show:Coming soon to this episode of The Doctor's Farmacy.
Dave Asprey:You spend six times more time brushing your teeth each week than you do cardio fitness than your friend who does cardio.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Welcome to Doctor's Farm. I am Dr. Mark Hyman. It's Farmacy's F, a place where important conversations happen. If you want to know what biohacking is or how to upgrade your biology, this is a great podcast because it's the podcast with my friend Dave Asprey, the granddaddy of biohacking. We'll dig into what it is. I think biohacking is just the consumer version of functional medicine.
Dave Asprey:You can say that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:He was a leading figure in the movement to control our own biology. The area where it exploded is now spreading like wildfire around the world. He hosts over a thousand episodes of the Human Upgrade podcast, formerly known as Bulletproof Radio, which I have listened to many times. He has been doing this for over a decade. Wow.
He is also the chairman of one of the largest and longest running biohacking conferences in the world. He works with famous doctors like me. No, I'm just kidding. Researchers, scientists and global scientists will discover the latest and most innovative methods, techniques and products to improve physical and mental performance.
Over two decades, he has personally spent nearly $2 million to take control of his biology and push the boundaries of human possibility in the name of science and evolution. His many New York Times bestsellers are amazing. He is also the founder of Danger Coffee and Bulletproof Coffee and the owner and CEO of the Human Upgrade Center's upgrade labs. He lives in Austin, Texas, where we are now.
Welcome to Doctor's Farm. deaf.
Dave Asprey:Thanks. I love the opportunity to be with you, Mark. And thank you for being one of the doctors whose name is on the back of my book…
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh, here you are.
Dave Asprey:...say, "You should read this."
Dr. Mark Hyman:This is a very good book. You wrote the book, Smarter Not Harder: A Biohacking Guide to Getting the Mind and Body You Want is dope. Which is good because there are a lot of people in this room right now. And a lot of people.
Dave Asprey:I adore it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's very confusing. In my opinion, there is a lot of garbage, a lot of noise, a lot of bullshit. and-
Dave Asprey:Big echo chamber, yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's a big echo chamber. I don't think we have understood what it really is, the right way to strengthen our body's innate biological systems in the most effective, efficient and powerful way so that we can feel good and do what we want in life Health and longevity ?
Basically what you do is winterize all that crap and create a map for people. I was so excited when I saw you write the book because I love the field too, but as a doctor I just love that it's so confusing and people are so confused. How are we going to go... because I don't want to write the book. Thank you for writing this book.
Dave Asprey:You are welcome. We all have this mindset. None of us have the time or desire to write a book that has already been written. It's easier to say "read this". It's a finished thing. That's why I just interviewed you on Young Forever, because it's a great book with new information.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:In Smarter Not Harder there are several concepts that I think should be more common in Functional Medicine, but not typical -
Dr. Mark Hyman:Okay my school. Teach me a lesson, Dr. Dave.
Dave Asprey:Okay, this is going to be fun. So have you heard of the meat OS?
Dr. Mark Hyman:Meat OS?
Dave Asprey:And.
Dr. Mark Hyman:No.
Dave Asprey:Okay, that's an idea.
Dr. Mark Hyman:USA meat.
Dave Asprey:Yes, meat OS.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Is it 4.0 or 2.0?
Dave Asprey:Exactly. Well, it's something you can't upgrade, which is nice because it's on your body, not on you. Here are some examples of what your operating system does for you.
Okay, you may have come across a neuroscientific measurement, I know you're not a neuroscientist, it's called the P300. Are you familiar with this? he knew It's not very well known, so I'm not trying to shame you with neuroscience or anything.
Dr. Mark Hyman:no, I am fine
Dave Asprey:I'm not a neuroscientist.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I promise you. I don't know everything.
Dave Asprey:Okay, and I'm not a neuroscientist. I just own a neuroscience company and know some parts of it, but neuroscientists elude me. So none of us are fully neuroscientists, and we know what we know. But I wrote about it in Smarter Not Harder.
So when I clap my hands like that, you hear it immediately, but you know there's a speed of sound between me and you, and then you hear it. But if we put electrodes from my neuroscience company on your head and measure your brain, a third of the time will pass between me making a sound and your brain receiving the first noisy signal. One second delay. Then you have to think about what the noise is, which is a bit of a delay.
Did you notice the delay between the third second --
Dr. Mark Hyman:No.
Dave Asprey:This is so weird. Okay, now you have a dime-sized blind spot in the center of each eye, in the center of vision in each eye. can you see it
Dr. Mark Hyman:No.
Dave Asprey:Okay, well, some system in there is interfering with your ability to see reality, and it interferes with you a third of the time, and you can't see it at all.
Dr. Mark Hyman:What does this have to do with your meat OS?
Dave Asprey:It's the meat OS that does it. Its job is to handle all the complexity of the world around you.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I know you say meat is like eating meat.
Dave Asprey:It's meat. You are flesh my friend. Me too.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh, I'm OS meat. OK OK
Dave Asprey:You are not your operating system. You have a meat OS. You are running on meat OS. So it's your body's job to drive itself. Don't you have to think about whether I should put another layer of glucosamine-based cartilage in my knee today?
Dr. Mark Hyman:No, absolutely not.
Dave Asprey:It's all hidden, right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:And what you see, what you hear, what you feel, what you sense, it's all manipulated by the operating system in your body. OK And as you get older, your operating system slows down. So if you're 18, it's a quarter. So your frame rate is really like 30 frames per second that people have heard of, or you're watching a movie at 60 frames per second. So when you're young, you see many slices of reality per second. As you get older, it slows down unless you do something about it. So this is a measure of aging ie how fast does your brain detect reality?
Dr. Mark Hyman:Why should we care?
Dave Asprey:Well, you should worry about it because your operating system -
Dr. Mark Hyman:When it's in your book, I thought, "Why is he talking about that?"
Dave Asprey:It ages you and slows you down. It steals your energy. And it can be hacked. So we think that because our OS is lazy, we are the bad guys. So your body wants to conserve energy in case of starvation. And since he can manipulate reality, you have two choices.
One of them is a spinning class where you're sweating and the music is playing and someone yells at you for pedaling and you're embarrassed because you're not the only one pedaling, so you just do it. That doesn't look very appealing. The other is this beautiful sofa and Ben & Jerry's bucket.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh! Yes.
Dave Asprey:Now we know the couch is a bad idea and spin class is a good idea, but we don't believe it at all. What we feel doesn't match what we believe because your operating system is the system that drives emotions. So we have to do our part.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So my operating system keeps telling me, "Go to spin class. Go to yoga."
Dave Asprey:No it doesn't.
Dr. Mark Hyman:"Don't eat the ice cream, stay on the couch." Well, maybe 95 times out of a hundred, I choose what's good for me.
Dave Asprey:it's because-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Every once in a while, when I'm feeling tired, stressed and depressed, I might have a pint of Chunky Monkey.
Dave Asprey:You see, it's because you have energy and you have discipline. But when people have low energy, like you and I, and we've all been exposed to toxic mold, your willpower drops. So you depend on willpower and habit to go to the gym and make the right choices. It is admirable.
The sentiment for most of the audience was that 92% of people don't go to the gym as often as the government says. There are 400 million ghost gym memberships a year where we buy memberships because our brains know it's a good idea, but we never go because our operating systems say no. So we have to turn to the LS. The way you do it, first, before we get into the technologies --
Dr. Mark Hyman:So you're basically thinking about the idea of an operating system for meat.
Dave Asprey:yes but i can...
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's not because I haven't read it and it's not missing from the medical literature. This is Dave Asprey's idea.
Dave Asprey:It's actually there, but it's not called that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:OK OK I said, "Wait, am I being so disengaged here?"
Dave Asprey:You'll see a little... I'm a biohacker, right? You must use language we understand. You'll see some of these in Candace Pert's Molecules of Emotion.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Emotional particles, yes.
Dave Asprey:This is the woman who discovered the opioid receptor. He will tell you and many others in functional medicine that you can say that your immune system has its own unique training ability, that it has a mind of its own. You could even argue that each of your cells has its own tiny, simple consciousness.
Actually, in my words, your body has billions of cells, and each cell is a little computer that can receive environmental signals, look around, talk to neighbors, decide what's going on, and then it can generate electricity, generate protein, produces sex hormones, produces melatonin, causes inflammation.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Surprising.
Dave Asprey:It determines what needs to be done. Everyone votes on each other to determine what happens in your flesh. Then they decide what you can see. terrible. These little bastards rule us, so we have to break them.
Dr. Mark Hyman:what do we have to do?
Dave Asprey:Okay
Dr. Mark Hyman:I want to understand how you do it. But before that, I want to give people a little advice, because you've really thought about it, you've researched it, you've tried it yourself, you've done it with a lot of people. What are the three most important things we can do to disrupt our metabolic, nervous, and epigenetic systems? Then we can access all of these -
Dave Asprey:It's like the first three things of the first three. So you get a three by three board. So let me break it down into a few questions for you. So it is very important to get the signal into the body to change. Because our brains are trying to conserve energy, we're left with simple thoughts like, "Oh, hard work pays off, so if I want to lose weight or get in shape, I'll go to the gym more."
So when I weighed 300 pounds, I did that, Mark. This is my revenge. I went to the gym 702 hours, 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week, half weights, half cardio for 18 months straight, even when I was sick. Whatever happens in my life, it's my number one priority, more than sleep.
At the end my waist was still 46 inches. I still weigh 300 pounds, but I can max out most machines in the gym. Will I gain more muscle? Yes. Am I still fat? Yes. and-
Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, you're healthier, but you're still fat.
Dave Asprey:Oh! Yes. My diet is low fat, low calorie.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Preventive diet for diabetes.
Dave Asprey:In fact. and after-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Or should we call it a diabetes diet.
Dave Asprey:No joke, right? Yes. American Diabetes Association diet causes diabetes. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh, that's why they call it the American Diabetes Association, because these people have diabetes?
Dave Asprey:It's obvious, isn't it? Yes. Apparently so does the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh my God.
Dave Asprey:It's right in the name. However, during this time in the gym it is a mistake to think that hard work will pay off.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. I always say you can't get rid of bad eating habits with exercise.
Dave Asprey:What I teach people to do is to say... actually five things, not three. You mentioned nerves and mitochondria. Here are five things people are asking for. That's eight years of running the world's first biohacking center where you can walk in and do these things.
I opened it under Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk. It's called Escalation Labs, and we've opened dozens of these franchises across the country. You can go to ownanupgradelabs.com and you can open one near your home. All we did was say, "Okay, here's five things." When you read Smarter Not Harder, you will learn about them.
But some people want muscles. This is not the same as saying "I want cardiovascular performance". There's a reason marathon runners aren't like bodybuilders because they're on opposite ends of the spectrum. You can choose the quantity of each you want.
Sometimes this is your number one goal. But for many people, it's really "I want my energy back." How do you do it? You don't even have to go to the gym for this, but there are some tricks to doing it. For weight loss they usually go together.
Some people wish their brains worked better. This is my biggest goal. When I was younger I had really bad brain fog. And others said for the first time, "I want to deal with stress and anxiety. I need resilience more than weight loss."
So those are the goals. You have to pick one and attack it. For each, I describe the technique that works best. So let me start with the cardiovascular aspect.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Walk us through it. Walk us through it.
Dave Asprey:Okay That's why the book is called Smarter Not Harder. I accept-
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's a fantastic book by the way.
Dave Asprey:Oh thank you.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Everyone should have a copy. Smarter not harder, you can buy books anywhere.
Dave Asprey:Appreciate it, Mark. If you do an hour of spinning five days a week, it should be good for your cardiovascular system. enough. You work very hard. you sweat Then you have to shower. You have people yelling at you. Your VO2max will increase by 2%, which is an indicator of your cardiovascular fitness. So that's a 2% improvement many times over.
You can use artificial intelligence technology. It's the workshop upgrade. I show you how to do something similar in this book at home. Five minutes, 3 times a week, that's 15 minutes instead of five hours without breaking a sweat.
Dr. Mark Hyman:What's your job?
Dave Asprey:Well, wait to hear the results. 12% improvement, 6x better performance in 15 minutes compared to 5 hours.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Really?
Dave Asprey:It is supported by three university studies.
Dr. Mark Hyman:How did you do it? Because I thought, "Wait a minute. Am I going to get all my time back?"
Dave Asprey:And.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I can read more novels--
Dave Asprey:That's why I wrote this book.
Dr. Mark Hyman:... and more books?
Dave Asprey:You literally spend six times more time per week brushing your teeth than you do for cardiovascular health than your friend who does cardio. It's worth learning about in the book. So here's how...
Dr. Mark Hyman:Then leave it to me.
Dave Asprey:Ok here's how it works. In Upgrade Labs, you ride an AI bike that measures your heart rate. But I'll tell you to make it at home right away. It is based on a new principle that can be applied to functional medicine. These are new ideas, so it's like a seed that I'm planting. This is called the slope of the curve in biology.
That means it's not how hard we're working, it's a signal of how quickly we can turn the operating system on and how quickly we can turn it off and return to baseline. So when you measure your heart rate on one of our AI-powered bikes at Upgrade Labs, we're pedaling really hard for 20 seconds all the way through and it's going to wear you down. We said, "Go as fast as you can."
Then the breathing exercises are slowed down. How quickly your heart rate returns to normal is what determines how well your body adapts. It's not how hard you work. It's not how much you sweat.
Dr. Mark Hyman:But how do you get... I mean, it's a known principle that your recovery rate determines your health. So there is no-
Dave Asprey:No, no, it doesn't determine health, it changes your health. This is another principle and it applies to almost everything.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So how do you achieve it?
Dave Asprey:Ok, here's how you would do it -
Dr. Mark Hyman:Because you usually improve your recovery by increasing your health.
Dave Asprey:right. So shockingly, the data shows that you don't need to improve your fitness, you just need to improve your recovery from any workout and your rate of fitness improvement will peak. So in other words -
Dr. Mark Hyman:How can you improve recovery?
Dave Asprey:So in this case, without exaggeration, it's just the 22nd resistance sprint. Then you do breathing exercises and move slower than is comfortable. Question for you and me and all other type A people-
Dr. Mark Hyman:I just want to go, go, go.
Dave Asprey:…We want to work hard because we were taught as children that hard workers are good, lazy are bad and will never be loved even if our OS is lazy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So what we've done is work harder, not smarter.
Dave Asprey:It's almost like...it's the title. See, that's how you do it in the park. Okay, now I have to warn you. It might seem funny, but that's how it works. You go to the park, maybe you have a weighted vest or something, or maybe you just go to the park. Then go really slow, as slow as if you had two THC gummies or something.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It would drive me crazy.
Dave Asprey:Of course, this is really very annoying. It should be so slow that you are almost doing a walking meditation. Then, without warning, you run like a tiger about to eat you. Then you run as fast as you can for 20 seconds, maybe 30 seconds. But it must be so fast that you can hardly handle it.
Any kind of resistance you can apply there is good. You will burn out to the point where you can go no further. You will then lie on your back in the park and do deep breathing exercises where you exhale twice as much as you inhale. That is, through the nose.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh
Dave Asprey:You'll do that for maybe two minutes, two and a half minutes, until you feel like you've calmed down, and then you'll get up and walk around like you've had more THC gum for a while. You will do it again. Lie on your back until your heart rate returns to normal and you are done. Now, the fact that someone might be trying to pass you word of mouth is the problem.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So basically just two 30 second sprints?
Dave Asprey:In the upgrade lab it's only 20 seconds because I can control the resistance with AI.
Dr. Mark Hyman:But basically two 20 to 30 second sprints.
Dave Asprey:Yes. This works better than high intensity interval training. Significantly better. The reason is that you are lying on your back. The reason is that you take a deep breath very slowly and then exhale. The only thing we say to the body is... because remember, these are stupid cells in your operating system. They don't know what's going on. They can't see the time. They cannot see tigers. All they knew was that there must be a tiger, and that was the trick, but I escaped.
Dr. Mark Hyman:right.
Dave Asprey:Now I am calm and safe. If you go to a spin class and go up your first hill, the body says, "Oh my God, that's a tiger. I wish I could get away." And then you can't run, because now you're running at 50% capacity.
After 45 minutes of hunting, your body says, "This is terrible. I'll give you some endorphins to keep you going and maybe even get you a little high. But I don't really want to spend a lot of money to improve my condition , because I could be chased like this again. This is not a safe place.' So instead of running, I ran and now I'm safe It's the 'I'm safe now' signal that causes the body to distribute nutrients to the muscles, cardiovascular and in the mitochondria.
Dr. Mark Hyman:interesting.
Dave Asprey:That's the trick.
Dr. Mark Hyman:interesting.
Dave Asprey:It sets you free. It's like going back hundreds of hours a year.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I like this. This reminds me of a book by Robert Sapolsky called "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" about chronic stress vs. acute stress Science and how zebras don't get ulcers because they're basically being hunted by lions. One of them is eaten and then they return to the pasture. When the lion then eats his brothers, they feel good.
Dave Asprey:If you want to find out the real durability of the vagus nerve physiologically, you will look more like a zebra. This means you are imitating the pattern. For the most part, we have the same mitochondria as zebrafish.
Dr. Mark Hyman:We must eat grass.
Dave Asprey:It's, "Oh, I'm safe." And not only...
Dr. Mark Hyman:So you lie on the grass and eat grass.
Dave Asprey:Only if you're a vegetarian.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So this is fantastic.
Dave Asprey:But food is important because there are two signals that can scare the OS. One is that something is chasing me and I can't escape. Okay, it's chronic stress. The second is that I don't have enough nutrition. Nutrients come in two forms. One is calories. In fact, we talked about it on my show when I interviewed you.
That's why calories matter. If you're low calorie, like I've been to the gym, the body thinks, "How am I going to get better? I'm not getting enough calories, so I'm not gaining muscle. I'm not going to improve cardiovascular. I'm just going to keep stressing you out."
So I see it especially with women. You may need a little more. If you exercise as you do now, you need to increase your calories. Then they lose weight, feel good and their hair becomes shiny. But beyond that, they say, "I don't know why I'm always stressed."
Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, that's right. What I mean is that excessive exercise is the body's response to stress. A little stress is good. Too much is bad.
Dave Asprey:Exactly. Well, Smarter Not Harder is about, well, let's figure out how to turn the pressure on and off so the body changes quickly, instead of "I just worked too hard to get results."
Dr. Mark Hyman:That's what cardiovascular health is all about.
Dave Asprey:Yes. It's the cell.
Dr. Mark Hyman:What about muscles?
Dave Asprey:Okay Muscles is exactly the same rule. How Fast Can You Burn Muscle? Throughout human history, all muscle building has accumulated stone.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Saml up.
Dave Asprey:Collect stones. By the way, all aerobics come from tigers. So pick up a rock. Some time ago someone said, "What if we piled rocks on kettlebells and plates?" So collect concentrated stones.
OK Now I spend a lot of time in the gym. I don't spend much time in the gym now because I have a special workshop. But when you pick these things up, you use your muscles. I mean, look at Arnold, you can be big. But what if there was a way to do it in less time? Turns out, how fast can you burn muscle? If you can do it for one or three or four reps without injury, that's great.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. The sore part is the key.
Dave Asprey:So if you go to upgrade workshops again and again, you don't have to go to one, you can open one in your city. Everything in the book has an original version or a free version.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:What we've done there is we've got an AI system that counters you in ways that slabs can't. So your muscles can get overwhelmed very, very quickly. Once that happens, they get overwhelmed, then recover, and then you're three or five times faster than lifting a heavy bell.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So you're going to do three sets of one to three reps, right?
Dave Asprey:Yes you will. At Upgrade Labs, I only work the large muscle groups for you. My goal is for you to spend less than 10 minutes a week building muscle and have the muscle you want. I don't have any triceps in the back of my head. If you want to become a bodybuilder, do it because you will love it.
What I will tell you is that most people, if you work your quads, glutes, chest and lats like rowing, you work all the major muscle groups that control your metabolism. If you have enough muscle, you won't have sarcopenia and you won't get diabetes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:So these are very important things that don't take a lot of time because it can run out of us very quickly. at home-
Dr. Mark Hyman:what would you do?
Dave Asprey:...you realize that your whole body is afraid of gravity. And it's afraid of gravity, because if you lift a dumbbell, it wobbles a little. As it oscillates, gravity accelerates it. And the little sensors in your wrists, elbows, shoulders, are called proprioceptors. They feel the gravity is there, so they tell you that you can't lift anything heavier.
You can lift something heavier, but it knows that if it swings, the swing will make it heavier and you will get hurt. Therefore, it blocks about 70% of the ability to exert pressure.
Dr. Mark Hyman:interesting.
Dave Asprey:Because he knows he can feel gravity. So let's remove gravity. I cover all the different techniques that allow you to do this. One of the interesting ones is the resistance band, which is just an elastic resistance band.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. Tell me about it.
Dave Asprey:The resistance band changes the resistance against the muscles into something foreign to them so they don't know how to defend against it. They know how to deal with gravity, they don't know how to deal with things that change when they move. So the faster they flood, the faster they grow. And there are studies that show that muscle growth is three times better. You can use electrical stimulation. You can-
Dr. Mark Hyman:I actually use tape. That's how I am... because I don't want to hurt myself. So I found them very effective and it's amazing what they do.
Dave Asprey:Plus it's lighter than the kettlebells in my suitcase. Airlines don't like that. If bodybuilding is your thing, then this is not against bodybuilding. Most, like me as a father, have two teenage children. I have eight companies. I write New York Times bestsellers, great podcasts, and life like you. do you know? I love my life, but I don't want to spend eight hours a week in the gym. I just don't know.
If you really want to do it, you can, but your stress response will be much higher than you think, so you'll have to eat and sleep like someone who's constantly on the hunt. Does not matter. You can choose this lifestyle, but it is a choice, not a necessity. I think we all believe that hard work will pay off.
Do you know someone in your life who has worked hard all their life and it doesn't work out?
Dr. Mark Hyman:not many.
Dave Asprey:Really? I know many people who are unfortunate because they have been cheated by someone.
Dr. Mark Hyman:must.
Dave Asprey:Sometimes you work too hard for things that don't matter.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. Well, it's true. I do it a lot.
Dave Asprey:Me too. I wasted a lot of time. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:So I can take back that time and get it back.
Dave Asprey:right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So you're basically talking about resistance zones. There are other tricks. So what about restricting blood flow?
Dave Asprey:I'm talking about restricting blood flow there. By restricting blood flow, you put a cuff on your arm that restricts some, but not all, blood flow. Then you can train with much lower weights or with resistance bands as you like. And you build muscle faster.
So what I did was I went through all the literature and said, "Okay, here's how to build muscle faster than you can pick up stones." Turns out there's a bunch of stuff and I put them in order, this and this and then this.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Then go through them. I think people will be interested to know what it is. Because in my long-term work and in this conversation, I talk a lot about muscle, so it's one of the key features of staying healthy and functional as we age, and that goes for both metabolism and body function.
Dave Asprey:Best of all is the AI-powered resistance, because you can put as much force on your muscles as I-
Dr. Mark Hyman:But you need a machine.
Dave Asprey:You need a machine. I did squats with a 1,600 pound belt. Now, if I did this with real weights, I would destroy my body like I destroyed my shoes. It literally ruined my $200 sneakers because they were like pancakes. This is because I didn't have to deal with gravity and my muscles were sore for a week. I really, really need to work out. It's a package.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Wow.
Dave Asprey:So you can do this safely because if you drop something heavy or shake it, something will tear. But with machines running slower, no one gets hurt.
Dr. Mark Hyman:No.
Dave Asprey:So let's say we don't have machines. If you go home, resistance bands, electrical muscle stimulation, ENS, not TENS units, but proper EMS, you can build muscle fast that way. I do this sometimes when I travel.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So tell us what it is.
Dave Asprey:That's when you get a machine. You usually go to the clinic, there are a few companies that sell them for home use now, but these systems cost over $1,000, between $1,000 and $5,000. Or go to an agency that does. If you want to wear wet clothes underneath you can stick electrodes or sometimes like a vest, which I don't like.
But you put electrodes where you want the muscle and turn on the machine. I actually do this at parties at my house. Then you turn on the machine and suddenly your control system, your body, says, "I can't do this." Instead, just pay attention and you will anyway.
What's happening is I'm using the current to tell the muscle, "Here's the force you want to make." It thinks it can't do it because... and then you let it do it. Once you do one rep, suddenly you don't have a problem.
So what you do is reset your OS to realize it needs to be able to accommodate more. He is so afraid of getting hurt that he doesn't ignite near his properties. A lot of what we do in the gym is just to show the body what it can do. You can use electricity to show the body that you can do it faster.
Dr. Mark Hyman:surprising. So you have AI powered moves. you have a band you have electric poles
Dave Asprey:You bleed.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Blood flow is restricted.
Dave Asprey:Even if you pick up rocks, some tricks turn out to be more effective than you think. The most important thing you can do is be extremely slow at the bottom of the movement. So when you lower the weight --
Dr. Mark Hyman:Weird, yes.
Dave Asprey:Weird but 10 seconds slower. All this, and there are studies that show you can build muscle faster. So I don't mind going to the gym. I'm basically lazy because my OS wants to save power. All my businesses exist because I'm lazy. Laziness drives human progress.
I don't want to walk, so I ride a horse. I didn't want to shovel shit, so I built a car. I don't want to deal with cars, so I fly. We are all lazy. It drives progress. Acknowledging this as part of my training philosophy, I'm down 15 minutes a week and I'm healthier and have gained more muscle.
Dr. Mark Hyman:You can measure VO2 max and strength, all objective indicators that you're stronger.
Dave Asprey:Yes. My bone density is off the charts. During my last operation they had a hard time cutting my bones. The saw slowed to my bones. The surgeon said, "What's going on here?" and-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Why do they cut your bones, Dave?
Dave Asprey:I have an old yoga injury, but it healed incorrectly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Damn yoga.
Dave Asprey:I will tell you that if your joint hurts, you should probably see it sooner rather than wait seven years. So I had to rebuild the joint on my big toe. It's crow kicked back on the board. I stubbed my toe really hard and it never got fixed.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh no.
Dave Asprey:It's really stupid. I should have met someone.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So is there anything else on the list?
Dave Asprey:On the muscle list? In the back of our minds, I think we all have these. There are a few things about getting enough animal protein to build muscle. If you're sending signals to your body and you're deficient in minerals, especially trace elements, your body can't adapt as quickly. We are all deficient in minerals, so exercise doesn't work, nor does meditation.
Minerals are the matrix for every signal that enters your body. The body says, "Do I have minerals? Do I have protein? Do I have fat? These are the things that mix together to create new enzymes to create body parts. If you're missing some of them, you get stressed because I can't adjust you." reaction.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Interesting points you point out. I want to emphasize this because it's at the heart of Functional Medicine and you're constantly feeding your system --
Dave Asprey:And.
Dr. Mark Hyman:……Is it good or bad. These inputs are translated into biological signals recorded in every cell, every gene, every pathway in your body.
Dave Asprey:And.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And set everything up. So your idea is a biological response modifier. Diet, exercise, stress levels, high and low temperatures. All kinds of things you can think of are translated into your biology by some kind of biological response modification that signals you to do something good or bad, heal or harm. It's a very powerful framework for thinking about things.
So all you're saying is how do we use the latest science to rethink what we do so we can deliver the right singles at the right time and the right dose for the best effect.
Dave Asprey:you did it. It can also be called applied epigenetics.
Dr. Mark Hyman:ok yes
Dave Asprey:For the public, epigenetics is the science of how the environment turns genes on and off. We just didn't understand it, and even five years ago we didn't have enough data to write smarter, not harder, because we needed to be able to say, "Well, what's the difference between doing this and doing that here , and compare them enough. Do people understand a way?" In the case of aerobic exercise, as far as I know, this is the only time that the slope of the biological curve is not always correct, because there is something called zone 2 aerobic exercise.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. tell us which region-
Dave Asprey:Have you reported on the show?
Dr. Mark Hyman:No, tell us about Cardio Zone 2.
Dave Asprey:If you go for Zone 2 cardio, it takes one and a half to three hours a week, which is more than I'm willing to invest, so I don't do it. But there is good science to suggest. You can't do without a heart rate monitor.
Zone 2 cardio is that weird little window of intensity that is faster than walking or as fast as walking but slower than jogging. If you can keep your heart rate in a narrow window, that narrow window directly drives your mitochondria to burn fat. So it turns out that speed training is burning fat, but not working harder.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's slower than you think.
Dave Asprey:It works in a very precise window. So I tell you in the book how to calculate your specific heart rate --
Dr. Mark Hyman:For zone 2.
Dave Asprey:...in zone 2. And there's evidence for that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Because we make calculations based on our age and they are not accurate. I am 63 years old and I exercise every day. My heart rate is 172. It shouldn't be that high. Technically, if you look at what determines a 63-year-old's maximum heart rate, it's not 172.
Dave Asprey:I just wanted to say something. You should choose a heart rate of around 35, which should be your lifetime heart rate. If you stay young, I don't know, forever young, I think 172 is where you are at 35.
So if you say, "Well, my heart rate is about right for my age," damn. It won't work. My testosterone levels are such that when I'm 30, at least if I'm healthy at 30, I have more testosterone now than I had when I was 30. Because when I was 30, my testosterone was lower than my mother's, because -
Dr. Mark Hyman:That's all I have to say. We don't have to follow these rules.
Dave Asprey:And.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, according to common medical thinking, my max heart rate should be 157, but yesterday it was 172. So how does that work? It means my body is actually younger.
Dave Asprey:Yes. Everyone is listening and you can do it. I found out I have an entire Upgrade Labs biohacking center at home because that's where I started my business. This means I can spend eight hours a day biohacking if I want and then I can't do anything.
So, even with biohacking, how can I spare only 10 or 20 minutes a day? For me, I biohack about 45 minutes a day. This includes meditation. This includes phototherapy. This includes whole body vibration—
Dr. Mark Hyman:You can do it all at once.
Dave Asprey:In fact, you can do most of them at once.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Train at a red light.
Dave Asprey:Yes. is true. My opinion is--
Dr. Mark Hyman:But you have to train naked.
Dave Asprey:Well, I mean, why not? The idea here is that people will come to the upgrade lab maybe twice a week and do all the things they need, including neurofeedback for the brain, including restorative techniques, including things that affect lymph, mitochondrial recharging, changing the structure of water in the body, twice a week, all in one place for less than an hour. You will look and feel better. We measure thousands of data points and show you every time you log in.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's really impressive. surprising.
Dave Asprey:No-
Dr. Mark Hyman:guess.
Dave Asprey:Yes, no guesswork. There is no placebo here. Every time you come in, we know what you're doing. We feed that back into our learning system, so the more we use it, the better it keeps getting for everyone.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's fantastic. Surprising. People also want to do it at home as there are no biohacking labs anywhere.
Dave Asprey:of course.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So you talked about cardio. We talked about power. Let's talk about energy, because it's another key pillar of yours. How do we optimize energy because one of the things that many people lack is energy fatigue, brain fog, just not 100%?
Dave Asprey:You and I both have this problem. So in terms of energy, what I like to do is talk about what they eat. It's in the book. This is not a weight loss book at all, it's not hard to be smart. But usually there is a lack of minerals. So even if you're getting rid of toxins, let's say even if you're getting rid of heavy metals, you're looking at zinc, especially copper, manganese, and molybdenum. You don't necessarily need molybdenum to...
Dr. Mark Hyman:Say it three times.
Dave Asprey:You know what, I had to repeat it so many times... When I read the audiobook version of the book, I got that word wrong a hundred times-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Like chromium.
Dave Asprey:...like molybdenum.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Chromium, Molybdenum.
Dave Asprey:molybdenum. Molly, if only I knew. Sorry, I swear by your podcast, but whatever.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Does not matter.
Dave Asprey:The mineral that recycles glutathione. So if your cells don't handle stress well and you're deficient in this trace element that no one has heard of, I can't even reliably say, then it's no wonder you have problems.
So I find that when I can get people to take a high quality multimineral and vitamin DAKE, which is D, A, K and E, all fat soluble actually, vitamindake.com has information on that. But when you take those two things away -
Dr. Mark Hyman:By the way, there is no vitamin DAKE. They are D, A, E and K.
Dave Asprey:Well, it's D,A,K,E. My name for it. This is vitamin DAKE. The book is correct. It's easy to remember that way. It's just fat soluble stuff.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Okay
Dave Asprey:But you're right. They are individual vitamins. But if you take vitamin D without taking vitamins A and K, taking D alone is not as safe as taking them all together.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:This is an important thing. You and I have been vitamin D advocates for decades, right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:And and.
Dave Asprey:But evidence is mounting that you need animal-derived retinol, the real vitamin A, not beta-keratin. And you need K2, and maybe some K1. I put K1 in things I make. I have found that if you have these and metals, everything works. Then your body can start producing energy again.
Then you need to apply. This is also an unusual thing. You have to use phototherapy because when your body can't make ATP, one of the reasons it can't make ATP is something called water out of bounds, which is the work of Gerald Pollack. When you drink plain water with or without electrolytes, your water should also have electrolytes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I do it this way. I now drink 32oz of water with electrolytes every morning.
Dave Asprey:beautiful.
Dr. Mark Hyman:before I have anything else.
Dave Asprey:Taking electrolytes is very healthy, otherwise plain water will pull the minerals from your body. If you drink a lot of water, you eat oatmeal, you eat all these processed foods, all the whole grains, they have a compound that pulls minerals out of your body. The plants and animals you eat no longer contain minerals anyway, so we all lack minerals. It leaves us weak, physically weak and unable to produce energy.
This is how you get your minerals. Then, while in the upgrade lab, you will perform full body infrared, red, and orange light therapy. If you are at home, spend 20 minutes a day in the sun and stay as naked as possible to avoid getting caught. and-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Or freeze to death, depending on where you live.
Dave Asprey:Well, cold therapy is not a problem. But the reason -
Dr. Mark Hyman:twenty minutes and -
Dave Asprey:Yes, it's cold. The reason you do this is because infrared changes the structure of the water. This dates back to the first time I drank butter tea at high altitude. This is the origin of Bulletproof Coffee.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes, I have that too.
Dave Asprey:you have that too. is true.
Dr. Mark Hyman:the salt. It's salty.
Dave Asprey:It was salty and unpleasant, but I felt different and thought, "What happened?" After funding some research at the University of Washington --
Dr. Mark Hyman:By the way, yaks are male. It's like being called a bully. I was corrected by a Tibetan monk. I said, "Oh, is that yak cheese?" and it was like… they all started to fall apart. It was a group of Tibetan monks. I said, "What do you mean? What are you laughing at?" "Ah, because yaks are men."
Dave Asprey:It's fun. What is a female yak?
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's called oak.
Dave Asprey:fall. Forgot. I've heard it before. Dry tea, okay.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Dry butter tea.
Dave Asprey:What your body does is it takes the water you bring in and turns the water from normal water into something useful for living things called forbidden water. To do this, it puts water in your cell membranes so they are made up of tiny fat droplets. and expose it to 1,200 nanometer infrared light called body heat.
When it does, the water changes its consistency. It is a viscosity. After this process, you can use water to make ATP. It does not work inside the cell until this process. You can see this water under a microscope. It's not fantastic quantum blue water. It's a real science based on decades of research by Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington.
Dr. Mark Hyman:interesting.
Dave Asprey:He actually found that of all the different fats he tested, MCT oil and butter had the highest levels of water repellency, so when you mix them into your coffee, you drink it, and it feels magically different. This is because you have changed the liquid in the drink. And heat, as it is hot tea or hot coffee, will also improve it. So is the presence of polyphenols.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Surprising.
Dave Asprey:So here's what's going on. So when someone says, "My energy is broken," I say, "Well, make sure you have enough metals to fix things." Put it down...it's not working hard, it's at this point to recover. Lie down on this thing and let us charge the water and charge your cells with red and infrared light. They did it for 20 minutes. I haven't felt this good in years. The knots caused by pseudo-hypoxia and toxins loosen. My brain works. I feel different. I feel good.
Then we might put them in cryotherapy for some cryotherapy. If you can make a liquid nitrogen or one of the actual cold chambers we use in the lab, it only takes three minutes. But at home you can take ice baths. I even teach in the book, "Hey, take an ice bath at home, unless you're a hardened biohacker like me, you're actually going to go to 7-11, buy a $20 ice bath, tell your suitcase, come on home, take out your suitcase and put it in your bathtub?'
Dr. Mark Hyman:You only have Massachusetts in the winter. When I filled the tub with cold water it was 45 degrees.
Dave Asprey:That's a fair point. I'm here in Austin. And you have to dry your suitcase because it's full of water. It's really annoying to have to buy a lot of ice cream to do this. so what-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Although my friend bought an ice cream maker, his giant ice cream maker. It has a sofa sink where they can drink water.
Dave Asprey:Yes, that's what I have in Canada.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Then he filled the sink with water and filled the tank with ice. Then you dive into it. It's fantastic.
Dave Asprey:You can do it. I have a cold here at home. But in the book, most people won't because it's expensive.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:So this is the cheapest and fastest way to get cold treatment because my concern is that you save time and get results while reading Smarter Not Harder. You get a salad bowl the size of your face. Add an inch of water and refrigerate overnight.
The next time you want to do a cold treatment, add some cold tap water and stir until the water is really, really cold. Then you take a deep breath, lean forward, press your whole face into the bowl as much as you can and hold your breath.
This is now called the diving reflex, but your face has the most thermoreceptors. By freezing your face, you send a cryotherapy signal throughout the body. If you do, you can go on for maybe 10 seconds and then your face hurts and you have a headache. Then you can come back.
But three days later the headache suddenly disappears and you start to feel better and better. Then suddenly you can take a cold shower and they don't bother you anymore. Therefore, the face is the most important area to achieve the highest return on investment in cold exposure.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, you know what, Dave, it's a medical procedure. do you know? We used to use it in the ER. When people come in, we call it supraventricular tachycardia, where their heart is beating a mile a minute. And then there's a lot of different techniques to actually correct that, like the Valsalva maneuver, which is squatting and holding your breath and different techniques.
But one of the techniques is to submerge the patient's face in ice water, which doesn't make you very popular, but it works.
Dave Asprey:It works perfectly. And it's definitely less painful than taking a cold shower. Most of us would like to do that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I really like taking cold showers.
Dave Asprey:So do I now.
Dr. Mark Hyman:You'll be like "hmm" for the first second and then you'll be like "Oh, that's not bad."
Dave Asprey:That's because three days of cold exposure in the study changed the ratio of fat in the mitochondrial membrane, meaning you can now suddenly deal with the cold. But the first three days were miserable. After that it's fine.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes of course.
Dave Asprey:But all this -
Dr. Mark Hyman:So basically you're talking about getting minerals and we're talking about energy and ATP. You're talking about phototherapy. You talk about the right vitamins A, E, K, D.
Dave Asprey:Vitamin Web.
Dr. Mark Hyman:anyone. OK, so you said -
Dave Asprey:This is a new vitamin, Mark.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Stop confusing people. So minerals, after the right light.
Dave Asprey:And.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It works like a cocktail. After cryotherapy.
Dave Asprey:It's a cocktail. In fact, you can drive all over town to try to get it, or you can go somewhere to do it. Or you can store it in your living room. There is a free version, a cheap home version, and a Crazy Billionaire version. The Crazy Billionaire version proves that it works without a doubt and is the most effective. It's also something crazy billionaires have in their living rooms, or you want a place to do it. But it proves to work.
So, now that we know the slope of the biological curve, how do you do it at home? So we all have different cardio, all different strength training, different cardio. Then we talk about restoring your energy. Cold therapy is a really good therapy. Getting enough minerals into your body is relatively easy. ATP cannot be produced without magnesium. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:So you are talking about the five minerals. What are the five minerals? Molybdenum is one of them.
Dave Asprey:So here are the macro minerals you need -
Dr. Mark Hyman:Macromineraler, and.
Dave Asprey:So the macrometal is sodium. If most people follow the government's low sodium recommendations, they are sodium deficient because their sodium levels are too low, and if you do that, it increases something called renin in the blood.
Dr. Mark Hyman:renin. and renin-
Dave Asprey:Renin increases cardiovascular risk. So enough salt and enough potassium to neutralize the taste. If you have sodium and potassium, you have enough. I talk about potassium in my book. You will not have high blood pressure. Lack of potassium is a big problem.
Then you need calcium and magnesium. Most people get enough calcium, too much is not good. This may not be true for you, but it is true for most people. Almost everyone is magnesium deficient.
Then you don't have to worry too much about phosphorus because it is found in food. For most people, this isn't a big deal. These are macrominerals. And trace elements, we get things like copper, zinc, molybdenum. Then there are super trace elements found in glacier water, blue zone, high mineral water, and even mineral water.
So what I do about it is you can take trace element supplements, you can take drops. You put it in the water. Danger Coffee, my new brand of coffee is different because of the electrolytes and trace elements in the coffee. So you get plenty of minerals every time you drink coffee.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Can you add it or because it happens naturally there?
Dave Asprey:Added.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Added.
Dave Asprey:Yes. Well it's part of -
Dr. Mark Hyman:etc. It is an upgraded version of coffee.
Dave Asprey:OH MY GOD. Who would have thought it? Yes, dangercoffee.com is where you find that stuff.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh my God.
Dave Asprey:I do this because of the different minerals, for example, if you have to have corn flakes, they put iron filings in to boost the iron content. But metallic iron is very bad for you. So minerals and electrolytes in ionic form are very good for you. If you plan to drink coffee every morning, you can also get minerals that way. You still need to take mineral capsules. It takes about three capsules to get enough minerals for a macromineral supplement.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:So before… I made nootropics-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Can you take multivitamins and minerals? Will everything be in there?
Dave Asprey:No, because none of them are...just minerals, take three regular-sized pills. Few people are willing to take more than three pills. So the vitamin companies say, "Okay, I'll take 3 pills a day." But they try to put everything you want. you can't do it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And it's at a lower level than what you need.
Dave Asprey:It's at a lower level than what you need. So it is better to take a multimineral before taking a multivitamin. This is important because without minerals nothing will work. If the body has minerals and energy, it can make almost anything it needs.
Therefore, these are not sexy. They are not exciting. They are almost boring. But they are the most important things and they are cheap. So I mean vitamin DAKE is about $20 a month. It is affordable. It is not a nootropic. This is not a libido enhancing formula. It's not high energy, adaptability, mushroom strips or anything new. It's just the basics. If you don't, don't spend your money on other things.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And and and.
Dave Asprey:right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Okay, we're getting energy. Any other energy tips or can you cover it?
Dave Asprey:Another thing that helps is detoxification. That's part of it. So one of the things we have is you have access to a clinically proven lymphatic drainage system.
Dr. Mark Hyman:These boots or these Hyperice or something?
Dave Asprey:Like boots. The problem is that many boots on the market simply don't work because they don't actually rely on lymph flow. They just apply pressure.
If you do a massage, Mark, if you do a lymphatic massage, you feel like somebody's touching you, and you're not even... it's not a real massage. They just caress you. So it takes some pressure to get the lymphatic drainage working.
When you contract a toxic mold like I did, your lymphatic system is affected. You have a muffin top. We've had people easily lose a size of clothing in one session because so much lymph builds up.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Wow.
Dave Asprey:Pressing hard won't help if you just press or give a Swedish massage. So you have to control the pressure waves very carefully to do this. But it also really affects things when the lymph flow starts up again. It's detox stuff.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes, of course, since most of our lymphatic circulation is slow. Our diet makes it sluggish or lack of exercise makes it sluggish.
Dave Asprey:The other thing we're going to do is whole body vibration and-
Dr. Mark Hyman:oh what is it
Dave Asprey:This is something I recommend. People have been making fun of me about it for years, but now it's kind of cool. You stand on a vibrating platform.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:They found that this worked well for the astronauts' recovery. Restores bone density. The reason it works is because it moves through the body. It also vibrates all your tissues, which wakes up your mitochondria through something called piezoelectricity. and-
Dr. Mark Hyman:That's a big word.
Dave Asprey:Yes. Piezoelectric essentially means that when your cell membranes bend, they create a small amount of electrical charge. So you stand on this thing for five minutes and shake it around a bit. Everything in the body relaxes and your bones recover.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's like a vibrating plate.
Dave Asprey:Yes it is. And now you're starting to see them...we definitely have them in the upgrade lab. You are starting to see these in many health centers. If you go back to the days of our parents or grandparents, health clubs had these band machines.
Dr. Mark Hyman:zone? Yes, belts.
Dave Asprey:A belt that makes your organs vibrate. Turns out it's actually good for you. They just look stupid.
Dr. Mark Hyman:It's fun. Well, there was a machine, I can't remember the name of it, but it was incredible, it was like a recliner with all these vibrating speakers built into it.
Dave Asprey:oh interesting
Dr. Mark Hyman:There is also a headset. You lay on it and it's like "shh". It completely resets your nervous system. It's fantastic.
Dave Asprey:Ah, that's why I'm talking about the brain chapter and the stress chapter. It turns out that the autoreceptors we mentioned earlier look for touch. That is why there is a system called HUSO. HUSO, you put on your headphones, they have a small speaker. It's called a converter and can be worn on the wrist and ankle. And you lie in bed listening to headphones.
By going to the acupoints or acupoints and playing the same sounds you hear, you enter these incredible states of change. Dave Rubin's company, Apollo, has a vibrator worn on the wrist or ankle that also changes the tone of the vagus.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:These are all stress relievers. This is the stress relief chapter. Then it goes on and on. And one above your chest. Because these are little cues to change your stress response, so your chills... Remember when...
Dr. Mark Hyman:Be wise Apollo.
Dave Asprey:Yes, I feel, please. This is my idea.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:So when you can turn on your chill factor faster, you can build muscle faster, build cardiovascular faster, and when you can turn on calm, you can build new neurons faster.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Okay just hearing people say why this happens, cortisol destroys your brain, destroys your muscles. When you turn it down, you can actually -
Dave Asprey:Unless it's too low. High cortisol can do just that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:right.
Dave Asprey:Adequate cortisol continues to build the brain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:right. Of course everyone should… yes. you know what I mean. But most of us live in a state of stress. And most of us have too much cortisol flooding our system.
Dave Asprey:It definitely came out at the wrong time. He does not come in the morning, but in the evening and more. I definitely have palpable adrenal burnout.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes it is. It was hard to go to bed, I couldn't sleep but exhausted.
Dave Asprey:The most important parts of Smarter Not Harder are the last two chapters where I talk about emotional and intellectual hacking.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. By the way, we cannot cover everything in this book. It has an entire section on the brain and neuroscience. So we've only really scratched the surface. And I think for the really curious listeners, you should get this book, smarter not harder, because it unpacks so many science-based and practical science-based applications that you can, as you say, turn on. these biological signals to reverse our biological age, optimize our health and make us feel better now.
So that's great. So we can't cover everything, but let's dive into mental health and its related aspects at the last point of this discussion.
Dave Asprey:You will find that as you work to regain your energy and get your body working at full potential, you will suddenly realize that something is triggering you. And if something sets you off, it's not the other person's fault. It means you have something in your gun, because no one will be able to fire you. So we go through three states on the way to the spiritual part.
Dr. Mark Hyman:You cannot fire if there is no chamber loaded.
Dave Asprey:You might want to uninstall it instead of yelling at me, just saying. So in Buddhist teachings and many other schools, the first stage is empathy. At least you can feel someone else's pain. You can sense another person's emotions. You can empathize with them. So it's a better situation than being angry. So empathy is great. The problem is that you have to feel the pain of others. It doesn't always work for you. Maybe you don't want to.
So the step above is compassion, which means you automatically want the other person to feel good, even if you don't know them, even if they do something you hate.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Buddhist Compassion Framework.
Dave Asprey:Yes, the Buddhist Compassion Framework. It is a state superior to empathy. But the highest state is what they call equilibrium. It may be another word for resilience, but the idea is that you can choose your situation and no power on earth can change your situation. So you say, "I'm going to choose happiness now, it doesn't matter if I have [inaudible 00:54:52]-
Dr. Mark Hyman:This is an inside job, not an outside job.
Dave Asprey:Exactly. So how do we do it? Well, it comes from our meat OS. It's not just us. We had to program this system by removing all messages and all stimuli from it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:I went through a process called the book reset process. This has been the core of Zen Buddhism for forty years.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Wow. So what is a reset? How do you restore old programs?
Dave Asprey:It's an F word. Can you guess what it is? forgive. But forgiveness is not what people think it is. I know this after monitoring the brains of 1500 people for 40 years with Zen at my neuroscience company where we do advanced brain upgrades for business people and professional athletes.
What happens is what happens in the world around you. Your fleshy operating system decides it's probably a tiger, even if it's your mother-in-law or whatever else is challenging you. Someone yells at you for injustice, whatever it may be. All of a sudden you're like "ahhh". Okay, the feeling you get there means you're triggered. It means your brain has been stolen. This means that all the electricity that should be used to make your life better is used to prepare for battle, prepare for flight.
So we want to disable it so you can look at it and say, "You know what? It's not fair, it's not fair. I'm going to do something about it." But you are from a controlling state rather than being controlled by the state.
Dr. Mark Hyman:right. instead of being activated.
Dave Asprey:Yes. So forgiveness is how you do it, but forgiveness doesn't mean the things you're angry about are right. It doesn't mean you tell someone you forgive them. Forgiveness is the act of going into your operating system and turning off the trigger, never to be triggered again. It is a state of mind. It's something you can measure with your brain waves, but it's something you do in your chest.
Dr. Mark Hyman:What is the practice that got you there?
Dave Asprey:Well, teach me that the complete reset process described in this chapter takes a few minutes. But the most basic thing you do is sit in a quiet room and imagine anything, assuming someone is insulting you. Let's say I'm angry with you because you haven't had enough coffee today. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:Maybe this one. Maybe this one.
Dave Asprey:Assuming I'm actually triggered, "How come Mark doesn't drink coffee?"
Dr. Mark Hyman:How could he not have my coffee for breakfast?
Dave Asprey:In fact.
Dr. Mark Hyman:You know how I can't get it? Why didn't you send it to me?
Dave Asprey:You see, now I have self-forgiveness today. So what I would do is have the virtual Mark sit across from me and say, "Mark, what you did really had this effect on me. It hurts my feelings. It makes me feel this way... I really want to understand how bad I am. And that's what people want to resist. You can forgive your parents. You can forgive your ex-boyfriend or your wife or whoever. Man, it's done. So do it again. it hurts. It's not very pleasant .
But this is what is missing from so much personal growth and trauma resolution work. You have to find what you are grateful for.
Dr. Mark Hyman:about-
Dave Asprey:that you are angry You cannot forgive anything if you are not open to gratitude. Gratitude is the spark that lights the fire of forgiveness.
Dr. Mark Hyman:Thanks for the trigger or the person?
Dave Asprey:Be grateful for the situation, be grateful for what happened. So, for example, in this case, Mark, I'm really, really crazy. My feelings are hurt. You didn't drink your coffee this morning and I really hope you did. What are the benefits of not drinking coffee this morning?
Dr. Mark Hyman:I'm not very hyper.
Dave Asprey:for you. It's one thing. So Mark, since you don't drink coffee, you're easily scheduled today and I can take advantage of that. Okay I won't. But I find some good things. In this case, getting angry is a very foolish thing. Oh well, it is what it is.
Well, I'm really crazy, but one of the nice things to take away from this is that you show up to the interview on time, because if you had to make coffee, you're late. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:This is real.
Dave Asprey:It can be the smallest, stupidest thing. It doesn't matter what you're looking for, but the feeling of gratitude will take you from the ground to, oh, because your fleshly operating system is like that, it just wants everything. So now he got what he wanted and now you're stuck. So you feel pain. Now you are stuck.
And then you start saying, "Well, let me step into Mark's shoes." And then you start using compassion and empathy. You say, "Well, I wonder what happened to Mark so bad that he wouldn't drink coffee this morning. Maybe he was bullied in seventh grade and is still afraid of coffee."
Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, it's true.
Dave Asprey:I really don't know why. But suddenly you see it, you say, through another person's eyes. And then when you say, "Wow, I really forgave Mark." Forgiveness is actually like something that comes out of your chest and you can feel it with the other person. I teach this to people with electrodes on their heads so they can more easily enter this state of forgiveness. But I describe it as best I can in that sense.
Here's the kicker. When you think you're done, you think you've really let go. You are actually registered with the highest power you have been given. It's okay if you don't believe in a higher power. There is something about artificial intelligence. All you need is a small lamp or a baby Jesus to give you a thumbs up. Does not matter. Something unmistakable.
This is so weird. Sometimes you say, "Yeah, I'm done." You control everything you can think of and you can't see. It's like, "You're not done yet." You say, "What the hell?" So there are all sorts of weird, semi-logical things going on in your operating system that are really hard to interact with. You interact with emotions.
So what you've just done in the process is open to the pain you feel when someone wrongs you. Consciously ignite a feeling of gratitude. Then you consciously open yourself to a kind of compassion. When the body sees pain, gratitude, compassion in that order, it cancels out the pain and you no longer cause it. The same person can come in and say the same thing and you're a complete loser. Have peace of mind.
Mark, I have six months to live...
Dr. Mark Hyman:Awesome.
Dave Asprey:...I have electrodes in my head and I'm learning to do this. I've taught 1,500 advanced entrepreneurs how to do this, because when you go through it, you say, "Wow, if I was fired, hallelujah." In the last four months I have been triggered twice, twice. And wow, I didn't know I had that trigger. Then I went and did the reset process so I had a hard time getting it to work.
Dr. Mark Hyman:And.
Dave Asprey:There have been many times over the past eight years that I have forgotten to do it or had no time to do it. Every time I realize someone is triggering me, I'm probably messing up my life. That's why I teach it on Smarter Not Harder because, yes, you should meditate. If you do this process once a week for something that triggers you, you will no longer have a muscular middle finger while driving. You don't yell at your kids. Your life will be better.
Dr. Mark Hyman:surprising.
Dave Asprey:All the energy that goes into hate is used to do things like fold proteins and get younger.
Dr. Mark Hyman:I like that, Dave. That's wonderful. Thank you for writing this book. Thanks for starting a sport that actually works for me and isn't just all these fun gadgets, techniques and tools. It's about empowering people to take control of their health, be the CEO of their health and realize that health doesn't come from a doctor's office. It happens where you are in charge, it happens at home, in your kitchen and everywhere you live because it literally changes your biology every moment.
So it's a gift to the world that you started this movement, that you wrote this book, that you showed people in a very simple, practical way how to understand how to unlock their own biology for better health and better life. That's basically it.
Dave Asprey:And.
Dr. Mark Hyman:So thanks Dave. I love you. Nice to chat with you here.
Dave Asprey:So.
Dr. Mark Hyman:If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends and family on social media. I'm sure they'll love it because it's full of all sorts of interesting things about what you can do to make your life better. And leave a comment, have you used any of these technologies or tricks to upgrade your health? And subscribe, wherever you listen to the podcast, and we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Farmacy.
closure:Hi to all. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Please note that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for the professional care of a physician or other qualified professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
If you seek help while travelling, seek the advice of a qualified medical practitioner. If you are looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can find a database of practitioners by visiting ifm.org and searching there. It's important to have someone close to you who is a trained, licensed physician who can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.