LONGEVITY SECRETS: The Foods You Absolutely SHOULD NOT EAT! | Dave Asprey

I think you say inflammation is the muffin top of the brain is that right and what does that mean what is that well anyone who's ever had muffin top maybe notices that some days it's there and some days it's not right Muffin Top is not fat Muffin Top is inflammation if it's always there you have a little bit of flab right but for most of us like you know I went out drinking last night I stayed up late or I flew somewhere and then the next morning I had muffin top you don't put on fat like that it's just the fact that your mitochondria became less efficient at managing water and you ended up getting [Music] looting welcome everyone back to the school of greatness podcast we've got a new guest on Dave asprey with a book out right now the book is called headstrong and he is a New York time best-selling author and founder and creator of Bulletproof Coffee and the bulletproof diet so Dave thank you so much for being here man I'm very excited about this I'm happy to actually be in your studi it's pretty nice it's nice yeah I love it we just renovated it and and updated we wanted to make it very intentional we've got the the Phoenix Rising on the wall we've got the school lockers we've got the cool you know moss and the woods so it's it's coming together you know oh yeah you you nailed it it's been good so also Dave has got this book uh the bulletproof diet make sure you guys check this one out as well awesome book I did the diet before I drink the coffee it's a game changer and everyone W Cliff was in here and he had the coffee for the first time he like what is this this is amazing so uh you know you've really taken the world over by storm first with kind of like the coffee stuff but then people learned about all the biohacking that you were doing for years you've been doing this not just since you had the coffee but you were doing all these tests on yourself um biomechanics on the physiology on muscles on the brain and this new book is really about how to maximize the mind right and how to optimize the brain so we can optimize Our Lives is that correct that's a great way of putting it yes and people have this this idea that I'll start out at the very highest level like I'm going to just change my thinking and and I'm I'm going to go out I'm going to learn to meditate or going to to to just start at the the very most complex most esoteric like I'm going to go learn math uhuh it turns out that everything you do with your brain comes down to how well your brain can make and use and allocate energy so there are some things you can do that change everything in your head and oftentimes in the rest of your body as well that really don't anything to do with memory training uh or with even meditation or with any skill acquisition thing it's like you turn up the volume the level of whatever you're doing goes up so if you're already great you turn up the volume you got more greatness and if you're a total jerk you ter volume you'll be more of a total jerk but you be a more effective jerk right exactly yeah so headstrong is really about um how to untap the brain energy to work smarter and think faster in just a couple of weeks now why is the brain the most important thing is the brain more important than your physical health and your your workout habits and other habits that you have is the brain the thing we should be focusing on the most or or is there a balance between everything else when you dig in the research there's actually a debate do the muscles exist for the brain or does the brain exist for the muscles and probably the brain exists for the muscles which is a surprising thing for a lot of people if your physical health isn't working your brain won't work it gets really strange though because the fundamental unit that controls most of the health in the brain is the same as the rest of the body but it's just a question of density we have these things called mitochondria and these are things that were bacteria a couple billion years ago and we somehow Incorporated them into our cells and there's all sorts of like tens of thousands of pages of academic debate about how this happened because this is the Genesis of all life on earth right somehow we became able to carry batteries around with us so that we don't have to have roots in the ground like plants do well those little batteries were Red Rod shaped bacteria we incorporated them into our cells or they invaded our cells which is probably more like what happened they took us over and these little bacteria there's about 15,000 of them per cell in the brain and only 1,000 of them per cell in the rest of your body except the heart so the eyes the the brain and the heart have this incredible density of these little things that control everything about you they give us energy they give you energy but they also decide if cells live or die they make hormones not the only part of you that makes hormones but they're actually in control of the hormone factories they decide whether or not you'll get cancer they control cellular aging and literally those little guys call the shots and they don't really care much about what you want they care about what they want you're a walking petri dish for them and they're going to make sure that the pet dish stays alive wow what are these called they're called mitochondria and they're in your brain they're in your whole body yeah they cells well they're inside your cells inside cells each one of your cells has all these different comp components in it you know kind of like like they're the like a carburetor or a battery inside inside each cell so about 10% of your body weight is your battery and these things are the battery in the body they charge the body they give you energy they you awake yeah they they take the food and they take the air and they take light even and they turn it into electrons the same electrons that power your iPhone power your body wow and it turns out these little guys are semiconductors we didn't know this until about five years ago and that's why they're affected by electromagnetic fields by light by electricity and by temperature and all these other things that you can manipulate and since they don't listen to you very well but they listen to the world around you you just change the world around you and all of a sudden your brain has more energy and when you get these guys hacked you feel it first in your brain and you feel it second right in in the chest like in in your emotional Center you feel it in your heart you know you put your heart into something so by doing this of course your muscles are going to benefit because they all have battery needs it's just they don't need very much to move thinking is actually a harder work than moving so what if you were to give yourself a battery upgrade you'd be a better athlete you'd be a better lover you'd be a better spouse and frankly a better human being because you have more energy to say no when you have one of those those urges to go out and you know do something you shouldn't do right right right right and so this helps you but it all starts from the brain first the brain muscle and mass is not optimized and you're saying that the rest of our body will not have the energy is that what I'm hearing you say well if you're brain isn't working the rest of your body won't be working and vice versa so it you a feedback loop yeah you can't starts with the brain it starts with a brain if you're if you're have no sleep and you're eating horrible foods and you're not getting any sunlight and you're stressed out all the time but you're working really really hard you're working out really hard and you're trying to build your body the brain is not going to have the energy to recover or you're not going to be fully optimized or something there's going to be breakdowns it's going to be what what will happen is these little bacteria throughout the body these mitochondria they're going to sense that stressed they're going to sense they don't have enough recovery they don't have enough energy like they aren't not getting enough food or enough light or enough of the other things that they rely on to be healthy Colony yeah when they don't get that they're going to communicate with each other life sucks get ready like get ready for a famine like like there's a threat there's a some ominous threat and they're bacteria they're stupid they don't know what a threat is so they're going to change your physiology to have higher cortisol lower testosterone less Focus less energy you're more optimized to fight and to run away and you're going to you're gonna be cranky or more reactive resentful yeah your blood sugar's gonna swing because like where do I need to fight when do I need to run and here's the thing that comes out of this research that that just fascinates me there's only three things you need to do to stay alive if you're a cat if you're a bacteria or if you're a possum or a tree it doesn't matter it's always only three things run away from or kill scary things and plants do that by making poisons or spines and things like that uh and they can't run away because they're plants I'm sorry right and then uh let's see you have to eat everything to make sure you don't starve to death right so I've certainly done both of those behaviors you know you eat all the donuts and and then the third thing is have sex with everything that's left to make sure the species doesn't die out right so reproduce yeah right so can you think of anything you've ever done you're ashamed of that didn't come from one of those three behaviors um I I mean I've been ashamed of a lot of things I've done but those three behaviors what was the first one again it was run away from or kill things run away from or kill things no I mean I was going to say getting angry at something but that's in that category right like lashing out or being reactive or being frustrated I didn't get what I wanted or something the second one is eat everything I've done that a lot I've ashamed of all the I mean I was a sugar fiend my whole life totally and uh you know I cut out sugar for 45 days last 45 days and what a transformation in my mind and my body and my health just by not having sugar and then wanting to reproduce yes I've been there too yeah like did I really go on that date exactly right and the the thing is we take responsibility for those things and those are things we're responsible for but they're not you they're emergent behaviors that come from what bacteria want because the bacteria are the Puppet Masters in our bodies and when you realize that you better take care of those little bastards because they have control over you in some way but when they give you enough energy in in return for this symbiosis they have you can then have enough energy for the human adult parts of your brain to easily take over and to easily control things that we call that willpower so so when you feel the urge to you flip the guy off in traffic or to yell at your spouse or you know to eat all the donuts if your batteries charged all the way you're like oh I got this it's not even that big of a deal I'm just going to say no and it's those times when you're browning out a little bit like well you know it's the end of the day I'm a little tired you know fine I'll just have half the doughnut and you you dive in and yeah there's you know there's frosted stuff all over your face and colored sprinkles on your shirt and you oh man or you say the thing you wish you didn't say or whatever happens yeah fascinating so how did you how have you applied this into your life uh what are the main things that you've done on a daily basis that you've seen a transformation in your life because you've done a lot of biohacking and mind hacking for years for years so what is this new stuff that you've been doing just to be honest I've we've probably seen each other maybe 10 times like in person I've known you for a while but we've probably been interacting in 10 times in person this time you look younger than I've ever seen you and we mentioned when you came in you look stronger you look like you have more energy you look clearer like you never looked as clear as you do now for some reason you look very clear high energy and Youthful not that you didn't before but you just look like even you know more youthful so what are the things that you're doing that is allowing you to have this energy of abundance that you know you've never had before I'm I'm doing a lot of stuff and one of the things that that that it's a fair criticism of biohacking is how do you know if it works well like you just said there's there's evidence that something is working can I tell you that one of the 45 things I'm doing is the one well no because it wasn't the one there's something called Synergy and and and there's amplification and if you do a it doesn't work very well you do B doesn't work very well and shockingly if you do a and b it works but the the double blind reductionist like Western medicine thing I swear there's there's like some guy in a white lab coat he's like there's no such thing as bread here's why I baked the water and nothing happened I bake the flour nothing happened I bake the yeast and nothing happened therefore there is no bread and you're like maybe if you mixed them and then baked them there would be bread right but no that's more than one variable I can't do it I have to test single variables our bodies are incredibly complex systems so what I do and what this this program and headstrong the twoe program is is let's do many of the things that make your mitochondria stronger all at the same time instead of messing around with just one thing give me a few examples of some of the things and I know you do things at every different point of the day you do the morning you do things in the afternoon at night you're like constantly testing and tweaking well one one of the things that that doesn't cost anything that that's really effective is changing temperature so mitochondria their job is to stay alive and then their job is also to kill off the weak so you got to stress them enough to kill off the weak and that process is is called apoptosis if you don't do that you get cancer so you want to you want to stress you want to stress them but not too much so it's brief periods of stress so there's like ice ice is great ice tubs or ice showers yeah just a cold shower in the morning not a whole cold shower cuz cold showers suck face yeah just take a hot shower at the end turn it on cold do it all at once and just feel the pain for a minute those little guys they're going to freak out it makes them stronger they get stronger and the weak ones die right and then you burn more calories throughout the day your brain is clearer and inflammation goes down and here's the interesting thing every time you have inflammation it's because your mitochondria aren't working very well so if something makes you inflamed it's because you damaged your battery system in the body when things are working well they they actually change the structure of the water in your body it it's called exclusion Zone water and no one knew mitochondria could do this until a couple years ago Gerald poock figured this out and he talked about it at the bulletproof conference wow so all of a sudden you're just telling these little guys hey the world isn't always warm and soft and fuzzy maybe you should just toughen up a little bit and then that toughness get built into your system and you carry it with you for the rest of the day and so you're a little leaner you're a little just just more on point and it cost you nothing in fact you saved a quarter Cent on heating hot water for that last one minut like it it was just a change in habit right another thing is exercise so I looked at all the research on mitochondria and exercise like what's what's going to make them stronger what's not going to make them stronger there's a set of studies that show if you go for a walk for 20 minutes a day that that increases mitochondrial function that's it that's it now that's one set of studies you can go for longer but if you go for too long you actually can stress them out which isn't a good thing so you know if you're going to every day go for you know two-hour run without recovery it's the lack of recovery that really messes up your energy system so you see a lot of people who are type A entrepreneurs like you and me where you know we we like to go yeah and they're like and on top of that I'm going to like run a the Kona Iron Man and I'm going to do it without sleep just cuz I could right so you push like that certainly done that you know in my early career in in Tech that the company that held Google's first servers and things like that I'd burn the I'm like why would you burn the candle both ends when you could also light the middle right like it's so bad for you and it's bad for you because it breaks your mitochondria like like they get stressed like that and they communicate with each other right and they do that with uh they do it with chemicals and we believe that they probably do it with light as well which is really interesting if those theories are proven and I I would bet right now that they will be uh we know that these little parts of your cells make lights the same way an LED light does they literally make little photons and they receive photons so a set of scientists are proposing that that's how mitochondria talk which is why if you're beating up your muscles all the time you're going to be tired in your head because the whole system of these bacteria that are interacting and they're not bacteria anymore they're part of our cells they're called organel but they still have that little bit of bacterial Behavior that's built in and that allows us to be who we are and what we are so it's fascinating and you go ahead sorry the other exercise just so I like so people listening I don't leave them going I just have to go for a walk once or maybe twice a week but certainly once a week you need to kick your ass and there's two ways to do it and these are actually both in the bulletproof diet too because we knew they worked but we didn't understand the mitochondrial part of that back then one is intermittent sprinting just basically Sprint for 60 seconds and there's a neat trick in headstrong that's not in the first book and I got this from John Gray uh the uh the Men Are from Mars yeah yeah okay that guy he is a crazy biohacker you would not know this from reading his books about relationships no he he goes deep so we got to be friends and he's like Dave after you sprint instead of walking lay on your back just lay down like the way you see cross Vision people just kill themselves and lay down there's a reason they're doing that they they're not doing it because they know the reason they're doing it because they they felt the urge and that was I could whenever I would do CrossFit and lay down it's because I couldn't breathe and I was just like I it it well that's the body's natural response so if you want to increase the height and the trough which is what you're doing you're telling guys you better be ready to just like bring it all at once you're training the battery in your body to totally have a high voltage and then stop so so you should stop and go on your back you should to keep walk yeah at least sit down better yet lay down for a minute and then get up and Sprint again and then lay down and this is what animals will do right that's true and it's it it's amazing what a difference that is so that's one way you kick your ass the other way is lift heavy things for 15 minutes or less and don't stop keep the muscles engaged the entire time don't stop at the top don't stop at the the bottom as heavy as you can and you'll while stretching and warming up properly why would you do that exactly yeah I I do my warm-ups on the on the bulletproof Vibe you know I'm vibrating when I do that sure uh and I I do that vibration stuff every day or I go for a walk but quite often I'm on the phone and it's I'm in Canada it's dark and raining like Vancouver right I Vancouver Island so I'm on an organic farm amazing amazing yeah so I mean it's funny because I've always in track and field when I ran track they would always tell you to like keep walking after you done with the Sprints so that's interesting and and why is it what's the science behind laying on your back or stopping it has to do with uh heart rate variability and cardiac recovery and getting the the system to go from Sprint to calm as fast as possible that's what you're trying to get it to do it's just to increase the the recovery after the Sprint so that you can do another Sprint set yeah and and it's you know we're talking you do this for 10 minutes 15 minutes it's it looks a little funny if you just collapse people call ambulances on it and you you only work out once or twice a week right like a heavy thing otherwi you're walking and that's it right that's that's about it yeah I'll go to yoga class when I get a chance like I I appreciate yoga more for the the stretching and all but I'm I'm doing all right from a 44y old you know I'm 44 you're Head Strong yeah I'm headr strong there you go musle I still have like stretch marks I I mean I've weigh for people who don't know I used to weigh 300 lbs like I was obese for until geez my my mid-30s wow you could carry it okay as a 64 guy a little bit better I couldn't quite see my feet but man you know I remember the first time I saw my ribs I'm like oh my God like I for years walking down the hallway I would like turn sideways to make space for people cuz I was just used to having this bulk that I don't have anymore how's it feel it it feels now natural but for a while it was it was pretty strange and I I put on about 19 pounds in a month last month it's crazy I was actually doing something that's not in the book but if if you order do the order headstrong do.com I I'll tell you how I did it right uh but I was I wanted to increase my mitochondria by 50% like this is a major Battery Systems upgrade wow and I used a research chemical uh called a sarm in order to do that and I wasn't trying to put on muscles like I'm happy with you're not training heavy weights all the time yeah no and I don't want to I don't want to look like a bodybuilder and I I I very much appreciate bodybuilders I'm also looking to live to 180 and carrying too much muscle mass is hard isn't well it's not necessar yeah it's not where I want to go but so I had to buy new a new suit and like half my shirts don't fit I'm like God you know I was okay the way I was before but it kind of feels good to have a little bit of mus you're strong man I'm feeling good that's great man and 20% increase in strength across the board on the the airax I have this when I when I do lifting I'm fighting a winch with a computer so I have like a a strain gauge I don't usually use like heavy things that have gravity associated with them so I'm I'm basically pushing it something where it's always Quantified and just across the board 20% 20% 20% in a month with three workouts on that and one electrical stimulation workout amazing man super crazy and you look younger too there stem cells involved but a lot of this as soon as you get the mitochondri working better they're responsible for powering recovery and and repair so what happens you do this to make your brain work better you feel it in your brain first but then it goes throughout the body and like I'm you know because you've known me for while I am getting younger you are I'm not you are it's crazy you almost looked like a little weathered at times like the first few times I met you maybe it was cuz you were like launching a business you're like everything was involv in distress when you first met me I was a VP at a publicly traded company head of global evangelism and starting and in three years I was one of the top 20 most influential voices in health on the internet like I was and I was a new dad or second new dad a lot you had a lot going on you you seemed like more you just seemed like overwhelmed whenever when I first met you the few times because you had a lot going on I can only imagine and now you just seem like this lightness about you there's something else I've done too you and this something I write about in here I've talked about neuro feedback as like a general term but I opened 40 years of Zen which is now something that that I'm I'm running as a well I'm not operationally running it but something that I created that has been like my baby I wanted the world's best brain mechanic in order to do like performance tuning for my brain I've I've had my own EEG machines at home for 20 years what's that EEG is the idea you can measure electricity coming out of the brain guess where that electricity comes from it's all about mitochondria right wow so you can measure it and then you can teach the brain which means teaching the metaconda how to work better wow so I've been doing this but I kind of topped out on all the things out there so we created new hardware and software and in order to teach you to be in this Zen State like 20 to 40 Years of daily Zen practice you can achieve that in five days wow and that sounds like a big claim it's just it's quantitative analysis of your brand I can show you your brand before and after and like there you go you just you made these these shifts happen so I've been doing that it's a facility in Seattle it's a 5-day executive thing very few people can go through and like we we out some people just where like this isn't the right training for you but I did that CU I really wanted this for myself so I've been able to go and do that and here's what's interesting you get a new battery upgrade you do this this headstrong stuff what do you spend most of your energy on you spend it controlling your desire to kill people your desire to eat everything you can turn off everything that's the bulletproof diet is how how do you lose the Cravings that's what the whole diet thing was about that's one of the three things I still haven't hacked that you how do you not want to have sex cuz actually it's good to want to have sex if you don't have sex you're cond won't be happy either because that's one of the reasons they they exist is to reproduce right so sex is good for you and all that but the the thing is how do you control that that overwhelming anxiety the fear the the sense of overwhelm stress I I sit in these big pods that we've made that that literally have 24 electrodes glued to my head with a computer showing me how to be chill so literally on the way over here I was negotiating a100 million deal no joke right and it it's a a very substantial thing I'm looking at Venture Capital dollars and all these things and right before that I was on stage with Jim quick at quick learning but I'm not stressed like you can see me like I'm I'm happy and I'm full of this before even even you know five years ago without this level of training I think it would have been harder for me to to switch and just to be grounded and present so some of this is just deep internal awareness and because I don't have the food craving thing the the onethird of my cognitive burden that would have gone towards saying no to food or thinking about food that's gone you're just like give it to me give I need something yeah I need energy right yeah and and the the part of me that's like I have to run away from or or kill things that's turned off I mean if if you were to attack me right now I would respond appropriately and with my instincts but I'm not like over sensitive to those things so I'm in that sense of groundedness and awareness but not in a state of fear and that also frees up a huge amount of energy that was subconscious but it was like constant worry in the background what if what if like what if there's not enough what you what am I going to say next all those voices those are just gone the voice in my head is just blissfully silent now uh and then you know there's there's that third Behavior there like that I'm married so like you know I get something yeah yeah yeah it's great man amazing what is this process called that's called five day process it's called 40 Years of Zen and you created it or is it part of a program that I I created it yeah it's it's it's my baby I've been like I gotta tell you the story check it out man it's cool yeah you should come up and do it love to Jim did it Jim quick did um when you uh that's the inis Lani did as well if you know Vis yeah of course if you and JJ she was on your show yeah JJ's yeah in fact it's in her book yeah nice so when you uh when I started doing this in 1996 this is like going back geez I'm like 20 years ago I decided my brain was I was really struggling and I didn't understand mitochondria I didn't understand like how to turn energy on I was really successful in my career but I was I was like I wouldn't hire myself I don't remember what's going on half the time like I'm I'm all over the place so I started doing neura feedback in Silicon Valley and this this I walk into the office for the first time and this like 10-year-old kid comes up and and he looks he looks at me and goes and just starts running in a circle around me and it doesn't stop yelling or running it just runs like 20 or 30 times like this is weird and I realiz okay the kid's probably Autistic or something but it was kind of jaring so I did my training for 10 sessions got some nominal benefits is very primitive Tech and then I come back six weeks later and the same kids in the waiting room I'm like oh God and he walks up to me he goes hi my name's Bobby and like makes eye contact and I was just so blown away it was like a miracle that happened and I I realized this is where neuroplasticity comes from like this is why a kid could change much and I had some change from that and that actually encouraged me to start not just doing R feedback but I bought the gear and I've been doing it myself for 20 years and I've been working with neuroscientists and like leaders in the field because there's a certain point where you could harm your brain with neuro feedback because it's like you're doing surgery on yourself you you should be careful about that and what came out about that is actually part of what's in the book and it's something called brain derived neut Tropic Factor bdnf this is a compound that makes your brain able to change itself better and many of the practices in the twoe program are designed to increase levels of this that makes your brain more plastic more youthful the cold shower thing we talked about exercise higher quality sleep not necessarily more sleep just better sleep and I it drives me know people say you need more sleep like no you need good sleep right it's just such a different animal when you're like I I slept with no wasted time I woke up in six hours and I felt amazing by the way the last 14 1838 nights 6 hours and 5 minutes of sleep like I track it every night I have for more than 3 years that's how many five hours you said 6 hours and 5 minutes that's my average some nights it's night before last was three and a half hours because I was flying I had to get up early but like you can bring it all day it doesn't matter amazing right and if you do that every night you're not going to like your life but it is it's entirely flexible yeah wow so the the whole bdnf conversation is how do you make your brain younger so you can learn better and one of the things that happens as we age and how old are you now 33 33 so you're already you're you're already on this this 34 and a month yeah and you're already on this path how do I stay younger all right 48% of people under 40 have early onset mitochondrial dysfunction that means they're not making enough energy and also their their neuroplasticity will go down because they don't have enough energy to make new neurons and so that's half of Us under 40 over 40 everyone has mitochondrial insufficiency and that's called Aging so our goal is no matter what age you are to give you maximum performance in this battery so you can turn the battery on you can you can pull a charge out of it at very high voltage if necessary and this would be you the ability to Sprint the ability to lift something heavy or during like 40 years is in we actually train you to increase voltage that your brain can make it's a trainable thing so literally the speed of neuron firing and the the height of the voltage curve you make in your brain is hackable in 5 days it it's completely ridiculous just's no one ever thought to train that this is not the stuff you do for a sick brain this is stuff you do for a super brain and some of that's what you're seeing in me like I've hacked the crap out of my brain amazing bdnf though those cold showers exercise sleep eating more fat and one of the other big things is avoiding toxins that lower mitochondrial function which what are Mercury vegetable no you can eat you can eat fish a yeah you don't want like super high like tuna and uh and and sharks and things like that but one of the biggest ones out there is environmental mold toxins and I did a documentary it's called moldy movie.com about this I interviewed Daniel aan and Mark Heyman and some of the luminaries in the field about what's going on with these and it turns out a lot of people get sick when like there's a water leak in their building and they don't know why they're sick suddenly like everything sucks in their life they gain some weight they get emotionally unstable they start forgetting things it's cuz they're poisoning their mitochondria the battery that used to make electrons well doesn't make electrons well so there's things you can you can do about that but one of the things you is you eat less of those one of the reasons paleo works that a lot of paleo people don't know about is that paleo naturally eliminates a lot of the mold that we eat because it's in Grain for the most part and when you cut out the grain you cut out these things that slow down your energy systems you don't do any grain I don't do anything grain I'll do white rice it's part of the bulletproof diet got it and the rest of the grains you just don't do it quinoa n of the other grains quinoa is technically a seed not a grain and I for quinoa works for most people but there are some people where it's just not right it's on the suspect Foods where like it might be guilty might be fine you just got you got to know so I would be uncomfortable saying K's good for you I would be uncomfortable saying it's bad for you it's a testable one versus some Kryptonite foods like MSG corn oil soybean oil canola oil those things are always bad for your brain uh in fact wow those this is going to shock people but nicotine is a mitochondrial stimulant in low doses I've never smoked smoking is bad for you but if someone came to me and said Dave here's a plate of deep fried food and here's a cigarette I would rather smoke the cigarette wow because at least I'll get the nicotine performance boost and the damage from the free radicals from the smoke and all the other crap in the cigarette they're only going to really hit me for 4 hours the fried food is at least 24 hours of damage to the brain to the membranes in the mitochondria and in your cells that make all this energy bad fat is really bad for you and one of the reasons that I look the way I look is I don't eat bad fat it's not oh I'll just have a little bit I just had to have the deep fried brussel sprouts I'm like what did you fry those in I don't eat that crap it's not food and when you get that that that freedom from Cravings that comes from eating a higher fat diet from using brain Octane and Bulletproof Coffee and all that stuff you suddenly have that ability to be like I'll just pass on the fries because I know the steak is coming when you do that sort of thing okay you look better you feel better but your brain stays sharper and like I'm I'm amazed at the changes I've been able to experience from just that one decision wow not that I've ever smoked instead of exactly so what things you like are non-negotiables that you cut out maybe like five or seven things you think everyone should cut out of their things that contain MSG have to go and there's still a group of science trolls who say there's no evidence that MSG is bad for you I'm like except for like a gazillion pieces of evidence that you chose to ignore so MSG causes hypoglycemia restaurants buy spices that are 74% MSG by volume and they are not required to be labeled as MSG spice extractives paprika extract garlic extract a lot of the extracts and flavorings natural flavoring sometimes the food companies sell these in magazines in cataloges saying does not have to be labeled as MSG they know it's MSG but according to FDA law actually it's probably USDA law but 75% or above is is MSG when you eat this or let's say you're running a restaurant you want to make more money put something into the food that has MSG in it that isn't labeled your chef can can without even knowing it's in there we be oh no there's no MSG I check the label when people eat this it's going they're going to like the food because it tastes good but they're also going to increase their order by about 30% because they're going to order more drinks because they get thirsty and they're going to order dessert because they got hypoglycemia guess what hypoglycemia is it's a lack of energy going into the inputs and the batteries in your cells so you feel like you need more well they starts creating a panic response it's like give me sugar baby and that's where sugar Cravings are coming from so yeah you got to not eat MSG it's just not there healthier fats because you have less cravings when you have more fat and it's not just healthier fats it's undamaged fats you can take like this grass-fed steak and like oh it's so amazing it's got that nice ribbon like a ribeye nice yellow fat that's like juicy and good well throw it under a broiler at 450 you don't want to eat it because when you damage fat it makes really toxic free radicals that directly lower your energy production so you want gently cooked meat like a lightly caramelized steak is fine a black and steak you got to cut off the black part or just don't eat it and I I I'm sad to say this but if you're cooking on a grill versus baking boiling or cooking in in water or even like a stir fry the grill makes a lot of things that we've known for years contribute to cancer really yeah and unfortunately before they contribute to cancer good I love Grill you can add smoked salt though if you get like the real smoked salt not the MSG salt like Lowes and all but the stuff where they like Alder smokes it is is so good it's it's amazing it's bad you probably right it's the MSG though it's good so I I'm like use this the stuff where it's just the pure smoke that isn't going to cause damage to your mitochondria and people like Dave you're so you're such a picky bastard right like seriously like look try it try this for two weeks and the just the times when you're like I would have had like a food coma food Comas are not normal shouldn't have them yeah the coma comes because the energy in your brain where you should have been on turned off because the energy was going to pumping crap out that shouldn't have been there in the first place people probably didn't have food Comas 100 years ago yeah if they did it was like vodan do yeah right but it wasn't like putting all these toxins in our body this inflammation constantly right uh and talking about inflammation I think you say inflammation is the muffin top of the brain is that right and what does that mean what is that well anyone who's ever had muffin top maybe notices that some days it's there and some days it's not right Muffin Top is not fat Muffin Top is inflammation if it's always there you have a little bit of flab but for most of us like you know I went out drinking last night I stayed up late or I flew somewhere and then the next morning I had muffin top you don't put on fat like that it's just the fact that your mitochondria became less efficient at managing water and you ended up getting some bloating you can also get bloating if you eat a bunch of carbs because you store water weight when you eat carbs and things like that yeah uh but when you get that muffin top it's highly variable so when you see the muffin top here that wasn't there yesterday your brain has the same kind of inflammation and here's the really yeah so if you see it on the body it's in the brain here's the weird thing about inflammation inside each each cell in the brain there's this 15,000 mitochondria and they have something called the electron transport chain so they make electrons from food and they have to move them right so if a cell is you know let's just kind of blow it up like that's the size of my hand right and the electron has to go from here to here well make the make inflammation happen now the electron has to go twice as far wow so a small increase in inflammation really changes the efficiency of the system and that's why inflamed neurons and brain inflammation is terrible for cognitive performance and if you're seeing inflammation in the body you'll see it in the brain drops the mic I'm kiding what are what else is inflammation foods that we shouldn't have gluten yeah and look there are people who will argue oh I like gluten okay that's great I like heroin too right okay I don't actually like heroin or alcohol I've never tried heroin to be honest but uh so but but that whole thing like it doesn't matter I like sugar too but it's not good for you right and and so that's not a valid argument and then there's a bunch of people say like there's a bunch of studies that show that only CIAA no there's study after study after study that show that gluten causes problems more for some than for others but it's never a food that makes you it's not an enhancer no it it at best at best it's neutral and it's probably bad uh and it it's not going to make you superum it's not going to make you everything it's not going to make you great right I like you're the school of greatness right if you really want to be great gluten shouldn't be on your diet and if you're like oh I just have it twice a week no it causes continuous changes in your immune system depending on what genetics you have and all those things so just because you're like well I can eat it and I feel okay doesn't mean it's not damaging something in your body or mind you can also start smoking feel okay it doesn't mean it was a good choice right exactly so I I know that that's a controversial thing but we should take gluten out of the human diet unless unless in times of famine it would be better for our soil better for agriculture better for Animals better for us better for everyone it's we know better now we just do it cuz that's what we've done for the last 3,000 years CU we had to feed a lot of people when we didn't have good technology yeah or we didn't have the money or whatever yeah exactly all right so we talked about bad fats we talked about burned fats we talked about burned meat uh we talked about gluten all right here's the other thing sugar probably right well sugar absolutely except mitochondria loves sugar so yes what types of sugar well they love straight up glucose so fructose is bad for you like high fructose corn syrup especially and by the way anything that's not organic and is made out of corn is full of glyphosate which is essentially round up that stuff is a mitochondrial inhibitor guess what these these bastards who make glyphosate who who literally we should we should stop them tomorrow because it's destroying our soil they say it doesn't affect humans because it only affects bacteria there's a quadrillion ancient bacteria in your body that are in there and they are affected by glyphosate it's just a fact not to mention your gut bacteria which talk to your mitochondria via these light Pathways they're also affected by glyos it so you need to eat more organic and you shouldn't eat concentrated corn products anyway yeah but there are times especially if if you're like wow I'm getting a really strong sugar craving guess what you might want to give into it right but what should you do have a banana or an apple or something a banana or an apple are mostly fructose you're not going to get it you might want to have a small amount of real sugar really and or honey or something or honey could work yeah and You' want to do that just because you're having an energy crash right and it's better to train your body you got to burn some fat use some brain octane which to go straight to ketones right but you can do that and a little bit of sugar so if someone's if you're listening to this like wow I can feel like I'm crashing like I I had lunch at at this restaurant tasted too good to be true maybe I'm getting a sugar crash if you prop up your glucose without having a huge wave of sugar you know I'm going to eat five scoops of Ben and Jes a tiny bit along with some fat and protein it might turn off a migraine like it it might affect it might affect you in a big way so if if you're crashing there's nothing wrong with saying all right I I I need a little bit of sugar right now some honey and some pistachios or some cashews or something and just some halva right that that'd be fine right yeah and so people are really surprised I like Dave I thought you were like a zero carb no bulletproof diet has always been a cyclical ketosis diet that uses external ketones in the form of brain octane to all make sure you always have some ketones ketones are these fat burning molecules that give you more energy than sugar we're we're wired to only have ketones or only have sugar and here's the cool thing about your brand your neurons they prefer fat as fuel they'll burn ketones over glucose even if they're both in your brain at the same time but the way we evolve we're not supposed to have fat and sugar if you want fat it's easy fast for four days or go on like the Atkins diet like a a ketogenic diet and then you have no glucose and only fat or eat some carbs and some protein and then you're in back in glucose mode which is our default energy production mode well you can cheat and that's part of Headstrong what if you had enough protein and a few carbs but not too many so you actually had glucose in the system and you had ketones you're not supposed to be able to do that you're supposed to be in one or the other but because brain octane converts to ketones even if you're eating carbs there you go now you get the benefits of ketones which is more energy than mitochondria the neurons in the brain they get to get their optimal fuel but the nerve the immune cells in the brain called gal cells they want sugar so they get a little bit of blood sugar that comes from eating even vegetables and and from eating steak and things like that so all of a sudden now both types of cells in your brain got the kind of fuel that was best for them so now you have the energy to grow new neurons to do neurogenesis things like that which is cool oh and we haven't talked about neurogenesis very much we talked about bdnf before there's a a new supplement that I I write about in the book studies just came out the one you gave me yeah it's called neuromaster where did I put it and uh there it is yes so this comes from coffee fruit this is not Coffee Bean just not green coffee extract and in two different studies it raises that bdnf that factor that gives you a more youthful brain so when I'm doing all this crazy brain training at 40 years then when I'm meditating when I'm doing anything that I is a skill acquisition thing including reading I take one of those in the morning so it keeps my brain at higher bdnf levels and I do all the other practices in here most of the things that make your mitochondria strong also increase bdnf so even intermittent fasting the bulletproof intermittent fasting all those things do it so it doesn't matter what you're studying what you're working to be better at having more neuroplasticity can only benefit you and that's why we came out with that stuff I'm I'm pretty excited about it it's one of my one of my important new supplements yeah you got so much at bulletproof.com you got tons of great products and Foods you've got the bars that I love that we talking about the lemon bars they're amazing what's it happening again the ingredients it's brain octane oil and collagen protein instead of like there's a lot of bars protein is bad yeah whey is is not that good but a lot of the the very common like ketogenic bars have milk protein isolate from non-organic milk it's like it's one step above soy protein it's toxic right it's got some inflammation or it it is very likely to increase inflammation and certainly it's it's not pure and and collagen you can't get in most food you have to boil bones to get bone broth or gelatin or something so it have a bar where all the protein in it comes from collagen with cashew as a binder and then to get the brain octane to suppress hunger and turn on ketones that's what I eat when I travel I give these things to my kids and I just made those bars because I didn't want to eat the ingredients like artificial sweeteners are universally train racks for your mitochondria things like sucralose aspart asil sulfame potassium those belong on those Kryptonite Foods list and a lot of people who are into keto and by the way I lost 50 lbs in the late 90s on the Atkins diet going into ketosis and I ate artificial sweeteners the whole time and you can't lose the other 50 pounds because artificial sweeteners cause inflammation and half your weight gain is inflammation anyway doesn't matter how hard you work out yeah right for me doing the food yeah an hour and a half a day six days a week and to not lose weight after a year and a half 20 something I was only like 24 when I did wow and I it I was so I felt like such a failure i' had three knee or two knee surgeries man and I was like all right I'm never going back like I'm I'm done with the surg I'm going to be in the best shape of my life I can max out every machine at my gym and I would do 45 minutes of cardio at an incline wow and but you were still eating the wrong things yeah I was actually eating less calories about 1,800 calories a day and I was eating a lowfat diet and I could not lose the weight I was like I could bench press my thin friends while they eat french fries and it was one day I looked at them like wait a minute I actually do eat less than any of my friends and like it's not me like like it's not that I didn't try hard enough it's not that a moral failing it's that that's what I'm doing just doesn't work and what it happened I was overtraining and I was fat deficient and protein deficient eating inflammation and all that kind of crap yeah man and um if you guys haven't checked out bulletproof.com make sure you check it out you got a lot of great resources the books the diet stuff but you have tons of supplements products Foods the Bulletproof Coffee obviously has changed thousands of people's lives out 48 million cups of Bulletproof Coffee served in what way how are you quantifying that like at home or and Bulletproof Coffee is is the mold-free lab tested beans with brain octane oil and grass-fed butter putting butter in coffee is better than putting milk in coffee because milk steals the polyphenols from your coffee it sticks to them and polyphenols are required for mitochondria to function if fact check this out throughout all of history the first trade routs established were for salt cuz salt is required for adrenal function it's fundamental being a human and if you have salt Cravings there's an easy thing to do give in to them just SE salt right you need that that's your adrenal system crying for salt that was like cash back in the day right yeah yeah you paid your Roman soldiers in salt is a man worth his salt and maybe a woman but back then I don't think they paid for women and salt right paying for women is bad by the way that's what they did back then because they were bad Romans anyway you know what I'm saying like literally soldiers paid insult yeah and from there the next evolution of those roots was SP spice what are the highest polyphenol Foods on Earth they're spices you know oregano thyme uh vanilla like all of these things right and after that was tea tea is also a high polyphenol food it turns out these little mitochondria that run things they are desperate to get these compounds that function as antioxidants but also are signaling molecules to the body so we set up Global Commerce we've had Wars over access to polyphenols and we've had Wars over coffee and it turns out coffee is the highest polyphenol food in the American diet just because we get most of our polyphenols from that so part of the headstrong program is you need to add more high quality spices and herbs to your food more turmeric and coffee is good tea is good dark chocolate is good unfortunately alcohol is bad for mitochondria but wine has some polyphenols in it so if you're going to have some at least drink wine with less anti- nutrients that that harm mitochondrial function in it uh so there's there's cool stuff you can do sure in all these different things but who would have thought that polyphenols were so important to the evolution of our society well it turns out Bulletproof Coffee is the culmination of of that where we don't use milk in it we use butter because butter allows you to absorb the polyphenols and we use brain octane in it which also allows you to make more energy from it so all a sudden the mondra like you gave me energy you gave me you gave me polyphenols at the same time I'm ready to party and that's why you feel so different when you drink it oh I love it and there's no crash and it tastes smooth and it's like I don't drink coffee but I like Bulletproof drink it all the time here cool yeah yeah but I never drank coffee before isn't it like being a like being a vegetarian that eats fish you're like exactly yeah exactly yeah but I never had coffee before I mean I'd have it every now and then or a cappuccino or something just for like a taste or whatever but now uh yeah I do it almost every day it's a performance- enhancing substance and you drink less of it like a cup of bulletproof is is a good amount long way yeah it goes a long way so awesome man want to make sure everyone check out bulletproof.com make sure you check out order headstrong dcom you can get some free videos a lot of other good stuff here it's a the bulletproof plan to activate untapped brain energy to work smarter and think faster in just two weeks so it's really a two-e program to get you up to speed on everything you need test it all put it all together and then see how you feel after two weeks there you go and they can connect with you on social media where what's the best place let see I'm Dave asprey on Instagram on Facebook I've got 300 and something thousand followers so pretty much Facebook Dave asy everywhere yeah it's all Dave I think on Instagram it might be dave. aspry okay cool I think on Instagram dave. as Dave as on Facebook awesome awesome uh couple final questions for you uh this one's called the three truths I don't think I asked this the last time you were on which few years ago yeah it's been a while so this called the three truth I ask everyone at the end and the question is when you're 180 and it's your last day and you've written everything you want to write you've put out videos you put out all this content but for whatever reason it's erased it's gone no one has any of your information anymore all the stuff you've taught they don't have access to it and you have a piece of pce of paper and a pen you get to write down three truths the three things you know to be true about everything you've learned everything you've experienced all the biohacking the Mind hacking all of it it came down to the three things that you would pass on to the world these lessons or truths what would be your three truths it's interesting question I I haven't heard you ask it before so I'm coming into it blind see this is what professional interviewers do is we're actually taught to not say that's an interesting question but I did it anyway just just to throw you you sure oh I'll think about that for a second yeah three truths uh the first one would would be that uh the world is way more complex than you than you perceive it to be like there are things you just don't notice that that are really important uh the uh the second one would be that you have way more control than you ever thought you did and the third one would be that it costs you more and causes more harm than you think when you hold hate and anger in your heart and that the antidote for that is gratitude and forgiveness and that if you can just do that that when you set that stuff down you stop carrying other people's baggage for them that costs you that you don't know how much Freedom that'll give you but you're also probably entirely unaware of the of the harm you're causing other people by sending them those bad vibes yeah I love that those was are great man that was are great um I want to acknowledge you for a moment Dave for being in intelligently um useful in all of your ways of being a resource for the world I mean you've you've tested so many things on yourself you've researched more than probably anyone I know to to see how you can improve your life and impact the lives of millions of people around the world and you've putting yourself through who knows what type of harm or all these different tests and you continue to push the boundaries to be in service to yourself and to other people with this you know this mind hacking and everything that you do so I acknowledge all the work that you do to constantly step up for yourself risk yourself to learn how we can improve our lives and it's it's really making a big impact so I would acknowledge you for that I I appreciate that Lis that feels good thank you yeah of course man final question is what's your definition of greatness definition of greatness you know the the very greatest uh people in history uh in in my view of of looking at this are the people who've who've reached full Enlightenment and my definition of enlightenment is based on I've studied in Napal and Tibet and all this stuff but I I don't follow any one spiritual school or anything like that I believe that when you have full awareness of what's going on inside your body that that leads to full awareness of what's going on outside your body so a sense of inner awareness tied with a sense of outer awareness when you know everything that's going on you will be great because your ability to interact with the world without telling yourself a story that's not true it you basically erase the story so you're like oh this is what's actually happening instead of what I told myself about what's actually happening so it's about removing self-deception and that's what makes it great Dave ASP me thank you so much man appreciate it thanks Louis yeah

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 170,605

Keywords: Lewis Howes, The School of Greatness, Dave Asprey, Bullet Proof, Training, Greatness, 2017, Inspriation, Wellness, Performance, Health, Fitness, Head Strong, Energy, Personal Growth, Brain, Podcast, Lewis Howes and Dave Asprey, Brain Hacking, bulletproof coffee, ketosis, biohacking

Id: 1P5WHzQRs40

Length: 51min 37sec (3097 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2017