u/Civil-Access8287

I saw a post online from someone talking about his experience with retatrutide and how it essentially “reset” his dopamine reward system. He mentioned that this reset was not exclusive to food; it also helped him kick bad habits such as gambling and smoking. I understand that the GLP-1 component of reta is primarily responsible for the reduction of food-related reward cues, which is part of the reason why reta is so effective. I have also heard about people’s experiences with reta and anhedonia.

I do not mean to come off as condescending or anything, but I do not necessarily need reta for the weight-loss effects. However, I am interested in taking a low dose to essentially reset my dopamine reward system. I do not eat processed food, I am very strict with my workout and school/work routine, and I do not use Instagram or TikTok, but I am always looking for ways to improve different aspects of my life.

If anyone is willing to share their experience with reta in regard to this idea of dopamine “resetting,” it would be much appreciated.

I’m up early 3 out of 5 weekday mornings to get my morning swim in, and the other 2 days I’m usually up around 7 getting ready for class. My morning routine typically starts with water + electrolytes. I know influencers have kind of turned that into a joke, but honestly, I really do feel better when I start my day that way.

After that, I sit down for a few minutes and just breathe. I often find myself feeling stressed or rushed in the morning, which I kind of attribute to that morning cortisol spike, and taking a few minutes to slow down seems to help a lot.

Next is supplements and breakfast. Most mornings I’ll have a yogurt bowl with honey and frozen fruit, along with magnesium threonate, vitamin D, creatine, and zinc. I usually have my coffee about 45 minutes to an hour after waking up, usually black, or sometimes with milk if I have any in the fridge.

My question for the Reddit community is: what have you done to optimize your mornings? Any habits, supplements, or small changes that have helped you feel better physically or mentally? I feel like my mornings are already in a pretty good place, but there’s always room for improvement, and I’d love to hear what’s worked for other people.

As someone who has been in the endurance training/racing game for about three years now, I was really intrigued when I first heard about MOTS-c. Endogenous MOTS-c is produced/released during training (the “~30 minutes in” idea is not exact, just an approximation based on what I’ve seen in research and how people discuss it). Your muscles essentially create an internal environment in response to exercise by producing MOTS-c, a mitochondrial-derived peptide. This environment includes improved metabolic flexibility, allowing your muscles to switch between glucose and fat as fuel, and increased efficiency in glucose handling, often discussed alongside improved insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake, therefore supporting energy use and recovery. Finally, MOTS-c may also help the body handle the stress of exercise, allowing for better adaptation and recovery. In other words, it’s part of the broader “stress → signal → adapt” cycle that endurance training is built on.

Admittedly, I wasn’t aware of endogenous MOTS-c and its role in exercise until I heard about the peptide variant. Adding MOTS-c exogenously essentially aims to replicate and amplify what endogenous MOTS-c already does (considering they share the same amino acid sequence). From a framework perspective (again, not medical advice), this may support improved glucose uptake and insulin sensitivity, plus increased fat oxidation capacity, potentially providing a steadier energy supply and helping you avoid the “bonk” many endurance athletes are familiar with. Exogenous MOTS-c is also framed as helping cells better tolerate exercise stress through antioxidant responses and decreased NF-κB inflammatory signaling. The benefits of exogenous MOTS-c likely won’t show up immediately, but rather over time when paired with endurance training. For instance, improved metabolic efficiency and better utilization of glucose are adaptations that build over weeks, not just in a single session. Overall, I’d label MOTS-c as a peptide (if taken) that’s meant to build on the endurance work you’re already doing, more of an “adaptation support” tool than a replacement for training fundamentals like volume, fueling, and recovery.

Personally, it’s hard to make absolute statements about almost anything. I would never say, “This supplement solely improved my sleep quality by x amount.” However, from a framework standpoint, MOTS-c does have a plausible mechanism for supporting endurance fitness, which is why I end up going to communities like Reddit to ask what other people’s experiences have been. That said, I try to treat anecdotes as a starting point not proof because training load, sleep, diet, and baseline fitness can completely change how someone responds or what they think they’re feeling.

I wanted to share an update on one change I have made to my routine recently. After posting my discussion on cortisol, I received some feedback that gave me a better understanding of why cortisol can stay elevated during times of stress. To keep it short, the person explained how cortisol is regulated during sleep, which led to a more important question in the context of lowering cortisol: why is my cortisol not being properly managed while I sleep?

For some background, cortisol is normally lower during the early and middle stages of sleep, before it begins to rise again closer to waking in order to help us get up and feel alert. That drop is supposed to happen, but stress, circadian rhythm disruption, illness, and other factors can interfere with it. When that happens, it suggests the HPA axis, or hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, may not be suppressing as it should during sleep, which can contribute to cortisol remaining elevated. I went into more detail on that in my previous cortisol post, but the main point is that chronically elevated cortisol can negatively affect many aspects of our lives. As always, this is not medical advice, and this is just a subjective discussion. Everyone should practice organized skepticism when reading claims made online.

I feel like I already have most of my bases covered. I keep consistent sleep and wake times, cut out food and caffeine at appropriate times, keep my room cold, and try to do the basic things right. Even with that in place, I still felt that life stress was keeping my cortisol elevated and that it was affecting how I felt day to day, which is part of why I made that original discussion in the first place.

This is where Selank comes into the conversation. I had tried Selank during the day before, and honestly I just did not feel great on it. I cannot fully explain why, but it just did not seem like it was working for me, so I stopped using it. However, from a framework perspective, taking Selank before bed may help reduce pre-sleep hyperarousal and anxiety. The idea is that if the nervous system is calmer before sleep, there may be less HPA-axis activation, which could allow for better regulation of cortisol during the night. It is not something that would put you to sleep like melatonin or act like something such as DSIP that people associate with sleep depth. Rather, the possible value would be in helping the body settle into a state where cortisol is managed more appropriately during sleep.

To be clear, this is a theoretical framework, not a proven statement. The idea is simply that lowering pre-sleep stress and hyperarousal may help support healthier overnight cortisol regulation, and that could potentially help people who feel like elevated cortisol is affecting their lives in ways that are hard to get under control. High cortisol is not something we want hanging around all the time, and I think a lot of people may be dealing with it more than they realize.

This is a shorter discussion than some of my other ones, but I still wanted to put it out there. I think a lot of people, myself included, probably deal with elevated cortisol affecting day-to-day life without fully understanding why it is happening or what angle to approach it from. This is just one framework-based perspective on how Selank may fit into that conversation. Again, this is not medical advice, just something I wanted to share so people can do their own research and think about the issue from another angle.

Why having a highly inflammatory diet matters (and how to change your diet)

Within the biohacking and optimization community, I feel like we often jump toward peptides and supplements way too fast, myself included. I wanted to create a few discussion posts that bring us back to the basics, highlighting the aspects of biohacking that can get lost in the peptide and optimization tactics.

The reason for this discussion is to:

a) keep myself in check, because I believe being informed is the first step toward real change,

b) highlight the importance of creating a solid foundation through sleep, nutrition, exercise, and other basic health habits that peptides and other optimization techniques can build upon, and

c) ask the Reddit community what they do in regard to optimizing their nutrition, gut health, and anything else within this realm, whether that be the addition or removal of specific foods, different supplements, or anything else.

d) do you have any recommendations for protocols to improve gut and stomach lining health? I am a big advocate for learning from others, which is why I pose this question.

This is not medical advice. Everybody should practice organized skepticism when analyzing claims made by others on the internet, and any feedback, negative or positive, is always appreciated.

What does an inflammatory diet look like?

When talking about an inflammatory diet, I primarily think of foods that may damage the stomach lining and contribute to various issues. There is plenty of research showing a strong stomach-to-brain connection, and poor stomach health can negatively affect mental health.

This relates to the gut-brain axis, which is the two-way communication system between the digestive system and the brain. Poor gut health can affect mental health through several pathways, including inflammation, altered neurotransmitter production, stress-hormone signaling, and changes in vagus nerve communication. Since the gut microbiome helps influence substances like serotonin and other neuroactive compounds, ongoing gut dysfunction may be linked with symptoms such as low mood, anxiety, brain fog, and reduced stress resilience.

Furthermore, a poor diet can affect not just the stomach lining but the entire gastrointestinal tract, especially the intestines, where much of the gut microbiome, immune activity, and nutrient absorption are located. Disruption in the stomach may contribute to a weakened intestinal barrier and increased permeability, which can allow inflammatory compounds and bacterial products to have a greater effect on the body. This may then affect immune functioning and brain signaling.

As you can see, the food we put in our bodies has so much more to do with health than just calories in versus calories out. That part is important, but there are many other aspects beyond it, and I have not even touched on the physical effects that a poor diet can have on the body.

How to fix our diets

First and foremost, if we are eating diets high in ultra-processed foods, refined sugars, trans fats, and low in fiber, there is plenty of low-hanging fruit that can be addressed quite easily. I somewhat assume most of us reading this are not in that category, but I digress.

Everybody is different. Therefore, before talking about what an anti-inflammatory diet may look like, I want to point out that food sensitivity tests are out there. I personally have gotten one or two done, and I am not someone who usually falls for health gimmicks, but I truly do believe they helped. It is a simple test that may allow you to understand which foods your body does not respond well to, which can be useful information when trying to improve stomach health.

Furthermore, I want to highlight the principle of simplicity. This article, and future articles, will have a pattern of simplicity: taking care of the basics. Yes, our bodies have obviously evolved over the span of human history, but I still believe our bodies have an innate sense of what is good for us and what is not, not just in regard to nutrition, but in multiple aspects of health. Therefore, if you feel like taking tests and trying different protocols is too much, and I do not say that in a condescending way, then I encourage you to listen to your body, follow your instincts, and be honest with yourself.

Anti-inflammatory eating can be understood as a long-term pattern of food choices and daily habits that helps reduce excess inflammation in the body, rather than as one specific diet or a few “superfoods.” Inflammation is part of the immune system’s normal response, but when it becomes excessive or misdirected, it can begin damaging healthy tissues and contribute to chronic conditions.

An anti-inflammatory eating pattern is generally centered around omega-3 fatty acids, other healthy fats, antioxidants, and fiber. Omega-3s from foods like salmon, trout, sardines, flax, and walnuts may help reduce inflammatory activity, while foods such as olive oil, avocado, nuts, and seeds provide additional healthy fats that also support this process. Antioxidant-rich foods, especially fruits, vegetables, beans, spices, olive oil, and green tea, help protect cells from damage caused by free radicals, which are linked to inflammation and disease.

Fiber is especially important because it supports beneficial gut bacteria, and the gut plays a major role in both immune regulation and overall inflammation. In addition to basic fiber intake, gut health can also be supported through more specific strategies, such as increasing resistant starch from foods like cooled potatoes, cooled rice, oats, legumes, and green bananas. These foods can be fermented by gut microbes into short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, which help support the gut lining.

Polyphenol diversity is also important, meaning regular intake of foods like berries, pomegranate, cocoa, green tea, olives, and spices, since these compounds may help improve microbiome balance and support the intestinal barrier.

Gut health is also influenced by circadian rhythm, so irregular sleep, frequent late-night eating, and inconsistent meal timing may negatively affect the microbiome, while more regular patterns may better support gut function. Oral health may also play a role, since the mouth and gut are connected, and changes in oral bacteria may influence digestive health as well.

Because of this strong connection between the gut, the immune system, and the brain, anti-inflammatory eating is often discussed not only in relation to physical conditions such as heart disease, psoriasis, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, and rheumatoid arthritis, but also in relation to mental health, since ongoing inflammation and poor gut health may contribute to symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and low mood.

Overall, this kind of eating pattern is best viewed as a supportive health strategy that may help lower inflammation and improve overall health when practiced consistently over time.