BIOHACK PROTOCOL FOR BRAIN FUNCTION & WARHAMMER 40 & SPORTS
Patrick Martin
WARHAMMER 40K is CHESS ON STEROIDS
As a biohackers, I am constantly testing out the newest nutrition, sleep or exercise protocols. I need to place myself in various arenas to test out how the newest method or supplements work.
When it comes to physical stress, I need to place my self in difficult environments. You can’t test much out without significant bodily stress, whether that be physical/mental or both. I have ran difficult marathons, played various sports, and trained with various different focuses such as; HIIT/POWER/STRENGTH/YOGA/FATLOSS/BODY BUILDING.
I generally like to enter events or competitions, as this provides an added dimension of pressure to the arena. These “arenas” as I call them, allow me to test out the efficacy of my sleep or nutrition protocols.
WARHAMMER AND BRAIN FUNCTION
My brother in law introduced me to the most complicated game I have ever played. At first I didn’t really realize what I was getting into, but over the course of 3 years, we continued to play the game on rare occasions, every 1-3 months (1 match takes 3-4 hours, and I don’t have the time for that). The game itself is a table top strategy game that goes head to head against your opponent on a large table surface with terrain, imagine a more real life chess game.
A friendly match that too place at the beginning of June 2023, my Necron force vs my friends Imperial Guard force.
Competitively, the game runs on a timer, similar to chess, so you don’t have time to waste. Your army has many specific and intricate rules that you have to remember by heart, and each individual model has a complex set of specific rules that you also have to memorize.
To play the game well at a competitive level, you also have to know all the other 40 some odd faction rules, as well as each individual model rule for each faction, so you can effective implement a board strategy and win the match.
The game is a dice based game, so each unit or model as a number of attacks that must be rolled for with a specific number of dice, and you must be able to quickly compute your statistical odds of ensure the attacks are effective against your chosen unit of attack. This is an important dimension of the game.
BRAIN FUNCTION
This game, warhammer 40k, started off as a COVID hobby , along with my fish tank, but has now transitioned to my mental biohacking arena. Once I really understood the full dimension of the competitive game, I realized that the mental focus, strategy, logic and mental computation required, all under the stress of competition and time, allowed me to test my strategies for cognition out.
My wife and youngest son joined in on my last friendly match. I’ve convinced my wife to play with me so I have a readily available opponent to destroy. (She beat me in our first match…)
My recently TESTED mindhack protocol
1. Ensure adequate REM sleep
REM is a deep stage of sleep, and is often the stage that is sacrificed by poor quality of sleep. Generally you need about 7.5 hours of quality sleep to obtain a sufficient amount of REM sleep (>1.5 hrs). When it comes to cognition, REM sleep is the most important aspect of sleep optimization. The other stages can also effect cognition, but the way sleep architecture works is that REM is the last stage, and you only get REM at after you get every other stage, so if you have sufficient REM, by default you have sufficient amounts of stages 1,2&3. REM is often effected by sleep apnea, alchohol, cannabis, restless leg syndome, or bruxism [1]
Lack of REM sleep results in 1) reduced concentration 2) reduced functional memory 3) fatigue [1,2]
All of these things are critical for optimal warhammer 40k success, but this also applies to anything else in life, such as sports, school, work, exercise, raising children etc.
So, if you have an important school test, sporting event, work presentation or warhammer match, make sure you get a good sleep.
2. Ensure adequate HYDRATION
The first step of any day should be to rehydrate immediately upon waking. I generally recommend my clients to drink 1-2 cups of room temp water upon waking, and then have another 1-2 cups in the form of coffee/tea or smoothie with or after breakfast.
Hydration doesn’t improve cognition, but dehydration definitely impairs it. Science shows that dehydration can significant impair memory and focus, as well as mood and physical performance [3]
3. Light balanced breakfast
You always have to pair your breakfast with the goal of the day. If you are doing heavy powerlifting first thing in the morning, you need more calories and carbs to fuel that workout. However, if your day is starting with more mentally focused tasks with little physical demand, such as work or school, too much calories or carbohydrates can make you feel sleepy and reduce your concentration and focus [4,5].
My favorite morning breakfast for cognitition is a cocoa powder smoothie:
2.5 cups cold water
1 frozen banana
3 tbsp. organic cocoa powder
1 tbsp. chia seeds
5g collagen
Cocoa powder in itself is a cognitive enhancer, here is an excerpt from a recent review on cocoa and cognition; “Findings from individual studies confirm that acute and chronic cocoa intake have a positive effect on several cognitive outcomes. After acute consumption, these beneficial effects seem to be accompanied with an increase in cerebral blood flow or cerebral blood oxygenation. After chronic intake of cocoa flavanols in young adults, a better cognitive performance was found together with increased levels of neurotrophins”[6]
4. The use of nootropic supplements, medicinal mushrooms
There are many many many forms of cognitive enhancing supplements. I have experimented with many, and plan to test them all so I have develop fine tuned protocols. The most commonly talked about nootropics today are the medicinal mushrooms. Medicinal mushrooms are not commonly used in cuisine, they are often too expensive, hard to grow and don’t taste great, yet they seem to have significant positive health effects. The science on these mushrooms is still in its infancy, but the positive health effects in rodent and human studies show promise [7]. Just to be clear, these mushrooms are non psycho active mushrooms, they are not “shrooms” containing psylocibin. Although psylocibin is an interesting topic with lots of research happening, you definitely don’t want to take those before an exam or work presentation.
The medicinal mushrooms that have been found to positively effect cognition are 1) Cordyceps 2) Lionsman 3) Reishi [7]. These mushrooms seem to have longer term dosing effects, meaning that you don’t really benefit from acute use as much as you do from taking a consistent dose for weeks at a time. In my case I have been taking a 500 mg dose of Cordyceps, I took them with my cocoa smoothie for breakfast. So far I have used both Cordyceps and Lions mane and low dose for extended periods of time, and I do confirm positive effects such as; increased focused, memory recall, mental stamina, energy, positive mood.
Dried Cordycep mushrooms, picture from Google images.
5. The use of acute FOCUS booster supplements
Along with my shrooms and cocoa smoothie, I took 750 mg of L-tyrosine. Tyrosine is a amino acid (protein unit) that is commonly found in high protein foods such as meat, legumes, and dairy. Tyrosine is used by the body to create catecholamine hormones that directly impact brain function, such as dopamine, epinephrine and nor-epinephrine [8]. The use of Tyrosine has been shown to improve cognition and concentration under higher mental loads. Personally, I have experimented with L-tyrosine before at a higher dose of 1500mg and found it made me too anxious and actually reduced my ability to focus. I tried it again at half the dose, 750 mg, and it hit the sweet spot. I felt like my mental stamina was at its peak.
Chemical strucuture of the amino acid L-Tyrosine. I used the brand NOW.
6. Cold shower
Last but not least, I finish my regular morning shower with a quick bout of cold. I turn my water temp down to the lowest, embrace the cold, breath heavy and enjoy the suck. Even though the science isn’t conclusive on cold exposure and cognition [9], I do personally feel a benefit. I feel fresh, energize, and more confident.
Me after a cold shower, happy to see my abs coming back after a bulking protocol transition to slow rate fat loss. (I am down 5 lbs. in 4 weeks.)
Overall, my performance during that Warhammer friendly match was great. I felt energized I won the match 50 - 20. More importantly, I didn’t make any significant errors due to lack of focus or forgetfulness. I felt like my concentration was high and consistent over the 4 hour bout. I plan to continue to tweak this protocol, so I can better understand the pros and cons of various supplements and methods.
I hope you enjoyed!
1. Blumberg, M. S., Lesku, J. A., Libourel, P. A., Schmidt, M. H., & Rattenborg, N. C. (2020). What is REM sleep?. Current Biology, 30(1), R38–R49.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31910377/
2. Peever, J., & Fuller, P. M. (2017). The biology of REM sleep. Current Biology, 27(22), R1237-R1248.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29161567/
3. Harris R. Lieberman (2007) Hydration and Cognition: A Critical Review and Recommendations for Future Research, Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 26:sup5, 555S-561S, DOI: 10.1080/07315724.2007.10719658
4. Peuhkuri, K., Sihvola, N., & Korpela, R. (2012). Diet promotes sleep duration and quality. Nutrition Research, 32(5), 309–319.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22652369
5. Murphy, K. R., Deshpande, S. A., Yurgel, M. E., Quinn, J. P., Weissbach, J. L., Keene, A. C., Dawson-Scully, K., Huber, R., Tomchik, S. M., & Ja, W. W. (2016). Postprandial sleep mechanics in Drosophila. eLife, 5, e19334.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27873574/
6. Martín MA, Goya L, de Pascual-Teresa S. Effect of Cocoa and Cocoa Products on Cognitive Performance in Young Adults. Nutrients. 2020 Nov 30;12(12):3691.
7. Amelie Nkodo, A Systematic Review of in-vivo Studies on Dietary Mushroom Supplementation for Cognitive Impairment (P14-021-19), Current Developments in Nutrition, Volume 3, Issue Supplement_1, June 2019, nzz052.P14–021–19,
https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzz052.P14-021-19
8. Adrian Hase, Sophie E. Jung, Marije aan het Rot, Behavioral and cognitive effects of tyrosine intake in healthy human adults, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, Volume 133,2015, Pages 1-6,ISSN 0091-3057,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbb.2015.03.008
9. Douglas M. Jones, Stephen P. Bailey, Bart Roelands, Michael J. Buono, Romain Meeusen, Cold acclimation and cognitive performance: A review Published:November 14, 2017 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autneu.2017.11.004