The Human Battery Project

Welcome to The Human Battery Project

“I’m tired all the time.” “I don’t sleep like I used to.” “My brain feels foggy.” “My bloodwork is normal, but I don’t feel normal.”

Twenty-five years of hearing the same complaints, from thousands of people.

Your body is trillions of tiny batteries, and they play like a band. Charged and on the beat, the music is beautiful. Flat and off the beat, it plays out of tune. That is what tired, foggy and wide awake at 2 a.m. sounds like.

Nobody has ever checked whether your batteries are charged. We measure them. We change what they run on. We measure them again.

Apply to start The Human Battery

What is The Human Battery Project

A ninety day program that measures the system your body runs on, and then measures it again.

We draw blood at day 0 and again at day 90, thirty-three markers both times, through a partner laboratory near you. In between you follow a written protocol covering food, training, light, sleep, cold and heat. You log each day in your own portal. At the end you see both sets of numbers side by side.

Here is why it exists. Most of those markers already show up on an ordinary blood panel. They get reported as a wall of numbers you are told are normal. We read them as four subsystems and score each against a target band instead, because a result sitting at the edge of normal is exactly the person this program is for.

Start with the thing in your hand

You have been holding a battery all day, so you already understand this. Your phone tells you when it is at 20 percent. You have never once known what you are at. A bad cable charges a phone slowly, and your body runs on light, food and sleep. Apps you never opened keep running in the background, and in your body that is inflammation, using power all day until you notice you are at 15 percent by two in the afternoon. After a few years a phone says its maximum capacity is 78 percent, so it charges to full and still dies by lunch. Cheap material makes a battery that fades, and yours is built from what you eat. Your phone shows you the number. We are going to show you yours, twice, ninety days apart.

This is not a comparison

It is real electricity, and it is running right now.

The voltage is roughly 150 millivolts across a membrane about five nanometres thick. Work that out and it is near thirty million volts per metre, lightning-strike field strength, held continuously, in every mitochondrion in your body.

You carry only about sixty grams of that fuel at any moment. But you make and burn roughly your own body weight in it every day.

The Human Battery

You are not like a battery. You are trillions of them. Not as a figure of speech but as a matter of physics.

Inside every cell you have hundreds of tiny power plants. Each one pushes charged particles across a membrane to build up a voltage, then lets them rush back through and uses that flow to make fuel. It is a battery, charging and discharging, and there are trillions of them in you right now.

Cross-section of a mitochondrion building a voltage across its folded inner membrane Food and oxygen enter. The folded inner membrane pumps protons out into the space between the two membranes, so far more protons gather outside it than remain inside. Those protons flow back in through ATP synthase, which turns like a turbine. Water and carbon dioxide leave. Food inOxygen in Water andCO₂ out Protons pumped out ATP synthase
Cross-section of a mitochondrion. The inner membrane pumps protons outward, so many more sit outside it than inside. They return through ATP synthase, which turns like a turbine. That returning flow is the work.

Coherence: they have to stay in step

Trillions of batteries cannot each run on their own terms. A neuron, a muscle cell and an immune cell are built to hold different voltages, and they are all supposed to hold them while staying synchronised with the tissue around them and with the day outside.

That is coherence: cells keeping their proper electrical identity while coordinating their voltage, metabolism, timing and behaviour with the tissue around them and with the whole organism.

Lose it and the symptoms arrive long before a standard panel flags anything. Tired at the wrong hours, wired at night, slow to recover. The circadian protocol is how we restore the timing, and the daily log is how we track whether it is holding.

Peter Mitchell worked this out and won the Nobel Prize for it in 1978. It is not a theory and it is not new. It is simply not something anybody measures.

Four things decide how well that battery works: how well you make charge, what drains it in the background, how much you can actually spend, and what the whole thing is built from. Those four are what we test.

What a low battery sounds like

These are some of the complaints heard most often across twenty-five years of listening to people describe how they feel. They are not a diagnostic list and they are not exhaustive. They are what people say out loud when someone finally asks.

They get treated as separate conditions, by separate approaches, usually one at a time and usually for years. Read them together instead and a pattern shows up. Each one sits downstream of a system that has lost capacity, and the system it points to is often predictable.

Tired by two in the afternoon, no matter how you sleptCharge
Weight that will not move, on a diet that used to workCharge
Weight that all went to the middle and stayed thereCharge
Needing to eat every three hours or you fall apartCharge
Coffee is not a pleasure anymore, it is a requirementCharge
Brain fog: losing words, rereading the same paragraphDrain
Aches in joints you never injuredDrain
Bloating, and a gut that reacts to food it never used toDrain
Anxiety that was not there five years agoDrain
Wired at midnight, wrecked at sixOutput
Awake at three in the morning for no reason you can nameOutput
Eight hours of sleep and you wake up unrefreshedOutput
Drive gone: for training, for work, for anythingOutput
Libido that quietly disappeared and nobody mentioned itOutput
Cold hands and feet when nobody else in the room is coldOutput
A shorter fuse than you used to haveOutput
Slow to recover, sore longer than you used to beReserve
Training hard and nothing is changingReserve
Catching everything going around, and keeping it longerReserve
Hair, skin and nails that are not what they wereReserve

Chase these one at a time and you will be busy for years. Restore the capacity underneath them and many of them ease on their own, in the order the body decides, not the order you would have picked.

Any one of these can also have a specific medical cause that needs a physician. This program does not diagnose and does not replace that. It measures capacity, and it refers out anything that belongs to a doctor.

Common complaints connected to the subsystem each one points to Eight complaints on the left, each joined by a thin line to one of four subsystems on the right. Tired by two and weight that will not move point to Charge. Brain fog and aches in joints point to Drain. Wired at midnight and drive gone point to Output. Slow to recover and hair, skin and nails point to Reserve. Tired by two Weight will not move Brain fog Aches in joints Wired at midnight Drive gone Slow to recover Hair, skin and nails Charge Drain Output Reserve
The complaints cluster. Each one sits downstream of a subsystem that has lost capacity, and the subsystem it points to is usually predictable. Eight of the twenty above are shown here.

I sleep eight hours and I wake up at forty percent.

The four systems, and the thirty-three markers behind them

Most of these appear on an ordinary blood panel and get reported as a wall of numbers you are told are normal. We read them as four subsystems and score each against a target band rather than the laboratory's population range, because a result sitting at the edge of "normal" is exactly the person this program is for.

The four subsystems drawn as one system with fuel flowing through it Fuel enters on the left through Charge. Charge fills a central store. Output draws from that store on the right. Drain leaks away upward in copper. Reserve runs underneath as the foundation all three stand on. Charge Output Drain Reserve StoreFuel in
The four subsystems are one system, not a list. Fuel enters through Charge, is held in the store, and is spent as Output. Drain leaks capacity away from the side. Reserve is the foundation the other three stand on.

Charge

The reaction itself: oxygen in, water and CO2 out, and the voltage built in between.

On your phone: how fast you fill up. The cable.

Drain

What is consuming capacity in the background.

On your phone: what runs in the background. The apps you did not open.

Output

What you can actually spend.

On your phone: how much power you actually get. The screen brightness, the speed.

Reserve

What the whole thing is built from.

On your phone: battery health. What it is made of and how much it can still hold.

Charge

  • VO₂max: the ceiling on how much oxygen your system can move
  • Respiratory exchange ratio: CO2 out over oxygen in, which fuel you are burning
  • Lactate at a fixed load: where oxidative capacity runs out
  • Fasting glucose and fasting insulin: insulin rises years before glucose does. Fuel is in the tank but it cannot get to the engine.
  • HbA1c, HOMA-IR, triglycerides, triglyceride:HDL ratio

Drain

  • hs-CRP: the anchor inflammatory marker
  • GGT, ALT, AST: liver enzymes as metabolic load
  • Uric acid, homocysteine, white cell count
  • AA:EPA ratio: the inflammatory side of your fat intake
  • Kynurenine:tryptophan: tryptophan being burned by inflammation

Output

  • TSH, free T3, free T4, and the conversion between them
  • Total and free testosterone, scored against your own sex's range
  • DHEA-S: adrenal reserve
  • Morning cortisol: drawn at the same hour both times
  • IGF-1, SHBG

Reserve

  • Omega-3 Index: EPA and DHA in your red cell membranes. This is what your battery casing is made of.
  • 25-OH vitamin D: the direct readout on the light protocol
  • Ferritin and iron saturation, read together
  • B12, folate, RBC magnesium: red cell, not serum
  • Albumin, HDL

Charge is the only one that is not just blood. Food enters the mitochondrion, electrons are stripped from it, protons get pumped across a membrane, and oxygen combines with them at the end to make water. Carbon leaves as CO2. That reaction is what builds the voltage.

Nobody can measure that voltage directly in a living person. What we can measure is the throughput: how much oxygen you move, which fuel you burn, and where the system runs out. Cardiorespiratory fitness is also the single strongest predictor of mortality in the literature, ahead of smoking, blood pressure and cholesterol.

The blood markers sit underneath that. They tell us whether fuel is even reaching the machinery. That is a fuel gauge, not an engine test, and most panels stop there.

Two of the blood markers are worth singling out. The Omega-3 Index is the most responsive marker on the panel. Red cell membranes turn over in about four months, so ninety days captures most of the change a diet can produce. And free testosterone at 450 means something entirely different in a man than in a woman; the scoring knows the difference.

Example of one marker moving from outside the program target band to inside it An example only. HbA1c at day 0 reads 6.1, sitting to the right of both the laboratory reference range and the narrower program target band. At day 90 it reads 5.2, inside the target band. The laboratory range is the wider, lighter band; the program target is the narrower one. Day 0Day 90 6.15.2 HbA1c EXAMPLE ONLY Laboratory reference rangeProgram target band
An example of a single marker moving. At day 0 this HbA1c sits outside the program target band, and outside the laboratory range too. At day 90 it sits inside the target. The wider, lighter band is what a laboratory calls normal, which is a lower bar than the target. Example only, not a promised result.
Example Battery Score readout at day 0 beside day 90 An example only. Two panels side by side. Day 0 shows a composite Battery Score of 48 with subsystem scores of Charge 44, Drain 52, Output 51 and Reserve 45. Day 90 shows a composite of 71 with Charge 74, Drain 68, Output 70 and Reserve 72. EXAMPLE ONLY Day 0 Day 90 48 71 Battery Score Battery Score Charge 44 Drain 52 Output 51 Reserve 45 Charge 74 Drain 68 Output 70 Reserve 72
An example of the readout a client receives: one composite Battery Score with the four subsystems beneath it, shown at day 0 and again at day 90. Example only, not a promised result.

I eat well and I am still dead by three.

The model, and how sure we are of each part

The program is built on a working theory of how the body captures, stores and spends energy. Some of that theory is settled science. Some is actively argued over. Some is frontier speculation that shaped how we designed the protocol. We tell you which is which.

The quantum floor

Tunnelling in enzymes, spin chemistry in photoreceptors, light-handling networks in the cytoskeleton. Real physics, running at timescales far below anything a ninety-day protocol touches. It is part of why the rest works, not something we can move.

WORKING MODEL

The membrane

What your cell membranes are built from determines whether the energy machinery assembles correctly. Omega-3 status is measurable, dietary, and moves inside ninety days.

ESTABLISHED

Light as input

Light sets circadian timing through the eye, which sets the hormonal cascade beneath it. We treat light as the timing signal and food as the load, which is why the protocol puts morning light before the first meal. It is the button that turns the whole system on, and miss it and the day runs on the wrong clock.

ESTABLISHED

Hormesis

Cold and heat exposure as controlled stress that builds capacity. Real physiological effects, though the best-controlled trial found a warm shower and slow breathing did about as well. In the protocol, honestly labelled.

CONTESTED

Behavioural load

Connection and purpose, cognitive engagement, movement and muscle, light and sleep timing, emotional load. Logged daily. The mortality evidence here is stronger than for most things sold as longevity.

ESTABLISHED

What we do not know. We cannot tell you in advance what your numbers will do. Everyone runs the same protocol, which means we cannot fully separate the effect of the protocol from the effect of being paid close attention to for ninety days. We will not pretend otherwise, and we will not present the group's results as proof that the protocol caused them.

What we can tell you is exactly what changed, marker by marker, between two draws ninety days apart. That is a real thing to know about yourself, and almost nobody has it.

Anyone in this field who tells you they are certain is selling you something. We would rather measure.

The path from morning light to the hormones that run metabolism and sleep Morning light reaches the eye. The eye sets the body clock. The body clock sets the hormone cascade, and those hormones run metabolism and sleep. This is why the protocol puts morning light before the first meal. Morning lightEyeBody clock Hormones Metabolism and sleep
Light reaches the eye and sets the body clock, and the body clock sets the hormone cascade that runs metabolism and sleep. That is why the protocol puts morning light before the first meal.

Ninety days, in three phases

Each phase has one job. You do not get the whole protocol on day one, because nobody sustains that. You get the next thing.

A ninety day timeline in three phases with a blood draw at each end Day 0 opens with a blood draw. Three phases follow, each thirty days: stop the drain, recharge, then build capacity. A weekly call marks every week along the top. Day 90 closes with a second blood draw. Stop the drainRechargeBuild capacity Blood drawBlood draw Weekly callDay 0Day 90
Ninety days in three phases, with a blood draw at each end and a call every week. Each phase has one job, and you get the next one when the last is holding.
Days 1-30

Stop the drain

Remove what is costing you capacity before adding anything that builds it. Sugar and alcohol come out, sleep gets a fixed window, morning light becomes non-negotiable, and you start logging every day. Most people feel the first change here, and it is usually sleep.

Days 31-60

Recharge

Now the inputs. Protein target, real training on a schedule you can hold, cold and heat exposure, and a meal timing window that lines up with your own clock rather than someone else's. The daily log keeps running, and the weekly call is where we adjust it.

Days 61-90

Build capacity

Load goes up, and the work shifts from repair to headroom. Day 90 ends with the second blood draw and a session comparing it against day 0, not to celebrate but to decide what you keep doing for the next ten years.

What you get

  • Thirty-three markers at day 0 and day 90, ordered through a partner laboratory on a physician-signed requisition
  • Your Battery Score at both ends, read as four subsystems and explained marker by marker
  • The full written protocol (food, training, light, sleep, cold and heat) phased across ninety days
  • An approved food list and a cookbook built only from it
  • A weekly one-hour group call, open to everyone running the program
  • Daily logging in your own portal, with a coach reading it
  • A daily accountability thread with everyone else running the program
  • A written plan for what happens after day 90
The daily log as it appears on a phone A phone screen headed Today. Two rows of tap chips for food and movement, then five domain scales each rated on a five point row, and a counter reading four of five. There is no save button; the log writes as you go. Today SleepLightFoodMoveMood 4 of 5 Tap, never typeIt saves as you goUnder a minute
The daily log. Tap chips instead of typing, five domain scales, and no Save button because it writes as you go. Target is under sixty seconds on a phone.

Who this is built for

  • You are functioning, but running on less than you used to
  • Your bloodwork came back normal and you did not feel any better
  • You will log something every day for ninety days
  • You are willing to change what you eat and when you sleep

And who it is not for

  • You are looking for treatment of a diagnosed condition. This is not medical care
  • You want a plan you can follow when it is convenient
  • You are pregnant, or managing a condition that needs a physician directing your nutrition and training
  • You want the bloodwork without the ninety days

$1,000

Start on the 1st or the 15th of any month. Your ninety days run on your own clock.

Paid in full

$1,000 when your seat is confirmed.

Two payments

$500 today, $500 at day thirty.

Three payments

$333 at signup, then at day thirty and day sixty.

Costs that are not included. You pay the laboratory directly for both blood draws. You pay for your own food. If any supplements are recommended, you pay for those too, and we will tell you before you enroll roughly what to expect, because you should hear the real number now rather than find it at day twenty.

We take no commission on laboratory work or on any supplement we suggest.

Questions

Is this medical care?

No. The Human Battery Project is a health coaching and research program. It does not diagnose, treat, or manage any medical condition, and nothing in it replaces care from your physician. Blood draws are ordered through a partner laboratory under a physician-signed requisition, and results outside the reference range are referred out.

What is the Battery Score, exactly?

A composite index we built for this program. Each marker is scored against a target band, averaged within its subsystem, then combined into one number. It exists to track change across ninety days.

It is not a diagnostic tool, it is not validated for clinical use, and you should not present it to a doctor as a medical measurement. It is a tracking instrument, and we are specific about that on purpose.

Why does this score me differently than my doctor's lab does?

A laboratory reference range describes where most of the population falls. It includes a great many people who feel exactly the way you feel. Scoring against it would give nearly everyone full marks on day one and leave nothing to work on.

We score against a narrower target band instead. A result your physician correctly calls normal may score around fifty here. That is the point, and it is not a disagreement with your doctor.

Where does the blood draw happen?

At a partner draw site near you. You book it through your portal once your seat is confirmed, and again in the week before day 90. Same lab, same fasting state, same hour of the morning both times. Cortisol and testosterone both move across the morning, and a 7am draw compared against an 11am draw shows a change that is not real.

How much time does this take each day?

It is the battery indicator. Two minutes a day and you can watch the number move. The log takes about two minutes. The protocol itself is mostly a rearrangement of things you already do: when you eat, when you see light, when you sleep. On top of that, training three to five days a week depending on your phase and starting point.

What happens to my data?

Your log and your lab results are yours. We ask separately, at signup, whether you are willing to let de-identified data be used in longevity research. You can join the program and decline that, and it changes nothing about what you receive. You can export or delete your data at any time.

What if I miss days?

You log the miss. The record is more useful honest than perfect, and the coaching happens around what actually occurred rather than what was supposed to.

What happens after day 90?

You leave with a written maintenance plan and both sets of numbers. Some people run the ninety days again later to measure again; most do not need to.

Apply to start

Start on the 1st or the 15th of any month. Applying does not commit you to anything. We will send you the full protocol, the panel and your start date, and you decide from there.

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Seven questions about how you live right now. There are no wrong answers. We are not testing you, we are working out which of the four protocols to send you. Answer honestly. People who answer these to look good get a protocol they cannot hold, quit in week three, and learn nothing. You can move up later.

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We collect your name, email, state, and the seven answers above so we can send you the right protocol. The seven are habit questions. There is no question here about a symptom, a diagnosis or a medication, and there will not be one until you are enrolled and have consented to it separately.