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Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
The Biohacker’s Guide To Sleep, Nicotine, & Weight Loss | Dave Asprey
01:06:26
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- [00:00]
Alex Clark
If somebody feels tired every day, what is the first thing you'd fix?
- [00:03]
Dave Asprey
Your thyroid gland controls how much energy you have. So you want to be tired all the time, be a low thyroid, want to be tired all the time, eat a lot of oxalates for a lot of years. Darkness at night and sunlight in the morning. It is critically important that you sleep in a blacked out room. That alone can shift the needle for longevity.
- [00:17]
Alex Clark
Cold plunging, nicotine ditching AirPods peptides, urine therapy, fixing circadian rhythm what is useless? What actually works?
- [00:27]
Dave Asprey
Everything you just listed works if you do it right. Even urine therapy, you know I did it this morning. I'm kidding.
- [00:56]
Alex Clark
Today I learned if you're struggling losing weight, you don't need more willpower, you just need butter in your coffee. To controversial takes on nicotine peptides in the whole supplement industry, this episode is a full blown interrogation of what actually works when it comes to biohacking and what's a total scam according to the man who has literally tried it all. Dave Asprey is a longevity expert, four time New York Times best selling author and the founder of Danger Coffee, the Bulletproof Diet and the entire biohacking movement. Movement. After losing over 100 pounds and transforming his own health, he spent decades helping millions optimize their bodies and their brains. He's the host of the Human Upgrade podcast and leads some of the most cutting edge ventures in health and performance. Watch Today's episode on YouTube by subscribing to Real Alex Clark or on Spotify by searching Culture Apothecary for the ladies listening. Join the Cute Servatives Facebook group to meet other like minded women who love this show and continue the discussion. If you're new, the name of this show came to me in a dream. No, it came to me because we're in a culture war in this country and I believe that taking back our health is the key to not only winning, but true freedom. Our culture needs natural remedies of healing. Hence the name Culture Apothecary. So that's where every guest brings their own remedy to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally or spiritually. Pause before we get started. It takes two seconds to leave a five star review for all of our hard work making the show so it can remain free. Please welcome legendary Biohacker founder and author Dave Asprey to Culture Apothecary. You were pushing 300 pounds. Instead of extreme dieting or taking OIC, you kind of found this crazy hack with your coffee which kickstarted your weight loss journey.
- [02:43]
Dave Asprey
Well, I Did try all the crazy things. I was a vegan. I shattered three teeth and gave myself allergies and. And I tried the old, old keto diet that lets you lose half your weight and then you get plateaued. I tried everything. And it was only out of desperation that I really went in and did the research on mitochondria and came up with this idea for putting butter and MCT oil in coffee that created a whole movement of biohacking.
- [03:08]
Alex Clark
Why butter and MCT oil? What even is MCT oil?
- [03:11]
Dave Asprey
In my 20s, I was so fat and sick. Arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome and a bunch of other stuff. So I started hanging out with people three times my age in Palo Alt so at a longevity nonprofit group. So I'm learning from people three times my age. And we learned about MCT oil a decade before anyone heard about it and said, oh, look, this gives you extra energy in your cells. So I filed that away. And then when nothing else worked to make me happy, I went to a remote part of Tibet to learn meditation from the masters. And I'm on the side of the world's holiest mountain called Mount Kailash. And a little Tibetan woman gave me a bowl of yak butter tea. And I drank it. And you're supposed to feel like death at 18,000ft elevation because you kind of are dying. And I just felt better than I'd felt in years. Like, what is in this? So I came back to Silicon Valley and I started buying butter and putting it in tea and it tasted gross and didn't work. So I figured out how to be grass fed butter and then I tried it in coffee and I realized that some coffee was crappy and gave you jitters and some didn't. So I came up with this idea for mold free coffee that didn't make you tweak today Danger coffee is my brand Danger. Because who knows what you might do? And then you can put butter and you can put MCT oil in it, and people have lost millions of pounds on this. And my book about this idea has sold more than a million copies globally, and it helped to kick off the biohacking movement.
- [04:31]
Alex Clark
What is MCT oil? What is it about this butter concoction that helps people drop weight? I don't even get it.
- [04:38]
Dave Asprey
Well, we had a bunch of theories, but it really worked. It was obvious that it worked. And anyone who's tried it is like, oh my God. So I funded some research at the University of Washington and both butter and this MCT oil. And I'll tell you about that. In a sec, they change the thickness or the viscosity of the water so your cells can use it directly. Now, who knew about this? The Tibetans. These people living at high altitude where there's no food, they would blend that butter into their tea. They would never eat them separately. And these little guys half my size would have a little bowl of barley with yak butter tea. And then they could pick up more than me. And they're walking around in T shirts and it's below freezing like they had superpowers. Well, they figured out that it was easier to mix the butter in the water than to do that inside the body, which is what we do when we eat butter and drink stuff. So it was just a hack from ancient, ancient cultures. And I unpacked it, and MCT oil is about 5% of what you find in coconut oil. So if you think of coconut oil as a weak beer, MCT oil is ever clear. It's highly concentrated.
- [05:42]
Alex Clark
Yuck.
- [05:43]
Dave Asprey
And what MCT does, though, is it cannot be stored as fat and it must be burned as energy. And fat has more energy than carbohydrates. So when people take this, it puts them in a mild form of ketosis, which is when your neurons in your brain are happy. So we didn't understand why at the time, but if you blend grass fed butter, MCT oil, Danger coffee, blend it for 20 seconds, and you drink it, your brain starts sparkling. Like you feel different and you just don't care about food. And you don't care about food because your cells have enough energy and because the fat shifts. Something called leptin and ghrelin. These are things that make you hungry or make you feel full. And the benefit of all this is that your body still thinks you're fasting because it doesn't recognize energy from fat the way it does from carbs or protein. So it was a really cool hack. And I wrote the first major book on intermittent fasting and cyclical ketosis. And it actually also had a lot about cold exposure and red light therapy in it. And these are now the pillars of biohacking. You hear everyone talking about em, but I'm the OG for that.
- [06:45]
Alex Clark
Okay, that's so cool. And that's why I wanted to have you on the show. So while you're doing the Danger coffee hack, are you doing other things that's helping you drop the weight, or was that really the primary thing?
- [06:55]
Dave Asprey
It's actually the primary thing. You do want to avoid inflammatory, ultra processed foods. And in my big book on that, you go to daveasprey.com roadmap and there's a one pager, so you don't have to buy anything, it's free. But it just says, look, these are foods that don't cause inflammation in almost anyone. These are foods that might be a problem for you, and these are foods that are a problem for everyone. So you just eat the things that don't mess with you. And one of the categories that I've written a lot about is called lectins. And you might have heard more recent books like the Plant Paradox about lectins. Well, lectins are one of the plant toxins that I identified in my work that for some people cause profound cravings and inflammation. I have a gene for that. So if I eat chili peppers, which are a member of the deadly nightshade family, even though it's my favorite food, that's why I had arthritis when I was 14. I have the genetics, those are not compatible with me. But they might be great for you.
- [07:48]
Alex Clark
How do you know if you have that gene?
- [07:50]
Dave Asprey
There's various tests out there now, but the easy thing to do is don't eat any of it for a while and then eat a bunch of it. And if you wake up the next day feeling like a truck hit you, it's like that. So I literally had three knee surgeries in one of my knees before I was 23. And I have no pain in my joints at all unless I eat that stuff. For me it's kryptonite. But for you it might be good. So you just gotta find out what are the things causing you to be tired and in pain and have brain fog and don't eat those anymore.
- [08:16]
Alex Clark
So before all of this, what did you think you knew about health? That turned out to be wrong.
- [08:21]
Dave Asprey
I was a firm believer of the calories in, calories out. If you just could work out more and you could just eat less and less fat, cause of calories, then you'll lose weight.
- [08:31]
Alex Clark
Just, just let's move. Right? That's what Michelle Obama said. Let's move. But she's promoting Subway. Let's move. Any ultra processed food. And somehow, miraculously, why is everybody still fat?
- [08:40]
Dave Asprey
It's a crime against humanity at this point. I went to the gym 90 minutes a day, six days a week without fail for 18 months. I started at 300 pounds. I had a 46 inch waist. I finished with a 46 inch waist. I still weighed 300 pounds. And the entire time I had gnawing hunger, I was eating low calories, low Fat, low protein usually because that comes with low calories. And I never felt worse. And yeah, I was stronger but I was covered in fat. So it doesn't work. It is just mean spirited. And I love it when you get these 25 year old people, I have a PhD and whatever and I'm going to bully you into calories in, calories out. You can eat a Snickers bar and a Diet Coke and they cancel each other out. These people have never treated an obese person and they've never had to come back from it themselves. The techniques that I've taught to millions of people, you are never hungry. It requires no willpower and you feel great the entire time and the weight just comes off because that's how your body's supposed to do it.
- [09:37]
Alex Clark
Why is it a red flag if you are somebody who is actively trying to lose weight, to be always hungry because they think that's good, this is working, I need to be hungry. This is how the pounds are going to come off.
- [09:46]
Dave Asprey
That feeling of hunger is your body telling you we got a problem, we don't have enough energy. And if there's not enough energy, when you get some energy, the body's going to try and store it because it thinks that you're in a famine state. In fact, the number of particularly women I've worked with over the years who are not eating enough calories and they cannot get rid of their fat, so they start eating more, including more red meat and maybe even exercising less to reduce cortisol. And magically they sleep all night, their cycle regulates, they feel better and now they're lean.
- [10:16]
Alex Clark
How did America end up in this mess that we're in now when it
- [10:19]
Dave Asprey
comes to our health, America put the government in charge of what we should eat. Which is probably the dumbest thing you could ever do because let's face it, the government's job is to maintain power at all costs and to extract as much in taxes as they can from their population. That's the algorithm for staying in power. I don't care if you're a king or a president or a dictator, whatever. That's what governments do. So why would they ever have our best interests at heart? They don't. Our best interests come second. And what do they like? Money. Who gives money to the government? Big Ag and Big Pharma and the big chemical industry.
- [10:53]
Alex Clark
You're preaching.
- [10:55]
Dave Asprey
And it gets a little bit darker too. There's, there's some evil in the world and I didn't used to believe that there was evil. I just thought there was people who just didn't know. I still believe in the inherent goodness of humanity. And there are evil actors. And one of the worst of all was Rockefeller. Way back in the day, Rockefeller established the American Medical association because he realized if he could sell chemical drugs made out of the petroleum that he has and he could cancel out natural medicine, he'd have another monopoly. So he put in place the education system that teaches us how to not think. He put in place many of the institutions today that make people sick. And he was one of the original advocates of reducing the population so we don't have as many useless eaters as he would call them. And then his head attorney was a guy named Gates and his son Bill. It's almost like he wants to reduce the global population. At least I would think that to be likely given the pattern of behavior that we've seen from him. I can't say that I know that to be true, but if it quacks like a duck and tries to kill you all the time with chemicals, it probably is.
- [12:06]
Alex Clark
Just saying, do you think that America would be better off if we disbanded the FDA entirely, or do you think we just need to revamp it?
- [12:12]
Dave Asprey
If you'd ask me three years ago, should we get rid of the fda, I would have said, hell yes. But I don't believe that anymore because
- [12:20]
Alex Clark
of who we have in now.
- [12:23]
Dave Asprey
There is a core around food safety that's important. We do not want bacteria in our food. We also don't want paranoia and regulatory capture. And back in September, I got a text from Bobby Kennedy. Only text I've ever received in my life. Not implying we're friends, but I'm like, wow. He found my number and I called him and talked to him for about 10 seconds. And he said, dave, I want you to interview someone at a conference in D.C. i said, all right. So I show up and he wants you to interview the head of the FDA, Dr. Marty Macri. And I'm like, what? They wouldn't have let me in a room with the FDA for the entire time I've been working in food and health.
- [13:00]
Alex Clark
I love Dr. Marty.
- [13:01]
Dave Asprey
He is so smart and good hearted. So my first question on stage. So, Marty, when you're done here at the fda, which big pharma company are you gonna go to work for? And he just laughed. He's like, I'm a surgeon. Like, I've never worked for those guys. And I took an O that I won't. And we talked about rapid change to put things on the Right. Track around restoring the rightful place of biological hormone replacement therapy for women to reduce suffering and all cause mortality. And they just did it for men as well. So I do think the leadership at the FDA has some really powerful beneficial things we can do, especially around regulating chemicals in food that's necessary. Because if you don't have that, you get what's going on at the epa. Oh, yeah, Glyphosate, like, let's put it in our shampoo. Like, that stuff is insane. What they're doing with glyphosate. I don't want big companies to run rampant, but I don't want companies to run the FDA and use it to enforce monopolies. And that's what's been happening.
- [13:58]
Alex Clark
What is your opinion on the executive order that came out on glyphosate and saying that we need glyphosate for national security? I know you cannot ask all conventional farmers to get off glyphosate in 24 hours. Obviously. However, do you feel like we're taking enough steps to help farmers wean off of it?
- [14:17]
Dave Asprey
I have been pounding the anti glyphosate drum forever. In fact, all the counties that spray the most glyphosate have higher cancer rates. It's very clear what it does to our collagen. And it's just. It's bad news for humans and bad news for the environment.
- [14:31]
Alex Clark
It's aging us. I just saw that new study or whatever that came out about how it's taking the collagen out of us and it's making us look old.
- [14:38]
Dave Asprey
The gly in glyphosate is glycine, and so it sticks to our glycine, which is what collagen is made out of. So it's. It's nasty stuff. And I actually support the executive order because there is a force, probably China, but we don't really know that's been going around the US for the past four years, bombing our egg, dairy, and meat production facilities. And you wonder where eggs are so expensive. It's because there's a group and you can see, like, where they're traveling from city to city and there's these random fires and explosions. So they're trying to starve us. And right now there are examples in a small country, probably in Africa somewhere, where they outright banned glyphosate and other pesticides. And they had a famine. Right. Because you can't transition from chemical agriculture with dead soil, which the glyphosate creates to all natural all the time. And having built A regenerative farm and raised cows and sheep and pigs and chickens and blueberries and all this stuff for more than 10 years. I can tell you when there's proper regenerative ag, it is more productive than chemical ag. But the transition takes time. So right now, the US cannot make glyphosate. It's all made in China. So if China cuts off glyphosate, we might have a famine here. And I actually support that logic. And I would say let's take some of the money that maybe the previous administration was sending to Ukraine or into their own pockets. Most likely, let's take that money and let's put it towards an aggressive regenerative ag program where we pay farmers to stop using glyphosate when they get their production as high. As a small farmer, I know that 90% of us don't make enough money to run a small farm. So most small farmers in the US have a day job. And I will tell you, running even a 30 acre farm is backbreaking work. I could not be the CEO of multiple companies and have a small farm unless I could afford to hire someone to run the farm. We didn't make money. We just ate good food.
- [16:32]
Alex Clark
Everyone is constipated. Everyone. You're walking around like, I'm tired, I have brain fog, I feel bloated. I haven't had a thought since 2017. Well, yeah, because your body is dry. You are internally a desert. And it's not your fault because the water you're drinking, useless. We've stripped everything out of it. The soil is depleted. That's growing your food. The minerals are gone. You're drinking flat, dead water and wondering why your body isn't functioning. Because you need minerals. You need magnesium. You need actual hydration, not just liberal tears, which of course, those are very tasty, but they're not enough. This is why use Taylor Dukes Wellness Electrolytes. This is real hydration. Unrefined sea salt, coconut water powder, real fruit, no artificial flavors, no natural flavors, no dyes, no sugar. And they actually are loaded with magnesium, which most of you are severely lacking, which is why you're stress tired and constipated. This fixes that. You drink this and suddenly you have energy. Your brain works, your cravings calm down. Your body starts acting like it's been reintroduced to civilization. You wonder why you're constantly, like, starving and on edge. It's because you're depleted of minerals. And for everyone, kids, pregnant women, nursing moms, you can all drink this because it's actually clean. It is perfect to have for spring for your reset travel workouts, late nights, or just trying to feel like a human again. Because hydration isn't just water. It's minerals. And most of you are walking around severely depleted, pretending coffee is a solution. Use code Alex Clark for 10% off at Taylor Dukes wellness.com that's code Alex Clark for 10% off electrolytes at Taylor Dukes wellness.com Are you coming to our Supreme Court rally in April? Do you know about this for Bayer and Monsanto?
- [18:11]
Dave Asprey
Vonnie texted me. Food babe. Vonnie and said, can you come? So I'm working on my calendar right now to see if I can.
- [18:16]
Alex Clark
Okay, good. Yes. Okay. So I'm gonna be there. I'm trying to get the. My entire audience needs to be there. I told them, I said, if you've been, you know, thinking about maybe taking a trip to dc, this is the time to do it. Also, the city is beautiful right now. They've really cleaned it up. It's very safe. It's safer than it's been in years. So I was like, come, Come to the rally that morning. On April 27, 9:00am Supr steps and use your voice to speak out against Big Chemical. It's going to be huge. You'll be so important for that.
- [18:40]
Dave Asprey
It's really funny because you know Bayer, Monsanto. Do you know the history of Bayer?
- [18:44]
Alex Clark
Tell us.
- [18:45]
Dave Asprey
So Bayer was part of AG Farben, which was a German chemical company, the company that made the gas used in the gas chambers of World War II. Like great genetics. And after the war, they split into five big companies, and Bayer was one of them. So it's only natural that Bayer would want to own Monsanto, because Monsanto is doing horrible things, both from a chemical perspective, but also from a legal perspective. There's tens of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide because of the legal approach that's going on from Bayer. So Bayer is just an evil company. And it's no wonder that Bayer would want Monsanto because they're both doing the same thing. And it was poetic justice that right after the acquisition, a $10 billion fine was at least being considered. I don't know where it ended up. So bottom line is these companies are harming the planet, they're harming humans, and they're holding governments hostage to try and prevent what should be the breakup of the companies.
- [19:43]
Alex Clark
Okay, so your health journey starts with the weight loss, but then you eventually become obsessed with. With biohacking everything. Now, to my audience, these are 25 to 35 on average year old young women starting families, they don't. I don't really talk about biohacking now. We talk about aspects like I talk about red light therapy and you know, don't eat ultra process food and these things. But that term is very new to them. So what is biohacking? What did you end up trying?
- [20:08]
Dave Asprey
So biohacking is this idea that you can change the environment around you and inside of you to have control of your state. That means if you're like me, you wanna lose 100 pounds, but maybe you wanna get rid of the brain fog, that, okay, that's your goal. So what do you do to change the world so it supports you and what do you do inside so your body will work the way you want or maybe your mind will work the way you want. And it's become a global industry worth about $36 billion. It's a new word in the English language as of 2018. And there are huge numbers of women who are biohacking at all ages. In fact, 58% of biohackers have been women since the start of the movement. So this is for all humans. And it's like, hey, if you want this, what are the things to do to get it with the least possible work? And that includes getting a diet that works for you because it's not the same as for a man and it's not the same as for someone else because we have a lot of individual variation. And then what is the cheap way to do it and what is the really fast, but more expensive way to do it? So red light therapy is one of the things that I introduced very early in the movement when there were almost no, no companies who could make this stuff for consumers. So I started one of the first companies that did that called True light years ago. And so we're saying, okay, it helps with wrinkles, it also helps if you have an upset stomach. And where biohacking is most applicable today for women in the age range you just talked about is around fertility. So my mother, my children, my former wife was infertile when we met, and we used biohacking to restore her fertility. She's a medical doctor too. And we had one child at 39 and one at 42 with no IVF just by doing biohacking, changed the environment around us, got her hormones working, made my own hormones work as well, and we were able to have two amazing kids.
- [21:54]
Alex Clark
So what was her specific biohack strategy? Like, what was she doing?
- [21:59]
Dave Asprey
Well, she was too lean and just couldn't gain weight. And we looked at what was going on. She was doing soy milk, she was doing ground flaxseed. These are highly estrogenic things that interfere with thyroid function. And when we switched out these things that are not food unless you're starving, in a couple months, she gained about 15 pounds of desperately needed fat. So it didn't hurt when she sat down. And so she got curves that she'd always wanted but couldn't have. She started getting warm instead of being cold all the time. And we got her thyroid working right, and we reversed pcos. And my first book that most people haven't read is called the Better Baby Book. What do you do before and during pregnancy in order to have the healthiest, smartest, happiest, non autistic kids you can have? And that book has probably resulted in at least 10,000 babies who wouldn't have been born. And it's five years of work because I wanted to have kids, too.
- [22:52]
Alex Clark
That's unbelievable.
- [22:53]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, it's important because when I was 30, I was like, I hope we don't get pregnant. And if you're 30 now, you're like, I hope we can get pregnant. This is unprecedented. So we got to do something about that.
- [23:01]
Alex Clark
You've tried basically everything at this point. What is the biggest waste of money in the supplement world?
- [23:06]
Dave Asprey
Green powders. So we have this idea that if you eat a whole bunch of different green things, somehow it's going to do something for you. The odds are it's going to trigger allergies or contain a lot of chemicals from plants, because it turns out no life on earth likes it when you eat their babies. So plants don't want you to eat them. They might want you to eat their fruit, but all plants have some compounds that are bad for you, and you may be sensitive to one compound and someone else to another. So when you take 10 or 20 of these things, mix them up in a green powder, pay 100 bucks a month for it, and think it's going to be healthy, it's probably not.
- [23:43]
Alex Clark
What is in your current supplement stack?
- [23:46]
Dave Asprey
I take 150 pills a day in my current supplement stack.
- [23:49]
Alex Clark
Is that really necessary, Dave? That seems excessive. Don't you get these nutrients from your food?
- [23:55]
Dave Asprey
Well, I'm planning to live to at least 180 years old, and I spent $2.5 million on upgrading my biology. So to me, I'm only spending $3,000 a month. It seems like a bargain because they work
- [24:06]
Alex Clark
okay, but that's not gonna be relatable to anyone.
- [24:08]
Dave Asprey
In my audience.
- [24:09]
Alex Clark
So.
- [24:09]
Dave Asprey
Well, here's the deal. I am absolutely testing the extreme, right? And you'd be surprised. There are lots of people listening who are going, wait a minute, I don't wanna spend $3,000 a month, but I wanna know, can I add 20 or 30 years to my life where I look good, I feel good, I'm happy, my brain works? Does that change your perspective on things? And it does.
- [24:28]
Alex Clark
What's your biological age? I know you've tested it.
- [24:31]
Dave Asprey
Well, my calendar age is 53, and there's about 40 different ways to measure biological age. And most aging influencers pick the number that's lowest and then yay. So my favorite one is it's based on the flexibility of my vasculature and I'm 24 years old from a cardio perspective. Okay, I don't believe that number, by the way. But so you can game the system depending on which of the many different tests. I'm about 10 years and sometimes much more younger than my age. So I would say it's not an exact science, but you can tell. And right now I run something called Unlimited Life, which is a concierge medical practice for high net worth people who spend more than a hundred thousand dollars a year to do everything possible to extend their life. And we go through lab work after lab work after lab work for people. And we can tell this is about how long you're going to live if you don't do anything. And then we can increase that by 10 years. It's totally doable. And my message to you, if you're under 30, it's very cheap to have enough minerals to have vitamin D. And if you have these things, everything else works better. So delaying the decay is a really good strategy. And it's cheap once you get old. If you try to reverse it, it's expensive. So the deals don't get old. So my top two things would be take Vitamindake. Vitamindake.com has it. And Minerals 101.
- [25:50]
Alex Clark
What is Dake D?
- [25:51]
Dave Asprey
A K E is a mix of fat soluble vitamins those guide minerals to go into your bones, into your ovaries, into all the different tissues where they belong. And we have this amazing idea that I should get all my nutrients from food. Well, then you should get all of your toxins from mother Nature too. So if you want to go live in the jungle somewhere where there's no emf, no artificial light and no chemicals, maybe you'll get all the nutrients you need from your food, but then you'll die of parasites by the time you're 40 on average. And so what do we do? Oh, let's eat a whole bunch of weird plants that no one ate except during a famine. Things like kale, and then hope it's going to give us minerals. But most plants, especially whole grains, as opposed to polished rice or white flour, they have chemicals in them that stick to the minerals like calcium, magnesium and zinc. They're supposed to go into your bones, into your mitochondria. But the plant's like, you're going to eat my babies? I'm going to take your minerals. We got to make sure that we remove the toxins from our food and then we eat it and that we get enough minerals too. So a mineral supplement and a fat soluble vitamin supplement are the cheapest way you can make everything in your body work better. They're very affordable.
- [27:00]
Alex Clark
Speaking of supplements, are you for or against dry scooping?
- [27:04]
Dave Asprey
I don't think it matters. I mean, if you drink some water afterwards, who cares?
- [27:09]
Alex Clark
Explain to my audience what that is.
- [27:11]
Dave Asprey
Dry scooping is you take a scoop of whatever you're gonna have, just put
- [27:13]
Alex Clark
it in your mouth, like colostrum or protein powder or creatine or whatever.
- [27:17]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, whatever it is, put it in your mouth and drink it. It probably won't absorb as well as if you.
- [27:20]
Alex Clark
That's what they think. They think it's. It's. You're getting, I don't know, more out of it by not mixing it with water.
- [27:25]
Dave Asprey
No, that's actually dumb. But I mean, if it's convenient, I mean, I'm not opposed to taking some creatine, swishing it around, but that's only because I don't have time to put it in my coffee, which is where it should be.
- [27:35]
Alex Clark
So out of all of the different trends out there for biohacking, cold plunging, nicotine ditching air pods, peptides, urine therapy, fixing circadian rhythm, what is useless? What actually works?
- [27:49]
Dave Asprey
Everything you just listed works if you do it right. Even urine therapy, you know, I did it this morning. I'm kidding. Urine therapy. And now the new name for it is called Biolane therapy. B I O L A Y.
- [28:01]
Alex Clark
No matter what you call it, I ain't doing it.
- [28:03]
Dave Asprey
Well, here's why it's interesting. This is a technique that is actually taught by doctors and it's called urine injection therapy. When people have really severe allergies, the antibodies are released in urine. So doctor collects sterile urine and then puts in some lidocaine, runs it through a filter and injects it into Your muscle and what it does is it causes your body to make antibodies against your severe allergies. And you can take someone who's anaphylactic to something like cats and make it so they have no allergies whatsoever. So I'm not saying that I'm going to be gargling urine any day soon, and there are people who do that. But I am saying that don't throw out the baby with toilet water. Let's talk about nicotine. So about 15 years ago, I read a paper from 1986 from Vanderbilt University that said, hey, pharmaceutical nicotine, not smoking, just nicotine, that it prevents Alzheimer's and probably Parkinson's. So I called the guy up who did the research and had him on the show. I call him Dr. Nicotine. His name was Andrew Newhall and kind of blew my mind. I'm like, oh, my God. Nicotine is a performance enhancing, mitochondrial enhancing smart drug, and there's a reason humans have used it forever. And smoking things is bad for you. And vaping is even worse. So since that time, I've used anywhere from 1-50mg a day of nicotine. As part of my longevity strategy, I recommend that everyone over age 40 especially do 1-5mg a day, which is a very low dose. A cigarette's about 12 to 20 milligrams. And don't smoke, but just do a little bit of nicotine. And the reason you do this is the protective effects on your neurons in your brain. And you're very unlikely to get neurodegeneration if you do this. So low dose nicotine? Yes. Sticking five zins in each side, probably not a good idea. High dose nicotine can lead to thinning of hair and erectile dysfunction in some people, but not all.
- [29:55]
Alex Clark
Are you pro vaping then?
- [29:56]
Dave Asprey
No, vaping's evil. It stuff is worse than smoking. So it's gotta be pharmaceutical nicotine, which means it's gonna be a lozenge or like a little packet.
- [30:05]
Alex Clark
What about a patch?
- [30:09]
Dave Asprey
Oh, yeah, there it is. Yeah, yeah, there patch. I'm wearing a patch right now. Yeah, they work.
- [30:13]
Alex Clark
Are we underselling how addictive it is?
- [30:16]
Dave Asprey
Well, smoking by itself is addictive. Smoking cigarettes from cigarette companies is terribly addictive because they add a bunch of stuff that's more addictive than tobacco alone. And studies show that at this low dose of 5 or 10 milligrams a day, the washout period of addiction is the same as coffee. It's a three days. But if you're using more than that, 5 milligrams on a regular basis, it starts to become physiologically addictive. So if you go cold turkey, you get, like, muscle tension and brain fog. And that's why they make patches to have you taper off. So I would say if you're young and you're vaping, dude, you're going to die. Stop it straight up. Okay. In fact, I would tell you, start smoking instead of vaping to lower your risk of dying. But smoking is a terrible idea. So maybe you could go to pharmaceutical nicotine, and there is an argument for it, and people do too much of it.
- [31:04]
Alex Clark
So what's the lowest dose that people should do in a patch or a pouch?
- [31:08]
Dave Asprey
Well, patches and pouches are different dosing. But one milligram a day, I do that for five years without any addiction whatsoever. Okay, so one would be the lowest dose you're gonna feel.
- [31:17]
Alex Clark
Would you let your child use nicotine
- [31:20]
Dave Asprey
if they're over 21? I think that there's a case for it. It also depends. One of my kids has genetics that mean they're much more likely to be nicotine addicted. So I'd say don't do it till you're 40. But as we age, I think there's a good case for it. And in terms of, would I want them to use nicotine? Not vaping, but just nicotine, like a lozenge or drink, dude, throw away the alcohol and use the nicotine. Nicotine has benefits. Alcohol doesn't.
- [31:50]
Alex Clark
I knew a guy who said, I don't need to go to the doctor, and I feel fine. That was his entire medical philosophy. I feel fine. Meanwhile, he looked like a candle that had been left in a hot car. But in his mind, peak performance. This is what most people in America are doing. You don't actually know what's going on in your body. You're just waiting until something breaks, and then you get shocked when you get this crazy medical bill. That's why Jevity is so interesting and such a game changer, because they don't guess. They test. We're talking over 90 biomarkers twice a year. Not the 12 things your doctor glances at before telling you to reduce stress. Like, you know, that's actionable. Jevity sends a phlebotomist to your house. They come to you, draw your blood, and then you have a virtual consultation where they actually explain your body to you. They build you a personalized plan. Supplements, nutrition, hormones, peptides if you need them, all delivered to your door. And they track it over time so you're not just spiraling. You're optimizing. And you also get access to advanced testing like the Dutch test, which I talk about for hormones. GI map. You got to check your gut health nutrient panels, things that actually tell you why you feel the way you feel. You can also see how much glyphosate is in your body. There's an app where you can talk with real humans about your health, which is really rare in 2026. And all of this is only 129amonth. That is less than what people spend on things that actively destroy their health. Now you have a choice. Continue guessing or actually no. And you can use code alex to get 20 off your first year@gojevity.com that's gojevity.com code Alex for 20 off because I feel fine is not a strategy for your health. Do you remember when furbies came out and people were convinced they were possessed? Like they would just turn on in the middle of the night? So speaking in tongues, staring into your soul. Parents were like, we need to remove this from the home immediately. National panic. And honestly, fair. But here's the thing. We're adults now. Also, nobody gave answers to that. Like, this was a national phenomenon. It was so scary. And like, they just pretended it didn't happen. I'm still traumatized by that. But you know what? We don't need to live in fear anymore. Except when you walk into CVS and look into deodorant, because that is where the real horror lives. You pick one up and it's like aluminum parabens, synthetic fragrance, things that you can't pronounce. It's basically a chemistry set for your armpits. And you're just like, well, I guess this is fine to rub onto my body every day, going right into my bloodstream. No, this is why Zebra exists. Their deodorant is actually clean. No aluminum, no parabens, no fake fragrance. But it still works in real life. I'm talking Aaron stress, summer heat, freaky time, sports, even freaky sports. It goes on clear, doesn't ruin your clothes, and they even have a baking soda and non baking soda version, depending on your skin. And while you're upgrading your life, their floss and toothpaste tablets are also clean, simple, and actually make sense. No chemicals, just normal stuff. Go to yay zebra.com. use code Alex for 10 off. That's yay zebra.com yay zebra.com code Alex for 10 off. If somebody feels tired every day, what is the first thing you'd Fix.
- [34:39]
Dave Asprey
I would make them turn off the lights at night before they go to bed for an hour or two. Get red light bulbs, blackout curtains, and learn how to sleep. That'll probably fix it.
- [34:48]
Alex Clark
You think we don't know how to sleep?
- [34:49]
Dave Asprey
Not at all.
- [34:50]
Alex Clark
What do you mean? Well, isn't that inherent?
- [34:54]
Dave Asprey
If only. It's like saying we know how to eat, but we're eating Twinkies all day. So you can get junk sleep. And a lot of people do that. So high quality sleep is completely different. And I know this because I was the guy who got five minutes of deep sleep every night and five minutes of REM sleep in eight hours. So I was asleep, I was not conscious, but nothing good was going on. So I've been tracking my sleep just about every night for 20 years. And I learned how to get really good deep sleep. And I've taught hundreds of thousands of people how to do it. It's free. Go to sleepwithdave.com which is the best URL of my entire marketing life, because it's funny. But you go there and this is all the stuff that works. But number one, the part of your brain that tells your body whether to go into sleep mode is called the scn. And the number one thing that controls it is the color and the brightness of light. So we have these LED lights in the bathroom, in the kitchen, and it takes two seconds of exposure to tell some parts of your brain, oh, bright light that's never existed in 2 billion years. night, it must be daytime, and it confuses your system. So if you were to visit my house at night, it looks like a submarine. There is red light. Right. The neighbors think I'm a vampire. It doesn't matter.
- [36:05]
Alex Clark
Okay, so you and Paul Saladino are doing that?
- [36:07]
Dave Asprey
I taught Paul Saladino to do that.
- [36:10]
Alex Clark
So Paul, if you go, if he invites you over for dinner, there's not a regular light on in his house.
- [36:16]
Dave Asprey
I'm the same way.
- [36:16]
Alex Clark
Yeah, Yeah.
- [36:17]
Dave Asprey
I have dimmer switches on everything, incandescent bulbs only. And you know, I. I even used to sell red light bulbs years ago.
- [36:24]
Alex Clark
Well, here's what Paul's doing. And I know this for a fact. Sorry, Paul. I'm gonna air this out. Paul invites this girl that I know over for. For a dinner date to his place. And she shows up. She's like, well, I don't know where it is. I can't. He's like, oh, sorry, there's no lights on. She shows up, like, first time ever being there. It's all dark and Just red lights, real creepy. I'm like, Paul, you have to give like a semblance of normalcy.
- [36:44]
Dave Asprey
And first I don't think those words go together. Paul and sibilance of normalcy.
- [36:48]
Alex Clark
I know he practices what he preaches. So do you. You guys really do walk the walk, which some people think like this is too crazy, too extreme. But that's what I think makes you interesting.
- [36:57]
Dave Asprey
There's also an easier way to do it. And I started the first modern circadian glasses company. It's called truedark truedark.com and I make glasses that have a special color of red. And you know what we published in a medical journal? That wearing those glasses for 15 minutes changes your brain waves in a way similar to meditation. It's like noise canceling headphones for your eyes. I get jet lagged nowhere on the planet and if I'm in a hotel I just wear my TrueDark glasses. I don't have to have dimmer switches and red lights. I just put them on an hour before bed. And you will completely pass out. And what's more interesting, you'll need less sleep if you get high quality sleep because a lot of people think, oh, I need eight hours of sleep. No you don't. The people who live the longest get six and a half hours of sleep because healthy people need less sleep. So get healthy and learn how to get good sleep and you get an hour and a half a day back.
- [37:46]
Alex Clark
Are people who are currently not using peptides going to be at a disadvantage in the next 10 years?
- [37:51]
Dave Asprey
Of course. People who don't use nootropics, people who don't use longevity medicine, people who don't use performance enhancers in general and peptides and supplements and a good diet, yeah, they'll slow down, they'll get older, they won't look good, their brains won't work and they'll spend more on medical bills. So yeah, they're at a disadvantage. It would suck to be like that.
- [38:10]
Alex Clark
What are oxalates and how do you know if you are oxalate sensitive and you should completely eliminate them from your diet?
- [38:16]
Dave Asprey
Oxalates are one of the five plant toxins that I've been putting at the center of nutrition for biohacking for the last decade or so. Oxalates are compounds found in many plants. Most nuts, spinach, kale, raspberries, sweet potatoes, the outer lining of beans and lentils. But not all plants, but just most. And they go in and they find calcium somewhere in your body and they form razor sharp microscopic calcium crystals. 70% of kidney stones are from eating oxalate. Matcha is a big source of it. Chocolate's a big source of it. Coffee has almost none. Whole wheat flour has a lot of oxalate. White flour has almost none. So we think, well, how much could this matter? Well, you're like, oh, beets have it. Okay, pineapple has it. And you realize most of the superfoods are high in oxalate. And when you start eating these things, by the way, I was a vegan and a raw vegan, so I've had more oxalate than I should have. Like, oh, I'm totally fine. And then you start seeing, oh, look, I have some stuff in my skin. And then, oh, my joints hurt a little bit. And for women in particular, you get a lot of urinary tract infections and you think, oh, it's a bacterial imbalance. No, you have razor sharp calcium crystals scratching your urethra. That's where the bacteria get in. So you back off on the raspberry juice and the kale juice and the spinach juice and all that stuff. And magically, you don't get UTIs anymore. So we don't have to completely eliminate oxalates, but we want to go down to under 200 milligrams a day. And one green smoothie can have five times the amount your body can process. And there is at least one case report of a guy who died after 10 days of green smoothies because he was pounding giant spinach smoothies and he gave himself kidney stones and systemic oxalosis. We knew everything about this before 1950. There's hundreds of papers about oxalate poisoning from plants in humans, but we just forgot about it at some point. So I've seen this resolve issues over and over and over. The issue is just ramp down. You don't just go cold turkey, because if you go cold turkey, your body's like, yay, I can let go of oxalates. Let's go of them all. And then you get styes in your eyes. You get deep pimples and you get joint pain, and it's just ugly.
- [40:20]
Alex Clark
Why? That causes styes? Oh, yeah, I used to get those all the time as a kid.
- [40:24]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, if you want more styes, just eat a whole bunch of almond butter and watch what happens.
- [40:27]
Alex Clark
So if somebody ends up in the ER with kidney stones, was it 100% preventable?
- [40:32]
Dave Asprey
Yes. Unless it's a weird genetic condition. 70% of the time, it's because they were having too much oxalate. The other 30% of the time it's from uric acid.
- [40:42]
Alex Clark
Okay, list common oxalates again.
- [40:44]
Dave Asprey
Okay. Raspberries, whole grains, nuts, peanuts, sweet potatoes, regular potato skin, but not the whites. And spinach, kale, pineapples, relatively high almonds. Almonds are excessively high. Cashews are excessively high. Any nuts, legumes. Black beans are terribly high in it. So you can go to any AI and be like, how much oxalate's in this? And it'll just tell you. Your goal is 200 milligrams a day.
- [41:12]
Alex Clark
I want to talk about black beans. You're anti black bean. And you know what this reminded me of? I've got this coworker. He only eats chipotle. Dave, I'm not exaggerating. Every day he skips breakfast. He has lunch and dinner chipotle every single day. He has nothing in his fridge at home. This is all he eats.
- [41:27]
Dave Asprey
Is he made out of seed oils or what?
- [41:29]
Alex Clark
So his blood work is trash. Testosterone trash. So what's your response? Is it the black beans? Is it just chipotle? Overall, like, what's going on with somebody like that?
- [41:39]
Dave Asprey
He's getting a lot of seed oils. I have not eaten seed oils in 15 years. I only eat butter, tallow, and olive oil and avocados and things like that. So the difference in my blood work is pretty phenomenal. And your friend has a problem because seed oils take about two years to work their ways out of the body. Just half of them. So if you ate no more seed oils, you replace it with biologically compatible fats. Well, it's going to take about four years to be 75% free of the seed oils that got built into the very makeup of your energy production inside your cells. So he screwed up because he broke his mitochondria and his cell membranes with bad oils. And he has a ton of oxalate and probably a ton of other flavorings and things like that that are affecting his neurochemistry. They just did an autopsy study of a bunch of people who died naturally in their 70s, and 87% had oxalate crystals in their thyroid gland.
- [42:34]
Alex Clark
Ew.
- [42:35]
Dave Asprey
Your thyroid gland controls how much energy you have. So you want to be tired all the time, be a low thyroid. You want to be tired all the time, eat a lot of oxalates for a lot of years. The problem is if you're in your 20s, I'm going to go vegan, same way I did. I guess I was 30 when I did it. And maybe it's because you Think it's healthy? It's not. You think it's good for animals? It's not. It's higher deaths per calorie than just eating a cow. And it's not good for the environment either because we need animal poop to have healthy soil. So there's no argument for a vegan diet other than self hatred. So I did that and I was just wrong on my arguments and it screwed me up. And one of the things it did is it messed up my thyroid. So you don't want to have low thyroid function, but you can handle it for about 2, 3 years as the oxalate levels build up. How many influencers do we now go, oh, I'm going to go vegan, I'm never doing this again. I got the glow. The glow is your body panicking because you don't have any good food. And then the glow starts to go away, but you know how good it is. So you just keep doing it until you have dark circles and you're gaunt and you're tired and you have autoimmune conditions and all this stuff. And then you have the tearful apology to your followers about how you're not vegan anymore. It's predictable. But if you're 20, you have abundant qi, this life force energy, and you can have this for decades, or you can could waste it on black beans. And it's dumb.
- [43:42]
Alex Clark
We know to avoid junk food. What about junk light?
- [43:45]
Dave Asprey
Junk light is a term I've been using for a very long time. And fluorescent lighting and LED lighting is junk light. And there's multiple reasons. Natural light from outdoors, it has infrared, which you can't see, but it makes you warm. That's a signal for your body to turn on, healing. And so is red light. So sunlight has blue light in it, but it's got the infrared and the red. And that tells your body, okay, you're taking a hit and you're recovering from it. When you go indoors, you're under these LED lights that have no warmth whatsoever because the infrared is gone. And that means that you're only getting the blue light. And it stresses your brain, stresses your mitochondria. And even worse, most people can't see it, but these lights are flickering. Put your phone on slow motion and look at these things and they're blinking like you're at some kind of dance club. So this is incredibly biologically stressful. And if you want to destroy human fertility, make people tired, docile, programmable, you'd want them to be under blinking lights all the time. And that's what junk light is. It's missing important spectrums. My house, all incandescent, dimmer switches and red lights at night. And I feel great.
- [44:53]
Alex Clark
This is a dumb question, I know, but every time I talk about this, this is the question that I get in my DMs. So you know what, I'm just the voice of the people. Where do you buy incandescent bulbs?
- [45:02]
Dave Asprey
Well, I've got this guy, like, he's, I have him in my, in my WhatsApp right next to my, you know, my, my dealer. And he brings me the bulbs and I just like, hey man, you got any 60 watts?
- [45:13]
Alex Clark
I told him, I said, I literally went to like Ace hardware and some 17 year old kid took me right over and was like, here you go. And I chose the wattage I wanted for my lamps, like.
- [45:23]
Dave Asprey
And it was incandescent.
- [45:24]
Alex Clark
Yes.
- [45:24]
Dave Asprey
You gotta be careful.
- [45:25]
Alex Clark
Super easy.
- [45:25]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, sometimes it says incandescent equivalent. Don't trust those.
- [45:28]
Alex Clark
Don't trust those.
- [45:29]
Dave Asprey
They do make them now for a period of time. I think it was Biden. Or maybe before him. No, it wasn't Trump. It wasn't Biden.
- [45:37]
Alex Clark
Trump loves incandescents.
- [45:38]
Dave Asprey
Oh, he totally does.
- [45:39]
Alex Clark
He hates led.
- [45:40]
Dave Asprey
I just don't know if it was Obama or Biden. Someone put in a plan to make it illegal and it was $400 per bulb as a penalty for companies who sold them. So right before the ban, I bought 2,000 incandescent bulbs. I have a trailer full of them, so I will never be without them because I want to live a long time.
- [45:54]
Alex Clark
How do you choose a high quality
- [45:55]
Dave Asprey
olive oil despite the expensive one? Okay, that's not real. Except it kind of is. So you can look at whether it has something called a COA on it. And there's a proven problem with fake olive oil. And this is because the Sicilian Mafia, where olive oil is from, is involved in counterfeit olive oil. So the good news is, if you're buying your olive oil from a place like Costco or Whole Foods, they have incredibly aggressive testing and enforcement. And I know this because I built a $750 million lifetime revenue food company in my career that was bulletproof. Back when I was involved with bulletproof. By the way, guys, Danger Coffee, not bulletproof coffee. Have nothing to do with bulletproof. But so I went and I talked to the buyers and I tell you, those guys at Walmart, they're hardcore. So they want all the testing. So if you're buying it from a big box store, there's a Pretty good chance that it's been tested, but you just don't know.
- [46:54]
Alex Clark
And you want it to be organic.
- [46:56]
Dave Asprey
Single origin organic, single origin. Lab tested also in glass.
- [47:01]
Alex Clark
There's a lot of olive oils in plastic bottles.
- [47:03]
Dave Asprey
And also cans don't work either, but at least cans block light, but they're lined in plastic. So here's the deal. If you have a lot of money, you want amber glass or green glass, high end, single estate, organic, extra virgin, all the stuff like that. But let's face it, that's really expensive. So would I do olive oil in a big can? Yes, because it's way better than soybean oil. And I wouldn't want to buy a no name knockoff brand. I'd want to buy it from a brand that's known and likely to get sued if they're lying about it. Or you can go online and you can find these single estate things, and those are the ultra premium. You're buying direct from farmers and things like that. But a lot of people don't want to spend $30 on a bottle of olive oil. I don't want to either, but I do because I like olive oil.
- [47:47]
Alex Clark
Let's talk about breakfast in America, which is essentially dessert marketed to children. You wake up, you pour a bowl of something that's been engineered in a lab by a man named Greg, who hasn't seen sunlight since 2004, and you're like, this is a great way to start the day. Meanwhile, it's loaded with pesticides, refined sugar, artificial dyes, basically a chemistry set with a cartoon bird on the front so you don't ask questions. And even the healthy cereals. Oh, don't even get me started. It's like now with ancient grains. Okay, great. Still poison. You walk into the store, you're like, I'm not buying junk cereal. I'm getting Cheerios. I'm a good person. Let's talk about cheerios. You're eating 729 parts per billion of glyphosate. Oh, and if you really want to treat yourself, how about Honey nut Cheerios? Over 800 parts per billion. This is why Lovebird exists. Lovebird is a cereal brand that was invented by a dad who worked in big food. And he was like, I'm not feeding this garbage to my kid anymore. Which is the most radical thing you can do in this country. Care. Lovebird took out all the fake stuff. No synthetic pesticides, no refined sugar, no weird lab ingredients, and replaced it with actual food. We're talking organic cassava prebiotic Fiber, lightly sweetened with honey. Things your body recognizes instead of rejects. And now they've gone even further with their new protein cereal. 11 grams of protein made with grass fed whey, sweetened with organic coconut sugar, gluten free, non gmo, third party tested. And it tastes phenomenal, which is rare because most healthy protein cereals taste disgusting. I'm not going to lie to you, I love the cinnamon one. And if you're trying to get your kids off ultra processed junk, this is the move. You swap in something familiar, right? You're not totally changing their life. They're used to cereal in the morning, but now you're going to start with something non toxic. Also, Lovebird donates 20 of profits to fight childhood cancer. They're family owned, independent and they even have a program to swap junk cereal in schools for real food at the same price. So you can email them, find their info on their website and tell them about your kids school. And they'll send cereal for free, which is insane because they're basically losing money just to fix the system. These are the types of companies that I sponsor on my show. Okay, so now do you understand? I am so picky. I want the game changers. I want the real parents making a difference. You can grab Lovebird at a grocery store near you, but if you want 20% off, go to lovebirdfoods.com use code ALEX20. That's code ALEX20 for 20% off at lovebirdfoods.com code ALEX20@lovebird foods.com. do you remember those Flintstone vitamins that we used to take? Like take a step back and process this. We were given neon colored, artificially flavored cartoon shaped chalk and told it was health. You're five years old, chewing on a glowing orange dinosaur that tastes like chemicals and your parents are like this is great for your development, honey. Meanwhile, it's loaded with food, dyes, sugars, fillers. It's basically a skittle with a medical degree. You're vibrating, seeing colors that don't exist. And everyone's like, like oh, must be normal childhood energy. No, it was fred Flintstone and Red 40 teaming up against your nervous system. So now as an adult, I'm extremely suspicious of anything labeled vitamin because I've seen what they did to us, all right? I survived that. That's why I use Etsy. It's the complete opposite of that chaos. Family owned company, they've got 100 acre herb farm in Wisconsin. Everything is made in the U. S. No unnecessary fillers, no trendy nonsense, just Clean foundational supplements without any synthetic garbage. And I love that everything comes in glass bottles, not plastic, because they've thought of everything. UTSI is my favorite choice for supplements. If you want to get back to the basics this year without turning your life into a science experiment, start with something simple. Okay, so you don't take any supplements right now. Well, how about a high quality B complex, A solid multivitamin or UTSI's? You immune for immune support, especially if you travel, but if you're around sick people, this is how you actually take care of yourself. Okay, this is what I use. Go to utsi.com that's utzy.com utsyutzy.com use code Alex utzy.com code Alex for any supplement that you might need multivitamin or immune support. If you had to buy a non dairy milk, what are you choosing?
- [51:44]
Dave Asprey
There's really only two non dairy milks that are worth touching. One is coconut milk and the other is macadamia milk. The rest of them are expensive trash. That is just not good for you. You don't need milk. And if you're worried about it, you could get a blender and put two macadamia nuts in there and blend it up there. Macadamia milk, it's not that hard.
- [52:02]
Alex Clark
Where do you stand on the fiber debate?
- [52:04]
Dave Asprey
There's two kinds of fiber. One of them is insoluble fiber and this is roughage. And it's probably not good for you and maybe it's good for you, but I would say probably not because it damages the lining of your gut. Then there's soluble fiber, which is also known as a prebiotic fiber. And there's a lot of really good research that shows that people who live a long time have more diverse gut bacteria and more quantity of gut bacteria. So as I was writing my big longevity book, which is called Superhuman, I added a bunch of different prebiotic fibers to my diet and I measured and I quadrupled the amount of bacteria and the types of bacteria in three months. So there's an argument for prebiotic fiber. There's also an argument that says if you don't eat any prebiotic fiber, it'll shift your gut bacteria so they make less toxins. That's kind of a fringe argument. It makes sense and I've seen it work for some people. But my recommendation now is you want 20 to 40 grams of soluble fiber unless you have bacterial overgrowth in your gut.
- [53:06]
Alex Clark
So if somebody's digestion isn't improving on a high fiber diet, what's Actually going wrong.
- [53:11]
Dave Asprey
A high fiber diet is always going to wreck you because they're giving you Metamucil and basically grind up sticks and twigs and sawdust. And of course you're going to be farting all the time. Studies show like 17 times more vegans fart than people who eat normal food. So oops, sorry about that, vegans. But okay, so high fiber diet is going to make you feel bloated, it's going to make you feel uncomfortable, and it's going to have less energy in it and it's going to suck minerals and fats from your body. Don't do that. High soluble fiber, you can do that and it's going to make more beneficial fatty acids in your gut. So never do a high fiber diet with grape nuts and all that kind of stuff. It's just a bad idea. So you don't need whole wheat if it's not working. You probably need digestive enzymes. So as we age and as we don't have enough salt, we make less stomach acid. And stomach acid's job is to sterilize the food and break it down. And then we need enzymes to absorb it fully. So if you're farting all the time, especially if it smells like death, you're not digesting well. So get some digestive enzymes that have betaine HCL in them and magically you take those when you eat and then your body can absorb all the nutrients from the food instead of letting it rot and then making everyone leave the room.
- [54:17]
Alex Clark
Nobody has come on the show and talked about the vagus nerve. And I know you know a lot about this.
- [54:23]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [54:23]
Alex Clark
Can you enlighten us?
- [54:24]
Dave Asprey
So like, the vagus nerve is where you go for gambling? Oh, no, the other one, the vagus nerve. Dad jokes for the win. All right. The vagus nerve is so cool. It is the largest nerve in the body and it basically controls everything. It's like the central control system. So there's little branches of it that go into your fingers and it's mostly available on the left ear and on the right ear and it controls your sympathetic response. So is your body ready to fight and be stressed and perform or is it ready to recover and digest? So if you can't go to sleep at night, there's probably a sympathetic activation. If you have a trauma anxiety response, you've got the vagus nerve involved. So there's a company called Zenbud and they make a. It's a few hundred bucks, a little ultrasound thing. Looks like a headphone. You put it in your ear for five minutes and it turns on parasympathetic. So you're feeling stressed, you're not feeling stressed. People go to sleep, they get better, heart rate variability, and breath work helps cold plunges, but not too many of them can help. And most of the things that make us feel calm and relaxed, they're affecting your vagus nerve. So if you have a hard time in your relationship and either one of you is anxious all the time, put the Zenbud in and then chill out and then have the difficult conversation. And you'll probably not yell at your partner nearly as much. So it's surprising how almost everything, like meditation, breath, work, deep sleep, it all improves the function of your vagus nerve.
- [55:50]
Alex Clark
What is your opinion on oatmeal for breakfast?
- [55:52]
Dave Asprey
Oatmeal is the biggest scam on Earth. It is peasant food. So back in the day when we had kings and dukes and people, they would have peasants. And you feed the peasants the cheapest human kibble you can get because you don't care if they die. They just need to have some babies and make sure that they raise the cows that you're going to eat. So oatmeal raises your blood sugar more than eating white sugar, more than Ben and Jerry's, and it doesn't have any protein in it, and it has the kind of fiber that sucks minerals out of your body, and it's usually contaminated with glyphosate. Have some donuts. Like, seriously, if you're going to screw up your thing, at least make it taste good. Oatmeal is not tasty.
- [56:28]
Alex Clark
So what if it's organic and sprouted?
- [56:31]
Dave Asprey
Okay. It's still going to raise your blood sugar through the roof.
- [56:34]
Alex Clark
So what, a small cup of oatmeal? I'm an oatmeal Stan. Okay, what about a small cup of oatmeal? If you're making sure that you're also having it with a lot of protein, like, let's say you have a little steak.
- [56:44]
Dave Asprey
So, well, if you had steak and
- [56:45]
Alex Clark
eggs and oatmeal, okay, if you have
- [56:46]
Dave Asprey
eight ounces of steak, not a little steak, and two eggs and a little bit of oatmeal, okay, fine. White rice would be a lot healthier because it has less toxins, but okay, fine. I don't have a problem with that. Unless you're sensitive to gluten, because most oatmeal has gluten in it, but most
- [57:00]
Alex Clark
Americans are having a huge bowl of oatmeal, brown sugar, and fruit.
- [57:03]
Dave Asprey
Yeah, I literally would give My kids high quality ice cream made with milk and sugar and eggs. Before I would give them oatmeal for breakfast because it's better for them. At least it has nutrients and it'll raise their blood sugar less than oatmeal. So if you eat oatmeal, expect to be hungry in like 20 minutes after you eat it. Unless you put a stick of butter in there and eat a steak with it, in which case, why are you eating the oatmeal?
- [57:24]
Alex Clark
What are some off label uses you've heard of for Ivermectin? And do you think that ivermectin should be available over the counter?
- [57:31]
Dave Asprey
Ivermectin is an incredibly interesting drug. And because I was a sheep farmer at my farm in Canada, we actually had Ivermectin on hand and use it all the time. So Ivermectin, probably the coolest off label use is they're finding reversal of Alzheimer's. In recent studies they find that ivermectin cream works very well on rosacea. And ivermectin seems to help with a bunch of different viral conditions that have nothing to do with parasites. And of course, there's ivermectin as a part of treatment for cancer, along with two other antiparasitics. So Ivermectin has a lot of different incredibly useful things in it. And as for whether it should be available over the counter, since when do you need a permission slip to take care of yourself? It is unethical for the trade lobby for physicians to tell you that you have to take a half a day off work, get an appointment, go see Nurse Cratchit behind bulletproof glass in the waiting room in order to go in and have three minutes with a doctor to beg for permission to buy Ivermectin or anything else. It's wrong. I just buy my drugs from India. It's way cheaper and easier.
- [58:37]
Alex Clark
How concerned are you about chemtrails? Do we really need to be worrying about them very much?
- [58:41]
Dave Asprey
You know, I like to be concerned about things I have control over. And since I don't have an anti aircraft missile system available to myself today, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about them. It's very clear if you have eyes that someone is spraying weird stuff in the sky. The airplanes are unmarked. There's patents and like, like written documentation that there are evil forces doing this. The problem is that where's our government transparency? So we know that there's stuff happening like that. There's a lot of toxins in the world, Whether they come from your kale, they come from the stuff that they put in gasoline instead of lead, which is about a thousand times worse than lead called thallium, or it comes from the plastics in the rug in your house or the deodorant you're using, or from chemtrails. Build a body that is highly resilient. Upregulate your toxin systems so that you can get rid of toxins faster than they come in, and then find the people responsible for chemtrails and then choke them. But politely in court, is what I'm saying.
- [59:40]
Alex Clark
Politely in court. Absolutely. Give us three simple longevity steps somebody can implement today.
- [59:45]
Dave Asprey
Darkness at night and sunlight in the morning. It is critically important that you sleep in a blacked out room. That alone can shift the needle for longevity. Plus you'll just like your life better anyway. So it's not that difficult. It's just darkness. Like our bodies need darkness as much as we need light. The second one would be figure out the foods that cause inflammation, digestive distress, pimples, things like that, and stop eating them. They're not compatible with your body. You wouldn't put the wrong gas in your car, so why are you doing that for your body? Just do that. And along the way, one gram of animal protein per pound of ideal body weight. If you do those things, you'll be so far ahead of time. And by the way, a study just came out this week showing that there's this. About a quarter of us have high risk of dementia and Alzheimer's because of something called APOE 3 or 4. Oh. Eating a high meat diet completely gets rid of that risk for a quarter of the population. So more meat. But don't eat processed meat because that gives you dementia. So pepperoni and slim Jims are not the same as ground beef. And just understanding that that'll massively change things.
- [60:50]
Alex Clark
I said this recently. I walked around Disneyland and I was talking about like, what in Disneyland is Maha? What isn't? You know, if you're somebody that's health conscious and you're going to the park and I talked about those huge turkey legs. The Internet was so pissed off at me because I said, look, out of all the things in the park, it's probably not the worst. However, they're filled with nitrites and msg. Yes. And so you're eating this. If you are somebody that is constantly eating fast food, you're eating ultra processed meat, lunchables and pepperoni pizzas, frozen pizza pizzas, all this and you are having that. It's, you're just, you're adding on to your, your toxin load towards cancer. That's just what it is. If you never ever eat ultra processed food or ultra processed meat. Like, I don't ever going to Disneyland once a year or once every couple years. And having a turkey leg is fine. But let me tell you something. I tried a bite of it. It was disgusting. I spit it out immediately. It didn't even taste like regular meat food. It was gross. So people were mad though, that I pointed that out. But exactly what you're saying, you want to avoid the ultra processed meat.
- [61:46]
Dave Asprey
Yeah. And msg, which is in pretty much everything at Disneyland, as far as I could tell. MSG causes your neurons to start firing and not stop firing. And this is why you get misbehaved kids. People are getting migraines, they're having all sorts of weird things and they feel like crap. At Disneyland, it's because the food is all poisoned.
- [62:04]
Alex Clark
How does being healthy equate to more freedom and being uncontrollable?
- [62:08]
Dave Asprey
I like this. You're tying in with danger coffee, because who knows what you might do. I named it that because during the pandemic, you had these smarmy, overweight bureaucrats saying, we're doing this for your own safety. I'm like, no, I choose danger. Like, literally all of the things in life worth doing have some risk. And your job is to have so much energy and so much power that you can overcome whatever life brings you this day. And when you do that, you have an inherent feeling of safety. And that feeling of safety lets you think about things and choose action. If you don't have enough energy, you will not think. You will react. And you are programmable. And this is why I started the biohacking movement. When people have working mitochondria that can make a ton of energy, we won't do stupid things because we have enough energy to think and we're very hard to program. So it comes down to having enough energy first and then second, learning your reactive patterns and then turning them off. And my company, 40 years of Zen, it's a very high end brain retraining program with neuroscientists. People come and spend five days to replace 40 years of meditation. And I will tell you, celebrities, athletes, CEOs, the top performers in the world, they come through and they all have the same patterns. Something happened when they were a little kid and it maybe wasn't even a big deal to an adult, but it was at the time and we're all still running the programs of childhood. The time the teacher was mean to your little brother was mean to you. You know, your mom yelled to your dad yelled all that stuff, it's still in there. And you can take it all out. So make massive amounts of power and remove reactive patterns, whether it's meditation or breath work or psychedelics, whatever. When you do that, the government or a big company or a bully can do whatever the heck they want. And you're just like, isn't that cute? That's how we want to be.
- [63:58]
Alex Clark
That's how we want to be. Where can people hear you speak in person?
- [64:01]
Dave Asprey
Come to the Biohacking Conference May 27th through 29th here in Austin, and go to biohackingconference.com it's called Beyond Biohacking. Now Steve Aoki is headlining and we've got Arthur Brooks and Jay Shetty. I'll be on stage multiple times, about 5,000 people. And it is an incredible time. And hundreds of vendors who make the stuff that changes how you feel. Things like air filters. Talk to the founders, talk to the creators, know what's real, and get amazing prices on things, too.
- [64:32]
Alex Clark
Biohackingconference.com and what's the name of your podcast and your Instagram?
- [64:36]
Dave Asprey
Go to the Human Upgrade, which is the podcast. And if you go to Dave Asprey on Instagram, got a million something followers.
- [64:44]
Alex Clark
If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be?
- [64:51]
Dave Asprey
It would be building community. That's what's missing. When you have community, you can form culture and shared culture and a culture of values, and that creates kindness and peace and safety. And if we don't have those things because everyone feels like they're isolated, it's very hard to make change like that. And that's why I've done this event for 13 years. It's why I do everything I can to support and build community. Because if you're alone, your mitochondria hate it and your vagus nerve hates it and you don't sleep well. So all you need is one or two trusted friends who you can really be real with. And that's where it starts.
- [65:28]
Alex Clark
I'm so glad I got to have you on. I've been. We've been trying to coordinate schedules, I feel like for over a year trying to figure this out. We finally made it happen. I hope I see you in, in D.C. fingers crossed. the, at the Bayer march, at the Monsanto march. So, yeah, everybody, everyone should join us out there. Thank you Dave for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [65:45]
Dave Asprey
Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.
- [65:49]
Alex Clark
What was the most mindchanging thing that you learned from this episode? I want to hear leave comments on the episode in a five star review or the cute servatives Facebook group and celebrate all of the important work that's being done by my entire team. We all read them and it really means a lot. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.