← The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
It's Weird, But It Turns On Your Body's Anti-Aging Switch Fast : 1487
00:15:34
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- [00:01]
Dave Asprey
What if there was something you could add to your water to make you perform better, have more energy and protect your cells from damage? Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe and the only one that can get deep inside your cells, mitochondria and even your DNA. It fuels energy production, crushes oxidative stress and supports sharper brain function. Hydrogen's a gas, so you can't take it as a pill. So you either have to breathe it in or infuse it into your water. But your tap bottled or filtered water doesn't have it. That's why I use the Echo Flask. Echo Flask is a hydrogen generator that uses advanced electrolysis and a proprietary proton exchange membrane to infuse your water with pure hydrogen. No chemicals, no ph change, just therapeutic science backed hydrogen. I've noticed more energy, faster recovery, less inflammation and mental clarity that lasts all day. Go to ecowater.com dave and use code DAVE.10 for 10% off your Echo flask. You'll feel the difference in days.
- [01:04]
GoFundMe Narrator
This is a paid message from GoFundMe. Meet Juan Naula. When his son was hospitalized for a viral infection, Juan started a GoFundMe to pay for medical expenses.
- [01:14]
Juan Naula
It was 5k to pay the bill for my son and I needed only 22 hours. It was amazing. People really trust on GoFundMe.
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GoFundMe Narrator
How did Juan raise $5,000 in less than a day? He posted a short video on GoFundMe telling his story in 30 seconds.
- [01:30]
Juan Naula
30 seconds. Be specific, be quick and tell. What are you gonna be using the funds for? I was nervous to do it because it doesn't feel okay to ask money. But you shouldn't be nervous. Sometimes you just have to do it and see the results. We were able to save my son's life thanks to gofundme that we still have my son with us.
- [01:54]
GoFundMe Narrator
Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this message reflects one person's experience.
- [02:04]
Dave Asprey
Your body has a built in longevity switch that actively restores your mitochondria. But right now, the modern lifestyle has jammed that switch in the off position. The worst part is you will never feel it happening until it's too late. When this switch shuts down, it does not matter how clean your diet is, how much you spend on supplements, or how hard you exercise, your cells physically cannot function properly. I have spent the last two decades studying human longevity. And this one broken switch is the reason most people follow perfect health protocols. And still feel terrible. Today, I am going to show you exactly what this switch is, what is keeping it off, and something you can eat to turn it back on. When people start trying to improve their health, they usually focus entirely on what they are putting into their bodies. They buy the highest quality organic food, they spend hundreds of dollars on premium supplements, and they follow incredibly strict protocols. And all of those things are super important. But what actually matters is what those specific tools trigger once they get inside your cells. The deciding factor for whether any of those expensive tools actually work is the current state of your mitochondria. Your mitochondria are the microscopic power plants that live inside almost every single cell in your entire body. They're responsible for producing the raw physical energy that runs literally everything you do. We when your mitochondria are strong, and when you have a healthy amount of them, your body is capable of doing exactly what it was designed to do. It can actively repair physical damage, it can keep your hormones perfectly balanced, it can keep your brain incredibly sharp, and it can recover from almost anything you throw at it. When your mitochondria are operating at peak capacity, the supplements and protocols you follow actually compound into real measurable results. Because the biological system receiving those tools is actually capable of using them efficiently. But when your mitochondria are damaged, depleted, or broken down, that entire system completely breaks down with them. No amount of high quality food or expensive supplements can compensate for a broken power plant. This is exactly why two different people can follow the exact same health protocol and get completely different results. One person's mitochondria are strong enough to use fuel properly, and the other person's mitochondria simply are not. So before you start worrying about exactly what to take, you have to make sure your mitochondria are healthy enough to respond in the first place. And your body actually has a brilliant built in mechanism to handle exactly that. It is a biological switch called mitophagy. And the way it works is actually very elegant. Over time, as your cells do their daily work, some of your mitochondria inevitably wear down. They stop producing clean energy efficiently, and instead of powering your cells, they start generating toxic cellular waste. Even worse, these broken power plants take up valuable physical space inside your cells that should be occupied by healthy ones. Mitophagy is the specific longevity switch that actively hunts down those damaged mitochondria, breaks them apart and and recycles the raw materials to build brand new, much stronger ones. You can think of mitophagy exactly like a microscopic roomba that moves through your cells automatically. When the switch is flipped on, the Roomba finds the broken equipment, completely clears it out, and makes room for better equipment to replace it. When this process is running consistently, your mitochondria stay incredibly strong. And your body keeps getting better at using the fuel you give it. But when you flip that switch off, the Roomba completely powers down, and the damaged mitochondria immediately start piling up inside your cells. Your daily energy drops rapidly. Because the broken power plants are producing less and less power. And because those broken mitochondria are still technically taking up space, your body never gets the biological signal to build replacements. So the number of healthy mitochondria keeps shrinking, while the number of damaged ones keeps accumulating. And at that exact point, everything you are doing on the outside is coming into a system that is less and less capable of using it. But the terrifying part is that this could be happening without you ever realizing it. This is because the modern world is almost perfectly designed to jam your longevity switch in the off position. For most people, most modern day, chronic stress has simply become the baseline of their existence. It is no longer just a temporary spike from a specific event. It is just how their daily life feels. And when your stress hormone cortisol stays elevated like that all the time, your body reads it as a permanent survival situation. It shifts every single biological resource towards simply getting you through the day and and completely away from any long term maintenance. Mitophagy is the ultimate long term maintenance process, so your body cuts it when you enter survival mode. Your biology is essentially saying that it cannot afford to run the Roomba right now, because it is just trying to survive until tomorrow. And the massive problem is that chronic stress almost always comes with an eating pattern that makes this situation even worse. When you are incredibly busy and stressed, and you tend to eat small amounts of food spread throughout the entire day, and when you are eating all day long, your insulin levels stay elevated from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep. Elevated insulin is the specific biological signal that tells your body to build and store energy rather than clean and repair the damage. So the mitophagy cycle never gets the low insulin window it desperately needs to actually run. And the cellular cleanup simply never happens. So now you have chronic stress jamming the longevity switch off from one direction and your eating pattern, preventing it from ever restarting from the other. A lot of people try to fix how terrible they feel by pushing themselves with intense exercise. And while exercise is absolutely part of the solution, if you Are pushing hard without giving your body time to actually recover, you are making the problem worse. Overtraining creates far more physical damage Than the cleanup system can handle at once. So instead of triggering mitophagy properly, you are just piling up broken mitochondria much faster than the Roomba can clear them out. And on the completely opposite end of the spectrum, if you are barely moving at all, the demand signal that tells your body to upgrade its mitochondrial capacity never fires. Your body has absolutely no biological reason to build new, stronger mitochondria. And if you're never asking it to perform at a high level. And underneath all of this, regardless of what you are doing with your stress or your diet or your exercise, There is a molecule called NAD that naturally declines with age. NAD is the raw fuel that the mitophagy machinery actually runs on. And as your NAD levels drop, the cleanup cycle gets slower and less complete every single year. Even when everything else in your life is perfectly dialed in. The most dangerous part of this entire situation is that none of this feels like a crisis While it is happening to you. You are never going to wake up one morning and suddenly realize that your mitophagy isn't working. Chronic stress just feels like normal life. Eating all day feels completely standard, and your NAD dropping just feels like you're getting older. So by the time you actually stop and ask a doctor what is happening to your body, your mitophagy has probably been suppressed for years. And in that time, the physical damage has been compounding quietly. Inside your cells, damaged mitochondria have been accumulating, Producing less clean energy and far more toxic cellular waste. With every passing month, that toxic waste actively triggers chronic inflammation throughout your entire body. And that inflammation directly damages even more of your healthy mitochondria, which produces even more waste, which triggers even more inflammation. The cycle feeds itself deeper and deeper into a massive biological deficit. Your daily energy drops significantly. Your physical recovery from exercise slows down to a crawl, Your brain stops being as sharp as it used to be, and your biological age starts accelerating much faster than your actual age. The longer this cycle goes on, the harder it becomes to reverse. Because the very system your body would use to fix the problem is itself running on damaged power plants. But you can reverse this massive downward spiral. And the specific way to do it is by flipping that longevity switch back on. Mitophagy is not a brand new biological process that you have to build entirely from scratch Inside your body. Your cells already know exactly how to run it, and they have the machinery in place. Right now, you just have to give your biology the specific signals it needs to turn the switch back on and actively stop doing the things that were shutting it off in the first place. The very first signal you have to send your body comes from fasting. Fasting is the most powerful signal available because it directly reverses the massive insulin problem I just talked about. When you physically stop eating for long enough, your insulin levels naturally drop to their baseline. And when your insulin drops, your body completely shifts out of its build and store mode and directly into its cleanup and repair mode. That is when mitophagy switches back on and the microscopic Roomba starts running through your cells again. Your body starts identifying, breaking down and clearing out damaged mitochondria. Practicing time restricted eating where you fast for 14 to 16 hours a day is enough to make that critical shift happen on a daily basis. And doing a full 24 hour fast once or twice a week goes even deeper. Because the longer the fast lasts, the more thoroughly the cleanup cycle runs. If you are eating constantly throughout the day, you are keeping your insulin up and suppressing mitophagy. Which is exactly why fasting has to come first before anything else you add will work properly. Now, fasting clears the damaged mitochondria out, but your body also needs to know exactly what to build in their place. It needs a massive demand signal. And that signal comes directly from high intensity exercise. When you push your body hard enough, you create a sudden, massive need for physical energy that damaged mitochondria simply cannot meet. Your body flags those broken power plants for removal, clears them out, and then builds brand new, much stronger ones split, specifically designed to handle that extreme level of demand. That is exactly why high intensity exercise builds significantly better mitochondria than just going for a light jog. The most efficient way to create that demand signal is a protocol called rehit. It stands for reduced exertion High intensity interval training. You do two minutes of very slow cycling, followed by a 22nd all out sprint where you push as hard as you physically can. Then you do two more minutes of slow cycling and one final 20 second sprint. Then you cool down. You are completely done in around five minutes. But that intensity only works if you give your body time to actually run the cleanup cycle and build the replacements.
- [13:48]
Irestore Representative
You're losing hair on your head and collagen in your skin right now, even though you probably can't see it yet. And that process speeds up as you age and it doesn't reverse on its own. But you can intervene at the cellular level. Studies show that specific wavelengths of red
- [14:03]
Dave Asprey
and near infrared light will stimulate your
- [14:05]
Irestore Representative
hair follicles and that does support collagen production. Irestore has been making red light therapy devices that actually work for over two decades. And with their summer savings event, it's
- [14:15]
Dave Asprey
the perfect time to upgrade your hair in skincare.
- [14:17]
Irestore Representative
The Irestore Elite is their most advanced laser hair growth system, using 300 lasers and two 200 LEDs which helps you regrow thicker, healthier hair in about three months. And it is really easy to use. You can wear it while you're working, while you're reading or unwinding at night. And The Illumina Face Mask360 medical grade LEDs can turn red, infrared or even blue light at the same time to target all of your different skin concerns. Just 10 minutes a few times a week gives you brighter, smoother and healthier looking skin. I've been using the Iristore Elite and the Illumina Face mask while I work at home but not on video. And they fit into my normal routine with no extra time cost. I really like it because I don't lose any time when I use it. Irestore is so confident you'll love their products that they give you a 12 month money back guarantee. That's because it actually works. You will see more hair. Irestore is kicking off their summer savings event with some huge discounts on their
- [15:11]
Dave Asprey
red light therapy devices.
- [15:13]
Irestore Representative
You can save on customer favorites like the Irestore Elite helmet and the Illumina face mask. Just head to irestore.com use code Dave to take advantage of the sale. That's Davey restore.com Please support the show and tell them we sent you.
- [15:27]
Dave Asprey
Give your hair and skin the upgrade they deserve so you can feel confident and refreshed.
- [15:32]
If your light environment isn't dialed in, your biology isn't either. And if you're not using light as a performance tool, you're leaving results on the table every single day. The right light wavelengths unlock recovery, energy and clarity in ways most people never tap into. EMR Tech's Krypton UV line puts that power in your hands. With red, near infrared, uva and UVB all in one system, they have something for everyone. From the compact Krypton Micro and Mini to the modular 606 watt and 1612 watt. Each device lets you choose your wavelengths, your timers, and how deep you want to go with your setup. I personally use the Ultron. It's a beast. Full body coverage, built in timers and high output light from premium components. Whether you're syncing your circadian rhythm or designing a pro level light environment. EMR tech lets you scale it your way with precise control. Go to emr-tek.com Dave and use code Dave for 40% off.
- [16:37]
So physical recovery matters just as much as the exercise itself. Now, there is another way to send that specific upgrade signal that does not involve exercise at all. Cold exposure activates an internal cellular sensor called ampk. You can think of AMPK as an emergency alarm that detects when energy is running low inside your cells. When AMPK fires, it screams at your body to build stronger mitochondria.
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Irestore Representative
So?
- [17:02]
Dave Asprey
So doing two to three cold plunges per week keeps that upgrade signal running consistently alongside everything else you are doing. So at this point, you have fasting, clearing the damage, and exercise and cold exposure telling your body what to build. But the physical machinery that actually runs the cleanup cycle needs raw fuel to operate efficiently. That raw fuel is nad. As I mentioned earlier, NAD naturally declines with age. And without enough of it, the mitophagy cycle physically cannot run at full speed. It does not matter how many of the right signals you are sending if the machinery has no fuel. Supplementing with nmn, short for nicotinamide mononucleotide, or nr, short for nicotinamide riboside, raises your NAD levels and keeps that cleanup machinery running smoothly. Which is exactly why supplementation works so much better when the other signals are already firmly in place. On its own, it is just fuel with no signal. And with the signals but no fuel, the system simply cannot execute the work. You absolutely need both. And there are two specific compounds you can eat that add something on top of all of this that absolutely nothing else covers. Pomegranates contain very specific compounds that your gut bacteria naturally convert into something called urolithin A. Urolithin A is powerful because it activates mitophagy through its own unique biological pathway. It does not depend on fasting or exercise or anything else to work. So it adds a completely separate independent trigger to the cleanup cycle. Most people don't have the gut bacteria to make urolithin A, so I recommend taking it as a supplement. And there's another compound called spermidine that does the exact same thing through yet another independent pathway. Spermidine is a naturally occurring compound that triggers the broader cellular cleanup process across your entire body. When you put all of these specific pieces together, you are covering multiple angles of mitochondrial health. Fasting clears out the accumulated damage. Exercise and cold exposure tell your body exactly what to build. NAD provides the raw fuel for the machinery that does the work, and urolithin A and spermidine keep the cycle running through independent pathways that work even when the other signals are not as strong. And if you feel perfectly fine right now and you are wondering whether any of this actually applies to you, it absolutely does. Mitophagy does not wait until you feel terrible to start slowing down. It starts declining long before you ever notice the symptoms. Keeping it running right now is exactly how you make sure it never gets to that point. It is not that your fasting protocol is failing, or that your expensive supplements are useless, or that your exercise routine is a waste of time. It is that absolutely none of those things can fully work if the biological process that converts all of that effort into new, healthy cells is turned off. Mitophagy is that specific process. Now you know exactly what it is, why your modern life shuts it down, and the specific steps you need to take to keep it running. The science is clear and the longevity switch is right there.
- [20:24]
Juan Naula
Foreign.
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Podcast Disclaimer Narrator
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 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.