Reclaim Your Health and Boost Your Brainpower: Dave Asprey

Going into this state is interesting-you lose weight, it’s anti-inflammatory, and you feel amazing…
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This Week’s Guest:

Dave Asprey is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Bulletproof Diet. He’s the creator of Bulletproof Coffee, which has transformed breakfast for millions of people around the world. He has the number one-ranked health and fitness podcast, Bulletproof Radio, and his website is The Bulletproof Executive. You can find Dave on Twitter @bulletproofexec.

Episode:

With all of the diets available to us, it’s difficult to know what we should be eating-but the results of The Bulletproof Diet speak for themselves. Dave Asprey is a bio-hacker who created the diet that not only helped him lose and keep off hundreds of pounds, but also optimize brain performance and clarity, energy, and rid your body of environmental toxins.
We Discuss:

• The science behind yo-yo dieting, and how to stop it.
• What foods create energy and optimal health, and what foods should be avoided.
• How to test your hormones and genetics to know what foods could cause you inflammation.
• How to overcome infertility-without medical assistance.

Here’s what I learned:

Dave’s Transformation

1. Dave weighed 300-pounds in his fourth year of college and was obese as a kid.
   • He started getting arthritis at 14, stretch marks at 16, had asthma, rashes, strep throat every month, and symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome.
   • He was living in a basement that had water damage and when that happens, you can inhale toxic molds.
   • Toxic molds interfere with your cells’ ability to make energy, your hormones, and your brain.
2. He realized what was going on and was able to hack all of this.
   • Now, at 43, he has lost hundreds of pounds of fat and has kept it off for a long time.
   • When he was younger, he would exercise a lot and all it did was make his body hurt more.
   • Unfortunately, you can’t exercise your way out of all these other issues.
   • By ridding your body of inflammation, you get much more progress with less effort.
3. When Dave was working in the tech industry, they would have plates of cookies in the afternoon in the conference room.
   • The more he told himself “no”, the harder it became to resist.
   • His desire for cookies was hormonally triggered and energetically driven because his body was starving for energy, and he would eventually give in.
   • When you don’t chose the right meals to satisfy you, you are in a constant state of hunger.
   • Dave has tweaked his diet so that what he eats helps his brain function, stops cravings, and satisfies his hunger.

The Bulletproof Diet Roadmap

1. The roadmap lays out what you should be eating.
   • It goes over the proteins that are least likely to trigger hunger, food cravings, and inflammation, and the ones that are most likely to do so.
   • It also has options for fats and vegetables, so you know exactly what foods to eat.
2. Most people don’t know that when you eat a raw kale salad, you should expect to be hungry because there’s not enough energy in that food and it’s full of antinutrients.
   • If you eat a salad, add a couple of avocado slices on top and wild-caught salmon for high-performance brain functionality.
   • Raw kale has an antinutrient called oxalic acid in it.
   • If you eat raw kale all the time, you may get kidney stones-it won’t happen to everyone because some people have bacteria in their gut or genes that make them more resistant.
   • Oxalic acid has also been linked to some cases of autism and many cases of arthritis.
3. The road map will show you foods that carry risk.
   • There’s Bulletproof foods that, for most people, cause no trouble and they make you feel great, they have lots of energy, vitamins and nutrients.
   • In the ‘suspect zone’, there are foods that may cause problems, such as lentils, potatoes, kale, and nightshades like tomatoes, eggplants, and bell peppers.

Moldy: The Documentary

1. Dave is the Executive Producer of a documentary called Moldy.
2. Many buildings have mold problems that can cause performance problems.
   • A moldy environment can deprive someone of energy, without the person knowing it.
   • Doctors aren’t necessarily trained to look at the environment, especially when you have two people in the same room and they respond differently.
3. One story from the documentary is about a husband and wife who are both physicians, and they moved to a new house.
   • Her health gets worse, but his remains fine if someone has more than ten symptoms, they assume they are a hypochondriac.
   • She noticed that her temperature was higher than it should be-therefore, her illness was real.
   • After three years of symptoms, she figured out that it was environmental mold, even though her husband was never affected by it. It can affect people differently.
   • 28% of the population has her genes, the other 72% of the population doesn’t have them-they still are at risk, but they just don’t have the same the same set of inflammatory genes.

Genetic Testing

1. Dave recommends a basic inflammation test.
2. You would need to test your hormone levels, and the test needs to go further than just cholesterol.
   • Cholesterol isn’t as important as you may think-the biggest thing to look at is your C-reactive protein, which is a sign of whether or not your system is inflamed.
   • Then, you look at homocysteine, which is another marker of inflammation.
   • If your inflammation levels are off, you need to start changing what you do, what you eat, how you sleep, and remove toxins from your environment.
   • You can take the 23andMe test, which is approximately $99, and then you can run your results through an analytical system that will determine your methylation pathways.
3. A good number of people have certain genes that mean that they’re not good at breaking down some vitamins.
   • For instance, roughly one third of people cannot process folic acid.
   • When Dave gets too much folic acid, it builds up and can reach toxic levels and cause inflammation.
4. This information helps you to understand if need a wider variety of foods, or if certain foods will be better or worse for you.

Sugar vs. Cholesterol

1. Sugar is the culprit in inflammation, and cholesterol is essential for your brain.
   • Unoxidized cholesterol is really good for you, unless you hit an absurdly high limit.
   • Cholesterol is the substrate for most of the hormones in your body.
   • The presence of cholesterol itself can help you put on muscle faster, and makes you more resilient to environmental toxins.
2. Low cholesterol, under 200, can make you weak-around 220 is more appropriate for most people, but it also depends what kind of cholesterol.
3. The Bulletproof Diet is a very low sugar diet-especially fructose, which is one of the most damaging sugars available.
   • Fruit is water, sugar, and trace amounts of vitamins and fiber, so it’s basically candy.
   • The Bulletproof Diet has lots of vegetables and limited fruit, although you can have the fruit around dinner time when it’s okay to get tired from a sugar crash.

The State of Ketosis

1. You want to keep your sugars and net carbohydrates-the carbs minus the fiber-at less than 20 to 25 grams per day.
   • This will put your body into ketosis, which is a state in which your body will burn fat for energy.
   • This will not only help you to lose weight, it’s anti-inflammatory, and you will feel amazing, have energy, and feel mentally sharp.
2. Dave’s Bulletproof coffee includes Brain Octane Oil, which will give you a mild state of ketosis within a half hour of drinking it.
3. When people lose weight, they normally struggle with losing and then gaining back, then losing again, and so forth.
   • This is because of a hormone in your body called ghrelin-when you lose a lot of weight and you’re not going to ketosis, you will have the ghrelin levels of your previous weight.
   • For example, this hunger hormone will create the hunger levels of a 200-pound person even though you now weigh 150 pounds.
   • A mild state of ketosis will lower your ghrelin levels so you can stop the yo-yo effect and your hunger will match your current weight.
4. If you use Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting, it will also help with hunger.
   • In the morning, you will have your coffee with healthy fats that increase your ketones, and by lunchtime you will still feel great.
   • Dave has two tablespoons of Brain Octane and a tablespoon of butter in his coffee.

40 Years of Zen and The Better Baby Book

1. The Better Baby Book is the first book that Dave and his wife wrote.
   • When Dave met her, she was infertile and they wanted to have kids-she was 35 at the time.
   • They decided to change their diets, and there were 1,300 references that went into the book.
   • She went from having Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and not being able to have babies, to having two healthy children without fertility assistance-one at age 39 and one at age 42.
2. With 40 Years of Zen, you can change your biological fear response.
   • Dave spent ten weeks with electrodes glued to his head reprogramming his nervous system, learning the forms of self-deception that he has.
   • They then would work on reprogramming them.
   • It’s meant to replicate the brain state that you get 20-40 years of daily Zen practice in a short amount of time.
   • This can cause profound changes in your brain function and level of awareness, and will change your emotional and physical connection with your body.
   • You have to apply to go to the program and the cost is $15,000, but it changed everything for Dave and gave him an incredible insight on what he is capable of.

Links and Resources Mentioned

The Bulletproof Diet
Bulletproof Coffee
The Bulletproof Executive
Bulletproof Radio
Bulletproof Diet Roadmap
Moldy: The Documentary
Glutathione Force
23andMe Test
Genetic Genie
Brain Octane Oil
The Silicon Valley Health Institute
40 Years of Zen
The Better Baby Book
Unfair Advantage

Get Optimized!

1. Have your Bulletproof Coffee first thing in the morning-which is your coffee with a few tablespoons of healthy fats-to stop mid-day hunger.
2. To allow your body to fully express its capabilities and potential, stay away from stressful environments with bad light, air, foods, and relationships, and replace any negative programming in your head with more positive thoughts.
3. Try Unfair Advantage, it will increase the efficiency of your mitochondria so you can make more energy for about six hours, and also has anti-aging benefits when taken regularly.

Thank you for listening!

As always, thank you for tuning in. Please feel free to contact me or leave a comment. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it!
-Stephan

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