Head Strong

That’s from chapter #1: “Your Brain on Energy” in which Asprey establishes the fact that our brains are THE largest consumers of energy in our entire body.

Our brains use 20% (!!!) of the total energy supply.

Therefore, if you want to Optimize the speed and effectiveness with which your brain operates, you need to Optimize your overall energy. Specifically, you want to pay attention to your source of your energy, your mitochondria. (Which we’ll talk about more in a moment.)

The #1 way to do that?

Eliminate the stuff that’s diminishing your energy.

Asprey calls them “kryptonites.” (Which we’ll talk about more in a moment as well.)

For now, take a nice, deep breath into your belly through your nose, hold for just a moment and let the air out with an even nicer, slightly longer deep breath out.

Thank your brain for all the work it does day in and day out to make you awesome.

Now, let’s do our brains a favor and learn a little more about how to help it shine!

Kryptonite.

A big chunk of it will stop Superman or Superwoman right in his or her tracks.

But you know what’s even more pernicious?

It’s not the kryptonite chunks. It’s the kryptonite DUST.

At least you know when you’ve been hit by the chunk and you can avoid it and recover. But the dust is so subtle that you just slowly lose a bit more energy over time until all your power’s sapped and you don’t know what hit you. You just assume that this depleted state is the new normal, the effects of getting old, etc.

Kryptonite DUST. That’s what we need to be on the look out for.

Before we look at the dust in your life, let’s connect this to a parallel in The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Recall that those guys tell us we need to 1. Know our Wildly Important Goal (what really (!) fires us up) then 2. Know our Lead Measure (what we need to do to hit that goal) then 3. Keep score on whether or not we’re rocking our Lead then 4. Keep on keeping score.

They tell us that the biggest obstacles to their 4DX aren’t big scary dragons swooping in and destroying everything. It’s the GNATS we need to worry about. The tiny little cloud of gnats that hover around and nibble at us all day every day in the “whirlwind” of our everyday lives.

Any ONE gnat bite isn’t going to do much. But when you aggregate all those nibbles over time what do you get? Well, what you DON’T get is you achieving your Wildly Important Goal. We get a version of you that’s run down and burned out from all those loops on the hamster wheel of being BUSY but not EFFECTIVE.

Guess what… Our gnats? That’s Asprey’s kryptonite dust.

It’s those tiny little, “This can’t be THAT bad for me!” stuff we do all day every day that IS that bad for us when you add it all up.

So…

What’s on your list of kryptonite dust?

Seriously. Take a moment right now and make a note of three little habits you have that you know aren’t serving you.

1. ____________________
2. ____________________
3. ____________________

Pull off your cape for a moment. Time to do some dusting.

Mitochondria.

The last time you thought about them might have been in your high school biology class. It’s time to dust off those books and shine a new spotlight on these (literal) POWERHOUSES.

First, let’s do the math here. We have TRILLIONS of cells in the human body. Experts say somewhere between 15 trillion and 70 trillion. Let’s go with the Smithsonian Institution and say we have 37.2 trillion cells in our body.

(Try to wrap your brain around that for a second… Good luck with that!)

Now, look inside those 37 trillion cells and observe the fact that EVERY SINGLE ONE of those cells has hundreds to thousands of little energy powerhouses known as mitochondria. Add that up and you get over a quadrillion mitochondria organelles in your body.

A QUADRILLION. As in, a 1 followed by 15 zeroes

1,000,000,000,000,000.

A QUADRILLION. That’s a lot.

btw: The primary food for the primary source of your energy? OXYGEN. Which is why breathing well is so important. Check out the Breathing Wisdom Pack for more.

btw2: Another essential energy source for your mitochondria? What you eat. Asprey tells us that our brains can create new neurons (neurogenesis) and he says: “Sugar is the enemy of neurogenesis.” Check out our Notes on The Bulletproof Diet and the Nutrition Wisdom Pack for more.

btw3: You know what else nearly all of those trillions of cells have in common? They’re influenced by your movement (or lack their of).

Here’s how Katy Bowman puts it in Movement Matters: “Movement, just like the cell wall, the mitochondria, the cytoskeleton, and the nucleus, is a part of every working cell. Cells don’t work without movement, and you aren’t fully operational without all of your cells working well. The movement of a part today is what affords it the ability to move tomorrow.”

Check out the Movement Wisdom Pack for more.

btw4: You know when your mitochondria do their best house cleaning? When you’re sleeping. Check out the Sleeping Wisdom Pack for more.

Eat. Move. Sleep. Breathe.

Yah. I knew there was a good reason we spend so much time focused on the fundamentals. We have a QUADRILLION little friends inside our bodies counting on us!

P.S. Here’s how David Perlmutter and Alberto Villoldo talk about mitochondria in Power Up Your Brain: “Intricately linked to the ability of the prefrontal cortex to come fully online are the mitochondria—the powerhouses of your cells and the feminine life force referred to by shamans. Mitochondria are the conductors of the genetic orchestra that regulate how every cell ages, divides, and dies. They wave the baton that helps dictate which genes are switched on and which are switched off in every one of our cells. And they provide the fuel for establishing new neural networks. And all of the mitochondrial DNA in your body is solely inherited from your mother’s lineage. That means that the source of energy that sustains your life is derived exclusively from the women in your family tree—your matrilineage.”

First, for curious souls: Here’s that interview with Dr. Gerald Pollack.

EZ water.

Exclusion Zone. You know, that spot right between a liquid and a gas? (Laughing. Yah. I’m trying to wrap my brain around that, too. Both a) What it is and b) How someone discovered it.)

In any case, without needing to know the precise details of its underlying biomechanics, we can appreciate its importance and do some little things to Optimize that substance through which microtubules appear to do their work of shuttling mitochondria around in neurons.

A few things here.

First, in his book Effortless Healing, Dr. Mercola tells us that the #1 thing we can do to Optimize our health is to drink good water. Although I don’t recall him mentioning EZ water in the book, here’s what he has to say: “About two thirds of your body is made up of water—your cells, organs, muscles, and even your brain are approximately 70 percent water. The water in your body is the main delivery system for nutrients and oxygen, as well as the power behind its waste removal system. If there isn’t enough water to flush away your toxic wastes, they will damage your body. Water also aids in energy production and keeps your joints lubricated. Water is absolutely imperative for your body to function. Go without food, and you’ll last several weeks. Go without water, however, and you’ll die within a few days. Clearly, water is something you need plenty of to function, especially since every day your body loses water through urine and sweat.

One of the most exciting aspects of this principle is that if you get the fluid/water replacement issue right, then you have taken one of the most important and powerful steps you can in owning your health. This is not an overstatement. You simply must have a high-quality source of water, or you will never achieve the health you seek. This applies to not only the water you drink but to the water you use while bathing.”

As a family of Professional Optimizers, that led us to install a house-wide water filtration system. Remember: Water isn’t just important when it comes to what you DRINK. Your skin is your largest organ and the water you shower with is absorbed by your skin into your cells. So, at the very least, get a simple water filter for your shower head!

Part two of being Professional Optimizers: We also recently upgraded our infrared sauna and I’ve been installing my new habit of sitting in it for 30 minutes at the end of my day—right after shut-down complete and right before family time. It’s been amazing for transition time and, according to Ben Greenfield (we got the sauna he has), science says it’s epic in many ways. Here’s his post for more: Ten Scientifically Proven Reasons I Am Addicted To A Daily Sauna.

Mundane things we can do? Get out in the sun for at least a few minutes per day and move your body. (Do so together for bonus points.)

As Navy SEAL’s like to say (and Evan and I said during our recent Spartan Beast): “Easy day!”

In this case: “EZ day!” :)

Junk light?

Yah. Junk light. Just like you don’t eat junk food all day if you want to Optimize, it’s time to eliminate some of the junk light in our lives.

Q: You ever wonder why you feel so bad when you spend all day under fluorescent lights?

Here’s some insight: “One of the biggest problems with junk light sources is how much blue light they emit. Fluorescent lights emit substantially more blue light and less infrared light than incandescent bulbs or sunlight, which is why no one on Earth loves to be in a flourescent-lit environment.”

And: “Your mitochondria have to produce a lot of extra energy to process the blue light in LEDs, which burns oxygen and creates free radicals in the cells of your eyes. And when the mitochondria in your eyes are stressed, the rest of your mitochondria can get stressed, too, including the ones in your brain.”

So… What kind of light are YOU under right now? Me? Just the natural daylight coming in through the office window. And… The light from my computer. On that note: Have you installed f.lux on your computer yet? Most people use it to reduce the blue-light frequencies coming at them from their computers at night (which is a great idea) but I have it on “night mode” all day every day (and I never turn it on past sunset). Reduce the blue light!

And… What about your phone? Have you used the handy-dandy feature to go into night mode there as well? If not, get on that. And, if you’re feeling super fired up to reduce the junk light in your life, schedule your night mode to go from 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM every day. :)

That, my friends, is a super quick look at how to get Head Strong. Here’s to Optimizing our QUADRILLION mitochondria as we eat, move, sleep, and breathe our way to awesome!