Pre-conditioning For Longevity?

Preconditioning refers to a process that enhances our body’s resilience by exposing cells or systems to mild stressors, which helps them adapt and better withstand future challenges.

The idea is that it may be possible to precondition ourselves to be better adapted to our ever-changing environment, and thus be better positioned to deal with novel health challenges.

I have no desire to live forever. I simply want to improve my odds of living the rest of my years with as much good health and stamina as I can possibly hold onto.

I’m no fan of people who tout the latest ways to improve longevity: the pricey pills and potions, the bizarre diets, the expensive machines and gadgets, etc. And the stuff that makes us look healthy, but doesn’t improve our health. Maybe they work; maybe they are just get-rich-quick schemes. At best, most are a gamble. Some are pure snake oil.

The ones I deem most worth investigating are those where someone has taken the time to organize their thoughts and present them publicly in a book or detailed article, and have shared their source materials to facilitate anyone else’s desire to dive deeper into the subject. At least they give you enough information to decide for yourself what is believable and what is not.

It’s been my belief for many years now that luck is the greatest predictor of longevity. A little bad luck, and you can lose the longevity race in an instant. And sufficient good luck means you can overcome situations where others aren’t so fortunate.

I spent more than a decade doing very detailed primary records genealogical research into many of my distant ancestors, as well as more than a few complete strangers. I’ve seen my share of causes of death listed on death certificates, or recounted in the “mugbook bios” found in county histories from all over the United States.

When my third great grandfather was captured at Dudley’s Defeat during the War of 1812, he and his Kentucky compatriots were marched to the gates of Fort Detroit. Before being allowed to enter the fort, the native allies of the British demanded that the prisoners first be made to run the gauntlet. Many men died in doing so, and my ancestor bore the scars of that experience for the rest of his life. Of those who survived the ordeal - getting hacked with tomahawks, crushed by clubs, stabbed or sliced with knives or simply shot point blank - many died within the two years that followed. My ancestor survived for more than five decades after that experience, finally dying at age 89. You can’t get much luckier than that.

It was bad luck when my grandfather died at age 66 in a head-on car crash when a front loader crossed the centerline into his lane.

It was incredibly good luck when my eldest niece survived a ruptured appendix.

It was good luck when another niece was driving with her father (my oldest brother) when he suddenly had a massive heart attack. It was even better luck when she recalled that she had just passed a fire station. She took his lifeless body there, and with a lot of effort they eventually managed to revive him.

For my niece with a burst appendix and my brother’s heart attack, their longevity almost ended very abruptly. But there was enough spark in them to get them through their ordeals.

I’ve never thought it was possible to bottle luck and sell it. Or to capture the spark necessary to improve your odds of surviving an acute health crisis.

But I may be starting to change my mind on the latter…

I’ve recently read some books by Dr. Frank Shallenberger.1 It was he who introduced me to the notion of pre-conditioning the body to potentially avoid disease, or to greatly increase your odds of surviving things like unexpected trauma or emergency surgery.

While the term is fairly new to me, my biologic dentist was using pre-conditioning years ago when she gave me Vitamin C infusions before and after having a wisdom tooth pulled, and ozone when filling cavitations created years ago when my wisdom teeth were pulled.

My functional medicine doctor was using pre-conditioning when he gave my wife multiple Vitamin C infusions and a Myers cocktail infusion, before and after her hip replacement surgery. She was the first person in her cohort to come off of pain meds after surgery, and she healed much faster than all the others. (And insurance doesn’t cover this because WHY?)

And there is the guy I had met at an infusion center. He believed he had beaten his cancer in large part due to Vitamin C infusions. So he was pre-conditioning when he would return every quarter for additional infusions, intended to increase his odds of avoiding a recurrence.

It was likely pre-conditioning from years of endurance exercise that allowed my brother to survive for several minutes with no heartbeat after his heart attack. My wife, the former nurse, was used to seeing heart attack victims who had gone just a few minutes without a heartbeat, and most of those who survived ended up with significant brain damage. But my brother seems to have avoided that fate. And he just celebrated his 80th birthday, 18 years after his heart attack.

And I guess you could say that I am practicing pre-conditioning when I consume a gram of Vitamin C with every meal, as a means of decreasing my odds of getting a cold, urinary tract infection or having a herpes outbreak.

Pierre Kory, MD, MPA recounted how an inadvertent increase in the amount of chlorine dioxide used to treat drinking water in Nigeria in 1985 resulted in a great reduction in the incidence of malaria symptoms there.

Yes, that’s right, it’s very easy to eliminate malaria. But it seems the powers-that-be aren’t interested in seeing that happen.

Who wouldn’t live longer without the daily burden of malaria?

Chlorine dioxide,2 and the other oxidative therapies, like hydrogen peroxide3 and ozone, all work in similar ways. They increase the amount of oxygen in your body. There are pros and cons to each. I tend to favor certain forms of ozone therapy, because they can last longer in the body than pretty much any other form of oxidative therapy. I’ll discuss ozone a little later on.

Curious Outlier mentioned pre-conditioning as a benefit of the simple blood pressure hack that he recently shared. He noted how some people were calling it “exercise in a device:” you get many of the benefits of exercise, without the actual exercise.

Regular use of the hack results in:

• Increased endurance,

• Improved recovery from exercise,

• Increased energy efficiency,

• Improved mitochondrial function,

• Improved endothelial function,

• Improved vascular health,

• Boosted antioxidant defenses,

• Improved cognition,

• Improved stress response,

• Increased systemic resilience,

• Better outcomes after surgery.

Who wouldn’t improve their odds of living longer with those benefits? And all while simply making better use of the time you already spend being lazy!

The same benefits can be attained with a rebreathing protocol developed by Arkadi Prokopov.4 A device alternates your breathing between states of hypoxia (low oxygen) and hyperoxia (high oxygen), creating stresses similar to that induced by RIC. Like the blood pressure hack, repeating in cycles of five sets generally gives optimal results.

The one downside to his approach is the cost and size of the device. But it sounds like it may be one of the better treatments for Lyme disease.

High intensity interval training (HIIT) does the same thing. Dr. Frank Shallenberger recommends a simple form of HIIT:5

1. Walk at a rate that slightly increases your breathing rate.

2. Maintain that pace for three minutes.

3. Then go really hard and fast for 30 seconds.

4. Next, slow way down until your breathing rate recovers to the same rate as in Step 1.

5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 until you’ve completed a total of five sets of hard effort.

6. When done, spend a few minutes walking at a relaxed pace before ending your exercise session.

Dr. Shallenberger also advocates the use of ozone for pre-conditioning, considering it of sufficient general benefit to encourage people to buy their own $3,000 ozone generator, in order to make their own ozone gas at home.

Fortunately, there are now simpler, less expensive options than buying expensive equipment, but which essentially accomplish the same thing. And they don’t require the space, maintenance costs and technical know-how required to operate an ozone generator.

The easiest option is ozonated oil capsules or suppositories.

For capsules, you take them like any other supplement, and generally one capsule per day is sufficient for general health maintenance.

Suppositories provide the same benefit, but they have the added benefit of getting absorbed by the body and transported directly to the liver via the portal vein. After I completed a course of ten ozonated hemp oil suppositories in ten days this past summer, I had a sudden and unexpected bump in my cycling performance, which I believe was likely due to improved filtering capacity of my liver, thanks to the ozone.

A better option, which initially involves a bit more complicated process, is to nebulize ozonated glycerin. Nebulizing atomizes a liquid into a very fine mist, which you inhale into your sinuses and lungs. The ozonides (ozone bound to other substances) in glycerin are less sensitive to ambient temperature than the ozonides in oils, making it a more flexible option in many situations.

You start by creating a solution of ozonated glycerin mixed in either normal saline (best option), distilled water or reverse osmosis water. One teaspoon of ozonated glycerin is equal to about 5 milliliters (ml), and most sources that I’ve read recommend between 10% and 30% ozonated glycerin for nebulizing.6 So, starting with one teaspoon of ozonated glycerin:

1. Added to 50 ml of liquid will yield about a 10% solution,

2. Added to 25 ml of liquid will yield about a 20% solution, or

3. Added to 15 ml of liquid will yield about a 30% solution.

The solution is added to a small reservoir in the nebulizer. We typically use between 4 ml and 8 ml per session, breathing the solution in through our nose and/or mouth. It takes about ten minutes to nebulize 4 ml.

Any cheap nebulizer is sufficient for reaching all parts of your sinuses. Most of the cheapest will filter particles to as small as 5 microns. Better nebulizers will filter down to around 3.5 microns or less, which is better for getting the mist into the deepest part of your lungs, where it can really do some magic by supercharging your red blood cells.

At the 3.5 micron level, nebulizing ozonated glycerin is said to be as effective a therapy as major autohemotherapy, a process where a pint of blood is extracted from the patient, infused with ozone, run through an ultraviolet filter, and then reinfused back into the patient. My functional medicine doctor charges $225 for one treatment, which in total takes nearly an hour. It typically takes at least a few treatments to really start noticing an improvement.

You can currently buy a two ounce (60 ml) bottle of ozonated glycerine for $60. A teaspoon (5 ml, which costs $5), will yield 30 ml of 20% solution, which would last for more than two weeks if you were nebulizing a few times per week. Multiply that by twelve 5 ml doses per bottle, and you have about a six month supply for nebulizing. That’s around $10 per month or 30 cents per day.

How often you nebulize is generally determined by whether you experience any throat irritation (even very mild irritation is best to be routinely avoided). Daily use generally isn’t a good idea. Twice per week works well for us, and probably just once per week is sufficient for pre-conditioning.

I already mentioned how my dentist uses Vitamin C, another oxidative therapy, before and after dental surgery, and how my wife used it before and after her hip replacement. That’s because having sufficient Vitamin C on board speeds wound healing and reduces oxidative stress. It’s the ultimate electron donor, eagerly replacing electrons stolen by free radicals.

My personal experience shows that regular Vitamin C use reduces the odds of getting an infection, and that when an infection does occur, taking one gram of Vitamin C every 20 minutes or so (to get around bowel tolerance issues) has never failed to resolve the issue within a few hours.

And The Orthomolecular Guy just published an article about how Vitamin C is important enough to be stored in the brain, the body’s second most metabolically active organ. Any preconditioning that prevents a loss of brain function has to improve your odds of a longer and more fulfilling life. Just ask anyone with Alzheimer’s.

I grew up thinking that any water that comes out of a tap in the United States is definitely safe to drink. And to the extent that it won’t immediately make you sick, that same belief holds true.

A couple of years ago, an article by A Midwestern Doctor convinced me to improve the quality of the water we drink at home. AMD even speculated that switching to reverse osmosis water might account for most of the exceptional health he/she was experiencing at the time the article was written.

A new report based upon data compiled by The Environmental Working Group suggests about 200 million Americans may be consuming water that contains unsafe levels of either nitrates, hexavalent chromium and/or arsenic. Including where I live (we have all three). These contaminants can cause liver failure, cancer and other chronic diseases. So the average American has better than a 50% chance of regularly consuming at least one of those three contaminants. Yet there are many more possible drinking water contaminants to be concerned about, suggesting that many of us are at risk from drinking water from public water supplies or private wells that in some ways may be working against our health.

We purchased a Waterdrop reverse osmosis filter almost two years ago. Not long after beginning to use it, the eczema on my elbows cleared. Then my heel calluses did likewise. It would seem likely that some aspect of our drinking water was probably clogging up my filtering organs, because when the liver becomes overburdened, our bodies will attempt to eliminate wastes vicariously through our skin.7 That can manifest as any number of odd skin rashes or blemishes.

What was in our water that might cause those symptoms? Was the problem the chlorine that was added to disinfect the water? Was it the fluoride that occurs naturally here? Or arsenic, nitrates or hexavalent chromium that exist in our environment? Or other trace residues of industrial waste, or from firefighting chemicals used at the local airport?

It’s impossible to tell, and pointless to guess. The main thing is that an aspect of my health improved once we switched to reverse osmosis filtered water. In my mind, that took at least a few disease straws off the camel’s back, and should mean that I’ll hang on to good health longer than if we hadn’t done so.

Anything that reduces your toxic burden is likely to improve your health span and your longevity. Filtering drinking water eliminates a common source of low levels of daily cumulative toxin exposure.

According to AMD, drinking water is an important source of magnesium in our diets, whereas other minerals we can likely get from our food. He/She recommends supplementing with magnesium when using reverse osmosis water.

Being grounded to the Earth while you sleep has many positive health benefits.

Your body’s normal state of health is slightly alkaline, which equates to a current of -25 millivolts (mV). As your health deteriorates, you lose negative ions: your overall body voltage becomes more positive and your cells trend toward becoming less alkaline and more acidic.8

The Earth is a vast reservoir of negative ions, so when you are in direct contact with the Earth some of those lost negative ions are restored to your body and your health improves, or at least declines less rapidly.

Another aspect of grounding is that the Earth resonates at a constant frequency of 7.83 Hertz, known as the Schumann Resonance. This frequency falls in the alpha frequency band of brain waves that correspond to a calm, meditative state.9 When we connect to the Earth, our bodies begin to entrain to that frequency: nervous system regulation occurs, cortisol levels drop, blood flows more freely, inflammation calms, and healing accelerates.10 Grounding enhances the rest and digest functionality of your autonomic nervous system, allowing your organs more opportunity at night to regenerate and restore their functions. Extraneous unnatural frequencies from wi-fi and other sources disrupt this functionality and increase your risk for disease.

When you are grounded, you become part of our planet’s powerful natural resonance, which helps to override weaker, harmful non-natural frequencies from electrical wiring and various wireless devices. The Earth’s resonance acts as a shield from those extraneous electrical fields, which can disrupt your body’s natural electrical potentials.11

The easiest way to consistently stay in direct connection to the Earth for hours every day is via sleeping on a grounded mattress cover placed under sheets made from natural fibers (cotton, silk or wool are all great, bamboo may not be). The pad connects to the Earth through a cord that plugs into the grounded prong of an electrical outlet.

You don’t want to use synthetic sheets because they tend to accumulate a net positive charge (which is why they can shock you when you rub against them). A mattress cover offered at Earthing.com currently retails for $320 for the queen size (I suspect they still offer coupon codes for new customers). That’s not cheap, but this is an investment. We’ve had ours for a few years now and it’s not showing any signs of wear.

Another option would be grounded sheets. But they tend to be more expensive than regular sheets of a similar quality, and they will wear out in a few years. And most people would want to invest in two sets - one on the bed, and another that can be washed and ready for the next bedding change. In that case, the grounded mattress cover is a simpler and cheaper option, and you will have a lot more non-grounded choices in color, pattern and materials for your bedding.

Photobiomodulation is a form of light therapy that uses low-level lasers or light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to promote healing, reduce inflammation, and relieve pain by stimulating cellular processes in tissues. This therapy typically involves the application of red and near-infrared light to enhance cellular metabolism and improve tissue repair.

I recently read Master Metabolism’s Light Therapy for Hashimoto’s. It states that there is research that ten treatments (twice per week for five weeks) with 830 nm near-infrared light at 50 mW for 40 seconds resulted in 47% of treated individuals coming off their thyroid medication! Since your thyroid is the master regulator of your metabolism, anything that improves thyroid function should have a very positive preconditioning effect.

I haven’t yet had a chance to try this for myself, but I already own a device that produces the correct wavelength of light, so I’ll be experimenting with this in the near future. One challenge that I have is that I have no idea how close I need to stand to my panel to achieve 50 mW of light input. Though I suspect a less-than-optimal dosing over a longer time period will probably achieve a similar result.

[This section was added after the original date of publication.]

I could have added this to the earlier Clean Water subheading, but Aurmina does more than just clean water.

Pierre Kory, MD, MPA has two soon-to-be-published books that he is currently providing in serial form to his paid subscribers: From Volcanoes to Vitality and The Blueprint of Life. Both relate to the source of what he believes to be the spark of life; how being deficient in trace minerals may be a significant contributor to chronic disease; and how there is a natural water-mineral cycle that removes toxins from water.

While I find his arguments very convincing, I’m still not 100% sure that there is a perceptible benefit to me, only have used Aurmina for a bit more than two months. But I do know that in the 1920s and 1930s, a large number of “infectious” diseases turned out to be caused by nutritional deficiencies. So many in fact, that after World War II the funding for research into nutritional deficiencies seems to have dried up (healing patients was discovered to be a very bad business model).

The reason I’ve added this section after having published my original article is because I think I may have cured the chronic pancreatitis that I’ve had since 2019 (I’ll write more about this in the future). I’d seen slow but steady improvement from consistent use of ozone since last August, but the improvement seemed to accelerate over the last couple of months. Since that overlaps with my use of Aurmina, it’s possible that some aspect of my pancreatitis may have been due to an unknown mineral deficiency. That is because trace minerals are often needed for the production of various enzymes, and the pancreas is a major producer of enzymes.

Whether or not that is the case, Aurmina does have a demonstrated ability to remove toxins from our water supplies, which is a sufficient benefit on its own. This is incredibly important, because the quality of water delivered to our taps varies greatly from day-to-day. Taking those unnecessary toxins out of our diets lowers a daily negative burden on our health.

While I still think that luck is the greatest predictor of longevity, I now believe that there are some simple and inexpensive ways of investing in improving your luck. And at the same time, improving or maintaining your current quality of life.

My top preconditioning routines, in order of cost are:

1. Remote Ischemic Conditioning, which gives you the benefits of exercise, without the exercise. A $20 blood pressure cuff is all you need, and 45 minutes of time during a sedentary activity, like reading or watching television.

2. Any sort of physical activity, especially if you occasionally incorporate some high intensity interval training (HIIT). Walking is pretty much free, though most other exercise options will require some sort of investment in equipment. If you can find something that you enjoy doing, then the added cost is more of an entertainment expense than a healthcare expense.

3. Vitamin C. Plain old ascorbic acid is dirt cheap, around 5 or 6 cents for a one gram tablet. Less than 20 cents per day will protect your brain and minimize your chances of getting an infection. A dollar’s worth (one gram every twenty minutes) can stop most infections dead in their tracks within a few hours. Keep a small stash in a ziplock bag in your car and at your office, so that it is always close at hand when needed. The sooner you act, the better your odds of success.

4. Ozonated oils, in dietary capsules or rectal suppositories. Ozonated oils with a higher ozonide index (hemp oil is highest, olive and avocado about medium strength) are great for giving your body a quick boost, while the milder oils (coconut oil and jojoba oil) are great for maintaining health. A 90-day supply of capsules will run $40-$50 or so. Suppositories run about $3.50 each in a pack of ten.

5. Nebulizing Ozonated Glycerin. You get the benefits of fancy IV ozone blood treatments, without the IVs, at a fraction of the cost, and you can do it at home whenever it is most convenient for your schedule. And if you suffered with chronic sinus problems, that will likely end very abruptly. There’s the initial investment in the nebulizer (up to $100 or so), plus the cost of the ozonated glycerin ($60 for two ounces), but the latter provides months of treatment.

6. Aurmina. A one year supply of Aurmina for one person currently costs $150, and I seem to recall there is a shipping charge added to that (Dr Kory often offers discount codes for his paid subscribers). So for about $14 per month, or less than 50 cents per day, you can have clean water loaded with trace minerals. You may find that you can offset some of that cost by eliminating some or all of your mineral supplements.
   With unfiltered tap or well water, Aurmina will cause some sediments to form, which are best filtered out before drinking. Using reverse osmosis filtered water pretty much eliminates this problem, at least until the RO filter starts reaching the end of its service life.

7. Grounding. There is the up front investment of a few hundred dollars, but after that there are no other costs. At a minimum, a good quality mattress pad will last a decade or more, which averages out to a few dollars per month or less. If you can’t afford that, trying standing barefoot in grass as often as possible.

8. Reverse Osmosis Water Filter. These can range in cost from around $200 to $850. Ours (for a household of two) also requires a new filter cartridge about every year, which costs about $120. In the long run, it’s a lot cheaper and more convenient than buying filtered water from your local grocery store. We cook with filtered water and we no longer get mineral build up on our kettle, pots and pans. And those same substances that cause that are no longer clogging up our kidneys and liver.

I combine most of the above in my current health maintenance routine, and I feel like I’ve been slowly dialing back the clock as I’ve added each to my routine over time. Since adding ozone suppositories in July and RIC in August I’m feeling better than I have in a long, long time, and I have far more energy and stamina than I had become accustomed to. I now realize that decreased energy isn’t an inevitable consequence of aging; that it is caused by energy being stolen by various disease processes in your body. Preconditioning can help steal that energy back.

I suspect a lot of people would put chlorine dioxide somewhere on their personal list of pre-conditioning treatments (it’s somewhat interchangeable with ozone), while others would consider eating organic a part of their regular regimen. I would add photobiomodulation to the list, but I’ve yet to test to see whether it might improve my mild hypothyroidism, or provide other benefits.

And no doubt there are ways of preconditioning that I have yet to discover.

The main point is that there are forms of preconditioning that are affordable to everyone: there are investment options to fit anyone’s budget.

Hopefully you will give some thought to how you can make pre-conditioning a part of your ongoing health maintenance routine. And thus increase your health span, and hopefully your longevity as well!

If you know of other pre-conditioning tips to share, please do so in the comments!

2026 March 16 - Added a subheading for Aurmina ionic sulfated minerals, and listed it in the conclusions.

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Disclaimer: I write about my personal experiences, and what works for me may not work for you. I have no healthcare training, but I’ve been reading passionately on healthcare since being diagnosed with melanoma in early 2004. If you have delegated responsibility for your health to someone else, you should probably continue to do so. If you accept full responsibility for your own health, I hope that the experiences and opinions that I share will help you on your personal healing journey.