Hormesis: Strengthen Your Mitochondria

August 13, 2018

Hormesis is defined as "an adaptive response of cells and organisms to a moderate stressor." It's basically when your body uses a source of stress to its advantage. My favorite example of this is exercise -- you exercise and your muscles repair and rebuild themselves into stronger, bigger muscles. You stressed your body by doing that exercise -- your body takes that stress and comes back better than it was before.

I believe that we should find little ways to hormetically stress our bodies as often as we can. Hormesis strengthens the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of our cells, and the stronger your mitochondria are, the better antioxidant and anti-inflammatory defense system you will have.

Dave Asprey''s food and lifestyle brand, Bulletproof, is based on this principle (hence the name Bulletproof). Here are 3 easy things you can do to help make your body as strong as it can be:

1. Do sprints. Research shows that running flat-out as fast as you can for short periods is just as effective as going for a 3-mile run several times a week. And it takes a LOT less time. The typical routine is to sprint for 30 seconds, recover for 90 seconds, then repeat 4-8 times, but you can do whatever you want. Even one set of sprints every two weeks for a few minutes can be beneficial.

2. Expose yourself to extreme temperatures. We should be taking warm or cool showers (as opposed to hot) all the time anyway, but try running the shower water for a few seconds turned all the way to cold. It's brutal, I've tried it, but it gets easier with time. Bonus: the cold water also causes collagen re-synthesis, which has a tightening effect on the skin -- let the water hit your face (or just cup cold water in your hands from the sink and dip your face in that) to help reduce wrinkles. It's chilly, but it's cheaper (and MUCH healthier) than Botox!

3. Try intermittent fasting a couple of times per week. This can be done in several different ways, but I think the easiest is just to compress your eating hours into a smaller window -- say between 9am and 7pm -- so you're getting a 14-hour fast without much difficulty. This tells your mitochondria that they better learn how to live without food for a length of time. They DO learn, and are stronger because of it.

This is all part of the BetterFed overarching theme that was expressed inNewsletter #1 -- make your life harder. Things that are little bit difficult and make us a little bit uncomfortable are what will make us stronger and more resilient in the end.