Okay so, caffeine is as necessary as oxygen to most parents.

**Drink coffee and consume everything else at your own risk, innit.**

Wait at Least 1 Hour Before Having a Coffee

You’re cortisol levels are high and adenesine levels are low in the morning, you can greatly reduce caffeine intake with minimal negative impact by waiting an hour after waking up, before consuming caffeine.

^I robbed this concept from the Huberman Lab podcast…seems to work.

If youre a 3 or 4 a day type of guy, waiting an hour or two in the morning, you can usually cut back by 1 or perhaps 2 coffees per day.

Add These To Your Coffee ☕️

Make the fecker stronger by adding:

– 100mg agmatine – makes it more potent

– 100mg l theanine – makes it less jittery & last longer

Ideally take the agmatine 5 mins before the coffee, doesn’t make a massive difference though.

Agmatine is pretty potent and affects people differently.

There’s good research now on agmatine for depression and it had minimal side effects, usually GI upset and headaches for some at higher doses.

Studies on agmatine and depression used doses around 2.5g per day. Which is high.

Agmatine is classed as a “novel food” in the UK, so do your own research before necking ten ton of it in your next coffee.

Start with 100mg, people take much more but its best to find a sweet spot.

People use agmatine to drop caffeine intake and to reduce tolerance rather than to just make the daily coffee stronger.

1 coffee usually lasts me all day if I take 500mg agmatine in the morning.

Optimise Mitochondrial Function

Caffeine works by blunting the effects of adenosine. It can also increase dopamine levels slightly.

This isn’t the only way to get more energy. Research optimising mitochondrial function if you want to take your energy up another notch.

ALCAR, PQQ, coQ10, red light therapy and even methylene blue are options to fire up the powerhouses. Just do some research before jumping in, ALCAR can impact TMAO release which may or may not be bad for cardiovascular health (jury is still out), and methylene blue with red light therapy is highly effective but doctors and academics ha e different opinions on methylene blue and its long term effects.

Anything that reduces excessive inflammation will also help you feel better and more energised. Sounds woo woo, but look into the research on grounding and grounding mats (or just stand bare foot on the garden for 5 mins).

Other Stuff

Jumping in an ice bath with also give you a big hit of dopamine – the feel good motivational hormone – for at least a few hours.

getting sunlight in your eyes in the morning, and minimising light in the evening, especially blue light, is also good for optimising dopamine.

Light is important yo:

If you have chronic low energy, you could have burnout or even depression.

I’m not fully versed in burnout, but the way I understand it…you will normally derive energy and motivation from dopamine and feel good hormones, when you’re burnt out, you’ve depleted all your dopamine and it hasn’t been restocked – so you start relying on stress hormones to keep going.

Optimising dopamine levels and receptor sensitivity is pretty complex but you want to try and optimise sleep, and avoid too many dopamine peaking activities.

Positive intermittent reinforced is used in gambling and social media to keep people hooked – it hammers your dopamine levels. Adult / pawn films also does the same, as does coke, sugary foods and energy drinks.