If you aren’t working out, it’s time to start. Being physically fit upgrades just about every part of your life. You’ll live longer[*], your brain will work better[*], you’ll be happier[*]—you’ll even have better sex[*][*].
But even if you’re going to the gym regularly, there’s a part of exercise that’s easy to overlook: recovery. To get the most out of your workouts, you have to give your body time to rebuild itself.
You can let your body rebuild on its own…or you can use technology to recover stronger and faster than you thought possible.
That’s where pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) therapy comes in. I’ve been using PEMF for years to increase my physical resilience and improve my sleep. It’s one of the first machines we added to Upgrade Labs because it works phenomenally well for muscle recovery.
PEMF has been around for more than 20 years. It used to be prohibitively expensive—about $50,000 for a PEMF unit—but thanks to recent advances in technology, you can get a unit at home for a fraction of that price.
PEMF is one of my favorite ways to hack my workouts. Here’s how it works and how you can use PEMF therapy to recover like a superhuman.
What Is PEMF Therapy?
You may have heard me talk about electromagnetic fields (EMFs) before. They’re a type of radiation that you absorb from electronics, including computers, smartphones, WiFi routers, cell towers, and other technology.
Most EMFs sap your performance and make you weak, and you’ll probably feel better if you avoid them.
But not all EMFs are bad. Unlike the broad-spectrum EMFs that electronics emit, PEMF therapy delivers specific, beneficial frequencies that target your cells, which can have some pretty cool effects.
During a PEMF session, you put the unit next to your body and it sends pulses of EMF radiation, gently stressing your cells (a process called hormesis, which is the good kind of stress). Your cells respond by becoming more efficient, boosting your performance in a variety of ways.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved PEMF devices for healing:
There’s also emerging evidence that PEMF therapy can improve your mood[*].
At Upgrade Labs, a lot of athletes would come in with mild injuries. We’d give them a couple PEMF treatments a week and they would feel better almost immediately.
I’ve never used PEMF for any of those things, but I do use it for faster muscle recovery and sleep, and I’ve seen quantifiable improvements in both.
Recover Faster and Sleep Better with PEMF
PEMF is my go-to hack for muscle repair. I use it after working out and see a major improvement in my recovery time.
I also use PEMF before bed, and according to my sleep tracking data, it reliably improves my sleep quality by between 10-15%, depending on other factors like how much I’ve been traveling.
If you want to recover faster and sleep deeper, I recommend HAELO.
HAELO takes a new approach to PEMF. Their unit releases symphonies of PEMF frequencies—several frequencies at once. Each frequency upgrades your cells in a different way.
The result is that you can choose how you want to improve your performance. HAELO has ten different frequency sets, each of which offers a unique benefit. I use the Recover set post-workout, and again at night as one of my bedtime hacks.
One of the reasons I like HAELO is that they take their research seriously. They lent their technology to a team of researchers investigating recovery in athletes. The study, published in 2021, found that when athletes used HAELO daily for two weeks, they saw an[*]:
- 18% increase in deep sleep
- 11% increase in sleep efficiency
- 11% increase in overall physical recovery
You can let your body recover on its own—but if you want to speed things up and get more out of your workouts, HAELO is one of the best biohacking tools available and by using code DAVE, you might even get a pretty sweet discount along with your new tech.
