DO THIS First Thing In The Morning To REVERSE YOUR AGE| Dave Asprey

Dave Asprey 0:00 So the worst diet of all is that one, with lots of fried stuff and bad oils. But the second worst diet for people who think they're being healthy, Lewis, this isn't gonna be popular, but it is-

Lewis Howes 0:14 Everyone swears by the, the lifestyle/diet that they live by that w- works for them. People who are vegan swear by it, and the ones who are super healthy have lots of energy. The ones who are vegetarian-

Dave Asprey 0:29 I, I don't know, Lewis. I-

Lewis Howes 0:29 The ones-

Dave Asprey 0:29 I feel like vegans just swear. They don't even swear by their diet

Lewis Howes 0:32 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 0:32 Is, is that just me?

Lewis Howes 0:34 Who knows? Yeah. I mean, they swear by lots of things.

Dave Asprey 0:36 Sorry, vegans. I'm just teasing you guys. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 0:37 The, the, you know, the vegetarian diet, people who live a vegetarian lifestyle for a long time say that this is best for them. People who are carnivore diets say it's the best for them. Keto. Is there a worst [laughs] type of diet, even though some of these things might work extremely well for-

Dave Asprey 0:53 Yeah

Lewis Howes 0:53 ... particular body types? What are, what is the-

Dave Asprey 0:56 The worst type of diet is the standard American diet, and there's three things in it that are just horribly destructive.

Lewis Howes 1:02 Sugar?

Dave Asprey 1:02 The first one is... [laughs] What?

Lewis Howes 1:04 Sugar?

Dave Asprey 1:05 Sugar? Sugar's there, but I don't think it's as destructive as the other two.

Lewis Howes 1:08 Okay.

Dave Asprey 1:09 So I'll, I'll give an order from the worst to the, the best of the worst, right? So the number one thing that is wrong with the American diet is seed oils. These are omega-6 oils.

Lewis Howes 1:22 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:22 And canola, corn, soybean, safflower, sunflower, all the stuff that's in everything at the restaurant and most packaged foods at the grocery store unless you, you know, buy from the right company, um, it's full of these oils. These are the oils that drive insulin resistance.

Lewis Howes 1:36 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:36 Your body takes these oils, and they're all plant-based oils, and it says, "Hmm, I'm gonna try to construct the outer layer of my mitochondria in my cells," the, these little batteries, "but I have the wrong ingredients, so I'm gonna make subpar batteries." Like, if you go to the, the knock-off store and you buy the cheap batteries and they last a third as long as the good ones, that's what happens when you eat a lot of seed oils. Americans have about 40 times more of that oil in their systems than they should, and it gets built into your tissues.

Lewis Howes 2:05 Eeh.

Dave Asprey 2:06 And that makes you weak. It is just not good.

Lewis Howes 2:09 Seed oils. Get 'em out.

Dave Asprey 2:10 Seed oils are bad. Second thing is industrially-raised meat. It's full of-

Lewis Howes 2:14 Mm

Dave Asprey 2:14 ... xenoestrogens. These are estrogens that make animals fat on one-third less calories than normal.

Lewis Howes 2:19 Eeh.

Dave Asprey 2:20 Um, it's also full of antibiotics, and it's destroying the soil of the planet right now.

Lewis Howes 2:25 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 2:25 It also is depleting, uh, farmland. When we take and we grow corn and soy and grain, and we don't actually put the animal poop back into the soil the way-

Lewis Howes 2:36 Right

Dave Asprey 2:36 ... we do on my farm, [laughs] what we're doing is we're sucking all the nutrients out of the soil, and we're creating a, a very, very big catastrophe. 60 years from now we'll be out of topsoil because we stopped having animals walk around and poop on it the way it works when you're doing a regenerative agriculture kind of thing. But worst of all, you eat industrial animals, they're also full of cortisol, and so you do this, they mess up your gut bacteria, and they're full of, uh, glyphosate because it was on the feed, and glyphosate disrupts your, your gut bacteria and your nervous system activity and is tied to cancer. So we're getting bad oils. Oh, and those animals, because they ate corn and soy, they're full of bad oils too. So now you're like, "Man, the steak tasted good, [laughs] and I had that nice salad dressing that came out of a bottle that was full of crap oils," and you think you're being healthy.

Lewis Howes 3:23 Mm.

Dave Asprey 3:23 But you're completely wrecking things, and this is some of the stuff that I did when I was heavy, right? And then the third thing would be sugar, right?

Lewis Howes 3:30 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 3:30 You just ... If you have a ton of sugar, i- it's directly harmful. If you do the stuff I'm talking about, you can probably have a few grams of sugar and you won't notice, like your body can handle it just fine.

Lewis Howes 3:39 Right.

Dave Asprey 3:39 So sugar is not good for you, and it is addictive, but it is way better to eat sugar than it is to eat corn oil.

Lewis Howes 3:46 Really?

Dave Asprey 3:46 But don't eat either one.

Lewis Howes 3:48 Don't eat [laughs] either one. Yeah. Have sugar every once in a while. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 3:50 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 3:51 But don't eat oil and-

Dave Asprey 3:53 Yeah

Lewis Howes 3:53 ... fats.

Dave Asprey 3:53 Like, if, if someone said, "Here's a birthday cake," you know, it's gluten-free, I don't do gluten.

Lewis Howes 3:58 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 3:58 Um, and they said, "I made it with canola oil," I'd just be like, "No." Right? But if they said, "I made it with sugar and butter," I'd be like, "All right. I'm gonna have some."

Lewis Howes 4:05 Right.

Dave Asprey 4:05 And it's that big... The sugar, okay, your body can process that and it's gone. The other stuff, it sticks, and it gets in there and you don't wanna do it. So the worst diet of all is that one, with lots of fried stuff and bad oils. But the second worst diet for people who think they're being healthy, Lewis, this isn't gonna be popular, but it is the vegan diet.

Lewis Howes 4:22 Why is that?

Dave Asprey 4:23 There's two things. Okay, I was devout raw vegan, okay? I did this for more than a year. I mean, I have bowls as big as my head full of kale and blended and mashed and sprouted and, I mean, I, I'm good with soaked dates.

Lewis Howes 4:35 Rice and beans and everything, yeah.

Dave Asprey 4:36 Yeah, all that stuff. So what happens there is your body doesn't get the essential fats that it needs. We are not made out of plant oils. And I have, I have [laughs] in my books I talk about the studies that show when you change the type of oil you eat, it changes what your body is made of. So when you go on a plant-based diet, you're getting two things. You're getting plant-based oils, which are not very compatible with you. Vegans will get mad at me and say, "Dave, we can convert plant omega-3s to the good ones." Yes, it takes 45 grams of bad omega-3s to make one gram of the good ones if your body can do that, which it won't be able to do because you're on a plant-based diet. [laughs] And then you get tons of these anti-nutrients from plants that cause cravings. When I was a raw vegan, I was always hungry.

Lewis Howes 5:21 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 5:22 And I think that that's a, a very common occurrence. And I would say, "Well, that's weird. I'm gonna put more coconut oil or, or eat more, you know, fresh, young coconuts."

Lewis Howes 5:32 Avocado or something. Yeah.

Dave Asprey 5:32 All these things. Avocados. It didn't matter. It's because plants don't want you to eat them, and they cover themselves in defense systems that cause cravings. So I talk about the five big categories of things that are causing problems in this right now, and many plants that are common on a plant-based diet are not very compatible with humans. Like, oh, they have these vitamins. Like, yeah, they also stick to the stuff that lines the cartilage in your joints and gives you joint pain, or they inhibit your ability to absorb zinc and magnesium and iron and things like

Dave Asprey 6:02 that. And so what happens is you tell yourself you're doing this to be nice to the animals But what you're doing is you're making sure that the animals will go extinct, 'cause if everyone was vegan, we'd have no animals. And then two generations later, we'd all be extinct because we'd have no animals to make soil. 'Cause you can't grow carrots without animal poop at the end of the day. You can do it for 20 years, you can do it for 30 years, but eventually you have to build that soil back up. So what's happening w- on a plant-based diet is the wrong fats and lots of anti-nutrients, and that combination is kryptonite for people. And I've had tens of thousands of former vegans go Bulletproof, and part of the reason I made the Bulletproof Diet was because I did harm to myself, including additional food allergies and, uh, worse hypothyroidism as a result of being vegan. Um, and in terms of animal cruelty, I calculated deaths per calorie from [laughs] eating a pound of grass-fed steak every day, which is a lot. You don't need to do that unless you're on the carnivore side of things, which there's an argument for that. Um, but if you do that and the cow is grass-fed and local, unless the cow stepped on a frog, you kill less than one animal per year in all of your food. But if you eat boxes of processed soy nuggets, you disrupted the lives of whatever was gonna live on that land and whatever the tractors killed. And so the number of deaths per calorie is way higher for any grain product and any- anything other than basically fresh-picked vegetables because of habitat destruction and tractor kills. And, like, I asked a monk this in Tibet. I, I'm not dogmatic, but I wanna do what works. So I like to minimize suffering, uh, buy from a local farmer, eat less meat-

Lewis Howes 7:39 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 7:39 ... but make it grass-fed, and eat very good fats. And if you do that, you'll never have a craving during a fast. And if you don't believe anything I say, you can still be plant-based or vegan, and you can still be standard American diet, Dave, I like my industrial animals, you know, go screw yourself. Just do intermittent fasting and you'll still improve. It works for any diet out there, and I'm happy to share the knowledge, and I've-

Lewis Howes 7:59 For sure

Dave Asprey 8:00 ... moved a lot of, uh, a lot of information. There's 3,000 blog posts and stuff like that. But what I want people to do is figure out the foods that are compatible with your biology. And if you're one of the small percentage of people who's like, "You know what? A vegetarian works for me." I know people, it really does. They eat some eggs, they eat some cheese.

Lewis Howes 8:18 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 8:18 They eat a substantial amount of butter, and magically, that really works for them, and that's okay. Right? But if it doesn't work for you, don't tell yourself it's supposed to work so you'll do it even more.

Lewis Howes 8:27 Right.

Dave Asprey 8:27 That's the mistake that I made.

Lewis Howes 8:29 Are you friends with, uh, some vegans that you've had these conversations with, or, like Rich Roll or, you know, anyone like that who-

Dave Asprey 8:36 You know, I haven't had Rich on the show, but I would totally do that. And I've, I've certainly had conversations with, with vegans a lot, and there's, there's kind of two mindsets there. Uh, one of them says you're doing it for your health, right? The evidence does not support that. And here's what's really going on, and it's intimately tied to fasting. There's a compound in the body called mTOR, and you've probably talked about it on the show before. mTOR is a signaling molecule that says grow. It says, you know, build muscle, you know, build tissue. And when you eat protein, a lot of protein, plant, plant-based will raise it, but animal-based raises it much more. So when mTOR goes up, you put on muscle. But chronic elevation of mTOR equals cancer.

Lewis Howes 9:21 Hm.

Dave Asprey 9:21 Right? So that's a bit of a problem. So one solution, say, well, I'm gonna go plant-based and low protein. The problem with that is that mTOR gets suppressed, but it never goes up, so you get frailty. Like, these are the people who break their hips.

Lewis Howes 9:34 Hm.

Dave Asprey 9:34 These are the people who have the, the vegan-sized pants for men. They have like little stick legs.

Lewis Howes 9:38 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 9:38 Right? You, you don't, you don't wanna be there.

Lewis Howes 9:41 Right. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 9:41 Right? So what's the solution? Well, don't eat for a while, then work out, and then eat. And what's neat is that mTOR's like a spring. You can push it down, and when it's down, it's good, except if it never goes up, it's not good. So when you push it down, there's three things that we know of that suppress mTOR, and this is how you build muscle and how you, uh, account for the difference in outcomes from vegans versus carnivores, let's say. So to suppress mTOR, fasting does it, exercise does it, and coffee does it. So what you do is eat dinner and stop eating around 6:00. Don't eat after dinner. So you got four hours of fasting before bedtime. You sleep for eight hours, you just fasted for 12 hours. Wait another four hours. There, you fast- you fasted 16 hours. You have a light breakfast, but before you eat, do some squats. Go lift. I mean, it can be a very quick workout, just something heavy. And then you eat. And because all three of those things push the mTOR down, as soon as you eat some protein, the body says wahoo, and it spikes the mTOR much higher, and then the exercise has a bigger impact on your tissue. So you got more exercise benefits in less time. Your mTOR was briefly elevated because you only ate once that day or twice that day, and then it goes back down and it stays down. People feel good on a vegan diet 'cause they suppress mTOR, which is driving chronic inflammation. Problem is, you do that forever, you never get the muscles and the growth, and then you get the anti-nutrients and you get the bad fats. So it's okay to be vegan for a week. It's probably good for you. But then at the end of that week, maybe you should go carnivore. So cycles are good.

Lewis Howes 11:10 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 11:10 And I will tell you, being all keto all the time is terrible for you.

Lewis Howes 11:14 Right.

Dave Asprey 11:14 Being all vegan all the time is terrible for you, and I've done both. And that's why intermittent fasting is so awesome, 'cause you can eat both vegetables. You can even have white rice. You can have carbs. You don't have to be in keto and g- and ketosis and all that to do fasting. It's cycling in and out. So be vegan for a day, but just don't be vegan for a year, and you'll be fine.

Lewis Howes 11:30 Gotcha. Yeah, I'd love to hear you and a vegan talk about the research and the science on both sides and see-

Dave Asprey 11:36 I, I love-

Lewis Howes 11:37 ... you know, what, what comes from that

Dave Asprey 11:38 ... I love having a, a genuine conversation, um, where it's born out of health.

Lewis Howes 11:44 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 11:44 When it, and when it's, a lot of the health stuff, like what the health... It was, it was created by people who went to jail for blowing up research laboratories because they were-

Lewis Howes 11:52 Hm

Dave Asprey 11:52 ... testing chicken eggs. Like, like, there were some very strong animal rights people that are masquerading as health people. But the whole thing about, you know, erections and vegetables and all that stuff, every doctor I know rolled their eyes and was like, "This is the worst propaganda I've ever seen." Like, like, there's no validity to this whatsoever.

Lewis Howes 12:08 From, from Game Changers or from, uh- I don't know if you watched that one.

Dave Asprey 12:12 Yeah, I definitely watched that one. I wrote a-

Lewis Howes 12:13 With guys, with guys having meat, and then they'd had no rea- erections the next morning or something.

Dave Asprey 12:17 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 12:17 And then the ones with vegetables had all the erections in the world or something.

Dave Asprey 12:20 The, the first animal rights propaganda one was, uh, What the Health. And when people are like, "Oh, we don't really care that much about this," it's like, "Oh, we'll make it a performance enhancer." But man, if you wanna see an athlete get injured, make 'em, make 'em vegan and keep 'em vegan for a while. And [laughs] they turn out-

Lewis Howes 12:36 Well, there's a lot-

Dave Asprey 12:36 ... a lot of muscular skeletal thing

Lewis Howes 12:36 ... well, there's some athlete, there's some athletes who are vegan that seems like they're, they say they're healthier, they recover faster. You know, there are some cases of-

Dave Asprey 12:45 What were they eating before?

Lewis Howes 12:46 Yeah, that's true.

Dave Asprey 12:46 They were eating meat and the standard American diet, right?

Lewis Howes 12:49 Right.

Dave Asprey 12:50 And, uh, what you'll find is, um, um... Who's that famous sprinter who went vegan a while ago? Um, Usain Bolt.

Lewis Howes 12:57 He's vegan now?

Dave Asprey 12:58 He was faster the first year he went vegan 'cause he stopped eating a bunch of crap.

Lewis Howes 13:00 All right.

Dave Asprey 13:00 And after that, he was sidelined by injuries every year [laughs] and never-

Lewis Howes 13:04 Interesting

Dave Asprey 13:04 ... set another record. And like-

Lewis Howes 13:05 That could be 'cause he was getting older. It, there could be other factors there, but-

Dave Asprey 13:08 Of course there could be.

Lewis Howes 13:08 Yeah, yeah. But-

Dave Asprey 13:09 I think it's 'cause he didn't have enough coffee. That's, that's my thing. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 13:12 [laughs] Yeah, I'm always trying to learn, you know, from every... Without making one side right or wrong, and trying to find the research for every study to see, okay, well, is... What are the cases for eating meat, quality meat? What are the cases for being vegan? What are the cases for vegetarian? 'Cause I'm always trying to learn. Like, hey, maybe what I'm doing is not optimal. So, you know.

Dave Asprey 13:33 You know, Lewis, your, your curiosity is what makes you, uh, a fantastic guy. Like, you're always just authentically questioning, and there's new studies out that show that curiosity makes you young. Uh, Steven Kotler talks about curiosity as being a component of flow state.

Lewis Howes 13:48 Mm.

Dave Asprey 13:48 I'm the same way. Like, I, I, like I said, I was a raw vegan. I was a devout raw vegan. Like, "I have to have my enzymes never heated above 112 degrees."

Lewis Howes 13:55 Right. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 13:56 And you know, I, uh, I was hardcore, right? So I, I'm willing to be wrong, and I've been wrong.

Lewis Howes 14:01 Sure.

Dave Asprey 14:02 And I've been really sick, and it's gotten to the point now where, uh, I talk about the science in all of the, the books that I write, and I'm more convinced than I've ever been that no matter what we agree or don't agree on about what to eat, there, there's two things. One is if you don't eat for a while every day, you're going to be better off. The second thing is that eat whatever doesn't make you hungrier after you finish eating, and you'll be better off. So if you are the rare vegan who's like, "Oh, I had a, you know-

Lewis Howes 14:31 I'm full. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 14:31 ... bowl of rice and beans and squishy whatevers, uh, and you know, I'm vibing with energy and I'm not hungry for four hours afterwards," I haven't met one yet, but there might be one out there. But most of them are, like, snacking on kale chips constantly 'cause they're ravenous all the time.

Lewis Howes 14:45 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 14:46 So, but hey, I, I, I'm very happy to be proven wrong.

Lewis Howes 14:50 I hear you there. Uh, and I'm, you know, it's always learning, always exploring. I was-

Dave Asprey 14:55 What, what are you eating now?

Lewis Howes 14:57 Uh, this [laughs] this week I'm eating [laughs] like-

Dave Asprey 15:01 Cheesecake

Lewis Howes 15:01 ... well, the last month I was, like, doing mostly keto and experimenting-

Dave Asprey 15:05 Oh

Lewis Howes 15:05 ... with that. Uh, and it worked for a while until it didn't.

Dave Asprey 15:09 Yes.

Lewis Howes 15:09 And then now I was like, you know what? Let me try vegetarian plant-based for this week. And so I'm eating vegetarian plant-based. And I'm tr-

Dave Asprey 15:19 Vegetarian's different than vegan, though, just to be really clear.

Lewis Howes 15:21 Yeah, yeah, it's true.

Dave Asprey 15:22 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 15:22 Well, I'm having a little bit of cheese-

Dave Asprey 15:23 That, that can be misleading

Lewis Howes 15:24 ... but yeah, so, uh, and a little eggs, but I'm trying to be more, uh, vegan, but I'm having some cheese and eggs, so I guess it's vegetarian. But-

Dave Asprey 15:31 Yeah

Lewis Howes 15:31 ... so I'm trying that. I'm just trying to explore to see what are the foods make me feel good when I poop, to be honest. Like, what makes it feel good-

Dave Asprey 15:39 Oh

Lewis Howes 15:39 ... when it comes out? Because-

Dave Asprey 15:41 I'm happy for you

Lewis Howes 15:42 ... if it, if it doesn't feel good when it comes out, then I probably shouldn't be eating those foods. Maybe those are peppers. Maybe those are whatever, nightshades or something, or a certain type of meat. Uh, and figuring out, you know, how do I just flow easily, effortlessly, every time, and, and optimize the gut is really what I'm looking for. Which I feel like-

Dave Asprey 16:00 Yeah

Lewis Howes 16:01 ... things are pretty good right now, but I'm always looking to improve and test.

Dave Asprey 16:05 There, it's a common thing with, especially with keto, where constipation happens, right? And the gut bacteria can get really out of whack on a keto diet. And this is why [laughs] I, I, I first went keto in the, the late '90s. It was called the Atkins Diet, right? And y- I lost 50 pounds on it, but the other 50 took 10 years to come off because it's inflammation that's caused by eating the wrong stuff when you're in keto, right? And then we have the modern renaissance of keto, where there still isn't a great focus on here's the right type of protein. You get people putting milk protein isolate, which is almost a waste product in the US-

Lewis Howes 16:40 Yeah

Dave Asprey 16:40 ... into, into their food, saying, "There, it's keto 'cause it's a protein." And you're like, "No, you're doing it wrong. Like, you, you can do better." Um, but here's... The, there's three hacks you can do during a fast that allow your body to stay fasted and don't make you get hangry and all.

Lewis Howes 16:56 Mm.

Dave Asprey 16:56 And one of those hacks is the one you're looking for. So I'm gonna walk your listeners through three things you're allowed to have during a fast. And by the way, some people get very angry when I say you can have something during a fast. Those are people who say, "But the mice in the study only had water."

Lewis Howes 17:07 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 17:08 Like, that's 'cause that was all you gave them.

Lewis Howes 17:10 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 17:10 But we wanted people to be high performance and comfortable. And I, I despise the idea of when I weighed 300 pounds of, of someone sitting down and saying, "Dave, I want you to only have water this morning, and then you're gonna go to work, and you're gonna show up, and you're gonna perform," and that's without two kids and, you know-

Lewis Howes 17:27 And, and be focused and, yeah.

Dave Asprey 17:29 Yeah. I, I couldn't do it. And it w- and if I did, it would've taken every ounce of willpower, and I would've been miserable, and I would've been hangry. This is not how to teach people to fast, and I think it's mean-spirited.

Lewis Howes 17:39 Mm.

Dave Asprey 17:39 So it, it's okay to do things that reduce your hunger and increase your focus during a fast as long as your body's still getting the benefits. So here's the three, and the third one's gonna be right for you. First one, there is abundant evidence that black coffee during a fast makes the fast work better. The new science behind that that didn't exist when I first talked about Bulletproof Coffee is that the amount of caffeine in two small cups of coffee doubles ketone production-

Lewis Howes 18:04 Mm

Dave Asprey 18:04 ... even if you eat carbs at night.

Lewis Howes 18:07 Wow.

Dave Asprey 18:07 So a little bit of a bump-

Lewis Howes 18:09 So-

Dave Asprey 18:09 Go ahead.

Lewis Howes 18:09 Black coffee, no butter, no MCT.

Dave Asprey 18:12 That, that's step one, right?

Lewis Howes 18:14 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 18:14 That's just black coffee.

Lewis Howes 18:15 Black coffee.

Dave Asprey 18:15 Okay? And that in and of itself doubles ketones.

Lewis Howes 18:18 Got it. So that's okay during a fast based on the science you've learned.

Dave Asprey 18:21 Not at night, but in the morning, yeah.

Lewis Howes 18:22 In the morning, yeah, of course.

Dave Asprey 18:23 Right.

Lewis Howes 18:24 Okay.

Dave Asprey 18:25 So the second thing, uh, well, l- l- let's talk about why that works 'cause it also explains why the second thing works. The reason it works is that-

Lewis Howes 18:31 Doesn't it have some ca- doesn't it have some calories, though? So wouldn't that affect the body in some way with those calories?

Dave Asprey 18:35 Coffee has nominal calories. I-

Lewis Howes 18:38 Got it

Dave Asprey 18:38 ... it, it's, it's not very much. And it's not that calories are going to disrupt the fast. It's raising insulin or raising mTOR are what break the fast.

Lewis Howes 18:48 Mm. So any type of carbs, any type of sugar, anything that it raises that, yeah.

Dave Asprey 18:52 Carbs, sugar, or protein are gonna break your fast, but there's some wiggle room in there.

Lewis Howes 18:56 Mm.

Dave Asprey 18:56 And when you have ketones higher, it suppresses ghrelin, which is the h- the hunger and the cravings hormone, and it raises CCK, which is the fullness hormone that was brought to you by Calvin Klein. And it's cholecystokinin for the, the people who are interested-

Lewis Howes 19:13 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 19:14 ... the hard science of it. What, what you find, Lewis, though, is that when you manipulate those things, the voice in your head telling you to think about food all the time starts to go away. And coffee is shown in many, many studies to be generally good for you. And there's still, still some people argue about that. Sorry, I just go to PubMed and Google coffee and the name of a disease and see what you find, and then make your own decision on that.

Lewis Howes 19:35 Sure.

Dave Asprey 19:36 The, the next one-

Lewis Howes 19:37 It's probably the amount of, the amount of coffee. If you're having 10 cups of coffee, then it's probably not the best thing for you.

Dave Asprey 19:43 The studies show that up to five cups a day increases longevity, and that-

Lewis Howes 19:48 Really?

Dave Asprey 19:48 ... it's slightly better up to five cups. Like in other words, four is probably better than three.

Lewis Howes 19:53 Four cups a g- a day is, is, is ... Wow.

Dave Asprey 19:57 It can be caffeinated or decaffeinated.

Lewis Howes 19:59 Okay.

Dave Asprey 19:59 But the studies all show up to five cups a day makes you live longer.

Lewis Howes 20:01 Wow, that's interesting.

Dave Asprey 20:03 And so I actually do a cup of decaf in the afternoon 'cause I really couldn't do five cups in the morning. That'd be a little bit too much for me.

Lewis Howes 20:10 Might be too jittery if you don't have the food and you're just having caffeine. So you gotta-

Dave Asprey 20:13 Yeah

Lewis Howes 20:13 ... you gotta test this for your body, I think, for sure.

Dave Asprey 20:15 You can have one. I'm not telling you to drink more coffee. I'm just saying have a cup of coffee in the morning and-

Lewis Howes 20:19 Yeah

Dave Asprey 20:19 ... your fast is gonna be easier. And if you're feeling like you want something at 10:00, have a cup of black coffee versus water and you'll have less distractions, more focus. You'll feel better.

Lewis Howes 20:27 Mm.

Dave Asprey 20:27 And you'll probably lose weight faster, too.

Lewis Howes 20:29 Mm.

Dave Asprey 20:29 So this is, like, really easy. But someone's like, "Well, it's not water. You can't do it." Do you know what a hair shirt is?

Lewis Howes 20:35 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 20:35 You ever heard of hair sh-

Lewis Howes 20:36 Hair shirt?

Dave Asprey 20:37 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 20:37 No.

Dave Asprey 20:39 These monks many years ago used to weave shirts out of human hair, and they'd wear them 'cause they were extra itchy. And they wanted to increase their suffering because suffering is a virtue. Okay? Those monks are reincarnated as people who only drink water when they're fasting in the middle of a workday.

Lewis Howes 20:54 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 20:54 Okay? If you want to do a water fast for medical reasons on the weekend and rest and relax and reflect, that's called a spiritual fast, and there's-

Lewis Howes 20:59 Mm

Dave Asprey 20:59 ... benefits to that.

Lewis Howes 21:00 Right.

Dave Asprey 21:01 But to try and do that when you're like a mom and you have kids and work, it's not okay unless your body's really in tune for that.

Lewis Howes 21:08 Unless you've slept 10 hours and you're recovered-

Dave Asprey 21:10 Yeah

Lewis Howes 21:10 ... and you're ready for it, yeah.

Dave Asprey 21:12 Right. S- so there's our black coffee. Second hack is one, yeah, I'm well known for it. I'm not trying to sell more Bulletproof Coffee. And I will tell you, if you use that MCT oil I've been talking about for 10 years, I made MCT a thing. Uh, it really h- wasn't, uh, wasn't in the world of biohacking. Um, if you do that and a little bit of grass-fed butter, it doesn't have to be two tablespoons, it can be just a small amount, it will give you a lot more ketones from the MCT. And something magic happens when you put butter in coffee. We did not know why this was the case, but when you blend butter in coffee, uh, new research out of the University of Washington, uh, I donated, uh, an, you know, unallocated grant to UW and said, "Could you please look at, like, water and fat and stuff?" And Gerald Pollack, who's written several books about this, who's, uh, just turned 80, is a, a biochemist, and he said, "Look, when you put water next to droplets of butter fat, it forms a very thick exclusion zone." This is the way the, the body ... Normally, you drink water. You put the water near your s- cell membranes. You heat the water, and it changes the water into the viscosity level of water that you need to make energy. But when you do it in a blender and then you drink it, just by having a little bit of fat in the water, your body can immediately put that water to work inside mitochondria without having to process it first, and that means you can more effectively burn fat or sugar. And this is why 15 minutes, like, oh, wow, I got ketones and I got this water I can use, and then poof, your brain wakes up. That's why you drink it in the morning and you feel the difference that you talked about earlier. Um, so okay, so that's a good has- a good hack for fasting. But people say, "Well, wait, why ... It, there's calories in there." Yes, but it doesn't raise insulin at all, and it doesn't raise mTOR at all, so you're still getting the benefits of the fast. And the third thing, this is gonna be the magic one for you.

Lewis Howes 22:59 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 23:00 No one's ever talked about this in the context of fasting that I'm aware of before, and it's prebiotic fiber. The recommended amount you should get is about 20 or 30 grams a day. Most people don't get it, or if they do get it, they're eating tons of whole grains with all the anti-nutrients and irritants in them, so it's not good for you. So if you put a couple scoops of prebiotic fiber in water, coffee, or tea, it is carbs, except your body can't digest it, and it goes right into your gut bacteria. It feeds the good guys. You'll grow more species and more abundance in your gut bacteria, and they eat it. And in studies, they convert prebiotic fiber into short-chain fatty acids called butyric acid that is pro-ketogenic. And there's dozens of studies that show soluble fiber suppresses hunger, and there's many more that show it makes you live longer. In fact, it's a core part of my anti-aging recommendation.

Lewis Howes 23:49 Wow.

Dave Asprey 23:50 So there you go. If you want to just-

Lewis Howes 23:51 So is this a, is this a powder?

Dave Asprey 23:53 It's a powder.

Lewis Howes 23:53 Is this a supplement?

Dave Asprey 23:54 Flavorless powder.

Lewis Howes 23:55 Flavorless powder.

Dave Asprey 23:56 And yes, I do make one.

Lewis Howes 23:56 What's it called? Prebiotic, prebiotic what? Fiber?

Dave Asprey 23:59 Prebiotic fiber is what it's called.

Lewis Howes 24:01 Got it. Got it.

Dave Asprey 24:02 And the one I make for Bulletproof is called Inner Fuel. I'm not here to sell Inner Fuel. I'll tell you what's in it [laughs] if, if you want to do that. Bulletproof Inner Fuel, though, it's all packaged up. I did all the research. There's three different kinds of fiber in there. They're all sap from trees. And these are specific things that feed the good guys. And they have zero flavor.

Lewis Howes 24:19 Mm.

Dave Asprey 24:20 So you can put it in whatever and it's very neutral, and it doesn't get all clumpy like a Metamucil or like-

Lewis Howes 24:25 Mm

Dave Asprey 24:25 ... like gunky. You can't really tell it's in there. So I usually get about 40 to 60 grams of soluble fiber a day, which is way more than most people, and it's going to make sure that everything goes out pretty much no matter what you eat, uh, the way you want it to. But most importantly, it suppresses hunger and it gives you good gut bacteria.

Lewis Howes 24:43 Mm.

Dave Asprey 24:45 So Lewis, I quadrupled the number of species of bacteria in my gut with the formula.

Lewis Howes 24:49 Really?

Dave Asprey 24:49 And it's made out of acacia gum, larch arabinogalactan, and hydrolyzed guar gum. Uh, try and spell all those. That's why, just, you can Google the ingredients on Bulletproof Inner Fuel if you don't wanna buy the stuff. But you can just Google for prebiotic fiber, and there's different companies who make different-

Lewis Howes 25:06 Sure

Dave Asprey 25:06 ... types of, of things. Try this, Lewis. You can put it in there.

Lewis Howes 25:09 Really?

Dave Asprey 25:09 You're still fasting, as long as it doesn't have sugar and stuff in there, which some of them do. And that combination, there is no one on earth who can drink a Bulletproof Coffee with 20 or 30 grams of soluble fiber and then look at a donut and wanna eat the donut. Like, your body's-

Lewis Howes 25:23 So is it-

Dave Asprey 25:23 ... like, it's full, but-

Lewis Howes 25:25 Can you do the fa-

Dave Asprey 25:25 ... the fasting mechanism still works

Lewis Howes 25:27 ... yeah. Can you do the Bulletproof and the powder in it, the-

Dave Asprey 25:30 Oh, yeah

Lewis Howes 25:30 ... the fiber, and it's all in one?

Dave Asprey 25:31 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 25:31 It tastes fine?

Dave Asprey 25:32 It tastes just like a latte.

Lewis Howes 25:34 Wow. I'm gonna have to-

Dave Asprey 25:35 And, and that's the trick. Some of, some of the prebiotic fibers are very flavorful and [laughs] not that good. These are very neutral.

Lewis Howes 25:41 Mm.

Dave Asprey 25:42 So I-

Lewis Howes 25:43 That's great

Dave Asprey 25:43 ... I, I think you should try that. I know people are saying, "Dave, that can't be a fast because there was something in there." Well, look at your insulin levels. Look at-

Lewis Howes 25:49 Yeah

Dave Asprey 25:49 ... your mTOR levels. Look at the mechanistics of fasting, and what you realize is, wow, this taught me to be able to go without breakfast. This gave me enough power. And then maybe a month from now, you go, "You know what? I'll try it without the fiber," or, "I'll try it without the butter," or, "without the MCT." That's fine, but this is gonna teach your body to be flexible, and you can do it forever. And maybe some days when you're feeling really strong, I'll just do black coffee.

Lewis Howes 26:12 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 26:12 And other days, you know what? I, I'm a little hungry. Things are off. I'm just gonna put everything in there, but I'm still gonna get my fast.

Lewis Howes 26:18 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 26:18 Man, I want that kind of freedom for people. [upbeat music]

Lewis Howes 26:24 There's only three things you need to do to stay alive. If you're a cat, if you're a bacteria, or if you're a, a possum or a tree, it doesn't matter, it's always only three things. Run away from or kill scary things, and plants do that by making poisons or spines and things like that, uh, and they can't run away 'cause they're plants. Sorry.

Dave Asprey 26:42 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 26:43 Right? And then, uh, let's see. You have to eat everything to make sure you don't starve to death, right? So w- I've certainly done both of those behaviors. You know, you eat all the donuts and oops.

Dave Asprey 26:52 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 26:53 And then the third thing is have sex with everything that's left to make sure the species doesn't die out, right?

Dave Asprey 26:57 Right.

Lewis Howes 26:57 So-

Dave Asprey 26:57 Reproduce, yeah

Lewis Howes 26:58 ... right. So Lewis, can you think of anything you've ever done you're ashamed of that didn't come from one of those three behaviors?

Dave Asprey 27:04 Um, I, I mean, I've been [laughs] ashamed of a lot of things I've done.

Lewis Howes 27:08 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 27:09 But those three behaviors. What was the first one again?

Lewis Howes 27:11 It was run away from or kill things.

Dave Asprey 27:12 Run away from or kill things. No. I mean, I was gonna say getting angry at something-

Lewis Howes 27:15 Yeah

Dave Asprey 27:15 ... but that's in that category, right?

Lewis Howes 27:16 That's what that is, right.

Dave Asprey 27:17 Like lashing out or being reactive or being-

Lewis Howes 27:19 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 27:19 ... frustrated that I didn't get what I wanted or something.

Lewis Howes 27:21 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 27:21 The second one is eat everything.

Lewis Howes 27:23 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 27:23 I've done that a lot. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 27:24 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 27:24 I mean, I've been ashamed of all the su- I mean, I was a sugar fiend my whole life.

Lewis Howes 27:28 Totally.

Dave Asprey 27:28 And, uh, you know, I cut out sugar for 45 da- the last 45 days, and what a transformation in my mind and my body-

Lewis Howes 27:35 Yeah

Dave Asprey 27:35 ... and my health, just by not having sugar. And then [laughs] wa- wanting to reproduce, yes, I've been there too, so-

Lewis Howes 27:41 Yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 27:42 You're like, "Can I go out on that date?"

Lewis Howes 27:43 Exactly. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 27:44 Right?

Lewis Howes 27:44 Yes. Uh, the, the thing is we take responsibility for those things, and tho- those are things we're responsible for.

Dave Asprey 27:50 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 27:50 But they're not you. They're emergent behaviors that come from what bacteria want, 'cause the bacteria are the puppet masters in our bodies.

Dave Asprey 28:00 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 28:00 And when you realize that, you better take care of those little bastards, 'cause they have control over you in some way. But when they give you enough energy in re- in return for this symbiosis they have, you can then have enough energy for the human adult parts of your brain to easily take over and to easily control things.

Dave Asprey 28:17 Mm.

Lewis Howes 28:17 And we call that willpower.

Dave Asprey 28:19 Right.

Lewis Howes 28:19 So, so when you feel the urge to, you know, flip the guy off in traffic or to yell at your spouse or, you know, to eat all the donuts, if your battery is charged all the way, you're like, "Oh, I got this. It's not even that big of a deal. I'm just gonna say no."

Dave Asprey 28:30 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 28:30 And it's those times when you're browning out a little bit and like, "Well, you know, it's the end of the day. I'm a little tired. You know, I, I, um, fine, I'm, I'll just have half the donut."

Dave Asprey 28:38 Right.

Lewis Howes 28:38 And you, you dive in and, you know, there's-

Dave Asprey 28:40 You have no willpower.

Lewis Howes 28:40 Yeah. There's, you know-

Dave Asprey 28:41 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 28:41 ... there's frosted stuff all over your face and-

Dave Asprey 28:43 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 28:43 ... colored sprinkles on your shirt, and y- you, oh, man, you say the thing-

Dave Asprey 28:46 Or you say the thing you wish you didn't say or whatever happens.

Lewis Howes 28:48 Exactly. Yeah. Fascinating. So how did you, how have you applied this into your life? Uh, what are the main things that you've done on a daily basis that you've seen a transformation in your life? 'Cause you've done a lot of biohacking and mind hacking-

Dave Asprey 29:01 Oh, yeah

Lewis Howes 29:02 ... for years.

Dave Asprey 29:02 For years.

Lewis Howes 29:03 So what is this new stuff that you've been doing? Just to be honest, I've w- uh, we've probably seen each other maybe 10 times-

Dave Asprey 29:08 Oh, yeah

Lewis Howes 29:08 ... like in person. I've known you for a while, but we've probably been interacting 10 times in person. This time, you look younger than I've ever seen you. When we met you when you came in, you look stronger. You look like you have more energy. You look clearer. Like, you never looked as clear as you do now for some reason. You look very clear-

Dave Asprey 29:23 Oh

Lewis Howes 29:23 ... high energy, and youthful. Not that you didn't before, but you just look, like, even, you know, more youthful. So what are the things that you're doing that is allowing you to have this energy of abundance that, you know, you've never had before?

Dave Asprey 29:36 I'm, I'm doing a lot of stuff.

Lewis Howes 29:38 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 29:38 And one of the things that, that, that ... It's a, a fair criticism of biohacking is how do you know if it works?

Lewis Howes 29:44 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 29:44 Well, like you just said, there's, uh, there's evidence that something-

Lewis Howes 29:48 The synergy, yeah

Dave Asprey 29:48 ... is working. Can I tell you that one of the 45 things I'm doing is the one? Well, no, 'cause it wasn't the one. There's something called synergy.

Lewis Howes 29:56 Mm.

Dave Asprey 29:56 And, and, and there's amplification. And if you do A, it doesn't work very well. You do B, it doesn't work very well. And shockingly, if you do A and B, it works. But the, the double blind reductionist, like, Western medicine thing-

Lewis Howes 30:07 Yeah

Dave Asprey 30:07 ... I, I swear there's, there's like some guy in a white lab coat, he's like, "There was no such thing as bread. Here's why. I baked the water and nothing happened. I baked the flour, nothing happened. I baked the yeast and nothing happened. Therefore, there is no bread." And you're like, maybe if you mixed them and then baked them, there would be bread.

Lewis Howes 30:20 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 30:20 Right? But no, that's more than one variable. I can't do it. I have to test single variables. Our bodies are incredibly complex systems.

Lewis Howes 30:27 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 30:27 So what I do and what this, this program in Head Strong, the two-week program is, is let's do many of the things that make your mitochondria stronger all at the same time-

Lewis Howes 30:35 Yes

Dave Asprey 30:36 ... instead of messing around with just one thing.

Lewis Howes 30:38 Give me a few examples of Some of the things ... And I, I know you do things at every different point of the day.

Dave Asprey 30:43 Sure, sure.

Lewis Howes 30:44 You do things in the morning, you do things in the afternoon, at night. You're, like, constantly testing and tweaking.

Dave Asprey 30:48 Well, one, one of the things that, that doesn't cost anything that, that's really effective is changing temperature. S- so mitochondria, their job is to stay alive, and then their job is also to kill off the weak. So you gotta stress them-

Lewis Howes 31:04 Mm

Dave Asprey 31:04 ... enough to kill off the weak.

Lewis Howes 31:06 Right.

Dave Asprey 31:06 And that process is, is called apoptosis. If you don't do that, you get cancer.

Lewis Howes 31:11 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 31:11 So you wanna, you wanna stress, you, you wanna stress them, but not too much.

Lewis Howes 31:15 Okay.

Dave Asprey 31:15 So it's brief periods of stress. So there's-

Lewis Howes 31:17 So like ice-

Dave Asprey 31:19 Ice is great

Lewis Howes 31:19 ... ice tubs or ice showers or-

Dave Asprey 31:20 Even ... Yeah, just a cold shower in the morning.

Lewis Howes 31:22 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 31:22 Not a whole cold shower, 'cause cold showers suck.

Lewis Howes 31:24 For, for a minute.

Dave Asprey 31:25 Let's face it.

Lewis Howes 31:25 Right, yeah.

Dave Asprey 31:25 Yeah, just take a hot shower, at the end turn it on cold, do it all at once, and just feel the pain for a minute. Those little guys, they're gonna freak out.

Lewis Howes 31:33 It makes them stronger?

Dave Asprey 31:34 They, they get stronger-

Lewis Howes 31:35 Charged up

Dave Asprey 31:35 ... and the weak ones die.

Lewis Howes 31:36 Huh.

Dave Asprey 31:36 Right? And then you burn more calories throughout the day, your brain is clearer, and inflammation goes down. And here's the interesting thing. Every time you have inflammation, it's because your mitochondria aren't working very well.

Lewis Howes 31:46 Mm.

Dave Asprey 31:46 So if something makes you inflamed, it's because you damaged your battery system in the body. When things are working well, they, they actually change the structure of the water in your body. It, it's called exclusion zone water, and no one knew mitochondria could do this-

Lewis Howes 32:00 Right

Dave Asprey 32:00 ... until a couple years ago. Gerald Pollack figured this out, and he talked about it at the Bulletproof Conference.

Lewis Howes 32:04 Wow.

Dave Asprey 32:05 So all of a sudden, you're just telling these little guys, "Hey, the world isn't always warm and soft and fuzzy. Maybe you should just toughen up a little bit."

Lewis Howes 32:12 Mm.

Dave Asprey 32:12 And then that toughness gets built into your system, and you carry it with you for the rest of the day. And so you're a little leaner, you're a little-

Lewis Howes 32:19 Yeah

Dave Asprey 32:19 ... just, just more on point, and it costs you nothing. In fact, you saved a quarter cent on heating hot water [laughs] for that last one minute. Like, it, it was just a change in habit.

Lewis Howes 32:27 Right.

Dave Asprey 32:28 Another thing is exercise. So I looked at all the research on mitochondria and exercise, like what's, what's going to make them stronger, what's not gonna make them stronger. There's a set of studies that show if you go for a walk for 20 minutes a day, that that increases mitochondrial function. That's it.

Lewis Howes 32:44 That's it, 20 minutes.

Dave Asprey 32:45 Right? Now, that's one set of studies. You can go for longer, but if you go for too long, you actually can stress them out-

Lewis Howes 32:50 Mm

Dave Asprey 32:50 ... which, which isn't a good thing. So you know, if, if you're gonna ev- every day go for, you know, a two-hour run without recovery, it's the lack of recovery that really messes up your energy system.

Lewis Howes 33:00 Right.

Dave Asprey 33:01 So you see a lot of people who are type A entrepreneurs like you or me, where, you know, we, we like to go out and-

Lewis Howes 33:05 Go all day, all night, yeah

Dave Asprey 33:05 ... yeah. And they're like, "And on top of that, I'm gonna, like, run at the Kona Ironman-

Lewis Howes 33:09 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 33:09 ... and I'm gonna do it without sleep-

Lewis Howes 33:11 Yeah

Dave Asprey 33:11 ... just 'cause I could," right? So you push like that, and I've certainly done that, you know, in my early career in, in tech, the, the company that held Google's first servers and, and things like that. I, um, I'd burn the c- I'm like, "Why would you burn the candle at both ends when you could also light the middle," right? [laughs] Like-

Lewis Howes 33:24 [laughs] Right

Dave Asprey 33:25 ... it's so bad for you. And it's bad for you 'cause it breaks your mitochondria. Like, like they get stressed like that, and they-

Lewis Howes 33:31 Mm

Dave Asprey 33:31 ... communicate with each other.

Lewis Howes 33:32 Right.

Dave Asprey 33:33 And they do that with, uh, they do it with chemicals, and we believe that they probably do it with light as well, which is really interesting.

Lewis Howes 33:40 Mm.

Dave Asprey 33:40 If those theories are proven, and I, I would bet right now that they will be, uh, we know that these little parts of your cells make lights the same way an LED light does. They literally make little photons, and they receive photons. So a set of scientists are proposing that that's how mitochondria talk, which is why if you're beating up your muscles all the time, you're gonna be tired in your head, because the whole system of these bacteria that are interacting ... And they're not bacteria anymore, they're part of our cells. They're called organelles.

Lewis Howes 34:07 Wow.

Dave Asprey 34:07 But they still have that little bit of bacterial behavior that's built in-

Lewis Howes 34:10 Sure

Dave Asprey 34:10 ... and that allows us to be who we are and what we are, so it's fascinating.

Lewis Howes 34:13 And you ... Yeah, go ahead, sorry.

Dave Asprey 34:14 The, the other exercise, just so I-

Lewis Howes 34:15 Yeah, yeah

Dave Asprey 34:15 ... like so people listening, I, I don't leave them going, "I just have to go for a walk."

Lewis Howes 34:19 Yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 34:19 Once or maybe twice a week, but certainly once a week, you need to kick your ass.

Lewis Howes 34:22 Mm.

Dave Asprey 34:23 And there's two ways to do it, and these are actually both in the Bulletproof Diet too, because we knew they worked, but we didn't understand the mitochondrial part of that back then. One is intermittent sprinting.

Lewis Howes 34:31 Yes.

Dave Asprey 34:32 Just basically sprint for 60 seconds, and there's a neat trick in Head Strong that's not in the first book, and I got this from John Gray, uh, the, uh-

Lewis Howes 34:39 The Men Are from Mars?

Dave Asprey 34:41 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 34:41 Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Dave Asprey 34:42 That guy.

Lewis Howes 34:42 Huh.

Dave Asprey 34:43 He is a crazy biohacker.

Lewis Howes 34:45 Really?

Dave Asprey 34:45 You would not know this from reading his books about relationships. No, he, he goes deep. So we got to be friends, and he's like, "Dave, after you sprint, instead of walking, lay on your back. Just lay down," like the way you'll see, you know, in CrossFit gym, people just kill themselves and lay down.

Lewis Howes 34:59 Yeah. Yeah, they do.

Dave Asprey 34:59 There's a reason they're doing that. They, they're not doing it 'cause they know the reason, they're doing it 'cause they, they felt the urge, and that was their instinct.

Lewis Howes 35:04 I couldn't brea- whenever I would do CrossFit or lay down, it's 'cause I couldn't breathe, and I was just like [laughs] out of breath.

Dave Asprey 35:08 Yeah. It, it ... Well, that's the body's natural response.

Lewis Howes 35:11 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 35:11 So if you wanna increase the height and the trough, which is what you're doing-

Lewis Howes 35:14 Yeah

Dave Asprey 35:14 ... your cells goes, "You better be ready to just, like, bring it all at once." You're training the battery in your body to totally have a high voltage and then stop.

Lewis Howes 35:23 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 35:23 So you-

Lewis Howes 35:23 So you should stop and go on your back.

Dave Asprey 35:25 You should stop.

Lewis Howes 35:25 You shouldn't keep walking.

Dave Asprey 35:26 Yeah. At, at least sit down, better yet lay down-

Lewis Howes 35:28 Really?

Dave Asprey 35:28 ... for a minute, and then get up and sprint again, and then lay down.

Lewis Howes 35:30 Really?

Dave Asprey 35:30 And this is what animals will do, right?

Lewis Howes 35:31 Huh, that's true.

Dave Asprey 35:32 And, and it's, it, it's amazing what a difference that is.

Lewis Howes 35:35 Wow.

Dave Asprey 35:35 So that's one way you kick your ass. The other way is lift heavy things for 15 minutes or less and don't stop. Keep the muscles engaged the entire time. Don't stop at the top, don't stop at the bottom. As heavy as you can, and you'll-

Lewis Howes 35:46 While stretching and warming up properly.

Dave Asprey 35:48 Why would you do that? [laughs]

Lewis Howes 35:50 Exactly.

Dave Asprey 35:50 Yeah. I, I do my warm-ups on the-

Lewis Howes 35:52 Yeah, yeah

Dave Asprey 35:52 ... on the Bulletproof vibe. You know, I, I'm vibrating-

Lewis Howes 35:54 Yeah

Dave Asprey 35:54 ... when I do that.

Lewis Howes 35:54 Sure, sure.

Dave Asprey 35:55 Uh, and I, I do that vibration stuff every day-

Lewis Howes 35:57 Yeah

Dave Asprey 35:57 ... or I go for a walk, but quite often I'm on the phone, and it's-

Lewis Howes 35:59 Right

Dave Asprey 35:59 ... I'm in Canada, it's dark and raining. Like, why would I go for a walk?

Lewis Howes 36:01 You're in Vancouver, right? Yeah.

Dave Asprey 36:02 I have a cow island, so-

Lewis Howes 36:03 Yeah, yeah. Yeah

Dave Asprey 36:03 ... I'm on an organic farm.

Lewis Howes 36:05 Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, so I mean, it's funny 'cause I've alwa- in track and field, when I ran track, they would always tell you to, like, keep walking after you're done with the sprints, so it's interesting. And, and why is it, what's the science behind laying on your back or stopping and folding?

Dave Asprey 36:18 It, it has to do with, uh, heart rate variability and cardiac recovery, and getting the, the system to go from sprint to calm as fast as possible.

Lewis Howes 36:27 To keep that calm.

Dave Asprey 36:27 That's what you're trying to get it to do. It's just to increase the, the recovery after the sprint-

Lewis Howes 36:31 Wow

Dave Asprey 36:31 ... so that you can do another sprint.

Lewis Howes 36:32 Another set, yeah.

Dave Asprey 36:33 Yeah. And, and it's ... You know, we're talking, do this for 10 minutes-

Lewis Howes 36:35 Yeah

Dave Asprey 36:35 ... 15 minutes.

Lewis Howes 36:36 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 36:36 It's, it, it looks a little funny if you just collapse. You know, s-

Lewis Howes 36:39 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 36:39 ... people call ambulances and all, but-

Lewis Howes 36:40 And you, you only work out once or twice a week, right?

Dave Asprey 36:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 36:43 Like a heavy thing.

Dave Asprey 36:44 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 36:44 Otherwise you're walking and that's it, right?

Dave Asprey 36:45 That's, that's about it. Yeah. I, I'll go to yoga class when I get a chance.

Lewis Howes 36:48 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 36:48 Like I, I appreciate yoga more for the ... the stretching and all.

Lewis Howes 36:51 Sure.

Dave Asprey 36:51 But I, I'm, I'm doing all right from a 44-year-old-

Lewis Howes 36:54 You're strong, man

Dave Asprey 36:54 ... yeah, I'm, I'm 44, and-

Lewis Howes 36:56 You're headstrong.

Dave Asprey 36:56 Yeah, I'm headstrong. There you go.

Lewis Howes 36:57 And you're muscle strong.

Dave Asprey 36:58 I, I still have, like, stretch marks. Like, I mean, I've, I weighed ... For people who don't know this, I used to weigh 300 pounds.

Lewis Howes 37:02 That's crazy.

Dave Asprey 37:02 Like, I was obese for, until, geez, my, my mid-30s.

Lewis Howes 37:05 Wow.

Dave Asprey 37:06 Uh-

Lewis Howes 37:06 You could carry it okay as a 6'4" guy.

Dave Asprey 37:08 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 37:08 A little bit better.

Dave Asprey 37:09 I, I couldn't quite see my feet, but-

Lewis Howes 37:10 Oh, man

Dave Asprey 37:11 ... you know, it, I remember the first time I saw my ribs. I'm like, oh my God. Like, I, uh-

Lewis Howes 37:14 Wow

Dave Asprey 37:15 ... and for years, walking down the hallway, I would, like, turn sideways to make space for people 'cause I was just used to having this bulk that I don't have anymore.

Lewis Howes 37:22 How's it feel?

Dave Asprey 37:23 It, it feels n- now natural, but for a while it was-

Lewis Howes 37:26 Hmm

Dave Asprey 37:26 ... it was pretty strange. And I, I put on about 19 pounds in a month last month.

Lewis Howes 37:31 That's crazy.

Dave Asprey 37:32 Uh, I was actually doing something that's not in the book-

Lewis Howes 37:34 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 37:34 ... but if, if you order, uh, through the orderheadstrong.com, I'll, I'll tell you how I did it.

Lewis Howes 37:38 Right.

Dave Asprey 37:39 Uh, but, uh, I was, I wanted to increase my mitochondria by 50%. Like, this is a major battery systems upgrade.

Lewis Howes 37:45 Wow.

Dave Asprey 37:45 And I used a research chemical, uh, called-

Lewis Howes 37:48 Right

Dave Asprey 37:48 ... a SARM in order to do that, and I wasn't trying to put on muscles. Like, I'm happy with-

Lewis Howes 37:51 Without training heavy weights all the time, yeah.

Dave Asprey 37:53 No, I, no, I, I don't wanna, I don't wanna look like a bodybuilder. I'm, I, I, I v- very much appreciate bodybuilders, but I'm also looking to live to 180, and carrying too much muscle mass-

Lewis Howes 38:03 Is hard

Dave Asprey 38:04 ... isn't ... Well, it's not necessarily-

Lewis Howes 38:05 Part of the joints and-

Dave Asprey 38:06 Yeah, it's, it's not where I wanna go, but ... So I had to buy a new, a new suit, and, like, half my shirts don't fit. I'm like, God, you know, I, I was okay the way I was before, but I-

Lewis Howes 38:13 Mm

Dave Asprey 38:13 ... d- it kinda feels good to have a little bit of extra muscle on.

Lewis Howes 38:15 Yeah, you're strong, man.

Dave Asprey 38:16 I'm feeling good.

Lewis Howes 38:17 That's great, man.

Dave Asprey 38:17 And 20% increase in strength across the board on the, the RX. I have this ... When I, when I do lifting-

Lewis Howes 38:22 Wow

Dave Asprey 38:22 ... I'm fighting a winch with a computer, so I have, like, a, a strain gauge.

Lewis Howes 38:25 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 38:26 Uh, I don't usually use, like, heavy things that have gravity associated with them. So I'm, I'm basically pushing at something where it's always quantified, and just across the board, 20%, 20%, 20% in a month with three workouts on that and one electrical stimulation workout. It's just-

Lewis Howes 38:39 Amazing, man

Dave Asprey 38:40 ... super crazy.

Lewis Howes 38:41 And you look younger, too. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 38:43 I ... There, there's some stem cells involved, but a lot of this-

Lewis Howes 38:44 Yeah, of course

Dave Asprey 38:45 ... as soon as you get the mitochondria working better, they're responsible for powering recovery and, and, and repair.

Lewis Howes 38:50 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 38:51 So what happens, you do this to make your brain work better. You feel it in your brain first, but then it goes throughout the body.

Lewis Howes 38:55 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 38:55 And, like, I'm ... You know 'cause you've known me for a while, I am getting younger.

Lewis Howes 38:58 You are, man.

Dave Asprey 38:59 I, I, I'm not, I'm not-

Lewis Howes 39:00 You are. It's crazy.

Dave Asprey 39:01 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 39:01 You almost looked, like, a little weathered at times. Like, the first few times I met you, maybe it was 'cause you were, like, launching a business-

Dave Asprey 39:06 Well, I was-

Lewis Howes 39:06 ... and you were like, everything was involved and the stress of it.

Dave Asprey 39:08 When you first met me, I was a VP at a publicly traded company, h- head of global evangelism-

Lewis Howes 39:13 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 39:13 ... and starting a blog.

Lewis Howes 39:14 And doing this on the side. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 39:15 Yeah, yeah. And in three years, I was one of the top 20 most influential voices in health on the internet.

Lewis Howes 39:19 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 39:19 And, like, I was ... Uh, oh, and I was a new dad, or a second new dad. I had two kids.

Lewis Howes 39:22 That's a lot. You got a lot going on.

Dave Asprey 39:24 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 39:24 You, you had-

Dave Asprey 39:24 I still do, but

Lewis Howes 39:25 ... you seemed, like, more ... You just seemed, like, overwhelmed whenever [laughs] , when I first met you the few times, uh, 'cause you had a lot going on.

Dave Asprey 39:31 Oh, yeah.

Lewis Howes 39:31 I can only imagine, and now you just seem, like, this lightness about you.

Dave Asprey 39:34 There, there's something else I've done, too.

Lewis Howes 39:35 Freeness, you know?

Dave Asprey 39:36 And this is something I write about in here.

Lewis Howes 39:38 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 39:38 I've talked about neurofeedback as, like, a general term, but I opened 40 Years of Zen, which is now something that, that I'm, I'm running as a, well, I'm, I'm operationally running it, but it's something that I created that has been, like, my baby. I wanted the world's best brain mechanic in order to do, like, performance tuning for my brain.

Lewis Howes 39:55 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 39:56 I've, I've had my own EEG machines at home for 20 years.

Lewis Howes 39:59 And what's that?

Dave Asprey 40:00 EEG is the idea you can measure electricity coming out of the brain. Guess where that electricity comes from? It's all about mitochondria, right?

Lewis Howes 40:06 Wow.

Dave Asprey 40:06 So you can measure it, and then you can sh- teach the brain, which means teaching the mitochondria how to work better.

Lewis Howes 40:11 Wow.

Dave Asprey 40:12 So I've been doing this, but I, I kinda topped out on all the things out there, so we created new hardware and software i- in order to teach you to be in this Zen state, like 20 to 40 years of daily Zen practice. You can achieve that in five days.

Lewis Howes 40:27 Wow.

Dave Asprey 40:28 And that sounds like a big claim, but it's just, it's quantitative analysis of your brain. I can show you your brain before and after, and, like, there you go. You just, you, you made these, these shifts happen. So I've been doing that. It's a facility in Seattle. It's a five-day executive thing-

Lewis Howes 40:40 Cool

Dave Asprey 40:40 ... very few people can go through, and, like, we, we vet out some people or just where, like, this isn't the right training for you. But I did that 'cause I really wanted this for myself, so I've been able to go and do that, and here's what's interesting. You get n- a new battery upgrade. You do this, this Headstrong stuff. What do you spend most of your energy on? You spend it controlling your desire to kill people, your des- eat everything.

Lewis Howes 41:02 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 41:03 You can turn off everything. That's the Bulletproof diet, is how do you-

Lewis Howes 41:04 Sleep with everything. Yeah, yeah

Dave Asprey 41:05 ... how do you lose the cravings? That's what the, the whole diet thing was about. That's one of the three things. I still haven't hacked that, you know, how do you not want to have sex, 'cause actually it's good to wanna have sex.

Lewis Howes 41:12 Right.

Dave Asprey 41:12 If you don't have sex, your mitochondria won't be happy either, 'cause that's-

Lewis Howes 41:14 Hmm

Dave Asprey 41:14 ... one of the reasons they s- they exist-

Lewis Howes 41:15 Hmm

Dave Asprey 41:16 ... is to reproduce, right?

Lewis Howes 41:17 There you go.

Dave Asprey 41:17 So sex is good for you and all that. Uh, but the, the thing is, how do you control that, that overwhelming anxiety, the fear, the, the sense of overwhelm?

Lewis Howes 41:25 The stress. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 41:26 Well, I, I sit in these big pods that we've made that, that literally have 24 electrodes glued to my head with a computer showing me how to be chill.

Lewis Howes 41:35 Wow.

Dave Asprey 41:35 So literally on the way over here, I was negotiating a $100 million deal. No joke, right? And it, it's a, a very substantial thing. I'm looking at venture capital dollars and all these things, and right before that, I was on stage with Jim Kwik-

Lewis Howes 41:47 Yeah, I saw

Dave Asprey 41:48 ... at Kwik Learning. But I'm not stressed. Like, you can see me. Like, I'm, I'm happy-

Lewis Howes 41:51 Right

Dave Asprey 41:51 ... and I'm full of this. Before, even, even, you know, five years ago, without this level of training-

Lewis Howes 41:56 Hmm

Dave Asprey 41:56 ... I think it would've been harder for me to task switch and just-

Lewis Howes 41:59 Yeah

Dave Asprey 41:59 ... to be grounded and present. So some of this is just deep internal awareness, and because I don't have the food craving thing, the, the 1/3 of my cognitive burden that would've gone towards saying no to food or thinking about food, that's gone.

Lewis Howes 42:11 You're just like, "Give it to me."

Dave Asprey 42:11 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 42:11 "Give ... I need something. Yeah, I need some energy," right?

Dave Asprey 42:13 Yeah. And, and the, the part of me that's like I have to run away from or, uh, or kill things, that's turned off. I mean, if, if you were to attack me right now, I would respond appropriately and with my instincts, but I'm not, like, over-sensitive to those things. So I'm in that sense of groundedness and awareness but not in a state of fear.

Lewis Howes 42:30 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 42:30 And that also frees up a huge amount of energy that was subconscious, but it was, like, constant worry in the background. What if, what if? Like, what if there's not enough? What ... You know, what am I gonna say next? All those voices, those are just gone. The voice in my head is just blissfully silent now. Uh, and then, you know, there's, there's that third behavior there like that I'm married, so, like, you know, I get some of that-

Lewis Howes 42:46 There you go. There you go

Dave Asprey 42:46 ... now and then, but [laughs]

Lewis Howes 42:47 Yeah, yeah. That's great, man. Amazing.

Dave Asprey 42:53 There's seven things that make us old. Mitochondria is just one of them, and it turns out-

Lewis Howes 42:57 Mm

Dave Asprey 42:57 ... it's one that might be an underpinning for many of the other things, uh, but-

Lewis Howes 43:01 What are the, what are the seven things?

Dave Asprey 43:03 The seven things are-

Lewis Howes 43:04 I can't remember them all

Dave Asprey 43:04 ... I call them the, the seven pillars.

Lewis Howes 43:06 Okay.

Dave Asprey 43:07 And one of them is mitochondrial, uh, mutations or, or essentially i- insufficiency. So this means your cells can't make enough money... or enough money. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 43:18 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 43:18 Enough energy for you to make enough money. Uh, so what really happens there is I wanted to make enough energy to repair a cell. I couldn't make enough energy with the food you gave me or with the state of the cell, so I didn't repair the cell.

Lewis Howes 43:30 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 43:31 And then bad things happen.

Lewis Howes 43:32 And you get old.

Dave Asprey 43:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 43:33 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 43:33 And so if, if that's one, I, I wanna make sure I don't repeat myself-

Lewis Howes 43:37 Yeah

Dave Asprey 43:37 ... and I'm pulling these from my head.

Lewis Howes 43:38 Mitochondria.

Dave Asprey 43:39 Yep, so mitochondria's the first one. The next one is something that I call cellular straitjackets, and it, it's fascinating that everyone's heard of beta amyloid plaque, 'cause, oh, we have Alzheimer's disease, everyone has amyloid. But what you don't know is amyloid forms throughout your body in all of your proteins, and it's basically cross-linked proteins that are inflexible. And you get more of this as you age, and it turns out there's things you can do that are coming online right now that'll break it down, but there's also a lot you can do just to prevent it from forming, because it's almost like a cellular level scar tissue.

Lewis Howes 44:11 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 44:11 So you've taken plenty of hits, uh-

Lewis Howes 44:13 Yeah, plenty

Dave Asprey 44:13 ... you know, as an athlete, right? So you know what scar tissue in an elbow or a knee or hip or something does.

Lewis Howes 44:17 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 44:18 Imagine each cell, every time it gets inflamed, it just wants to get a little bit more scar tissue. This is happening. If you're gonna live to at least 180 like I am, you might want it to happen a little bit less, otherwise I'm gonna be walking around pretty stiff-

Lewis Howes 44:29 Yeah

Dave Asprey 44:29 ... when I'm, when I'm old, and I don't really want that.

Lewis Howes 44:32 Okay. [clears throat] So how do we eliminate that?

Dave Asprey 44:35 Well, that one, I mean, we can go through in detail on each of these things. Um, that one, it turns out what you eat really matters. Because if you eat stuff that makes you inflamed or if you have an autoimmune condition or if you have environmental allergies and you don't deal with them, that constant chronic g- low levels of inflammation, that's what does that.

Lewis Howes 44:54 That builds up, yeah.

Dave Asprey 44:55 Yeah. So you're talking 20, 30 years after this stuff starts and all of a sudden just bad stuff is going on in your body and you don't know why, and, and literally the cells can't move the way they're supposed to move.

Lewis Howes 45:07 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 45:07 And what's going on there is you eat fried stuff on a regular basis. You eat those grains, the whole grains you still think are healthy even though they are shown to cause inflammation in all humans. Sorry, [laughs] I wish it wasn't that way 'cause I like a croissant like the rest of us.

Lewis Howes 45:20 Oh, I love croissants. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 45:21 But they're just not good for us.

Lewis Howes 45:23 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 45:23 And some people are more sensitive than others.

Lewis Howes 45:25 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 45:26 And for me, there's something called the nightshade family, and I wrote about this in The Bulletproof Diet, by the way. I saw it right there.

Lewis Howes 45:30 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 45:31 Thank you.

Lewis Howes 45:31 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 45:32 Uh, and, uh-

Lewis Howes 45:33 Yeah, Dr., um-

Dave Asprey 45:34 Gundry

Lewis Howes 45:35 ... Gundry talks about nightshades.

Dave Asprey 45:36 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 45:36 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 45:36 Yeah. So I, I... that was one of the four categories of plant toxins that might be a problem for you in The Bulletproof Diet, and Dr. Gundry, who's, who's a good friend, focuses on those very heavily. And there's other stuff that comes in plants, like heavy metals. It, it's a major cause of aging. There's a whole chapter on heavy metals.

Lewis Howes 45:53 Wow.

Dave Asprey 45:53 Um, did you know kale is the number one source of thallium in our diet? Thallium's called the poisoner's poison.

Lewis Howes 46:00 So we shouldn't be having kale?

Dave Asprey 46:02 No. Kale's gross. Have you eaten it lately?

Lewis Howes 46:03 Oh, my gosh, I d- yeah, but they put it with saute with butter and some garlic.

Dave Asprey 46:06 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 46:07 You know, it's like-

Dave Asprey 46:07 [laughs] You have to torture kale to make it taste good.

Lewis Howes 46:09 So no kale.

Dave Asprey 46:10 I don't know that no kale is necessary, but-

Lewis Howes 46:13 I thought leafy greens was the thing.

Dave Asprey 46:14 Leafy greens, some of them, but there's a difference between lettuce and kale, a very big difference. I, I was... you know I have a farm, right?

Lewis Howes 46:21 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 46:21 I've got sheep and pigs. If I give them raw kale, they spit it out.

Lewis Howes 46:24 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 46:25 I'm not even kidding. There's a pile of raw kale, they will not eat it.

Lewis Howes 46:27 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 46:27 I can put it in the compost, the worms will eat it.

Lewis Howes 46:29 Right. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 46:29 But-

Lewis Howes 46:30 Wow.

Dave Asprey 46:30 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 46:30 Interesting. So you're not supposed to be eating kale.

Dave Asprey 46:32 Kale is high in oxalic acid, which causes systemic inflammation, going back to-

Lewis Howes 46:36 Really?

Dave Asprey 46:36 ... cellular. Very high in it, actually. Kidney stones and gout-

Lewis Howes 46:39 What?

Dave Asprey 46:39 ... are happening in all kinds of people who eat too much kale, especially raw kale. So I, I-

Lewis Howes 46:43 Man

Dave Asprey 46:43 ... I wrote a post actually a couple years ago that's like, "Hey, cook your kale, dump the water, add some baking soda to precipitate out these microcrystals." 'Cause one of the things that kale does, if you eat a lot of it, those microcrystals start circulating around. They bind with calcium and they stick in your tissues.

Lewis Howes 46:57 I don't like that.

Dave Asprey 46:57 In women, there's something called, uh, vulvodynia, where the crystals form in the labia, and then it's really painful even just to sit down. And-

Lewis Howes 47:08 What about, um-

Dave Asprey 47:09 Cook your kale is all I'm saying, and don't eat it every day.

Lewis Howes 47:11 Okay.

Dave Asprey 47:11 Right?

Lewis Howes 47:11 Cook your kale. Don't eat it raw.

Dave Asprey 47:12 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 47:12 What about kale chips? No?

Dave Asprey 47:14 You know, this-

Lewis Howes 47:15 I guess it's kind of cooked a little bit, I guess, but-

Dave Asprey 47:16 Yeah, they're cooked, but you don't a- you wanna, like, wash the stuff out.

Lewis Howes 47:19 Ah, okay.

Dave Asprey 47:19 It's a, it's a really strong toxin that, that-

Lewis Howes 47:22 Jeez

Dave Asprey 47:22 ... the plants use to keep from being overeaten.

Lewis Howes 47:24 Right, to not be killed.

Dave Asprey 47:24 Yeah. Right.

Lewis Howes 47:25 Well-

Dave Asprey 47:25 They don't want us to kill them.

Lewis Howes 47:26 What about, um-

Dave Asprey 47:27 So that's different than lectins, but it, it... there's stuff like that that's out there. But here's the thing.

Lewis Howes 47:31 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 47:31 It's... you don't have to be perfect about it. It's not like, oh, kale's good or kale's bad. If you're doing two kales a day, you're probably gonna get kidney stones or other bad stuff over time.

Lewis Howes 47:40 Wow.

Dave Asprey 47:40 I was a raw vegan. I did a lot of kale. It was not good for my joints. It's not good for most people. Um, so that said-

Lewis Howes 47:46 Wow

Dave Asprey 47:47 ... can it taste good with bacon? Hell, yeah.

Lewis Howes 47:48 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 47:49 Right? So-

Lewis Howes 47:49 Small amounts there

Dave Asprey 47:50 ... if you're having a side dish of collard greens and kale, whatever, like, just eat it and enjoy it.

Lewis Howes 47:54 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 47:54 Right? But if you're doing it on purpose to ramp it up, it's actually not gonna make you superhuman. It's probably going to increase systemic inflammation, which is going to increase your risk of the four killers I write about in the book, like diabetes and things like that. Kale doesn't cause diabetes, but systemic inflammation does.

Lewis Howes 48:09 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 48:10 So it's like stop taking these thousand little cuts that we take in our life. J- maybe just take less. You don't have to be perfect. And if you can find the foods that are triggers for you. So for me, I can eat some kale occasionally. If I eat a lot of it, I really feel it. But the nightshades, they trash me, and I love them, by the way. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 48:26 And the main nightshades are, is that tomatoes? Is that-

Dave Asprey 48:28 It's, uh, spicy peppers, eggplants.

Lewis Howes 48:31 Ah, but it's so good. I love it.

Dave Asprey 48:32 I know, cayenne. It's, it's... I grew up in New Mexico.

Lewis Howes 48:34 But you're not supposed to eat it.

Dave Asprey 48:35 Well, no. You can probably eat it just fine. A third of us, if you have the genes I do, I eat it and I have the knee pain. I've had three knee surgeries before I was 23. I had arthritis since I was 14. It's caused by those.

Lewis Howes 48:46 Wow.

Dave Asprey 48:46 If I don't eat them, I have no pain in my back. If I eat them, it comes back reliably every time.

Lewis Howes 48:51 Wow.

Dave Asprey 48:51 But if you don't know it- And, and you're saying, "Well, I, I have this kinda crunchiness and it's always there." You have to find out what's causing it because if you allow it to happen, when you are 60 or 70-

Lewis Howes 49:02 It's gonna be really bad

Dave Asprey 49:03 ... you're gonna hate your life.

Lewis Howes 49:04 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 49:04 Right? And if you, if you fix it now, your energy level goes up right now and you love your life right now, and when you're old, you won't look or feel old.

Lewis Howes 49:12 Right.

Dave Asprey 49:12 S- so it's that important that we figure that out. And so that's gonna illustrate that inflammation causes this cellular level scar tissue to form. Then there's zombie cells. It's one of my favorites.

Lewis Howes 49:24 Is this three?

Dave Asprey 49:25 Yeah, this is three.

Lewis Howes 49:26 Zombie cells.

Dave Asprey 49:27 Yeah. Zombie cells are cells that should die but don't.

Lewis Howes 49:34 Ooh.

Dave Asprey 49:34 And they sit there and they take up space and resources. They make free radicals, but they don't do their job anymore.

Lewis Howes 49:39 So is the best way to kill those off is to fast?

Dave Asprey 49:41 Turns out fasting causes autophagy, which is one of the ways to do it. And there's a few drug protocols I write about in here and some other supplements, one called fisetin that comes from strawberries and seaweed, that are shown to remove senescent cells.

Lewis Howes 49:57 Mm.

Dave Asprey 49:57 And these seven types of aging, these have been studied b- by a lot of people I've interviewed o- on my show, and in 20 years of running an anti-aging nonprofit, I've gotten to know the people doing the research. So decades of knowledge has gone into ... You know, we finally understand this. You know, uh, David Sinclair, by the way, that's a guy you should have on the show if you haven't. Uh, he is, uh, a guy who's just written a, a book that says straight up, "I've spent 30 years studying aging at Harvard. And you know what? I feel safe now saying that we can turn the biological clock in our cells backwards 'cause now we know why we age and what to do about it."

Lewis Howes 50:31 Wow.

Dave Asprey 50:31 Like straight up, you don't do that as an academic unless you are sure. We're, we're actually at the point where we know these seven things will do it.

Lewis Howes 50:39 Wow.

Dave Asprey 50:39 If you have a car, you know that you wanna keep your car for a while, you should change the oil, change the tires and, and do the maintenance schedule. But if you only do half the maintenance schedule, the car isn't gonna make it. Well, these seven things in Superhuman are the seven things that you account for because if you don't do all seven of them, you're not maintaining your chassis very well.

Lewis Howes 51:00 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 51:00 Like you're, you're gonna have a problem.

Lewis Howes 51:02 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 51:03 And so to get rid of these zombie cells, fasting is a big deal, as well as some of these other new things that are coming online. And what's neat here is I can actually tell you exactly when and what is happening. And right now, for those, most people won't go on the drug cocktail, uh, that you can get because it costs about 500 bucks and it's still considered experimental. All of my anti-aging friends are like, "Oh, yeah. [laughs] I'm gonna do that once every year for-

Lewis Howes 51:29 Right

Dave Asprey 51:29 ... for the next while 'cause it's worth $500." And they feel better and their immune system works better and they're noticing a difference. So I'm talking about the stuff that crazy billionaires do, the stuff, why it works, the stuff that you can do that's very affordable, you know, a $50 supplement or something, and then the stuff that's free that stops the problem in the first place.

Lewis Howes 51:47 Right.

Dave Asprey 51:47 So the deal is you don't have to go out and do it, but anything the crazy billionaires are doing, if it costs $10,000 right now, it's gonna cost-

Lewis Howes 51:53 It's gonna cost $200

Dave Asprey 51:54 ... $200. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 51:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 51:55 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 51:55 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 51:56 It us- ... We- just by raising awareness, you're gonna go to your insurance company and be like, "Hey, man, why can't I get this? Because I don't need knee replacement if you give me stem cells in my knees."

Lewis Howes 52:04 Right.

Dave Asprey 52:05 And I've done ... I write about it. I share the whole experience. I did $120,000 whole body stem cell makeover, uh, in Utah.

Lewis Howes 52:13 By yourself?

Dave Asprey 52:14 Uh, well, I mean, I had doctors doing it, not me.

Lewis Howes 52:16 Right, right, right. But yeah.

Dave Asprey 52:17 Yeah. So I, I went in.

Lewis Howes 52:18 Wow.

Dave Asprey 52:18 Three doctors. Uh, Dr. Harry Adelson-

Lewis Howes 52:20 Wow

Dave Asprey 52:20 ... led it, and a neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins named Marcelo, um, and then, uh, Amy Killen did the cosmetic stuff. So I'm unconscious for four hours. They're pulling a half a liter of bone marrow out.

Lewis Howes 52:30 What? How do they do that?

Dave Asprey 52:32 Um, they go in through your, your hip, the iliac crest.

Lewis Howes 52:34 Oh.

Dave Asprey 52:34 I've had that done twice. Once I was awake actually, uh, with no, no, uh, anesthesia.

Lewis Howes 52:38 Oh my gosh. They take bone marrow out?

Dave Asprey 52:40 I have a video ... Yeah, the video, you see them, like, hammering on this thing and then they go, "Eh, eh," like right on the bone. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 52:45 Oh, my gosh. In the bone?

Dave Asprey 52:46 Look at your face. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 52:48 Gosh, man.

Dave Asprey 52:48 It doesn't hurt. Everyone says it hurts. It's just this ... It's the weirdest feeling I've ever had. It was intense, but it wasn't pain. It was, it was more like fingernails on a blackboard intense.

Lewis Howes 52:56 Ah.

Dave Asprey 52:56 [laughs] So I did that.

Lewis Howes 52:58 When was this?

Dave Asprey 52:59 Uh, let's see. I did that about a year ago.

Lewis Howes 53:02 No way.

Dave Asprey 53:02 And-

Lewis Howes 53:03 How much do they take, bone marrow out?

Dave Asprey 53:05 A half a liter. I mean, that's a good amount of bone marrow.

Lewis Howes 53:07 Wow. So what do they do with that?

Dave Asprey 53:08 Well, they take it, they get the stem cells out of it, and then they reinject them throughout the body.

Lewis Howes 53:14 Mm.

Dave Asprey 53:14 So I had stem cells from my fat and my bone marrow. I had them injected every joint in the body, knees, hips, every- all along the spine, inside the spine along the spinal cord with a cannula, into the cerebral spinal fluid-

Lewis Howes 53:26 What?

Dave Asprey 53:26 ... into face hair-

Lewis Howes 53:27 Oh, my gosh

Dave Asprey 53:28 ... male reproductive organs. Uh, pretty much everywhere you can put a stem cell in a human, I did all at the same time.

Lewis Howes 53:34 In four hours.

Dave Asprey 53:35 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 53:35 But, like, you had-

Dave Asprey 53:36 It was-

Lewis Howes 53:36 ... to be in pain for a few days afterwards, at least.

Dave Asprey 53:39 You know, the first two days were pretty tough.

Lewis Howes 53:40 Probably couldn't move that well.

Dave Asprey 53:41 Mostly from the spinal stuff where they put it inside the spine.

Lewis Howes 53:44 Oh, my gosh, man.

Dave Asprey 53:45 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 53:45 Every joint though, so they're injecting-

Dave Asprey 53:47 Yeah

Lewis Howes 53:47 ... through a needle or through a-

Dave Asprey 53:48 Yeah, just a needle, and they use a 3D X-ray machine or ultrasound and they guide the needle to go right-

Lewis Howes 53:53 Oh, yeah

Dave Asprey 53:53 ... to get it along this. But you know what?

Lewis Howes 53:55 You're asleep. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 53:56 I mean ... Yeah, you're asleep. You, you wake up and you sort of ... I look kind like the Terminator.

Lewis Howes 54:00 Oh, a lot of pain. Yeah.

Dave Asprey 54:01 Uh, it was ... The first two days were just not happy.

Lewis Howes 54:04 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 54:04 But you know what? This is the sort of thing, I'm very unlikely to have spinal stenosis when I'm 80-

Lewis Howes 54:09 Wow

Dave Asprey 54:09 ... 'cause my spine is rejuvenated and all of the old injuries that, that I've had are just going away or have gone away.

Lewis Howes 54:17 Mm.

Dave Asprey 54:17 And really dramatic stuff. Uh, even my wife, frozen, uh, neck since she was nine when she fell out of a mul- like a two-story building. And three days after she got injected, she's like, "I can move my head for the first time all the way.

Lewis Howes 54:29 Wow.

Dave Asprey 54:29 Look, this is amazing." So-

Lewis Howes 54:31 How much of it is placebo versus-

Dave Asprey 54:33 I, I don't really-

Lewis Howes 54:34 ... science, you know?

Dave Asprey 54:35 Oh, for stem cells, there's a huge amount of science. I mean, 100 billion-

Lewis Howes 54:38 But I wonder how much of it is like, okay, it's been injected.

Dave Asprey 54:41 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 54:41 Now I can f- feel confident to, you know-

Dave Asprey 54:43 I think that she'd had-

Lewis Howes 54:44 ... have more

Dave Asprey 54:45 ... other treatments. I mean, she's an ER doctor.

Lewis Howes 54:46 Gotcha. Oh, wow.

Dave Asprey 54:47 Trained, you know, trained at Karolinska Institute. She's had lots of people working on her.

Lewis Howes 54:50 Wow, okay.

Dave Asprey 54:51 And, uh, and she was just not even expecting that, sort of like, yeah, inject all these spots, whatever. Uh, so for her it was that, and then they also do the reproductive organs. We've had a couple kids.

Lewis Howes 55:02 Wow.

Dave Asprey 55:02 Right? And she's, she's 50, and so both of us had our reproductive organs done and it- And she was just completely floored. Like, like- Wow ... massive changes. So you could say, "Okay, Dave, that, that is a ridiculous ... You could buy a Tesla for that." Um, here's the deal. Number one- You could live an extra- I, yeah. [laughs] Well, so I'm a guinea pig, so like, you know, we, we, we worked a deal. And- Yeah, exactly ... and two, um, and I have other friends who've gone through the full treatment, 'cause like I'm really serious about living a long time. But it shouldn't cost that much. Yeah. Like, it will be $12,000 in a little while. It's coming down- Yeah ... fast, fast, fast. Uh, but the, the differences in, in how you feel are profound. So if, if that's an example of what a crazy biohacker would do, okay, let's say you're facing a hip replacement or joint replacement. Would you go in and spend $5,000 instead of getting the replacement if you had a 50% chance of not needing a new joint? Amazing. Most people would, especially if their insurance company- A lot ... would do it. 'Cause a joint replacement is 25 grand, and growing your own tissues back is five grand. Like- Right ... let's do that. Yeah. Right? And so a lot of Superhuman, I'm gonna talk about that kind of stuff, saying maybe you should know it exists. But there's so many things that are free and cheap- Yeah ... that can re- regenerate something. Like, let's talk about knees. I mean, you and I have talked about knees before. But there's something called prolozone that I talk about here. They inject ozone gas, it's $150 injection- Wow ... into your knee, and it causes cartilage to regrow. And I've seen x-rays before and after- Wow ... of people, and I've seen the difference in my own joints. So it's, it's pretty strong stuff. And have you ever heard of injecting ozone in a joint? No. Most people haven't. But the science has been going back since World War I, 100 years of science. Mm. And it's just unknown. So I interviewed and got to know the pioneers in that space, the people who are, are the top in the field, and I talk about it in the book, saying, "Here's what ozone therapy does to restore mitochondria," number one of these aging things. Wow. So, so you go through this, and there's kind of the story of what it's like to do these things. But also, here's what you can do right now to increase stem cells. By the way, fasting seems to be really effective for a lot of things. Right, right, right. Sleep and fasting are those- They do the trick. Yeah. Yeah, those are crazy things. But then how do you sleep? Right? Like, that's, that's kind of a, a big deal. Right. So do, do you track your sleep on your, on a ring or anything? I, I need to get the Oura ring. I'm supposed to get one soon. Oh, man. Well, I'll- It's amazing, right? Yeah. I'll email Harpreet if you want, but let me, let me show you a sleep score here that's ... Here we go. So I slept six hours and 50 minutes. Uh-huh. Two hours and 50 minutes of dreaming sleep. That's way more than a 20-year-old gets in eight hours of sleep. Really? Oh, yeah. And an hour and 19 of deep sleep here. So I gotta track this so I know- Y- yeah ... if my sleep's working or not. Right. And I can tell you, if you're getting an hour, more than an hour, I do an hour and a half of deep sleep, you're getting more than most people. And over time, as you age, there's a decline in REM and deep sleep. Those are what keep you young. So I sleep like a young person. Wow. And I did that on purpose. I did not used to be good at sleep. I learned how to do it. I've written the, the preeminent blogs on sleep hacking. And, you know, when people talk about blue-blocking glasses, they're not enough. I started a company called TrueDark that does actually patented glasses for sleep that are more than blue blocking. And you wear those right before bed. And I don't get jet lag when I use them. And like all these crazy things because now we know the science that we didn't know 10 years ago. So our ability to sleep like young people- Mm ... has changed. Mm. And that will reduce your risk of the things that are most likely to kill you, as well as make you younger. Better sleep. Yeah. Wow. All right. So we got- Okay. We got- ... mitochondria,

Dave Asprey 58:35 zombie cells, cellular straight jackets. All right. There's buildup of gunk inside the cells. I call it, uh, intracellular junk. Okay. And our cells have these things called lysosomes, and their job is to take broken down parts of the cell or parts of food metabolism and digest them and use them. So it's sort of like a furnace that burns waste. It burns garbage. So if you went to the dump, there's an incinerator, but what if you put stuff in the incinerator that wouldn't burn? Eventually, it gets full, and you can't use the incinerator because there's no more space to put stuff in. Mm-hmm. Well, that's happening in your cells right now. Wow. So companies are working on enzymes you'll be able to take that will help to remove that. In the meantime, what you do is you put in less stuff in your body that your cells can't break down. So in other words, don't put the hunks of metal into the incinerator 'cause they don't burn. Mm-hmm. Right? [laughs] Right. So to solve this problem right now, the easiest thing to do is don't eat a lot of sugar, because sugar helps to create something called advanced glycation end products, or AGE. And don't eat burned meat in ... or burned vegetables, for that matter. Uh, in the Bulletproof Diet, I wrote about the dangers of eating advanced glycation end products, and the problem is there was only two studies. [laughs] But we know that they form ... Anytime you eat sugar, the sugar goes into your ... If you spike your blood sugar level, it goes in and it browns your tissues the way onions- Mm ... get caramelized. That's advanced glycation end products. So you can make that crème brûlée or that, that crusty meat. So good. Uh- It, it's ... I don't know why they taste good, 'cause they're really bad for you, but yeah- Yeah ... they taste good. So if you just- Don't eat those burned things. Yeah. As you go to the restaurant and say, "Could you not blacken my steak?" Uh-huh. Right? And, and it's, it's ... You just don't wanna eat that blackened- Yeah ... or super burned stuff. And if occasionally you have a caramelized crunchy crust on your steak, great. Make it brown, not black. Yeah. Right? Like, you don't have to be perfect. But when you do that, when you eat those things, now we know they go in and they just stick right in the lysosome, and now your cells- Mm ... can't burn all the other bits of protein, so you end up getting eventually zombie cells- Mm ... because of that. Yeah. So let's put less stuff in there that's harmful. So don't spike your blood sugar levels. Don't eat burned food. Right. Okay. Big difference, okay? Got it. Then there's accumulation of stuff outside the cells, right? And this is another different set of problems. And there, it's amazing that sometimes fasting makes a really big difference for this. Fasting does everything, huh? It does, but you can also bind toxins by taking things that bind toxins. You have these heavy metals that are inside the cells and outside the cells. As any animal ages, things that bioaccumulate get worse and worse. So if ... I like to go fishing, uh, and so I'll go up to Alaska with friends once a year. And if you catch 100-pound halibut, you throw it back. Mm. The reason you do that is this fish is probably 100 years old and it, it's probably going to lay a lot of eggs, which is good.

Lewis Howes 1:01:25 Oh.

Dave Asprey 1:01:25 You should, you should let them reproduce. But even if you wanted to eat it, that fish has 100 years of eating other fish.

Lewis Howes 1:01:31 Oh, wow.

Dave Asprey 1:01:31 And it is full of mercury and nickel and cadmium and all the things that will mess up your cellular metabolism, give you gray hair. There's a whole chapter here on, like, gray hair and hair loss-

Lewis Howes 1:01:39 Wow

Dave Asprey 1:01:40 ... and stuff like that, and wrinkles and skin. But the, the real issue here is you and me are the same way. So if you eat food, you need to eat clean food, and you wanna actually go through and remove the toxins as you go.

Lewis Howes 1:01:55 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:01:55 Otherwise, when you're 100 years old, you have 100 years of toxin buildup of these things that don't naturally leave the body. So in Superhuman, I, like, I take this fiber supplement [laughs] , take activated charcoal-

Lewis Howes 1:02:07 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:02:07 ... and do these things that allow the body to just naturally eliminate these things, otherwise they will go in and they'll be in your liver, they'll be in your brain, they'll be in your skeleton, and they'll be in your nervous system. And over time, all of the diseases of aging are associated with metal buildup and those things.

Lewis Howes 1:02:22 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:02:23 So that's-

Lewis Howes 1:02:23 Right

Dave Asprey 1:02:23 ... an example of a toxin that could be outside of cells. One of the other seven pillars of aging is the telomerase.

Lewis Howes 1:02:29 Number five?

Dave Asprey 1:02:30 I think this is number five, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:02:31 The telomerase, the ones that-

Dave Asprey 1:02:32 Well, we had, we had to- we had toxins inside the cells and outside the cells, like the buildup. So you have intracellular, you just have extracellular is number five.

Lewis Howes 1:02:38 Okay. Extracellular?

Dave Asprey 1:02:40 Extra-

Lewis Howes 1:02:40 Extra

Dave Asprey 1:02:40 ... E-X-T-R-A, extracellular. So inside and outside the cells.

Lewis Howes 1:02:44 Yeah. And then ...

Dave Asprey 1:02:45 Let's see. Number six would be telomerase. And this is something-

Lewis Howes 1:02:50 Is it the ends of the, the ge- or the ends of the DNA? What is it? The ...

Dave Asprey 1:02:53 They're different than the ends of the DNA. It, it's essentially, imagine it like a wick. If you have a cell, every time it divides, you take, y- you subtract one unit from the wick, and that's called the Hayflick limit.

Lewis Howes 1:03:04 Ah.

Dave Asprey 1:03:04 So it's normally about 37. So if you have normal telomerase, you can copy a cell 37 times, and then it won't, it won't do anything.

Lewis Howes 1:03:10 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:03:10 And at that point you get zombie cells. So-

Lewis Howes 1:03:13 Gotcha

Dave Asprey 1:03:15 ... what you wanna do then is figure out a way, how do I add more pieces onto that wick?

Lewis Howes 1:03:19 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:03:20 The only problem is if you add too many pieces onto it, it increases your cancer risk. But what if you could reduce the number of things? So really, regeneration, anytime you increase growth of your cells, like a young person, you increase cancer risk.

Lewis Howes 1:03:31 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:03:32 So it turns out in here, like, well, there's four things that are gonna kill you if you're average, and cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, and diabetes.

Lewis Howes 1:03:39 Really?

Dave Asprey 1:03:40 80% of people listening to the show, one of those is gonna get you.

Lewis Howes 1:03:42 Really?

Dave Asprey 1:03:43 And usually diabetes is a, a precedent of the other three. So let's assume we're not average, because you can read the book and you can do the things, and you and I aren't average because, well, we have the ability to order the food that we want.

Lewis Howes 1:03:54 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:03:54 Just that and alone is a-

Lewis Howes 1:03:55 Right

Dave Asprey 1:03:55 ... huge advantage. There's a lot of people who actually-

Lewis Howes 1:03:58 Don't, yeah

Dave Asprey 1:03:58 ... they're in a food desert.

Lewis Howes 1:03:59 Eating grains all day or whatever.

Dave Asprey 1:04:00 Yeah. I go to 7-Eleven or I can go to the dollar store. Like, which one?

Lewis Howes 1:04:04 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:04:04 There's no food there. Uh, not yet. We'll get some good collagen bars-

Lewis Howes 1:04:08 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:04:08 ... into Whole Foods. Or Whole Foods into 7-Eleven one of these days. But, uh, what's going on with the telomeres is now there are herbal compounds that are shown to increase the length-

Lewis Howes 1:04:20 Really?

Dave Asprey 1:04:20 ... of your telomeres, but they cost a couple grand a month.

Lewis Howes 1:04:22 Oh man, that's a lot.

Dave Asprey 1:04:23 Well, it's, it's insane. But there's a Russian peptide, which is a small group of amino acids that's injectable, that's been studied since 2003.

Lewis Howes 1:04:33 Peptides are the biggest thing right now.

Dave Asprey 1:04:34 Oh, yeah. I've been using peptides for years.

Lewis Howes 1:04:36 One nutritionist was telling me about peptides. Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:04:36 Oh, excellent. Oral or injectable?

Lewis Howes 1:04:38 Injectable.

Dave Asprey 1:04:39 Okay. That's, uh ... Let's talk about that. There's a chapter-

Lewis Howes 1:04:42 Oral better, or what is it?

Dave Asprey 1:04:43 Uh, depends on what they are, but injectable is good. There's a whole chapter, uh, on SARMs and peptides in here as well.

Lewis Howes 1:04:48 Oh, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:04:48 Because ... And this is the cutting edge stuff. I love that the nutritionist is doing that.

Lewis Howes 1:04:51 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:04:51 ... because licensed nutritionists and doctors, it's a gray zone for them.

Lewis Howes 1:04:56 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:04:56 And they should be completely free to, to-

Lewis Howes 1:04:58 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:04:58 ... help people use them, but because they're not pharmaceuticals-

Lewis Howes 1:05:03 They're not a drug.

Dave Asprey 1:05:04 Yeah, they're not a drug, but it's injectable, so there's, there's like weird-

Lewis Howes 1:05:07 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:05:07 ... regulatory zones.

Lewis Howes 1:05:08 So he was saying this is, like, what every doctor is talking about at all the conferences-

Dave Asprey 1:05:12 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:05:12 ... and all the research-

Dave Asprey 1:05:13 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:05:13 ... is, like, now coming out as-

Dave Asprey 1:05:15 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 1:05:15 ... you know, how about the natural and fine.

Dave Asprey 1:05:17 I've been on it for 10 years.

Lewis Howes 1:05:18 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:05:18 Right. And it's crazy what happens, 'cause this one, in 2003, of course, I'm an anti-aging guy, so, you know, you, you hear about it and you say, "All right, I'll try it." And you inject it for 10 days, once every six months, and it dramatically lengthens telomeres. So you can do that, and it costs 50 bucks, right? So you're thinking, "All right, I wanna live a lot longer. I got seven pillars of aging. Telomeres matter. So I'm-

Lewis Howes 1:05:40 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:05:40 ... gonna use this peptide." And one of the reasons I wrote Superhuman [laughs] was is that there's no one who's really going to market that. Those are not patentable.

Lewis Howes 1:05:51 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:05:51 But they're something that all of us need to know about, because I wanna live in a world full of people who are older and full of energy and, and-

Lewis Howes 1:05:57 Hmm

Dave Asprey 1:05:57 ... full of wisdom. Because when I was 26, the reason I know all this stuff, I magically made my way to an anti-aging nonprofit group, and I was learning from people two times and-

Lewis Howes 1:06:07 Wow

Dave Asprey 1:06:07 ... almost three times my age.

Lewis Howes 1:06:08 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:06:08 Uh, one of my really good friends, Mike, there was in his mid-80s, and he's on our board of directors. And the first night I meet him, we're out till 11:30 at night talking about all this stuff. Like, this guy has as much energy as I do, and he's w- like, way older than I am. Like, how did he do this? And you just realize it's possible, it's just unusual.

Lewis Howes 1:06:24 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:06:24 So if it can be done, how do you do it? And so I feel that if, when we have a world full of people who have the wisdom of having experienced things, enough energy and enough desire to give back-

Lewis Howes 1:06:37 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:06:37 ... it, it saves the rest of us a lot of time and energy-

Lewis Howes 1:06:40 Right

Dave Asprey 1:06:40 ... to have that, the, the village elder actually not-

Lewis Howes 1:06:43 Right

Dave Asprey 1:06:43 ... not have Alzheimer's disease and not be in a hospital.

Lewis Howes 1:06:46 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:06:46 Right? [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:06:46 That's powerful, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:06:48 So that's, that's a big part of my mission. And getting this, a $50 thing that makes your telomeres longer, that's a pretty good ROI.

Lewis Howes 1:06:56 That's pretty sweet.

Dave Asprey 1:06:57 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:06:57 It's already out there, or is that something you're gonna-

Dave Asprey 1:06:58 It's called Ep- it's called Epitalon. It's, here ... It's not something I make. I'm, I'm not selling that stuff. I'm just telling you about it.

Lewis Howes 1:07:02 Epitalon?

Dave Asprey 1:07:03 Epitalon, E-P-I-T-A-L-O-N.

1:07:06 And I forget which chapter it's in, but-

Lewis Howes 1:07:08 Okay

Dave Asprey 1:07:08 ... uh, I describe it, and if you ask your-

Lewis Howes 1:07:11 Right

Dave Asprey 1:07:11 ... nutritionist they'll probably know about it.

Lewis Howes 1:07:12 Okay, cool.

Dave Asprey 1:07:13 And, and there's things that speed healing, something called BPC-157. You've probably tried that one.

Lewis Howes 1:07:18 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:07:18 It's one of the injectable ones. Uh, it works. And there's, uh, other ones, um, something called TB500. And, uh, you go into this-

Lewis Howes 1:07:25 Oh

Dave Asprey 1:07:25 ... and you're saying, "Wait, but all of these are under $100, and all of them have really strong effects." So if you're dealing with something like, oh, I have an injury, or this hurts, or I'm looking at this aspect of aging-

Lewis Howes 1:07:36 Right

Dave Asprey 1:07:36 ... and I don't wanna deal with that, or my brain isn't working. My brain wasn't working, I [laughs] had arthritis, I was fat, I was a high risk of stroke and heart attack. I had pretty much the diseases of aging before I was 30, and it sucked, and like, I'm not going back. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:07:48 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:07:50 So now you've got me asking myself, what is number seven? I know what number seven is here, um, to make sure my memory still works.

Lewis Howes 1:07:56 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:07:57 Uh, number seven is, uh, loss of tissue.

Lewis Howes 1:08:01 Okay.

Dave Asprey 1:08:01 And as we get old, you imagine that real thin-

Lewis Howes 1:08:04 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 1:08:04 ... uh, real thin skin?

Lewis Howes 1:08:06 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:08:06 So I actually talk about the rate of collagen loss-

Lewis Howes 1:08:09 Hmm

Dave Asprey 1:08:09 ... and then what you can do about that. And if you are going to live for 100, 150 years, it, it's almost like having an investment and bank account that compounds. So if you're saying, "I'm just gonna take aging the way it normally comes", you're gonna have really thin skin when you're old. Or-

Lewis Howes 1:08:22 Right. Wow

Dave Asprey 1:08:23 ... you could, you could-

Lewis Howes 1:08:23 It's that loss of collagen, huh?

Dave Asprey 1:08:24 Yeah. It's not just collagen, but in that case it's an example of collagen.

Lewis Howes 1:08:28 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:08:28 So, yes.

Lewis Howes 1:08:28 Fat, it's collagen-

Dave Asprey 1:08:29 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:08:29 ... it's whatever, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:08:30 And there a combination of exposure to light, there's things like red light therapy or just getting some sunshine. Not too much sunshine, but not no sunshine either. [upbeat music] People have lost a million pounds using intermittent fasting-

Lewis Howes 1:08:44 Hmm

Dave Asprey 1:08:44 ... and bulletproof coffee, and the other principles in that, and it stood the test of time, but I've learned a lot. And what you find is that there is not an answer for the general population, because women are not, uh, just smaller men [laughs] with less muscles. And so it varies. It also changes on time of life. And the most important thing, and the thing that motivated me to write Fast This Way, is that it's not the same every day.

Lewis Howes 1:09:11 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:09:11 So I, I was on a, a big, uh, TV show in London that required me to be awake at 2:30 AM, and fully alert with bright lights on, and, you know, being in a studio. That next morning was not the time to intermittent fast, because I already had enough circadian stress. And so the, the deal is, what's the right fast for you today? And to give yourself permission to do it differently. And you know, 'cause you're a pro athlete, or you were, uh, you, on a day when you're just, you don't have it, and you say, "I'm gonna go lift heavy anyway," what would happen to you?

Lewis Howes 1:09:45 You might hurt yourself, you might strain something, you might not have the energy to do the, the full thing.

Dave Asprey 1:09:50 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:09:50 And, and then, you know, you might regret it. You might pull a muscle. Who knows?

Dave Asprey 1:09:54 Exactly. And, and fasting is the same kind of a thing, where you're saying, "Okay, you know, what did my Oura Ring tell me this morning about my readiness scores? Okay, if I'm ready to go and I'm totally full of it, maybe today is one meal a day." And maybe you're gonna wake up and say, "You know, on most days, I just do a 14 or a 16-hour fast because that's what works really well for me." And I usually do a 16 or an 18-hour fast. Uh, today it's, uh, around 2:00 I had my first meal, and before that I just had some black bulletproof coffee without even the butter and, and MCT, 'cause I didn't have time to put it in there 'cause I was busy. [laughs] And like-

Lewis Howes 1:10:27 Sure

Dave Asprey 1:10:28 ... my metabolism can handle that. But when I weighed 300 pounds, if I would've tried that, I would've been hangry and hypoglybitchy, and I would not have shown up the way that I expect myself to show up. So, so it, it's that kindness to yourself that says, "You know what? Today I'm gonna do this, and if it's just not working, it's okay to say I only fasted for 12 hours", which is the minimum fast that really does anything. Most people do 12 hours and don't even know it.

Lewis Howes 1:10:52 So what am I... Am I hearing you say that, you know, just 'cause you say you want to intermittent fast for two weeks or for a month, that you shouldn't push the fasting if you went to bed at 2:00 AM for some reason, if you haven't recovered from your workouts, if you're exhausted and you're moody, that maybe you sh- you should eat breakfast, or you should have a smoothie-

Dave Asprey 1:11:11 Yep

Lewis Howes 1:11:11 ... or do something to give you more e- energy and calories in the morning as opposed to just, "Well, well, I'm supposed to fast 'cause it's gonna make me live longer and, and kill off these dead cells or whatever." But it may be more harm if you actually don't listen to your body. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Dave Asprey 1:11:26 That is exactly right. Fasting is like exercise, and you don't wanna overdo it and you don't wanna underdo it. And what we fall into as just being humans is, uh, what I call the fasting trap, and before that there was the keto trap, and before that, when I was a raw vegan, it was the vegan trap.

Lewis Howes 1:11:42 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:11:43 And the trap goes like this, and I, I may be more guilty of this than most people-

Lewis Howes 1:11:46 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:11:46 ... when I look back on my life. "Hey, this is good. I'll just do more of it." Right? And that isn't the thing. The right amount is good, and many things in life have a, a U-shape response curve, or an inverted U. So what that means is if you just do a little bit, nothing happens. You do the right amount, you get tons of, of benefits, and if you do too much, the benefits go back down. And fasting is a stressor on the body, but it's a good stressor unless you already have enough stress. So, like if your girlfriend broke up with you last night, maybe a 24-hour fast today is just really not the thing to do, but maybe wallowing in a bucket of ice cream isn't the right thing to do either, and there's something in the middle there.

Lewis Howes 1:12:25 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:12:25 And so when people say, "How should I fast every day?" I can tell you for women, the recommendations, there's a whole chapter just on the studies for women in the book, 'cause there are fewer of them. It turns out the minimum effective dose is three fasts a week, like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If you can do 14 or 16 hours, you'll get some benefits. And you get used to that and you say, "You know what? Maybe I'm gonna do it five days a week." But I tell everyone, even, and this will make some people mad, like, have breakfast Saturday or Sunday. Don't have, you know, crazy, ridiculous, you know, IHOP. But if you wanna have some gluten-free pancakes even, it's fine, because if you have a flexible metabolism, you should be able to handle it, and you want your body to know that it is in a land of plenty, that you don't eat all the time, but that there's always enough food. And if you push your fasts too much too often, you get an epigenetic, an environmental signal that says, "Hey- There's kind of a little bit of a famine going on here, and then your body adjusts in a way that isn't good for you.

Lewis Howes 1:13:22 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:13:22 So it's the idea time without, time with. But you still have a sense of abundance in your tissues, which is very different than a low-calorie diet, which just makes you feel like crap and want to punch people. That's not good.

Lewis Howes 1:13:32 Right. [laughs] So it's taking it in, in cycles. Let's do-

Dave Asprey 1:13:36 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:13:36 ... I'm gonna do this for two weeks, four weeks, uh, but it's not gonna be years consistently fasting, 'cause that may not be as useful to your body long-term-

Dave Asprey 1:13:46 Well-

Lewis Howes 1:13:46 ... benefits.

Dave Asprey 1:13:46 I think it will be years. Most people who practice intermittent fasting and learn how to do it the right way, they have more energy in the morning they intermittent fast than when they have breakfast. Like Saturday morning, I sit down. You know, we have a small organic farm, so we're gonna have bacon from our own pigs. It's the best bacon on the planet. I like bacon. But I look at myself, I go, "Man, it's only 9:00. I really don't wanna eat anything right now 'cause I know that I actually have more energy if I don't eat."

Lewis Howes 1:14:10 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:14:10 But I'm going to, 'cause I'm doing it for a social thing. You know, this is family time, right? And I also know that I'm teaching my body, you should be able to handle this, right? And I do. Uh, but there's times when I look at it, I'm just not hungry even though this is a time when most people say I'd be ravenous. And it's that freedom from the voice in your head that says, "If I don't eat lunch, I'm going to starve."

Lewis Howes 1:14:30 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:14:30 That's, that's the reason people do this for long term.

Lewis Howes 1:14:34 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:14:34 In fact, one of the studies in Fast This Way talks about how the average person spends 15% of their thoughts about what their next meal is. I'm like, maybe we could have that 15% back and do something better with it.

Lewis Howes 1:14:45 Mm. Yeah, it's more about optimizing your life and not obsessing over th- the brain thinking about what am I gonna eat, or watching media that's saying eat this fast food, and you're constantly saying, "Well, what's next? What's next?" As opposed to allowing your brain and your gut to rest for a little bit.

Dave Asprey 1:15:03 The brain and gut rest thing is, is very interesting because in the history of fasting, it's always had spiritual context or health context. And what they do is they say, well, fast for a couple days, and then on the third day you stop caring about food, you get a lot of energy, and then you can go into this new open spiritual state. And there's several things happening there that I never would've imagined to be true, uh, back when the idea of skipping breakfast was something that was scary. I'm like, I don't wanna do that.

Lewis Howes 1:15:31 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:15:32 The first thing that happens is that when there's food in your stomach, even if it's really good food, that food is going to take energy to digest. So energy that could have gone into thinking or feeling or repairing tissues or whatever, it goes into attacking the steak you just ate. [laughs] And it breaks it down and you absorb it, and then you get more energy later. But the process of doing that is an energy suck. So if you have especially a high sugar, high carb, even oatmeal kind of breakfast, well, all of a sudden all the energy that should have gone into your morning goes into your gut, and that's not where you wanted it to be. And then your blood sugar goes up, then it, when it goes back down, the muffin calls to you-

Lewis Howes 1:16:11 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:16:11 ... at 10:00 AM and you really want the muffin. And then you start expending willpower on the muffin. Meanwhile, your body is spending extra energy digesting so you have less energy for willpower. You're probably gonna eat the muffin, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means that that's biology. But the second thing that happens on these longer fasts is that you go into a state of ketosis after about a couple days of not eating anything. And ketones provide more electrons to the neurons in your brain than even glucose or sugar or carbs do, even though that's what your brain usually eats. So all of a sudden now, you get these people fasting. All the energy that would've gone to digestion is going into repairing their tissues and going into their brain, and their brain got more energy 'cause it's burning a better fuel. And then the body says, "Well, if there's no food, maybe I should open up my perception and my sensors and I should become more tuned into the world around me so I could find something to eat."

Lewis Howes 1:17:06 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:17:07 Now-

Lewis Howes 1:17:07 Right

Dave Asprey 1:17:07 ... if you say, "I'm not gonna eat yet, I'm gonna use that openness to connect with others. I'm gonna use it to connect with myself, to go for a walk in nature", you're actually in a different state. So you get all three of those from a longer fast, but the hack that now, I now have 10 years of experience with, is that when you use MCT oil during a fast, I have very good evidence you stay fasted, but you get the ketones that would've been present after a three-day fast.

Lewis Howes 1:17:34 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:17:34 And this is why people will say, "Okay, I'm going to do the Bulletproof Coffee thing in the morning", which I'm well known for, and there's a couple other things going on there biochemically, but one of the things is that you just got the third day of fasting feeling the morning you fasted, and this is very sustainable. I mean, there are people who have done this for 10 years now and keep doing it because they're never hungry. And just not being hungry is such a relief. I know-

Lewis Howes 1:18:00 I know

Dave Asprey 1:18:00 ... when I was a 300 pounder, [laughs] I didn't even know-

Lewis Howes 1:18:02 You're always hungry

Dave Asprey 1:18:03 ... you could have hunger.

Lewis Howes 1:18:04 Are you... Or you're always hungry though when you're 300 pounds, probably, right? In the beginning?

Dave Asprey 1:18:07 Well, I was never hungry. I was always craving. I didn't know there was a difference.

Lewis Howes 1:18:10 Craving. Ah.

Dave Asprey 1:18:11 Right? And most people-

Lewis Howes 1:18:11 What's the difference between craving and hunger?

Dave Asprey 1:18:14 There you go. Uh, most people listening probably feel cravings most of the time, and a craving is when, "If I don't eat soon, a disaster is gonna happen. Like, I really need to eat." And it, it's an intense thing. But it turns out hunger is, "I should probably eat some time in the next couple hours for, you know, to perform better, but if I didn't, I'd be all right. I could go till tomorrow if I need to." So hunger's a gentle feeling, and the intensity of cravings is terrible. And what people find when they learn how to intermittent fast in the right ways is that they've eliminated cravings, and hunger becomes a gentle presence in your life. Like, "Oh, it's a little bit cold in the room. Maybe I could turn the thermostat up, but if I don't, I'll be all right."

Lewis Howes 1:18:56 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:18:56 And that calmness and peace that comes from it, that was what led me to write the book.

Lewis Howes 1:19:02 And what's the biggest mistake you've made in fasting personally in the last 10 years, or a mistake you've seen from other people who've tried to do fasting that it didn't work out for them?

Dave Asprey 1:19:13 It's falling into that fasting trap that says if something's good, more is better.

Lewis Howes 1:19:17 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:19:17 So-

Lewis Howes 1:19:17 Extremism of it

Dave Asprey 1:19:18 ... extremism or even just something that worked for a little while, assuming it's always gonna work. Um, I noticed, uh, when I started writing about intermittent fasting, it's, it's been a big pillar of the Bulletproof Diet for a long time, I think before intermittent fasting was really cool. And then people would call me and they'd say, especially women, "I, you know, I felt amazing. I've lost weight. I, I can't believe this. Like, who would ever thought butter would make me not hungry? I love my life." But then they call about four weeks, five weeks later and say, "You know what? I feel like my sleep quality's gone down."

Lewis Howes 1:19:50 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:19:51 "What's going on here?" And then I say, "Well, did you follow the advice of cycling in and out of keto and having some carbs sometimes, and not, you know, not pushing it?" They're like, "Well, no, I just felt so good, so I just kept doing that one thing, which was I didn't eat any carbs for long periods of time, and then I added this intermittent fasting." Um, and then so step one is you lose quality of sleep. Same amount of sleep, lower quality. Second thing, and men usually hit this about a month after women, but men and women both get poor quality of sleep. Women will get, their cycle is less regular than it was before, so they're going, "Hmm, th- this is weird. I don't normally have, uh, hormonal issues, but I'm feeling it this month more than I do." And for guys, I'm waking up without a kickstand. And-

Lewis Howes 1:20:37 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:20:38 ... the third thing that happens... [laughs] I was watching you process that.

Lewis Howes 1:20:42 God. [laughs] Yep.

Dave Asprey 1:20:46 All right. So-

Lewis Howes 1:20:46 So you wake up without a kickstand because you're not having carbs and you're doing it the extreme way, is that what you're saying?

Dave Asprey 1:20:50 Well, it's 'cause you're over-fasting.

Lewis Howes 1:20:52 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:20:52 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:20:52 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:20:52 And, and so the body's like, "Oh, it's a, it's a stressful environment. I don't really need that biological function very well-

Lewis Howes 1:20:57 Right

Dave Asprey 1:20:57 ... because there's not enough food." It's a famine.

Lewis Howes 1:21:00 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:21:00 Right? And your cortisol levels go up, and what happens when cortisol goes up and you keep it elevated because you're not eating often enough, is thinning of hair, and it happens in women and men. So like, okay, sleep, hormones, hair, in that order, is what happens when you over-fast.

Lewis Howes 1:21:15 Interesting.

Dave Asprey 1:21:17 And I've gone through times where I definitely went over keto. I went through a three-month period where I ate-

Lewis Howes 1:21:24 Just meat

Dave Asprey 1:21:24 ... one serving of broccoli a day.

Lewis Howes 1:21:25 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:21:26 And the rest was just, like, meat and all. And it was all grass-fed and very carnivore-ish, although I didn't have zero veggies. Um, and I felt amazing at first, but by the end of that, it's exactly the same as over-fasting, where my... I'd wake up 12 times a night, but not know that I woke up, but my sleep monitoring thing said I was.

Lewis Howes 1:21:42 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:21:42 And then you can even, you know, mess with your gut bacteria if you overdo it. So the deal is, look, you skip breakfast, and you have lunch around noon or 2:00, and sometimes you only have dinner, but you mix it up.

Lewis Howes 1:21:54 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:21:54 And that's actually how it was in nature, but this idea of a rigid fasting schedule and you're gonna, like, muscle through and push through. Like, if you're fading, right, and like, I'm just not, I'm not feeling very good today-

Lewis Howes 1:22:03 Eat some food, eat some food

Dave Asprey 1:22:04 ... and I was-

Lewis Howes 1:22:04 Have a, have some broccoli, have some vegetables-

Dave Asprey 1:22:06 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:22:06 ... have some salad. Have some... Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:22:08 Yeah, and it, it's just, it's okay.

Lewis Howes 1:22:10 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:22:10 And the other, the flip side is also true. What if you say, "I'm going to have a 16-hour fast today," and noon comes and you're like, "I am so feeling good." You're like, "You know, I'm gonna make this a 20 or a 23-hour fast because I have it in me today."

Lewis Howes 1:22:21 'Cause you're feeling good. You have the energy, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:22:23 Yeah. Right? And, like, I feel like as an athlete, you would know this better than most. Sometimes you go to the gym and you do the prescribed thing. Other times, like, I'm gonna put, put another set in because I can-

Lewis Howes 1:22:33 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:22:33 ... and 'cause, like, my body's ready. If we approach fasting that way, really good things happen. And I thought it was important. I... Okay, everything I do, and, I mean, 'cause we're friends and all, you know I do cryotherapy and stem cells and all kinds of crazy stuff, right? But there's a return on investment for everything you do, and it's not based on dollars. It's based on energy. You spend energy to do something, and you get energy back.

Lewis Howes 1:22:58 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:22:59 Well, fasting is like, okay, you walk into the bank, and you don't have an account there, and the teller's like, "Oh, hi. Here's some money." And you're like, "But I didn't do anything." They're like, "That's right. Here. Here's some money, and I'll, we'll pay you interest on this later today, and then two years from now, we'll pay you more interest." You're like, "But I didn't open an account. I didn't put any energy into this." And it's like, yeah, fine, that, that's all right. 'Cause with fasting, you spent no money and no time and no energy on breakfast, so you got paid right now.

Lewis Howes 1:23:22 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:23:22 You got free energy and free money and time back. And then all morning long, you have less hunger and more energy than you did when you had the Pop-Tarts. And then you don't get Type 2 diabetes, and you have more energy, and you have to buy smaller pants, and, like, all kinds of good things happen, even if you're not perfect with your diet.

Lewis Howes 1:23:39 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:23:39 And so this is the one thing that has the highest return on investment because you invest less than you do today.

Lewis Howes 1:23:46 And what do you think is the worst food to eat before you start fasting? Like-

Dave Asprey 1:23:51 Ooh

Lewis Howes 1:23:51 ... what's, what's the worst thing you could do where it kind of doesn't matter that you fasted 'cause you just had this, this, and this, you know-

Dave Asprey 1:23:58 I would say-

Lewis Howes 1:23:58 ... 16 hours ago

Dave Asprey 1:23:59 ... a bunch of fried stuff, especially, like, french fries-

Lewis Howes 1:24:02 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:24:02 ... uh, from a restaurant especially, because they use such bad oils. And what you find from fasting is that sometimes it's effortless, and sometimes you're just, have gnawing hunger the whole time.

Lewis Howes 1:24:14 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:24:15 And the gnawing hunger, it's your fault. It's what you ate before the fast.

Lewis Howes 1:24:19 Interesting.

Dave Asprey 1:24:20 So in Fast This Way, I teach about these six big categories of food that are likely to cause cravings for you, and they don't all cause the same intensity of cravings, but these are foods that aren't as good as we think they are. Because we have... Anything you're gonna eat has three things in it, and most nutritionists only look at two. And I'm not picking on nutritionists specifically. Dietitians are even worse. I'll pick on them. [laughs] These are the guys who feed you Jell-O with NutraSweet in the hospital.

Lewis Howes 1:24:44 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:24:45 But there's calories in food, and some types of, of popular wisdom say, "Well, eat food with less calories." Guys, calories are energy. Energy is what you want, and to say that you are somehow gonna feel really good on a low-calorie diet, it does not work. As a 300-pound guy who's lost way more than 100 pounds... I'd say I'm a 200-pound guy now. But y- you, you go low-calorie, you lose 20 pounds, gain 30, lose 30, gain 40. It does not work. It makes you miserable, and it makes you-

Lewis Howes 1:25:12 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:25:12 ... just Just cranky.

Lewis Howes 1:25:14 So what's the solution?

Dave Asprey 1:25:15 You need calories.

Lewis Howes 1:25:16 What's the solution then?

Dave Asprey 1:25:17 Well, the solution is you actually eat enough calories, and you eat the right kinds of calories. So, well, let's assume your food has some energy in it. The second thing food has, it has nutrients. So it has vitamins and minerals and stuff like that. This is good. Now, most of the time we stop there and say, "Okay, you should eat more of this because it has..." For some reason, some people say less calories, and other people say more nutrients. But the third bucket is what matters. The third bucket is anti-nutrients or toxins.

Lewis Howes 1:25:42 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:25:43 And it's not like any food is, is perfect, but some have more or less calories, some have more or less nutrients, and some have more or less anti-nutrients. And if you pretend like they don't exist, which is how most nutritional stuff is written, they'll say, "Eat this because it's packed with this," ignoring the fact that you could literally have a bowl of cyanide, and if you put some vitamins in it, they'd say, "Well, it's low-calorie, it's high in vitamins, you should eat that."

Lewis Howes 1:26:04 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:26:04 And so I teach people in, in Fast This Way, look, here's the things to look for. If you eat that, you're probably gonna have a miserable fast with low energy, cravings, and be cold, but if you don't eat that, you're gonna have a much easier fast. And then you start to realize, wait a minute, maybe I'm going to choose foods that don't make me hungry as soon as I finish eating them. And if you master that, even when you're not intermittent fasting, you're gonna have lunch, and instead of wanting a snack at 2:00, you're like, "I'm actually full until dinner."

Lewis Howes 1:26:31 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:26:31 "I just don't wanna eat, so I don't think about eating, I don't reach for the cookies."

Lewis Howes 1:26:35 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:26:35 So in- instead of willpower, it's just biology. It's so much easier that way.

Lewis Howes 1:26:39 What would you say would be the top three foods if you could only have three that you would eat before a fast, whether it's 16 hour or 24 hour, anything?

Dave Asprey 1:26:47 It, it would be definitely grass-fed steak. There is nothing more satiating than animal fats or butter. Um, this stuff, it, it's full of nutrients, as long as it's grass-fed. If it's industrial, it'll actually give you cravings. It's not good to eat industrially raised animals. So the idea that meat is good or bad, you gotta know what meat, [laughs] um, how was the animal treated, and all that, it matters. I wish that it didn't matter. I wish you could just eat gravel, but it doesn't work. So this is something that is the most satiating. Something with a lot of soluble fiber in it. You can do broccoli if you want to. You can do some, some vegetables, preferably cooked. Not all vegetables are going to have the same effect on you. So I talk about things like how the nightshade family of vegetables, which have been a, a core part of the Bulletproof Diet, like guys, watch out for that. If you eat bell peppers, you're probably gonna feel different than if you eat cabbage.

Lewis Howes 1:27:35 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:27:36 In fact, you'll feel very different. And when I say that, most people, "Oh, wait, I guess that might be true," but we've just never thought about it.

Lewis Howes 1:27:42 Different, different in a not feeling as good with the nightshades?

Dave Asprey 1:27:46 Yeah. Bell peppers are in the deadly nightshade family. They're clearly not deadly, but they cause inflammation in many people.

Lewis Howes 1:27:52 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:27:52 But in others, they handle it pretty well.

Lewis Howes 1:27:54 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:27:54 So I'm like, watch out for that. Uh, but for me, I would say eat... Give me some vegetables, give me some steak. And then the other thing that's gonna be really good is anything with fat. Dark chocolate-

Lewis Howes 1:28:05 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:28:05 ... uh, guacamole, uh, things like that. E- A salad with a really heavy dressing with real olive oil, not the fake stuff, and with some extra MCT oil in it and some extra avocados on top. So give me the good, undamaged fats, not a lot of seed oils, give me some protein, and give me some vegetables. You do that, and you can cruise all day long. But if you say, "Oh, instead, I'm going to insert some kind of fancy raw kale salad," kale gives a lot of people cravings.

Lewis Howes 1:28:33 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:28:33 In fact, it's not very good for you at all. In fact, have you ever eaten a huge kale salad and then been, "I'm so full, I'm so satisfied, I'm just bursting with energy. I'm not gonna be hungry for four hours"?

Lewis Howes 1:28:43 No. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:28:44 Even if you c- even if you cover it in bacon, it still doesn't work.

Lewis Howes 1:28:47 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:28:47 Kale has stuff in it that pisses your body off.

Lewis Howes 1:28:49 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:28:50 It, it really does. And it, it's just how it is. It doesn't taste that good either, but even if you like the taste of it, it's not particularly a strong health food.

Lewis Howes 1:28:58 There you go. And how does, from all the research that you've done, obviously you've tested this for 10 years personally, but from the research and the science, how does fasting the right way, uh, play a role in anti-aging in your life and, and w- other people's lives?

Dave Asprey 1:29:14 The number one thing fasting or intermittent fasting regularly will do, and remember, it doesn't have to be a super long one. 14 hours can start, 16 hours is good. We're not talking heavy duty, you know, living in a cave kind of stuff. And that will stop you from having insulin resistance. When you have insulin resistance, it means that insulin levels go up and your body can't hear them, so they go up higher. When your insulin is higher, your all-cause mortality, um, goes up. In other words, your chances of dying from every disease you can think of happens. What insulin resistance means is that when there's energy in your body, your cells are weak enough that they can't make good use of the energy, and fasting fixes that problem. When sugar goes up in the body, it forms something called advanced glycation end products. It basically cooks your tissues the way onions brown in a pan. And we know this from 30 years of anti-aging research about the effect of excess insulin and sugar in the body. Fasting will fix that. But on top of it, there's something called autophagy, uh, which is a, a core part of the recommendations I make, which is do whatever it takes to cause your body to turn its protein digestion mechanisms back on you. Because if it's not busy eating steak and eggs or, you know, tofu, if that's what you're into, it'll turn around and go, "Oh, there's some extra debris, some junk inside the cells, outside the cells. I can clean that up." And if you go a little bit longer, it says, "You know what? I've got enough extra enzyme activity here. I think I will take out the weak mitochondria," these little power plant generators. "I'll take out the weak ones and replace them with young, strong ones." And you start upgrading yourself internally because the stuff that would have gone into digesting the food you eat every two hours because that's what someone told you to do in the '70s, instead of doing that, you're eating the stuff in your body that makes you old. And when you control insulin and you control autophagy, something very interesting anti-aging-wise happens, and it's that you actually have younger and more abundant stem cells in your body. So intermittent fasting is proven to increase stem cells, increases testosterone, human growth hormone, uh, and a huge swath of anti-aging-

Lewis Howes 1:31:17 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:31:17 ... substances in the body. And, like, it's free. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:31:20 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:31:20 It costs less than eating breakfast

Lewis Howes 1:31:22 Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. [upbeat music]

Dave Asprey 1:31:36 Lewis, this is gonna shock people, but nicotine is a mitochondrial stimulant in low doses. Y- I've never smoked. Smoking's bad for you, but if someone came up to me and said, "Dave, here's a plate of deep-fried food, and here's a cigarette," I would rather smoke the cigarette.

Lewis Howes 1:31:51 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:31:52 Because at least I'll get the nicotine performance boost.

Lewis Howes 1:31:54 Ah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:31:55 And the damage from the free radicals from the smoke and all the other crap in the cigarette, they're only gonna really hit me for four hours. The fried food's at least 24 hours-

Lewis Howes 1:32:03 Really?

Dave Asprey 1:32:03 ... of damage to the brain, to the membranes in the mitochondria and in your cells that make all this energy. Bad fat is really bad for you, and one of the reasons that I look the way I look is I don't eat bad fat. It's not, "Oh, I'll just have a little bit. I just had to have the deep-fried Brussels sprouts." I'm like, "What'd you fry those in? I don't eat that crap." It's not food. And when you get that, that, that freedom from cravings that comes from eating a higher fat diet, from using brain octane and bulletproof coffee and all that stuff, you suddenly w- have that ability to be like, "I'll just pass on the fries 'cause I know the steak is coming."

Lewis Howes 1:32:31 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:32:31 And when you do that sort of thing, okay, you look better, you feel better, but your brain stays sharper. And, like, I'm-

Lewis Howes 1:32:36 Wow

Dave Asprey 1:32:36 ... I'm amazed at the changes I've been able to experience from just that one decision.

Lewis Howes 1:32:40 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:32:41 Not that I've ever smoked instead of-

Lewis Howes 1:32:43 Right. [laughs] Exactly. So what are the things you, like, are non-negotiables that you cut out, maybe, like, five or seven things you think everyone should cut out of their-

Dave Asprey 1:32:50 It-

Lewis Howes 1:32:50 ... what they're putting in their body

Dave Asprey 1:32:51 ... things that contain MSG have to go.

Lewis Howes 1:32:54 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:32:54 And there's still a group of science trolls who say, "There's no evidence that MSG is bad for you." I'm like, "Except for, like, a gazillion pieces of evidence that you chose to ignore." So MSG causes hypoglycemia. Restaurants buy spices that are 74% MSG by volume.

Lewis Howes 1:33:11 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:33:11 And they are not required to be labeled as MSG. Spice extractives, paprika extract, garlic extract, a lot of the extracts and flavorings, natural flavoring sometimes. The food companies sell these in magazines, in catalogs, saying, "Does not have to be labeled as MSG."

Lewis Howes 1:33:29 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:33:29 They know it's MSG, but according to FDA law, actually it's probably USDA law, but 75% or above is, is MSG.

Lewis Howes 1:33:37 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:33:37 When you eat this, or let's say you're running a restaurant, you wanna make more money.

Lewis Howes 1:33:39 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:33:40 Put something into the food that has MSG in it that isn't labeled. Your chef can, can, without even knowing it's in there will be, "Oh, no, there's no MSG. I checked the label."

Lewis Howes 1:33:48 Oh.

Dave Asprey 1:33:49 When people eat this, it's going... They're, they're gonna like the food because it tastes good.

Lewis Howes 1:33:53 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:33:53 But they're also gonna increase their order by about 30% because they're gonna order more drinks because they get thirsty, and they're gonna order dessert because they got hypoglycemia. Guess what hypoglycemia is? It's a lack of energy going into the inputs in the batteries in your cells.

Lewis Howes 1:34:06 So you feel like you need more.

Dave Asprey 1:34:07 Well, they start s- creating a panic response.

Lewis Howes 1:34:09 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:34:09 It's like, "Give me sugar, baby."

Lewis Howes 1:34:10 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:34:10 And that's where sugar cravings are coming from. So yeah, you gotta not eat MSG.

Lewis Howes 1:34:15 So-

Dave Asprey 1:34:15 It's just not there

Lewis Howes 1:34:16 ... healthier fats-

Dave Asprey 1:34:17 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:34:17 ... 'cause you have less cravings when you eat more fat.

Dave Asprey 1:34:19 Right. It, and it's not just healthier fats. It's undamaged fats. You can take, like, this grass-fed steak and, like, "Oh, it's so amazing. It's got that nice ribbon, like a ribeye-"

Lewis Howes 1:34:27 Ah

Dave Asprey 1:34:27 ... "nice yellow fat that's, like, juicy and good." Well, throw it under a broiler at 450, you don't wanna eat it.

Lewis Howes 1:34:33 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:34:33 'Cause when you damage fat, it makes really toxic free radicals that directly lower your energy production. So you want gently cooked meat. Like a lightly caramelized steak is fine. A blackened steak, you gotta cut off the black part or just don't eat it.

Lewis Howes 1:34:47 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:34:47 And I'm, I, I'm sad to say this, but if you're cooking it on a grill versus baking, broiling, or cooking it in water or even, like, a stir-fry, the grill makes a lot of things that we've known for years contribute to cancer.

Lewis Howes 1:35:00 Really?

Dave Asprey 1:35:01 Yeah. And unfortunately, before they contribute to cancer-

Lewis Howes 1:35:03 God, grill is so good though.

Dave Asprey 1:35:03 I know. I love grill. You can add smoked salt though if you get, like, the real smoked salt.

Lewis Howes 1:35:07 Oh.

Dave Asprey 1:35:07 Not the MSG salt like Lawry's and all, but the stuff where they, like, alder smoked.

Lewis Howes 1:35:11 Oh, that's good though. Damn.

Dave Asprey 1:35:11 I know. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:35:13 [laughs] It is.

Dave Asprey 1:35:13 Oh, it's so good. It's-

Lewis Howes 1:35:15 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:35:15 It, it's amazing.

Lewis Howes 1:35:16 'Cause it's bad for you probably, right? [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:35:17 It's the MSG though.

Lewis Howes 1:35:18 Yeah, yeah, of course.

Dave Asprey 1:35:18 That's why it's so good. So I, I, I'm like use the, the stuff where it's just the pure smoke.

Lewis Howes 1:35:22 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:35:23 That isn't gonna cause damage to your mitochondria. And people are like, "Dave, you're so, you're such a picky bastard," right? Like, seriously?

Lewis Howes 1:35:29 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:35:29 I'm like, "Look, try it."

Lewis Howes 1:35:30 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:35:30 "Try this for two weeks."

Lewis Howes 1:35:31 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:35:31 And the im- just the times when you're like, I would have had, like, a food coma. Food comas are not normal.

Lewis Howes 1:35:37 Shouldn't have them.

Dave Asprey 1:35:37 Yeah, the coma comes 'cause the energy in your brain where you should've been on, turned off because the energy was going to pumping crap out that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Lewis Howes 1:35:45 But people probably didn't have food comas 100 years ago.

Dave Asprey 1:35:47 Yeah, but-

Lewis Howes 1:35:47 You know, if-

Dave Asprey 1:35:47 If they did, it was like vodka and juice. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:35:49 Yeah, right. But it wasn't, like, putting all these toxins in our body-

Dave Asprey 1:35:52 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:35:52 ... this inflammation constantly, right?

Dave Asprey 1:35:53 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:35:54 Uh, and talking about inflammation, I think you say inflammation's the muffin top of the brain. Is that right?

Dave Asprey 1:35:58 [laughs] Yes. I love that quote.

Lewis Howes 1:36:00 In the book. And what does that mean? What is that?

Dave Asprey 1:36:02 Well, anyone who's ever had muffin top maybe notices that some days it's there and some days it's not, right? Muffin top is not fat. Muffin top is inflammation.

Lewis Howes 1:36:10 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:36:10 If it's always there, you have a little bit of flab.

Lewis Howes 1:36:13 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:36:13 But for most of us, you're like, "You know, I went out drinking last night."

Lewis Howes 1:36:16 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:36:16 "I stayed up late," or, "I flew somewhere, and then the next morning I had muffin top." You don't put on fat like that.

Lewis Howes 1:36:22 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:36:22 It's just the fact that your mitochondria became less efficient at managing water, and you ended up getting some bloating. You can also get bloating if you eat a bunch of carbs 'cause you store water weight when you eat carbs and things like that.

Lewis Howes 1:36:32 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:36:32 Uh, but when you get that muffin top, it's highly variable. So when you see the muffin top here that wasn't there yesterday, your brain has the same kind of inflammation. And here's the-

Lewis Howes 1:36:41 Really?

Dave Asprey 1:36:41 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:36:42 So if you see it on the body, it's in the brain.

Dave Asprey 1:36:43 Yeah. And here's the weird thing about inflammation. Inside each, each cell in the brain, there's this 15,000 mitochondria, and they have something called the electron transport chain. So they make electrons from food, and then they have to move them, right? So if a cell is, you know, let, let's just kinda blow it up like it's the size of my hand.

Lewis Howes 1:37:00 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:37:00 Right? And the electron has to go from here to here. Well, make the, make inflammation happen. Now the electrons go twice as far.

Lewis Howes 1:37:07 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:37:07 So a small increase in inflammation really changes the efficiency of the system, and that's why inflamed neurons and brain inflammation is terrible for cognitive performance. And if you're seeing inflammation in the body, you'll see it in the brain.

Lewis Howes 1:37:22 Drops the mic. No, I'm kidding.

Dave Asprey 1:37:23 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:37:23 What are, what else is inflammation foods that we shouldn't have?

Dave Asprey 1:37:27 Gluten.

Lewis Howes 1:37:28 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:37:28 And- Look, there are people who will argue, "Oh, I like gluten." Okay, that's great. I like heroin too, right?

Lewis Howes 1:37:34 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:37:34 It's just that ... Yeah, I don't actually like heroin, but-

Lewis Howes 1:37:36 Right, or alcohol, whatever.

Dave Asprey 1:37:37 Yeah, I've never tried heroin, to be honest. But, uh, so, but, but that whole thing-

Lewis Howes 1:37:41 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:37:41 ... like, it doesn't matter.

Lewis Howes 1:37:42 I like sugar, too, but that's not good for you.

Dave Asprey 1:37:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:37:43 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:37:43 Right? And, and so it's not a valid argument.

Lewis Howes 1:37:46 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:37:46 And then there's a bunch of people who say, like, there's a bunch of studies that show that only celiacs. No. There's study after study after study that show that-

Lewis Howes 1:37:53 For everyone

Dave Asprey 1:37:54 ... gluten causes problems, more for some than for others.

Lewis Howes 1:37:56 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:37:56 But it's never a food that makes you-

Lewis Howes 1:37:58 It's not an enhancer.

Dave Asprey 1:38:00 No. It, it at, at best-

Lewis Howes 1:38:01 Doesn't add value

Dave Asprey 1:38:02 ... at, at best, it's neutral-

Lewis Howes 1:38:03 Neutral

Dave Asprey 1:38:03 ... and it's probably bad.

Lewis Howes 1:38:05 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:38:05 Uh, and it, it's not gonna make you superhuman. It's not gonna-

Lewis Howes 1:38:08 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:38:08 ... make you everything. It's not gonna make you great, right? I mean, like you're at the school of greatness, right?

Lewis Howes 1:38:12 It is.

Dave Asprey 1:38:12 If you really wanna be great, gluten just shouldn't be on your diet. And if you're like, "Oh, I just have it twice a week," no. It causes continuous changes in your immune system, uh, depending on what genetics you have and all those things.

Lewis Howes 1:38:23 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:38:23 So just 'cause you're like, "Well, I can eat it and I feel okay"

Lewis Howes 1:38:27 Doesn't mean it's not damaging something in your body or your mind.

Dave Asprey 1:38:29 You can also start smoking and feel okay.

Lewis Howes 1:38:30 Yeah. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:38:30 It doesn't mean it was a good choice, right?

Lewis Howes 1:38:32 Right. Exactly.

Dave Asprey 1:38:33 Uh, so I, I know that that's a controversial thing.

Lewis Howes 1:38:35 Gluten.

Dave Asprey 1:38:35 But we should take gluten out of the human diet unless, unless in times of famine.

Lewis Howes 1:38:39 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:38:40 It would be better for our soil, better for agriculture, better for animals, better for us, better for everyone. It, it's-

Lewis Howes 1:38:44 Wow

Dave Asprey 1:38:45 ... we, we know better now. We just do it 'cause that's what we've done for the last few thousand years-

Lewis Howes 1:38:48 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:38:48 ... 'cause we had to feed a lot of people when we didn't have good technology.

Lewis Howes 1:38:51 Yeah, or we didn't have the money or whatever.

Dave Asprey 1:38:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:38:52 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:38:52 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:38:52 Exactly.

Dave Asprey 1:38:53 All right. So we talked about bad fats. We talked about burned fats. We talked about burned meat. Uh, we talked about gluten. All right, here's the other thing.

Lewis Howes 1:38:59 Sugar probably, right?

Dave Asprey 1:39:00 Well, sugar, absolutely. Except mitochondria love sugar. So yes.

Lewis Howes 1:39:04 What types of sugar?

Dave Asprey 1:39:05 Uh, well, they love straight up glucose. So fructose is bad for you, like high fructose corn syrup especially. And by the way, anything that's not organic and is made out of corn is full of glyphosate, which is essentially Roundup. That stuff is a mitochondrial inhibitor. Guess what? These, these bastards who make glyphosate, who, who literally we should, we should stop them tomorrow because it's destroying our soil.

Lewis Howes 1:39:27 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:39:27 They say, "Oh, it doesn't affect humans 'cause it only affects bacteria." There's a quadrillion ancient bacteria in your body-

Lewis Howes 1:39:33 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 1:39:34 ... that are in there, and they are affected by glyphosate. It's just a fact. Not to mention your gut bacteria, which talk to your mitochondria via these light pathways. They're also affected by glyphosate. So you need to eat more organic, and you shouldn't eat concentrated corn products anyway.

Lewis Howes 1:39:48 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:39:49 But there are times, especially if, if you're like, "Wow, I'm getting a really strong sugar craving," guess what? You might wanna give into it, right?

Lewis Howes 1:39:55 But what should you do, have a banana or an apple or something or?

Dave Asprey 1:39:57 No. A, a banana or an apple are mostly fructose. You're not gonna get it. You might wanna have a, a small amount of real sugar.

Lewis Howes 1:40:03 Really?

Dave Asprey 1:40:04 And I-

Lewis Howes 1:40:04 Or honey or something or no?

Dave Asprey 1:40:05 Yeah. Honey could work.

Lewis Howes 1:40:06 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:40:06 And you'd wanna do that just because you're having an energy crash, right?

Lewis Howes 1:40:10 Uh-huh.

Dave Asprey 1:40:10 And it's better to train your body, you gotta burn some fat. Use some brain octane, which will go straight to ketones, right? But you can do that, add a little bit of sugar. So if someone's ... If you're listening to this like, "Wow, I can feel like I'm crashing. Like I, I had lunch out at this restaurant. It tasted too good to be true."

Lewis Howes 1:40:23 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:40:23 "Maybe I'm getting a, a sugar crash." If you prop up your glucose without having a huge wave of sugar, you know, I'm gonna eat, you know, five scoops of Ben & Jerry's.

Lewis Howes 1:40:30 It's a little bit. Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:40:31 A tiny bit along with some fat and protein, it might turn off a migraine. Like it, it might affect, it might affect you in a big way.

Lewis Howes 1:40:38 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:40:38 So if you, if you're crashing, there's nothing wrong with saying, "All right. I, I, I need a little bit of sugar right now."

Lewis Howes 1:40:43 Like some honey and some pistachios-

Dave Asprey 1:40:45 Yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 1:40:45 ... or some cashews or something and just-

Dave Asprey 1:40:46 Some halva, right? That, that'd be fine, right?

Lewis Howes 1:40:48 Yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:40:49 Yeah. And so people are really surprised at that. Like, "Dave, I thought you were like a zero carbon." No. Bulletproof Diet has always been a cyclical ketosis diet that uses external ketones in the form of brain octane to al- it makes you always have some ketones. Ketones are these fat burning molecules that give you more energy than sugar. We're, we're wired to only have ketones-

Lewis Howes 1:41:07 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:41:07 ... or only have sugar. W- and here's the cool thing about your brain. Your neurons, they prefer fat as fuel. They'll burn ketones over glucose even if they're both in your brain at the same time.

Lewis Howes 1:41:17 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:41:17 But the way we evolve, we're not supposed to have fat and sugar. If you want fat, it's easy. Fast for four days or go on like the Atkins diet, like a-

Lewis Howes 1:41:24 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 1:41:24 ... a, a ketogenic diet.

Lewis Howes 1:41:26 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:41:26 And then you have no glucose and only fat. Or eat some carbs and some protein, and then you're in, back in glucose mode, which is our default energy production mode. Well, you can cheat, and that's part of as strong. What if you had enough protein and a few carbs, but not too many, so you actually had glucose in the system and you had ketones? You're not supposed to be able to do that. You're supposed to be in one or the other. But because brain octane converts to ketones even if you're eating carbs, there you go. Now you get the benefits of ketones, which is more energy in the mitochondria. The neurons in the brain-

Lewis Howes 1:41:56 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:41:56 ... they get to get their optimal fuel. But the neur- the, uh, immune cells in the brain called glial cells, they want sugar. So they get a little bit of blood sugar that comes from eating even vegetables and, and from eating steak and things like that. So all of a sudden now, both types of cells in your brain got the kind of fuel that was best for them. So now you have the energy to grow new neurons-

Lewis Howes 1:42:15 Mm

Dave Asprey 1:42:15 ... to do neurogenesis, things like that, which is cool. Oh, and we haven't talked about neurogenesis very much.

Lewis Howes 1:42:19 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:42:21 We talked about BDNF before. There's a, a new supplement that I, I write about in the book.

Lewis Howes 1:42:25 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:42:26 The studies just came out.

Lewis Howes 1:42:27 It's the one you gave me?

Dave Asprey 1:42:28 Yeah. It's called Neuromaster.

Lewis Howes 1:42:30 Where'd I put it?

Dave Asprey 1:42:30 And, uh, there it is.

Lewis Howes 1:42:31 Yes.

Dave Asprey 1:42:32 So this comes from coffee fruit. Th- this is not coffee bean. It's not green coffee extract. And in two different studies, it raises that BDNF, that factor that gives you a more youthful brain. So when I'm doing all this crazy brain training at 40 Years Zen, when I'm meditating, when I'm doing anything that I ... is a skill acquisition thing, including reading, I, I take one of those in the morning.

Lewis Howes 1:42:52 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:42:52 So it keeps my brain at higher BDNF levels.

Lewis Howes 1:42:55 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:42:55 And I do all the other practices in here. Most of the things that make your mitochondria strong also increase BDNF.

Lewis Howes 1:43:00 [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:43:01 So even intermittent fasting, the Bulletproof intermittent fasting-

Lewis Howes 1:43:03 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:43:04 ... all those things do it. So it doesn't matter what you're studying, what you're working to be better at. Having more neuroplasticity can only benefit you.

Lewis Howes 1:43:11 Mm.

Dave Asprey 1:43:11 And that's why, uh, we came out with that stuff. I'm, I'm pretty excited about it. It's one of my-

Lewis Howes 1:43:15 I love, I love

Dave Asprey 1:43:15 ... one of my important new supplements.

Lewis Howes 1:43:16 Yeah. You got so much at bulletproof.com. You got tons of great products and foods. You've got the bars that I love, that we talk about.

Dave Asprey 1:43:22 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:43:22 The leather bars are amazing. Let's get ... What's it have in it again, the ingredients?

Dave Asprey 1:43:26 ... brain octane oil and collagen protein instead of, like there's a lot of bars-

Lewis Howes 1:43:29 Like whey protein is bad, yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:43:30 Well, yeah, well whey is, is not that good, but-

Lewis Howes 1:43:32 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:43:32 ... a lot of the, the very, uh, common like ketogenic bars have milk protein isolate from non-organic milk.

Lewis Howes 1:43:39 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:43:39 It's like it, it's one step above soy protein.

Lewis Howes 1:43:42 It's toxic, right? It's got some inflammation, or it's-

Dave Asprey 1:43:44 It is, it is very likely to increase inflammation.

Lewis Howes 1:43:46 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:43:46 And certainly it's, it's not pure. And, and collagen you can't get, uh, in most food. You have to boil bones to get bone broth-

Lewis Howes 1:43:52 Mm-hmm

Dave Asprey 1:43:53 ... or gelatin or something. So to have a bar where all the protein in it comes from collagen-

Lewis Howes 1:43:56 Wow

Dave Asprey 1:43:56 ... with cashew as a binder, and then to get the brain octane to suppress hunger and turn on ketones, that's what I eat when I travel. I give these things to my kids.

Lewis Howes 1:44:03 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:44:03 And I just made those bars because I didn't want to eat the ingredients, like artificial sweeteners are universally train wrecks for your mitochondria. Things like sucralose, a- aspartame, acesulfame potassium, those belong in those Kryptonite foods list.

Lewis Howes 1:44:16 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:44:17 And a lot of people who are into keto, and by the way, I lost 50 pounds in the late '90s on the Atkins diet going into ketosis, and I ate artificial sweeteners the whole time. And you can't lose the other 50 pounds because artificial sweeteners cause inflammation.

Lewis Howes 1:44:30 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:44:30 And half your weight gain is inflammation anyway.

Lewis Howes 1:44:32 Doesn't matter how hard you work out.

Dave Asprey 1:44:33 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:44:34 Right?

Dave Asprey 1:44:34 It didn't for me.

Lewis Howes 1:44:34 If you keep doing the food, yeah, yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:44:35 I, an hour and a half a day, six days a week, and to not lose weight after a year and a half of that.

Lewis Howes 1:44:39 Unless you're 20.

Dave Asprey 1:44:40 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:44:40 You know, it's something [laughs] different.

Dave Asprey 1:44:41 I was only like 24 when I did that.

Lewis Howes 1:44:42 Oh, really? Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:44:43 And I, it, I was so, I felt like such a failure. I, I'd had three knees, or two knee surgeries.

Lewis Howes 1:44:48 Oh, man.

Dave Asprey 1:44:48 And I was like, "All right. I'm never going back." Like, "I'm, I'm done with these surgeries. I'm gonna be in the best shape of my life." I can max out every machine at my gym, and I would do 45 minutes of cardio at an incline.

Lewis Howes 1:44:58 Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:44:58 And-

Lewis Howes 1:44:59 But you were still eating the wrong things.

Dave Asprey 1:45:00 Yeah, I was actually eating less calories. I was about 1,800 calories a day.

Lewis Howes 1:45:03 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:45:03 And I was eating a low fat diet, and I could not lose the weight. I was like, I could bench press my thin friends while they eat french fries. And it was a, one day I looked at them like, "Wait a minute, I actually do eat less than any of my friends, and like it's not me." Like, like it's not that I didn't try hard enough. It's not that a, a moral failing. It, it's that what I'm doing just doesn't work. And what had happened to me, I was over-training, and I was fat deficient and protein deficient, eating inflammation and-

Lewis Howes 1:45:27 Yeah

Dave Asprey 1:45:27 ... all that kind of crap.

Lewis Howes 1:45:28 Man. Man. And, um, if you guys haven't checked out bulletproof.com, make sure you check it out. You got a lot of great resources, the books, the diet stuff, but you have tons of supplements, products, foods. The Bulletproof coffee obviously has changed thousands of people's lives, hundreds of thousands, I mean-

Dave Asprey 1:45:44 Check this out. 48 million cups of Bulletproof coffee sold last year.

Lewis Howes 1:45:47 No way.

Dave Asprey 1:45:47 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:45:47 Served in what way? How are you quantifying that?

Dave Asprey 1:45:49 Like-

Lewis Howes 1:45:49 Like at home or at a, at a store?

Dave Asprey 1:45:51 In, in total.

Lewis Howes 1:45:51 Anywhere. Wow.

Dave Asprey 1:45:52 It's, it's just, and I, uh, Bulletproof coffee is, is the mold-free lab tested beans with brain octane oil and grass-fed butter.

Lewis Howes 1:45:58 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:45:58 Putting butter in coffee is better than putting milk in coffee, 'cause milk steals the polyphenols from your coffee.

Lewis Howes 1:46:04 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:46:04 It sticks to them, and polyphenols are required for mitochondria to function. In fact, check this out. Throughout all of history, the first trade routes established were for salt, 'cause salt is required for adrenal function. It, it's fundamental being a human, and if you have salt cravings, there's an easy thing to do. Give in to them.

Lewis Howes 1:46:19 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:46:19 Just use sea salt, right? You need that.

Lewis Howes 1:46:21 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:46:21 That's your adrenal system crying for salt.

Lewis Howes 1:46:22 That was like cash back in the day, right?

Dave Asprey 1:46:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:46:24 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:46:24 Yeah, you paid your Roman soldiers in salt. Is a man worth his salt?

Lewis Howes 1:46:27 Mm-hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:46:27 And maybe a woman, but back then I don't think they paid for a woman in salt.

Lewis Howes 1:46:30 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:46:30 Paying for women is bad, by the way.

Lewis Howes 1:46:32 Right. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:46:32 That's what they did back then, 'cause they were bad Romans.

Lewis Howes 1:46:34 Yep.

Dave Asprey 1:46:34 Anyway, you know what I'm saying, like literally soldiers paid in salt.

Lewis Howes 1:46:37 Yeah.

Dave Asprey 1:46:38 And from there, the next evolution of those roots was spice. What are the highest polyphenol foods on Earth? They're spices.

Lewis Howes 1:46:48 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:46:48 You know, oregano, thyme, uh, vanilla, like all of these things, right? And after that was tea.

Lewis Howes 1:46:54 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:46:55 Tea is also a high polyphenol food. It turns out these little mitochondria that run things, they are desperate to get these compounds that function as antioxidants but also are signaling molecules to the body. So we set up global commerce. We've had wars over access to polyphenols, and we've had wars over coffee. And it turns out coffee's the highest polyphenol food in the American diet, just 'cause we get most of our polyphenols from that.

Lewis Howes 1:47:18 Right.

Dave Asprey 1:47:18 So part of the Head Strong program is you need to add more high quality spices and herbs to your food, more turmeric. And coffee is good. Tea is good. Dark chocolate is good. Unfortunately, alcohol is bad for mitochondria-

Lewis Howes 1:47:30 Hmm

Dave Asprey 1:47:30 ... but wine has some polyphenols in it, so if you're gonna have some, at least drink wine with less anti-nutrients that, that harm mitochondrial function in it. Uh, so there's, there's cool stuff you can do-

Lewis Howes 1:47:41 Sure

Dave Asprey 1:47:41 ... uh, in all these different things. But who would have thought that polyphenols were so important to the evolution of our society?

Lewis Howes 1:47:47 Hmm.

Dave Asprey 1:47:47 Well, it turns out Bulletproof coffee is the culmination of, of that, where we don't use milk in it. We use butter, 'cause butter allows you to absorb the polyphenols, and we use brain octane in it, which also allows you to make more energy from it. So all of a sudden the mitochondria are like, "You gave me energy, you gave me po- you gave me polyphenols at the same time. I'm ready to party." And that's why you feel so different when you drink it.

Lewis Howes 1:48:07 Oh, I love it. And there's no crash, and it tastes smooth.

Dave Asprey 1:48:09 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:48:09 And it's like, I don't drink coffee, but I like Bulletproof.

Dave Asprey 1:48:12 Nice.

Lewis Howes 1:48:12 So we drink it all the time here.

Dave Asprey 1:48:13 Cool. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:48:14 Yeah, yeah. But I never drank coffee before.

Dave Asprey 1:48:16 Isn't that like being a, like being a vegetarian that eats fish? You know, like

Lewis Howes 1:48:19 Exactly. [laughs]

Dave Asprey 1:48:19 You have your cake.

Lewis Howes 1:48:19 Exactly, yeah. But I never had coffee before. I may not have it every now and then or a cappuccino or something-

Dave Asprey 1:48:23 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:48:23 ... just for like a taste or whatever, but now, uh, yeah, I do it almost every day.

Dave Asprey 1:48:27 It, it's a performance enhancing substance.

Lewis Howes 1:48:28 Nice.

Dave Asprey 1:48:28 And you drink less of it. Like a cup of Bulletproof is, is a good amount.

Lewis Howes 1:48:31 Goes a long way.

Dave Asprey 1:48:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:48:32 Yeah, it goes a long ways. Cancer is caused by food.

1:48:34 And sugar is the number one culprit.

1:48:36 Sugar.

1:48:36 Diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease, the big killers. Now-

1:48:40 Are by sugar and food.

1:48:41 Yes. Yeah.

1:48:43 So if you change your diet, you should be able to c- cure-

1:48:45 Prevent those

1:48:46 ... prevent-

1:48:46 Or cure sometimes

1:48:47 ... sometimes cure. Depends how-

1:48:48 Yeah

1:48:49 ... how long things are, I guess.