Behaviors

Avoid alcohol during pregnancy due to fetal alcohol syndrome and other cognitive and physical malformation risks. Also probably avoid alcohol during puberty because alcohol, especially beer and other grain alcohols, can increase estrogenic activity and disrupt hormonal development in both boys and girls.

Log whether you feel high energy/unpleasant, high energy/pleasant, low energy/unpleasant, or low energy/pleasant, then choose the closest emotion word and note what you're doing.

Chew food more thoroughly to improve digestion.

Cool the face during endurance work, between rounds or halftime, during training, or after training to dump heat and improve recovery. Methods mentioned include splashing cold water on the face, holding a damp cool cloth on the face, or briefly applying an ice pack or cool face mask without leaving it on long enough to trigger vasoconstriction.

Make sure iodine intake is sufficient to support healthy thyroid hormone levels, especially if following restrictive or very clean diets; if purely plant-based and eating lots of cruciferous vegetables, pay extra attention because cruciferous vegetables may increase iodine need.

Make sure L-tyrosine intake is sufficient to support healthy thyroid hormone levels.

Exercise can markedly increase growth hormone release during waking and the following night, especially with weight training or endurance training lasting about 60 minutes. Use about 10 minutes of warm-up, train close to but not to absolute failure, avoid eating too close to exercise and sugary sports drinks during exercise, and cool body temperature back down relatively quickly afterward; women may see the biggest peak in the first 30 minutes of resistance exercise, while men may peak around 60 minutes total.

Some people take arginine before bedtime to increase growth hormone, provided blood glucose is low; taking arginine before exercise does not stack with exercise for larger growth hormone increases and may clamp the effect to what either one alone would produce.

When learning a skill, work for a defined time block such as 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour, and aim for maximal or near-maximal density of safe repetitions and safe failures. If time-limited, 10 minutes of maximum-focus, maximum-repetition practice is preferable to longer unfocused practice.

After skill practice or training, do nothing for a brief period so the brain can replay and consolidate the motor sequence. Ideally sit or lie quietly with eyes closed for about 5–10 minutes, though even 1 minute can help; avoid new sensory input, social media, email, conversation, or shifting to other learning tasks.

Once somewhat familiar with the movement and occasionally performing it well, deliberately cue attention to one specific aspect of the movement and keep attention on that one thing consistently throughout the session; as skill deepens, focusing purely on the motor execution itself can be beneficial.

Use ultra-slow or slow-motion practice only after some proficiency has been gained. It is suggested to become beneficial once success reaches about 25–30%, rather than when success is only 5–10%.

Keep insulin levels relatively low if the goal is body fat reduction and fat oxidation.

Use sufficiently intense exercise to reach the muscular burn/lactate threshold for roughly 10% of workouts or about 10% of an individual workout; intended to generate lactate signaling that benefits brain, heart, and liver. When the burn appears, focus on deep inhales to bring in more oxygen and do not hold your breath.

Use Alcoholics Anonymous as a recovery structure; the guest explicitly endorses becoming highly engaged with AA rather than avoiding it because it feels cult-like.

Especially if susceptible to depression or during hormonal transitions, talk to a doctor and get blood work that includes measures of thyroid hormone and cortisol hormone.

If the goal is to reduce perceived pain, provide advance warning roughly 20 to 40 seconds before the painful stimulus; 2 seconds is too short and 2 minutes is too long.

For anorexia, teach the individual what leads up to the habit, including awareness of internal state cues such as quickening heart rate and hyper-focused attention, so they can notice and intervene before the reflexive food-avoidance habit executes.

For anorexia, involve the family in treatment so they understand the biology and psychology, stop condemning the individual, and support habit change and neuroplasticity over time.

Do not diagnose yourself or others based on discussed symptoms; ADHD diagnosis should be carried out by a psychiatrist, physician, or very well-trained clinical psychologist.

Use open monitoring rather than over-focusing; access it by consciously dilating your gaze into panoramic vision to improve detection of multiple targets and reduce attentional blinks. Works immediately and can be practiced whether or not you have ADHD.

Before visual focus training or other sit-still tasks, do physical movements or allow recess-like activity to reduce the urge to move and improve subsequent ability to sit still and focus.

Reduce constant switching between streams of information, especially on smartphones, because it diminishes capacity for meaningful work. For adolescents, keep smartphone use under 60 minutes per day; for adults, about two hours per day or less is suggested as the upper limit before severe attentional deficits are likely.

Do not touch or wipe your eyes after touching other people or other surfaces, because the eyes are a primary entry point for bacteria and viruses.

For people whose hormone health does not do well with time-restricted feeding, eating more meals spread throughout the day, presumably smaller meals with the same caloric intake, may be more beneficial.

Write down the things you are grateful for and then spend a moment thinking about or feeling into them. This common gratitude practice may be slightly more effective if preceded by increased autonomic arousal.

Center the practice on receiving genuine, wholehearted thanks rather than only expressing gratitude, because receiving gratitude appears especially potent for activating gratitude-related prefrontal circuits. A useful version is to recall a time when someone sincerely thanked you and focus on how it felt.

If working in the middle of the night, keep light only as bright as needed to do the work in order to avoid suppressing melatonin and shifting circadian rhythm. If you must stay awake all night and are struggling to remain awake, turn on as many bright lights as possible despite the circadian tradeoff.

Do creative, abstract, brainstorming work in a room with a higher ceiling, ideally during phase two of the day, or outdoors on a deck or patio to leverage an expansive visual environment.

Do detailed analytic work in a lower-ceiling environment, even if done later in the day.