← Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Young and Profiting with Hala Taha
Dave Asprey: The Father of Biohacking on How to Unlock Limitless Energy to Power Your Business | Health and Wellness | YAPClassic
01:07:53
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- [00:03]
Hala Taha
Hey Young and profits. When I think back to the early days of YAP Media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public WI FI networks and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients and keep everything moving. And that's exactly why I wish I had AT&T business back then. AT&T business is a reliable provider for small business owners. For Small Business Month, we celebrate small businesses by helping them run better. This means reliable uptime, easy switching, smart communications. You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are. Like AT&T business built to work. Get AT&T business@business.att.com that's business.att.com Today's episode is sponsored in part by Huel AT&T business. Through Mintly and Prolon, Huel makes nutritionally complete meals that you can drink get 15% off with my code yap15@heal.com yap15@&t business delivers reliable business grade connectivity that gives your team a competitive edge. Switch to ATT business@business.att.com millions of people trust Remitly to move money globally. Use Code Business to get a hundred dollar bonus to after you send $300 or more with Remitly to redeem, visit the Rewards tab on the Remitly app and enter the code Business Prolon puts you in the right fasting state so you can lose weight and reset your body. Get 15% off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five day program. Just visit prolonlife.com Profiting as always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or@youngandprofiting.com deals I
- [01:53]
Dave Asprey
have the average response time in my brain of an 18 year old.
- [01:56]
Hala Taha
Dave Asprey is an entrepreneur, the father of biohacking, and the author of books like Bulletproof Diet, Superhuman and most recently Smarter, Not Harder. There's literally not a more qualified expert in the world on this topic.
- [02:07]
Dave Asprey
It's silly to run a business and not manage your biology. Your body is lazy by design and the flip side of laziness is efficiency. You're just wasting time in the gym. So being fit is important, but it does not follow that spending more time in the gym makes you more fit. If you can learn to recover faster than Mother Nature intended. You can do way more in your life. And that's what biohacking really is about. Now I have the body I want without a lot of work, because if you do that, you're captain of your own ship and it changes everything.
- [02:40]
Hala Taha
How would you approach going to the gym?
- [02:42]
Dave Asprey
What you would do is you would lift and then you make sure of animal protein right after you work out.
- [02:47]
Hala Taha
What should we know about meat?
- [02:49]
Dave Asprey
Grass fed red meat is the healthiest meat that most people can eat.
- [02:54]
Hala Taha
What's the most unconventional thing that you're doing right now to achieve your age goal?
- [02:59]
Dave Asprey
Wow. I do everything.
- [03:01]
Hala Taha
What's up, young and profiters? Earlier this week with Dr. Andy Galpin, we talked about building a body that can actually support your ambition. And today's YAV classic keeps that same same theme going with the father of biohacking himself, Dave Asprey. Dave is an entrepreneur and a bustling author of books like the Bulletproof Diet, Superhuman and Smarter, Not Harder. In this conversation, he breaks down how entrepreneurs can take control of their biology, recover from stress, boost energy, and get better results without wasting time on routines that don't move the needle. And hey, if this is your first time hanging out with us, welcome to the Yap Fam Follow Young and Profiting Podcast so you can keep learning from top entrepreneurs and experts in each and every week. Now let's throw it back to my epic conversation with Dave Asprey. Dave, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
- [03:47]
Dave Asprey
I'm happy to be here.
- [03:49]
Hala Taha
I am so pumped to speak with you. You are the father of biohacking. You literally invented the term and there's literally not a more qualified expert in the world on this topic. So, so happy to have you here. So we last talked three years ago on the podcast, which feels like such a long time ago. And I think the most memorable part of the interview is when I called you by your biological age and you told me that I was ageist and you mentioned that you are a 48 year old who aligns with being 28 years old because you believe you will live to be at least 180 years old. And at the time, you were 28% of your goal. And so like I mentioned three years ago, there was AI, but nobody was really talking about AI, even, like, we didn't even mention it one time in the conversation. So I'm curious to know, how old do you think you're going to live to now?
- [04:43]
Dave Asprey
I am sticking to at least 180 and it's funny There are a group of people in the longevity field who are kind of afraid of death. And it's like, I'm never going to die. And look, the universe is going to end at some point. I'm willing to wait around till that. And I don't think 180 is an upper limit. I just think it's 50% better than our current best. And this week, I celebrated my 29% birthday. So I just look at my birthdays now as a percentage of my minimum acceptable duty life. And I think that has an effect on the cells themselves. There are interesting studies where they'll take really old people and they'll make a special, like a hotel with all the TV shows and all the furniture from when they were young. And then their biological markers of aging go down. So I just keep reminding myself like, I'm somewhere in my mid-30s or less, and that's how I see the world. And I was only kidding when I said you were ageist. But the idea here is there are people out there who have the attitude, they have the brains of being 32 years old, and they might be substantially older than that. And I learned most of biohacking from people in their 70s and 80s when I was 26 years old. So I want to find the people who have lots of calendar years who have young energy and, like, what are you doing? Because that's where we learn.
- [06:07]
Hala Taha
That's so interesting. So you are saying that you basically are telling yourself that you're a certain age because you believe that your cells are acting differently because you are telling yourself that you are a younger age. Did I get that right?
- [06:22]
Dave Asprey
The power of self deception works on cells. We call it placebo, but it's totally real. In fact, a lot of pharmaceuticals get approved that are 10% better than just what your mind can do on its own. We've all read Think and Grow Rich. I read that when I was 16, and I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. And we know that having a positive mindset, visualization matters. So why would it only matter in your business? It doesn't even make sense.
- [06:47]
Hala Taha
I love the concept of being able to identify with whatever age that you want. I myself look 10 years younger than I really am. And people often get really confused. They think I'm in my mid-20s and I'm in my 30s. It's to my advantage in the business world for sure. But lately, I don't even want to tell people my age. I feel like it's not their business. And I feel like in the future people won't really identify with their biological age. Do you feel like that's true?
- [07:17]
Dave Asprey
We're getting to that point. And it's funny. When I was 24 and I was building out my tech entrepreneur career, I went to the hairdresser. I'm like, can you give me some gray right here on the sides? And they're like, why would you ever want that? We don't have gray hair dye. And I said, well, I know that I'm going to make $20,000 a year more when I go into a job, because they're going to say, oh, he has experience. And so you want to look like you have enough experience for people to take you seriously. Because if you look like you're 25 and you're 45, you're not going to be given the kind of respect you think. And in entrepreneurship, it matters less. Except if you're going in with a bunch of old, stodgy government bureaucrats and you're trying to sell them your new service, they want to see that you've got enough experience. So there's probably around 30 to 35 is where you want to be pinned in terms of how you look and how you think. Because by the time you're early mid-30s, you figured out enough stuff to not do the things you would have done when you were 22 or 25. And I think that's where you maximize your value as a business partner. And it's fine if you're 50. In fact, you probably have more experience, but it's better if you have the experience of being 50. They think you're 35, and then you just outplay them.
- [08:34]
Hala Taha
Exactly. That's why I said, it's definitely to my advantage. I need to just stay looking 30 years old forever. So what's the most unconventional thing that you're doing right now to achieve your age goal?
- [08:45]
Dave Asprey
Wow. I do everything. So I wrote a major book on longevity called Superhuman that outlines all of this. And there's seven pillars of aging, and you'll get. Well, what's the most unusual thing? Recently I went down to Costa Rica and I reset my central aging clock. And what that means is I sat every day for a couple hours with focused ultrasound beams hitting the hypothalamus in my brain while getting stem cells so they could actually cross the blood brain barrier. And the effect on cognitive function is really powerful. If you've looked at aging lately, you've seen people say, we can reverse cell aging. Okay, that's nice. But if your brain thinks you're old and your brain actually is aging and your cells are less old. Okay, you've got some of the longevity. But having a young brain, having done a ton of neurofeedback on my brain to train it to be more effective, to. To be more powerful and to be more efficient at the same time, that combination is pretty incredible. And I do all the other stuff you'd expect, like tons of stem cells and making sure my cognitive systems work epically well. The cool thing is, as you age, your brain slows down a little bit unless you do something about it. And we can measure that. So I have the average response time in my brain of an 18 year old. So whatever I'm doing is working.
- [10:10]
Hala Taha
Wow, I love that. And I'm going to pick your brain later on about how we can improve our brain health. Let's talk about the boom of biohacking. Since we last talked, I've had Ben Greenfield on the show and Gary Brucka and all these guys. Do you feel like there's different schools of thoughts when it comes to biohacking?
- [10:30]
Dave Asprey
Well, biohacking, the definition when I first came out with this, it's the art and science of changing the environment around you and then inside of you so you have control of your own biology. And the areas that we play in are longevity, which is a big focus for me, cognitive function, and then I'm going to call it the spiritual or the happiness side of things. And I've been putting a lot of weighting of my effort behind those three areas. And you'll see a lot of people who maybe are newer to the biohacking scene, they read a bunch of stuff and decide that they want to write a book or start a podcast. And the reason I didn't trademark the word biohacking is I wanted it to be a global movement. I don't own biohacking. I just started it. People call me the father of biohacking. So I do. See, people are saying I'm just a longevity person. And there's a longevity conference. And then I'll see people say, well, I'm a biohacker. I just have some red light and some cold plunges. I'm like, those are very old biohacks. That's great. And all of these are helping people. What's maybe most refreshing is that biohacking has crushed the vegan diet. And having been a raw vegan at one time in my life, which is really bad for you, what inspires me the most is I write all of my posts on my podcast, if someone had just told me this when I was 20, it would have saved me two and a half million dollars, and it would have saved me an enormous amount of suffering, both the spiritual emotional suffering and physical suffering. Having lost 100 pounds, having made my brain work better than it ever has. So I try to keep it balanced. It also comes down to, what's your goal? Because the things that make old people young are the things that make young people powerful. So let's say you're 30 and you say, oh, my gosh, I'm going to do biohacking now. I have the body I want without a lot of work. Because if you're an entrepreneur, you don't have time to spend 10 hours a day on longevity and going to the gym because you're actually building a company. You probably have some sort of romantic interest. You're balancing all this. You could also meditate for four hours a day, and we just don't have time for that. So how do I make it really effective? And how do I make it take a small amount of time for my brain to work for me to have epic levels of energy and just more resilience than anyone else? And if you can do that, you will be really successful, not just in your entrepreneurial life, but in your personal life. And it depends on how many friends you have of different ages. Show me an entrepreneur who's killing it at work. When their relationship is falling apart at home, it doesn't work. So your relationships are a part of your environment that affects you as a biohacker. So we want happiness. We want the ability to be in whatever state we choose, whether it's focused or relaxed, so no one can trigger us. You can't do just one thing. You have to have brain. You have to have energy. You need to have your body. You need to have your longevity. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to do this if you start in your 20s or 30s than if you wait till you're 40 or 50.
- [13:35]
Hala Taha
And I know that you wrote a recent book called Smarter, Not Harder. And we're gonna dive into a lot of those concepts today so that we can learn how we can do biohacking more efficiently, like you said. Cause we are busy entrepreneurs. We don't really have time to meditate for hours or work out for hours and, you know, do these diets that don't work. So one last question before we jump into that kind of stuff. Biohacking has received a lot of criticism. A lot of people call it elitist. They call it unscientific. What are your thoughts around that?
- [14:07]
Dave Asprey
You know, there's always been seventh grade bullies who don't like something so they just insult it instead of saying something meaningful. And you can say biohacking is non scientific, except there's this weird thing we do called science. As biohackers say, I wanted to get this result. So what are the things that have scientific studies behind them or just have clinical evidence behind them? Let's try those and measure the results. And when someone says biohacking isn't scientific, these are the same kind of people that will say AB testing your ads online is not scientific. What do you mean it's not scientific? I tried it and it worked or it didn't work. And the thing about being an entrepreneur for my entire life, if you believe something is going to work in your business and you just keep doing it despite the evidence, you will go out of business. So if you think billboards are going to be a great way of advertising, you put a million dollars into billboards and you don't sell anything, you go, well, I believe billboards work. Let me put another million in. But we do this all the time with our stupid oatmeal in the morning, with kale and with our health. And then these arrogant pharmaceutical backed people go, well, biohacking is not scientific. I'm like, guys, the whole point of biohacking is I'm only going to do what works and I'm going to measure results the same way I do in my business. I'm going to do it for my sleep, for my stress, for my inflammation, for my aging. And if I'm doing something wrong, I'll change it. How is that unscientific? It's the most obvious thing on the planet. What's going on here? There's a lot of people with a vested interest in you not having the data and you not having the knowledge and you not even having the right to control your own biology. So you can insult biohacking all you want. There are tens of millions of biohackers all over the planet. And my biohacking facilities called upgrade labs, 32 locations opening across the US and Canada. And we're partnering with entrepreneurs all over the place who are saying, I want to bring biohacking to my community using AI, using data, and there's not even a mirror in my biohacking facilities. At Upgrade Labs, your only mirror is your data. How am I actually doing? There's no self deception, there's no religious belief. Oh, I Saw an ad from a drug company or from Kraft Foods or General Mills telling me Froot Loops was part of a healthy breakfast. So I just believed it. I kept eating Fruit Loops and getting fat, like, this is what they want. But entrepreneurs, one of the gifts we have is we want to make the world a better place, and we don't really suffer bullshit. So, sure, you can. You can say biohacking is elitist, too, because sleeping in a dark room is elitist. Having dimmer switches is elitist. Lowering your thermostat's elitist. Eating healthy food is elitist. Or is this just the manual for being a healthy, effective human? That's what I believe. Most biohacks are based on principles that are free. All of my books have the free version, the cheap version. And here's what the crazy billionaires are doing in order to prove that it works. And yes, I do all the crazy billionaire stuff because that's my job and I get to do it.
- [17:02]
Hala Taha
Yeah, it makes so much sense, you know, And I feel like it's not elitist to your point. It is scientific. The whole basis of biohacking is scientific. Now, this is not a political podcast, but I have to say, I am kind of excited for rfk, because I do feel like he's going to make some changes. What are your thoughts on that?
- [17:21]
Dave Asprey
I have had a chance to have dinner with rfk, and that man is one of the most grounded, stable, intelligent, knowledgeable people I've ever met in my life. And we had a chance to talk about this because he's very open that 30 years ago, he got addicted to heroin, and he has been in recovery for 30 years, which means every single psychological trigger or anything he has, he's worked on it. So he can sit there and face down Monsanto, face down a Senate hearing, and he's just factual and he's so well educated. The thing that is the challenge now is making sure that the Senate confirms him. And you know, already the big pharma people are going after things with him. So I don't think that the population at large will be satisfied if some compromised senator tries to block RFK from fixing health in the US we all know this is the sickest country, and we all know why. And so I've never been more hopeful for biohacking. And anyone listening who's running a health or wellness or biohacking business, get ready, because the gloves are going to come off. We are not going to give the regulatory agencies that are owned by big pharma companies the power to tell you what to do anymore. You're going to be able to actually speak the truth and to actually help people without having to dance around old regulations meant to make drugs sell better.
- [18:50]
Hala Taha
I'm so excited for that. Honestly. I feel like when I walk in the grocery store, I'm like, nothing is edible here. Like, what am I supposed to eat?
- [18:59]
Dave Asprey
Yeah.
- [19:00]
Hala Taha
Um, so let's talk about your new book, Smarter, Not Harder. Um, your most recent book, I should say. And I want to start with the central theme of your book, and that's that laziness makes us strong. And that seems very counterintuitive. So why do you believe that's the case?
- [19:14]
Dave Asprey
First off, for all of my entrepreneur friends listening, do not market laziness. Uh, I didn't sell as many of that book as I expected because I thought this was a really cool thing. And it's. Recognize your body is lazy by design. All of mother nature is lazy. And the. The flip side of laziness is efficiency. So we don't want to waste one electron. We don't want to waste effort. And if you think about it, you want to sell 10,000. Whatever you sell, do you want to sell them with the most work or the least work you want to do with the least work? So entrepreneurs are the laziest people on the planet, right? And you could be even pissed off that I said that. But think about it. You only do what works. And you know that if you can do it more effectively, more efficiently, you'll get better results. So what this means, though, is we get a lot of guilt and shame because you wake up and you say, well, I should want to go to the gym because I know it's good for me. But your body is screaming at you. Don't you know that that takes energy and wasting energy is a bad thing? And look, there's a couch and there's a croissant. So doesn't that look more comfortable? And it does. And so you feel this emotional, this attraction to things that are bad for you because your body's trying to get more energy in and waste less energy. So instead of saying, well, I'm a bad person because my body wants to do what 2 billion years of evolution taught it to do. There is a way to use basically what the marketing industry does to make yourself motivated. And this is the hack for entrepreneurs. Recognize that your body loves to save more than makes sense. And you see this on every single website, including mine, when I'm selling danger coffee or whatever. 10% discount. Why does saving 2 bucks on a bag of coffee. Feel like you're saving more than $2, it's because your emotions, before you can think, know that saving is really good. So instead of motivating yourself, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to sweat, I'm going to work hard. I know it's good for me. That's all logic. And the body doesn't do logic. Instead you wake up and you say, today I'm going to do biohacking instead of going to the gym. Even if it involves going to a gym or to an upgrade labs or something. And the motivation is instead of wasting a lot of time, I'm going to do a more effective workout. So you just tell yourself, I am going to save 45 minutes of suffering by going to the gym right now. That flips the switch on your emotional body. So now all of a sudden, oh yeah, I'm going to save. Because saving feels bigger than doing work. You can do this in your entrepreneurial life as well. I have this long hour meeting. This is going to suck. Well, what if you reposition that mentally and say, I'm going to save eight hours of work later? So in your mind you're saying, wow, I'm saving seven hours of effort and that meeting will not feel painful. Understand, savings motivates you because your biology is lazy, even though you have an immense drive and power. Otherwise you wouldn't be an entrepreneur. So I don't want to waste my willpower. I can use my willpower to overcome my desire to not go to the gym. Or I could change my desire so that I want to go to the gym so I can save my willpower for building my business.
- [22:31]
Hala Taha
Yeah, fam, I'm all about doing health resets. I'm on a health kick this year. I tried juice cleanses, cutting sugar completely, even intermittent fasting, but they didn't stick for me because they were just too hard to follow, too strict. And so I was on the hunt of a way to lose five pounds transparently. That's how I came across Prolon. So me and my boyfriend have been together for about a year and we gained some weight over the holidays. We're just like in love and eating too much and going out to eat and just like in this puppy love stage where we're gaining some weight and we both wanted to lose weight and Prolon is what I came across. It gives you a total reset and it prevents you from losing muscle mass. It's a five day nutrition program with plant based soups. Snacks and beverages that keep your body in a fasting state while still nourishing you. And that's what helps support cellular rejuvenation and renewal. But the biggest thing for me is how easy it is. Everything is prepackaged and labeled day by day, which is great for somebody like me. So you know exactly what to eat, when to eat. No prep, no planning, no guesswork. It just puts you in the right fasting state so you can lose weight and reset your body. Are you ready to lose five pounds and for your own reset? For a limited time, Prolon is offering young and profiting listeners 15% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift with when you subscribe to their five day program, just visit prolonlife.com profiting that's P R O L O N L I F.com/profiting to claim your 15% discount and your bonus gift. That's prolonlife.com profiting prolong life.com/profiting yeah fam have you ever had a message you meant to reply to and then just didn't? It happens to the best of us. And in business, that adds up fast. Because when somebody is ready to talk, speed can secure the deal. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. The smarter way to run your business Communications I've seen this firsthand with my clients. Suddenly a lot of our clients don't want Slack or cool automations. They just want to text and get a fast response. They want to go back to basics and and if we don't make that easy for them, we become the bottleneck. So we decided to switch to Quo. Now we use one shared business number. Every call and text goes to the whole team. Everybody sees the thread and anyone can respond and nothing gets lost. No bottlenecks? No. I'll get back to this later. Just fast, clean communication. How clients actually want it It's a simple shift that removes one of the easiest ways to quietly lose revenue. Money is on the line. Yab fam always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com profiting that's Quo.com profiting Quo.com profiting Yap gang I didn't really understand the importance of life insurance until I saw what it did for my family when my dad passed. My dad had life insurance and when he died, my mom was taken care of financially. And in an already difficult moment, that stability made a huge difference for us. It's Something that I've never forgotten. That experience changed how I think about all of it. Life insurance isn't really about you. It's about the people that you leave behind. That's why I want to share. Fabric by Gerber Life Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today made for busy entrepreneurs and parents like you all. You could do it right from your couch and you could be covered in under 10 minutes, often with no health exam required. And it's designed so you can choose coverage that actually fits your family and your budget. Because being responsible isn't just about what you build in your lifetime. It's about what you leave protected. Join the thousands of entrepreneurs and parents who trust fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes@meetfabric.com profiting that's meetfabric.com profiting and use my link so they know that I sent you. That's M e E T Fabric F A B R I C.com Profiting meat fabric.com Profiting policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Now, I know a lot of this has to do with the fact that our brain is taking. Sorry. That our body is acting before our brain. Can you talk to us about what's happening biologically?
- [26:54]
Dave Asprey
This is one of my favorite parts of biohacking. What really happens, and this is totally invisible. That, say I clap my hands and you know that it took some time for the sound to get to your ears and then you heard it. But that's a total lie because if we glued electrodes on your head like we do at my neuroscience company. Well, your auditory cortex, the part of your brain that hears things a third of a second after the sound got to your body, your body allowed your brain to hear it. And during that third of a second, the body decides what you're allowed to hear and what you're going to feel about it. And then you're going to make up a story that matches the feeling. This is how all of reality works. There's a 1/3 of a second window where your body gets to betray you. And understanding that is pretty profound. Now you go, oh, my body's pre processing reality for me. How is it doing that? What are the rules it's using? Well, it's using rules that it learned, starting from the moment of conception to try and figure out how to survive in this world. So your body's creating a user interface to help you survive. Unfortunately, it got Programmed by that time someone almost dropped you when you were one year old, by that coach who was mean to you, by the bullies, by parenting. Even the best parents make mistakes. So all of us, especially when we're younger, we have triggers. There's things that just piss you off. They get under your skin. That is ancient survival systems that are making you feel a certain way to try and keep you alive and understanding. That's not you. It's not that you got anxious, it's that your body got anxious and then you chose how to react about it. But if you don't know that, you are going to feel that you're the same thing as your body. And then this is the worst for entrepreneurs. Let's say you're cruising along, business is doing okay, and then something happens. Potential lawsuit from some douchebag employee who's making up a story because you fired him because they stole money. I've had that happen, by the way. So stuff like that, okay, now the lawsuit or the bad pr, whatever, it feels like a threat to your body. And now you are in a state of fight or flight. Your decision making goes down, your team leadership goes down, and you're dysregulated. It happens all the time. Understand, this was your body's response. It was not you. And by creating that division now you can say, all right, I can tell my body's freaking out. Let me do some deep breaths. Let me do a cold plunge. Let me do whatever the biohack is to turn off the bodily response. In the meantime, though, I am not going to be triggered. I am not going to be reactive. And if you can stop being reactive when there's a perceived threat to your company, you'll see that a perceived threat isn't even real. You want to hear a story about that?
- [29:32]
Hala Taha
Yeah, I would love to.
- [29:33]
Dave Asprey
Years ago, about 2015 or so, bulletproof is taking off. And to be clear, guys, Danger Coffee is my new coffee company. I have nothing to do with Bulletproof anymore. But years ago, Bulletproof is taking off. And I get on this guy Joe Rogan's show, and I didn't even know who he was because I don't actually listen to podcasts. I have 500 million downloads of my own. I make them, I don't listen to them. So I go on. And I changed Joe Rogan's life. I helped him with adhd. We talked about Kale, all kinds of good stuff. And he is prolific in his praise. Multiple, multiple offsets. But then he has ownership in a company that decides to copy Bulletproof. So overnight, he sends 25,000 organized trolls to my website to just decimate it. And he starts basically saying all sorts of bad things about me online.
- [30:25]
Hala Taha
Oh, my God.
- [30:26]
Dave Asprey
Oh, it was super dirty. It was financially motivated. And he actually deleted the three episodes where I've been on when he went over to Spotify. But the point of all this is that that freaked me out. I was already doing very well. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. And he caused a bump in sales, but it wasn't like, life changing, but it was cool. So it just felt weird. And then all of a sudden, that did trigger me. Like, what is going on? So I. For about six months, I was really dysregulated. My social media, instead of people saying, dave, I lost a bunch of weight. My brain works like, thank you, you saved my life. My family's different. All this amazing stuff, it was just, you're a con artist and a snake oil salesman, and it was all from one guy trying to ruin my reputation. Well, that did push my threat response buttons, and so I was reactive to it. When I sat down and I did the stuff that I write about now, it's called the reset mode. My next book is about that. And went in and dealt with the trigger itself. Here was the reality. It felt like I was being tortured or that I was going to die or whatever. Like, it felt really threatening to my work in the world. Every time Joe Rogan says, dave Asprey is a bad man, I sell more coffee. That's the reality. But I couldn't see it. My body wouldn't let me see it until I dealt with an old trauma that was part of it. Every entrepreneur in existence has old traumas that we're unaware of. That flavor how we see reality. And if you find yourself being reactive, that's powerful. But you're unlikely to know you're being reactive. And this is why you have a team who trusts you. They're going to tell you when you're being reactive. In my case, my buddy Zach, who was a convoy commander in Iraq, driving generals past explosive stuff, called me on my bullshit. And you need a team who can call you on your bullshit. When you are being emotional, you're being reactive. And if it happens, it's either an old trauma or maybe you drank too much last night and your biology is out. And this is another thing entrepreneurs just need to understand. If you're feeling dysregulated, your brain is foggy, you're reactive, you're cranky. Whatever it is, it's either your biology is stressed or you are emotionally stressed. It's one of the two. And it's always one of those. Deal with the biology first because it's easy, and then the emotions feel less strong. And then deal with the emotions. If you do that, you're captain of your own ship and it changes everything.
- [32:53]
Hala Taha
I have a question about this. Can you talk to us about the importance of just managing our stress and especially related to the laziness principle, like why do we have to manage our stress and anxiety?
- [33:04]
Dave Asprey
Well, stress is not good or bad. Stress is what causes you to become stronger. So if you're a typical entrepreneur like me, well, if stress is what makes you stronger, let me do even more stress. In fact, I'll lift weights twice a day. And you know, well, lifting weights is stress, right? And you can build incredible resilience with biohacking. You also need to recover. So I don't recommend you avoid stress. I recommend you avoid useless stress, things that only take out of your energy bucket instead of putting things in. And recognize where are you on the scale from 1 to 10. If you just flew back from Dubai and maybe you drank too much, maybe you didn't sleep, is it time to go to the gym, lift heavy and go out partying again? It's not. So recognizing 80% of the improvement that you get cognitively or physically comes from recovering after stress. It does not come from the stress. Entrepreneurs are wired to focus on stress and to go into stressful situations because we can handle it. We're not wired to recover. When entrepreneurs come in to upgrade labs, we're measuring all this stuff and they're saying, I want to put on muscle. Like, you're not ready. Your body is not recovered. So if you want to grow, you want to improve, you recover first, then you stimulate, then you recover. 80% of the improvement comes from recovering. So don't be afraid of stress. Choose useful stress. And stress is different than anxiety. Anxiety is this feeling of doom. You feel it across your chest, in your gut, in your heart, and something is causing that and it's either repetitive thoughts in the head. And for that I use neurofeedback at 40 years of Zen and I teach a lot of techniques in my books. Or most likely something is wrong inside your body. It doesn't have a micronutrient, it doesn't have a mineral it needs. And the biggest needle mover is the simplest. If you were to take vitamin dake, it's just Vitamindake.com, these are fat soluble Vitamins. And you take those along with minerals 101 broad spectrum minerals. The fat soluble vitamins drive the minerals into your tissues in the right place. So now if you have stress in your business, stress in your personal life, or you just go to the gym and you're lifting, now the body says, okay, there was stress. Now I want to recover. Do I have enough zinc? Okay. Oh, I do. Now I can make testosterone. Now I can make muscle. Oh, I don't have enough zinc. I'm going to feel anxiety. So at least half your anxiety and sometimes 80, 90% of it, it's just biology. It's not the thoughts in your head. You just think. It's the thoughts in your head.
- [35:51]
Hala Taha
Wow, that's so interesting. I never realized that your diet can impact your anxiety.
- [35:57]
Dave Asprey
In fact, it's the number one contributor to anxiety. You could have PTSD the way I used to. You can have emotional stress, you can have relationship problems. Those are very real. It's just they're impacting you so much because your biology is wrecked, because it's tweaked, because you have all kinds of problems. What I see now in entrepreneurs, both men and women, is that your testosterone is too low. It's because we have estrogen everywhere. You're using air fresheners and perfume and scented products and there's plastic and everything. When testosterone is low, it doesn't matter if men or women. Women have more testosterone than estrogen, believe it or not, naturally. And since everyone is low right now, testosterone controls dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that causes you to be motivated by pursuing a goal. So a low testosterone, man or woman who's an entrepreneur is not going to pursue their goals as much as they they could. How do you fix it? Eat less bad oils, less synthetic fragrances and things like that. Less plastic clothing, less plastic bottles. And then you eat more saturated fats. So you can actually make testosterone and get a lab test. If I'd have had access to lab tests during the first part of my career, when I was 26, I made $6 million at the first company that did data centers. When Google was two guys and two computers, we built the buildings that held their servers. My testosterone was lower than my mom's and I found this out back then it was very hard to do. 90% of people listening to this episode are low in their sex hormones right now. So you might as well test it. And testing it, you go to the doctor and doctor says you don't need it. You're too young. I'm like, I'm done with that. You can go to Axo Health. Axo Health. And someone will come to your house and draw blood and advanced longevity panels, like 600 bucks. And then you get a dashboard. Where are my sex hormones? And let's say maybe you're 26, 27, like I was at that time when I made all that money. You could say, I don't need to. If you're feeling great, know your numbers. Because when you are 47 instead of 27, you can keep your testosterone and estrogen and other hormones right where you feel best. And if you're £300, like I was in my early 20s, you're already wrecked, but at least recognize what is wrong and you don't have to go to a doctor to do this anymore. You have a right to your own data. If you know your roas, if you know the amount of traffic going to your website, how many downloads for your podcast, how dare you not know Your thyroid, which controls energy, your testosterone, which controls motivation, and your inflammation, which is a sign that your efforts, the electricity your body makes, is not going into something useful, it's going into inflammation. If you have those variables, you manage them the same way you manage anything else in your business. And it costs less than you're probably spending on AdWords every day.
- [38:47]
Hala Taha
Totally. Totally. I feel like I've been getting more into bypassing the regular doctor and just getting my health checked. Have you heard of these full body scans that are coming out? What do you think about that?
- [38:59]
Dave Asprey
I had the founders of Pre Nouveau, which is one of the whole body scans on my podcast, about three, four years ago, and they reached out a couple months later and said, dave, that podcast episode saved 25 lives.
- [39:12]
Hala Taha
Wow.
- [39:13]
Dave Asprey
People, after they got their whole body scan, perfectly healthy looking people, they called them, said, straight to the hospital, you're about to blow an aneurysm. And another dozen people had life threatening things that needed treatment. Things like stage three cancer that you have no symptoms of, but they can see it. So you go and you spend an hour doing that. Given that cancer is incredibly increased, especially in young people, for some reason over the last five years, who could ever talk about what that was? But it's actually a big problem in young people. So I do a whole body scan every year and it runs about 2,500 bucks. And it'll tell you if anything's wrong. And some critics will say you might find something that's wrong that wasn't actually wrong. Well, that's why you do it every year. So you see what changes. I have two spots in my brain that are congenital. They don't cause any symptoms. But if they got bigger, I'd go work on it. It's like basic maintenance. Most people listening, if you're an entrepreneur, you're doing ideally hundreds of thousands to maybe 100 million plus in your business. You can afford a few grand to make sure that your biology is keeping track with your business. It's required. In fact, it's silly to run a business and not manage your biology. It's just not that hard anymore. It used to be really difficult. You can get the Axo health test, you can order the supplements. It's just not much work. And you don't have to eat perfectly. You might find this food really affects your sleep, if you have a ring that tracks your sleep or something. But it just isn't that hard. The one thing that I wish someone had taught me when I was learning entrepreneurship in my 20s, your company is a direct reflection of your energy. So if you're feeling physical anxiety because your body is not getting the nutrients it needs, or you're feeling emotional anxiety, your team will be dysregulated. So if you're powerful and shiny and bright and dialed in and clean, your company will be the same thing.
- [41:17]
Hala Taha
So much of us, you know, like, for me, it's like I'm buying like $2,000 shoes and $5,000 bags and it's like, why not spend it on your, your own body, you know? So I'm totally in line with that. I want to talk about ADHD for a second. I did this webinar and I basically, it was sponsored by BetterHelp and I had to work really hard on it. And I studied a lot about adhd and I'm like, I feel like I have it. I self diagnose myself with it. I also feel like it's a superpower of mine.
- [41:49]
Dave Asprey
Show me an entrepreneur without adhd. It's exceptionally rare. Like, we are attracted to entrepreneurship because we have adhd. And certainly I meet those diagnostic criteria. At least I used to. I might not anymore. Yeah.
- [42:02]
Hala Taha
And so when I was looking into it and I was reading about your laziness principle in my head, I was like, it just feels like he's talking about people with adhd because it seems like neuro, neurodiverse people have more issues being motivated and getting their task done unless they're really into what they're doing and really passionate about it. And then neurotypical people stereotypically do well at mundane tasks that they don't want to do, and they don't really need a lot of motivation. And so just curious to understand, do you feel like everybody just has ADHD to a degree.
- [42:38]
Dave Asprey
Well, if you're a muggle, your boss can tell you to pay attention to something and you will just do it. And that seems horrible because the ability to control your attention, so you put all of your attention onto something you care about, and you ignore things that don't matter. That's the kind of world I want to live in. I don't want to be someone, oh, look, pay attention to this stupid thing that doesn't move the needle for the world forward. No, you cannot make me do that. So the superpower is that. But what it does mean is you need to put systems in place to help you manage that, because there will be things, if you have adhd, that just take a huge amount of energy for you to do it, and they're different for different people. So identify the top 10 things that suck your energy the most. It might be paying bills. It might be taking out the trash, whatever it is. And just make a sacred commitment to yourself that you are never going to do those again in your life because they're not worth it. And hire someone to do it. And I also have to tell you this. If you do your own laundry and you're an entrepreneur, you're doing it wrong. Unless you have a laundry fetish. If you love your laundry, go for it the rest of the time. That is the lowest value thing you could ever do with your time. So be absolutely savage about hiring people to do the stuff you hate. You do that first. Oh, I need a head of marketing. No, you need someone to wash your socks and do the other things that you hate, because you will be so much more free that then you will hire the right person to be in charge of marketing. Right? So you got to get rid of that stuff, especially if you have adhd. It's. It's critically important for you to just get everything done you want to get done.
- [44:29]
Hala Taha
I'm so aligned with that. I have somebody who comes and does my laundry every single Friday, and I don't have to worry about it. And I can just focus on making money, you know, and doing fun things. Yeah, fam. Raise your hand if you've been putting off a doctor's appointment. Yeah, same. And for me, it's even worse because I'm always traveling, bouncing around cities, and so I don't really plan my healthcare weeks or months in advance. Most of the time I wake up and think I better go to the dentist and if I don't go right then and there in the next day or two, it can easily turn into months. That's exactly why I've been using ZocDoc for years and honestly over 15 years now, it is the main way that I schedule my healthcare. ZocDoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality and network doctors so you can find somebody that you love. I just open it up, search what I need, see the real reviews, check availability and book an in person or video visit instantly. Most of the time that same day. At this point, ZocDoc is quite literally the way that I handle all of my healthcare needs and I love that I get to see all the doctors that I visited and it's just saved in my profile and it's like my go to place to understand what are the doctors that I've seen in every city so that I can just go back to the same doctor so they have my information. So stop putting off these doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com profiting to find and instantly book a doctor that you love today. That's z o c d o c.com profiting zocdoc.com profiting again that's zocdoc.com profiting and thanks to Zocdoc for supporting this message. What's up yap gang? You know, starting a business sounds exciting until you realize that suddenly you're the marketer, designer, tech support and operations team all at once. And that can get overwhelming fast. And that's why for a lot of people the hardest part isn't the idea. It's getting started. That's where Shopify comes in. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide and about 10% of all E commerce in the US from notable brands to people just starting out, it helps you do everything in one place. You can build a store with ready to use templates, use AI tools to write product descriptions and headlines, and run email and social campaigns without juggling a dozen platforms. It also handles payment, inventory, shipping and returns. And if you get stuck, there's 24. 7 support. So if you've been thinking, what if this idea could work? It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com profiting go to shopify.com profiting again. That's shopify.com profiting
- [47:14]
Dave Asprey
Expedia and visit Scotland. Invite you to come. Step into centuries of history that await in Scotland. Castles steeped in legend. Walk along cobblestone streets. Come share the warmth of stories passed down through generations.
- [47:31]
Hala Taha
This is a place with a past
- [47:32]
Dave Asprey
that is fully present today and all yours to explore. Plan your Scottish escape today@expedia.com visitscotland so
- [47:43]
Hala Taha
let's talk about hacking our meat OS system. All right, tell me what you mean by Meat os.
- [47:52]
Dave Asprey
There is an incredibly elegant system in your body that gets all sorts of stuff done so you don't have to pay attention. If you had to think about each heartbeat, you had to think about each breath and squeeze, all the little things that need squeezing and pumping, your brain would be overwhelmed. In fact, you would just die. So there's an operating system in there, and that operating system is what's taking care of business in that third of a second before your conscious brain sees or hears anything. And it's the thing that's responsible for rapid threat detection. It's not very smart, but it's very, very fast. And you felt this. If you ever lean against a hot stove and then you go, oh, that's pretty hot, I guess I should move my hand away. And that's not how it works. You pull your hand away before you get burned and say, good thing I was so fast I pulled my hand away. It wasn't you. It was your operating system. Another name for the operating system is your ego. It's all the stuff that happens before you can think. And we all learn, including me, to feel shame and guilt about this part of us because we think it's us. No, it's a very fast, very ancient part of your operating system that's reacting to potential threats because it doesn't understand a threat is not a tiger. That's all it's wired for, is don't die right now. So embracing this idea that you have an operating system, that it does things without your knowledge or permission, and that you can influence your operating system by reprogramming it with things like meditation or breath work or 40 years of Zen, my neuroscience program is my preferred way. Or that you can influence the operating system by making it feel more nourished and more safe, by feeding yourself the right way, by having darkness at night and sunlight during the day, and just make the body feel like it has more capacity, and then you're harder to trigger, and then you stay more focused on whatever it is you care about.
- [49:43]
Hala Taha
Can you talk to us about FAST on Fast off. And how we can do this with our diet, with our exercise, with our breathing and meditation even.
- [49:52]
Dave Asprey
One of the things that entrepreneurs do is we have this belief if something is good, more of it's better. And if something is bad, you shouldn't have any of it. A good example there would be cortisol. It's the death hormone. Low cortisol is four times more deadly than high cortisol. So there's a proper dose and proper timing for everything. And we do the same thing in the gym. When I was a 23 year old 300 pound guy, I went to the gym 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week without fail for 18 months. You think I would have been ripped? No, I still weighed 300 pounds and I had a 46 inch waist when I started and when I finished and it really pissed me off. So what was the problem? Well, if exercise is better, more exercise must be better to get results. And we oftentimes do this in our businesses too. If this thing works, I need to do more of it. But there's a right amount of ad spend because spending more when roas it goes down is a bad idea. So what you want to be able to do is just allocate your resources effectively to doing the right amount of stuff. And what we've learned about biology and the principle of smarter, not harder is that the body doesn't change based on the amount of work you do. It changes based on how quickly you do the work and how quickly you recover. And using this, if you come to upgrade labs, we have an AI bike and you can do this for 15 minutes a week. So three five minute sessions and during that time you never sweat. It's barely hard. It is 94% more efficient than going to a spin class. So in 15 minutes, the amount of time you spend brushing your teeth, you can have the same cardiovascular benefits. Actually, it's not the same. I lied. You can have six times more cardiovascular benefits than you would get from doing an hour of spin class a day. The reason is wrap it on, wrap it off. So think about this. Recovery is what causes you to improve, not pushing harder. And I look at what I've done to my body, to my mind, when I was younger, because I believe that pushing harder got results. No, it's pushing hard for a short period of time and then recovering that causes positive change in your brain, in your muscles, all throughout your biology. And the liberating part of this, it takes way less time to do that. So now you have time for your relationships and your business, instead of just giving everything and just pushing, pushing, pushing. It's spikes of pushing followed by recovery, spikes of pushing followed by recovery. And it follows, if you can learn to recover faster than Mother Nature intended, you can do way more in your life. And that's what biohacking really is about.
- [52:40]
Hala Taha
So give me an example, like if we go to the gym, how would you approach going to the gym?
- [52:45]
Dave Asprey
Well, what you would do is you would lift heavy and you would exhaust the muscles as fast as you can. And you would keep your workout to 15 minutes. And depending on what your goals are, you're going to go for the largest muscles first. So you want quads, you want your butt, you want your chest, you want your back. If you just did those, and you did it in 15 minutes, as hard as you can, and afterwards, you laid on your back and took some deep breaths and you were done. Instead of going and doing a lot more machines or say, well, more is better, let me get on the treadmill, it turns out you'll get much better results. And you can do things that stack the deck in your favor. You make sure you've got your vitamin D and your minerals 101, so that you have the precursors, the building blocks. And then you make sure of animal protein right after you work out. So now the body says, oh, I'm nourished and I'm safe. You might even finish and do some breath work. Just bring your heart rate down, relax. And the body says, oh, there was a brief stressor. Must have been a tiger. But now I'm nourished and I'm safe. And when the body has experienced stress and it is nourished and it is safe, it will change rapidly and dramatically. But what I used to do and what most people do is they go into the gym for 45 minutes and they really over train. And then, okay, I'm done, they go back to work. But it's the nutrient status and the heart rate that really change things. So it's relaxing after you exercise. This means you go to the gym, you lift heavy twice a week. And look, if you're a fitness competitor and you want to get the best tricep, you're going to work that thing out. But I'll tell you my exercise regimen, 20 minutes a week at Upgrade Labs using AI powered tech. My muscles are AI. My cardio is all AI. I'm 4.8% body fat. The calendar thinks I'm 52. My lab tests think I'm 35, and I'm reasonably ripped. That's caffeine, by the way. So you can do the same thing. If you got back, say you go to the gym four to six hours a week. If you got that back and you were in better shape than with what you're doing now, what would you do with four to six hours? Spend it with your girlfriend or your boyfriend. Spend it on a new project at work. Spend it learning how to meditate or play pickleball, whatever. You're just wasting time in the gym. So being fit is important, but it does not follow that spending more time in the gym makes you more fit. That is a myth. It is. Learning how to stimulate and recover in the briefest period of time frees you so that you have the body and the mind you want and you can do stuff that matters.
- [55:21]
Hala Taha
It's really hard for me to actually absorb that. Like I'm a person who goes to the gym five, six times a week and I go for 45 minutes to even an hour and a half and I feel like I'm in really good shape and I like it, you know, and so for me, when I hear that, I'm just like, well, that sounds like my life enjoyment is going to be reduced.
- [55:42]
Dave Asprey
Well, if going to the gym is something you really, really love, you can do it as long as you're not over training. I don't know very many people who exercise for an hour a day who are not overtrained. So what if you went to a yoga class instead of whatever kind of thing you're doing now? What if you went for a walk in the forest? What if you went to a meditation class? Would you actually have a better body and a better mind? It's entirely possible.
- [56:08]
Hala Taha
I'm going to experiment. I'm going to biohack on myself.
- [56:12]
Dave Asprey
A lot of people, especially high stress entrepreneurs, they'll go to the gym to burn off excess adrenaline and cortisol. In fact, special forces people, after an operation, they will go to the gym and just kill it for an hour just to dump all their stress hormones. If you're using exercise to deal with the stress, maybe you should find out where the stress is coming from and do something about that. Or you might be doing it because you're addicted to endorphins. And I know people like, if I don't go for a run every day, I'm not happy. You know what happens to those guys as they age? They get new knees and new hips. Because going for a five mile run every day is not good for your body over time and if you can't deal with reality unless you basically go out and exercise with high intensity every single day, something's probably not right. And I respect the desire to be stronger and faster and I share it. What I'm proposing is you want to be able to do that and be in a place of peace and power, and it shouldn't take an hour a day. And if you just love running, do it as long as you can. But it does come at a cost.
- [57:22]
Hala Taha
Yeah, I'm not a runner. I believe in keeping my knees intact.
- [57:27]
Dave Asprey
Good move.
- [57:28]
Hala Taha
So let's talk about diet. You mentioned in the beginning of this interview that you basically made the vegan diet obsolete to a degree. Some people still are vegan. I feel like beef is really making a comeback. When I was growing up, everybody was anti red meat and it was a really big deal. And I would always try to avoid red meat and everybody tried to avoid red meat. And now I feel like everybody, or a lot of people, at least in my world, are all about beef. And everyone's pretty anti chicken right now. So talk to us about that. What should we know about meat?
- [58:03]
Dave Asprey
Well, grass fed red meat is the healthiest meat that most people can eat. And there's three reasons that people become vegan and none of them are valid scientifically. One of them is saying, I don't want there to be suffering in animals. Okay, Number one, if you're eating a soy burger or one of those impossible things, there are large threshers and tractors that go through the field and they cut up every animal. So there's dead baby deer, turtles, salamanders, mice, butterflies, snakes, all the things, if they're even still alive on that land. Because unless you're eating organic stuff, the land has been sterilized by glyphosate and things like that. So the deaths per calorie from a vegan thing are much, much higher than if you eat a pound of grass fed meat every day. Because that cow, it was just one life for you to eat for an entire year. And that means you can buy it from a small farmer who treated the cow with respect. I built and ran a regenerative farm for 10 years on Vancouver Island. I've raised my own animals and eaten them for a long time. So there is not an ethical argument around killing. You're killing more animals with your fake food. The health argument. Vegans get sick all the time. These plant things suck minerals out of your bones. The more vegan you are, the more you need more minerals in your diet. So that doesn't work very well and you don't have the right fat and your testosterone's low and you feel ungrounded. And there's a reason that people make jokes about vegans being highly emotionally reactive. I say this as a former raw vegan. You're ungrounded because you don't have any minerals in your body. So those don't work. So it's not health, it's not animals. And then this ridiculous environmental argument. Grass fed animals build soil. Soil is the largest carbon sink on the planet. I, I put the first $50,000 into the carbon Capture X prize that Elon Musk funded for $100 million. And we can pull carbon out of the air. We're not going to do it with industrial farming for plant based things. We're going to do it by restoring our soil, which requires. So why should you eat meat? It is the right kind of fat, the right kind of protein, and it's mineral rich and it's actually good for the environment. We just need to fix our animal agriculture. And if you look at chickens, the kind of heritage chickens that I raise take nine months to reach full size. The kind that you're eating takes six weeks to reach full size. And they have no minerals in them, they have very little nutrients. And they torture those animals. And you can eat one chicken a day. So you don't want to kill 365 animals a year. You don't want to kill one animal a year. And from a spiritual, shamanic perspective, at 40 years of Zen, we do a lot of spiritual stuff. I've done shamanic training, I've met with meditation gurus and learned from them all over the world. The reality is that from a spiritual perspective, I believe animals, or farm animals come here to experience gratitude. And this is why all societies practice saying grace or saying something grateful. So when I'm going to eat that beautiful grass fed ribeye that I'm going to eat after this show, I'm going to take about 10 seconds, say, hey, thanks cow, and then it's complete. So if you want to feel better, I'm not even kidding, add a pound of steak a day for a week and watch how your life changes. Eating that much red meat, eating one gram of animal protein per pound of body weight has the same effect on your biology as taking semaglutide or one of the GLP1 drugs that costs $1,000 a month to do that stuff. And I have used GLP one time for a podcast. I've never used it. And how Many people walk around at 4.8% body fat. Especially with a history of obesity, it's unheard of. And I'm not using pharmaceuticals to do it. I'm using beef.
- [61:46]
Hala Taha
And what about the argument? There's a couple arguments and one of them might be a wives tale, but like meat stays in your stomach for a really long time, I've heard. And then also cholesterol.
- [61:56]
Dave Asprey
Well the people who say meat stay around in your stomach all the time, I've seen that stuff as well. It's nonsense. And all you have to do is go to any doctor who does colonoscopies. They look with a camera inside your colon and there is no meat in your colon. The sides are pink, it's just not there. Now what does stick around in your colon and rot is plants. It turns out the lowest residue food you can eat is meat. You eat meat, almost all of it's digested and there's very little leftover. And contrast that with a bowl of kale or whole grains, neither of which I eat. What you're going to find is tons of undigestible matter that is rotting in the gut. Ideally it's fermenting and making good stuff, but that oftentimes doesn't happen. And there is no evidence that meat sticks around your gut. That's just a wives tale because it does get fully digested. Also, if you're eating too much meat and your body doesn't make enough enzymes, you will have the worst farts ever. In which case you need to fix your digestion because meat absorbs completely and then cholesterol. Even the American Heart association the worst job ever of doing their mission well. They say that cholesterol in food is a nutrient of non concern. They've said eating cholesterol doesn't harm you at all. And these are the most skeptical people on the planet. And cholesterol is the precursor for all of your sex hormones, for your stress hormones. Low cholesterol people, including what happens when you're vegan, they die more from all cause mortality. The longest lived humans have higher LDL and higher hdl. And when you eat the way I've been teaching entrepreneurs and others to eat for 10 plus years now, you get enough saturated fat, you get enough animal protein, your resilience goes up and your inflammation goes down. Your hdl, which is the protective kind of cholesterol, goes up and your LDL largely doesn't matter in that thing. And I teach people with the AXO health app. Here are the markers to pay attention to if you're worried about, oh, no, I ate some butter, I might die. Well, number one, that's what we've been eating throughout all of history, and people didn't get heart attacks until recently. But let's say you're still just test the markers that tell you whether there's damage to the lining of your arteries. It's pretty easy to do.
- [64:15]
Hala Taha
So, one question about plants, because I feel like a lot of people just think anything that's a fruit or vegetable is healthy, and that's really just not the case.
- [64:23]
Dave Asprey
Oh, my God.
- [64:24]
Hala Taha
So talk to us about anti nutrients, lectins, all that kind of stuff.
- [64:28]
Dave Asprey
All right? If you were to walk outside into your backyard or into the forest, pick a plant, just a random one, and chew it up and swallow it, you know what's going to happen. You're probably going to the hospital or maybe just to the bathroom. Most plants are so toxic you can't eat them. Right. And so there's. Well, those aren't the edible plants. Okay, Just because something is edible. Do you think all edible plants are 100% edible, or does each plant come with pros and cons? We know that that's the case. So can you survive on a plant to get energy, even though it's also delivering toxins? Of course you can. That's one of the things that's made our species so powerful, because during famines we can eat all sorts of stuff. It just comes at a cost. In my first big biohacking book, in the first chapter, I wrote about these five big toxins that are affecting your performance that come from plants. And lectins cause inflammation differently for different people. These are plant defense compounds. And the most famous lectin is called sarin nerve gas. And this is something that terrorists have used for creating chaos. And it comes from beans. So lectins can be really good or really bad for you. You just don't know, depending on your genetics. So minimizing lectins for a brief period, if suddenly your joints don't hurt anymore, that's a big sign. The one that people oftentimes miss is called phytic acid. This is present in whole grains and legumes. And phytic acid steals minerals, including calcium and zinc and a lot of the other ones from your bones and from your mitochondria. It's such a problem that when farmers feed chickens or cows grain, they have to measure the phytic acid level because the cows or chickens will have such soft bones they can't stand. So then they give them special Enzymes to block this. And those animals can digest phytic acid and humans can't. And then there's oxalate, which is a huge issue. And these are all in the first chapter of the bulletproof diet. And oxalates are compounds that cause razor sharp calcium crystals to form throughout your body. And we can handle about 200 milligrams a day. One spinach, kale, beet almond smoothie can have five times the amount your body can handle. And when you're young, it doesn't cause that much. You might get some skin irritation or a little bit of soreness, but they stick around in the body over time. And 70% of kidney stones are caused by plants, not by eating animals. When people lower oxalate in their diet by getting rid of the weird freaky superfoods, eating less whole grains, eat white rice instead of whole grains. If you want a grain, what happens? And they eat less spinach, less kale, even red raspberries. All of a sudden their brains work better, they don't have cravings, their joints don't hurt, their skin clears up. So there's okay. Could you eat those foods and survive? Yes. Is that going to be an improvement in your quality of life? No. So what I recommend people do is eat the low toxin plants and eat grass fed meat. And for carbs, you eat the kinds of fruit that are lower in toxins. And you eat some rice, you eat some honey, and if you do that, you're going to be fine. And maybe some sweet potatoes, maybe some white potatoes. Those both have toxins, depending on whether you're sensitive or not. So I'm not asking for perfection, I'm just saying that if you make a few changes to minimize, just to recognize that some plants are probably causing your digestive problems and your skin problems, stop them for a little while and watch how life changes. The reason you do this as an entrepreneur is that if something's causing inflammation in your gut and you think it's good for you and it's not, and your gut's inflamed, your brain's inflamed. When your brain's inflamed, someone's gonna do something stupid in your company and you're gonna get pissed off at em, you're gonna yell at them, and then the whole day, the whole company is disrupted. So you have to manage your biology if you wanna be the leader of your company.
- [68:14]
Hala Taha
So this feels like pretty complex, right? And I know you were mentioning that it's not a one size fits all thing. It's based on our genetics. But if you had to say, listen, eat these foods, you'll be pretty safe. Or is there just no way to do that?
- [68:31]
Dave Asprey
It's more about avoiding the most likely harmful foods than it is eating the good foods. The best thing is grass fed meat. And you can get grass fed hamburger, you can get grass fed steak. It really matters that it's grass fed for a whole bunch of complex reasons, including environmental and including your own health. But grass fed meat, and then instead of spinach, have lettuce or arugula. Those are good for you. Be careful with the nightshade family, which is potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers. There are so many people, 28% of rheumatoid arthritis is caused by those plants. So don't eat them for a week and then eat them again and see what happened. You may be completely immune to them. Or like many, many people, you go, oh, wait, when I don't eat those, my brain is clearer, my skin is clearer, and my digestion is better, my joints don't hurt. And then in terms of carbohydrates, white rice. The reason white rice is so much better than brown rice is that brown rice contains way more arsenic and way more inflammatory compounds in the gut. And this is why in every rice eating culture, people who can afford it eat white rice. And only the poorest peasants eat brown rice. There's more calories in brown rice because you keep the lining of the rice, the outer shell, the husk. But that's bad for you. It's better than starving. But it's not a superfood. And if a restaurant tries to charge more for brown rice, you should tell them to go screw themselves. Eat the white rice if you're going to eat carbs like that. Don't eat refined sugar. It's not good for you. If you find you need more carbs, honey and fruit. And don't eat a zero carb diet all the time, it's bad for you. Don't eat carbs every day, it's bad for you. And every now and then, skip breakfast or skip dinner. Do some intermittent fasting three days a week. Intermittent fasting starts at 12 hours a day of not eating. Have an earlier dinner, have a later breakfast and you'll be fine.
- [70:21]
Hala Taha
So coffee is something that you are really into. You had bulletproof coffee. You mentioned you're no longer doing bulletproof coffee. Tell us about danger coffee.
- [70:33]
Dave Asprey
Danger. Coffee is a new idea. It's called danger because who knows what you might do. It's the Good kind of danger. The kind of danger that entrepreneurs are attracted to to make it, it is lab tested mold free because the mold toxin that's found in coffee very commonly, especially in the U.S. in fact, recent studies just came out, it directly inhibits mitochondrial function, which means it takes your energy. So if you drink coffee and it needs sugar and then you feel tweaked a while later and you want more coffee, it's probably the toxins from mold in the coffee. So Danger Coffee is mold free. Brands I've worked with in the past no longer say mold free on the label. They just say clean, whatever that means. And what's biggest about Danger Coffee? There is a therapeutic dose of trace minerals and electrolytes in the coffee. It's a very high end, amazing flavor coffee. But Danger Coffee has those minerals. And those minerals help your body make electricity. So if you're going to make a cup of coffee in the morning, it might as well give you a therapeutic dose of trace minerals that your body needs to make energy in your cells. And you feel different. People say, oh my gosh, it doesn't need sugar. No, it's because it's really good coffee. It tastes great. But the minerals do something different in the body. You can add butter, you can add mct, you can blend it up or not. It still creates a very different coffee experience.
- [71:53]
Hala Taha
Very cool. Well, Dave, this has been such an incredible interview. I really enjoyed it. I learned so much. I end my interview with two questions that I ask all of my guests. It doesn't have to be about today's topic. You could just answer from the heart. You're speaking to entrepreneurs, of course. As you know, what is one actionable thing our young and profits can do today to be more profitable tomorrow?
- [72:15]
Dave Asprey
One thing you could do today to be more profitable tomorrow is find an older person over 70 and ask them for advice because they have suffered way more than you have and they will tell you for free what to do.
- [72:33]
Hala Taha
I love that. Never heard that before. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can be beyond just business.
- [72:40]
Dave Asprey
The most important secret to profiting in life, it's to understand that you're not investing dollars, you're investing energy. And then you're investing time, and then you're investing suffering, and then you're investing dollars. So look at it as, how much energy did I put in and how much energy did I get out of it? If that is the thing that you measure, it'll directly lead to more joy and more happiness. And the sense that you're resilient and you can handle everything. But if you only focus on dollars every time you get more dollars, it won't make you happier.
- [73:15]
Hala Taha
That's really smart Dave. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
- [73:20]
Dave Asprey
You can go to dangercoffee.com to check out the coffee and all of my stuff is@daveasprey.com I will get all of
- [73:27]
Hala Taha
your links from your team. Put them in the show notes Dave. Thank you so much for your time.
- [73:32]
Dave Asprey
Thanks Hala. Some Follow the Noise Bloomberg follows the
- [73:38]
Hala Taha
money because behind every headline is a bottom line.
- [73:42]
Dave Asprey
Whether it's the funds fueling AI or
- [73:45]
Hala Taha
crypto's trillion dollar swings.
- [73:47]
Dave Asprey
There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side,
- [73:52]
Hala Taha
you understand what others miss.
- [73:54]
Dave Asprey
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