← The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
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00:54:21
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- [00:00]
A
You have to remediate. You've got mold growing inside of your walls. We tell people you need to rip that mold out. But like you're saying, it's really the mycotoxins, it's the leftover. It's all of these things that get left in the house after these.
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B
Mycotoxins are very small particles. They get on everything. And if you move to a new home and I'm going to bring my moldy furniture with me, you will remain sick. So you have to throw away all your stuff.
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A
What we like to say is car detailing is not car detoxing. A lot of times when you detail a car, you're introducing more chemicals. One of the things that cars have are volatile organic compounds, chemicals that off gas in new cars. None of those chemicals are oxidizers that are strong enough to destroy the chemical. And that's what the building cleaner and the whole system as well as the Yoder bombs are designed to do. Designed to clean up all that chemical contamination without even a wipe just from a fog landing on the surface. There's 100% reduction in okra toxin from the building.
- [00:51]
B
Wow. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
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C
Are you ready to plug into the latest science of longevity and human performance? Come to beyond the Biohacking conference where biology, longevity and consciousness collide in real Life. Join us May 27th through 29th, 2026 in Austin, Texas. Experience breakthrough tech, meet world class experts and connect with people who are also committed to being the best versions of themselves. Because strong community isn't optional. It's how we live longer. Register now@BeyondConference.com live longer, live better. Live beyond. How many nights have you stared at the ceiling counting the hours until morning? Maybe you tried a sleep supplement, but it knocked you out and left you groggy like you traded one problem for another. Poor sleep doesn't just make you tired in it kills your performance, slows your brain down and speeds up aging. Kill Switch from SWICH supplements solves that problem. It works with your biology instead of against it. It contains five gut friendly extensively researched ingredients like GABA magnesium glycinate and tart cherry extract to help you fall asleep naturally, stay asleep and wake up clear. And it's in the form of a delicious sugar free, no BS hot cocoa drink. Sleep tracking data proves how well it works. People consistently hit 90 plus sleep scores and more than double their REM sleep in only three days with kill Switch. If you're ready for the best sleep of your life, order now@switchsupplements.com and use code DAVE for 20% off. If you don't sleep better, you get your money back. Kill Switch works with your biology. Your body does the rest.
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B
You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
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A
Dave, welcome to me because I'm in your home in Austin, Texas, that's soon
- [02:57]
B
to be heavily treated for mold, even though don't have a lot here.
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A
That's right. You. You. This is a beautiful place. And we came down here to talk about what to do with it.
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B
Yep.
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A
Now I know. Well, let's actually, before we get into this home, tell me a little bit about your personal story. I know a lot of people know, you know, you started a kind of your health journey around mold. Maybe you've seen the moldy documentary, but how did you get to a place where we're sitting here and you are looking at treating your whole home?
- [03:27]
B
Well, I grew up in a basement that had been flooded in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We didn't know about toxic mold then, but I had all the symptoms of mold poisoning, autism. And mold does not cause autism, but it can be an important, important ingredient in the recipe for autism. You have to have the right genetics and things like that and mold. Also, one of the symptoms of it is chronic strep throat, which I had for 15 years. And chronic strep throat also causes weird autoimmune things and behavioral things like ADHD and something called pandas, which I had, which gives you ocd. And my favorite one is odd. Have you heard of that? No. Oppositional defiant disorder. And this is when that Rage against the Machine song f you. I won't do what you told me. It plays constantly in your head. And if someone tells you to do something before you can think, you're like, no, you can't make me. So, needless to say, my Dave's a good boy file was not very big, but Dave's a bad boy file was very high. And so there was a lot of health stuff that came out of that. I had arthritis in my knees since I was 14 and just all kinds of health problems. By the time I was in my mid-20s, I had been diagnosed without arthritis, high risk of stroke and heart attack. I had chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, which are probably the same thing. Let's see. Crippling brain fog to the point that I bought disability insurance in my 20s because I wasn't sure if I could really keep going. And it's this feeling like you have the Pedal all the way to the floor in your car, and it's slowing down, and you can push harder, but there's no more push to give. And so I went to all these functional medicine doctors. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get well, and I just wanted my brain to work. And fortunately for me, I was a computer hacker. And I started hanging out with people in their 80s and 90s, running the first longevity group in the Bay Area. So I got mentored by the leaders in what is now functional medicine, even though that was just what I kind of did for fun, because I just wanted my brain to work. I didn't want my body to hurt all the time the way it did. So let's say it was a lot of work and a lot of suffering. And when I unpacked all this stuff, I went to a guy in Los Altos, California, in the Bay Area, who's this old wise functional medicine doctor. And he said, dave, the people I treat don't come back. He said, you've been back five times. That's unheard of in my practice. I want to run an HIV test on you because I don't think you have it. You don't have any of the behavior patterns. But why are you not getting well? This doesn't make any sense. Of course I didn't have HIV, but I did have an allergic response to 10 of the top 12 toxic molds out there. And that was like, aha. I get this. And along the way, I'm like, oh, I had that probably when I was a kid, certainly all the symptoms of it. And I moved into a place in the Bay Area that had massive water damage in the bedroom. And I got really sick when I moved there. My dog got pneumonia, and my partner at the time gained 30 pounds and got really sick. And we both had this weird brain fog. I'm like, oh, but we moved out of that place. But right after we moved out, I found slimy black mold on the back of the drywall that was where the headboard was because the neighbor's water heater was leaking. I'm like, aha. Smoking guns. And then I moved into a place where water would pool underneath it when it rained. And I got sicker, and I found this, like, you know what? This is mold. So I learned how to detox. And I'm like, why did no one say anything? And then I realized that there was this small pool of experts who had been talking about mold who for a long time, and most of them are kind of mavericks because they're saying, well, why is everyone missing this? Along the way, I became an expert in mitochondrial biology, because when my doctor couldn't help me earlier on, I just fired him. And for four years, I studied energy production in the human body as a scientist, but a computer scientist, I'm like, I have to solve this problem because I'm going to die. Or at least I feel like I'm going to die if I don't. So I learned that mold toxins, about 200 of them, are direct mitochondrial poisons, so your mitochondria can't do their job. And since that time, I've learned mitochondria are basically the seed of consciousness in the body. They're much more important than just energy production. They're actually energetic sensors and environmental sensors, and they get stressed by these toxins. And what I learned was that environmental toxins are the worst from toxic mold, but we also eat a lot of toxins that become a trigger. And during this path, I quit coffee for five years. And they were long, dark, horrible years because coffee is actually really good. And I came back from a trip to bed because I studied consciousness and meditation and all just, I just want things to work. I don't want to feel anxious all the time. And mold makes you feel anxious and tired all the time. And I drank a cup of coffee and I felt amazing. It's like the lights turned back on and I'm like, I'm not allergic anymore. Yay. Because every time I drink coffee, an hour or two later, I get like this jitter, this feeling in my chest, like, ah. So day after, I had another cup of coffee and then I felt the symptoms and I thought, wait, I didn't get allergic overnight. It's the coffee. So I went down this, wow, here's how much mold is in peanuts versus wheat versus coffee. And I found out coffee is a serious mold risk. Food ended up launching a massive coffee company called Bulletproof. And today I run Danger Coffee, which is mold free and contains special minerals that actually bind to toxins. So it's like this whole path of longevity, and I'm a leader in the longevity movement, really came from being sick as a kid from toxic mold. At another experience in Palo Alto. When I was there, we're at a leaky dishwasher, and when we had that changed, my dogs stopped eating and I got really sick overnight. All the symptoms returned. And I used to be to the point where I would walk into a moldy building and immediately I would have like a whole body panic response or Even worse, I get mold rage, which is a thing I remember one time my kids were kind of young and I got exposed to mold. And I just remember yelling at my kids, like in a way I would never do. And I'm like, what is happening right now? And of course I apologize later, but I'm sure it wasn't good for him. Because mold has the ability to hijack your nervous system because your body, it doesn't understand that mold toxins, which is different from mold itself, the toxins that mold makes. It's kind of like penicillin is a concentrated mold toxin. That one little pill has a huge effect on your body. If you're getting that absorbed through your skin from your house. But it's not the good penicillin. It's a poison or you're breathing it, man, it's going to mess you up and it's going to have systemic effects. So I just realized I got a problem and I went through and I did everything you can do to detox my body. And I became aware of how important it was to do to look at mold in structures and just to control moisture levels and water. Along the way, I shot a documentary that I funded called Moldy Movie. And it's helped, I'm guessing about a million people now become aware of mold because no one would believe it at the beginning. So I interviewed a dozen top experts, including Mark Hyman, who had mold poisoning and actually helped him diagnose his mold poisoning because it was so. It feels so random. Different people get different things. I interviewed a dozen high performing people who were just taken offline by mold and a dozen top experts. And you cannot watch. It's an hour. It's free moldymovie.com you cannot watch that and go, oh, mold isn't real. So it's meant for doctors or for spouses who don't believe it. Because what's scary about this is mitochondria are so low level in the body. Depending on which mold toxins you have, they might attack your mitochondria, the lining of your nerves. They're tied to Ms. And Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and cancer and cardiovascular disease and diabetes even, because they're biological dysregulators. But if there was mold in this room right now, depending on the species, I might have one set of symptoms like brain fog or dizziness. And you might say, I don't feel anything. But two days later I've got a rash. And so I found a lot of couples were really fighting over it. Because one of the two has genetics that makes them more susceptible. So they're getting crazy symptoms. And the other one's like, I get a stuffy nose sometimes, but it's just not a big deal. And so you think the other person's crazy until you realize different people get affected. But one person may get, you know, Alzheimer's, and the other person may just say, I don't really feel anything. But then they get cancer. And today I run a concierge longevity medicine practice along with a top longevity doctor. And one of our clients in her early 40s, we tested, and she had serious brain fog. But she has what's essentially advanced Alzheimer's disease. And she's in her 40s with two young kids. And what happened? Their basement got flooded. And she has the very clear signs. We see the mycotoxins, we see the inflammation, we see the genetics that make her susceptible, and we see the brain stuff. That's how powerful it is. But her husband. I feel fine. Right. So I want people to understand this is deadly serious. And the fact that a person in the room with you feels mold and you don't, it doesn't mean that it's not there. And we have the ability to test for it in the environment. We have the ability to test for it in the body today. And the problem has always been, well, what do you do? And you could do what the Bible says. If you go back, I don't remember which chapter and all, but it's Leviticus. Yeah, Leviticus. There you go. It says, literally, if there's black mold, clean everything. And if it comes back in 10 days, burn everything.
- [13:14]
A
Take it outside the city and burn it.
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B
Yeah. And so we've known about this for 2000 years, yet somehow we just don't talk about it. And the reason this is so important, I'm talking with some of the people in the government about troop readiness. Every barracks is full of mold, and you cannot perform at your best in mold, even if it's not affecting you very much. And every university, every high school, every elementary school has mold because they don't spend money on maintaining the buildings. And I remember when I was at the University of California, the library had, like, standing water, and people were complaining about getting sick in it. But this is, like, how it is. So most government buildings, most libraries, they're all full of it. And so there's people who know they've been exposed to mold and they just won't go into those buildings. And everyone else who goes in there, they're getting Sicker and sicker. And they're spending more and more on drugs and they wonder why Their relationships have gone to hell, their hormones are disrupted. All of this can be attributed to mold and mold's additive with all the other environmental toxins and lack of sleep and eating junk food and all that. But it's a much bigger part of the burden. And the way mold enters the body is by breathing it, by absorbing through the skin and by eating it. And so danger Coffee. I lab test the coffee using proprietary methods to make sure that there's no mold in it. And then any home that I own or spend a lot of time in, I test the air, I test the dust, I make sure that I've treated the H Vac system right. And along the way I ended up inventing a probiotic that I could spray around. And it's very affordable and it helps, but it doesn't solve the whole problem. You have to keep doing it. And if it's inside a wall, what do you do? And so I've been searching for years for what do I tell people to do that's affordable? Because ripping out your whole kitchen is kind of an expensive thing. And I've had to do that twice. So you're replacing your H vac system, very expensive. So what are we going to do about this? Because most people aren't going to do that and then you're just kind of stuck, especially if you own the home. And so I was really excited when we got to connect because you've got something that I've thinking I have to go invent that. But Super Stratum is like a long term solution for mold and I'm pretty excited about it. But that's the story. And man, this is personal.
- [15:42]
A
And you said something that I thought was such a great point and it is what I find is the reason why most people are not aware of this problem, or let's say when they're experiencing the problem, it's the main issue in them seeing the problem. And it's the difference, like you say, in how we think about germ theory. And if you have a cold and we're in the same environment and I get the same symptoms, then we naturally, I'm going to assume that that came from you and that that somehow is a part of our environment. But when the symptoms don't match, then, then we, because of the way that we've been indoctrinated and in this understanding about our environments, to think that there's not a correlation there. And like you Brought up, this is, this is not a germ that gets into your body. This is toxicity in the body and that behaves completely differently. And the, the issues with relationships, those are the. We haven't even talked about yet what mold does to the body, but then you move on into the interpersonal and all the ways that it impacts your life. And it's tremendous. And we were equally as excited to meet you, certainly because of your reputation in the space and your own personal story, but also for Home Bionic. And when we look at the reason that Super Stratum really exists is because we started our company with some very powerful technology, our Endurance coating, which I know you're a very big fan of, but what we realized very quickly, which I think is the same thing that you realized on your journey with Home Biotic. Even if you have a good technology, one product doesn't solve the whole problem.
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B
Yeah. Mold is complex and sneaky.
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A
It's very complex. It's very sneaky. You're dealing with the sneakiest kingdom, you know, in the entire. You know, the mold kingdom in and of itself is. It's older than probably anything else here.
- [17:28]
B
If you think about it, for 2 billion years, there's been a war between bacteria. Oh, your mitochondria are ranks of bacteria. Yep. And fungus. And they've been fighting all that time. Right. And so it's no wonder that mold is such a low level toxin. Former for humans. And it will eat us when we die. And it's happy for us to die sooner so it can eat us. And I don't want people to freak out like, oh, my God, I have, you know, black stuff in my bathroom. But it's not just bathroom grime. You actually need to take care of that because you say, oh, it's fine, but it's actually not. And I remember my parents had a dream to live in Alaska over a winter. So when they retired, they did it. And my dad had a calcium score of very low. Did the thing to look at his cardiovascular health. They lived in a house that I went up to visit them and I was disabled for six weeks afterwards. It was the moldiest place I've ever been in because every winter for 40 years, the owners had boiled a kettle. And so you have this moist air and freezing cold walls. So the inside of all the walls was just covered in mold. And both of my parents started having really weird symptoms. Bruising for no reason, which is a common one. Weird nightmares, changes in their gait, they'd fall over a lot. Dizziness, visual Distortions, frequent respiratory stuff. And my dad had a heart attack with full calcification six months later. And we measured before. I am 100% certain that it was that mold exposure that drove those biological changes. I'm not just saying that. There's a set of books written by a WHO researcher who spent about 17 years studying mold. And this was before the WHO got purchased and corrupt. And he. He published a series of books called Fungal Bionics. And these books, they were $400 for each edition because they weren't available in the U.S. they were from Germany, and I bought them all, and each one was like, here's the link between mold and diabetes. And the book is this thick, full of research reports. And here's the link with mold and cancer and mold and breast cancer and mold and heart disease and mold and Alzheimer's. And the link is very clear. And there's thousands of studies that support this. And even worse, and maybe it's not worse, but it's pretty bad. I used to weigh 300 pounds, and I weigh about 195 right now. And I'd been fat since I was a teenager. And no matter how little I ate, no matter how much I worked out, no matter what I did, I could not lose the weight. I could lose half of it. The other half would just stick around. And it turns out there's this sneaky mold toxin called zearalenone. And zearalenone mimics human estrogen, but it's 10,000 times stronger. And it's so potent that they concentrate zearalenone into little pellets and sell it to ranchers, because they put a little zearalenone in the ear of a cow, and it'll melt into their bloodstream, and that cow will get fat on 30% less food. I was getting treated with this mold toxin in my bedroom that was making me obese no matter how little I ate.
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A
Wow.
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B
And people would just say, eat less and work out more. No, that doesn't work. Yes, right.
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A
That's one of the most common things we see in zearalenone, especially for women, because it's an estrogen mimicker, what it does to the hormones, to fertility, you know? And that is actually one of the most common mycotoxins that we find in homes now.
- [21:07]
B
It is so dangerous. Your face is the first thing people see, and you can work out clean, but if you still look older than you feel, especially if you're a guy, you're not maximizing your potential. Your skin is a signal of how well, you're really taking care of yourself. And if it looks inflamed or tired or just old, that's what people are going to notice. Even if you're doing your best to eat well. The good news is there's a company called Caldera Lab that's here to fix that for you. This isn't your girlfriend's 20 step routine. It's skincare designed specifically for men. Which means it has to be simple and effective and backed by science. But not too much work. After using caldera lab products, 100% of men said their skin looks smoother and healthier. And 97% said said they had improved hydration and texture. And 93% reported a more youthful appearance. Caldera Lab has spent years developing and testing each of their formulas with leading cosmetic chemists. So you can tell it actually works. And if they don't love it, they don't release it. Which is the same way I am with my own products. Some of the products you might want to try are the good, which is a face serum that has 3.4 million antioxidant units per drop. There's the eye serum. These are peptides that make you look fully rested even when you stayed up all night doing something you wanted to do. And the base layer, which is a stem cell powered moisturizer that isn't going to give you pimples by clogging your pores. And all their products are cruelty free and plastic neutral. And for every product they sell, they pull the same amount of plastic from the environment, which is good because having little bits of plastic in your mitochondria actually sucks. So upgrade your routine with Caldera Lab and see the difference for yourself. Go to calderalab.com Dave use code Dave and they'll give you 20% off your first order. So if you're not taking care of your skin because it's just been too much work, now you have a solution.
- [22:55]
C
Calderalab.com Dave staring at screens all day is wrecking your vision and your brain. You might just think it's aging, but it's not. It's a broken eye brain connection. And it gets worse every hour you spend looking at a screen. If you plan to live to 180 and beyond, you need to protect your dominant sense. Now here's the good news. You can train your visual system just like you train your body or your brain. Screen fit is a science backed method built by Dr. Bryce Applebaum that rebuilds how your brain and eyes work together. No eye drops, no appointments, no gimmicks. Just 15 minutes a day to sharpen focus, reduce fatigue, and protect your vision for the long haul. I saw real results in just a week. If you strive for peak performance or plan to live a very long time like I do, you want clear vision to match? Go to screenfit.com Dave or use code Dave to get $200 off and try it for yourself. You'll see what I mean. Literally,
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B
it's crazy what happens with your hormones with mold, because mold also will disrupt your thyroid, and your thyroid gives you energy every day. So now you're like, I'm so tired. I just can't do anything. And then you have massive amounts of estrogen, and suddenly you have man boobs, which I had for much of my life. Don't have them anymore. And it's so sneaky because that level of estrogen is just bad for everyone, and it's not the good estrogen. And it turns out I don't have a liver that makes the right stuff to detox that. But knowing these things was important because otherwise I would have just been, well, I guess I'm kind of a fat slob, and no matter what I do, it just doesn't work. And one of the things that was, well, validating for me is I interviewed Dr. Amen from Amen clinics, who's done more brain scans than what I know. He was part of me discovering what had happened when they. I was in Wharton Business School and I was failing out of my classes. I thought, man, maybe I'm actually dumber than I think I am, right? And I'm trying hard, but it's just nothing works. Like, there's no memory there. And I was being exposed to mold at the time. So I went and I got a brain scan where they inject radioactive sugar, and then they look at metabolic activity in the brain. And I remember going to the psychiatrist, and he kind of looks at me and he's like, oh, tech bro wants Adderall. Like, we've seen this before, right? Because a lot of people wanted to do Adderall, and I didn't want Adderall, but it's not a very nice drug. But I got the scan and I came back, and he just looked at me so different, and he said, dave, inside your brain is total chaos. You have the best camouflage I've ever seen. I don't know how you're standing here in front of me right now. Because there were huge chunks of the front of my brain, the prefrontal cortex, where there was zero metabolic activity. And when Dr. Amen looked at the scan, he said, dave, you had mold toxin induced brain damage. And the good news here is I got a scan 10 years later and it's gone. I fixed it. You can fix it. You're rid of the toxins, and you can fix your biology. And today I'm on the board of directors of Amen clinics. And Dan Amen's become a good friend. But in that interview in Moldy movie, he said, if you have toxic mold, no matter how little you eat, you will never lose weight. And so you're like, wow, I'm super emotional. I yell at my spouse, I'm puffy and I'm fat all the time. I have dark circles under my eyes. I have weird rashes getting sick. You know, I yell at my family. I don't like myself. And I feel like at the end of the day, I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Well, it's because these toxins, they're affecting where energy comes from. And there's two studies directly showing that your mitochondrial health controls your willpower. So when people get mold, they lose their energy and they lose their willpower, and then it just feels like everything is climbing Everest. Like, it's just. It's too much. And so you kind of get paralyzed in your life. And, like, I can't even pay my bills. I know I should, but I'm just so tired. Yeah, right.
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A
Which I'm sure isn't a coincidence that you become paralyzed in the environment where the mold is when you get mold poisoning.
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B
Yeah, like, if it was a snake once you there. Yeah, if it was a snake and it bit you, like, I got paralyzed. But then you'd see it. But if you're getting paralyzed over the course of a month or six months or a year, it's so slow that we just don't pick it up. And your immune system, it's really good at finding bacteria. And it can even find, like, a fungus growing in the body sometimes. But what mold does is it takes out the immune system, which is why most people have Lyme disease. If you look at it, they actually have mold poisoning. You get rid of the mold, and the lyme resolves. Because 95% of people have the Lyme spirochete in their body. They don't have any symptoms. Only the people who get mold get Lyme. And I'm talking about research from UCLA when I say that, not saying there isn't Lyme disease. I tested positive for it. I also just had mold and Treating the Lyme didn't work. Treating the mold worked. So people oftentimes have mold as an underlying cause of another disease. Even things like kidney stones directly tied to mold. And the mold that's very common in environments is OTA or ochratoxin A. And OTA is also the most common mold in coffee. And since I've been exposed to OTA in multiple homes, I can feel mold in the coffee. And it turns out 28% of people have a mutation that makes them more susceptible to mold. And it's in the HLADR4 part of your genetics. And this is a mutation that is really good if there's a famine, or if there's maybe you're Northern European, or you're part of wherever you're from, and your job was to go to the neighboring village and then basically take an arrow in the back and not bleed out so your blood clots quickly, and then be exposed to the microbiome of all the stuff you're stealing. Right. And then not get sick from that because your immune system is highly active, and then go home, enjoy the spoils of war, and then do it again. Right. If your people are doing that for a while, you're much more likely to have these genetics. And we can measure it now. And those are the people who tend to get really sick because your immune system goes, there's an invader. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to get really inflamed. I'm going to get really irritated, right? And because we're good on famines, with these genetics, we recycle our bile, which is a fatty substance. And mold toxins primarily dissolve into the fat in your tissues. So the longer you're exposed, the more it gets into your brain, the lining of your nerves, and all the cell membranes made out of fat. So I like to have this picture of a glass of water, and you put two drops of blue food coloring in, and at first they're just on the surface, and then they slowly spread. That's what mold toxin does inside the body. So when you want to remove it from the body, it takes a little bit of time because you have to add more water to wash out the stuff. So you increase fat turnover, you increase detox pathways, and we know how to get people well from mold. But it can still be expensive. It can take time. It takes much less time now than it did 20 years ago when I was doing it. But would it be better if you just didn't get it because your house was built right, because you took a few steps, even if you didn't build the house, to just protect yourself and protect your kids by going to the high risk areas, checking them real quick, and then spraying them with something. So if the sink drips underneath it, which most sinks do, at some point, let's not have a problem there, right? Let's go to the place around the window where it's always a little bit moist. And let's just make sure that nothing ever grows there. That's the goal. So you never have to go through all this detox. You don't have to lose your energy, you don't have to lose your fertility. And there's something else about fertility that I found in my research about mold that is shocking and disturbing. See, the people who really understand mold are farmers and ranchers. So they measure the mold in food that they feed their animals. And they will not feed moldy food to animals that are going to get pregnant or are pregnant, because the number of miscarriages goes through the roof and they can't make any money. But what they will do is the three months before they sell the animals, they'll feed it the moldy food because they don't care if it gets sick as long as it's not dead. So we're actually getting mold in industrially fed meat. But those farmers know about mold infertility. And right now we have a fertility crisis where a lot of people can't get pregnant or they can't carry a healthy baby. And mold is a major culprit. And the other thing that's weird about mold, if it's in your home, in your workplace, in your car, which is a major source, what you end up doing is you get the mold and then your toxic metals go through the roof like mercury and lead, because mold is disabling detox pathways. So now everything else in the environment gets worse and worse and worse. So it's additive. So I'm like, let's prevent the problem. If you know you have that one room in your house that smells a bit funky, but you just open the window like, no, not okay. And I couldn't tell people what to do. I'm like, well, you could run a little ozone, which is hard to do and expensive, and it kind of works. But with the technology that you have at super stratum, it's like, no, you can actually treat that room fully and kill everything, right? And after everything's dead, you can hit it with some home biotic, you can hit it with permanent coatings that Super Strata makes that completely protect the moisture prone surfaces. And maybe you're going to look at your air conditioning and figure out why there's moisture in there. But if you were just do that, that whole like set of dominoes that happens in your health over time, it stops and it saves you at least tens of thousands of dollars in getting well, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it could be the difference between having a healthy baby and having no baby at all. And like this, this is fundamental and it's cheap compared to the costs of having mold. So let's get this to the point where every public structure gets treated with this because we're worth it. And all of our homes are that way. And the sad thing is there is a correlation between income and mold. And that said, I have a friend with a 34 bedroom house he had to just basically move out of because it was built wrong, has mold. But if you're in a mobile home, you're in an rv, you're maybe living in your car like you're in a house that's had no maintenance for a long time, there's a guarantee that there's mold and some of it you're not going to even know about or be able to fix. But now there's a cost effective way to do it. And this is something that is kind of personal because one thing that mold does do, and I have Dr. Amen, who's scanned more than a million brains and is a leading psychiatrist with, I think, a dozen New York Times bestsellers, a credible guy. He says straight up that mold can drop your IQ by 15 points. And you get rid of the mold, your IQ goes back up, and mine did. So I'm not as dumb as I was. So, man, this is a big deal. And so there's all kinds of things you do to make your life better. I mean, I'm the guy behind intermittent fat fasting and cold plunges and red light therapy. And I do all those things. But I would spend all of my money on getting mold out of my house before I would do these other biohacks that cost money. The other thing that mold does, massive disruptions in sleep. One of the symptoms that you're in a moldy environment is weird, vivid nightmares. So if you move into a new house, you're in an Airbnb, a lot of those are moldy because they turn the AC off when no one's there and you wake up like, wow, I had the craziest dream and it was so real. And There was something trying to kill me. And like, I don't normally have that kind of dream. That's your body going, I am sensing something, but I can't tell what it is, because mold toxins are. They're very tiny molecules, and they look a lot like cholesterol because they're fat soluble. And your immune system is generally primed to find a big fungus or a big bacteria, but not a tiny little molecule that kind of looks familiar. So they. They get around the immune system, then they get into the immune cells and all the other cells, and they start poisoning the cells. So the body's like, I know that I'm sick. I know something's wrong. I can't tell what it is. And it's trying to tell you, like, something's off. And then you wake up and your eyes are puffy and your voice is hoarse, and you just can't get out of bed and your body hurts, and maybe you get a nosebleed. I used to have 10, 15 nosebleeds a day all through my childhood because of the mold. And I'd have bruises for no reason. Are you walking into walls? No. I don't know why I have a bruise, because frequent bruising is a cause of this because it's damaging your circulatory system. So all these things add up. And I have not had a full ability to tell people, here's what to do in your home other than throw a match in it and make sure you have insurance. And that's where super stratum comes in.
- [35:51]
A
Yeah. Well, let's talk about that. We're here at your house, and a lot of people have mold. Well, obviously, a lot of people have mold have to deal with in different ways. I mean, there's some cases in which you have to remediate. You've got mold growing inside of your walls. We tell people you need to rip that mold out. But like you're saying it's really the mycotoxins, it's the leftover. It's all of these things that get left in the house after. Right. That blue food coloring like you described in the body. The home's the same way. Right? The air in that home, the surfaces. And that's what superstratum and home biotic, you know, really set out to solve. It says, okay, how do we bridge that gap between ripping your house apart, you know, and removing gross, slimy mold that's growing?
- [36:34]
B
And you do need to do that.
- [36:35]
A
You do. Right. But also, that doesn't get you the full way for most of the people who are suffering. So how do we detox the home? And, you know, we came down here to Austin, to your house, because you have the perfect opportunity to do that. You've got a beautiful home that doesn't have really any systemic issues with mold. We looked at. We had a little issue in the attic that you've got a plan for replacing some of the plenums. You're doing the number one thing we always recommend for people, which is addressing the H Vac and also the split unit that we looked at in your building. You know, the air, of course, when there's mold in those, that's where you're going to get exposed the most. So we've got a good plan there. But with super stratum and home biotic, you know, what we're really doing here is we are bombing the house. Well, let's back up a little bit. First we're going to come in fog, and we've got all the equipment here and the building cleaner that we'll use to do that. That fog is the hypochlorous acid that'll get on all the surfaces, break down those mycotoxins. When you brought up ochratoxin, that was one of the specific mycotoxins that we tested. And without even a wipe, just from a fog landing on the surface, there's 100% reduction in ochratoxin from the building.
- [37:47]
B
Wow. And this is different. It's not killing the mold. It's killing the equivalent of the penicillin, the toxin made by the mold.
- [37:54]
A
Exactly. And that's an issue because there's lots of chemicals out there that can kill mold. Some of them are toxic themselves. Some of them do it better than others. But none of those chemicals are oxidizers that are strong enough to destroy the chemical. And that's what the building cleaner and the whole system, as well as the deodor bombs are designed to do, designed to clean up all that chemical contamination. And then once we're done with that, we bring in the home biotic. And why don't you talk a little bit about home biotic and how you came about it and how it works within our system.
- [38:23]
B
So in healthy soil, there's always fungus, and the environment requires fungus. And most fungus is pretty harmless. In fact, we eat a lot of mushrooms. Right. The problem is when it gets in homes that it's usually the 200 or so toxic species, maybe even up to 400, that are out there, that make toxins that are really bad for us. They love wet paper, which is what drywall is made out of, right? So if there's humidity even from body, just body humidity, or from cooking or from taking showers or from just cold air and it's hot and moist outside, and San Diego's just a whole mold bomb because the whole place is moist from the sea and everyone's air conditioned. And like, this stuff happens. So the issue then is if healthy soil has fungus, that's not the bad stuff. Why Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this rush hour ad to keep you calm, which could help your driving. And science says therapy is great for a healthy mindset. So enjoy this 14 second session on us. I think you've done everything right and absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, anything that hasn't gone your way could probably be blamed on your father not being emotionally available because his father wasn't emotionally available, and so on. And now that you're calm and healing, you're probably driving better, too.
- [39:44]
A
Liberty. Liberty.
- [39:45]
B
Liberty.
- [39:46]
A
Liberty.
- [39:48]
B
And it's because it has about nine species of bacteria that live in the soil that naturally compete with the mold and keep it in check. Sort of like you get too many deer if you don't have some predators that eat the deer. So then they're in balance. And what we have in our homes today is we have people really sterilizing as best they can, and then the mold just goes crazy because most of what people are doing doesn't work at all for mold. And so now it's like, I got no competition. So we identified these nine species of mold, and you can mist with Home Biotic, which restores those nine bacteria that live in soil. So then they get into the home and then they compete with the mold. And their job is to actually eat the roots. The hyphae that come out of a mold spore, they'll eat those as they come out, right? And some of them can even eat some of the mycotoxins. So now you have a natural competition. So a healthy home isn't sterile. A healthy home is just like a healthy gut. You need to have the right bacterial balance. So it's the world's first environmental probiotic, and you just mist it around. It's not terribly expensive. The problem is if you have a lot of mold and you haven't done the cleanup first, it's like, oh, I planted some nice seeds in the middle of the weeds. It's not going to make that big of a difference, especially right away. So this idea that you Come in with super stratum and you sterilize, you get rid of everything, and then you restore these healthy bacteria and they'll live for quite a while there. And then you coat all the areas in the home where you want no bacteria and you want no mold with a superstratum coating. And then you end up with incredibly strong protection in some places. And everywhere else you have this cleanup crew, bacteria that are in the home. So my plan for this property, which I just acquired, is we're going to go through and we're going to fog everything. And I tested the place. It had one species of mold that makes some toxins, but it's not high levels. But I could see some mold on the air conditioning vents where there was condensation. So we've already cleaned that off. But I know the H Vac has an issue because there was. It wasn't properly insulated. And so we found that. So I'm replacing the parts of the H Vac that were rusted through, replacing where the water leaked on the floor from condensation in the attic. And then we're going to bomb everything. So now I'm going to have sterilization up there. We're going to do a little bit of home biotic mist up there, and I'm going to coat all the high risk surfaces, and that's going to provide amazing protection. But the one area in every home I've ever lived in that has the biggest problem is the inside of the ductwork and the inside of the ac. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through and spray. After we clean them, the vents, we're going to spray the inside of them with super stratum's coating, which is perfect because it lasts for a decade, possibly more. Nothing will grow in those vents, even if there's some condensation or something like that. And to me, that's precious. And this is so cheap. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mold remediation for my homes. And this was not much money at all to work with super stratum. And I know that every surface in this home will be mold free, the air will be mold free, and it's not expensive compared to anything else I've ever done. So I'm incredibly stoked about this. And then one of the other things I'm doing is the home that I'm in now had high humidity levels because of an AC problem. So just the air was wet for a while. So that creates the potential for Mold or mycotoxins. And one thing that happens so often, and this is tragic, okay, you have a home, you've lived there for a while, you have books, you have a bed, you have couches, you have all your things. And then like, oh, no, I have mold. Well, these mycotoxins are very small particles. They get on everything. And if you, okay, I'm going to fix my health. I'm going to move to a new home and I'm going to bring my moldy furniture with me. You will remain sick. So you have to throw away all your stuff. Most people with mold, you already have job stress, there's financial stress. Everyone has financial stress right now. And you're going, so you're telling me I'm gonna have to sell my house or I'm gonna have to rent a new place, which is expensive and you want me to throw away all my possessions that aren't, you know, metal or stone or glass or plastic. Like, I can't afford that. So what the heck would you do? Well, what I'm gonna do to make sure that I have a perfectly clean environment is all the things from my old home. We're going to also fog or bomb those with super stratum. I'm going to treat them with home biotic as well. I'm going to HEPA vacuum them to make sure that there's no particles left. And I'm salvaging all the things that have been exposed to a higher level of humidity than you want. And what I do now, which is funny because this is in moldy movie and I just wasn't doing it in my old home, is have a humidity gauge and you want around 50%, maybe 45% if you're too high or too low. Mold loves to grow. So there's a good range. And I was up to 65% in the old home, which was the problem. And if I'd have just looked at a gauge or put one in because I was lazy, I didn't do it. And I'm actually working with another company we're going to talk about at some point that has humidity monitoring kind of built into your health monitoring. So the goal is, I don't want to think about it, but I know my home is safe. This is a one time thing I'm going to have to do and I'll probably touch it up again with foggers and I'll do home biotic every quarter or something like that, just in high risk areas. But this place will be the cleanest home I'VE ever lived in. And yeah, I'm going to run air filters too, because, well, you should do that anyway. I live in Austin. We have cedar and things like that. And I'm going to make sure that there's no dust in my home because dust is the single biggest way mold gets in your body. So I'll make sure that I vacuum or more to the point, probably my house cleaner will. But I'm gonna use a HEPA vacuum. But the amount of protection that I would have had even in the place I was living before, when the humidity levels rose, if I'd have treated that Homo suprastratum, it would have radically reduced my risk. So perfection's not required. You just wanna set yourself up for success. And if you have to remediate mold, you may have to remove some stuff. But the Super Stratum treatment with multiple products and adding some probiotic at the right stage, it's the lowest cost way to minimize risk that I can think of. And that said, if you have drainage, rains pooling under your house, your foundation's always wet, your carpet is sogging, you have to deal with the water. But for most of us, fix the roof leak, get rid of the moldy stuff, super stratum everything, bomb everything, fog everything, home biotic everything, vacuum everything. And it's not going to destroy your bank account. And that's the gift. Because otherwise mold is a massive financial hit between the health and the home. It can easily be a quarter million dollars. And who has that?
- [46:47]
A
You're exactly right. And what you just said, that was the intention behind Super Stratum. It's like you said with the body, sometimes it can be expensive to get mold out of the body. It can take a long time. But there's a way to do it. We wanted to create the same thing for the home. It was expensive. You know, you can get mold out of the home. But how you detox the home, how you get that cloudy blue water into clear water again, doing that in a cost effective manner was impossible. And we talked to so many people who had spent hundreds of thousands who had done everything. They're washing their clothes in vinegar, they're throwing everything away. I mean, they're in this cycle of losing everything. And you. The way we're moving your contents in is a great way. We encourage people to do that where you have them in your old home. But before you move them in, we're moving it into the garage. So all the wiping down and vacuuming and the bombing can happen in the garage. So that before you move any of those contents in, you won't have any exposure. This is fantastic. We're excited to be here. We're going to get some footage of us walking around the house and doing some of the work. I know you've got another crew doing work with the H Vac this week, but this was an amazing conversation. It's great to hear your story and I'm again, so excited for, for this project.
- [48:03]
B
Tell me how you got into molds. Like, what's your mold story?
- [48:06]
A
Oh, my mold story. Well, I didn't start in mold, as most of us don't. I was in. I was a musician, I was a songwriter, DJ. I did that for 10, 15 plus years and I was living in Los Angeles and I had actually started the company. Funny enough, I knew, and I had enough friends who had been sick. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had a partner who was extremely mold sick. I had no idea about mold. I watched her just be sick all the time. Couldn't get out of bed, hormones, couldn't eat anything, and tried to be as supportive as I could for the, you know, the time that we were together. But. But it ended very traumatically for her and a lot of mental health issues. And that was really kind of my first. Oh, is this what this is? And as I started the company, I was actually in another relationship. And unbeknownst to us in the time, the home we were living in in Los Angeles, which is very, very common in LA because of how leaky all the buildings are and how dry the climate is, it was a toxic home and her health cratered extremely quickly. She had had exposures as a child, and again, it ended even more traumatically. And I had a lot of the same symptoms that or some of the symptoms that you were describing, the adhd, it was a lot of brain. I called the psychiatrist and it was like, oh, great, another musician who wants Adderall? And I was like, I don't want Adderall. I just don't know why I can't sit and focus and finish. And I don't know why everyone in the house. One girl who lived in the apartment got appendicitis and lost her appendix after the vaccine. You know, gut issues and doctors and all the usual suspects. Funny enough, however, it wasn't until two to three years into building the company where we realized, wait, mold isn't really maybe the problem. Maybe it's mycotoxins and there's no solution. I was actually. I'd helped many Many people at that point. And I was working with a customer who had a very crazy mold story and had become very educated through it. And she looked at me one day and she said, you know, you lived in that house, too, like all these people that you're. You know, the message that you're carrying to everyone about mold exposure, maybe you should look in the mirror a little bit. And it was really the first time where I had gone, oh, because as, you know, as big as the elephant is in the room, you think to yourself, oh, I'm fine, and you see everyone else. And that was really the, you know, the lens that I had until I kind of made that realization. I went back to that home, I knocked on the door, and I brought a mycotoxin test in, and I tested the home, found trichothecenes, and, you know, started to piece the whole story together and realized that as I was building this company, you know, first because you just want to build a company, and then you start to discover things, I realized that my mission of the company had developed in my own life. It was the very thing that I was dealing with in all my relationships. It was the thing I was dealing with in my own, you know, my own life as I was working through certain mental health issues. And then that kind of began, you know, what my journey was of getting my health back in order and in the lifestyle, you know, because I've got to practice what I preach as well. And there are many times I don't do it, but that is the intention, you know, where I am now. I've seen how it's affected my life. I've seen how it's affected many people in my life, including my wife. Now, we just had an issue in our home, and she had an issue in a place that she was in. So it is one of those things. You don't want it to dominate your life. It shouldn't be. The story of your life is avoiding mold, but at the same time, it touches everyone. And if you don't have that part of your life in integrity, if you're not aware of water damage and the environments that you live in, if you're not thinking of your health, you know, in these terms, then you can get in a really tough spot. And, you know, I'm looking back on it probably in the same way that you are. I see it as a blessing in the sense that it's given me all this knowledge. It created super stratum. It brought us here to the table, and I talk to so many People from mothers who are living in their garage with their children for years because they can't go into their home, but they can't afford to move and they can't get a job because they're too sick to elderly. I had a poor woman who messaged me who had just tried everything and she thinks she's dying and her brain's gone and she doesn't have a place to go. And you know, I hear these stories from the World Series pitcher who loses his home to the people that can barely scrape enough money together to get by. And the truth is like you're saying, when you have the right information, when you do the right things in the beginning, you don't get stuck in these situations or, or you are much more likely to avoid these situations that completely ruin your life. And so we want to spread the education of what needs to be done right and what you're missing. What are the mistakes that people are making when they're trying to fix these problems? And we want to give people solutions that are effective, number one, that don't cause more issues in their sensitive bodies and are affordable tools that they can use to get them from that $15,000 remediation where they ripped out their basement to a home that's actually healthy for them to live in. And that's what Super Stratum is meant to do.
- [53:27]
B
I think you actually cracked the code, which after 20 years of dealing with mold, I'm pretty excited about that. Just for people who are listening, you can go to superstratumlabs.com and you can go to moldymovie.com if you don't believe what we just said. There's just abundant evidence it is totally free and that'll just. It's a one hour documentary. It costs almost $200,000 to make that. I spent months traveling around the country interviewing people because it's so important. And you can go to homebiotic.com or you can just get Home Biotic on the Super Stratum site, which is the easiest way to do it. So I would just say at a minimum, you know, fog your place and we didn't talk about. And an issue I've had multiple, multiple times as someone who used to be really mold sensitive. And I've actually recovered from that to the point where it doesn't really take me out, which, I mean, I can teach people how to do that. That's a lot of work. I don't have like the anxious response if I walk into a mold room, like, oh, it's probably mold in here, but like I'm not gonna die, but I would get in my car and I'd turn it on and you smell mold. And like what I've tried running ozone through that thing. And like, it just seems like you have to to sell the car. Right. A lot of cars have actually. Someone left the window down, it was rainy and the carpet gets wet and all that stuff. So what do you do in a car? Or even worse, like an rv? I've got my RV parked out there. We should actually hit that while we're here. What do you do for that with Super Stratum?
- [54:55]
A
Yeah. So great question. And cars are obviously the home is where we spend the main portion of our time. But we can do the same treatment for the car. And the car is actually a great way even to try out Super Stratum. I think the car detox, we have a compact version, an SUV version, but it's somewhere in the 60 to $80 range for the whole package.
- [55:16]
B
This is not like a device. This is a one time treatment, correct?
- [55:19]
A
Yeah, this is a one time treatment. What we like to say is car detailing is not car detoxing.
- [55:24]
B
That is totally true.
- [55:25]
A
A lot of times when you detail a car, you're introducing more chemicals.
- [55:28]
B
And you know why? They put in those stupid like fragrances and Eritrea. The car's rotting mold in it.
- [55:34]
A
Exactly. And one of the things that cars have that homes do suffer from, but cars the most are volatile organic compounds. Chemicals that off gas. Especially in new cars.
- [55:44]
B
Oh yeah.
- [55:45]
A
So not only do we help a lot of people who have molded mycotoxins in their cars, but a lot of people who buy new cars who are mold sick or sensitive, they buy a new car and they get into it and they go, I can't even be in this car.
- [55:56]
B
Oh my God. Okay, we didn't talk about this. So mcs multiple chemicals and setters I used to have that I used to have to hold my breath on like the detergent aisle. I don't have a lot of sensitivity. I have to a few things now compared to where I used to be. Mold is a direct cause of chemical sensitivity. Right. And I know people who are just like locked in their homes because of chemical sensitivity. They all have been exposed to mold. So you can get rid of the VOCs in cars?
- [56:22]
A
Absolutely.
- [56:22]
B
I won't buy a new car. When I rent a car, if it smells like new car, I take it back. I'm like, do you have one with more miles? Because I don't want to I get headaches. And you feel dumb by the time you get to where you're going.
- [56:31]
A
Exactly. And one thing that a lot. I had a doctor, a great doctor, who educated me on this. A lot of behavioral issues in children.
- [56:38]
B
Oh, my God.
- [56:39]
A
This is what it's from. When you put them in the car, and it's like they're clawing to get out. Those are VOCs, and they don't affect everyone the same. Now, VOCs are chemicals. They're not living spores. They're not living organisms like mold, but they are chemicals like mycotoxins, and you break those down. The deodor bomb is specifically designed for VOCs. Now, that's why it's great in new builds as well. Once you complete, you've got all those caulks and adhesives and paints. So that chlorine dioxide gas will not only destroy the VOCs, but it's looking for moisture in the air. That's why we raise the humidity in the protocol. So it'll pull the moisture out of paints and caulks and coatings. So it helps to cure the home. It destroys all the VOCs in that process. So when you do it in a car, amazing. Not only destroying the mycotoxins, we have the pure one tabs that will get any mold or any bacteria. You know, anything that you see from spills. When you set off the bomb within the car, that moves through the H vac system, the vent system in the car, It'll destroy those mycotoxins, destroy all the VOCs. So it's a. Again, that's your detox. That's the difference in a detox and a detail. The detail is aesthetic. The detox is actually going to destroy those things, those chemical toxins, those VOCs, those things that make you feel bad in your car.
- [57:51]
B
So we can run the car detox kit in a new car, and it's going to lose that nasty new car smell. That's insane. And if it has mold, it'll also get rid of the mold. But just getting rid of those chemicals, man. Yeah. You put kids in a new car, even adults. Like, I don't know why I'm so tired. And food cravings. You expose people to mold or chemicals like volatile organic. Your mitochondria freak out. Like, I need more energy because I'm under stress right now. So then you get sugar cravings, and you give kids a sugar. Now their brains are poisoned by either mold or chemicals, and you give them some sugar. And it's no wonder that maybe that's not the best day you've ever had as a parent, right?
- [58:28]
A
Wow.
- [58:29]
B
I'm actually stoked. I did not know that you could handle VOCs in cars. And even here I'm doing some repainting and I always insist on low or no VOC paint, but it still has a smell and it's going to help me with that.
- [58:40]
A
Yep.
- [58:40]
B
Amazing. Well, I'm excited to get to work on the house.
- [58:44]
A
Me too. Let's.
- [58:45]
B
So thanks for making some cool stuff, man. This is. This is one of those low cost, huge impact things that moves the needle the most.
- [58:52]
A
Yeah. Well, I really appreciate your journey and all the work you've done to educate people because you know you can develop a solution. And. And we have developed a solution. It's a few years old, but people have to know about it. They have to understand it's available, they have to know how to use it, and first they have to understand what's causing all these issues. So I really appreciate, you know, all the work you've done with that.
- [59:13]
B
You got it. I'm happy to share this video.
- [59:15]
A
Awesome.
- [59:17]
B
See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.
- [59:26]
D
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 purpose of 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 advers 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.