Remember the film Limitless, which saw Bradley Cooper become an absolute superhuman after discovering a magical pill that allowed him to learn countless languages, beat the stock market and be an all-round badass?
A new book, aptly named Limitless, has been released and contains twelve strategies to enable you to ‘biohack’ your way to exceptional performance, just like Bradley in the hit movie. As well as getting to grips with sleep, diet, meditation and exercise, the book, penned by Nick Powell, will teach you all about fasting, smart drugs, light therapy, Heart Rate Variability training, toxin exposure, cold therapy, ketogenic diets and time-efficient exercise.
Each chapter references leading scientific research from some of the world’s best doctors and is packed with actionable advice, top tips and case studies.
And it seems that people are keen to learn – and emulate Bradley; following the book launch last week, it became an Amazon No. 1 Best Seller in the UK and US in its categories.
Here, Nick shares an extract of his book with GLAMOUR, revealing exactly how to measure your age….
You measure your age based on the number of years since you were born, but it’s not a good indicator of how old you are. How often have you seen somebody and thought, crikey, they look great for their age, or conversely looked at somebody and said, ‘they must have had a hard life’. Your age since birth is just a number and one that doesn’t matter.
So how do you determine how old you are?
The truth is, you never truly know. Some tests can be performed to tell you your metabolic age or your telomere length, and these give an indication, but they have a margin of error and don’t give you a complete picture. In the future, the convergence of microbiome analysis, DNA sequencing, blood testing and artificial intelligence has the best chance of giving your true biological age, but for now, it’s best to focus on:
How do you feel?
Do you feel like you have a lot of energy, do you have aches and pains? How you feel is such a powerful indicator of your emotional, physical and mental health but it’s a skill most people have lost because they never take the time to slow down and perform self-enquiry. They are too busy rushing from one thing to the next. Taking up a practice such as meditation enables you to tap into how you’re feeling physically, mentally and emotionally and this is explained in Chapter 14.
How is your memory?
Is your memory starting to fail you, do you forget or misplace things easily? Are you able to learn and retain knowledge like you used to? There are ten times the mitochondria in your brain than anywhere else in your body, so your brain is a great indicator on how you’re performing.
What are my biomarkers saying?
In Part Two of this book, there is a section in Chapter 5 which is dedicated to measuring your biological markers. There are a whole host of biomarkers that give you a good indication of how well you are performing. When you measure your biomarkers, it’s an excellent point at which to act, and then you can track them over time. You can order most of these tests yourself and you can then work with a Functional Medical Practitioner if they flag any concerns.
