All protocols

Use a red bulb or very dim red nightlight in bedrooms and other evening spaces instead of bright white or blue-rich lighting, especially in the last hour before bed. The goal is to minimize blue-light exposure and reduce disruption to circadian signaling and nighttime cortisol, which can make it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Wait about 90 to 120 minutes after waking before having your first caffeine dose, especially on non-training days or if you tend to get an afternoon energy crash. This timing is meant to let the natural morning cortisol/adrenal wake-up process unfold and to reduce the later dip in alertness, while also helping some people preserve better nighttime sleep.

A carbohydrate-restricted diet used specifically to push the body into ketosis, often with blood ketones monitored to confirm the effect. In the mental-health use case, the protocol aims for measurable ketone levels rather than just “eating low carb,” because ketosis is thought to provide a stronger therapeutic metabolic shift for mood and related symptoms.

A structured, language-based form of cognitive behavioral therapy that asks you to recount difficult experiences in full detail, including internal feelings and memories before, during, and after the event. By identifying the thoughts and stories attached to the experience and then reshaping them, it helps reduce fear responses, process trauma, and replace self-defeating narratives with more workable ones.

Breathe through the nose by default during rest and sleep, and use it as the preferred pattern whenever you are not speaking or eating. The practice is often trained deliberately during the day, including during easy exercise, to make nasal breathing more automatic. It can help keep the mouth from drying out, support oral health, and encourage a calmer, more efficient breathing pattern.

Choose a schedule you can do consistently and perform it as many days and weeks of the year as possible; aim to complete roughly 85% to 95% of workouts on average.

A seated or lying-down meditation that repeatedly returns attention to a single anchor, most often the breath, but sometimes a body sensation or a point behind the forehead/third eye. A typical version is about 13–17 minutes daily, with brief focused sessions also used before learning. It’s recommended for improving concentration, persistence, choice selection, and overall mood, and may be especially helpful for attention difficulties.

A regular yoga practice used as a simple, accessible way to downshift stress and regulate the body. The emphasis is on easy poses and breath-led movement that can be done when running or other intense exercise feels like too much. It helps people breathe through heightened emotion, lower arousal, and create a sense of calm, synchronization, and even transcendence.

Build a habit of walking every day, with a practical target of roughly 7,000 to 10,000 steps or about 30 minutes at a reasonable pace. The main value is that even people starting from very low activity can get major health gains from a modest increase in steps, and walking also serves as an easy way to improve mood, decompress, and support overall physical health.

A daily oral saffron supplement, typically around 30 mg, used as an anxiolytic. It’s been supported by multiple human studies, including double-blind trials in both men and women, and is associated with lower scores on standard anxiety measures such as the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale.

Shift most food intake into the earlier part of the day, and pair it with light exposure and exercise when possible. Eating earlier tends to move your body clock earlier, which can make you feel sleepy and wake earlier the next day, while late-night eating pushes your rhythm later.

Wear a glucose sensor on the arm that measures blood sugar about every 5 minutes, typically for around 14 days per device and often used for a short learning phase of roughly 30 days. It helps you see how specific foods, sleep, stress, and other behaviors affect your glucose in real time, so you can identify your personal spike triggers and make more effective behavior changes.

Use deliberate heat exposure to build heat tolerance and improve sweating capacity. Start conservatively—about 15 minutes total, or 3 x 5-minute bouts with breaks if you’re poorly acclimated—then progress toward 30 to 45 minutes as tolerated, ideally beginning weeks before an event rather than in the final days. The goal is to gradually adapt the body’s thermoregulation and trigger protective heat-shock and antioxidant responses.

A commonly recommended magnesium supplement, often taken in smaller divided amounts rather than one large dose to reduce gastrointestinal upset. It’s used to correct widespread deficiency and support core cellular functions including ATP production, DNA repair enzymes, and vitamin D metabolism.

A commonly used adaptogenic supplement taken to help lower cortisol and blunt stress reactivity. The dominant guidance is to use it in short bursts rather than continuously, with one recommendation warning against chronic use beyond about two weeks of regular dosing. Its appeal is that it may act as a fairly potent cortisol reducer, though the evidence base is still limited.

Eat a more carbohydrate- and starch-heavy dinner or late-evening meal, often using foods like rice, pasta, oats, or potatoes, rather than keeping dinner very low carb. The idea is that evening carbs can help blunt cortisol, increase serotonin/tryptophan availability, and make it easier to feel calm, fall asleep, and stay asleep.

If your main goal is muscle growth or strength, avoid ice baths, cold showers, or other deliberate cold exposure right after resistance training. The common recommendation is to wait at least 4 hours, and often 6-8 hours or until later in the day, because immediate cold exposure may blunt the inflammatory and mTOR-driven signaling needed for adaptation.

Do cardio or resistance training before eating, often soon after waking and after an overnight fast of several hours. This is mainly used to increase fat oxidation and fat adaptation, and it can be a perfectly reasonable choice when performance is not limited by fuel availability or when you simply feel better training that way.

During rest periods in resistance training, cool the palms with a cool object, cool surface, or brief hand cooling rather than ice-cold immersion. The goal is to improve work capacity—often allowing more reps or total volume at the same load—by helping dissipate heat without triggering excessive vasoconstriction.

A herbal sleep aid used to support falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up feeling more refreshed. It’s typically taken in the evening as a calming, clinically studied option for improving sleep quality rather than acting as a strong sedative.

A supervised therapeutic approach to psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD, or MDMA, used only in carefully controlled medical or clinical settings. The protocol typically includes preparation sessions before dosing, trained guides or physicians present during the experience, and integration afterward to help process what emerged. This structure is meant to reduce risk and make the experience more likely to produce durable benefits such as reduced depression, anxiety, or emotional burden from past experiences.

Using a rowing machine for high-intensity interval training, often as a low-eccentric-load alternative to running or other impact-heavy conditioning. It’s typically programmed in vigorous intervals or mixed conditioning sessions, sometimes paired with assault bike work and lifting. The appeal is that it builds anaerobic capacity and conditioning while being easier on the joints and muscles than many other hard-effort modalities.

Use a brief active warm-up before workouts or practice, especially before lifting or other intense efforts. The common pattern is 5–10 minutes of movement plus a few lighter ramp-up sets on the first exercise, progressing from easy reps to heavier loads until joints, movement patterns, and the nervous system feel ready. This improves readiness and blood flow without the performance drop that can come from static stretching or jumping straight into heavy work.

A red and near-infrared light therapy panel used at close range for a few minutes per session. The common protocol is about 10–15 minutes, 5–7 days per week, positioned roughly 1–2 feet away, with the goal of delivering long-wavelength light for skin quality and related photobiomodulation benefits.

Alternate heat and cold in repeated rounds, typically moving between sauna or hot exposure and brief cold plunges or showers. A common pattern is several cycles of about 15–20 minutes of heat followed by 1–6 minutes of cooling, sometimes ending on cold if the goal is metabolic stimulation. The idea is that the temperature swing itself is the stimulus, supporting recovery, vasodilation/vasoconstriction training, and a hormetic boost to mood, neurotransmitters, and cardiovascular resilience.

A generally low-to-moderate probiotic regimen used consistently to support gut microbiota diversity, with stronger use reserved for periods of dysbiosis, severe stress, or after antibiotic treatment. The main rationale is to help restore a healthier microbial balance, which may also support mood and gut-brain signaling in some people.

Wear a weighted vest during walks, hikes, chores, or dog walks to make ordinary movement more demanding without adding extra time. A common starting point is about 10% of body weight, often around 8-12 pounds, with some people using heavier loads up to roughly 10-50 pounds depending on the activity. The added load increases effort and impact, which can help build strength and support bone density, especially for osteoporosis prevention.

Use zinc at roughly 90–100 mg per day at the first sign of a cold, with an upper range around 120 mg per day; doses below about 75 mg per day are unlikely to help. The point is to shorten the duration of the illness, with one cited study of 90 mg/day zinc acetate reporting about a threefold faster recovery rate.

Eat meals at roughly the same times each day instead of grazing randomly, using a simple pattern like breakfast/lunch/dinner or lunch/snack/dinner. This regularity helps train anticipatory hunger and other body rhythms, and it can also make it easier to notice when you need to eat—especially for people who tend to forget meals or lose track of internal cues.

Use a bright 10,000-lux light soon after waking when natural sunlight is unavailable, especially in darker seasons or for early indoor schedules. Place it nearby while you make coffee, journal, or get ready for the day for about 5–10 minutes rather than staring directly at it. The goal is to mimic morning daylight cues that help anchor circadian rhythm and improve alertness and mood.