All protocols

Use an old-fashioned bathroom or floor scale as a makeshift hand-grip test by squeezing it with both hands and reading the output. Track the number against your own baseline over time to gauge recovery and overall grip strength. It’s a cheap, simple proxy for monitoring fatigue or improvement when you don’t have a dedicated dynamometer.

Use muscle soreness as a simple local recovery check before training the same area again. If a muscle is still notably sore—especially around 6/10 or higher—avoid hard retraining it that day and give it more time to recover. This helps prevent piling stress onto tissue that has not fully bounced back.

Treat social media as a planned, bounded activity rather than an always-on habit. Add friction before opening apps, decide ahead of time how long you’ll spend, and use it only at designated times or on a separate device if needed. This reduces reflexive scrolling and helps keep social media in the role of a tool for connection instead of a constant drain on attention.

Work with a clinician to start at the lowest effective dose of ADHD medication and increase only as needed while monitoring benefits and side effects. The goal is to find the smallest amount that still provides adequate symptom control, which can reduce adverse effects and allow dosing to be adjusted downward over time as needs change.

A trauma-processing technique done with a clinician while recalling a distressing memory and moving the eyes horizontally back and forth, typically for 30 to 60 seconds at a time. The side-to-side eye movements are used to help reduce the emotional intensity of the memory and support desensitization during exposure to the traumatic narrative.

Begin with behavior-based strategies before moving to nutrition, supplements, or medications. The idea is to use repeated actions and routines as the first-line intervention because they can build lasting neuroplastic changes and improve focus and motivation systems over time.

Use Ritalin only if it has already been prescribed by a board-certified physician, and pay attention to when you take it relative to studying or learning. The key protocol is to match dosing to the drug’s duration of action and whether you want the effect to support learning before, during, or after the material, so the cognitive boost lines up with the task instead of wearing off at the wrong time.

A boron supplement protocol used to help regulate sex hormone-binding globulin, with the effect described as mostly acute. A common approach is 3 to 6 mg once or twice daily, and some suggest cycling it rather than taking it continuously. The appeal is its potential to shift SHBG and thereby influence free hormone availability.

Train hard enough to create a useful stimulus, but keep soreness in the mild range so it does not interfere with later sessions or force missed workouts. A practical rule is to spend most of your time around 3/10 soreness and continue training through light soreness when needed. This preserves training frequency and consistency, which matter more for progress than chasing a sore feeling.

For hypertrophy, give a worked muscle about 2 to 3 days before training it hard again, with roughly 72 hours often cited as the sweet spot. This spacing lets protein synthesis and tissue repair progress enough to support growth while avoiding excessive overlap from training the same muscle too soon.

During strength, speed, or power training, try to move each rep as explosively as possible rather than just completing the lift. Even if the bar or implement does not actually move faster, that high-intent effort improves neural drive and helps develop strength and speed more effectively than casual execution.

A short-term in-the-moment tactic for when a distressing or trauma-related thought is keeping you from functioning, especially at bedtime. The protocol is to deliberately set the thought aside for the moment rather than engage with it, so you can stay present and get through the immediate task, such as falling asleep. It works as a temporary containment strategy, reducing mental overload until you can address the issue later.

A therapist-guided cognitive behavioral treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder that repeatedly exposes a person to feared thoughts, images, or situations while preventing the usual compulsion or ritual. The protocol often starts with identifying the core fear behind the obsession and then gradually confronting triggers, sometimes with a replacement behavior to help ride out the urge. Over time, this reduces anxiety and compulsive responding so the person can function more normally.

A small piece of medical tape is placed over the lips before sleep to keep the mouth closed. The goal is to train or encourage nasal breathing overnight, which may help reduce mouth breathing during sleep and support more consistent airflow through the nose.

This practice is to avoid very large meals, especially when you need to stay sharp during the day. Big meals can shift the body toward digestion, pulling blood and resources toward the gut and away from the brain, which often makes you sleepy and less focused afterward.

If future fertility matters, avoid starting exogenous testosterone until after you’re done having children. Testosterone can suppress LH and FSH, shutting down sperm production and sometimes making recovery slow or incomplete; if treatment is needed, consider fertility-preserving alternatives and bank sperm first when appropriate.

A simple mindfulness practice where you move attention systematically from the head down through the body, noticing sensations, breathing into each area, and consciously releasing tension. It can be done sitting or lying down, often by focusing on the body’s contact with the surface beneath you. This steady attention helps calm the nervous system and has been shown to significantly reduce cravings.

A meditation practice done while walking with the eyes open, using movement and external sensory input as the focus instead of a seated inward scan. It’s especially useful when you want a more exteroceptive, grounded form of mindfulness that can feel easier to sustain than still meditation. The added motion can make attention training more accessible while keeping you engaged with your surroundings.

Wear a wool sauna hat, cap, or even a towel over your head while sitting in the sauna to insulate the scalp from direct heat. By reducing how strongly the heat registers at the head, it can make the sauna feel more tolerable and help you stay in longer at higher temperatures.

A trauma-focused psychotherapy protocol that uses MDMA only in a legal, supervised clinical setting alongside talk therapy. The typical approach includes preparation sessions before dosing and integration afterward, with careful attention to dose, frequency, and drug purity. The goal is to reduce fear and defensiveness so patients can revisit traumatic memories and form new, healthier associations.

Use a soft-bristled toothbrush rather than medium or hard bristles when brushing. The gentler bristles reduce trauma at the tooth-gum interface, helping prevent gum recession, pocketing, and the small spaces where bacteria can collect.

Use heavy curtains or shades to make the bedroom as dark as possible during sleep, especially in bright or seasonal-light environments. The goal is to eliminate even small amounts of light that can disrupt sleep quality and make it harder to stay asleep.

Estrogen therapy for women in perimenopause or after menopause, typically discussed with a clinician and started early when appropriate. The common protocol emphasis is timing: benefits appear strongest when begun around ages 50–59 or within about 10 years of menopause, and it is often used to relieve hot flashes. It may also help preserve cognition and support skin, with possible cardiovascular benefit when started in that earlier window.

Use bone broth, especially beef or chicken broth, as a collagen-rich food to support skin collagen and a more youthful appearance. It can be taken on its own or used alongside collagen protein, since it provides collagen and some protein from animal connective tissue.

Use a 21-day habit acquisition period as a structured program for new habits. Write down six habits you would like to do every day for 21 days, expect to complete only 4–5 per day, do not compensate for missed days by doing extra the next day, and think in 2-day chunks with a reset every two days.

If you want to remember a person, object, or scene better, deliberately capture it either by taking a photo or by taking a mental snapshot—often by deciding to 'snap' the scene with your mind, sometimes with a blink. Pay attention while framing or observing it. You do not need to review the photo later for the memory benefit. Mental snapshotting can improve visual memory but may reduce memory for concurrent auditory information.

Focused work can be done either fasted or fed depending on what works for you. Fasted states can be great for focus if hunger is not distracting; fed states can also support focus if you do not overeat.

Start with nutritional testing as part of precision medicine phenotyping; use a combination of blood and urine to assess micronutrient gaps relevant to hormone production, including antioxidants, B vitamins, glutathione, and magnesium.

If social media scrolling is the issue, delete the apps from your phone and reinstall only when needed. Using a delete-and-reinstall strategy, potentially once or twice per day, creates enough friction and behavioral barrier to reduce compulsive use.

Huberman described placing a red/near-infrared light next to a 10,000 lux light in the morning for added energy, mood, and focus benefits.