Head Strong by Dave Asprey

Author:Dave Asprey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062652430
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

THE AIR UP THERE

You’ve probably noticed by now that oxygen is important to your mitochondria: they need it to produce energy. This is one reason we die pretty quickly without access to oxygen. It’s also why you feel like you’re going to die when you try to hold your breath—your mitochondria run the show, and they want you to really feel the danger if oxygen is in short supply.

You obviously receive oxygen by breathing it in. The act of breathing is something that most of us take for granted, but the truth is, breathing is a unique biological function because it is the only one that is naturally both voluntary and involuntary. You don’t have to think about breathing to do it; it happens automatically. But you can also intentionally alter your breath by speeding it up, slowing it down, or stopping it altogether. Breathing offers a perfect opportunity for biohackers, since one of the easiest ways to improve performance is to start by upgrading the simplest biological functions.

Think about it this way: many of the tools that transform a normal gas-burning engine into a high-performance race car engine provide mechanisms for getting more oxygen into the engine. Turbochargers and superchargers force more air into an engine using air compression so that there’s enough oxygen to burn high-octane gasoline. Likewise, an important way to transform your body from an inefficient machine to a high-performance hot rod is to make more oxygen available to your mitochondria.

Unfortunately, turbocharging the human body isn’t as simple as just gulping down more oxygen. Ironically, one way to increase the amount of oxygen in your body is to restrict your oxygen intake for short periods of time. This temporarily stresses your mitochondria (an example of good mitochondrial stress), which causes them to either grow stronger or die. Eliminate the weak; train the strong is a great algorithm for the survival of your cells.

Subjecting your body to short periods of low oxygen intake can also help it become more efficient at using oxygen when it is present. Even more interesting, short periods of low oxygen intake (known as hypoxia) increase the production of the all-important brain hormone BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which helps support neuron growth and development.12 Improving your body’s oxygen delivery will energize your cells and make you more resilient in circumstances that limit your oxygen intake, such as travel, environmental changes, and stress. In other words, you can actually exercise your oxygen usage abilities. I do it regularly.

Boosting the body’s oxygen efficiency is an important way to adapt to our changing environment. We already don’t get as much oxygen just from breathing as our ancestors did because our atmosphere today contains a lot less oxygen than it did centuries ago. Even more worrying, since 2003 there has been an unprecedented drop in oxygen levels that’s even more substantial than the increase in carbon dioxide.13 You may be aware of the poor air quality when you’re in a heavily trafficked city center, but recent research shows that poor air quality is also common in many indoor areas—including your gym.

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