Ditch Hours of Exercise. Do THIS 15 Minute Biohack and 6x Your Results | Dave Asprey

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Be a part of the action on FanDuel. All customers get a Profit Boost every NBA Playoff game day. 21+ and present in select states. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable Profit Boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See full terms at fanduel.com/sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. I tell you, take away my hamburgers, I'm not going to be so inspired. I'm going to be angry, and so is everyone else. And I will tell you this, I am not eating crickets, and, um, it's not going to happen. There's all sorts of nutritional reasons not to do that. Yes, people can argue, but they do it in Mexico. They eat whole wild grasshoppers. I've had grasshopper tacos. I know the nutritionals, they're just not there. Don't eat corn, don't eat soy, don't eat the stuff that makes me sick, and you shouldn't either. And if someone tries to force you to do it, I don't care if it's the UN, I don't care if it's a private company, I don't care if it's a local government person or whoever the heck it is. They don't have a right to do that. They never did. They do not have the right. And you have a right to do whatever is necessary to keep yourself and your family healthy. That's the way the world is. It's the way it's always been. So weird. Welcome back to the Ancient Health Podcast, where we educate you on real health solutions that will help transform the way you live, feel, and overcome disease naturally.

I'm your host, Courtney Bursage, along with Dr.

Josh Axe and Dr. Chris Motley. We're so happy you've us. Let's dive into today's episode.

Hey, I'm Dr. Josh Axe, and welcome to this week's episode. Today, we've got a special guest, Dave Asprey. He's an entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author. In fact, he was on the New York Times bestselling list 4 times, and he's oftentimes known as the father of biohacking and the CEO of Upgrade Labs. Uh, also, he's the host of his podcast, The Human Upgrade, And as I mentioned, he has been a person who has really been the pioneer when it comes to biohacking. I remember reading many of Dave's articles years ago and even trying out his Bulletproof Coffee many years ago. So, excited to dive in today and talk about all things biohacking, infrared light, hyperbaric chambers, and all the cool things he's up to. Dave, welcome to the show.

Hey, Josh. Nice to chat with you again.

Alright, man. Well, hey, I want to dive right in and talk to you a little bit about anti-aging and really how you got into this field. Again, I know the first time I ever saw— I'd heard of you, which again, it was a long time ago, probably 15 years ago, was when I was reading an article on biohacking and then started stumbling across some of the things you wrote on longevity, how to live longer. I know one of the things you've done is you've tested a lot of things on yourself. And so first thing, a question would be, what sort of turned you on to studying longevity medicine?

When I was in my 20s, I hit 300 pounds. I'm about 197 pounds and 7% body fat right now and never hungry. So kind of made a reversal there. But it wasn't just fat when I was in my 20s. I had chronic fatigue syndrome, severe brain fog. My career was taking off and my brain was not moving along with it. Arthritis since I was 14, high risk of stroke and heart attack on my lab tests when I was 28, and prediabetes, fasting blood sugar of 117. Uh, pretty much I was a shit show, Josh. My doctors couldn't help me. They told me maybe vitamin C would kill me, literally, uh, they said that. And so I fired them and I said, I'm a computer hacker, it's my job, how hard could it be to hack this because I'm in this all by myself. And about 4 years and thousands of papers and having read every book there was, I went into a doctor and I said, hey, I want some help. Fortunately, I found a functional medicine doctor. They called them something different back then. And the way I found that doctor was I started learning from people 3 times my age who were reversing their age. I was invited when I was about 28 to be the president and chairman of one of the first longevity nonprofit research and education groups in Silicon Valley. We met by Stanford University. I've been meeting since 1993. I didn't— wasn't there at the first few meetings, but, um, so I spent about a decade working with people 3 times my age who learned how to reverse their age. Their techniques taught me biohacking. I learned biohacking from the elders. I named it biohacking because I couldn't make anyone under 60 come to our meetings, even though this stuff makes your brain work better. So then I started saying, well, what can I call it that would make my entrepreneur friends, it would make my tech guys happy? And that's what got me going. It was enlightened self-interest. And I started the blog not because I was going to start Bulletproof. I started my blog without a list, without a business plan, just because if 5 people didn't go through the hell that I went through having spent at this point more than $2 million to upgrade myself, but at the time I spent about $300,000 or $400,000 to heal myself. If I hadn't had that money, I'd have been disabled or dead by now. And so I just didn't want anyone else to suffer the way I had. It sucks to feel like you're in a car and you're trying to accelerate and the pedal's all the way to the floor and the car's slowing down and slowing down. You're pushing harder, but there's nowhere else to go. I live my life like that, even though I was an entrepreneur, made $6 million when I was 26. And I was terrified the whole time. I bought disability insurance. I couldn't remember half the stuff I was doing. I faked it. So that's how biohacking started, because I had to do it myself. And at this point, I've lectured to thousands of doctors. I built one of the preeminent health and wellness and beyond brands called Bulletproof. And I don't know how many millions of people follow me, but, you know, a bunch of New York Times bestsellers and 400 million episodes of The Human Upgrade, my podcast, later won a Webby.. So I'm feeling pretty good just that it's made a difference and I'm not stopping. That's, that's the story. There's a trip to Tibet meditating in monasteries, neurofeedback and some other stuff in the story, but you get the gist.

Yep. Well, thanks for sharing that, Dave. I love, I love hearing the, you know, sort of the genesis of how, how this all began. And I know one of the things that you're really working on now is creating your own, your own clinics, you know, these Upgrade Labs. And I know I actually went on here a couple weeks ago and when I saw I was going to have you and went on and started doing some research there, and you're doing some pretty amazing things. So I'd love to dive into some of these hacks, some of these things that you have in the clinic. And, and, you know, one of the things I saw on there, which I'd love to hear about, is this full body compression. Talk to me about what, what, what that is and what that does.

What Upgrade Labs is doing is, is we're saying, look, there are about 1,000 different biohacking technologies that you could you could use, and I've tried the vast majority, and many of them are hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I've had all of them at my barn at the regenerative farm that I built on Vancouver Island, and I've tried everything. So 8 years ago, I opened the first biohacking center underneath Arnold Schwarzenegger's office in Santa Monica, California, and we've had an enormous number of, of people come through saying, I don't necessarily want to exercise, but I'd like to put on muscle or I'd like to get leaner, or I want my energy back, or I want to be smarter, or I want to handle stress better. You don't go to the gym for that, right? Well, we're not the gym. What we've done is we've used artificial intelligence and biohacking and longevity in order to let you choose the state you want. We measure where are you now with clinical-grade tools. We use AI to help determine the best goal for you. And then the best path to get there using our tech. And this, um, whole body compression is one of the things that our algorithms could recommend for you based on your data and your goals. And funny enough, sometimes people will lose a dress size or two when they come into an Upgrade Labs to use it. And, um, there may be an Upgrade Labs in, in your neighborhood already. There's 27 of them opening right now. You can go to ownandupgradelabs.com to open your own. Or if you're in Idaho or Utah or California, or soon Austin in January, there'll be one opening in Austin. So they're popping up everywhere, but you can go in and, and do this, or, you know, you can, you can get Smarter Not Harder, the new book, and learn how to do some of this at home. But what this does is it uses a clinical-grade, lab-tested technique to gently squeeze the entire body to drain your lymphatic system. There's a lot of places that have low-cost, non-tested— basically, they're the equivalent of blood pressure cuffs or water wings that they'll put on your legs and tell you that you're doing compression therapy. It just doesn't work. So we only use medical-grade tech for stuff like that that's validated. And so people come out going, what just happened? Whereas someone else, I don't know, I was squeezed for a little while. So it turns out there's a lot of precision when you're using AI and biohacking. It's not about, you know, slopping yourself in a, in a cold plunge that, you know, 500 other people have used and sitting in a sauna and then squeezing yourself and saying you did biohacking. The problem with the industry that I created— people call me the father of biohacking. I still run the largest and first biohacking conference ever. It's called biohackingconference.com. The, the problem with it is if you don't know what you're doing and you just jump in there and go, well, I saw something somewhere, maybe in Santa Monica, let me just copy it but use some cheap stuff, it doesn't work. So I've, I've gone through this 8-year process of figuring out not just what, what's the right technology, what's the right technology manufacturer to get results, and how do I do the right things in the right order for the right person. And it turns out it's a really hard problem to solve. Took me 8 years before I wanted to franchise.. And now I have a really powerful business and I'm kind of laughing at the people just threw random equipment at a random problem. It's, it doesn't work very well when you do it that way. And we're seeing those people come over to Upgrade Labs saying, oh, you have a data-based approach where like, you know what works and you can prove that it works. I'm like, yeah, because biohacking is a science and an art, but it's not the art of assembling cheap crap from Chinese vendors to see if you can get a membership that doesn't last very long.

Yeah. Well, you know, a couple, a couple of good points here, and I know you and I have been in this general industry for a pretty long time, and I think the, you know, the, the quality matters. Right. And, and, and I think the other thing is, is being able to measure things is incredibly important. I think if people wanna get the best results possible, being able to see, hey, where you're at now accurately and see that progression over time is incredibly helpful to be able to make adjustments, try different therapies, you know, do some things differently to help people experience some of those breakthroughs. You know, and to your point, I think there is definitely a science behind that. Compression therapy, that's something that I know my wife and I have done some. And obviously, I think there's a, you know, there can be a pretty substantial leap in some of the different brands of technologies people are using. And I mean, we tend to see this always. You tend to have somebody come in and pioneer an industry and oftentimes being a leader in an area. And a lot of times people copying it, but not doing the, but not understanding the why behind it. And not fully understanding necessarily. Well, I think there's also something to be said, and this is something I, you know, when I first came across your work, Dave, I appreciated is that you're testing on yourself, right? I think that experience too, there's a lot of benefits there.

You know, testing things on yourself is one thing. You also have to know why it works, or at least that it works on more than just you because I mean, it might work for you, uh, Josh, just because, you know, the shape of your ears. Like, we don't know that's why it works for you, but it turns out people with a certain earlobe, whatever it is— I know you're wearing earbuds, I can't even tell— but maybe that's the thing, and no one on Earth knows that. So what I like to do is say, is there a reason it might work? Let me try this. And if I get outsized results, it's like, okay, uh, let's try it on a few other people. And then it gets really interesting because You can imagine if you were running a bakery, but instead of saying, I have some lovely sourdough bread, you're like, I got water, I got salt, I got yeast, and I got flour. And what do you want? Uh, that's the state of biohacking facilities and gyms today, right? Because, well, do you want the squeezy pants? I don't know. Who are you? Are you inflamed? What was your goal? So everything that we do at Upgrade Labs is about measuring thousands of data points very quickly when you come in the door to know what's best for you. So you can walk in and say, just tell me what to do, and you always know that you're doing the very, very best you could do to get to where you want to go the fastest. And the difference is profound. Just one of the pieces of technology at Upgrade Labs It'll replace hours and hours of cardio with clinically validated results. If you did— let's say you want to be in good shape, so you do cardio for an hour a day, 5 days a week. That should do it, right? You know, well, if you do that for 2 months, you'll improve by 2% your VO2 max. It's not that big of a difference. If you go to Upgrade Labs and you do 5 minutes 3 times a week with no sweating allowed You'll improve by 12%. You get 6 times more result in 15 minutes versus 5 hours. And with all that time you save, what if you hooked your brain up to a neurofeedback system and you trained your brain to be smarter and more peaceful and calmer so that you could stay more present and grounded even if your kids are complaining? And with this time that's left over, you did something that also reduced inflammation or made you live longer because your top goal was really longevity. And we determined the best way for you to live longer is to stop stressing so much. So let's start working on your stress response because we can train that too. It's such a different view of the world where you are in charge of your biology, which is the very definition of biohacking, that it's, it's become a, a beautiful thing and it's part of making the biohacking movement flourish. Biohacking is now a $10 billion business. The biohacking conference— and if I'd love it if our listeners, if you feel called, in Dallas at the end of May, uh, of 2024. Go to biohackingconference.com and come on in and, you know, meet all the vendors, all the people making the cool latest biohacks, talk to the founders, learn from guys like Dr. Mercola and Jim Quick and me. And, you know, we have— we just have so much fun with biohacking, but it's, it's now a global movement. And so it's my job to show people what's possible personally, but also to give you a vision for what you can do so that you can choose what you want to do. And it's a very different vibe than you have to eat kale, you know, you have to exercise this much, you have to— you don't have to do anything. I just want you to do what you want to do, and I want to do it in the least possible work, because I think you have a family to spend time with. I think you have a mission or a goal, or maybe you wanted to meditate, whatever. It's your life. I just don't want you to waste it. I can help a little bit. That's what I do.

Yeah, it's great, Dave. You know, I think one of the things, and you and I hadn't talked for quite a long time. I had this past year, it came, had a, this would be a long story. I'm gonna try and keep it to 30 seconds cuz I want you to do most of the talking. But I ended up having a spinal infection, didn't walk for a year. And during that time I had to, I had to find ways to heal. And one of the things I, I did is turn to a lot of the therapies that I know that you're promoting now. I started doing a red light bed, a full-on bed. I started doing hyperbaric chamber, regular, doing a hard chamber actually. I think soft—

you became a biohacker.

Congratulations, Josh. Exactly. Yeah. So, started doing a lot of that stuff and really saw some really amazing results. And, to your point, I think everybody wants to do this. It's like, okay, if I just have 30 minutes a week, wouldn't I want to get 6 times or 10 times the results in this precious time I have? So, I think that's a message that everybody really can get excited to embrace. And, I'd love for you to walk through what are some of the other what you consider to be some of the other game-changing therapies that you've really seen great results with yourself and with others that you've been using over the past few years.

One of the things that's been most important for me has been really going deep on the very foundations. Now, mitochondria have been at the core of biohacking forever. I wrote my big book on the brain, which is called um, Head Strong, uh, and it's about mitochondria and how these things are environmental sensors and manufacturing plants and power plants and all this stuff. But I want to formulate, you know, sexy nootropics that make your brain work better and all sorts of herbal cool things, but the reality is that the most boring supplements are some of the ones that make the biggest difference. So I have focused on minerals, on broad spectrum minerals and trace minerals.. And one of the reasons I'm as lean as I am now is I got my mineral balance right. And I focus on this a lot in my newest book called Smarter Not Harder, where like, look, it doesn't matter if you exercise right, if you're lacking minerals, lacking animal protein, you will not get the results because your body can't change. Since most food is depleted of minerals and since all these plant-based, whatever foods oftentimes deplete minerals. This is an epidemic of people that causes systemic lack of resilience. So I usually recommend that people go to vitaminDake.com, vitaminD-A-K-E.com, and I tell you about— here's the 4 fat-soluble vitamins and here's all the minerals, because it's the fat-soluble vitamins that tell the minerals where to go. If you just get those, you can load up on, you know, bone broth protein, you can load up on, you know, whatever your, your your typical diet is. But it— if you're lacking those and you're spending money on other things that are more esoteric, it's the foundation that matters. So for me, going back to the basics has made a huge difference. And it turns out I was not paying attention to the minerals that just aren't sexy, like manganese. How many people talk about manganese? Or even copper, right? Like that. So when you get that right and you look at that The other thing I've done is I've incorporated that in my daily practice through Danger Coffee. Danger Coffee is my new coffee brand. I'm no longer with Bulletproof, and it's called Danger because who knows what you might do. It's— you might ask that girl out, you might get a raise, you might lose 100 pounds. I don't know, might be dangerous, but it also might be powerful. So I just want people to get their minerals back so that they can perform at the level to do what they're here to do. And Danger Coffee's got the electrolytes in it as well, so it tastes like the world's best coffee. It's amazing, but it's that extra feeling you get from minerals and electrolytes that really does change how your brain feels when you drink it. So for me, those have been major changes. Um, you know, the other biohacks— I've literally tried every biohack on the planet, including gene therapy recently, but The most important thing to do is start with the basics. Get enough animal protein in your diet. Don't eat Impossible Burgers or some kind of nonsense like that. And, uh, and, you know, do the things that you're supposed to do, like go outside in the morning and see some sunshine, go to sleep when it's dark, don't drink alcohol. I know you're gonna hate me for saying that. Yes, my name is Dave Asprey. You can unfollow me now, but I like alcohol too. I just drink it once a year if it's really, really good and older than me, because every drink, even that one little drink, it's just— it makes you older, it makes you a less nice person the next day. So even if you can handle it, it's taking it out. So I don't do that anymore. Not that I was ever much of a drinker, but even twice a month I won't do that because the reason I'm here is not that. It's, it's something bigger and more important.

Yeah, going back to your point with the minerals, I think that this is, I think if somebody really thinks about it and if somebody's looked at some of the research on soil depletion today and the amount of nutrients in our foods, I mean, you're going to see that you'd mentioned those fat-soluble vitamins. And I remember when I started working with a lot of kids, when I first, when I opened, I had a practice for 5, 6 years I ran in Nashville and One of the things I stumbled upon was a lot of children on the autism spectrum and how depleted they were in fat-soluble vitamins. In fact, from what I saw in children, it was the things that they were the most depleted in, at least according to the recommended daily intake. And so that was really surprising and of course really important. But to your point on minerals, if our soil is continually being depleted as it has been, whether it's manganese or boron or chromium or so many of these different minerals in macro and trace minerals. These are things that we can be really deficient in. And I think there's also this fallacy that, hey, hydration is drinking water versus no, it's not just water, it's water plus electrolytes. And so obviously we can get some of that from fruits and vegetables, but our soil is depleted. That's a reality.

You're not getting electrolytes from fruits and vegetables. The people who say that, are full of crap. You might get sugar in fruit juice, and sugar will cause the body to absorb water more quickly. That's why you can spend a lot of money on a packet of sugar that says it's electrolyte, because, you know, Liquid IV is mostly a packet of sugar. You could also drink Coca-Cola, which is more hydrating than water. It's just a bad idea to drink it for obvious reasons. So what do you want to do? Well, you should drink electrolytes in your water. I do not drink water without electrolytes. I just don't do it. It's dumb. It actually harms your health. If my water is not as salty or as electrolyte dense, uh, as my cells, then why would I drink it? Because it's going to remove minerals from my cells and I'm just going to pee it out. And the change in my health from doing that is very, very noticeable. And even Danger Coffee has electrolytes built in. So your job is to get minerals in every time you can. And when you do that, the differences are insane. About a year ago, I had to have an old yoga injury repaired, and this involved cutting through the main bone in my foot. Relatively strong surgery, and I was awake for it because I'm a biohacker and I couldn't feel it. So you hear the bone saw start, it's like, bzzz. And the doctor— I was on film. It's in the— I did a documentary.

It's free.

Uh, it's daveasprey.com/heal, and it's, it's basically how do you heal faster after surgery. Well, the doctor had a hard time cutting through the bone in my foot because my bones are so dense, and afterwards he's like, Dave, the saw slowed down on your bones. Said, I, I did a surgery on a professional athlete half your age and their bones cut like butter. It's like, what are you doing? Are you even human? What I'm doing is I'm getting the kind of minerals that our ancestors got. And it makes you dense, it makes you strong, it makes you resilient. And I'm telling the minerals where to go. And that's why that vitaminday.com, all that information there about here's what vitamin A does versus vitamin D, and why taking vitamin D without K2 is a substantial issue, why kale is a terrible source of vitamin K because it doesn't protect your bones, it only works for your blood, and all these different things. I don't want it to be hard for people. I want to be cheap and easy. So what I do on that site is I do my best to make it very, very affordable. So it's like $20 a month to get all your fat-solubles, and it's, you know, slightly more than that to get a mass dose of broad-spectrum minerals. And with the trace minerals, it's just in your coffee. So that's— let's build that into our daily practice. And then look, you can practice whatever diet you want. You want to go eat a whole bunch of, you know, garbanzo beans and think it makes you a better person, that's awesome. Like, you eat more garbanzo beans, but at least you minerals first. I might suggest you eat some ground beef, but hey, you be you. Uh, I just want you, and especially, really especially, our women who are fertile and looking to have kids, uh, and our kids to have enough minerals and enough fat-soluble vitamins. This whole push towards Meatless Mondays in schools, it is profoundly harmful for our kids. I say this as the author of a major fertility book called The Better Baby Book. And I'm not worried about a population rise. I'm worried about us unable to have kids. And you mentioned autism earlier.

Well, I wanna mention too, just to your point, I mean, you and I have probably both seen the research recently on testosterone levels just taking a total, total nosedive. I mean, so to your point, I think that's a, that, that, that is the bigger concern.

I, I don't know if you, you ever, if we ever talked about this, it's been a while since we chatted. You know, I was on the spectrum. I had Asperger's syndrome. Pretty severe. No, no. Yeah, I reversed it. It's real. I've spoken at the Autism One conference, um, and I, I've spent a lot of time and money and energy doing that. I had to reprogram, first I fixed my mitochondria, fix my nervous system, change how my eyes work, how I hear things, how I move, and it's been a lot of work. It's kind of like rebuilding your operating system from the ground up. And yeah, minerals are a major part of that, and toxins are a major part of that, and learning what foods work for your body versus don't work. I had to do all the work myself, and there isn't a manual for this, but there are these spots of light. There's an expert on this and an expert on that. I've curated 1,200 interviews on, on The Human Upgrade, which is my, my big podcast. And it's been an honor to get to do it for myself and then to share it with people. And the thing that I worry about the most is I have friends in their 30s and they can't get pregnant, and if they do, it's really, really rough. And then there's all these health problems. And so our fertility as a species is plummeting, and autism is going up a lot. Let's get our minerals going. Let's get rid of our toxins. And I'm, uh, I'm hopeful that with enough knowledge, there can be enough of us who are healthy enough to have the next generation, because right now it looks like the next generation is going to be half as big as this one, which means we don't have a population excess. It means we're about to have a lot of empty houses in 25 years because there literally aren't enough people to live in them. If you don't believe me, go to Japan and get a free house because they have entire cities that are empty because they are ahead of the curve on this problem. So our job, you and me, Josh, we're gonna have to live twice as long and have the energy of young people so we can fix all the shit that's happening in the world right now. That's one of the reasons I'm into longevity and I spend so much time talking about, yes, I'm gonna live to 180 at least. Maybe our listeners can too if we do our jobs right.

Yeah, yeah. I know that. Obviously, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's a health expert a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about how, like, when I first got into practice or even just into this field, I mean, things have gone so far in 20 years. I mean, it really is amazing. I mean, because I remember teaching a lecture, this is when I first started, and I asked people, how many of you know what an omega-3 fat was? Almost nobody. All of a sudden, 5 years later, everyone in the room would raise their hand. A similar thing, like, how many people have heard of, you know, 5 years ago, compression therapy, red light therapy, hyperbaric chamber, a lot of the stuff, you know, a lot of these things? Almost nobody. And now it's, it's becoming more and more common knowledge. And so I think as people continue to sort of learn and embrace these, you know, many of these therapies that, that you've been promoting, I think obviously there's some, some great benefits there. And I think we're going to start seeing You know, the lifespan, you know, one of the things I almost have a concern about though, and this isn't, this is a comment you can comment on it or we can go to the next question, but is, is there almost being a gap between, I mean, this tends to happen with wealth. It happens with almost everything in life where you've got these people who really are, are studying and learning about all these things that, you know, we've been teaching and their lives are going to continue to go up. But then I had Zach Bush on a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about, I mean, you start looking at how depleted the soil is and car— just a lot of the other issues. And so some people may have their lifespan decreased, you know, and I think a few years ago was the first time that happened actually with, with certain parts of the population.

No, you, you're right. There, there's a huge gap and it's not fair. There are some people who have really focused all of their energy on being really good at golf. And, and they are so much better at golf than I am, and it's just not fair, Josh. In fact, it's kind of triggering. I'm like, look at them, how dare they be so good at golf when I'm not? Yeah, well, perhaps some of us are putting massive— I, I can't even say 10,000 hours, it's probably 50,000 hours of my life into understanding how to live a better life at every single level, and I don't go to basketball games. I could, but then I wouldn't do the other stuff that I've decided is more important. So if you're listening to this, you get to pick what's most important. But if you're saying it's not fair, some of us are going to have access to longevity, some of us are thinking about it every time we pick up our fork, and some of us are saying it tastes good. And you get to pick who you are. And you could also tell yourself the story that says, oh, this is only for rich people. And that's also Nonsense. I put Toyota truck parts in boxes for 5 years and I was paying for my school. I shared a room with someone for 4 years, just a single one-bedroom place while I was doing it, and I worked at Baskin-Robbins. I started a company, paid for my tuition. You can work, you can work hard, and it's shitty right now in the economy, and there are large companies and politicians who set it up to make it really, really hard to be successful. You can still be healthy on a budget, and I've talked about it for a long time. Yeah, there is a war on you. Things that are staple foods that make you healthy and strong— these are ground beef and eggs and butter. Some group, I don't know who it is, I have my guesses, as we all do. Someone's been traveling around the US, and you can see that they're traveling around because over time it's very easy if you graph it out, and they are blowing up and burning meat processing plants and especially eggplants and some dairies. They're cutting animal protein out of the American diet. Why are they doing it? I have no idea. You could say that it's, you know, some billionaire who bought up all of our farmland to make you crickets. You could say it's a foreign nation who wants us to eat more soy so we can, you know, further destroy our hormone profiles. I don't know. I don't even have to know. All I know is it's not cool, but it's still affordable to eat those foods. You just have to be really careful about it. And you know what you got to do? This is going to sound really, really crappy. It's 4-letter word. You ready for it? Can you guess what it is, Josh? S-A-R-M-A-N. Okay, that's what you need to do. You have to learn how to cook. And if you say, I don't know how to cook, get a freaking hot plate. It's gonna cost you $20. You're gonna get some water— bottled is better— pour through a filter if you can. If not, use some tap water. If you're from Flint, you're screwed. And then boil some rice and boil some hamburger meat, even if it's not organic, and you're going to be so much better off. And it's going to cost you less than one trip to McDonald's, and you're going to have a pound of animal protein. And throw a tablespoon of butter and some herbs in there if you can afford the herbs, and some salt, and you'll be fine. You know what I eat every day? I eat rice and steak because I can. It's the same meal. So don't make excuses, don't whine. What we know is people who believe they're victims in psychology experiments, those people will look for fault in others more aggressively, and they will call for more extreme punishment of other people who they perceive to have not followed the rules. So if you want to be a Karen, look at yourself as a victim. Otherwise, say, damn, I want to get me some of that longevity stuff. Every one of my books has 3 categories for everything I talk about. There's the free version, there's the affordable version, and there's the crazy billionaire version. And it's the crazy billionaire version that funds everything else. So yeah, I, you know, I think there are some people who are going to miss this. They are missing it because they are not trying, because they feel helpless, because they feel like they can't do it. The reality is that you can do it. You must do it. And I'm gonna just say this straight up: if you are under 25 and you don't do this, you are missing the biggest opportunity of your life. Because most of your friends aren't going to live very long in the world that we've created, and there won't be that many old people. The world is yours to inherit. You just have to live long enough and be smart and learn how to control your emotions and learn how to control your biology. Literally This world is yours.

Yeah. Well, to one of your points, we've talked a lot about longevity, but the other thing I just want to point out is you're living a better life now, too. Like, I know, I know for myself, and I guarantee it's similar with you, Dave. I wake up, I have energy, I feel great. I feel like I can, you know, so, so that's a— and I want to jump back to something else, too. I did a video recently, this article on It was Bill Gates and it was either Impossible Burger or their biggest competitor. And basically in the guy's quote, and then he's not trying to hide it. He said our goal. And he was like, I 100% believe that we will be meatless in 15 years. And I was like, wow. I mean, there are literally people out there with that agenda.

Yeah. It's impossible. Cause you know what they missed out on humans who make those kinds of statements. They are made out of meat. And people like me don't eat plant-based diets because it makes us sick. Yeah. So if you're a politician who thinks you're going to force people— I mean, literally, I will die if you put me back on a plant-based diet. I was a vegan. I was a devout raw vegan. I ruined my health. I shattered teeth. I have autoimmunity. You give me the wrong foods, I go back to being a fat autistic person, and I don't like it. And I'm going to be really hungry, and you're going to look like a drumstick. A chubby drumstick if you're one of these politicians. And I'm sorry, someone's gonna eat you. Probably not me because, you know, I have meditated and stuff like that. But there simply will not be this unless the US is a prison colony, in which case I'll be living in the rest of the world that still eats meat. Italy banned fake meat, so the US needs to ban fake politicians and our problems are solved.

Yeah, that, that would, you know, it's, it's so, it's crazy, it's crazy. This is, I don't, I you know, we probably don't want to get into this, but it's, you know, I, I, uh, I'm watching you shift uncomfortably. This is great. No, it's good. You know, you know, we, uh, I know you recently, I think you recently had RFK on your podcast. And I think from a healthcare standpoint, yeah, he's a stud.

I mean, I have no idea if he'll win or not. I sure hope so. But that guy understands why our system is broken exactly why. And I have so much respect for his ability to think and see. Wow. So we could fix our policy as, as whether or not, you know, I, I'm very much— I care about maintaining health freedom. That's my, my thing. Everything else, I don't, I don't really follow politics that much. But I will tell you, if you look at how disruptive Trump was to certain agendas, RFK will be equally disruptive to the people trying to wreck our health. So, uh, he's, he's very different than Trump, but man, that guy has the chance to fix the country. And I I find myself being a little hopeful about that.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think going into, you know, during COVID I think that there was this thing that happened too where some people just woke up. You know, I think there were some people not, and I think some people, you know, just sort of continue to go along with the narrative. But I think there was a few people, you know, that started to sort of wake up and I think realize a little bit more about sort of, you know, what's going on in government and the systems and those sort of things. And some of the, you know, some of the, some, some of the downsides of, of, of, of that, you know. So anyways, I'm looking forward to, to, to, to that interview.

Um, it'll be, it'll be great fun. I'll ask him questions he hasn't answered before. But, uh, what, what you're going to see is, is there's a, there's actually a story. I just spent some time with him live, and someone asked RFK, you know, you're going to be going up against like some of biggest and wealthiest people out there. And, you know, some of these are, are not very nice. And I've never seen this from a politician. I mean, he stood there and he said, you know, I've been a heroin addict, said, and I beat that many, many years ago. I was in my early 20s and have living my life, having been an addict, having committed myself to a cause. He said, I'm going to tell you a story. There's a, a criminal, like a warlord, and a monk He said, no, the warlord stands in front of the monk who's blocking the way and he says, don't you know I can run my sword through your guts without batting an eye? And the monk looks at him and said, don't you know you can run your sword through my guts without me batting an eye? And I have never seen that much courage in a politician or most humans ever. And I was blown away. He is absolutely fearless because he believes in what he's doing. Um, there are people like that out there who are looking to do good in the world, and they're not all politicians. They're out there sometimes writing blogs, writing books, sometimes just sharing information at a community meeting. But there's a lot of good people there, and the fact that you don't see them on social media, that's because social media is broken, not because there aren't good people. So if you're feeling alone and you're listening to this, there are millions of people like you, and the, the system's carefully designed to make sure that You, you and people like that tend to be invisible. It doesn't have to be that way, and it's not that way. So I'm feeling inspired, and I tell you, take away my hamburgers, I'm not going to be so inspired. I'm going to be angry, and so is everyone else. And I will tell you this, I am not eating crickets, and, um, it's not going to happen. There's all sorts of nutritional reasons not to do that. And yes, people can argue, but they do it in Mexico. They eat whole wild grasshoppers. I've had grasshopper tacos. I know the nutritionals. They're just not there. So don't eat corn, don't eat soy, don't eat the stuff that makes me sick, and you shouldn't either. And if someone tries to force you to do it, I don't care if it's the UN, I don't care if it's a private company, I don't care if it's a local government person or whoever the heck it is, they don't have a right to do that. They never did. They do not have the right. And you have a right to do whatever is necessary to keep yourself and your family healthy. That's the way the world is. It's the way it's always been.

So weird. Yeah. Walk, walk me through, you know, what, one of the, my, the thing that I've probably in health studied the most the past 5 to 10 years is probably Chinese medicine. And so, you know, one of the things I'm just, I, I so appreciate about their approach even early on was, uh, the, the, the diagnosing tools that like an acupuncturist would have and reasoning your pulse and looking at your tongue. I just, you know, and, and when I looked at their diet, it was incredibly personalized. And I think that's one of the things that I think that I really embraced is that, listen, some different foods work for different people. I think there's some general principles are true for a lot of people. I think everybody has a different diet that's right for them. I think, again, there's certain overlaying principles. My question for you is you might have people now from the paleo community or from another community say, well, hey, why are you eating rice? You know, and you mentioned stay. I'm curious about your dietary philosophy at this point.

My dietary philosophy is still very much in line with the Bulletproof Diet. This is a book people have lost a couple million pounds on it, and it is the first modern nutrition book to recommend intermittent fasting. So every fasting book, including mine, uh, recently came out, uh, as an echo of that. This is the first modern book to talk about lectins and oxalates and omega-6s to avoid them, uh, in the first chapter, uh, and that was what, 2011? And so, um, what, what I do is I still first and foremost I avoid toxins. And here's what's weird around personalization: different toxins affect different people differently. So I'm more sensitive to mold toxins because I grew up in a basement with toxic mold. Than a lot of people. So mold in coffee tweaks on me. That's why Danger Coffee, my new coffee company, is lab tested and has minerals that soak up mold toxins in it. Some people handle it better, but it's bad for all of us. Some people handle mercury better. In fact, if you've been working in a mercury mine for 10 years, you probably have the genes that detox mercury, otherwise you'd be dead. In fact, when they test mercury mine workers, that's what they find. So different toxins are more or less bad for you, but the fewer toxins you're exposed to, the better off you are, right? So I, I take a let's remove plant toxins and man-made toxins from the diet first. Let's have animal protein, which is the most available first. Let's have oils that are compatible with our biology first, which means primarily saturated fats based on the normal healthy grass-fed beef, or for humans, you know, a naturally grass-fed human, a human who eats grass-fed beef and things like that, what does our saturated fat ratio look like? I eat a little bit of olive oil and mostly animal fats and butter and ghee. Uh, eat some dairy, uh, that I'm not allergic to. I'm allergic to cow's dairy, but I handle sheep pretty well. Doesn't mean you shouldn't eat cow's dairy, but if it's the industrial powdered milk crap that's out there, don't do that. It's bad for you. I make sure that I include ruminant meat, which is basically either that's something like venison, but primarily beef or lamb. And I do at least once a day. Sometimes I intermittent fast, sometimes I don't. There is, even in the Bulletproof Diet, there's no reason to be zero carb. There is a great reason to not eat most carbs because most plants really do cause problems that you don't know they're causing. For instance, I did write about oxalates in the Bulletproof Diet, but I wasn't aggressive enough on things like raspberries. In fact, some of the charts on oxalates didn't even exist when I wrote that book. It turns out spinach and kale are really bad, especially the, the lacy kale, but raspberries are almost as bad. And before I knew this, back when I was just coming off of being a raw vegan, I was eating 2 cups of raspberries from the farmer's market every single day. Because, hey, I'm healthy, I'm going to invest a lot in my, in my food for my health. And everyone knows raspberries are good for you, right? I was getting massively excessive amounts of oxalic acid that turns into razor-sharp crystals in your kidneys and your bladder and your urethra. And I suddenly had to pee 25 times a day, and I had to go to the doctor. The doctor said, that's really weird, I don't know, let's stick a camera up there. Yeah, that was not fun. Uh, that's an exit-only place. And I said, we don't know what it is. Well, I finally figured out it was raspberries. And just a little while ago, friend, Dave, I've had interstitial cystitis for years. Like, maybe you should step away from the raspberries and kale salad already, and the spinach. 3 days later, she calls me and goes, it's gone. Okay, I've had this for so many years, it went away. It's because of plant toxins. So I avoid those. And why can you eat white rice? Because there's nothing toxic in it. There's just starch. And my metabolism works because I haven't had omega-6 fats in 10 years. It takes about 6 years to get rid of 85% of the bad fats that are stored in your cell membranes. And I, I've published that research in the Bulletproof Diet. It's been echoed in the, the keto and carnivore community ever since, but the half-life of fat is in the body is about 700 days in your cell membranes. So you've gotten rid of most of it. So after 6 or 8 years of doing what I do and eating butter and coconut oil and maybe a little palm oil, but mostly tallow and beef and avoiding chicken fat even, what you end up with is you end up with a body that's incredibly resilient. The 7% body fat— I, I have abs. Like, I'm— I was a 300-pound computer hacker. Like the, the fat guy from Jurassic Park 1, but, but a good guy, that kind of a thing. And to look like this, where I'm like happy to take my shirt off at the beach because, you know, people my age are like, what, what is going on? Like, are you exercising? Like, 20 minutes a week at Upgrade Labs. My life is great. It's because I learned how to eat, and I don't eat plant toxins. Doesn't mean I don't eat any plants. I get more polyphenols than almost anyone in my diet because I crust everything with oregano and rosemary, and I drink a lot of my Danger Coffee, and I take supplements. So would I change that? Hell no. And if I stopped eating rice and just went full keto, over time the same thing would happen that happened to me a long time ago when, when I went full keto. You can over-keto, you can over-fast. Yeah, and what happens there is very predictable. As a man, first your sleep quality goes down, then you wake up without a kickstand, and then your hair gets thinner. And for women, it happens sooner, and first their sleep quality goes down, then their monthly cycle gets messed up, and then their hair gets thinner. So carbs are fine, just don't eat the carbs full of toxins. Don't have a bunch of sugar. But I have no fear of sugar. I metabolize it like a boss because I'm not full of soybean and corn and canola oil. Anyone listening can do this. It's quite manageable. I do not spend a lot of money on food unless I'm eating really good steak. I normally eat the sirloin, which is $12 a pound for grass-fed sirloin here in Austin, Texas. I throw it on a grill, I put on good salt, and I crust it with a crapload of herbs. Sometimes I have white rice, sometimes I have arugula. I eat a little fruit every now and then, and I have some honey if I want to, and I have some sheep's milk yogurt or sheep's milk cheese. And I could do this for the rest of my life and never be hungry again.

All real food, all good stuff. And obviously, one of the things just for everybody picking up on this is Dave's talking a lot about these plant toxins. So, it's not just toxins that you think of in terms of Roundup or herbicides or pesticides or environmental toxins or heavy metals and some of these other things is there are plants. Sometimes with certain ones, you can cook them or ferment them, or there are ways to break certain ones down, but others you can't. So, obviously, there are some issues. And my experience has been, David, a similar thing is that some people's bodies are— I remember when I wrote a book, Eat Dirt, there was a study out of Japan that showed that people in Japan digest seaweed incredibly well.

Uh, they, they do have special bacteria that has evolved in the, the gut over there for it. Um, and it's totally okay to just say, you know what, every time I eat Brussels sprouts, I have room-clearing gas and my gut hurts and I wake up with pimples. News flash: stop eating Brussels sprouts. You can't digest raffinose. It's okay, just don't eat them, right? And even worse, you say, well, I know I can't eat them, but I went to the to the restaurant and they charged me $16 for deep fried canola oil Brussels sprouts. But because they're a veggie and some idiot told me vegetables were necessary and healthy for me, I ate the deep fried veggies and then I had brain fog and bad skin for a long time, and it took years for all those fats to leave my system. Don't eat fried stuff at restaurants unless it's fried in tallow or maybe the Zero Acre Farm cultured oil, um, or maybe if it's properly, properly changed, you could get away with olive oil, but they don't fry in good oils at most restaurants. So you just don't eat fried stuff at restaurants. Don't eat salad dressing at restaurants and eat the thing that looks like it's a piece of meat you can identify. You'll be fine. I travel 200 days of the year.

Yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah. I, I wanna last couple questions here for you, Dave, cuz I know, I know we're running outta time. You know, I wanted to ask you about, you know, your exercise. You mentioned 20 minutes a week. Talk to me about what, what specifically you're doing for exercise right now.

All right, so this is all in Smarter Not Harder. And even exercise— people know what exercise is, you know, what does that even mean? Is it going for a walk? Is it playing soccer? Is it rock climbing? Well, I mean brief and purposeful and intense exercise. And what am I doing? Mostly what I'm doing is powered by artificial intelligence. In Smarter, Not Harder, it's really— if this question, you're leaning in, you should just buy Smarter, Not Harder. It won't change my life if you do or don't buy the book. It'll probably change yours. I'll tell you, there's 5 things for weights that work better than picking up rocks. There's 5 things for cardio that work better than running away from tigers for long distances. And that's what all cardio and all weight-bearing exercise has been so far. And for those 2 categories, Um, I'm doing AI-driven Rehit from Upgrade Labs, which is the reduced exertion high-intensity training. What we've done is we've optimized the amount and length of the hard part of the exercise. It takes 20 seconds, but I can change the variable automatically on the bicycle, and I'm tracking heart rate on every person who does it, including me, so that we know exactly how hard to push you for a very brief period. And then guide you to bring your heart rate back down. And just doing that, it's provably 6 times better in 1/20th of the time. So now my cardio is done in the amount of time every week that I spend brushing my teeth, and I got 6 times more improvement than the poor guy who's sweating and like puffing and wearing his knees out running up and down the street. I feel bad for him. Now, unless he loves it, but they don't look like they're loving it. And then for strength, about once a week I'll do something called the Cheat Machine, which is also an AI-driven platform at Upgrade Labs. Instead of fighting against rocks and gravity, I'm fighting against an AI-powered computer that can always win, but it's manipulating the amount of pressure that my body feels so that my muscles don't know how to adapt, and then they get confused and they adapt much more quickly. And now I'm going to do kind of the douchey thing, but like, I am— I am— that's a caffeine molecule, by the way. I don't know if my camera and lighting is going to pick it up, but you can see, like, I am ridiculously lean and I've got sizable muscles. Yeah, there are guys who are like bowling ball shoulders. Dude, I spend 20 minutes a week. You can spend 6 hours in the gym if you think it makes you more of a man. I, I agree, you're more of a man. Good for you. Um, I'm gonna live to 180, and I got stuff to do. So how do I feel? Amazing. Do I have incredible statistics? Is my liver fat low? Is my BMI good? Is my— my liver fat's at 0.8. It's one of the lowest liver fats that you'll ever see recorded. So all the variables for longevity, for aging, for leanness, they're where they need to be. And I look better than I ever have in my entire life. In fact, I don't have to do all the extra skin from when I weighed 300 pounds. It's mostly on my low back, but even that going away. So that's what my exercise looks like. I let computers confuse my body so my body will change faster. And just because I have all this time left over, then I hook electrodes up to my head from 40 Years of Zen, and I do the brain upgrade from Upgrade Labs. And this is— 40 Years of Zen is my high-end neuroscience clinic, like F1 driver school for your brain. And, uh, we use that technology at Upgrade Labs to let people train their own brains to work better. So instead of picking up more weight, I just hook stuff up to my head and I learn how to focus and I learn how to be peaceful and learn how to think and I learn how to connect. And per minute, I'd rather have an hour or a minute of neurofeedback than I would another hour of picking up rocks at the gym. So as long as I have enough rocks picked up or enough AI stimulation that my muscles are where I want them to be, that my body feels good, I'm built, I'm lean, I'm muscular, and I know that I have more than enough energy to handle anything that comes my way, even politicians with fake hamburgers. Well, then I'm in a good place, and that's what I'm doing.

That's good, Dave. Well, Dave, I appreciate everything you shared. Just to kind of rehash everything with everybody, I think that, you know, Dave's doing some incredible things with his Upgrade Labs. He mentioned that clinic, or multiple, 27. Amazing that he's opening throughout the country as well. And Dave, share with us a little bit more about where we can find you on social media and where people can find more out about Upgrade Labs.

Sure. Go to ownandupgradelabs.com and you can become a biohacker, you can become an entrepreneur, and my team and I will teach you how to open and run your own biohacking facility as a part of the Upgrade Labs franchise., and it's empowering entrepreneurs, makes me so happy. So ownandupgradelabs.com. All of my work is at daveasprey.com, and my podcast is The Human Upgrade. I post a lot on Instagram and TikTok and whatever platform you like. My stuff is there, pretty easy to find. And if, uh, if you Google Bulletproof Dave Asprey, you may find me. I'm very well known for starting Bulletproof and making Bulletproof Coffee, but I am not with Bulletproof any longer. My new coffee company is Danger Coffee.

Awesome. Well, I encourage everybody to check it out. And Dave, thanks so much for being a pioneer in this industry. Again, I know that you're, again, somebody who really kind of brought a lot of these things that you've talked about to light for the first time for many people. And again, hey, so grateful for you and all the wisdom you have to share. And hey, if you're watching this on YouTube, want to encourage you to, hey, leave a comment. Let us know what is your biggest takeaway from some of the wisdom that Dave shared with us today. And we, again, we'd love to hear from you there as well. And if you're not subscribed, hey, please subscribe. We'd love to continue to get some of these great interviews like we had with, with Dave out to you here soon. And again, thanks so much, Dave, for coming on and sharing all your advice and wisdom with us.

You got it. Thank you, Josh.

All right. Thanks everybody. Hey, Dr. Axe here. I want to say thank you so much for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and subscribe to show so you don't miss a thing. Also, if you're in search of more natural health content, you can follow us @healthinstitute on Instagram or subscribe to our newsletter using the link in the show notes below. Hey, thanks a lot and have a blessed week.

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