungs to maximum capacity, and then push all of the air out. Hold this for as long as you can and try to feel the oxygen spreading around your body. When you can’t hold it anymore, inhale fully and feel your chest expanding. Hold it again, sending energy where your body needs it.
as you are holding your lungs empty, count how many push-ups you can do before you have to breathe again. It seems impossible, but you can do it, and that short bit of low oxygen forces your body to better deal with lower-oxygen environments.
I recommend you research Wim’s work and watch one of his many videos online demonstrating his breathing technique. I don’t think it works as well as mechanically filtering oxygen out of the air you breathe, but the Wim Hof technique is absolutely free, totally portable, and Wim is capable of things I could never do! His breathing method helps your body adapt to bursts of oxygen and puts you more in tune with the way your body uses your breath to create energy. It also makes you more resilient to cold temperatures, but there is evidence that cold temperatures themselves are good for your mitochondria.
Subjecting your body to short periods of low oxygen intake can also help it become more efficient at using oxygen when it is present. Even more interesting, short periods of low oxygen intake (known as hypoxia) increase the production of the all-important brain hormone BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which helps support neuron growth and development.12 Improving your body’s oxygen delivery will energize your cells and make you more resilient in circumstances that limit your oxygen intake, such as travel, environmental changes, and stress. In other words, you can actually exercise your oxygen usage abilities. I do it regularly.
Boosting the body’s oxygen efficiency is an important way to adapt to our changing environment. We already don’t get as much oxygen just from breathing as our ancestors did because our atmosphere today contains a lot less oxygen than it did centuries ago.