What Stress Is Costing You?
From a study: Psychological stress triggers inflammatory activity and cognitive changes that play a critical role in the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of negative thoughts. R
Legend: PoD = Amygdala and the PoS = Human brain, the prefrontal cortex.
Let me repeat that in a way that makes more sense: negative thoughts cause inflammation triggering stress hormones juicing the PoD. And we’re not making and DHEA for a rainy day.
Blood sensor phase 1: Monitors our bloodstream for toxins such as AGE’s, ALEs, and aldehydes. If found, a stress response is issued to clean the crap up by triggering inflammatory processes.
The brains power cleanse, the glymphatic system. It mops up oxidative stress, inflammation, and junk proteins such as amyloid plaques, tau tangles, and toxic peptides 1. AGE’s create amyloid plaques, tau tangles, and toxic peptides, and often, REM sleep is needed to mop up the mess.
AGE’s, ALEs, and aldehydes are in the foods you eat like cheap-ass mayonnaise and seed oils and cause some of the following argan and cell destruction over time.
Issue 1: Heart disease, rusting the pipes. R
Issue 2: Sore and inflexible joints, eventually leading to arthritis.
Issue 3: Pulmonary disorders such as asthma and cystic fibrosis. As you know, this is very personal to me because biohacking would have saved my pop’s life. Asthma should not be as common as it is; very few people should suffer its torture. If you’d don’t have a genetic mutation in one of the genes or enzymes, not to be mistaken with slow or sleep genes, then you can cure asthma, allergies, and arthritis as I have.
Issue 4: Endocrine system malfunction (DHEA and sex hormones) and advanced ageing.
Issue 5: Faster ageing is a two-fold problem: One, telomere shortening speeds ageing up and two, AGE’s speed the ageing process further. R – R
If the body didn’t take care of these toxins from your blood and cells, again, we wouldn’t recover from a simple cold. Blood stress from P2s are slowing you down.
There are more issues; however, there’s no need to cover them in detail. I’m sure you now appreciate why I wrote this book.
It’s time to heal and become healthy. It’s time to take our power back.
Blood sensor phase 2: The blood sensor also scans for physical stress, such as muscles that need rebuilding through resistance training, day to day housekeeping, and damaged cells that need recycling. The chief way it sensors cellular stress in the bloodstream is through inflammation.
When our brains P2 sensor notices above normal housekeeping levels of either cortisol or inflammation, we lose ZEST physiology because the brain activates inflammatory process activating A&A, juicing the PoD, and engaging a self-preservation mindset.
Then, systems start to shut down all over the place; energy pathways are diverted to fix the problem, and we lose focus, feel tired and might want to go home to the cave to recover or falling prey to a pissy mood wanting comfort food.
What’s happening in the body?
Inflammation has two basic steps and a third; first, the inflammatory trigger (NFk-B) and the resolution of inflammation (sirtuins, longevity genes). There’s the BoP again. Inflammation is activated by a transcription factor (TF) then by a promotor called nuclear factor kappa-B (NFk-B) that codes DNA to make enzymes to upregulate inflammatory processes wasting vast amounts of NAD+. That’s where your energy is going.
NFk-B can trigger by something seemingly harmless, such as cheap mayonnaise which we explored previously. Cheap-ass mayo contains several nasties such as industrial seed oil, emulsifiers, and preservatives that have been shown in studies to produce aldehydes such as 4-hydroxynonenal, which is HIGHLY inflammatory and can even damage our DNA. R
The second stage is the resolution of inflammation, and believe me if health and longevity are important to you, you want resolution switched to the on position. Resolution is mediated by a master family of longevity genes called Sirtuin’s—covered in this section: Energy: Know thy thieves to stop them from thieving thy energy.
The third step is the brain’s power cleanse, the glymphatic system. The sirtuin family and melatonin are key players turning on the brains power cleanse while you sleep. And sirtuins require lots of NAD+, but if you’re constantly inflamed because of the winter diet or poor nutrition, it’s a slow process. That was me, that was my struggle.
Inflammation can start for many reasons.
(1) Lacking gene fuel (covered in principal 3 of my book). Gene fuel keeps energy, androgen and antioxidant pathways open such as the sirtuins family mentioned previously. If those incredible sirtuins are lacking gene fuel, detoxing your cells and the speedy resolution of inflammatory processes are put on hold—including DNA repair genes.
Your body is in a state of scarcity, which signals hypothalamic neurons to trigger cravings and yep, the PoD gets juiced, and we feel pissy and hungry. Your cellular intelligence knows it lacks key components to keep its genes and enzymes working. Interestingly, you can have cravings even if you’re not hungry.
(2) As mentioned, low sodium, magnesium, or calcium causes cortisol to rise, and the PoD goes on alert; and yep, craving again. R
(3) A brain trying to learn can triggers stress. Long-term memory or long-term potentiation (LTP) requires protein synthesis and gene expression, while short-term memory involves covalent modification of pre-existing proteins and changes in the strength of pre-existing synaptic connections. Meaning, if you lack minerals, you can’t think or comprehend what you’re reading, and you’ll find yourself re-reading sentences and getting stressed out.
An optimal level of magnesium is essential for maintaining the capacity for neuroplasticity, which is encoding memories into long-term memory (LTP). Sodium and calcium play a critical role here too; a smidgen of sodium flows into the neuron, creating a positive charge allowing it to go from one neuron to the next (neurotransmission). Calcium signals gene expression triggering synaptogenesis to sharpen and strengthen the memory. R
As you can imagine, low sodium manifests as brain fog, umms and ahhs and cravings, for clear reasons; you can’t think, the brain lacks the means for neurotransmission and the encoding of long-term memories. Oh, and forget about trying to open up working memory because it’s is a skill of the PoS, which is offline because the PoD has the juice.
But don’t fear because there’s an amazing study that involves the extinction of fear. An elevation of brain magnesium enhances synaptic plasticity and extinction of conditioned false-fear memories. With the right antecedent strategies (which I will reveal my book), you can learn how to stop worrying about what other people think.
Imagine if you lack magnesium when trying to overcome social or performance anxiety, it’s a much slower process—to hell with that!
Do you want more speed overcoming false-fears? Biohacking has you covered, you see, magnesium does not pass the blood-brain barrier too well, but there is a form of magnesium that does, and it’s been shown in studies to speed up fear extinction considerably.R
Magnesium has also been shown in studies to prevent neuropathic pain, improve synaptogenesis, mediate enhancement of memory, and boost GABA levels! WOW! R
On a more personal note, my dad had neuropathic pain, which meant poor sleep, irritability, and inflammation, plus higher cortisol levels. People tend to be “okay” living with pain, which significantly slows them down, and a person in pain gets pissy easily; however, it’s not their fault. Their energy and mood are all over the place. In one of the sections to come, I will introduce my pain protocol, which is a two-step method that helped my dad overcome the chronic pain he endured for decades.
Helping my dad and others was only possible by following the science of biohacking and digging through 100s of research studies. What’s happening under the hood, is your CNS has “learned” to always feel pain, but ONLY WHEN inflammation is above housekeeping levels. A lot of people have the winter diet, and if they do, low-grade inflammation is always streaming out of their cells. Below is the current data, and if you’re in the green, you’re good, and if you’re not, biohacking has you covered. Stay tuned.
The Winter Diet fuels pain and inflammation, sore joints, cancer, heart disease, ages you faster, and the list goes on and on; it’s a metabolic mess.
As you can imagine, gene fuel helps to keep your system pumping juice to the PoS, pain-free, false-fear-free, leading to a happy you. If you want to have consistent high-energy days where your brain is focused and learning, gene fuel must be in the system to keep all genes and pathways open for business.
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