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Dave Asprey
I want to get all of my calories from mother Nature and all of my nutrients from mother Nature. That is fantastic. As long as you would only get your toxins from mother Nature. And unfortunately, last I checked, she wasn't making microplastics. There's a big problem with microplastics. They're finding a substantial amount in human brain tissue. They've found them in ovaries and testes, even in semen these days. Sulforaphane in newly discovered research helps you dump microplastic sulforaphane.
David Roberts
We try to talk about just focus on a handful of its benefits, but it has 39 pro health benefits in the science literature.
Dave Asprey
Do you know something that excretes BPA from the body? Yeah, for sure.
Dr. John Gildea
Sulforaphane.
Dave Asprey
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David Roberts
little bit of help.
Dave Asprey
The context for this episode is that friend of yours, the one who probably showers once every couple weeks, is like, I want to get all of my calories from Mother Nature and all of my nutrients from mother Nature. And then I should. It should just work. I'm like, that is fantastic. As long as you would only get your toxins from Mother Nature. And unfortunately, last I checked, she wasn't making microplastics. So my theory, and the last 25 years of being in the longevity field is that you should give your biology everything it needs to handle the environment you're in instead of the environment that you ideally wish you were in. And if you just do that, man, you feel a lot better, you get a lot more energy, and then you might live a lot longer too, which is the bat. So, David, John, welcome to the studio.
David Roberts
Thanks for having us. Great to be back.
Dr. John Gildea
Thanks a lot.
Dave Asprey
Well, last time here, I don't think we talked about microplastics even months.
David Roberts
We did not. In fact, just after we recorded last time, this, we found this researcher at North Dakota, I believe, had done this research using our form of sulforaphane called broccolite. And he showed that, basically he mobilized microplastics for excretion. And so we found that, and we were like, oh, my gosh. Because we had no idea who was doing that. And so that was, I think, the first time that something like that was shown to help kind of move the needle on microplastics.
Dave Asprey
There's a big problem with microplastics. They're finding a substantial amount in human brain tissue. They've found them in ovaries and testes, even in semen these days. And sometimes I feel like some of these people just are unaware. They're wearing only plastic clothes, drinking water, doing all the things wrong. You're bathing in BPA covered receipts, which don't actually have microplastic much, but they sell bpa. And I realized at a certain point, like, the reproductive act is actually more of a 3D printing activity. There's More plastic involved than human parts. And it's kind of. It's kind of scary. I've asked myself about. About three years ago, really, like, what do we know can excrete these? And I know you could bind them if, you know you're eating microplastics, which you shouldn't, but if you did that, you could take some charcoal, and there's an electrical attraction there which is going to get particles in your gut. But if they're already in your tissues. What did the research with. With Mara Labs Broccolite, what did it show?
David Roberts
Well, the gentleman that did the research is a lysosome expert. So lysosomes are sort of the garbage disposals of the cell. And so it's like a vesicle. And when you ingest the microplastics that get through the gut barrier, they actually get engulfed in these lysosomes and they secrete digestive enzymes. But of course, as you just mentioned, microplastics can't be digested. And so what ends up happening is the more you get these lysosomes that engulf the microplastics, they just sit there and they back up, and they back up the cell. Clog up the cell, much like a, you know, food in a kitchen sink clogs up the sink. And so what he showed was, and he had this hypothesis from a different paper that he read, the sulforaphane would dissolve the lysosomes to release the microplastics so that they could then be excreted. And so that's what. What he showed.
Dave Asprey
So it's dissolving the lysosome itself?
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, it's.
Dr. John Gildea
Yeah. The mechanism is called lysosomal surface translocation. So it's lysosomal dumping in where it. It fuses with the surface and then dumps its contents out. And that's a known phenomenon. It's. It's been shown in papers. And sulforaphane was used as a positive control for those studies.
Dave Asprey
Oh, how fun. All right, guys, that was technical. And it's time for a little bit of cellular biology. But I'll make it really simple. Now, if mitochondria are my favorite part of the cell, they get all the attention. And I've kind of bet my. My biohacking career starting in the late 90s and my health and my brain on the fact that mitochondria were central. And man, was I right that I'm proud of data that's come out since then. I was very intelligent back then because I'm like, I have serious brain fog, and I'm tired all the time. Maybe I should have more energy. That was my whole bed. But I learned a lot since then. But my second favorite part of the cell would be the lysosome.
David Roberts
Oh, wow.
Dave Asprey
And you can look at the lysosome. And by the way, if you're listening, you have a favorite part of the cell, don't you? Okay, only nerds. But the second part, the lysosome, think of it like. Like an incinerator. So it's sitting there inside the cell, floating around. You have multiple lysosomes, multiple mitochondria, and the lysosome is incinerating things. And if you get things like advanced glycation end products, which I've written about in the books and all, they also clog up lysosomes. So you have an incinerator, and you're burning a bunch of trash in it, and pretty soon, there's a bunch of metal scraps built up in there. And of course, you can't burn anything in the incinerator because it's clogged with things that won't burn. So then you dump the ashes, you get all the chunks of metal left over out of it, and then it can work again. And what we're learning from this new research is that the sulforaphane in broccolite and broccoli is a special form of sulforaphane. But the sulforaphane in it essentially causes the lysosome to dump out all of the ashes in that incinerator so that it can start working again.
David Roberts
Yep.
Dave Asprey
All right. There you go. So if you're watching the video, you saw me, like, double checking with our PhD here to be like, did I oversimplify anything? And I didn't. I don't think I did. Right. Okay, good deal. So there you go. You have clogged incinerators, and that means you can't get rid of stuff. And sulforaphane in newly discovered research helps you dump microplastics. That's kind of epic, because we know it's a problem, but do we know what tissues it'll drop them from? That?
Dr. John Gildea
We don't know. The. The data was blood.
Dave Asprey
Okay.
Dr. John Gildea
And so all we know is that it makes it into the bloodstream. There's a very large spike in one day. In fact, the microplastics that were detected in this individual, the highest ever measured.
Dave Asprey
Wow.
Dr. John Gildea
So what was also interesting afterwards is he did the same study again a year later, just to make sure that it was substantial. But his microplastics were very low. The second time he still saw the same induction again, but his total microplastics were much lower the second time he did the study.
Dave Asprey
Wow. So broccolite may be turning microplastics into a problem like heavy metals, where if they build up over time, you just excrete it. My experience with heavy metals started in my mid-20s, where I had no idea about any of this stuff. And just in general, medicine didn't know nearly as much. And I went into one of the very early functional medicine practitioners and said, well, let's run some labs. Look, you're leading. Your mercury are off the charts. So I did some intravenous release called chelation. And I came back and my wife at the time said, oh, wow, your skin's pink. It was always gray before, and it was because I was pretty toxic. And so since then, I just look at in all of the clients with unlimited life and all the people I've worked with over the years, like, let's look at your metals. Okay. It's time to bind them and excrete them and get them out. If you wanted to excrete metals, which we know you need to do, wouldn't you need something that increased glutathione levels? Yeah. Can you think of a product that simultaneously binds macroplastic and increases glutathione levels so you can excrete metals? What would that be?
Dr. John Gildea
Yeah, one and two very strong inducers than sulforaphane.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, it is kind of. It's funny, but it's also pretty amazing. It's amazing product. Right. So sulforaphane, we try to talk about, just focus on, you know, a handful of its benefits, but it has 39 pro health benefits in the science literature. And that there's this detox pathways, glutathione, it's the best natural molecule at inducing phase two detox because of the NRF2 pathway. And so, yeah, it is an amazing supplement, not just because we sell it, but because of what it is. And so we haven't done any of the research because there's so much research already out there, mainly coming from Johns Hopkins because they discovered it back in 1992 and have done all of this research. All we are bringing to the market is the only naturally derived, stable form of it in a capsule. And so there's another stable form of it out of France. But it's hard. You don't really. Can't really buy it here. And so all the other broccoli supplements have the precursor molecule called glutaraphanin, and so that they may have the enzyme to try to move it to convert it to sulforaphane. But basically, you know, regardless, it's not inducing. It's not inducing the NRF2 pathway in a way that moves the needle on the biology.
Dave Asprey
And so, okay, when I was a raw vegan, and, guys, I'm. I'm very ashamed to say that I was a raw vegan, I'm. I. I apologize publicly and ask for your forgiveness that I would ever make such a terrible biohacking mistake. But when I was a raw vegan and by. If you are a raw vegan, right now, I'm trolling you, but I really was one, and it's not good for you, and you should stop. And I know you're probably doing it for one of three reasons. None of them are valid. If you want to look at other episodes about that. So this is actually a compassionate call. Like, seriously, please take care of yourself, because I made that mistake. But I got into broccoli sprouts. Yeah, man, I could sprout the crap out of them. So my sprouter filled with molds. That was a problem. But this is the only way you can get. This is fresh broccoli sprouts and a lot of them. How many pounds of broccoli sprouts does it take to make one capsule? Like, if I was to do a comparison.
David Roberts
Yeah. One capsule is two and a half pounds of mature broccoli, and then that would be a. About 2 ounces of the sprouts. Got it.
Dave Asprey
So I take six capsules of broccoli on a normal day, and when I fly, I take 12.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
So let's just say it's 10 capsules, which would be 20 ounces of broccoli sprouts. I guess you could juice those.
David Roberts
Yeah, that's what, like a quart. We basically grew my wife's cancer cells in our lab. John grew them and put 60 different supplements on them. And sulforaphane was number three in killing your cancer. And so, of course, because I tried to buy it in all the broccoli supplements, none of them had sulforaphane. They had the precursor. And so we grew the broccoli sprouts. And the joke is I grew enough for 10 families because we had these trays stacked to the ceiling. But the issue is, you can do that. But first of all, some seeds actually don't make sulforaphane. I. Yeah, we. We tested six different organic brands off of Amazon. We're trying to find sources. Right. And some of them didn't have the ability to. Six of the seven didn't have the ability to grow to make sulforaphane.
Dave Asprey
So you just said broccoli sprouts are a waste of time.
David Roberts
But a year later we did it. And eight of. We did it on nine. Eight of the nine could. And so it's a crapshoot. We sell the seeds online not because we're a seed company, but because we know some people want to do that. But we guarantee 400mg of sulforaphane can get converted from a half a pound of our seeds.
Dave Asprey
That is actually really cool. I imagine that you make no money from disease.
David Roberts
Okay.
Dave Asprey
And that's just because you're helping people and because of the story with your wife's cancer. We didn't talk about that in this episode. Do you want to kind of share with the audience what happened?
David Roberts
Yeah. So 2012, Mara was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was a nurse, knew what chemotherapy did and didn't want anything to do with it. And so. And with my background in sciences, she asked me to kind of figure out some natural options. And that same week that she was diagnosed, I met John through a friend and basically would email him or call him every day for the next five years. Pretty much gave him Sundays off, but asking him questions and trying to really learn because his wife had gone through the same thing ten years earlier. And. And so he was an expert in cancer. And so when after we grew the cells in his in, in our lab, basically we had sort of a blueprint of, okay, what's. What can kill her type for cancer. And. And so again grew all these broccoli sprouts. But like basically I had a one to three year old, you know, kids, boys, and, and you know, it's a big deal to grow that many. And if you travel, you. They don't travel well in the summers. They mold. And so over lunch I was like, John, it'd be really, I mean, it kind of venting. It was like we, you know, it'd be great if there were. If there was a stable form in a capsule. And so literally two years later, he's like, we're all three of us, Mara. John and I wrote lunch and he's like kind of matter of factly, I stabilized it.
Dave Asprey
Wow.
David Roberts
And we were like, what? No, I had no idea he was even trying to. And so we tested it to at a third party lab. Sure enough, he had stabilized It. And so we were with another company, supplement company at the time. And we're like, let's just sit on this. And Mara's like, no way. We, like. She knew it was a game changer for people, and she. So she began to raise the seed money for the company. Unfortunately, she died a bit about six months later.
Dave Asprey
Later.
David Roberts
And so after that, we were sort of catalyzed and left the supplement company, started Mar Labs and had had broccoli. It was our first to the market.
Dave Asprey
Wow. And you named the company after Mara, which is. Which is really cool.
David Roberts
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And so, I mean, basically, our capsules, we don't have fillers. We don't have flow agents because. And we have it in the smallest capsule we can. Because sick people typically can't swallow and kids can't swallow these big pills. And Mara swallowed a lot of big pills. And we're like, no, we're not doing that. And so basically, we just want the powder that we make to get in there and as much of it as possible.
Dave Asprey
It makes so much sense. You said something there that pushed a button for me. You said that you raised seed capital. What a story. And this idea of stabilizing it is important. So if you're listening to this going, what are these guys talking about? Broccolite is the only stabilized form of this sulforaphane. And stabilizing it means that it won't break down by itself in air or light. And a lot of supplements have a problem with stabilization. That's why they're in bottles. You don't keep them on the windowsill or in bright light and things like that. But for very fragile molecules like sulforaphane, if you can't stabilize it, you can't make it into a supplement that works. This is the only compound that. That I'm aware of that stimulates all three of the detox pathways. And if you've read my books for years, I've written about glucuronidation or calcium D Glucarate. It's just like an unknown thing that's second in importance to glutathione. So you could take glutathione that doesn't absorb that well orally, or you can spray it on with oral wellness, which actually works really well. And it increases glutathione levels, which I highly recommend. You can take broccolite internally, which stimulates production inside the cells. Right. And gets the calcium D. Glucarate pathway. Glucuronidation. And now we are just discovering it helps to get rid of microplastics.
David Roberts
Yeah. And one of the. Also one of the differentiators is we add the cousin molecule from watercress, so it's called pitc. It's a. It's a cousin molecule to sulforaphane. But what that does is it. It increases the induction of these pathways of the NRF2 by synergistically. So additively is one plus one equals two. Synergistically, one plus one equals five. So there's a five times effect. Wow. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
Okay, so broccolite plus watercress elite. Tough naming.
David Roberts
Yeah, no, but I mean, that's the other differentiator, too. Is that the broccoli supplements on the market that have glucoraphanin. That's just the precursor of sulforaphane. That's all they have. We don't talk about this enough, but we excrete all or extract all of the isothiocyanates, all of the cousin molecules in the seed, and there are seven of them. And so they work in synergy. They work together. It's like that's. It's basically the same as the Johns Hopkins studies where they make a broccoli sprout beverage as the sulfur thing. Wow.
Dave Asprey
Okay. So you've really fully. We'll say fully. It's not just dehydrated broccoli sprout juice, but you fully replicated what it does in a pill. I think going back 10 years to one of my books, I talked about broccoli sprouts and, you know, the benefits across a broad spectrum of things. There just wasn't a convenient way. And I don't own a sprouter right now because I have a life. I actually, like, go on dates sometimes and things like that. And if I was home sprouting, never would want to date me. Number two, I wouldn't have time to go on dates. It's incredibly time consuming and finicky. Not something that I enjoy. And if you're offended because you sprout, then I bow down to your sprouting prowess. I just found it to always be a chore. Your longevity stack is probably missing something important, something that helps you with aging where it matters most. Your mitochondria. They are the engines inside your cells, and they make all the energy that powers your brain, your muscles, everything in your metabolism. And as you age, they slow down, and then you slow down, and that's when you have less strength. It takes you longer to recover, and you start to lose your edge. It happens earlier than you think. And when you start to feel it, that's when aging really hits you. If you're looking for a way to solve that problem, listen up. Timeline, powered by Mitopure, contains urolithin A, which is a compound that supports your mitochondria like no other substance we've found so far. Think of it like the battery in your cell phone. When the battery drains, your phone gets slow and then it stops working. Mitopure is a full recharge for the battery. It powers you. Timeline spent about 15 years and more than $50 million to crack the code on this. And the data says that this is at least as important as nad. That's because Mitopure delivers the exact dose that scientists used in clinical trials. And I've used Mitopure for years because I'm planning to live to at least 180 and I want to feel good the whole time. And here's some news. Timeline just dropped their price. A one time purchase is now $99 a month and if you go on subscription it goes down to $79 a month. So go to timeline.comdave and you can get an additional additional 20% off your first month might appear. Comes in really good sugar free gummies. They're NSF certified and clean label project verified. It's very high end longevity supplement. So you end up living longer by eating things that taste good. And there are no excuses now. So if you're serious about improving your longevity stack, go over to timeline.com Dave get 20% off your first month. Is your cookware actually poisoning your food? Most nonstick pans contain pfas or forever chemicals as they're known. Manufacturers add them so the pans will be slippery. But get this. A recent study found a single scratch on a nonstick pan can release about 9,100 plastic particles. Then you get to eat them and those chemicals don't break down and your body stores them. And studies show they can contribute to immune problems, insulin resistance, even cancer. A company called Our Place makes high performance toxin free kitchenware and I've been using it for years. Their products have zero forever chemicals like PFAS and ptfes. So you can cook amazing food without wondering what's in your pan except for what you're cooking. Their cookware set will upgrade your entire kitchen and your meals. The set includes two multifunctional always pans and two perfect pots in many and full sizes. And those replace a bulky expensive stack of cookware. It's just four pieces and it lets you sear saute fry, bake, boil, roast, steam and whatever else you could do with the pan. Our place designed their products for performance and long lasting quality. And I've been using my frying pan for about six years now and it's still perfect. So stop using toxic cookware and upgrade to our place today. Go to fromourplace.com Dave and get 10% off everything. Plus you get 100 day risk free trial and free shipping and free returns. So you can just give it a try and there's no risk. That's fromourplace.com Dave this upgraded my cooking
Dr. John Gildea
issue is when we, when we make it into the final product. One of the issues that a lot of people has have with the sprouts is the sulfur high amount of sulfur hydrogen sulfide that's removed during our procedure. So some of those bad side effects of having too much sulfur are also removed. So back to your idea of trying to get rid of some of the things that there's always a balance of good and bad. And if you can engineer as much of the good as you can with, with trying to modulate the bad parts. And everyone that works at our company knows that because the days that we cook, it's barely able to walk around there unless you're used to it.
Dave Asprey
You can. Smells like broccoli farts basically.
David Roberts
Basically, yeah.
Dave Asprey
And there's, when I look at the genetics across the people in the concierge VIP program, Unlimited Life, which is, you know, very high end, 40, $50,000 worth of lab tests for each member. So that this is not something that, that most people do. A meaningful number of people are sensitive to sulfur. They have a hard time genetically or because of their microbiome getting rid of sulfur. So if they eat high sulfur foods like garlic and onions and even collagen, right? Or of course broccoli, then it actually slows down their mitochondria and it messes up their, their detox systems. And there's another group of people who need more sulfur who can't make enough glutathione and things like that. And some people actually have both. They have low glutathione and sulfur problems. And those people are kind of screwed unless they have access to something like, like broccoli because you can stimulate the pathways without over introducing sulfur. So that's kind of technical stuff, but we'll just say if you're the kind of person who just, you know, has a hard time with sulfur and eggs and all the other things like that, or broccoli, you may be in one of those categories. And it's worth knowing your genes and knowing your microbiome so that you can see what's going on.
Dr. John Gildea
But I was just thinking about the. Your comment earlier about glutathione being in there is inside the cells. That kind of confused me for a while, mechanistically. But cysteine is a sulfur containing compounds. You're a correct form of sulfur. And when sulforaphane gets to the cell at the right concentration, it dramatically increases the transport of cysteine, the cysteine transporter.
Dave Asprey
Oh, interesting.
Dr. John Gildea
Glutathione inside the cells. And then the famous parts of the NRF2 induction is inducing glutathione S transferase. So then using that glutathione you just made. And so when you think about the whole system, like then you bind the toxin, then you move it out of the cell, then you get it out of the whole system. So it's pretty amazing that it has that whole system in mind to make the glutathione, conjugate it to toxins, then transport it safely out of the body. And that's why people take sulforaphane. And if they'd done fasts and different things to try and detox and they feel really sick, it's usually a lot less. So if you're doing it through sulforaphane,
Dave Asprey
it would make a lot of sense to take broccoli during a fast. Oh yeah, right. Or even before going in your infrared sauna. Right. I do both of those, by the way, because anytime you help your body get rid of toxins, it's going to extend at a min minimum your health span. Which is kind of boring, but at least you didn't put your car keys in the fridge when you were 85. But if you extend your lifespan the way that listeners are doing, then when you turn 86, you don't just keel over healthy, you actually say, oh look, I gave myself another 20 years of healthy life or 40, or in my case, you know, 80 years. You could join me on that. Let's race. But the whole point here is if the toxins are cooking you along the way, probably, and there's actually research published on this, I've seen between 70 and 80% of aging is environmental. Right. So circadian biology and just not exposing yourself to toxins and getting them out as soon as you can, and then there's some amount that's genetic and we've got that, we've got gene therapy for that. It's getting better and better. So the story is don't allow toxins to affect your cell biology. Or at least if they get in there, get them out right away. And that's why, like I said, I take six broccoli every single day, unless I'm flying, in which case I double that. And it's been since our first interview, I've been doing that.
David Roberts
Yeah. Going back to microplastics, one of the. I saw the air filters downstairs. One of the crazy things in studying about this is that over half of our exposure comes from indoor air. And so, you know, if you're getting. Trying to get them out of your body, it's also a good thing to mitigate them and lessen your, you know, how many you're bringing into your body so you can actually get ahead. And so sleeping with a HEPA filter in your room is sort of one of the things we're like. That's a good first step, too. Yeah.
Dave Asprey
People don't talk about how microplastics get in. And it's not necessarily cooking, although cooking is like secondhand smoke. It's the second cause. Cooking fumes are the second cause of lung cancer after secondhand smoke. And since you're probably not smoking anyhow, so if you listen to this show, you know, turn on your exhaust fan already when you're cooking. It's a really good idea. And cook outside whenever you can. That's mostly what I do. The second one is your dryer. Yeah. Don't buy fleece. Like, fleece is bad. Recycled plastic bottles made into tiny little fibers that absorb through your skin and more through your lungs when you wash them. Bad, bad, bad. Don't do that.
David Roberts
Yeah. I mean, if you. Your. Your lint trap, you know, you. Everybody's taken the lint out and there's this poof of dust.
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
David Roberts
And that's my. That's micro plastics. It's the proportional to the microplastic, the. The nylon, the polyester, the. The synthetic fibers that you have on your clothes. And so. And the other bad thing is rugs. Yes. Mostly plastic. Right. Mostly synthetic. Your couches, when you sit down on your couch, and there's the poof of. And if there's foam in there, that's plastic. And so, yeah, having. Opening your windows, getting HEPA filters in there. Really important.
Dave Asprey
Yeah. Look at the carpet here. It's plastic. It's wool. Everything in the house is wool. Or maybe some cotton here and there and some silk. But, yeah, I'm very conscious of that. Because if you have those plastic rugs, you're getting electrical effect from them too. You don't want. So natural fibers. And the other thing I really like to do, though, is I like to add, like, really heavily scented fabric softener to my. To my dryer. So that way, when I inhale the puff of microplastics, they have endocrine disruptors on them to more efficiently poison myself. You think that's a good plan? Micro needles, dryer sheets are the dumbest thing on the planet.
David Roberts
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that, I don't know if you watch that Netflix documentary on microplastics came out in March. I mean, it's soft science. They don't really, but it's more for the consumer. But they talk about it with the issue with fertility, which is the endocrine disrupting and the BPAs with the estrogen mimicking and all sorts of, you know, side effects there.
Dave Asprey
So it's actually kind of shocking that the companies who are making those cash register receipts, you heard it here first, but there's a massive class action lawsuit coming that's like as big as tobacco and asbestos towards bpa. So if you're running Wendy's or something right now and you're putting out those receipts, there is science. It's been shown. And so I just think there's a
David Roberts
lot of liability out there.
Dave Asprey
If I was running a big retail establishment, I'd probably maybe move away from BPA receipts because those are a bigger source even than plastic bottles. And we worry about our plastic. And then we basically rub BPA all over ourselves. It's. It's a crazy time.
David Roberts
Yeah. You definitely want to. I don't touch. I haven't touched a receipt. And I have maybe one or two when they. They force it, you know. Yeah, but. But yeah, I just leave it. If I'm in the grocery store, I just leave it and just. I'm like, I don't care.
Dave Asprey
Yeah. I just say, I don't want that.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
If I. If. Even if I'm at Costco and like, trying to search without your Fourth amendment rights or something, and I'm like, I do not consent to a search. I already bought this stuff, the receipts back at the counter. You can go get it if you want it, but I'm not touching that thing. It's gross.
David Roberts
Y. Exactly right.
Dave Asprey
And then I also will say things like, plus, I don't want to shrink my balls.
David Roberts
You go touch it.
Dave Asprey
And then it creates a moral conundrum for the guy. But I do it really nicely. Like, I'm not A jerk about it. I'm just like, sorry, man.
David Roberts
Yeah. I mean, yeah. So like, decreased testosterone, decreased sperm count, decreased sperm quality.
Dave Asprey
Yeah. Do you know something that excretes BPA from the body? Yeah, for sure.
Dr. John Gildea
So for fam has been shown, we have a list of all the things that are increased. The excretion of. And list is getting really long. And even stuff that they didn't think came out very easily, like the benzenes and things that are in the air. Inner city pollutants in the air are shown to be excreted in really high levels. So it's. It's really in the center of that.
Dave Asprey
All towards removal.
David Roberts
Yeah. And you had heavy metals, lead, mercury. There's papers on that. But even like, you know, I mean, BPA being estrogen mimic, but then estrogen metabolites, you know, the bad. Yes. Which John can talk about.
Dave Asprey
Let's break that down. There's. So most people are saying. Saying there's nothing you can do about BPA except don't touch it. And I gave a talk at a longevity conference a few years ago saying, look, here's the pathway, and it's the one after glutathione, the glucuronidation. And since broccoli hits all three of these pathways, you're increasing our ability to get rid of bpa. And mechanistically, you can predict that. And you guys actually have studies that these are the pathways involved. Right. So, okay, we get rid of that. And then you mentioned the metals. Definitely. And then when it comes to benzene, the reason I take twice as much broccoli when I'm flying as not is because you get huge benzene exposure when you're flying because, you know, it smells like that delicious, crisp jet exhaust when the pilot isn't. They're not allowed to. To actually leave the air intakes on when they're taking off, but they always do. And you get that. That two minutes of smelling jet fuel which has neurotoxins in it. That's bad. So you should definitely be detoxing if you smell jet exhaust when you take off.
Dr. John Gildea
No, that was. That's Nautilus.
Dave Asprey
Yeah, it's. It's not normal. And it's literally the pilots didn't hit a switch, so. Drives me nuts. Only happens on maybe 20% of the flights, but I fly hundreds of times a year. And by the way, guys, if you want to die quickly, fly hundreds of times a year. The amount of mitigation I do to not take all those hits is insane. But a Major part of it is broccoli. And the list I should show, I show a whole episode. Some people have heard of xenoestrogens, right? I've talked about those mycotoxins and synthetic estrogens made by plants and by industry. But estrogen metabolites go deeper on that.
Dr. John Gildea
Estrogen is. The high level of it is saying that when you're fighting a cancer that's estrogen dependent, one of the big problems is that estrogen can be metabolized into a number of different categories. One of them of which is can be converted into an estrogen that causes DNA cross linking. And so that's down an inflammation pathway. And in general, if you improve your inflammation, you'll send the estrogens down a better pathway. And so those estrogen metabolites go down a number of correct versions. You'll have a much better time with your estrogen and your breast cancer. So that was very early on for us in being able to reduce the carcinogenic estrogens and that those generally are either DNA cross linking estrogens or strongly inducing estrogen receptor alpha as a growth promoting thing that goes through C MYC And I only mention that because so many people are worried about the cancer version of estrogen receptor alpha. But it's pretty clear that the growth promoting part of that is through a gene called cnic. And we specifically made berberine product early on because of that, because berberine directly binds to MyC Max heterodimer and blocks C MyC activity. And so in the cancer world, C. MyC is an undruggable target.
Dave Asprey
Oh, that's interesting. So berberine has a unique advantage in blocking toxic estrogen. I didn't know that. Okay, fascinating. And of course Mara Labs makes a really, really good berberine product because you have things that escort it into the cells better. Right.
David Roberts
And get through the gut barrier. Basically the regular berberine out there, even some of the ones that say they absorb a typical Berberine, is 0.6% absorbed. And so, you know, we did a. John did a study looking at our form of berberine, which is Berber elite. And basically he did a study where he ate dinner, didn't eat overnight, skipped breakfast, took two Berber leats and it's hard to measure bioavailability, but he showed functionally he got into ketosis, like ketosis in four hours.
Dave Asprey
So there's effects on ketosis from berberine independent of just dropping blood sugar. I do have a complaint about berberoli. I don't take it every day because my blood sugar Is pretty normal, but I was like, you know, I haven't had any in a while, so I took a couple of them, and it made me hypoglycemic. Right. Because it works much better than normal berberine.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
Like, you take it and your blood sugar goes down. Like, whoa. Like, I'm feeling. So I actually ate a little bit of sugar after that. I should have taken one because my blood sugar was already low. I wasn't eating a ton of carbs. So it's not really a complaint, but it's just saying it works better for dropping blood sugar than normal berberine.
David Roberts
Yeah. And we typically. The directions say to take it at night because most people eat late. And once the sun goes down and your melatonin kicks in, your insulin production shuts down. And so this will help kind of process the glucose, get it into muscle, and.
Dave Asprey
Very cool.
David Roberts
And it helps with sleep. It actually, one of our favorite papers is how berberine, even non. Not our form, even just regular berberine outperforms Valium as a sleep aid. Really? Yeah. And so it increases serotonin 30%, increases dopamine 25%.
Dave Asprey
Wow. I did not know that about berberine either. So berberine is a sleep aid that is cool. And you probably don't want to take too much of it, because if you drop your blood sugar too much at night, you're going to wake up with adrenaline surges. But you take one or two a night, probably with your latest meal. Okay. But not right before bed. Or do you take it right before bed?
David Roberts
I'll. I'll take it right before bed. But I will take it with the. The last meal.
Dave Asprey
Okay, with the last meal. That makes so much sense. So berberine at dinner. You heard it here first. And of course, Berber elite is gonna work better.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
Anyway, I wanna circle back to estrogen for a minute here. Estrogen gets a bad rap. So for guys like, we're men, we need testosterone, not estrogen. And so a lot of guys, especially in the bodybuilding side of things, they'll take aromatase inhibitors and, like, shut down estrogen entirely. And that was what I did in my mid-20s. Now, I did go to the gym a lot to try to lose the weight, but I definitely wasn't a competitive bodybuilder. But I learned so much about hormones from bodybuilders who were much better biohackers back then than most doctors. I think there's been an emerging of knowledge now at the cutting edge in longevity. What I did is I blocked all the aromatase, which Is great because when I'm 26, I have more estrogen than my mom in the lab tests, and that's a real thing. So we blocked it all. I went on testosterone and I was able to have kids. Oh, sometime like eight years after I started testosterone therapy. So it doesn't have to hurt your fertility, you just have to manage it. Right. Since that time, I've been on testosterone most of the time, but I don't take anything that blocks aromatase. I just learn how to manage it. And I can excrete estrogen as much as I want to using natural pathways that are triggered by broccoli. Right. And I'm not saying you should quit taking aromatase inhibitors. I'm just saying that dropping estrogen in men is a bad thing. If you don't have enough estrogen, your cardiac risk and your Alzheimer's risk go up. So men need estrogen. Right. We just don't need that much. And then with women, like, oh, estrogen is good for women and, you know, testosterone, whatever. Women have four times more testosterone than estrogen. Right. So neither one is a masculine or feminine hormone. But women have a unique problem. And this is something we test genetically. And I'm guessing this is not a quotable number. Somewhere around 20% of women in unlimited life who we've tested, they have the genes that make their estrogen go down the toxic estrogen pathway. And there's no way to know this by looking at someone. You can only get this by testing. It's kind of like looking at Apo E3 or for like, it's a risk factor that isn't visible. And if you go into the toxic thing, it's the. Which one is it? It's the four something. Estrone. Estradiol. I don't remember. Do you know the which one that is 17B estradiol. There's a four in the one that we're testing.
Dr. John Gildea
The DNA cross linking.
Dave Asprey
Yeah, it's a DNA cross linking one. Right. I forget the name of it too. It doesn't really matter. Like, it's the bad four. Estrogen is the way my brain stores it. But if you have that, it is critically important that your estrogen detox pathways work. So my take, in fact, all of those people, I say, you need to take broccoli. And so I'm working with Tim Cook, our longevity doc has worked on two heads of state. And we sit down and we go through, is this a pharmaceutical? Is this a nutritus? Well, how do you want to do this? And since everyone has too much estrogen because of toxic mold and plastics and BP and all that. Like everyone should be taking something to help with that. And broccolite is the only thing that does all three of the pathways. The alternative would be you take. And for some people, they need to do this. You take, you know what a spray, glutathione, like the oral wellness stuff. But you also need to get the secondary thing, which means broccoli is the best way to do it, which is glucuronidation. But we never mentioned the other detox pathway. If we have glutathione and glucarate. What's the third one?
Dr. John Gildea
Sulfation.
Dave Asprey
Sulfation. What toxins do we get exposed to that don't go out through one of those three pathways? I can't think of one either. So you want to live a long time or just not have brain fog and obesity and all the other crap. You want all three of those to work. So the body's like, oh, you just gave me way more toxins than mother nature ever meant, but I have way more ability to excrete it. So you stay in balance with the environment. That's why I'm so excited about what you're doing. And the story of the company is great too.
Dr. John Gildea
And even one of the things I think it's so little known thing is that even when you know one particular toxin gets rid of by glucuronidation, if you really look, it's actually also sulfation, you do your glucuronidation induction, there's still, you know, could be a lack in, in one of the other pathways. So you take that and you take broccoli, you're gonna excrete a whole bunch of toxins that you wouldn't. Even if you're doing this great thing that that helps for most toxins. So it's the completeness of the, of the detox removal.
Dave Asprey
When I'm looking at toxin exposure, there's really two things that I'm going to reliably take. One of them is activated charcoal. And I take that away from broccolite. And you do that because if you know it's in your food and in your gut, you just want to bind it. So I take that, wait a couple hours and I take broccoli, right? And most of the time, because if you take charcoal with anything, it binds to it. I don't take the charcoal, but I take the broccolite in morning and night every day. And I think that's just a good Strategy. But we haven't talked about much in this episode about NRF2 and the other AMPK pathways. Talk about those and energy and aging. So our listeners get the download.
Dr. John Gildea
I think the most solid data from science related to longevity is the fasting calorie restriction. And so the way that that pathway is induced is by a sensor that senses your AMP to ATP ratio. And that complex is called AMP kinase. And so when your ratio of AMP to ATP goes high, you stimulate an kinase. And kinase stimulation is sort of like the cleanup crew. It's telling your body to get lean, get. Get rid of all the things that are. That could possibly be hindering what's keeping you from, I guess, getting food. But you're cleaning out toxins. You're cleaning up just about everything. And interestingly, it. It also sort of tied back to the, to the detox and microplastics is it induces TFEB1, the clear transcriptional program. So the sets of genes that make more and robust lysosomes is regulated by amp Kinase, SIRT1, and amp Kinase.
Dave Asprey
So these are major targets of longevity. If you read my longevity book, you've heard the interviews with David Sinclair. We're talking about these pathways. So they're foundational to energy. And what you're showing is that it's also foundational to detox. Right. And you can turn up AMP K, and you do that with broccolite and with your curcumin product, which is Kirk Elite.
David Roberts
That's right. And then the, the TFEB one that he was talking about, you know, when we talk about microplastics, we talk about unclogging the sink with broccoli, but then you increase the size of the plumbing with resverolite. So the resveratrol product increases that. That pathway to kind of get more out more quickly.
Dave Asprey
Your resveratrol product is. It's different because you have things that increase absorption of it differently than what I've seen out there.
David Roberts
Yeah. We have not found a bioavailable form of resveratrol. So don't sue us if you're out there. But. But we think we're the only one on the market that's bioavailable.
Dave Asprey
There's just. In terms of accuracy, and you don't want to rain on your parade. I think there's another one out there that I've worked with that's really good, and I want to be really clear for everyone listening. I bring a lot of supplement manufacturers on the show, but there's 10,000 of them who never come on the show. So I bring in PhDs, people who went really deep. You have a reason for doing what you do? Sure. With Mara Labs, and you're making superior products. And at the biohacking conference, there are at least 10 supplement companies who have
David Roberts
really high quality products.
Dave Asprey
And some of them overlap. And I'm just totally okay with that. So I want you to listen to the show and say, do I trust these guys and do I think that this is worthy? And then you look at your own goals and you say, how do I invest my supplement investment portfolio, which is part of your longevity strategy. And so this is a very high quality resveratrol. I don't want to, you know, rain on other people's parades and at the same time. Yeah, this is good stuff.
David Roberts
So, yeah, I mean, our whole view on things because, you know, my family, the boy, my boys are doing great. They're 15, 17 now. But how much better would we be if Mara was still around? And so having tools to get offer people so that they can see their kids graduate high school, see their kids get married, be grandparents where they can play with the grandkids on the floor, versus the stereotypical rigid old person who can't get out of the armchair. And so all of our products are, you know, being offered so that either because they're not available like broccoli, or they're not available historically in a biologically relevant way. So where it gets through the gut barrier, it gets to your cells, it turns on the pathways that increase your life and keep you healthy and where you can actually feel it.
Dave Asprey
It's awesome. I'm, I'm always inspired that there are very few companies who, who meet the bar for me where you're doing the core research and some of what you're doing looks almost like a pharmaceutical company in terms of the pathway development and the clinical testing and all. So you, you've, you've earned my respect that way just from a science and a biohacking thing, which is why I'm willing to have you on the show a couple times. And I think I'm learning some things on this, which sometimes doesn't happen in interviews.
David Roberts
So thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Early on, I would do all of the, everything that I. So I was doing, even the customer service. So we offer a pretty generous money back guarantee because our supplements work and people typically notice it. So it's 100 day unconditional money back guarantee. So this guy was calling, he's like, I want my money back. Broccoli doesn't work. I'm like, okay, let me ask you, have you had any vivid dreams recently? And there's this pause on the line. He's like, no way.
Dave Asprey
This is.
David Roberts
He was like, yeah, it stimulates this thing called brain derived nootropic factor, which is bdnf. And he's like, oh, my gosh. And so in about a quarter of the people, not everybody notice that they have vivid dreams. And that's this bdnf, which is at the center of brain health. It helps preserve existing neurons, but also helps grow new neurons. And so if you look at different brain issues, brain brain diseases, and type in sulforaphane, there's a body of literature on how it helps these things with the BDNF production.
Dave Asprey
And people who've been listening for a while or who read Headstrong, which was my New York Times best science list bestseller. It was sandwiched between Homo deuce and sapiens on the monthly list. I was like, oh, my God, that's the big list for an authority. And that whole book was, if you want your brain to work really well, you should have more mitochondrial function. And I talk about detox pathways to get there and other things and have more BDNF. And we're recording on site at 40 years of Zen. And what we're doing is we're giving people a ton of supplements and every other intervention that I know of to increase BDNF while they're training their brains using neurofeedback, even the ketamine. That's an optional part of the program. It's because it increases bdnf. And the most reliable sign that your BDNF went up is exactly what you said. It's vivid dreams. You can test your lion's mane if you're using it. If you're taking a lion's mane, that works. You should be having vivid dreams. And I will tell you, I've never found a coffee with lion's mane in it that works for that. And the reason is that they're using basically the roots. And if you want real lion's mane to do it, it needs to be alcohol and heat extracted. And just putting some mushroom dust in your coffee just makes the coffee not taste as good. And, sorry, if you're running a mushroom coffee company. I did test this at the. The old bulletproof coffee shop in Santa Monica, and I could never get it to work. So that's why I don't do that. But that's why I like Lion's mane just that way. However, if you look at how much lion's mane costs and you look at how much Brock Elite costs, and you're saying a quarter of your users are getting approximately.
David Roberts
Yeah, wow.
Dave Asprey
Are getting vivid dreams. You could give that a try. So if you're working on lucid dreaming or some of the other altered states work, having enough BDNF so you have a teenager's neuroplasticity, it's probably a good strategy. And if you look at how you make a decision on a supplement, like you want to know, okay, what's your goal? That's kind of important. What's your genetic basis? That's kind of important. But most of us either don't know that or don't have the ability to decode that the way we would with clients and a team of people doing it. Then you say, what are the possible benefits that would be valuable to me? And like, okay, more resilience to toxins. Less estrogen in the body, especially the toxic forms. Ability to excrete the plastics and the metals and the benzene, all these other things. And you say, wow. And more neuroplasticity in a single supplement. Does that mean you could avoid spending on some other supplements because you hit multiple pathways? It does. So this is just like Broccolite in particular is, is a pretty impressive supplement because it's so broad spectrum.
David Roberts
Yeah, definitely.
Dr. John Gildea
That I wanted to add that we had decided we wanted to break the information here was that there's so many people saying we mobilized microplastics, but how do we know how you're getting rid of them out of your body? And so with that researcher, we, we did a study. Oh, in house study.
Dave Asprey
Do you tell?
Dr. John Gildea
Yeah. And so we measured urine, sweat and feces and the signal came out extremely clear that it was coming out in feces.
Dave Asprey
So you take broccoli and in your in house study, the more broccoli they took, probably with an upper limit somewhere, but the more microplastics they pooped out.
David Roberts
Right.
Dr. John Gildea
Okay, that's a big question that, that we wanted to know the answer, so we ended up doing it ourselves. So we developed the test and, and did it in house and, and now that we have it in the hands of a real lysosome researcher, you know, he's in, in the process of figuring out how to publish that.
Dave Asprey
Oh, I can't, I can't wait to see that. I'm imagining people like pooping out little Lego bricks. Plastic is a. Yeah. How it works.
David Roberts
I mean, you, you've, you've heard the statistic credit card size of microplastics a week which came out of Australia in 2019. I think it's a little high. But even if it's 10% of that. Yeah, still a ton.
Dave Asprey
It would take a long time to poop enough Legos to make the Death Star.
David Roberts
But I, yeah, yeah, the start Super Star Destroyer.
Dave Asprey
Guys, anytime we talk about poop on the show, I have to make a poop joke. I, I, I can't help myself. It's part of my longevity strategy.
Dr. John Gildea
Yeah, it's part of your age reversal is your humor.
Dave Asprey
Right. This is one thing that's not funny. Even though I'm still laughing about it. You actually have some results in autism. And autism is something that's personal to me. If people have read heavily, meditated, I was fully on the autism spectrum. I'm very high functioning as a kid and it took about 10 years and a huge amount of work. But I do not test as being on the autism spectrum. But I still have an unusual brain. And along with autism comes a whole host of autoimmune toxin related things. There's a set of genes that make you susceptible and a set of environmental triggers that make it happen. Problems with sulfur, problems with glutathione, which I do have genetically, I don't make enough of it, and a bunch of other of other things like that. One of the things that I found when I was looking at preparing for the show was that this could be having an effect on autism. What have you guys seen?
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean we, we have docs that have heavy used it and the families have used it. And so kids who weren't talking start talking. And I mean if you think about it, even so there Hopkins did a study in 2014. It's one of our favorite studies where 29 different young men, so people who don't typically get better at 12 weeks on Sulforaphane, so they had a broccoli sprout beverage they gave them and the average increase over everything they had two different autistic skill scores was 30% improvement.
Dave Asprey
Wow.
David Roberts
And so that's, that's in this population that typically sees no improvement. And in that case of that doctor where that's kids not talking talking, kids not doing math can do math and that just that 30%, it's transformative in these families. And so I mean that's the one end of the spectrum. But like my kid's soccer coach who has adhd, owned a pizza business and you know, he Texts. I gave him a bottle. He texts me, like, two days later. He's like, david, I had the best paperwork day of my entire life. So being able to concentrate. So, I mean, it works on each side of the spectrum. By the way, that. That Hopkins study, they took them off sulforaphane and they reverted back to baseline.
Dave Asprey
Wow. It's amazing what fixing pathways that don't work well biologically or environmentally will do. And I've got to say, if you're an entrepreneur and you're listening to the show, there's about a 99.98% chance you have ADHD. Because almost every entrepreneur who's successful has it. Because stupid stuff hurts people with adhd because we get bored. Like, I'm not doing stupid stuff. If you don't have adhd, you can make yourself do stupid things almost without pain. I. I don't understand you, and I respect your ability to do boring things. And boring isn't like a.
David Roberts
The.
Dave Asprey
The Buddhist egoic boring. It's like you only want to pay attention to things that matter to you. It's different than I just want to be entertained. It's. I want to do meaningful things, and if it's not meaningful, your brain just won't do it. So then, like, you, well, I gotta go make this product because I can and I can't buy it anywhere and this matters. So then you focus on it. But. So if you're making golf clubs just to make money, it just wouldn't motivate you, would it?
David Roberts
No. Yeah, exactly.
Dave Asprey
So this is why I think entrepreneurs are important and why ADHD is important. But if you have it and you take broccoli or do anything to make your brain work better, then you've unlocked your superpower because now you can focus even better on stuff you care about.
David Roberts
Sure.
Dave Asprey
So I'm a huge fan of adhd. That's well managed because it really does give you superpowers.
David Roberts
I love that.
Dave Asprey
Okay. And how do you manage it? Well, get the damn toxins out of the way. And broccolita. Way to do it.
Dr. John Gildea
I was just gonna say that I really love having interactions with our consumer facing people from our company. And what crept up from our Spanish community was I think there was some lady who's an influencer that, that had a miraculous experience with her own autistic kids.
Dave Asprey
Oh, my gosh.
Dr. John Gildea
Grew completely organically, and now there's a gigantic group of people in Mexico and. And Central America that are. That are crazy about broccoli.
Dave Asprey
That is so cool. There's. There's a lot of autism in Mexico. Yeah, I don't know so much about further south there could be. And I go down to Ecuador a lot, but I don't hear about it as much there. So, yeah, it's happening. It's probably because of industrial pollution, I would guess, and just a degradation of the diet. So. Wow, that's profound. And we just had Warrior mom on the show and I think we're going to see more and more autism. And the rates have been just going up every generation. One in eight now. And we didn't talk about this, but my first book was Preconception. What do you do before you get pregnant? Yeah, and if you are thinking about maintaining your fertility or thinking about having kids, you probably, in fact, I'll just get rid of probably. You ought to go on broccoli as early as you can to reduce your toxin load because study after study will show that the lower your toxin load, the more fertile you are and the healthier your babies will be. And that's just critically important. So a year before you're gonna get pregnant, you should be doing it. And it, it does make a difference. And God, there's a thousand studies in my first book about that kind of thing. So.
David Roberts
And then once you have that baby, make sure you don't have infinite formula. And, and, and if you have, they have bottles that you're heating, make sure they're not plastic because that, that plastic will leach into the breast milk and you give it to that baby and it's just, it's insidious.
Dave Asprey
The other thing is if as a nursing mom you'd want to be on Brock Elite.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Dave Asprey
I don't know if you guys are allowed to say that.
David Roberts
We can't actually. We can't say that.
Dave Asprey
But look, I make cell phones too. I can say that. And you guys did not pay me to say that. I'm just saying that of my own expertise, you want to reduce your toxin intake as much when you're making, when you're making milk for a baby.
David Roberts
So I will say we to right after public health school, a study came out, out of France where they found in mother's breast milk this flame retardant. And the flame retardant just came. They found out they came from just sitting on furniture that has flame retardant. That's required by a lot. And it later that's a neurotoxin. And so, yeah, I mean, we will say consult your physician, but there are some people who, the physicians and their nursing moms agree that they should be
Dave Asprey
on broccoli and that flame retardant. The state of California. That's your fault. Straight up. It was. The state of California mandated it in mattresses. Six pounds of endocrine disrupting neurotoxic flame retardant in a mattress. Because babies smoke and their mattresses catch on fire when they're smoking. Yeah, because the chemical industry, the government of California a long time ago, along with big pharma, and they've been messing with people ever since. So, yeah, we will fix that problem. We know who you are, we know what you did, and we're coming for you.
David Roberts
And we've talked a lot about detox in this episode, but summer's approaching, and people are going to go on diets. And typically, when you diet, a lot of the toxins are in your fat.
Dave Asprey
Oh, God. Yeah.
David Roberts
And so, you know, doing some broccoli to mitigate the toxins that you're losing the weight and immobilizing those toxins is a really good idea.
Dave Asprey
Oh, that's so smart.
David Roberts
Maybe.
Dave Asprey
Ten years ago, I wrote this blog post called the rapid fat loss protocol, how to lose weight faster than you should. And I'd written it for a guy who wanted to look good at his wedding, and he lost £75 in 75 days on it. But everyone gets brain fog on it. So a major part of that was binding toxins with charcoal. This was before broccoli existed. And I said, at least get your glutathione levels up, because reliably, after two weeks of that kind of weight loss, people get the worst brain fog. And it's not good for you to lose weight that fast. It's like, how do you mitigate? But if I was recreating that protocol today, it'd be a high dose of broccoli every day. So as you're getting rid of fat that's full of pesticides and heavy metals and all the stuff your body couldn't handle, you got to get rid of it. So.
David Roberts
And we have a glp, one alternative that actually helps against the muscle loss when you're losing weight. And so it has three ingredients, and they. They all help with the myostatin to a reduction, which. The myosin's enzyme that breaks down muscle. So as you're losing weight this summer, you might want to think about that product.
Dave Asprey
What's that product called?
David Roberts
It's called GL Perfect. GL Perfect.
Dave Asprey
Okay. Oh, I do take that. I alternate months on it just because
David Roberts
I have a lot of bottles of stuff.
Dave Asprey
But that's that's a good one. All right, guys, this was a completely information packed episode and you know what to do. You probably want to try this stuff. So how about for the next week and get 25% off of Mara Labs. Go to mara-labs.com that's M A R A-labs.com Dave and that's a heck of a discount. Thanks for offering that for our listeners.
David Roberts
And the unconditional 100 day money back guarantee as well. If you try it and don't like it, we'll give you money back.
Dave Asprey
Okay? And if you decide you want to buy this After June 11, the code goes back to just 15% off, but you might as well save 25%. There's a question. If they subscribe in that first window, do they get to keep that discount on this description?
David Roberts
Yes, they do. Okay, so it it stacks. All right. That's the way to go.
Dave Asprey
So you are okay. If you're into this stuff, you should subscribe and get the 25% locked in. And then you can always use the 100 day money back or cancel if you don't like it. But you actually will like this. This is a very potent supplement. Thanks for listening. This was a cool episode for me. You guys loved it. On the Human Upgrade Podcast Foreign.
Dr. John Gildea
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Date: June 4, 2026
Guests: Dr. John Gildea (Chief Science Officer, Mara Labs), David Roberts (Co-founder, Mara Labs)
This episode dives deep into the pervasive issue of microplastics in the human body, exploring cutting-edge strategies to facilitate their removal. Dave Asprey hosts returning guests David Roberts and Dr. John Gildea from Mara Labs, creators of the BrocElite supplement. They focus on newly published research showing that sulforaphane—a potent compound found in broccoli sprouts—can mobilize and promote excretion of microplastics, BPA, and other environmental toxins. The discussion branches into detoxification pathways, the link between toxins and chronic illness (including autism and ADHD), supporting hormone metabolism, practical lifestyle hacks, and the powerful synergy between innovative supplements and smart biohacks.
"That is fantastic. As long as you would only get your toxins from mother nature. And unfortunately, last I checked, she wasn't making microplastics." ([00:00], [05:15])
"The reproductive act is actually more of a 3D printing activity. There’s more plastic involved than human parts." – Dave Asprey ([06:43])
“Sulforaphane...causes the lysosome to dump out all of the ashes in that incinerator so that it can start working again.” – Dave Asprey ([10:49])
“One of the issues that a lot of people have with the sprouts is the high amount of hydrogen sulfide…that’s removed during our procedure.” – Dr. John Gildea ([26:30])
“It’s the only compound I’m aware of that stimulates all three detox pathways.” – Dave Asprey ([19:55])
“We haven’t done any of the research because there’s so much research already out there—mainly coming from John Hopkins.” – David Roberts ([13:11])
“Don’t buy fleece. Like, fleece is bad. Recycled plastic bottles made into tiny little fibers that absorb through your skin and more through your lungs when you wash them. Bad, bad, bad. Don’t do that." – Dave Asprey ([31:35])
"Dryer sheets are the dumbest thing on the planet." – Dave Asprey ([32:52])
“A year before you’re gonna get pregnant, you should be doing it...the lower your toxin load, the more fertile you are and the healthier your babies will be.” – Dave Asprey ([63:11])
"If you have it and you take BrocElite or do anything to make your brain work better, then you’ve unlocked your superpower..." – Dave Asprey ([60:59])
Dave’s Jabs at Natural Purists and Raw Vegans: Self-deprecating humor about his own raw vegan phase, and tongue-in-cheek remarks about sprouting and relationships ([14:33]-[22:29]).
Microplastic Poop Jokes:
“I’m imagining people like pooping out little Lego bricks... It would take a long time to poop enough Legos to make the Death Star.” – Dave Asprey ([57:07], [57:26])
On vivid dreams and neuroplasticity:
“Let me ask you, have you had any vivid dreams recently? …No way.” – David Roberts ([52:43])
Summary prepared in the voice and style of the episode, preserving key detail, clarity, and relevance for listeners and practitioners.