How to Build Muscle WITHOUT Lifting! Biohacker Longevity : 1362

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey

Episode: How to Build Muscle WITHOUT Lifting! Biohacker Longevity (Ep 1362)
Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Dave Asprey
Guest: Dr. Brian St. Pierre

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into building muscle, improving metabolic health, and upgrading longevity—without traditional heavy lifting. Dave Asprey interviews Dr. Brian St. Pierre, a leading researcher in metabolic physiology who specializes in blood flow restriction (BFR) training and intermittent hypoxia. Together, they unpack how innovative exercise science strategies can trigger muscular and metabolic adaptations, optimize hormones, and even enhance libido—all while being accessible to people of all ages and abilities.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Altitude, Hypoxia, and Human Adaptation

• Altitude Acclimation as a Biohack:
  Dave and Brian discuss how living high and training low improves performance and general health by stimulating red blood cell production and mitochondrial efficiency.

  • "There's this huge amount of evidence that says if you're acclimated to high altitude, you're healthier, but not necessarily living at altitude." (Dave, 07:31)

• Acute Effects of Altitude:
  Brian explains how altitude exposure increases stress on the system, raises sympathetic tone, and can suppress appetite and disturb sleep.

  • "You're actually kind of in a stress state when you're at altitude. It's going to make you pee more, increase your blood pressure a little bit. It might give you a headache." (Dr. St. Pierre, 09:33)

• Intermittent Hypoxia Protocols:
  Cycling low and high oxygen (like in Upgrade Labs’ "atmospheric cell training") can replicate altitude adaptations in far less time, with benefits for metabolism, blood sugar, and potential reversal of type 2 diabetes.

2. Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training: How It Works

• Definition and Method:
  BFR training involves placing specialized cuffs at the top of the limbs, restricting venous outflow (not inflow), creating a hypoxic environment in the tissue during low-load exercise.

  • "It looks similar to a blood pressure cuff, but basically the goal is to partially restrict arterial inflow but more intermittently and impede the venous blood flow coming out..." (Dr. St. Pierre, 14:28)

• Benefits at Lower Loads:
  Allows for muscle growth and strength akin to heavy lifting while using light weights, reducing stress on joints and tendons.

  • Efficacious even for those who cannot safely perform traditional high-intensity training, such as the elderly or injured.

• Systemic Effects:
  BFR’s effects are not limited to the restricted limb; adaptations (muscle growth, improved circulation) occur both below and above the bands.

  • "The entire circulatory system is connected. We're seeing the glutes and pecs increase in muscle size with BFR, even though the bands are on the limbs." (Dr. St. Pierre, 28:14)

  Notable Advice:

  • Do not use BFR bands on the neck or attempt to restrict blood flow to the brain—risks involve brain damage or death (Dave & Brian, ~25:44).

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3. Metabolic and Hormonal Effects

• Glucose Handling and Insulin Sensitivity:
  Both muscle contraction and local hypoxia (from BFR) allow glucose uptake into cells independent of insulin.

  • "BFR and hypoxia improve insulin sensitivity. Sometimes pesky side effects like type 2 diabetes just go away with these protocols." (Dave, 12:29-13:08)

• Nitric Oxide Production:
  BFR increases NO signaling, enhancing vascular health, insulin function, and potentially sexual function.

  • "If you have dysfunctional NO production, you probably aren't benefiting as much from hypoxia anyway. But hypoxia does help even with low insulin." (Dr. St. Pierre, 13:15)

• Acute Hormonal Responses:
  BFR and high-intensity exercise both transiently raise testosterone, growth hormone, and cortisol, supporting muscle adaptation and libido.

  • "BFR has been shown to cause pretty large, acute increases in testosterone and growth hormone, similar to high intensity exercise." (Dr. St. Pierre, 35:34)
  • The increases are brief (30–60 mins), but frequent transient spikes may be sufficient for adaptation and libido.

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4. Practical Applications & Protocols

• Rehab, Aging, & Special Populations:
  BFR provides a way for the injured, elderly, or deconditioned to reap the benefits of high-intensity exercise safely.

• General Protocol:
  Standard BFR set:

  • Four sets: 30, 15, 15, 15 reps (about 30 seconds rest between sets).
  • "What we really want is a strong fatigue stimulus in the second, third, or fourth sets." (Dr. St. Pierre, 31:05)

• Zone 2 + BFR:
  Combining light aerobic exercise (like brisk walking) at "zone 2" heart rate with BFR cuffs boosts VO2 max and grows muscle in less time.

  • "Zone 2 with BFR can increase VO2 max and muscle. You can do it for 15–20 minutes, and even grow your muscles while walking." (Dr. St. Pierre, 54:33)

• Stacking Biohacks:
  Combine BFR with:

  • Whole-body vibration plates for joint and tendon adaptation.
  • EMS (electrical muscle stimulation)—especially for those unable to voluntarily contract muscles.
  • Intermittent hypoxia BFR + low-oxygen helps accelerate adaptation.
  • "I want every benefit I can get. I'll stack BFR, whole body vibration, EMS, and intermittent hypoxia at various times." (Dave, 59:28)

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5. Longevity, Muscle, Power, and Libido

• Muscle Mass as a Health "Bank":
  Muscles act as a buffer for glucose, triglycerides, and support better aging.

  • "Muscle is a glucose and triglyceride sink. It's important to have a reserve as you age." (Dr. St. Pierre, 34:10)

• Power and Neural Drive:
  Neural recruitment and explosive power may be more pivotal for functional longevity than sheer muscle mass.

  • "Shaolin monks have huge neural drive and power, but little mass... Power is a key metric." (Dave, 33:18)

• BFR and Libido:
  Unpublished results with Marines showed BFR notably increased libido—likely via a mix of hormonal and nitric oxide pathways.

  • "90% of Marines doing BFR training came back saying 'I'm really horny...I'm making my wife really happy.'” (Dr. St. Pierre, 42:30)
  • Nitric oxide boosts systemic and cerebral blood flow, key for sexual function.

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6. Other Notable Moments & Quotes

• Cautions on DIY BFR:
  DIY bands or cheap knockoffs are not safe or effective—precision matters.

  • "The $12 Amazon bands don't work, it's not called tourniquet training. You need precise control." (Dave, 25:03)

• The Science Process Remains Uncertain:
  Both host and guest critique scientific over-interpretation and stress the importance of context, meta-analyses, and the evolving nature of knowledge.

  • "No study gives us actual truth...Every study can be criticized by haters.” (Dave, 41:52)

• Personal Biohacker Reflections:
  Dave shares his own journey overcoming health challenges (toxic mold, Bartonella, obesity) and how these drove him to push biohacking's boundaries.

  • "If you're exhausted and your brain doesn't work, it's a hell. I'm not going back, and I'll spend all my money and all my time to never go there again." (Dave, 63:12)

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Notable Timestamps & Segments

• 03:22 — Introduction to Dr. St. Pierre and his unusual research niche
• 09:32 — Mechanisms and effects of intermittent hypoxia
• 14:24 — Introduction and mechanics of BFR training
• 17:52 — How BFR works for rehab, aging, and low load exercise
• 24:14 — Cautions for beginners: start with low BFR pressure, watch for lactate intolerance
• 28:14 — Proximal muscle adaptation (above the band)
• 29:54 — Systemic BFR benefits, safe use, costs, and protocols
• 32:47 — Focus on intention and felt fatigue over set numbers
• 35:34 — Muscle memory and the importance of strength over mass
• 40:25-42:30 — Libido-boosting effects of BFR; pilot Marine study anecdote
• 53:35-54:34 — Using BFR for efficient "Zone 2" training and muscle growth
• 55:08 — DHA storage in hips/butt and evolutionary attraction
• 56:41 — Reduced exertion high-intensity (REHIT) and how to stack BFR for maximal benefit
• 59:44-61:49 — Stacking BFR with vibration, EMS, and safety notes
• 63:26 — BFR, brain blood flow, and cognition enhancements

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Quotes of the Episode

• On Exercise as Non-Optional:
  "Exercise is actually not an option. It's essential to maintain the system." (Dr. St. Pierre, 52:06)
• On BFR for All:
  "You can get systemic, whole-body benefits from just doing arms or legs with BFR, and with light weights at home.” (Dave, 29:54)
• On Science and Biohacking:
  "No study gives us actual truth...Science is a process and we’re always moving toward more truth." (Dave & Dr. St. Pierre, 41:47)
• On Libido and Results:
  "I'm really horny and I'm making my wife really happy—what does BFR do for libido? ...It's multiple things; anabolic effect, nitric oxide, and less stress." (Dr. St. Pierre, 42:30-43:04)
• On Efficient Training:
  "It doesn’t take much to move the needle a lot. That’s the whole business model for Upgrade Labs." (Dave, 53:35)

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Summary Takeaway

Blood flow restriction and intermittent hypoxia are powerful, underutilized tools for building muscle, improving metabolic health, boosting hormones, and saving time—no heavy weights required. They are especially valuable for the elderly, injured, busy, or anyone seeking maximum efficiency. Key mediators are nitric oxide production, transient hormone surges, improved insulin sensitivity, and systemic neural adaptation.
Biohacking truly lets you do more with less, safely and effectively—upgrading the human body and mind for longevity and high performance.

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Further Learning:

• Visit B Strong BFR for validated BFR devices.
• Explore Dave Asprey’s Upgrade Labs for clinical protocols on these biohacks.
• For nitric oxide: supplements like N101 or Vasconox, as discussed.
• For best practice: combine metabolic, mechanical, and neural components for optimal adaptation.

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If you can’t or don’t want to train hard, train smart—blood flow restriction delivers results you never thought possible. (And yes, your libido might thank you, too.)

Transcript

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

You're actually kind of in a stress state. When you're at altitude, it's going to make you pee more. It's going to actually increase your blood pressure a little bit. It might give you a headache.

[Dave Asprey]

The first time I tried climbing it was really brutal. Since that time I did a natural formula that I put together and I don't really experience altitude sickness anymore. Sten Stray is a leading researcher in.

[Podcast Narrator]

Metabolic physiology specializing in blood flow restriction training and intermittent hypoxia. His work bridges exercise science, vascular biology and and human performance. He has helped redefine how strength and metabolic health can be improved with minimal mechanical load and maximum efficiency.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

You need to stress the system in order for it to adapt and you can't train at a high intensity. You can't do interval training every single day. Exercise is actually not an option. No exercise is essential to maintain the system. The recommended protocol is I'm willing to.

[Dave Asprey]

Do whatever it takes in order to live to 180, but I don't want to do more than I have to.

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[Dave Asprey]

You're the only expert I've ever found who clinically studies blood flow restriction. And if you're listening, what are you talking about? I wrote about this in Smarter, not Harder as one of the ways of putting on muscle without lifting weights. At least not the same way with all these crazy longevity and cognitive benefits that you study. And you also study intermittent hypoxia, which is something we do at upgrade labs and most people have never heard of it. So you're studying these crazy esoteric things in the context of cardiorespiratory fitness, which is why I guess your colleagues will still talk to you, right?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, exactly. And a little bit about my journey in getting there. You know, my, my dad was really involved with Live High, Train Low and really coming up with this idea of high altitude exposure boosting performance. And then you maintain that intensity of exercise by being able to perform at high intensities at low altitude and by living high, boosting red blood cell mass, boosting plasma volume, things like that, we can maximize those adaptations but then not lose the intensity of training that you, that you normally do at high altitude by training at low altitude. So that was really the, the sort of the snowball that got me going on of a, a carryover of what he's done in the past. And really look at different ways to do this in a, in a, in acute and very fine tuned short duration type of way.

[Dave Asprey]

For about 10, maybe 12 years I've looked at how do I become acclimated to high altitude, because that means your metabolism works better and even your mitochondrial function goes up. But I don't want to sleep in an altitude tent. And some of that stuff is really intense.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Literally.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. Okay, that was solid. I can't believe I missed that.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Jeez.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, that was like 10 dad joke points to you.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Go, not a dad yet, but I'm working.

[Dave Asprey]

Well, you got the joking down. I'm remembering I was In Tibet, a long time ago. Very high altitude. It was 2004, the. The same trip where I first had yak butter tea. That led to the whole bulletproof thing.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Oh, wow.

[Dave Asprey]

And I was thinking, well, I must be accident. I've been here for like a month. And we're driving through these passes at, you know, 18,000, 19,000, like a really, really, really high. And at the top of one of the passes, I'm in a bus five days from Kamandu to Lhassa. Said, I'm just going to run up this little hill. And I just jogged up the hill and I get to the top and I'm like, I'm gonna die. And I. I just remember I laid on my back and I'm looking at the sky and it's just turning like I'm about to pass out. And I had this horrible feeling like I'm just on my chest. What was going on physiologically when I did that?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

That's exactly what we're talking about with that exercise performance being degraded at aisle.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, it was horrible.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

It's not. And it's as opposed to something like intermittent hypoxia, where you're adjusting the concentration. Right. And the concentration of oxygen. Right. You're titrating various gases, primarily N. Nitrogen is used to lower the relative concentration of oxygen. The partial pressure of oxygen is what's different at altitude. It's actually the same concentration, about 21%, but it's the partial pressure, which is which. You know, these pressure gradients are what's driving various gases into tissues. Various gases from the outside into the lungs through the systemic circulation. And then that's how we get it to our tissues. And what's happening is that partial pressure is now lower, so there's less of that pressure gradient, less of that driving pressure to get it into the tissues. So you're not. First of all, the red blood cells are not picking up as much oxyge from the environment, and then it's not able to carry as much oxygen to the tissues. So you were experiencing what a relatively unfit person would experience, maybe even at sea level, trying to sprint. So you're really putting your mind. You're putting yourself in someone else's shoes who isn't as fit as you is really what was happening.

[Dave Asprey]

I wouldn't want to be unfit like that. Cause that was brutal.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. So along the way, I said, I'm. I'm going to fix my. My lack of altitude worthiness. And having grown up in Albuquerque at a mile high, I was used to it, but I would notice. I'd go to a ski slope or something. It's not good. So I bought this weird Russian gear that let me breathe through oxygen scrubbers. The problem is that sort of pollutes your lungs with aluminum particles. So quit doing that. And eventually came across some tech to do the ability to take oxygen out of the air and breathe low oxygen air, then high oxygen air. And that's now become a part of our standard protocol for certain conditions at upgrade Labs. So there's this huge amount of evidence that says if you're acclimated to high altitude, you're healthier, but not necessarily living in aisle two. That may not be healthier because some people have a hard time with blood perfusion in the brain. So unpack. What's going on with people who are acclimated versus not acclimated to altitude?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, and this is particularly relevant for me. I've spent significant amount of my life at altitude in Park City, Utah. That's kind of where my family is based. And actually my. My dad specifically brought us there as adolescents to expose us to this high altitud environment in order to really maximize our sports performance and fun. Fact is, I actually lived in one of those altitude tents as a middle schooler. We had moved to Dallas for my dad's work, and I was still competing pretty competitively in cross country skiing. And so in order to maintain that ability to perform at altitude, yeah, I spent about 12 to 14 hours a day in a tent and my family basically called me the bubble boy. So it was really interesting to get that exposure at such a young age. My dad really considered his kids guinea pigs.

[Dave Asprey]

I'll say. What your. What your friends think or did you just not have any friends at that point?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

No friends. Yeah. The bubble situation was. Was an issue. Issue. No, actually most people thought it was pretty cool.

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[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

You know, I kind of framed it that way. It's like I get to do this, not I have to do this.

[Dave Asprey]

Getting superpowers.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, exactly. So in an early, early biohack, if you will, and you know, with. With all that. I completely forgot your question, but. So what was.

[Dave Asprey]

What was it was what's going on with this exposure to high levels of oxygen, low levels. What's the physiology of intermittent hypoxia? Which is actually, let me rephrase that, because people don't know what it is. So we'll phrase it like this. So Upgrade Labs. One of the pieces of metabolic gear that we have is called atmospheric cell training. And what it really is Is we're exposing people to air that has very little oxygen than air that has a lot of oxygen and it makes them acclimated. Altitude. Why is altitude acclimation so good for you?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So multiple things here, going into a high altitude environment and then we'll talk about that specific hypoxia, hyperoxia, sort of, sort of situation. When you go up to altitude, there's a bunch of responses that occur essentially in an effort to maintain tissue oxyge oxygenation in the brain and in skeletal muscle and locomotor muscles as you're going to exercise. Some of the things that occur when you do that is we have this sympathetically mediated, meaning we turn on that sympathetic fight orf flight state. Sympathetically mediated vasoconstriction with actually a peripheral vasodilation that goes on to actually maintain tissue oxygenation to the tissues as well. And with that comes with a heightened sympathetic state. So you're actually kind of in a stress state when you're at altitude. It's gonna make you pee more. It's gonna, it's gonna actually increase your blood pressure a little bit. It might give you a headache. All of these things are associated with essentially the body recognizing a low oxygen environment and basically turning on the nervous system into this fight or flight mode. That's why people really don't have great sleep at altitude, especially when they go up to very high altitudes without being acclimatized. And that's another reason why you don't have as much of an appetite when you're in altitude. Have you ever noticed that where your appetite might be suppressed at altitude or.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, the first time I tried climbing a really high altitude was a place called Mount Cotopaxi.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Oh yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Down in Ecuador. And it's really hard to climb it because it's always avalanched off. And we got avalanched off the mountain. But I spent a night in the climber's hut there and man, it's like I couldn't eat because I just wanted to barf the whole time. It was really brutal, even with Diamox and all the drugs for that. But since that time I, I did a, like a natural formula that I put together. And I don't really experience altitude sickness anymore, even without the pharmaceuticals. And I've been to some pretty high places, but it's all mitochondrial regulation.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly. And, and that actually is a nice segue into what's going on with this hypo hypoxia to hyperoxia. And to be frank, I don't think we have A really good idea of exactly what's going on.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

But there's this idea that intermittent hypoxia, or exposure to acute exposure to low alt or to high altitude or low oxygen levels initiates a trigger, and it triggers a cascade of events that are associated with increased red blood cell mass, actually better glucose clearance in the blood. There's actually two ways to, to get glucose out of the blood independent of insulin, and that's muscle contraction and hypoxia. So, and actually, just to take a quick segue or deviation here, that's really what my researchers was looking at, is what are the cardiovascular effects of this intermittent hypoxia? What happens to your cardiovascular system? And what we see is a very predictable pattern where we see this vasodilation effect in the periphery.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Accompanied with this actual central sympathetic response. It's really this paradoxical response to this altitude. It's very interesting. But not only that, we also see increased insulin sensitivity. So that low oxygen environment is actually improving your ability to uptake glucose.

[Dave Asprey]

Wow.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

By stimulating these increases in insulin sensitivity.

[Dave Asprey]

That explains this terrible side effect we have at Upgrade Labs. Because Upgrade Labs is non medical or AI longevity play. And when people say they want more energy or to lose weight and they're doing our protocols that include this type of intermittent hypoxia, sometimes this pesky side effect or type 2 diabetes just goes away. I'm like, I'm sorry, big pharma. Like, we're not diagnosing or treating that at all. I guess you fix someone's metabolism, they can burn glucose better. And who would have thought. Thought that changing your altitude acclimation would just physiologically let someone's body do its own thing like that.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. It's really interesting. This, this is a major problem, you know, to throw into the conversation. Nitric oxide is heavily involved with.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Signaling. Signaling as well. And so if you have dysfunctional no production or nitric oxide synthase production, that's going to also affect your insulin. But what's nice about hypoxia is it's doing this irrespective of your insulin. So you're probably getting some glute 4 translocation, you know, through the hypoxia itself, which is slightly dependent on nitric oxide. So if your nitric oxide isn't good, you're probably not going to benefit as much from the hypoxia anyway and just throwing that out there. But we, we do know, and to come back to your original question, this idea of turning that signal on, triggering these processes Both on a, at a hormonal level and at a neurotransmitter level, and then really flushing the system with this hyperoxia or high oxygen level. In my, in my mind, I think what's going on is you're just, you're stressing the body and then you're providing it more of what it needs in that, in, in a very acute period. And you're doing, you're cycling this kind of thing. Um, and by doing that, I think you're sensitizing yourself to oxygen. And so then when you're exposed to that hyperoxy or high oxygen level, you can uptake that oxygen better, diffuse it into the tissues better, and then everything starts working more efficiently, including your mitochondria.

[Dave Asprey]

What is bfr or blood flow restriction trading? Some people haven't heard of it.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So blood flow restriction training involves placing bands or cuffs on the upper, upper legs.

[Dave Asprey]

We should have brought some. I have some downstairs in the labs or just want to, we'll cut in so people can see what it looks like. It's like a blood pressure cuff.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, it looks, it looks similar to a blood pressure cuff, but has some very distinct characteristics that separate it from, from a blood pressure cuff. But basically the goal is to potentially partially restrict arterial inflow. The blood going into the muscle that is saturated with oxygen, but more intermittently and coming back to the intermittent word, impair or impede the venous blood flow coming out of the muscle that contains a lower amount of oxygen and metabolites that were created in order to generate ATP in the muscle. And by doing this, by putting that slight impairment on the normal circulation in the body, we can accelerate fatigue using relatively light loads or relatively short durations. And it's actually been amazing to see the anabolic effects of such short duration, low load or low intensity type training yielding all these high intensity or high load adaptations.

[Dave Asprey]

So you could have, you know, the big weight bro guy at the gym and have him put on the be strong bands. This is the company that your dad founded that does like precise type of this. And they can pick up little pink weights and flop around and get equivalent hypertrophy.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes, with some caveats. Okay, okay, so, and this is something I like, like, like to explain it, explain a little bit. Um, so for example, in my training I still use heavy weights partially because I like to, it's, it's fun. You, you'll feel yourself getting stronger. But I use, I use BFR and be strong as a way to supplement my training. So I'll use It as like a finisher or topper on those heavier lifting days. Um, and then I'll use it on my, my active recovery days to sort of still get that anabolic signal for the muscle, still get the, the tendon and ligament adaptations and the bone adaptations using those lightweights. And over time what that's done for me is allowed me to feel great. I'm not over overly sore. You know, at any given time I'm recovering properly, I can still think. You know, you have these giant training volumes that, where you're pushing, pushing, pushing, that's a huge stressor on the body and that's going to affect your cognition.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. If you're too stressed, you got to recover. And I think there's something else I wanted to ask you about this forever. So. So if I put a B strong band on and then I'm doing say some curls, I'm probably not doing a lot in my forearm unless I'm doing some special movement. But because the forearm is also hypoxic and it may just be doing stabilization, I'm probably getting a lot more building of those muscles than I would without the band. Right.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

For sure. And coming back to your question is can you expose someone who's used to lifting super heavy weights and give them a 5 pound dumbbell? Typically we think of working in the 20 to 30% of 1 RM. So that 5 pound dumbbell might not be quite enough for. But it's actually pretty amazing. I've played with this where I go, just how effective is bfr? And I'll do that with a five pound weight. I might have to do more volume, I might have to do more reps, but I do get a really pronounced fatigue signal. Despite using such a lightweight.

[Dave Asprey]

I've loved my B strong. I can't say I use it all the time. I'm on the road a ton. But I'll show you downstairs in the lab where I have all the stuff. They're right there. And if I'm going to do something, you put it on. And you really do feel a different kind of fatigue. Everybody wants less wrinkles, better hair, stronger.

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[Dave Asprey]

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[Dave Asprey]

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[Dave Asprey]

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[Dave Asprey]

I had injuries in both shoulders. I'd torn some stuff, so I had to lay off the shoulder workouts. And I couldn't do even curls, just not as heavy until I fixed it with a bunch of stuff, stem cells and whatever. So I would do the B strong and you get that incredible pump. And maybe more importantly, okay, use it for finishing. You're in really good shape. But if we were to look at say like Biolane's mom, she probably can't lift as much as, you know, he can. Right. For obvious reasons. So we can take, you know, someone who's elderly and we can put B strong bands on them and they can do, maybe even with resistance bands, they can do very lightweight and they get the benefits of heavy when they couldn't do it.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly. And that magic, that really is what my dad's vision with creating V Strong. It was to allow for those populations that either don't want to or can't lift heavy or can't train at a high intensity because that's where really, that's where the exercise benefits are reaped. Right. Is that it? Is that high intensity or high load type exercise? Yes. It's very good to get a certain amount of steps a day. It's very good to, to move the body consistently throughout the day. But to really reap the absolute benefits of exercise, those high intensities are essential. And, and this was a way to allow for a population that isn't used to training at a high intensity to reap the benefits of high intensity exercise by the application of BFR and movement.

[Dave Asprey]

Does BFR also help to stabilize blood sugar levels?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So coming back to what I said earlier, muscle contraction and hypoxia allow glucose to enter the cell independent of insulin. So you're getting both. And, and this is often a point of confusion with bfr generally, you know, some BFR can induce partial restriction of arterial inflow. And so that might affect how Much the. The muscle is getting oxygen, but. But really, in my estimation, it's the impediment of venous outflow that is just damming up the system. I think often people forget that the circulatory system is completely connected, I mean, as obvious as that sounds. But by putting in a slight impairment on one aspect of it, you're disrupting the entire circulation.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And so what happens is the blood doesn't become hypoxemic or low oxygen. It's the tissue that becomes hypoxic. So that. That really does two things. Number one, it allows for glucose to enter the cell, so you can just increase your glucose uptake that way. It also, as I mentioned before, driven by pressure gradients. So you're actually extracting more oxygen from the red blood cells because there's a. There's a larger gradient between the oxygen and the red blood cells and the tissues that are. That. That capillaries are feeding. And then you're also combining it with muscle contraction, which is also going to help clear glucose.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And so this is actually something that, you know, if you haven't tried BFR or be strong before, it's important to have some electrolytes nearby because it can. It can get you into a state, especially if you're not used to a pretty high intensity. It can get you into a state where you're a little bit nauseous, that.

[Dave Asprey]

Is like your blood pressure drops. Or is this a racing heart rate?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Probably a lack of tolerance to lactate.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Fundamentally. And low pH. Just everything that is associated with a disturbance in homeostasis from exercise that people just aren't quite ready for. And so I. I always tell people to start out at a relatively low pressure, start with a few exercises to begin, see how you respond, and then you can start, start ramping things up from there.

[Dave Asprey]

It can be confusing because you're saying this isn't very intense, but you're changing signaling inside the body to make it more intense than it feels, which lets you do more. Right. So I love that you're warning people. I would just say, at a minimum, salt in your water before you do it. And maybe some other electrolytes too. Like element or something.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And just one more piece there. Often what people will do is they'll pump it up as high as they can and just try to kind of go all out. One of the aspects of BFR is that you can sort of, in a sense, and I say this with quotations, train the vascular system to increase your ability to Vasodilate in response to that. And so starting out with a lower pressure and then progressing that just like you would progress your exercise intensity or volume is a great way to sort of have a long term adaptation from BFR training rather than just jumping into it.

[Dave Asprey]

There's two things I've learned from doing this for a long time. Haven't studied it the way you have, but enough. One of them is that the. The buckley things for $12 on Amazon, they don't work. It's not called tourniquet training. It's called blood flow restriction training. So you need to have precise control over it. That's probably the most important thing is those things just don't work. And the other one is that you get systemic benefits even if you just do arms or legs. And I guess the final bonus one is you can't really blood flow, restrict your glutes. But I found out a way. I just put the blood flow band around my neck and I pump it up and I just. Blood flow restriction for the whole body. It's a good idea, right?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

How's that worked out for you guys?

[Dave Asprey]

Do not try this.

[Sponsor Voice]

I'm just.

[Dave Asprey]

Please don't do that.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

But. So let's talk about why not to do that.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. Why not?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Right? The. The brain is really good at maintaining its blood flow.

[Dave Asprey]

Yes.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Okay. And also, we don't have the same capacity that we have in the skeletal muscle to engorge the muscle the way that we engorge the brain the way that we can engage the muscle. It's a different tissue. And not only that, your blood flow to the brain is very fine tuned. You don't really want to mess with it. And highly.

[Dave Asprey]

Do you recommend studies of that?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

No.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. This is really. I don't remember where this popped up on Instagram, but.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Oh, for concussion.

[Dave Asprey]

No, this is way more fun than that. Okay, so there are certain people who like to be choked in the bedroom during certain acts. And they looked at the cognitive health and brain volume of people who regularly participated not in full erotic asphyxiation, but even relatively light choking. And it showed shrinkage of brains. You do not want to cut off blood flow to the brain. You want more blood flow to the brain. Unless you have an aneurysm. Different. Different conversation.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, very interesting. You know, there's been a couple studies looking at jiu jitsu fighters and. Oh yeah, actually doing headlocks and measuring distensibility in. In the cerebral vasculature. And weirdly enough, there's actually some positive adaptations for Getting chucked out a lot.

[Sponsor Voice]

So.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So I, you know, whether it's a lot or a little, this is very preliminary stuff. Okay. Not my expertise. So kind of take it with a grain of. There actually might be some benefit to it. And I don't know if it's in the context of exercise and pushing and pulling.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Overall, my recommendation, to be clear, do not put a blood pressure, a BFR cuff around your neck.

[Dave Asprey]

No, I'm just gonna go even beyond that. So I've had a couple professional dominatrixes on Kimmy Inch. I wrote about her in the book. And they're trained in choking. And seriously, if you are not trained in how to choke someone safely, there are lots of health reasons beyond, beyond long term damage, as in if you crush the wrong part, they can die hours later. So if you're going to do it like light choking and it's not blood flow restriction, that's a whole different podcast. But I was kind of joking about it. But the real question is if I can put the BFR cuffs on my upper legs, right, like kind of above the quads almost. I'm going to get everything in my leg, do my calves, do my feet, all that stuff. Stuff. But I still can't get my glutes. And glutes are such foundational muscles. Am I going to get any glute benefits if I put the b strong bands on my legs?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So this is what's really interesting. And my dad and I were super skeptical around what we call the proximal adaptations. Right? The adaptations, proximal or above the band. What we've found in the research, not necessarily my research, other people's research, which I always give credit to, that we're seeing the pecs increase in muscle size, increase in muscle strength, we're seeing the glutes increase in muscle size and strength. And what's. Again, it's coming back to this idea that the entire circulatory system is connected. So just because you're restricting blood flow, there might be some unique adaptations to, to distal or below the cuff. But you're also fatiguing the fibers in the glutes when you're doing, doing a Bulgarian split squat, for example. And you know, I would encourage people to actually try that. I think one of my favorite exercises, and actually least favorite is a Bulgarian split split spot because it is so hard to do, but it's super effective. And you'll notice your glutes are sore with very large weights or with the.

[Dave Asprey]

B strong bands than without using the same Weight.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, got it.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. And. And that's actually a good point. I think often people say, oh, BFR doesn't cause soreness or things like that. What it is is any novel exercise you're doing is going to induce some muscle soreness stemming from a little bit of muscle damage, but also just dysfunctional muscle contraction after being fatigued. So you are going to get a little bit sore. And we wouldn't see that soreness with that same load without VFR if there wasn't some acute stimulus to cause adaptation. And again, we're seeing in these studies that they're not only growing the muscle, the vasculature, below the cuff, they're also growing it above the cuff.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. So we have direct evidence that doing blood flow restriction on one part of the body has systemic benefits.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Right.

[Dave Asprey]

So what this means is that if you're listening to the show and there's any reason you can't exercise, maybe post surgery, maybe injury, maybe aging, maybe whatever, maybe just too damn busy, you could get some of the B Strong bands and maybe just on arms or arms and legs, and there's a little, like, blood pressure pump thing. So you get the right pressure, you could do. And you could do relatively light weights, which means you don't need a whole set of dumbbells at home and you can get systemic benefits.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. And this is like a couple hundred bucks. What does the full set cost?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, I think it's just under $500 for 479 is MSRP, and that's the full set of everything for really. Good point. B Strong is one of the very few BFR products that you can do all four bands at once. And so it really goes into a, you know, a very functional circuit training kind of, kind of situation. And I will say, just on. On the note of feeling it, experiencing that blood flow restriction, it's really not until the latter sets that you're starting to induce that fatigue state. It's, it's really interesting on that first set, and we typically, you know, the, the recommended protocol is 30, 15, 15, 15. What does that mean? Mean 30 reps followed by 15 reps followed by 15 reps followed by15 reps with about 30 seconds rest in between each of those sets.

[Dave Asprey]

That's less rest than we normally recommend for heavy weights. Right?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes. Is that because of the significantly. It's. It's because what's going on is you're initiating that stimulus, you're initiating that muscle fatigue, and then you're. Because you're using such Light weights. Normally you would recover within 30 seconds, but because your, your venous flow is restricted, you're not allowing the muscle to recover. And it's almost like a drop set mentality where you're sort of keeping that muscle in a fatig state and they're asking more and more of it, demanding more out of it. And it's in, it's that intentional piece, right. That is able to recruit muscle fibers and that is what causes muscles to increase in strength and grow. And, and so if people are using BFR and you're going, okay, this first set of light weights of, of let's say 20 to 30 reps isn't doing very much or I feel the pressure of the band, that's okay. What we really want is to establish a very strong fatigue stimulus in the sec end of the second, third or even fourth set sets.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Last thing I'll say is those recommended protocols that 30, 15, 15, 15 is, is what is. As I said, it's a recommended protocol. As long as you're hitting that fatigue state within, within subsequent reps and subsequent sets, you're doing bfr, you're going to benefit from it. So I don't necessarily identify with the rigid thinking of we have to stick with, with this rep range. As long as you're eliciting a strong fatigue state of coaching failure, you're good.

[Dave Asprey]

Thank you for saying that. There's so many people like, well, I saw it in a study, therefore it's true. Like actually did they test 29 and then 31? No, they didn't. They picked a number and they tested it and it works. So and, and you might not be the average person in the study. You might be the one who needs two more to get tired. So I think your felt state is pretty important.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, absolutely. And that is key. Again, coming back to the intention of the exercise, it's what a BFR is doing is accelerating fatigue league. And in order to complete that exercise, you're having to recruit more and more motor units. The way you do that is by pushing yourself with intention. Okay. This is the whole theory behind velocity based training. By using lightweights but moving them extremely fast, that actually produces increases in power. And it's because you're, you're, it's a neural recruitment of muscle fibers more than anything. It's a nervous system training. Just like intermittent hypoxia.

[Dave Asprey]

I love we're talking about nervous system training. Training. One of the things that fascinates me is Shaolin monks and they're doing one finger Push ups. And they have no discernible muscle mass, but they're strong. And this is about neural drive more so than mass. And you'll see guys like in Peter, like, more muscle, live forever. More strength, live forever. More power is more accurate or strength or more power, which is another aspect of strength. Right. So if you're very strong, long, and you have a lot of power, is that more important than just having mass and not having the neural strength?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

I would say they're, they're both important, but certainly the strength and power are going to be more functionally important. I think, I think what's nice about having larger muscle mass is that they, you know, your muscles are sponges for various things throughout the body. And so you can soak up your, you know, you have a larger glucose bank for disposal.

[Dave Asprey]

You can eat more ice cream.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, exactly. And, and without, without getting that circulating for too long, you clear triglycerides fast, faster. So in that aspect, muscle mass is important. Muscle mass is also important to, to maintain throughout your life. So, you know, what I've tried to do is try to build a little bit of muscle now in my, in my early 30s, so that I can, it's pretty easy to maintain muscle once you've built it. So then you can sort of rely on that muscle mass as you age and you can age gracefully.

[Dave Asprey]

And that's why there's also studies that show when people use testosterone, even for a brief period, to bulk up, once the body's been bulked up, even if you did when you were 22, come back to it when you're 62, you're going to actually have much better results from exercise.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Absolutely. Muscle rebound or muscle memory.

[Dave Asprey]

So you're saying everyone should do nandrolone? Is that what I said?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Didn't hear from me?

[Dave Asprey]

I'm just kidding.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

I don't have any personal experience.

[Dave Asprey]

And for the record, neither do I have never used nandrolone. I do have some from Mexico in my refrigerator. I just haven't looked up the protocol to do it, but I would probably microdose it if I did. But I have been on testosterone for most of the time since I was 26 because my testosterone levels were lower than my mom's at that age.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Wow.

[Dave Asprey]

So I actually had a physiological need for it and. Absolutely. But I just have physiologically normal levels and I use bioidentical. But I think that's part of the equation. And just when you're young, lift some heavy stuff until you get a little bulky, and then even if you lay off where you get your PhD or whatever. That's fine, right?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, let's talk a little, a little bit about testosterone related to bfr. There's been, there's, it's been shown to show pretty large acute increases in testosterone and growth hormone.

[Dave Asprey]

Man, you totally are reading my mind on this.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

I love. This is right. And so, yeah, acutely. And you know, I have to say there's some debate and controversy over whether these acute increases that are, that are transient in nature are actually having a big impact on, you know, muscle mass or other, other downstream anabolic signaling.

[Dave Asprey]

How transient of testosterone do you get from doing BFR?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

It lasts for about 30 minutes to an hour. Okay. And same with growth hormone. And so as opposed to taking an exogenous steroid where that signal is being, being set at a pretty high level consistently, exercise in general can boost your testosterone. BFR can boost your testosterone to the equivalent levels that high intensity exercise will do. And this is actually one of the things that is nice about using BFR is you can't train heavy every single day.

[Dave Asprey]

It's not good for you.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, it's bad for you. You can't train at a high intensity. You can't do interval training every single day, say. But we're able to reap the benefits and create signals to increase your hormone levels, increase all those anabolic responses systemically with BFR without as much cost, without as much damage mechanically that you'd be getting from those high intensity or high load exercises. And so you can maximally stimulate these, these hormonal responses on a daily basis as long as you can tolerate. But one little caveat in there. It can zap your CNS a little bit if you've ever.

[Dave Asprey]

Nervous system.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. Your central nervous system, it can, you know, if you're pushing BFR every day, especially if you're not super well trained, you, you'll, you'll feel a little bit broken down.

[Dave Asprey]

You know, it's amazing how over training with any technology always sucks.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, right.

[Dave Asprey]

You got to recover.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

It's just the modulation of that is there's a lot more flexibility when using BFR because of the actual absolute lows that you're using rather than high intensity training where you can really only tolerate. You know, elite athletes are maybe tolerating two really, really hard days.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

You know, typically it's, it's one really, really hard day followed by a mix of medium and easier days. You know, it's a little bit different when you get into resistance training. Maybe, maybe closer to three days. But anyway, point being, BFR allows you a little bit more wiggle room to maximally stimulate those anabolic responses without the cost.

[Dave Asprey]

There's some new information about the duration of your testosterone window that's worth talking about.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, please, please.

[Dave Asprey]

And I did an interview with the guys who started Kaiserrex, which is the first oral form of testosterone. And it's daveasprey.com testosterone is where there's a link to that show because everyone keeps asking about it. And Kaiserrex is interesting because you take it twice a day and it creates a transient spike in testosterone. I think it peaks like two or three hours after you take it. So it goes up and goes down. And having been on testosterone cream.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Cream.

[Dave Asprey]

I've tried patches and gels which don't really work very well. And injectable, both sub qim. And then like all the things I've been on for two and a half decades to keep my levels where they ought to be. And it's been life changing. I highly recommend if you're low on testosterone, you have to fix it. I don't care. You do it, but fix it. So about six, maybe nine months ago, I switched over to oral, which is way less work than stabbing myself. I actually, on ultrasound, where I usually inject on both sides, you can see disruption of my fascia from hundreds and hundreds of testosterone injections over the years. So I actually had to go in and do some shockwave on that to just recorrect the tissue. So there's reasons you might not want to inject. This is muscle, not subkey, which is harmless. So what I found is that doing a pellet of testosterone caused me to lose a bunch of hair really fast. Because your levels go up and stay up. The body loves for levels to go up and down on a circadian basis. So if I time my Kaisertrex right, it's. You take it when you first wake up in the morning. So you get a morning spike, right? And then you take it midday. So you get a midday spike and it should be lower at night because your T is low when you sleep. And those two spikes, I think it works like high intensity interval training. It goes up and then down. The body's like, all right, I got the signal, got to do it, put on muscle. And it seems to work because I work out not very much. I'm using AI and upgrade labs and all, but I'm like super cut. It's. Yeah, kind of ridiculous. So that's new data. I think Kaiserrex is going to blow everyone's minds with the data that's coming out from these little transient windows of T. Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

First time hearing about it. But it sounds like exactly the kind of framework that we think about with, with exercise in general and BFR specifically. And in my estimation, I think these transient rises are very important for anabolic signaling. So to your point.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, so the other thing I'll do before date night, I might take an extra Kaisertrek so my transient T levels are a little bit higher during the day, which is not a bad recreational strategy. What does BFR do for libido?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So I'm so glad you asked that question. It's really interesting. We did a pilot study out at Camp Pendleton with the marines and we generated a white paper on it. This was not published in an academic journal or anything, so take it with a grain of salt. But one of them.

[Dave Asprey]

Someone to publish it.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dave Asprey]

So academic journals have lost their credibility.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Says no, we put them through a four week BFR protocol and essentially what we did is we just added an ENT to their existing training.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Okay. So no, it wasn't a super well controlled study. There wasn't a control group. Again, these are some issues that academic journals may have with the study. Just, just, just framing the thing you.

[Dave Asprey]

Every study can be criticized by haters.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

What you learn and actually that's kind of my job is to criticize studies. So. So it's just kind of par for the course.

[Dave Asprey]

But hold on, on. Do you actually criticize the ones you don't like the results of more?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

No. I would say there's some people who.

[Dave Asprey]

Are influencers and PhDs who just love that. I hate that one. While we'll take it apart and look.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Doing studies, doing research is hard. Okay. It like it, it takes you know, up to three years.

[Dave Asprey]

Like it's hard anymore.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly. You can just make up the data. No, it's hard. It's hard work. And so, you know, I have the utmost respect for, for that. And no study can be perfect. I mean I think we're dealing with.

[Dave Asprey]

Humans and how many of them can be reproduced.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Actually that the reproducibility issue is a major issue in academia.

[Dave Asprey]

So we're always.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And a P. Value issue as well. Right.

[Dave Asprey]

So we're always moving in the direction of more truth. But I don't think any study gives us actual truth.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly.

[Dave Asprey]

Is that accurate?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. And that's, that's actually the process of science. Right. You have to like this is. This goes into it. That's why there's meta analyses. That's why there's reviews, that's why there was reviews of reviews or meta analyses of reviews. So it's, it's a, it's a long process and we shouldn't take too much from any one given study.

[Dave Asprey]

So, so we talked about libido and you said it was a long process. So I, I, I finally, I got one in.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

All right, well, it's funny, you know, I, I, I went to ut, I'm a Longhorn, but now I'm at usc. I'm a Gamecock. So, you know, oh man, you do the math. I'm both. Sorry. Complete side segue. I, I love it.

[Dave Asprey]

No, actually segued you on the reproducibility. It's important. So people are listening with baited breath going, what's BFR going to do for my libido?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So one of the very interesting things, again, just added BFR to their existing program, completely unsolicited. These marines who are pretty well known for being, having high libido, pretty, being pretty sexually active came back. You know, it's like 90% of them were coming back and saying, hey, so I'm really horny and my wife, I'm making my wife really happy. Like, is there any bfr, is there any data on what's going on with BFR and libido?

[Dave Asprey]

And it's not testosterone driven because it's just a short rise. Right.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

I think it's multiple things going on.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

You're getting this anabolic effect without the necessary cost. That's, that's normally associated with getting that anabolic response, meaning those high intensity bouts you have, that's a very stressful thing for the body to undergo. And the anabolic response is to help heal the tissue that was potentially damaged and help build it back better so it can handle it for the next, next time.

[Dave Asprey]

So again, less cortisol too likely.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Okay, I say likely. There, there have been studies showing increases in cortisol, again, acutely, transiently, short term, from, from a very stressful stimulus. But some, those increases in cortisol are sometimes involved with this anabolic signaling or at least the, the stress state that you need to actually trigger this anabolic response.

[Dave Asprey]

Bodybuilders have been taking extra cortisol for years to put on muscle.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Oh, interesting. I didn't know that.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, they take Cortez because if you over train, you need to help the body make enough cortisol. You can't make enough cortisol, you kick over to adrenaline.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Right.

[Dave Asprey]

So this is less Common today. But I have been taking bioidentical cortisol for many years. If you want to not have jet lag, you take 5 milligrams of Cortef two times a day for the first three days and there you go, you didn't get jet lag.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And this is a perfect example why we shouldn't demonize certain hormones. It's all involved in the milieu of adaptation and the stress response. So it's very, very important. You said that. I think what's going on is yes, you're getting these anabolic hormones going, but you're also stimulating nitric oxide production.

[Dave Asprey]

I thought you'd get there.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And nitric oxide synthases. And so that's going to help libido, that's going to help maintain an erection and things like that. And in fact, combining it with things like nitrates, as long as you have the lactate or the dehydrogenase necessary to actually break down that nitrate into nitrite. I know that no know N101 is a very good supplement. Achieve that.

[Dave Asprey]

Their local friends been on the show. And Vasconox is maybe a longer acting. I actually take both.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Okay. Right.

[Dave Asprey]

And Vasconox is from Calroy who's been a sponsor on the show. Really good science between the two of them. So I literally take half a dose of ascanox and an N101 in the morning and at night because I like having blood flow in my brain and.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Other parts in other places. You know, I would say the, the blood flow down there is a great surrogate for blood flow systemically and, and in the brain. And that's, you know, that's why Viagra. What's the other one? Cialis. Cialis people take it to actually increase cerebral blood flow.

[Dave Asprey]

I m not just. Yeah, I do 5 milligrams every night. And if I ever. To get. If I ever have to get in a sword fight with Brian Johnson, I. I think that's kind of. Sorry, Brian, we're about to.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

My money's on you.

[Dave Asprey]

So I don't think I want to be in that fight. I see.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So. So back to it. I think there's a. Multiple things occurring. I think the ease or the, the recovery aspect. Right. Stimulating these increases, which high, high intensity exercise does. Right. It still increases your Enos production, your nitric oxid synthases.

[Dave Asprey]

Can you talk about Enos versus Inos versus Nas for a minute? And what BFR does Because most people don't know this.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So nitro and synthase is really produced in just about every cell in the body. INOS represents inducible nitric oxide oxide synthase really prevalent in the brain. Endothelial nitric oxide synthase is. Is produced in the endothelium.

[Dave Asprey]

That's the one you want?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes. And. And you produce nitric oxide from this by increasing what we call sheer rate, or the amount of friction that the red blood cells are. Are pressing up against the inner lining of the. Of the. Of the blood vessel, which is the highly involved in. In vasodilating the arteries, vasodilating the arterials, and maintaining blood flow into certain areas. And that stimulation of the ENOS system will help you produce more nitric oxide. This is one of the issues that we get into with dysfunctional nit nitric oxide synthesis, where we have an uncoupling of that process and that. That is really worsened by oxidative stress and inflammation. Really the positive feedback loop that's associated with atherosclerosclerosis and development of plaque is really oxidative stress, inflammation, dysfunctional enos. Dysfunctional? No. Bioavailability and production. Various things getting under the endothelial wall, creating plaque. And then we have a vessel injury that releases this plaque, and we have a whole downstream of negative issues going on from there.

[Dave Asprey]

If I translate that, that to be slightly less medical, but I totally see what you're saying. Three kinds of nitric oxide. There's the endothelial, which is the stuff we want in our blood vessels. And if your body works right, you can take any of the nitric oxide type of things that work. Beets usually don't work, but you take those, and then your body will make endothelial nos, which protects you. And then there's neural in nos, which is highly present in the brain. And then there's inducible.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Dave Asprey]

An inducible is usually good for you unless you have dysfunctional genetics like I do. And then you make too much inducible and the body then can't quench the free radicals, which are called peroxy nitrides.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Which, by the way, their chemical formula is. Oh, no. Oh, n o. Oh, I love that. I don't know if you know that.

[Dave Asprey]

No.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

When I found that out in a textbook, I was just laughing to myself like, no. Combines with superoxide to create an oh, no situation.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh my gosh. Gosh. We just had a whole sod conversation on a podcast right before this one. We were actually talking about spirulina and what that does.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Interesting.

[Dave Asprey]

And how that can help to block that effect. So there's like this complex stuff going on. If I do blood flow restriction and I'm looking to increase nitric oxide levels, what is the mechanism by which BFR raises nitric oxide?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So multiple things going on, on in general increases in what we call sheer stress. Like I mentioned before, that friction up against that endothelial wall will trigger that Enos production of nitric oxide. And what Enos does is it actually takes L arginine and converts it into L citrulline and nitric oxide. That nitric oxide then diffuses. So if you have the, the endothelium lining here, we have the smooth muscle lining here, here's the lumen of the blood vessel. Our smooth muscle is here. That nitric oxide will diffuse into that smooth muscle, initiating a cascade of events to actually induce that smooth muscle to relax and initiate dilation.

[Dave Asprey]

And BFR does that better than weight training.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And so what BFR does is twofold. Number one, obviously we're contracting muscle, driving more blood flow into those areas. But number two is we're restricting the venous outflow. So we're getting plenty of arterial inflow into the muscle, but we're, we're, because we're impairing, we're causing a pooling effect which is necessarily dilating all these other arterioles and all these other capillaries to a greater degree without that bfr. Okay, so it's, it's, it's a mechanical aspect and then it's a, it's, it also a metabolic aspect.

[Dave Asprey]

So you're getting two benefits that way.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Right?

[Dave Asprey]

All right. This will be kind of a technical question, but I think it's relevant for a lot of, a lot of listeners. As you age, and sometimes even as you don't age, blood pools in your legs, like when you fly. This is why people wear compression socks. And some people have poor venous return for various reasons. Even fit people can have that. Oh yeah, right. So what causes poor venous return? And is it safe to use BFR on my legs if, if you have a hard time doing that?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So number one, we call it venous capacitance. Right. It's the ability for your veins to hold blood.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And when we're standing, about 70% of our blood is actually pulled in our legs. And, and it's, it's really the actions of the, what we call the skeletal muscle pump that is going to squeeze those veins. And because the veins have these one way valves, it pushes blood back to back towards the heart, increasing venous return.

[Dave Asprey]

Unless your valves are Dysfunctional.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly. So if you're, if you have valvular dysfunction or if you have venous insufficiency, you have varicose veins, that is going to impede your ability to basically mobilize that blood back to the heart to then be compensated. Doubt.

[Dave Asprey]

What causes venous insufficiency or bad valves.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

All the things that are associated with metabolic syndrome. I mean, it's. It's poor. Poor diet, poor lifestyle, sedentary behavior, excessive oxidative stress. All the things that we.

[Dave Asprey]

Infection. All the things are big ones.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. And I know your, you know, your experience with toxic mold.

[Dave Asprey]

Toxic mold, and in my case, barnella, which directly goes after your arteries.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

See, and I, I didn't know.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. When I was 16, I had a huge amount of symptoms. I started getting like, like small micro varicose veins, spider veins and all, which is weird at that age. But I was bitten by a vampire bat when I was about 10. I woke up with it feeding on me. And 70% of them have bartonella. So one of the reasons I have all the stretch marks I have, it's not just from being obese.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Interesting.

[Dave Asprey]

So that actually goes after the fascia and the lining of your arteries, the endothelium as well. Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Wow.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. So I had to do a lot of recovery and, you know, my full. I'm going to live to at least 180 thing. That's one of the childhood exposures that doesn't work in my favor is one of many. So I just, I just hack it.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So, you know, and coming back to your question, that's really interesting, you also have endothelial lining on your, on your veins as well.

[Dave Asprey]

That's important.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And, and, and filling those veins up and getting them to distend and you have better veins than I do. Getting them to distend helps keep them healthy.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So, you know, we typically think, you know, and people are maybe worried about restricting blood flow and getting that. Those, Those veins really swollen and things like that. It's actually a really positive thing. And what the body is used to, and one of the aspects about human physiology is that we need to stress the system in order for it to adapt. And, and this is something that I always tell my students is exercise is actually not an option. We typically like to put exercise in sort of this, this category of like, it's a nice to have, like, you should be doing it, but, you know, you can kind of get away with not as long as your diet's good. No. Exercise is essential to maintain the system.

[Dave Asprey]

And these, you can certainly do less if it's efficient, like BFR versus not so.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly.

[Dave Asprey]

It's important, but more is not better just because it's important.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Exactly. Yeah. I'm so glad you said that. So it's like, yes, you don't want an overtraining situation, but you do need these bouts of exercise to maximally optimize the human body.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And. And the transient, very acute type of interventions that, that you have talked about are a great way to maintain and build that system. Now, if you're training for a specific event, if you're an athlete who would need to, like I said at the beginning of this, to accumulate this volume, like it's a different category, but to maintain health, to maintain a long and functional life, you can do these really acute, sparse exercise protocols and really get a lot of benefits.

[Dave Asprey]

It doesn't take much to move the needle a lot. And that's the whole business model for upgrade labs is there's a lot of people aren't going to spend 12 hours a week doing zone two. Exactly. So, so how do we get them the results in 40 minutes a week? And it's very doable, but it takes data and science.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And what.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And actually, I'd love to talk about kind of Zone two with regard to bfr, because that has kind of come up in the conversation recently.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, let's talk about that. There's some Zone 2 fetishists. I think there's better ways to get VO2 max. But let's. Like, what do you think?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So, so some of the preliminary work so far has shown exercising In a zone 2 heart rate zone with BFR can increase VO2 max.

[Dave Asprey]

There you go. See, that's interesting. And by the way, for Zone two, it's a very narrow rate of heartbeat, so it's think you're walking fast, you can kind of have a conversation, but not too much. And if you're really going to do Zone two training, you probably need a heart rate monitor. So you know you're in the zone and it takes a lot of time. Can I do less time in Zone two with BFR So far?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

Yay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Okay, so you can get the benefits of that zone two training by doing it for 15 to 20 minutes, for example. And what's really interesting about this is that we are. Are also able to grow muscle while you're walking.

[Dave Asprey]

Exactly. There's been some.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, there's been some really interesting data showing increases in VO2 max that are concomitant with increases in cross sectional Area of the thigh.

[Dave Asprey]

Yep. You want big glutes and big thighs. Right. It also in drives brain volume.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Oh, interesting.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. So the larger the butt, the larger the brain volume, on average. So this is one reason, reason that juicy butts apparently are attractive to men. Because it tells us the women are smarter.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. And they contain the DHA in there.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, you know this. Nobody knows that.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Like, okay, like you're one of five people, unless you read my fertility book.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Well, I live 15 years.

[Dave Asprey]

Well, thank you. Yeah. And what we're talking about there is women store DHA and a little epa. And these are the essential, like fish oils. But you store them in your inner thighs and on your hips and on your butt. And then guys, without knowing this, you know, we're just like, that looks attractive. But the reason our body tells us it's attractive is like that woman can make a smart, healthy baby because she has enough dha.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Right. And I also. You also had mentioned I think the firstborn child is typically higher iq and I took a. I took that as an affront because I'm a third child.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, wow. Hopefully your mom ate some fish.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

You know, my sister is really smart. My brother is really smart. So.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, you're just saying that because they beat you when you were young.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, exactly. Not too bad, though.

[Dave Asprey]

Awesome. This is fascinating, but I kind of don't like Zone two because I have a life. I have nine companies right now, and a lot of them are growing rapidly. And I'm not going to stop doing the show because I get to have this kind of conversation, which is so much fun. So I don't want to do Zone two. I'm willing to do whatever it takes in order to live to 180, but I don't want to do more than I have to. So I am a huge fan of something else that you have studied that very few people have studied that. I've done two episodes on on called rehit. This is also part of Upgrade Labs. Reduced exertion High intensity training. We do something called the AI bike. The AI is guiding your heart rate. Talk to me about reduced exertion high intensity training and can I stack that with bfr?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes. So in my experience with that was really across the hall in the human Performance laboratory here at UT Austin under Dr. Eddie Coyle, where he was using a bike that he designed himself. Himself, which was called an inertial load ergometer.

[Dave Asprey]

Hold on. This is a human performance lab. That's not an empty room. Just want to double check.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

No, it is Full.

[Dave Asprey]

This is a real one.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

It is. It has been at UT for multiple decades and it's very full of a lot of different equipment. And some of my best friends are coming out of that lab.

[Dave Asprey]

I'm gonna have to introduce her. I gotta, I live in Austin. I gotta go hang with these guys.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Absolutely, I will.

[Dave Asprey]

I'll do like a dinner party for them.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

But what was really interesting right when I had kind of started my grand graduate work, he was working on this inertial load ergometer.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. Is this like an assault bite kind of thing?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Similar. Okay. And I'll explain it briefly. It's kind of nicknamed the power cycle.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

All it is is it's a flywheel that. It's pretty heavy.

[Dave Asprey]

Those are brutal.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And what it is, is you just have the inertial load of the wheel and they're four second bouts of, of what we call. And you'll, you'll get a kick out of this super high intensity interval training or. Or it's the. Okay. Okay. And so what you do is you do four second bouts of this ultra maximal effort on the bike. Then you rest for a period of 20 seconds to, to three minutes, depending on the protocol.

[Dave Asprey]

Ooh, I like this. You got four seconds and then how many seconds?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And then 20. Anywhere from 20 seconds recovery up to three minutes of recovery was what they were looking at.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. And so this is much shorter intervals, but it's also really intense that four seconds.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Right, exactly. And there you usually doing somewhere between 10 and 20 sets of this, which, which honestly I don't think is super necessary. I think it's. It. I think you could probably get away with with less, but it was really interesting.

[Dave Asprey]

Six to eight would be optimal.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, I think so. But this is what they've looked at in that lab and there's been some really cool data that's been generated from that, especially in older adults who, you know, kind of have those same issues. And so actually sort of on the tail end of my time there, we were playing with the idea of adding blood flight restriction to, to this, which maybe you get away with three or four sets of this and you're stimulating these responses. And what's really interesting about the BFR especially B strong is that you're, you know, people typically think about it as a low intensity or a low load type type thing, but there's actually sprint training with BFR that has been shown to be pretty effective as well. And this is in people who are pretty well trained and can tolerate these, these things. But even just doing a 4 second ultra sprint with BFR and then keeping the bands inflated created might help accelerate things like VO2 max or capitalization mitochondrial biogenesis again.

[Dave Asprey]

So I guess my, my take on things. If I'm gonna go to the trouble of exercising, I want every possible benefit I can get.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. And you're just explaining it. All right. Two more potential stacks with it that you may have studied. Or just tell me what you think because you're an expert, you kind of know how things work. Whole body vibration and bfr. I do this sometimes to stand on my plate. Okay, tell me how it works. Works.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Perhaps one of the critiques with BFR is that we're not in a low load or low intensity type environment. We're not getting the mechanical loading on the body.

[Dave Asprey]

You are.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Which has. Right. Which has some specific stressors that leads to specific adaptations like the fascial plan, the fascial, the joint integrity, small changes in the foot structure to be able to handle that mechanical load as well. So a way to sort of biohack that is to introduce the vibration plate which induces a change in mechanical load. Right. Because of that vibration, your mechanoreceptors within your muscles are responding to it as if it is a high mechanical load. Then you're ramping up the metabolic stress. Excuse me, the metabolic stress with the bfr. And so I, you know, potentially getting the best of both worlds by, by working out on this vibration plate with the BFR bands accelerating your metabolic stress and then the vibration accelerating your mechanical stress from that exercise.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. So that's a good thing. And you could just stand on it or you can do squats or some planks on a whole body vibe plate. Okay. The other one, which is super intense, but that's kind of how I like to roll is I'll put on BFR bands and then I'll slap electrodes on and run electrical stimulation. Not tens, but full on ems. What's that going to do?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

So I still think because of that neuromuscular recruitment relationship and building strength, I still think that actual week actively intentionally contracting the muscle.

[Dave Asprey]

You can intentionally do it with EMS though.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. And so, so that's kind of my caveat is I think it's. It's an active use of that is going to be better than a passive use of it. However, immobilization type studies where they literally cannot move their leg, they've been using BFR in PT where they're actually attaching these electrodes and causing muscle contraction with the bands On. On the leg.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And this helps reduce atrophy.

[Dave Asprey]

The only side effect that I saw from doing that a couple times, I had the elect really close to the band, and I got some bruising by it. Probably just a lot of tension right there, which is. There's no harm to it. I just had, like, a black thing on my.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, we. That. That does sometimes happen. And just to. If people are using it, it's nothing to be overtly concerned with, but it is. It is. It's a bursting of little capillaries at the superficial level right there.

[Dave Asprey]

I have very, very runny blood because I've been blocking thrombin and fibrinogen for 25 years. By the way, if you have long covet or you had Covid or whatever, you probably should nattokinase, serrapeptase and a bunch of other things that make your blood flow. Well, because in my late 20s, my blood would clot almost entirely within 10 seconds of taking it out. And, like, you're going to die of a stroke or heart attack, and you're not even 30. And I'm like, what am I doing wrong? I'm working out. I'm trying to eat right. And I had. One of the reasons I became a biohacker.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Right. So, you know, it is interesting. Just to have a slight caveat here is. It's interesting how all this stress in your early life has led to you. To this. To this point, trashed. And. Yeah, it's just. It's just. It's very. It's very inspiring to kind of see that journey that you're on, because I don't think that people are exposed to this level of sort of stress and illness at an. At an early age. You have to freaking figure it out.

[Dave Asprey]

I think I almost died a couple times. One was the toxic mold. I was so sick. And the other one was that barnella.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

I. You have 15 years of antibiotics every month, and just all the stuff. And. And people. One of my favorites, like, you were never fat fat. And I'm like, I can show you my stretch marks. Or here's my picture from Entrepreneur magazine. The first guy to sell anything on the Internet. That's my fat picture. And they still told me I wasn't fat. I'm like, I don't actually care if you believe me at this point.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But I know it wasn't being fat. That's like the smallest thing ever. It's. If you're exhausted and your brain doesn't work, it's a hell. And that's where I was. I'm like, I'm not going back, and I will spend all my money and all my time to never go there again.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, absolutely. And again, one of the nice things about BFR is that we can enhance cerebral vascular blood flow. Right. All the blood flow flow to the brain. Excuse me. And so before any major event, even before this podcast, for example, I just do a quick body, body weight circuit, and I feel like I'm ready to run through a wall, ready to engage with anybody, ready to talk to whoever. Okay. And, and there's, I think there's maybe a testosterone effect there, but there's also an enhancement. Lactate can be very, very, very, very beneficial for the brain and its cognitive function. So on top of the BDNF effects that we're seeing with BFR as well.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. There's all kinds of new research on lactate and cognition and mitochondrial function, and we probably won't get into that in the time we have.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

But I do have to ask. So we, we did a little tour of my crazy vitamin room, and I gave you a big handful of cognitive enhancers. How is your brain feeling right now?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

I feel great. I mean, better than normal, I think so.

[Dave Asprey]

I think it sounds like it's subtle, though.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

I kind of gave you like a.

[Dave Asprey]

Course level of those things.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Did you? So maybe it's taking a little bit of time. I, I tend to lock in. So I feel, I feel very good. Right.

[Dave Asprey]

You're already in flow anyway.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, I, I, I kind of get myself there, but I definitely feel like word recall is pretty, pretty good right now. You know, I think we're just vibing and sweet. That's, that's great.

[Dave Asprey]

And for people wondering, I gave him a bunch of stuff, but one of them was aniracetam, which I've talked about lots of, of times. It's my favorite of the Rasatan family. Been on it almost every day for 25 years. Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Wow.

[Dave Asprey]

It, it's neuroprotective, but it increases memory IO so you can remember things more easily. Like, what was that? And it just comes to you, Right.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

You know, to your point, I haven't had a moment where I'm like, oh, what was that thing again? It's been, it's been fresh. It's been right at the top of the, top of the executive function there.

[Dave Asprey]

So it's kind of crazy. When I first started taking these things, I was maybe 25 and had such bad brain fog. I blew twelve hundred dollars on, like, European smart drugs.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

When you couldn't really get them, like no one talked about it. There's no Reddit, there's no nothing. And I actually read about them in a paper newsletter called Smart Drug News from the 80s. I found them posted on something called Usenet, like, okay. And I ended up getting mentored by the author of that Steve, folks. And so I ordered these things and I took them for a week and I'm like, son of a. That was 1200 pre Biden dollars. It was like a lot of money back then. And I was like, these don't work. So I stopped. And the next day I was in a meeting going, what was I going to say?

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Wow.

[Dave Asprey]

And I realized you notice the absence of performance more than you notice an increase. I feel more like myself and it's just natural. And when you go back to your old ways, like, I don't want to go there.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

So it could be that.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

That's really interesting too. You know, I also take creatine pretty consistently, especially last night. I was, I got in really late. I think I, I went to bed at like 2am last night just because of the travel and everything. So I did a 30 gram stat.

[Dave Asprey]

30.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

30 gram thing.

[Dave Asprey]

That's creatine.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Now. May not be necessary, especially because I take a consistent amount every day.

[Dave Asprey]

I do about 10, 15.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, I do about 10 a day. But there's been some recent evidence to show about a 25 gram bolus of creatine can help attenuate the reductions in cognition associated with sleep deprivation.

[Dave Asprey]

I'll go heavy if I don't sleep very well.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

And that's, that's kind of the one use case I use. I have.

[Dave Asprey]

I do notice if I go above 15, even if I take it in the morning, that I wake up at three in the morning and my body is making so much ATP, like I just don't want to go back to sleep. Like it reduce my sleep drive.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Normally if I wake up at three, I, I don't have weird prostate issue or something. But you know, I drink a glass of electrolytes for bed to keep my blood volume up. So I have enough hypoperfusion or enough perfusion in my brain. Not hypo. I have hypoperfusion. Unless you drink it, like, got it. Anyway, I do that. So I might have to wake up to pee one time and if I have too much creatine, like I don't want to go back to sleep, I'm going to go down and get in the sauna and do some Right. So I had to back off on.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Interesting.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

I had a similar experience last night. So it's interesting you say that. I. And I. I kind of chalked it up to a new environment. Like whenever you sleep in a new environment, like, it's whatever. Yeah. And especially, like, it was not a blacked out room. There was. There was light coming in from the outside lights, which is super annoying. But anyway, so I, you know, that may have been. That may have been a place. So I'll start. I'll start playing with that myself and. And see what happens. But the.

[Dave Asprey]

The way to attenuate that, if memory serves, I. I hacked it. I think it was folinic acid.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Okay.

[Dave Asprey]

Like, you can get that if you want to be really masochistic by eating a huge amount of crushed romaine. Or you could just take full in a cast.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah, let's do that second.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, exactly. Romaine smoothies are not delicious.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Sen, thank you for doing physiological research at levels that most people never even think about. It's super fun and I've really enjoyed interviewing you and thanks for making the long flight out here.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah. So such a pleasure to be on here. And I just want to say, you know, thank you for having me on, but also thank you for having my father on several years ago. It's a kind of full circle moment. I was able to watch his podcast before this, and it allowed me to connect with him actually on a very deep level because you have this innate ability to put people at ease and allow them to, like, show their genuine selves. And, you know, my. My dad had been on several public appearances and things like that, but I never saw him as genuine as he was when he was with you. And so that gave me a special, you know, kind of touched my heart.

[Dave Asprey]

He was a master of his field and a really nice, humble guy. And so I'm. I'm happy that you're continuing on in his legacy. So thank you.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

If you guys like today's episode, like, hold your breath or something or do any of the things we just talked about because. Because there are levels of resilience you probably haven't felt yet, and they can be yours. And I don't care if you're 102 or you're 22, this stuff works, and it works well, and it's powerful and it saves you time. And in the extra time you have free, you could probably learn how to date.

[Dr. Brian St. Pierre]

It's going to make you want to date too, by the way.

[Dave Asprey]

There you go.

[Podcast Narrator]

See you next time.

[Dave Asprey]

On the Human Upgrade Podcast.

[Podcast Disclaimer Narrator]

A Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used to in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.