THE BIOHACKING EXPERT: NEW Research On How To Live Past 100 Years Old | Dave Asprey

Dave Asprey 0:00 If you can be triggered, it means you're walking around with a loaded gun. 70% of the emotional stress that we feel on a daily basis comes from our body being malnourished.

Jay Shetty 0:11 Dave Asprey.

Dave Asprey 0:12 New York Times best-selling author. He's the founder and CEO of Bulletproof Coffee. We've all been shamed for being lazy. Talking about laziness, the only thing worse is talking about death. We are living in a world today where you can measure as 20 years younger than your calendar age. You don't have to get old.

Jay Shetty 0:30 Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments, and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me.

Dave Asprey 0:52 The best-selling author and host.

Speaker 0:53 The number one health and wellness podcast.

Dave Asprey 0:55 On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

Jay Shetty 0:59 Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now, you know that I'm curious about biohacking, about becoming better, about improving my energy, my focus, my strength, and there's a guest that we've had on twice before who I'm so excited to have back on because he is the father of biohacking, someone who has brought this movement to the fore, helped create so many products, insights, books that have guided us through this. I'm talking about the one and only Dave Asprey, entrepreneur, four-time New York Times best-selling author, and host of the top 100 podcast The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, which is more than 200 million downloads. Dave is the co-founder of Bulletproof Coffee and a leading voice in the movement to take control of our own biology. And what I love about what Dave does is he makes what could cost a lot of money extremely accessible, relevant, and practical, and he's doing that in this new book called Smarter Not Harder: The Biohacker's Guide to Getting the Body and Mind You Want. Go and grab a copy of this right now. We're gonna put a link in the caption so you can order it while you're listening to us. Uh, welcome back to the show, Dave Asprey. Dave, third time.

Dave Asprey 2:14 Jay, it's-

Jay Shetty 2:14 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 2:15 ... always such a pleasure to get time in person with you.

Jay Shetty 2:17 I know, me too. I, I really love seeing you, and I said it to you today. I, I see you, like, you know, whenever we're connecting, maybe it's at a conference or obviously on the podcast, you look better and younger and fitter and healthier every time over the last few years, and I think that's testament to everything you say working- [laughs]

Dave Asprey 2:33 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:34 ... and everything you're saying pra- you're practicing it. And honestly, I saw you today and I was just like, "Who's this big, bright light in my house?" Like-

Dave Asprey 2:40 Thank you

Jay Shetty 2:40 ... you know. It's, it's really special to obviously practice what you preach, but f- to actually see the benefits. You must feel great, too. I mean-

Dave Asprey 2:46 I, I feel amazing. I, I wrote a big book on longevity-

Jay Shetty 2:51 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 2:51 ... uh, that I published a few years ago, and I went really deep. Um, for 20 years I've been running a nonprofit and just working in that field, but I went really deep and I started doing the stuff more aggressively, and I am now, let's see, 11, 11 years younger, uh, than my calendar age. And last week I just got some gene therapy that'll take another nine years off my measured age. So I should test to be about 30 years old even though the calendar believes something different.

Jay Shetty 3:17 What is that measuring? So I've heard people talk about measuring their age before. How is that calculating... Obviously we know how your calendar age marks, but how are they calculating a biological age? Like, what does that look like? What are the processes?

Dave Asprey 3:29 You draw a little bit of blood, and then they look at something called DNA methylation, about 800,000 different data points, and you can say, well, normal people have this much methylation in this pattern, but people who are younger look this way. So if you take two people's blood, you should be able to tell their age, but if they take my blood, they get a much younger age.

Jay Shetty 3:49 Mm.

Dave Asprey 3:49 So this is now the gold standard for measuring how old you are. There's other more affordable tests, like Viome has an age that's based on a lot of things, uh, that are happening in your gut bacteria and in your body, and then there's old-fashioned blood telomere tests that don't work very well.

Jay Shetty 4:03 [laughs] So yeah, don't trust those ones.

Dave Asprey 4:05 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 4:06 You may feel like you're 10 years older, but, but that's, that's not accurate. Well, I wanna dive into this new book. There are so many chapters that really stood out to me as we were going, and I picked out some lines here that really kinda hit me.

Jay Shetty 4:16 This one I thought was huge, and I love how you start the book on laziness, and you talk about tapping into the power of laziness, and I was just thinking this is so true because whenever anyone's trying to shift their health, whether it's biohacking, whether it's mental health, whatever it may be, laziness seems to be like this big elephant in the room, right? It's like that thing that slows you down, it makes you lax, it feels like it's negative, but you say you're not lazy, your body is, and you talk about tapping into the power of laziness.

Dave Asprey 4:46 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 4:47 Tell me how you do that and what does that mean-

Dave Asprey 4:49 All right

Jay Shetty 4:49 ... because I think a lot of... You're gonna make a lot of people happy today.

Dave Asprey 4:52 I will, but even talking about laziness, it, the only thing worse is talking about death. I mean, people, they don't wanna do it. So when I would u- do an Instagram post about laziness, people would just not watch it because, like, I don't wanna face that. And we've all been shamed for being lazy. There's that coach who's like, "Don't be so lazy. Run around the field again," and the teacher, you know, "You're not performing," or your parents. So we have all this shame about it. T- the reality though is that your body has an operating system. I call it the meat operating system, and a lot of spiritual work is actually accessing that. And it has a very strong desire to not waste energy, and that is a sacred thing, right? Imagine if we had two people, and one of them says, "Working hard gets results." And I said, "All right, guys, go dig a ditch." And one of them says, "I got my shovel," and the other one says, "I got a tractor." Uh, okay. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 5:42 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 5:42 The guy with the tractor was done in 20 minutes-

Jay Shetty 5:44 Yeah

Dave Asprey 5:44 ... and the other guy works for three days. And we somehow believe without thinking the virtuous guy is the guy with the shovel because he worked hard, and we're unconsciously believing that working hard gets results. So we shame ourselves when we don't work hard, and sadly, when we work hard and we don't get results- We start feeling like victims, which is really toxic. [laughs] We all know people who work really hard and don't get results. Maybe it's because we have a belief system in there that doesn't work, and when we say, "Well, couldn't I do this in an easier way?" We start feeling shame. No, it's not okay to do it the easy way because the virtue comes from the struggle. But in the world that we live in, the virtue comes from getting it done.

Jay Shetty 6:26 Mm.

Dave Asprey 6:27 And understanding that you will always have a desire to be lazy. And think about it, you wake up and you say, "All right, I could go to the gym," or there's a couch and there's donuts and Netflix. The couch is always going to look sexier, and there's... And pe- we start, "Well, I should want the gym." No, you shouldn't. Your body really does want the extra energy from the donuts and not using any energy in case there's a famine. So embracing that your motivation from your body is to save energy, and n- there's nothing wrong with that. So then how do

Dave Asprey 7:00 you use that to motivate yourself?

Jay Shetty 7:01 Mm. Mm.

Dave Asprey 7:01 That's how to hack laziness. Well, if you go to the gym, well, let's say you're gonna do cardio, go to spin class. If you did an hour a day, five days a week, okay, that's aggressive, you're going to improve after two months, you know, 2% improvement in your fitness. If you do the lazy way, the thing I write about in Smarter Not Harder, you're gonna spend 15 minutes a week, you will not sweat. That's the amount of time you spend brushing your teeth, by the way. You'll improve by 12%, six times more. So you wake up and you say, "Today, I'm going to save 50 minutes of not working at the gym 'cause I'm gonna do it better." And all of a sudden, it's really motivating because the body says, "I get to save energy at the gym?" And then the body aligns its motivation with what your mind wants, and then the resistance fades. And it's a really important thing. It's something that I've never seen written about anywhere. So use the savings of time, the savings of energy to motivate yourself. But you know who does know about this? Big food companies. They will send you a 25 cent coupon, and you're like, "Oh, look, I saved 25 cents." Because to our body, saving money feels like a lot more than it really is.

Jay Shetty 8:10 Mm.

Dave Asprey 8:11 Right? So it's about our unconscious view of reality.

Jay Shetty 8:13 Mm.

Dave Asprey 8:14 So since we know our body does that without our knowledge or permission, let's just use it to our advantage instead of against us.

Jay Shetty 8:20 Yeah, absolutely. So using a 15-minute workout per day.

Dave Asprey 8:23 No, no, no, no, no.

Jay Shetty 8:24 No, using a 15-minute workout-

Dave Asprey 8:25 Five minutes, three times a week.

Jay Shetty 8:27 Five minutes, three times a week?

Dave Asprey 8:28 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 8:28 How is that having a 12% change?

Dave Asprey 8:31 Well, maybe working hard doesn't get results when it comes to exercise. And I want to be really clear, the ability to work hard is necessary for you to get things done in the world, but working hard without the right tools is a fool's errand.

Jay Shetty 8:44 Yes.

Dave Asprey 8:45 And one of my companies, it's a franchise, we're about to be over about 30 locations signed, so we're opening across the country. It's called Upgrade Labs. You can go to ownanupgradelabs.com and open one in your neighborhood. And we have the technology to do this. It uses artificial intelligence, and it causes you to move slower than you want, and then way harder than you really, really want to, but only for 20 seconds.

Jay Shetty 9:10 Mm.

Dave Asprey 9:11 And then here's the trick. As soon as you're done, you take some really deep breaths, and it guides you with the AI to say, "All right, breathe deeper," and it brings your heart rate down. So what your body really responds to-

Jay Shetty 9:20 Mm

Dave Asprey 9:20 ... is really strong stimulation, like a tiger was gonna catch you, and then a feeling of safety and calm when you have enough minerals, you have enough nutrients. Says, "Oh, I guess I should improve my performance." But if you go to the spin class, okay, the tiger chases you on the first sprint, and then you keep running, and then you sprint again, and you keep running, and the body believes, "I'm being hunted," and it doesn't get away. And if you're combining that with a low-calorie diet, "Oh, there's a famine, and I'm continuously hunted for an hour a day," no wonder it's not going to improve. It doesn't have any energy to improve. It's just stressed.

Jay Shetty 9:53 Mm.

Dave Asprey 9:53 So the precise dose of exercise, it matters so much. And the liberating thing, [laughs] you're gonna hate me for saying this.

Jay Shetty 10:02 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 10:03 So y- you notice I'm in better shape than before. 20 minutes a week is my entire workout regimen, and I'm like, "I'm doing all right."

Jay Shetty 10:10 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 10:10 Right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 10:11 You're stacked, yeah.

Dave Asprey 10:12 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 10:12 That's epic, man. And you, you said it beautifully on page

Jay Shetty 10:15 21. You said, "Your body does not care how much time you do something hard. It cares about how quickly you do something hard, how hard it is, and how quickly it returns to baseline."

Dave Asprey 10:27 There you go.

Jay Shetty 10:27 Page 21. That is, that is... And that resonated with me a lot because, and we'll talk about this later on, I don't want to get into it now, but you talk about this in the book as well, why the infrared sauna and why cold plunges kind of ex- that, that explains exactly that process.

Dave Asprey 10:43 Yes.

Jay Shetty 10:43 Especially if you're doing both back and forth. And you'd think that getting in the cold for, you're like, "Oh, I'd have to sit in there for a long time." But it's actually how long is it uncomfortable for-

Dave Asprey 10:54 Right

Jay Shetty 10:54 ... that, where it's actually working. Because you're saying once it becomes normalized, once anything becomes normalized, whether it's spin class, whether it's sitting in the cold or whatever it may be, it's now not having that effect.

Dave Asprey 11:05 It doesn't work. In fact, if you got in a, in a normal warm bathtub and slowly cooled the water, you would have no benefits from doing that. And instead it's that you got in and it was a rapid drop in temperature, and then you got out and the body warmed itself up again.

Jay Shetty 11:19 Mm.

Dave Asprey 11:19 And it's teaching the body that it is safe to warm itself up, and then it becomes better at creating heat. If your body's better at creating heat, it means your metabolism works better.

Jay Shetty 11:28 Mm.

Dave Asprey 11:29 And so w- we've unpacked all of this using machine learning and artificial intelligence, and today most people, [laughs] they buy gym memberships and they don't go.

Jay Shetty 11:38 Mm.

Dave Asprey 11:39 There's $400 million a year of ghost memberships where people pay and never show up. Because, well, if I have the membership, I might show up, but the lazy impulse of the body wins because the gym doesn't have a good return on investment of your time.

Jay Shetty 11:52 Mm. Wow.

Dave Asprey 11:53 And I'm not saying you shouldn't work out.

Jay Shetty 11:55 No, I know you... Yeah.

Dave Asprey 11:55 Yeah. And if you go to the gym, awesome. Uh, I enjoy that as well, but I'd frankly rather go to a yoga class in my spare time and- Then you can get the muscles in about three to five times less time than going to the gym. You get the cardio [laughs] in, I don't know, 15 minutes versus five hours a week. I don't know the ratio there, but it's crazy.

Jay Shetty 12:15 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 12:15 And it's much better cardio anyway.

Jay Shetty 12:17 Mm.

Dave Asprey 12:17 And so all of a sudden you're saying, "Wait, I got my strength, I got my cardio." And that was what led me to create Upgrade Labs, because people wanna come in and do this, and what do you do with the extra time? Well, how about we train your brain with neurofeedback? How about we train your stress response so you can be more resilient when things are weird at work or at home or things like that? Or how about we just make it so your body recovers better than it ever did? And what we're dealing with now is a world full of stress and never any recovery time.

Jay Shetty 12:45 Mm.

Dave Asprey 12:45 So let's use technology to handle the easy stuff like muscles and cardio, and then let's take the extra saved time to make our brains better and to make our stress handling better. Absolutely has changed my life.

Jay Shetty 12:57 Have you got one in LA, Upgrade Labs?

Dave Asprey 12:59 There's one at the Beverly Hilton, although that hotel is about to get renovated, and there's one in Santa Monica underneath Arnold Schwarzenegger's office.

Jay Shetty 13:05 I wanna go.

Dave Asprey 13:06 Oh, absolutely. You're-

Jay Shetty 13:07 I need to go

Dave Asprey 13:07 ... always welcome.

Jay Shetty 13:07 Yeah, I need to come in

Dave Asprey 13:08 I'd love for you to.

Jay Shetty 13:08 I didn't... Yeah. This is... I didn't realize. That's awesome.

Dave Asprey 13:11 Yeah. In fact, the first one opened eight years ago in Santa Monica.

Jay Shetty 13:13 Wow.

Dave Asprey 13:13 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 13:14 Wow.

Dave Asprey 13:14 I've been working on this for a long time before we decided to let anyone open a business-

Jay Shetty 13:17 Right

Dave Asprey 13:18 ... at Upgrade Labs. And part of this is it's a global movement now. Biohacking, it- it's a thing. You go to Latin America, you go to Japan, it doesn't matter, there's biohacking all over the world, and it's expensive to build a million-dollar lab like I did at my house with all this advanced tech. So I'm like, what if we just made it available for everyone?

Jay Shetty 13:35 Mm. That's awesome. I can't wait to check it out.

Dave Asprey 13:37 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 13:38 All right. Let's dive back in. There's a couple of things that you talk about. So we talked about laziness.

Jay Shetty 13:42 One of the things that you talk about in the book is removing friction. So you have these six steps to energy success, and I'll let people get the book to dive into all of them. I don't wanna go through everything. But you talk about removing friction, and I think when you, when you dive into that, I was like, that's the right word. Like, it's friction that we experience.

Dave Asprey 14:00 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 14:00 What are some of the steps or some of the highlights that you see of, like, removing friction? What does that look like?

Dave Asprey 14:04 When you think about something that you wanna do, oftentimes it's the little things that feel really big because your body's creating resistance. It's like, "Don't waste energy. There might be a famine. Don't waste energy." So if you can't find your gym shoes, right? 'Cause you, you're not organized, right? And there's a lot of things that we do that make it so that there's many steps, and each step is a decision. So you, you remove decisions to make it really easy. And a big source of friction is you wanted to do it. You went to the gym, and you didn't get results. Well, one of the things that's holding you back is that either you're exposing yourself to toxins that lower your testosterone, things like extra plastic, BPA, um, or you're just lacking minerals. And right now we have an epidemic of people who just don't have enough minerals. Our food used to be full of minerals because our soil was full of minerals. We've been kind of strip farming the land. So even if you're eating plants that are supposed to be high in iron, they're probably not-

Jay Shetty 15:02 Mm

Dave Asprey 15:02 ... because the soil doesn't have iron anymore. And when you get enough minerals in the body, then the... You send a signal through your exercise that says, "Hey, improve." The body says, "Well, I wanted to improve, but I have this big sticking point. I don't have enough zinc and copper. I can't improve." So then you just feel stress. So one of the things that's really helped me lean out is I focus very heavily on my mineral intake. They're the least sexy supplements on earth. And to make minerals go where they're supposed to go, we need something called Vitamin DAKE. And you can go to Vitamin DAKE, D-A-K-E, dot com, and it's there. It's about 20 bucks a month for what it takes to do this. It's a combination of vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K, and a special form of vitamin E. And those things, when you take those in combination with a broad spectrum mineral supplement on the same site, your body suddenly has the power to build bones and to build muscle and make energy, and your focus can improve. And then I put the trace minerals that are just broadly lacking for all of us in my new coffee brand called Danger Coffee. So the idea is it's easy. You're doing coffee every day probably anyway, and you end up going, "Wow, something different. It feels different in this." And it's called Danger Coffee, by the way, you're gonna like this, because who knows what you might do, right? [laughs]

Jay Shetty 16:19 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 16:19 You know, you, you might finally ask that girl out. You might start a company. You might start a podcast.

Jay Shetty 16:23 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 16:24 Uh, the idea is-

Jay Shetty 16:25 I love that

Dave Asprey 16:25 ... you can handle it now-

Jay Shetty 16:27 Yeah

Dave Asprey 16:27 ... because you've got the energy, and minerals are the key.

Jay Shetty 16:29 Mm. And why are the minerals... You talked about this. Like, we always talk about supplements.

Dave Asprey 16:33 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 16:33 Talk about vitamins. We don't hear about minerals as much, and-

Dave Asprey 16:35 Yeah

Jay Shetty 16:35 ... you make that point in the book. Are those the four minerals that you're saying, the D, A, K, and special form of E? Like, those are the-

Dave Asprey 16:41 Those are vitamins.

Jay Shetty 16:42 Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Dave Asprey 16:43 They're, they're the fat-soluble vitamins, and each of those directs minerals to go to the right place in the body.

Jay Shetty 16:48 Mm.

Dave Asprey 16:48 And in the minerals, there's macro minerals, things like magnesium and potassium, and there's trace minerals like zinc and copper and manganese, and then there's ultra trace minerals that are present in Earth's crust, and you need a little bit of those. So there's, in the coffee, there's 54 different kinds of minerals at super tiny traces, and in the supplements you take, it's three pills to get enough minerals, just enough minerals in your day. That's why a one-a-pill thing that has vitamins, minerals, there's not enough of anything in that. And when you do that, those are the first two most important foundational and affordable supplements that you need to take before you do B vitamins. And I've formulated nootropics and advanced anti-aging longevity things. I love doing that, and I take those too, but the last thing I would ever stop taking would be Vitamin DAKE and Minerals 101 because they're foundational to everything else your body does, whether it's meditating better, [laughs] whether it's running faster, whether it's thinking better, or just staying calm in a stressful situation. Without minerals, your body cannot do what it's trying to do.

Jay Shetty 17:49 Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with you more. I've, I've definitely... We've talked about this before, and I've definitely had periods in my life where I was so low on v- minerals or vitamins, of course, which are then impacting the minerals-

Dave Asprey 17:59 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 17:59 ... where I'm like, "Wait a minute. I'm sleeping right. I'm working out. I'm eating right. Like, what is going on?" And so often I think we make it a mental challenge where we're like-

Dave Asprey 18:09 Yeah

Jay Shetty 18:09 ... "Oh, maybe I'm dealing with something." And actually, what you realize is your body's just not dealing with stress well. And now it makes it feel like everything's mental when it's actually biological and chemical.

Dave Asprey 18:20 Oh, you said it so, "My body's not dealing with stress right now." I believe that half and maybe 70% of the emotional stress that we feel on a daily basis, it comes from our body being malnourished.

Jay Shetty 18:33 Yes, I agree.

Dave Asprey 18:34 Right?

Jay Shetty 18:34 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 18:34 And, and then it feels like-

Jay Shetty 18:35 I've experienced that.

Dave Asprey 18:36 Okay, you have. So me too, and it feels like it's your mother-in-law or your boss or like, like s- it's someone else's fault, or maybe it's you and your mind is just running in circles. Well, when the body feels like, "Okay, there's not a famine, I've got everything I need," all of a sudden things that felt like Everest, they're, "Oh, that's just a foot. I could walk up that no problem."

Jay Shetty 18:53 Mm.

Dave Asprey 18:53 And to create a feeling of peace in your tissues, and then do the hard work on the mental and spiritual aspects of meditation, it's a lot easier to work on those when your body's working. But if, if you're constantly feeling that what your body's telling you, because it's hungry [laughs] is you and it's a flaw or it's something to work on, you can spend your entire life trying to deal with your emotions, not knowing that it's what's on your plate that's causing them.

Jay Shetty 19:17 Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I wanna fully double emphasize that. [laughs] That is so true and so real, and I think so many of us are climbing up a steep hill trying to solve the wrong problem first, and this way round's gonna make all of it much easier. I, I think you're spot on. No, I'm so glad, so glad that we addressed that. I wanted to dive into this one. Like I... For everyone who's listening and watching, the book goes into depth into exactly the minerals, exactly the vitamins you need. Like I want you to know that the book's giving you a breakdown, and so make sure you grab the book so that you actually get all the insights. I just wanna give you the breadth of the insight that Dave has so that you're like, "Oh, wait a minute, I need to work on that, I need to work

Jay Shetty 19:52 on that." Uh, something you talk a lot about is picking a target area and tracking it, and you talk about these core target areas. You talk about strength, cardiovascular fitness, energy, metabolism, brain function, and stress resistance. And I've found that that's probably our biggest mistake when it comes to our health, is we either are measuring nothing or we're trying to measure everything.

Dave Asprey 20:16 You nailed it.

Jay Shetty 20:17 Right? Where should one start? Like, how does one, I guess, intuitively or data-wise know what they are missing right now? Because I feel like most of us don't know. Most of us live quite unconsciously, and we may be feeling a bit tired, we may be feeling a bit of body pain, but we're not really that aware of what the challenge is and what we need.

Dave Asprey 20:38 I have a lot of data on this, because we ask people this when they come into Upgrade Labs, and that was one of the things that inspired me to structure the book this way. And it's kind of funny, the only people on earth who, who are gonna say when they wake up in the morning the first thing they want, "I wanna be healthy today," they're people who are like me. When I weighed 300 pounds, I had chronic fatigue syndrome and arthritis and massive brain fog, and I was a wreck. So being healthy was a top priority for me. And you might get there when you're 75, [laughs] right, as well. "I just wish I was healthy." But when we're reasonably healthy, health is number 17 on the honey do list. I, I, I want it. And what's really motivating us, oftentimes from our body, is we wanna be powerful, we wanna be energetic, uh, we want love in our life, and those things, they trump health. So health n- never gets enough priority. And what does health even mean? Most people can't tell you. So I broke it down into those five or six categories and, okay, what are you gonna work on first? And every person is individual. So where are you today, and then what's your first goal? And everyone says, "Well, I want all of those," but pick one. And in fact, I encourage you in the book to pick two and really think about it. And when people come in, we actually use a, a conjoint analysis survey and like we, we go through data to help you figure out your goals. But in the book, I teach you how to do it. So if your first goal is, "You know what? I notice that I'm, I'm weak. I, I, I can't hold onto things like my grip strength is gone. I don't have the muscles I want." Okay. So you're gonna focus on muscle first. Or like a lot of people, "I'm stressed all the time and my brain doesn't work. I'm gonna focus on my brain first." So then you go to the section of the book on brain and I list all the technologies and techniques, whether they're free or cost a couple hundred bucks or cost thousands of dollars, that work really well to bring your brain back online. And when you do that, your muscles will work a little bit better as a side effect.

Jay Shetty 22:31 Mm.

Dave Asprey 22:31 Right? So maybe that was it. First I want my brain, then I want my muscles. But someone else could be totally different in their desires. "I wanna be able to run a marathon. I just need the endurance to walk up the stairs because I can't take care of my kids." Stuff like that happens all the time. So you, you go through the book and say, "Okay, this is my goal," and then there's a variety of technologies that will support that. And some of them I say technologies, they're just techniques. And if it's muscles, picking up rocks is the entire history of building muscles for humans. We concentrate the rocks into kettlebells now.

Jay Shetty 23:00 Yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 23:00 But they're still rocks. And then-

Jay Shetty 23:02 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 23:02 ... for endurance, it's run away from tigers. Like you could run away from a slow tiger or a fast tiger, and, and that's all of exercise.

Jay Shetty 23:08 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 23:09 Well, with machine learning and AI, we are doubling the amount of knowledge of biology that we have every 73 days. There's so much magic happening right now that you can use this new knowledge that your doctor is probably never gonna know, and you can use that to say, "Oh, I can do this in a lot less time." So then you get your muscles back and your brain works better, or you get your brain back and then you have the energy to do the muscle work or to do the endurance work. And then you say, "Okay, I'm gonna work on these stress management techniques." And you have so much wisdom that you've offered people on, on dealing with stress and the meditation side of things. And there's a couple chapters towards the end of the book where I talk about, you know, spiritual hacking, which on its face is a bit offensive, I admit it. But anyway.

Jay Shetty 23:53 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 23:54 Uh, it, it was-

Jay Shetty 23:54 No, I knew it came from a good place

Dave Asprey 23:56 ... under enlightened. It, it did.

Jay Shetty 23:56 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 23:57 And, and the idea here is, is what would've happened in Tibet or in India or Nepal or a place like that is, okay, we have a cave [laughs] and you can go to the cave, and 20 years later you are going to be enlightened. And you could call that fast path But most of us have other things that we want to do. So how do we get the maximum amount of meditation benefit per minute? Like hurry meditate faster? It's an oxymoron-

Jay Shetty 24:27 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 24:27 ... except if you can say, "Well, I'm gonna do breathwork with my meditation," and studies show that your brain gets into these states more quickly, then maybe you should consider finding the kind of breathwork that works for your body-

Jay Shetty 24:40 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 24:40 ... because for every 10 minutes of work you do, you might get into the state faster. And for some people, they say, "Well, that's not okay." The Dalai Lama years ago offered a $100,000 reward to neuroscientists who could help him get into a special esoteric state. He says, "It takes me four hours of meditation to get there, and I don't have four hours. If you can get me there in an hour, I'll pay you $100,000." [laughs]

Jay Shetty 25:02 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 25:02 Okay, this is possible today. I, I run a neuroscience clinic called 40 Years of Zen.

Jay Shetty 25:07 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 25:07 And in five days, people have the brainwaves of someone who's spent 20 years in the cave, and I've spent six months of my life with electrodes glued to my head, meditating every day with a computer teaching me how to not do it wrong. And for me, that was faster, but I also did five years of Art of Living, um, breathwork every single morning, 'cause I found it worked better than just sitting and meditating, which I also did every morning. And I want people to understand any of those approaches is better than not doing it, and you've got to find the one that works for you.

Jay Shetty 25:38 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 25:39 And there's a list of, of exercises in here, including the Reset Process, which is one

Dave Asprey 25:44 of the most important things I teach.

Jay Shetty 25:45 Mm. Can you walk us through that?

Dave Asprey 25:47 The Reset Process is something that, uh, um, I pioneered with the neuroscience practice, because you can measure when it works. And what you do, and the whole recipe is in the book for it, but what you're doing is you're finding something that is a trigger for you. And I want to be really straightforward. If you can be triggered, it means you're walking around with a loaded gun. You need to unload the gun. It's not everyone else's job to not make you shoot them. It's your job to say, "I'm not carrying a weapon anymore."

Jay Shetty 26:13 Mm.

Dave Asprey 26:14 And so you find something that triggers you, and you sit and you think about that feeling, and it's usually something will pop into your head. You were bullied. Uh, something a parent said. Someone cut you off in traffic. It doesn't really matter. It's, something's gonna pop into your head. You say, "Okay, I'm gonna run the Reset Process on that." So you sit the person who made you angry down across from you in your mind's eye.

Jay Shetty 26:34 Visually, yeah.

Dave Asprey 26:34 Yeah, visually. In your, also in your mind's eye, you imagine some sort of a infallible deity. Some people use God or Jesus or Buddha or, you know, any of the deities that you like, or it could just be, you know, a, a, a light bulb that's always right. It, it, it doesn't matter, but this is your, your double-checking thing. And then you sit there and you actually say, "You did this, and it made me feel this way." And then you tap into how bad you felt, and you actually turn on the bad feeling. You're like, "What? You, you want me to actually re-" Yes, I want you to feel it. And then once you're sure that you've really felt the bad feeling, you might have tears in your eyes. I mean, it might have been a big thing. Then, and this is the key that's missing from a lot even of, of older literature, before you work on letting it go, you have to find gratitude. So you find one thing. It doesn't matter how big of a gratitude it is. You just need a spark of gratitude and say, "Oh, here's one good thing that happened." And all of a sudden that flips a switch in your brain.

Jay Shetty 27:34 Mm.

Dave Asprey 27:35 And then you can step into the F word, called forgiveness. And-

Jay Shetty 27:39 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 27:40 [laughs] Forgiveness-

Jay Shetty 27:42 I was like-

Dave Asprey 27:42 I go like... [laughs]

Jay Shetty 27:43 It depends where you everyone's mind went. Yeah. I was like... Yeah.

Dave Asprey 27:47 And the reason I call it the F word is a lot of people, "I'm not gonna forgive that person. They wronged me." You don't have to tell them you forgive them. This is just you unloading the weapon.

Jay Shetty 27:55 Mm.

Dave Asprey 27:55 This is you no longer being triggered.

Jay Shetty 27:57 Mm.

Dave Asprey 27:57 Right? And then you look at it from the other person's point of view, and you realize maybe their mom was mean to them. You know, maybe they didn't know. Maybe the guy who cut you off in traffic was on the way to the hospital to see his daughter being born.

Jay Shetty 28:09 Mm.

Dave Asprey 28:09 You just don't know.

Jay Shetty 28:10 Mm.

Dave Asprey 28:11 Right? And you start looking, then all of a sudden, because you did gratitude first, y- you feel your heart open, and you go, "Oh my gosh." And when you're done, and sometimes it takes neuroscience or a facilitator or some coaching, uh, but when you're done, you can look at someone who wronged you greatly, and all you feel is peace and love.

Jay Shetty 28:30 Mm.

Dave Asprey 28:31 And you can no longer be triggered. This is very important, because what we normally learn to do is to say, "Well, I know that every time this situation comes up, I'm going to feel triggered. I'm going to notice that I'm triggered, and then I'm going to take a deep breath and I'm going to choose to behave like an adult." Hallelujah for doing that. We all need to do more of that. It's just biologically expensive, because it takes a lot of effort and time and focus. What if there was no trigger? So the Reset Process lets you turn this off at a very deep and profound level. And when you're done, you can look at your greatest enemy and you can say, "I love you. I forgive you. We are one," and you are done for the rest of your life with that trauma. And I have done this on every single trauma that's ever happened.

Jay Shetty 29:11 Mm.

Dave Asprey 29:11 Um, I've, I had a, a very successful conscious uncoupling in the last two years. I had an employee embezzle money. I've had people try to ruin my reputation. All of it. I ran the Reset Process on it, and I'm absolutely at peace with it.

Jay Shetty 29:25 Mm.

Dave Asprey 29:25 And to be able to get there, running... I mean, you run at a very big level. So do I. And the amount of stuff that comes at us, no one's ever gonna know. It is an enormous thing when you're leading millions of people and making the world a better place. And to be able to do that without the constant stress and the constant tension and the constant questioning in your mind, that all comes from unresolved forgiveness.

Jay Shetty 29:49 Mm.

Dave Asprey 29:50 So the Reset Process in the book is, how do you get there most quickly? And y- you may say, "I don't want to do that. That sounds awful." Do some EMDR. That's another way to get to a similar state. But this process is so powerful, and it leads you to amazing spiritual states where you no longer are carrying a grudge. Because, I mean, Smarter Not Harder, the power of laziness, how expensive is it for you spiritually-

Jay Shetty 30:15 Mm

Dave Asprey 30:15 ... at a soul level to carry a grudge against someone who wronged you for the rest of your life? It, life is too precious to waste it that way

Jay Shetty 30:22 Mm.

Dave Asprey 30:23 And this is the fastest way I've found for people to learn how to let go of something. And I put it in a book. You say, "Well, that, I thought that was about exercise-

Jay Shetty 30:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 30:29 ... or biohacking." Look, the, the biggest thing you can do and the hardest thing you can do is to let go of something that your body is holding onto because it thinks it's keeping you safe.

Jay Shetty 30:39 Mm.

Dave Asprey 30:39 And I thought it was just worthy of including in the book. That's what I mean by spiritual hacking. Find the technique that lets you fully let go of something so that you can be present with your family, with your friends, with your loved one, and then you can be present for your mission, or maybe you can find your mission and your purpose.

Jay Shetty 30:55 Yeah. I thi- I, I think it's so well said, and I'm so glad you included it because I think for the sake of simplicity, we talk about our body, our mind, our soul or spirit or whatever we call it, but the truth is that it's so interconnected in that, as you were saying, if you can't let go of an emotional disconnect or a misalignment, chances are that's going to lead to your eating habits, and then that eating habit is gonna link back to a lack of that spiritual cleansing or detoxing or whatever that may be.

Dave Asprey 31:24 Right.

Jay Shetty 31:24 And so we're kind of just stuck in this vicious cycle, and I, I wanted to talk to you about that because using that spiritual hacking the other way and going, what are

Jay Shetty 31:33 some of the blocks that are created physically because of the lack of letting go?

Dave Asprey 31:39 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 31:40 What are some of the habits that you've seen develop physically in our diet, in our, you know, in our physical practices because of a lack of that?

Dave Asprey 31:47 I believe that every cell in your body has its own small consciousness, and even inside the cells, the mitochondria, each of them is an ancient bacteria, and ancient bacteria have a consciousness. It's a pretty slow, dumb consciousness. [laughs] Actually, it's a very fast consciousness, but it's, it doesn't have much awareness. But when you have billions, actually for those things, almost trillions inside the body, they function as a distributed consciousness for your meat, for your, your hardware, and they're just trying to keep the Petri dish alive, and they think you're a Petri dish. And you realize that they're storing traumas, and when you do this really deep forgiveness work, you're causing the body to relax, and you're causing the body to feel safe at a cellular level. And when a cell feels safe, it will expand and grow and thrive, and it'll maintain itself. And when a cell feels like the environment around it is hostile, whether it's because of self-hate or whether it's because of a lack of nutrients or because you're over-exercising or under-exercising, then they don't feel safe, and then they don't do their job right. So when your body is in that place, your energy field gets bigger and stronger, and we can even measure that at the neuroscience clinic. We measure brain voltage, and people will increase their brain voltage, and when that happens, suddenly that injury that you've had that won't heal, it heals. The cancer that you have can shrink just from doing meditation, right? Because if there's conscious or unconscious loathing around a part of your body, like, oh, you don't like your love handles, right? They're probably not gonna go away. In fact, they'll probably get bigger, right? Because they don't feel safe, so this deep loving of your body, of your tissues. And, um, I was working with a teenager recently, and she said, "You know, some of my friends don't like their bodies."

Jay Shetty 33:42 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 33:43 Uh, and it-

Jay Shetty 33:43 Very common occurrence, yeah.

Dave Asprey 33:45 Yeah. And, and they think they're fat, or they think they're thin, or they don't like their nose or whatever, and she said, "I thought about it, uh, a lot, and I realized I really like my body because it can do all these amazing things." And I was like, "That is the most enlightened, cool thing I've ever heard from a teenager," right? Because if you have that self-love for your tissues, even if they're not working right... And I say this as a guy who was 300 pounds with, like, arthritis and a knee that I couldn't trust 'cause it would just, like, it would just fold in the middle [laughs] of walking, and I would fall over. Like, I was such a wreck. And to be able to go through and, and forgive yourself, that's actually the hardest forgiveness, and you can run the reset process on a part of your body that you have an issue with. You can run the reset process on your entire body, and the feelings of not being enough, not being good enough, all of those things you can just let go of. So you're just at peace, and things are as they are, and you don't have to have an emotional reaction to everything. And that allows you to have so much more energy for your spirit.

Jay Shetty 34:43 When that spiritual lacking is draining all your energy, you don't have the energy to pick the right foods and to do the workout and to put into your creative processes or creative endeavors that you have going on. And I wanna dive into a couple of things which I thought really...

Jay Shetty 35:00 I'm glad you talked about this in the book because I think the challenge is, as we know with health and wellness, there's always a new fad, a new trend, a new kinda thing that comes up, and everyone gets behind it. And then afterwards, a few years later, we realize that there was more research to it. I think one of those big areas is around... Let's l- there's two areas in the book that you cover really well that I wanna dive into. One is around where we get our protein. We know protein's important. I mean, remind us how much protein we need to get every day, like good protein, because-

Dave Asprey 35:29 You need between 0.8 and one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So I weigh 200 pounds, and I'm about 7% body fat, and I, that means I need about 200 grams of protein a day.

Jay Shetty 35:41 You're 7% body fat?

Dave Asprey 35:42 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 35:42 Wow.

Dave Asprey 35:42 It's ridiculous.

Jay Shetty 35:43 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 35:44 As a guy who was the fat computer hacker from the first Jurassic Park, [laughs] like it's, it's totally ridiculous. And in order to do that, if, if you're obese like I was, you might say, "Well, if I weighed 300 pounds and I had 100 pounds of fat," you really only need 200 grams of protein. You can subtract the extra fat from the number. But 200 grams of protein-

Jay Shetty 36:02 It's a lot

Dave Asprey 36:02 ... and protein isn't all the same, and this is something that-

Jay Shetty 36:05 That's what... Yeah

Dave Asprey 36:06 ... yeah, that the big food companies are trying to tell us. Oh, you have cricket protein, or gluten is protein. There's a company making keto cookies that are all protein. They're just gluten-

Jay Shetty 36:14 Gluten

Dave Asprey 36:15 ... and canola oil, right? That, that is not food. So a while ago, the story was, "Oh, all calories are the same, so you can drink this, you know, high-fructose corn syrup. It's just calories. As long as you keep your calories low, you can drink a Diet Coke and a Snickers bar. They cancel each other out." It doesn't work like that. Protein's the same way. So different proteins send different signals to the body, and there's something called amino acid availability score, and it turns out that animal proteins score much higher than plant-based proteins. And I say this as a former vegan, a former raw vegan, and you just cannot get enough protein from plants unless you're doing heavy industrial processing of the plants, and that comes at a cost. But even then, the highest quality plant-based protein powders don't hold a candle to dairy protein, which is vegetarian, or egg protein, which is vegetarian, or sort of the king of proteins is beef or buffalo or, or bison. As a vegan, I had a problem with this because, well, I was a vegan. I was in Tibet at a, a monastery, and Tibetan monks love to argue. And they're trained since they're about eight years old, or they'll have an eight-year-old sitting on the ground surrounded by older kids standing up, all arguing at the same time, doing these, like, aggressive things, and it's to teach you to be calm in the face of arguments so that you can still be at peace, and it's beautiful to watch.

Jay Shetty 37:36 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 37:37 So I knew this, and, and so I'm kind of teasing the head lama. I said, "Well, you tell me no killing, but you have a yak skin on your prayer pole. Uh, so I think you're a hypocrite." And he starts laughing, and he looks at me and he goes, "One death feeds everyone." And I'm like, mind blown, 'cause I had been a vegan until I went to Tibet and I realized I cannot be a vegan in Tibet because there's just very little food, and if there's, you know, some yak butter tea or there's, you know, a little bit of meat, you just eat it 'cause there's just not enough food. So I really thought about it and that led me to think about deaths

Dave Asprey 38:10 per calorie. And as a guy who's built a regenerative farm on Vancouver Island and raised all of my own animals for most of the last eight years, I will tell you that a cow will feed you for an entire year, and if it's grass-fed and from a local farmer, no other animal died unless the cow stepped on a frog. I mean, it is literally one death, and if the cow was treated with respect and ethically, then you are killing fewer animals than an industrial plant protein. Because when they do those, the tractor comes through [laughs] and it chops up every creature that's there, including the bunnies and the mice and the butterflies, and all the ugly ones like worms that no one likes that are important for life. So I feel really clean about it, but the most important thing that I can say if you choose to eat animal protein, which I do, is that practice gratitude before you eat. Um, I believe because of my shamanic training and because of all the spiritual work that I do that humans, our energetic field as a species made a sacred agreement with the animals that we've domesticated and they come here to nourish us in exchange for our gratitude. So if you're going to eat meat, you practice gratitude because that's the deal we made. And if you disrespect the animal and you're eating industrial meat and you're eating it with mindlessly, I don't think that's a good practice. But I do think it's ethical to eat meat because I'm killing fewer lives when I eat beef than when I eat plant-based protein. And since that nourishes me better, which gives me stronger energy and stronger bones and it gives me more energy to put back into the world, including building better soil via farming of animals, I feel like it's a good deal and it's within integrity for me.

Jay Shetty 39:51 But even in some animal protein

Jay Shetty 39:53 you are recommending, and we'll talk about the plant proteins as well, but some of the animal proteins you were saying are not as-

Dave Asprey 39:58 Yeah

Jay Shetty 39:59 ... strong and reliable. I believe you mentioned chicken, turkey. I think there were a couple of others-

Dave Asprey 40:02 Yeah

Jay Shetty 40:02 ... in the book that I saw.

Dave Asprey 40:03 Birds are-

Jay Shetty 40:05 Yeah

Dave Asprey 40:05 ... not that con- they're not dinosaurs.

Jay Shetty 40:06 Mm.

Dave Asprey 40:07 So [laughs] they're less like us and the fat that's present in birds is similar to soybean oil. It's a lot of omega-6 that causes inflammation and, uh, you would know this, if you're in India and you're not feeling well, your grandma's gonna give you white rice and ghee, which is clarified butter. In the US you get saltines and margarine or something and it doesn't work very well. But w- the reason is that ghee, that saturated fat, is very nourishing for you.

Jay Shetty 40:33 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 40:33 And that you actually need that. You don't get it from a chicken. And also one chicken, to get the amount of protein, I'd eat a chicken a day. I'm killing 365 chickens a year. That doesn't feel very good.

Jay Shetty 40:43 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 40:44 In addition to that, real chickens, the kind that I grow on my farm, take nine months to mature and their fat is rich and yellow and full of vitamins even though it's not the best kind of fat. But the chickens that you're eating at the store takes six weeks to get that big because they're, they've been modified and bred to have these incredibly large breasts and they're terribly mistreated. So unless a chicken is pasture raised and a heritage breed, at, at which point it's not affordable, they're terribly expensive to raise. Chickens exist to make eggs. [laughs] Eggs, if you're not allergic, are really a good source of fat and protein. And when you eat eggs you wanna cook the whites and leave the yolk runny, and then you get the most nutrients that way.

Jay Shetty 41:24 And we talked about the plant protein from a ethical standpoint, but, but even from a nutritional standpoint, I mean, I, as a... So me and my wife are both plant-based, but plant protein is like not a big-

Dave Asprey 41:35 Yeah

Jay Shetty 41:35 ... p- part of our diets at all. My wife's like not into eating any of the burgers or any of the meats or-

Dave Asprey 41:40 That's probably a good move

Jay Shetty 41:41 ... plant-based or-

Dave Asprey 41:41 The fake meat is not good.

Jay Shetty 41:42 Yeah, it's, yeah.

Dave Asprey 41:43 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 41:43 Explain why because I think that's slightly the challenge for a lot of people who try and make that switch and I feel everyone who turns to that then goes back because-

Dave Asprey 41:51 Yeah

Jay Shetty 41:51 ... it's not satisfying, it's not good.

Dave Asprey 41:52 Are, are you plant-based to the exclusion of, of dairy?

Jay Shetty 41:55 Yes, I am.

Dave Asprey 41:56 You are.

Jay Shetty 41:56 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 41:56 You are. Okay, cool.

Jay Shetty 41:56 Me and my wife are. We have been for years.

Dave Asprey 41:58 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 41:58 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 41:58 And, and it's working

Dave Asprey 41:59 for you.

Jay Shetty 41:59 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 41:59 And by the way, if you're from India you probably have [laughs] -

Jay Shetty 42:01 We have genes

Dave Asprey 42:02 ... the genes that are gonna support that much better.

Jay Shetty 42:03 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Asprey 42:04 Uh, and so if you look at what your great-grandmother ate, that's gonna be an indication of what you can handle. And if you look at you, your skin is really good and that's unusual when most people go vegan 'cause they eat a lot of industrial processed seed oils.

Jay Shetty 42:18 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 42:18 So if you're eating a diet that agrees with your body, and I totally support doing that, uh, then what you wanna do is you wanna make sure that you're getting complete amino acids. And you can do it from rice and beans, but here's the issue. To get enough protein from-

Jay Shetty 42:34 It's definitely hard. I'm, I'm-

Dave Asprey 42:35 It, yeah

Jay Shetty 42:35 ... fully, like, I'm thinking about it a lot. Like-

Dave Asprey 42:37 It, it's like 300 grams of carbs to get 20 grams of protein.

Jay Shetty 42:41 It's hard.

Dave Asprey 42:42 So then y- your best bet for plant-based proteins that have the highest amino acid score, it's actually hemp protein with the fat removed.

Jay Shetty 42:50 Mm.

Dave Asprey 42:51 Because hemp oil isn't particularly good for you. So then what you end up doing is saying, "Okay, I'm going to do that, and I feel good." I've also helped a lot of, um, a lot of vegans. In fact, this was at David Wolfe's vegan conference. I explained the virtues of ghee, where no animals-

Jay Shetty 43:05 Yeah, ghee's, yeah

Dave Asprey 43:06 ... die to make ghee, [laughs] and ghee helps to escort the nutrients from plants into the body so you make better use of the plants. So sometimes adding, you know, a tablespoon of ghee a day gives you, like, a healthier skin glow, and it, it feels more nourishing. And people can choose to do that or not choose to do that, and I... And people get mad 'cause I tease vegans. Dude, I was a vegan.

Jay Shetty 43:25 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 43:25 Like, it, it's teasing, guys. It's, it's not, it's not a disrespectful thing.

Jay Shetty 43:29 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 43:29 It's, uh, in my case, it, it actually harmed me. And some things like spinach, kale, uh, even raspberries and almonds are very high in oxalic acid, which I write about in the book, and it causes crystals to form. 70% of kidney stones are from plant-based compounds, not from eating meat and beer. 30% are from meat and beer. And so you can overdo either direction, right? So I want people to say, "Choose the right plants-"

Jay Shetty 43:56 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 43:56 ... when you're plant based.

Jay Shetty 43:57 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 43:58 And I would consider, if I was plant based, adding hemp-based protein powder. Even though it is a processed food, it's going to be a processed food that has the best amino acid score that you can get.

Jay Shetty 44:09 Absolutely. Thank you so much. Very useful for everyone who's listening. And I wanted to dive into

Jay Shetty 44:13 drinking the wrong kind of milk, because I think milk's been this... You know, there's, obviously there's been the almond milks and the oat milks, and then there's been debate on either side. Walk us through milk, because I think, like, that's, again, I'd love to hear your side of it because, again, it's one of the... I find all of this so confusing because you hear something new come out, everyone gets behind it, it works for people, maybe it doesn't work. Stopping dairy milk from my diet helped me with my gut, but I also don't drink a lot of, uh, oat milk or almond milk. That's not really, that's not really part of my diet. I don't, I don't have cereal and stuff like that, so I'm not drinking that. But then there's a lot of debate on that side of it as well. So-

Dave Asprey 44:52 There is a lot of debate

Jay Shetty 44:53 ... yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 44:54 Dairy milk has been a part of human food for at least 5,000 years, and it's a convenient way to not kill an animal and to have it continuously produce fat and protein, which are the hard things for humans to get enough of, 'cause carbs are relatively abundant in nature. So what do you do? Well, normally you would just drink milk, but the milk we would drink was from a breed of cows that makes a2 milk, and they ate grass, and that works well with our biology. The kind of milk that you get now is from cows that are bred to eat grain and, and corn and soy, and that milk has the wrong kind of fat, and it has a kind of protein called a1 protein that's very inflammatory. So a lot of people who can't drink milk, which include me, 'cause it messes up my gut royally-

Jay Shetty 45:38 It's insane, yeah

Dave Asprey 45:39 ... it just makes me, it makes me stupid, actually. My brain swells up from it.

Jay Shetty 45:41 I get a lot of mucus. I used to get throat... Like, I used to get more throat infections, like.

Dave Asprey 45:45 Me too.

Jay Shetty 45:46 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 45:46 It's very similar. So sometimes you can handle a2 milk, but raw a2 milk is how we used to drink it, and in many states it's still illegal. And why the government thinks it has a right to tell you what you're allowed to eat, I don't know. They don't have that right, so it doesn't matter if they make it illegal. They didn't have the right to make it illegal, so therefore it's not illegal in the world that I live in. Then again, if you're selling it, they might still try to arrest you, then you gotta go to court.

Jay Shetty 46:08 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 46:09 But here's the deal: raw milk, for many people, is very, very healing.

Jay Shetty 46:12 Mm.

Dave Asprey 46:13 And for some people, whey protein, especially if you're vegetarian but not vegan, it's a, a source. Just get grass-fed whey protein, 'cause the animals are treated better and because it's a higher quality nutritional product. But let's assume you're not gonna drink cow's milk, because for a lot of people it just doesn't work, including me. I don't touch it. Butter and ghee usually are acceptable, especially ghee won't trigger allergies and mucus like that for almost anyone. Well, what about the fake milks, right? So these are all industrial products unless you make it yourself, and [laughs] what they figured out i- with almond milk was, oh, we can take leftover parts of almonds and, you know, the ones that are broken and unsightly, and we can use those to make milk. And it's just a few almonds and some canola oil and some high-fructose corn syrup, some flavorings, and we blend it up, and we sell it for, like, $8 as a health food product. It's not a health food product. So almond milk is high in phytic acid that sucks minerals out of your bones, so you have to take more minerals, and it's also high in oxalates, which are the things that are causing kidney stones and things that are causing gout and joint pain when you wake up. Even if you have really bad skin and you're eating a ton of these high-oxalate foods like almond milk and kale smoothies and all, this can be why, because it's making tiny razor-sharp calcium oxalate crystals in your skin that are coming out. So I don't recommend almond milk. Also, if you're a, a vegan for animals, [laughs] the number of bees, about a third of all bees die pollinating almonds every year. Like, it, it is not a particularly clean product. So then we say, well, oat milk. Okay, that is the biggest scam on the planet right now. It raises your blood sugar as much as drinking a Coke. It is not a health food, and it usually has glyphosate, and it's high in phytic acid that sucks minerals out of your body. And I, I know you might not like hearing this, but [laughs] do the math. There's a tablespoon of oats blended into a bunch of water, and you spent six bucks on that?

Jay Shetty 48:07 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 48:07 Like, are you dumb, right? It, it, it's not a good move, right? So what should you drink? There's two kinds of milk that are, are okay. One of them is macadamia milk, which is really expensive and you have to make it yourself, 'cause macadamias have the right kinds of oil in them. But the other one that's abundant and healthy is coconut milk. So if you're going to do it, use coconut milk

Jay Shetty 48:29 That's the worst-tasting one.

Dave Asprey 48:30 I know, right?

Jay Shetty 48:31 Yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 48:31 It is the worst-tasting one.

Jay Shetty 48:32 Yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 48:33 But the, the... Here's the, the problem, though. If you say, "Okay, I don't like the taste of coconut milk," and I'm with you on that-

Jay Shetty 48:39 Yeah

Dave Asprey 48:39 ... uh, so I'm going to-

Jay Shetty 48:40 I don't drink any milks, but yes

Dave Asprey 48:41 ... Yeah, that-

Jay Shetty 48:42 Yeah

Dave Asprey 48:42 ... that's, that's really the key. You don't need to drink-

Jay Shetty 48:44 Yeah

Dave Asprey 48:44 ... a plant milk. It's a made-up product that you don't have a need for. But if you say, "I'm going to do one of these other things," you're spending a lot of money, you're getting anti-nutrients, you're getting mostly water, and you're usually getting a toxic burden. So, like, why, why am I doing this again? The thing that milk has that's most important is it has protein, and the second most important is it has good fats.

Jay Shetty 49:06 Mm.

Dave Asprey 49:07 When you have a replacement milk, even coconut milk, there is no protein. So the coconut yogurt you like, it doesn't work because it doesn't have protein, so you have to take that and add whey protein or add scoops of maybe hemp protein if you're doing plant-based. But you've gotta add a whole bunch of protein to it, because normal yogurt has that. Most people tolerate grass-fed yogurt pretty well. I still don't. I can't touch cow's milk unless it's ghee, for the most part.

Jay Shetty 49:32 Mm.

Dave Asprey 49:32 Or I can do some butter. But if I was to have, you know, uh, two tablespoons of regular milk, it messes me up. My gut's wrong. It, it's just not right. So that's an immune response. So I just wanna tell you, you're not getting protein in your plant milks, and you're getting stuff you don't want in your plant milks, so just don't do it.

Jay Shetty 49:49 Mm. You've mentioned canola oil a few times as well, and I feel like oils has been...

Jay Shetty 49:55 Obviously, in the biohacking world, it's, it's been known for a while, but I think it's finally coming into, like, the forefront of checking the back of something and going, "Oh, my gosh. Wow, this has canola oil, palm oil," you know, the millions of different oils. Walk us through that, because I think that's kind of still, for the majority of people, like, an under-understood area. Like, it's, it's... We're just not aware. Unaware is probably the right word. Like-

Dave Asprey 50:17 Yeah, we're unaware. We've been taught first calories are what matter, and it turns out, well, calories do entirely different things, so we've tossed that out for... At least most people have understood that's different. And then we say, "Okay, well, it's how much fat are you eating?" But who would imagine that different fats do different things in the body? We're like, "Oh, my gosh. You mean the kind of fat matters?" Oh, and different proteins. So even saying fat, carbs, and protein, it doesn't mean anything unless you know what it is. So we zoom in on fat. Well, it turns out omega-6 fats, which is canola, corn, soybeans, safflower, even grapeseed oil, those are fats that when they enter the body, they slow your metabolism and they cause inflammation, 'cause they're unstable fats. They're called polyunsaturated fats. And when you eat saturated fats, things like coconut oil or butter or ghee or most animal fats, uh, from, like, sheep or something, or from cows, but not from chickens, then you end up saying, "Oh, the saturated fats, they can't oxidize 'cause they're stable." So you eat those, and they stimulate your metabolism, and they allow your body to make testosterone [laughs] and to make other hormones that your body needs, and to make stable cell membranes.

Jay Shetty 51:27 Mm.

Dave Asprey 51:27 So we understand the biochemistry of this, but the food companies are saying, "Well, it's cheaper to do canola oil, so let's fry our french fries in those." Canola oil and its, its cousins there, they're a major cause of diabetes and cancer, which are skyrocketing because they're unstable, especially when they're heated a lot.

Jay Shetty 51:43 And they're pretty much in every packaged good, right?

Dave Asprey 51:46 They, they are, but-

Jay Shetty 51:47 Yeah

Dave Asprey 51:47 ... change is coming. So before about the 1970s, all french fries were made with beef tallow, because it's a very stable oil. That's fat from cows. In McDonald's, that's what they use. And then they switched to these seed oils, and then all the diseases went through the roof. So we have a problem. Food needs to be affordable for everyone. One of the companies that I've invested in and that I'm backing, that I'm most excited about, is called Zero Acre Farms. And I don't work for them. I did put a small amount of money in them, but it's because of, of the mission. They found a way to use fermentation to make an oil that is monounsaturated, like olive oil, that is stable for frying, at 25% the cost of canola oil for a restaurant. And they're scaling up to get to that price point, but what... It's called Zero Acre because it'll remove millions of acres of corn and soy from being grown to squeeze oil out of them, and they can take sugarcane, just the entire sugarcane, not sugar, and they can ferment it and make a healthy, edible oil for humans.

Jay Shetty 52:45 Mm.

Dave Asprey 52:46 And this is gonna change the world's metabolism. It's, it's a huge thing. So in the meantime, you can go to a place that has duck fat fries or tallow fries, which you wouldn't eat, or you don't eat fries. Don't eat fried food at restaurants is a great rule to live longer, and don't eat the salad dressing either. Tell them, "I want real olive oil that's not cut with canola oil, and I want vinegar or lemon juice." When you do that, just those two things, nothing fried, and do that, and all of a sudden you find you lose weight, your brain is focused-

Jay Shetty 53:11 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 53:11 ... your body makes more hormones.

Jay Shetty 53:13 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 53:13 It's that big of a deal.

Jay Shetty 53:14 I'm so glad you raised that, because that's the... It's, it's s- it's such a tiny, simple change, but it could save you from so many different things. Like, I switched probably... It might've been a year now, but I traveled a lot this year on tour, and that was hard, because my diet on tour was not as easy to maintain, 'cause I was in different cities every day. And, and I didn't have a chef who was traveling with me or anything like that. And when I'm back here, I've been eating, like, a whole foods diet, uh, only eating plants, not eating anything out of packages.

Dave Asprey 53:43 Oh, yeah.

Jay Shetty 53:44 B- you know, not eating... pretty much no packaged food whatsoever, maybe now and again. And, like, that in and of itself has transformed... I used to love a bag of chips.

Dave Asprey 53:53 Right.

Jay Shetty 53:53 Like, even if they were, like, the healthiest chips that I could possibly find, I love a bag of chips. I love, uh, you know, I love a little bit of crackers, biscuits, whatever, any of this kind of stuff, knick-knacks. And just taking out packaged foods has had a massive impact on how I feel.

Dave Asprey 54:08 It's kind of life-changing to do

Dave Asprey 54:10 that. And I realiz- I missed an oil that should get a shout-out. It's palm oil.

Jay Shetty 54:14 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 54:15 So palm oil is saturated, and I would much rather eat something cooked in palm oil than canola oil. The issue with palm oil is mostly environmental, so there's deforestation and orangutans and things like that. But if you are at the store and you wanna buy some chips or crisps or what, whatever you call them-

Jay Shetty 54:31 Yeah, yeah. Crisps is what I would've called it.

Dave Asprey 54:33 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 54:33 I've adapted. Bag of chips.

Dave Asprey 54:34 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 54:35 We'd call it a bag of crisps back in London, yes.

Dave Asprey 54:37 [laughs] So, uh, you wanna eat those. Look for something that's cooked in coconut oil or palm oil. And when you do that, you're gonna be much healthier-

Jay Shetty 54:45 Mm

Dave Asprey 54:45 ... and they're gonna taste better, and they're gonna be more satisfying. 'Cause when you eat those bad oils, the omega-6 oils, they make you hungry really quickly 'cause your body says, "I gotta deal with all this inflammation. Have some sugar."

Jay Shetty 54:55 Mm.

Dave Asprey 54:56 So all of a sudden you ate a, a chip that felt good, and I don't generally eat stuff like that. Maybe at a barbecue or something I'll bring a bag of those-

Jay Shetty 55:04 Yeah, of course. So will I

Dave Asprey 55:04 ... 'cause I'd rather my friends eat those.

Jay Shetty 55:05 Yeah, of course.

Dave Asprey 55:06 Yeah, yeah.

Jay Shetty 55:06 I'm not perfect. Yeah. And Dave, I wanna thank you for doing all this research because, you know, as, as I've got older, and I'm 36 now, and as I get older every single year, my health goes up and up and up on the priority list. And I think for me it's been so challenging because I grew up, I would say, with no health education.

Dave Asprey 55:25 Right.

Jay Shetty 55:25 I'm benefited by having a wife who's very disciplined and focused and understands more. I'm grateful to have my podcast where I get to sit down with incredible people like you, and I get introduced to books like yours that I have over the years on longevity, and now Smarter Not Harder. And to me I'm just like,

Jay Shetty 55:41 I wanna get this right to make getting older easier, right? Like, to m- get- make getting older, like-

Dave Asprey 55:48 Y- your goals-

Jay Shetty 55:49 ... better

Dave Asprey 55:50 ... your goals suck.

Jay Shetty 55:51 Oh, sorry. That's a bad goal? [laughs]

Dave Asprey 55:53 I wanna make, I wanna make getting older easier.

Jay Shetty 55:55 No, you know what I mean.

Dave Asprey 55:56 How about I wanna stop getting old-

Jay Shetty 55:59 That sounds great

Dave Asprey 55:59 ... and I wanna stay how I am now or better every single year.

Jay Shetty 56:02 I wanna be better. I wanna be better.

Dave Asprey 56:04 There you go.

Jay Shetty 56:04 Let's do that one. Let's do that one.

Dave Asprey 56:05 That... It, it's... Isn't that a different vision?

Jay Shetty 56:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.

Dave Asprey 56:07 It feels different.

Jay Shetty 56:08 Definitely.

Dave Asprey 56:08 Right? We have it so built in that we're going to get old.

Jay Shetty 56:11 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 56:11 We are living in a world today where you can measure as 20 years younger than your calendar age.

Jay Shetty 56:17 I want that.

Dave Asprey 56:17 So you-

Jay Shetty 56:18 I want that

Dave Asprey 56:18 ... you don't have to get old.

Jay Shetty 56:20 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 56:21 Right? You might age, but the getting old thing, that's-

Jay Shetty 56:24 Yeah

Dave Asprey 56:24 ... that's what we did in the '70s. We can do better.

Jay Shetty 56:26 Yeah. It made me happy. I was, I was... I've been playing a lot of pickleball, and that's been, like-

Dave Asprey 56:29 Nice

Jay Shetty 56:29 ... my, my form of exercise that I love and I enjoy, and it's, it's f- it's start and stop. It's fast. It's competitive. I love every-

Dave Asprey 56:36 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:36 ... part of it, and I just got beat by a 70-year-old a couple of weeks ago.

Dave Asprey 56:40 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 56:41 And I loved it 'cause I, I just... I was like, "I wanna be like you when I'm 70." Like, he's-

Dave Asprey 56:44 It's so inspiring

Jay Shetty 56:45 ... double my age.

Dave Asprey 56:46 Like, if-

Jay Shetty 56:46 He destroyed me. Yeah

Dave Asprey 56:47 ... one person can do that-

Jay Shetty 56:48 Yeah

Dave Asprey 56:49 ... and, and that brings up something that, that's actually really important.

Jay Shetty 56:51 Yeah, please.

Dave Asprey 56:52 It's learning from our elders.

Jay Shetty 56:53 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 56:53 The reason I can do all this biohacking is I was so desperate for my health in my 20s, I started running an anti-aging longevity nonprofit group near Stanford University. So I was learning how to maintain my health from people in their 80s who could run circles around me.

Jay Shetty 57:08 Mm.

Dave Asprey 57:09 I'm like, "That's possible." I saw it, and I saw it in their 90s. And if they could do it back then, we can do so much better now. You don't-

Jay Shetty 57:16 Thank you for calling me out on that.

Dave Asprey 57:17 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 57:17 That's good. I like it.

Dave Asprey 57:18 You're, you're welcome.

Jay Shetty 57:18 You're allowed to.

Dave Asprey 57:19 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 57:19 Yeah, I like that.

Dave Asprey 57:20 It, it-

Jay Shetty 57:20 That's awesome

Dave Asprey 57:21 ... I learned from my elders. You learned from the guy on the pickleball court. You can be that guy when you're 70.

Jay Shetty 57:25 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 57:26 And what's really going to happen when you're 70 is you can be that guy but look and feel like you do now.

Jay Shetty 57:29 Yes.

Dave Asprey 57:29 And we're building this world for all of us, and it's really important 'cause the birth rate in all developed nations is so low right now we're not replacing our population, which means it's our job to be strong and young forever.

Jay Shetty 57:40 Well said. Well said. The book is

Jay Shetty 57:43 called Smarter Not Harder by Dave Asprey, The Biohacker's Guide to Getting the Body and Mind You Want. I highly, highly recommend that you grab a copy of this book. I... We have just skimmed over some of the things that I found interesting, some of the things that I felt were front of mind for me. I know a lot of you have been asking questions about these things. I see tons of videos on TikTok sharing all sorts of advice. I felt it was great to dive into it with Dave. Please go and grab a copy. Go and read it with your friends. Figure out that one thing that you're gonna focus on. Remember, you don't need to try and do all of this. Pick that one area that you wanna solve, master it, and move on to the next. Uh, I promise you that as much as it sounds hard and complicated and difficult, once you start seeing a win in one area, it's gonna have that domino effect. So go and grab it. Dave, thank you so much for always coming on and being such a... You're such a... You are, you are an elder, truly, but you don't look like one, you know? [laughs] You know, you don't, you don't feel like one, which is amazing, and I'm very grateful that I get to have these conversations with you because I always come away more inspired and uplifted, and my goals get bigger and bolder and better. So I'm glad that you're not letting me settle. So thank you for not letting me settle. I appreciate it. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 58:50 You're so welcome, Jay.

Jay Shetty 58:51 I mean it. I mean it.

Dave Asprey 58:52 I, I appreciate your work so much. You're, you are inspiring millions of people to, to, to be better, and I, I see it every day online, and you're just... You're doing such amazing work, so-

Jay Shetty 59:00 Oh

Dave Asprey 59:00 ... true appreciation.

Jay Shetty 59:01 Well, thank you. Thank you, Dave. If you loved this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.

Speaker 59:14 Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a, a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick, does it? It grows where it's soft and green and vulnerable