Longevity Protocols: Step-by-Step Instructions

A protocol is the shortest path from “I read the study” to “I did it tonight”. The rest of the site explains mechanisms. This section tells you what to do and at what time.

What is a protocol made of?

Every protocol here follows the same shape, so they can be compared and stacked:

1. Prerequisites. What you need, and what you must not have, for the protocol to make sense.
2. Numbered steps, each with a time or a dose.
3. Expected effects, with the date by which they should appear.
4. An evidence level for the whole thing.
5. A minimal and a full version.

The rule that keeps this honest: if a step cannot be written as a number, whether a time, a dose or a temperature, it is not a protocol step but advice. Advice belongs in articles.

Where do the steps in a protocol come from?

A step makes it into a protocol when it meets three conditions at once. It has human research behind it, it can be written as a number, and it can be done without equipment most people do not own.

That third condition rules out more than you might expect. Exposure to a specific light intensity at a specific time has good research, but the step “position a 10,000 lux lamp 40 cm away” assumes buying a lamp. So the sleep protocol says “go outside for 10 minutes”, and the lamp appears as an option for people who leave for work before sunrise in winter.

We also deliberately reject steps whose effect cannot be seen within the span of the protocol. Something that produces a measurable change after six months can be an excellent health decision and a hopeless protocol step, because after two weeks you cannot distinguish it from nothing.

How do we assign an evidence level to a protocol?

Each protocol carries one overall evidence level, and it is usually the level of the weakest step rather than the strongest. A protocol is a set, not a buffet. If three steps have strong trials and the fourth rests on a mechanism, the whole thing does not deserve a “strong evidence” label.

The more important caveat, which I repeat on every protocol: there is almost never a trial on the specific combination of steps. There are trials on the components. Assembling them into a protocol is an editorial decision, and we label it as such rather than pretending someone tested this exact sequence.

Why does the minimal version matter more than the full one?

The most common reason people abandon a protocol is not lack of effect, it is overload. They start with the full version, last four days, and go back to baseline convinced that “it does not work”.

So every protocol names the one thing to do if you are only going to do one thing. That step usually accounts for most of the effect, and the rest fills in the remainder.

I ran the sleep protocol three times before it stuck. The first time I tried four changes at once and dropped out on day five. I have no reason to think you are different in this respect.

Why do protocols run two weeks rather than three months?

Fourteen days is neither arbitrary nor a marketing device. It is roughly how long a circadian reset takes, and simultaneously about as long as anyone sustains without superhuman discipline.

Three-month protocols look more serious and have one flaw: almost nobody finishes them. A protocol you do not finish yields no information, and leaves behind the belief that “it does not work” for something that was never actually tested.

There is a trade-off here that I am not hiding. Two weeks is enough to change sleep latency and not enough to change body composition, fitness or metabolic markers. Protocols here target measures that can realistically be measured in that window. Where an effect needs months, we say so rather than promising a result in a fortnight.

What exactly do these protocols measure?

Each protocol targets one parameter you can measure without a laboratory. In the sleep protocol that is sleep latency and the number of awakenings. In the planned morning protocol it will be the time evening sleepiness arrives, an indirect marker of the circadian shift driven by the suprachiasmatic nucleus.

We deliberately avoid building protocols around parameters you cannot measure reliably at home. Slow-wave sleep, REM and melatonin secretion require polysomnography or laboratory assays. Trackers report these values, but their agreement with polysomnography on stage classification is low enough that building decisions on them would mean building on noise.

HRV and resting heart rate sit in between. Devices measure them reasonably well, but between-person variation and the influence of alcohol, infection or training are large enough that a single reading means nothing. If you use HRV, read the weekly average against your own baseline rather than a single morning value.

The criterion is simple: a parameter enters a protocol if you can measure it with a phone, a sheet of paper or a thermometer, and if the expected change is larger than day-to-day variation. The evidence scale we apply at each step is described in the supplements guide.

How do you tell whether a protocol is working?

Every protocol has one or two numbers to log. Not three, not eight. Two numbers logged for 14 days give useful information; eight numbers logged for four days give none, because you will stop logging them.

Compare week to week, not day to day. Natural day-to-day variation in most physiological measures is larger than the effect you are looking for.

In what order should you stack protocols?

Protocols here are deliberately short, because they are meant to run one after another. A sensible order for the first six months looks like this: sleep first, then mornings, then aerobic base work, and supplements last.

The reason is practical rather than ideological. Sleep affects everything else: training tolerance, appetite, and whether you get up for morning light at all. Starting with supplements while sleeping five hours a night is optimising the third decimal place.

Leave a week between protocols with no changes. That is not superstition: you need a reference point to see whether the previous change held once you stopped policing it.

What if you are short on time?

The minimal version exists for exactly this. One step, done daily for two weeks, with one number logged each morning. That takes under a minute a day and delivers most of the effect.

I do not recommend the full version to anyone starting out. Not because it is worse, but because on a first attempt what wins is the version you finish, not the one that is theoretically better.

If after two weeks the minimal version has become a habit and no longer needs policing, add the second step. Not before. The order and the specific thresholds for sleep are in the sleep protocol, and the underlying mechanisms are in sleep and longevity.

What are the most common implementation mistakes?

First: everything at once on day one. Then if things improve you do not know what worked, and if they do not you drop the whole set.

Second: measuring too many things. Two numbers over fourteen days beat eight numbers over four days.

Third: judging by a single day. Day-to-day variation in most measures is larger than the effect you are hunting.

Fourth: changing the protocol mid-run. Add something unplanned on day eight and you end up with an experiment that has no control and yields no conclusion.

What will a protocol not do?

It will not diagnose. It will not replace treatment. It will not work if it targets the wrong problem, which happens more often than this industry admits. A good share of the people trying sleep protocols are one apnoea screening or one ferritin test away from an actual fix.

It will also do nothing if you do not finish it. That sounds trivial, but in practice it is the main cause of failure. Which is why every protocol here names a minimal version rather than only a full one.

What you will find in every protocol, and what you will not

You will find: times, doses, temperature thresholds, a list of what not to do during the run, and a table of when to expect effects.

You will not find: a promise of results, a ranking of “best” protocols, or affiliate links woven into the steps. If a protocol requires a purchase, the price is stated outright alongside a cheaper alternative rather than hidden in a link.

The rules we use to judge evidence level at each step are set out in the supplements guide, where the scale gets the heaviest use.

Available protocols

One so far, documented end to end:

• The sleep protocol: 14 days to falling asleep faster. Four changes introduced one at a time, two numbers to log, and an expected effect on sleep latency after two weeks.

Next in the planned order: a morning protocol covering light, caffeine and first meal, a zone 2 protocol, and a cold exposure protocol. All built on the same structure.

Before you start any protocol

It helps to know what the protocol is meant to improve and where you are starting from. The fundamentals on sleep, including mortality and insulin sensitivity data, are in sleep and longevity. Which sleep hygiene rules have evidence and which are repeated folklore is taken apart in sleep hygiene. If you are thinking about adding a supplement, do it after the protocol and start with the supplements guide.