Andrew is a member of the Bulletproof team who has been coached by Dave for years. Andrew talks about some of the basic principles of biohacking and what kind of results you might obtain from this fascinating new practice.
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What We Cover
- How Andrew lost 20lbs of fat and gained 10 pounds of muscle in 6 months.
- The diet that allows you to shed fat, gain muscle, become smarter, and eat as much as you want.
- Supplements you can use to become stronger, smarter, and healthier.
- How to eat healthy every day of your life (and make it easy).
- Where to look for mycotoxins in your food.
- Andrews most successful experiments.
- The principles of biohacking.
- The experiments Andrew is currently running on himself and what you can learn from his tests.
- How Andrew is falls asleep faster than ever before.
- How to practice biohacking on a budget.
- Andrew’s favorite tools for hacking his biology and mind.
- Practical advice for people who want to start biohacking.
- The best resources for amateur biohackers and health enthusiasts.
- How to boost your IQ by 28 points in 20 days.
Links From The Show
Articles
The Carbohydrate Hypothesis of Obesity: A Critical Examination by Stephan Guyenet
“The China Study: Fact Or Fallacy?” by Denise Minger
Gear
Food & Supplements
Natural Calm Magnesium (very tasty)
Paleo Pemmican Powder Upgraded™ Whey Protein
Brain Fuel
Jarrow Formulas Phosphatidyleserene
Books & Magazines
Podcast Interview: Hey folks, today we have a friend of mine and a really cool guy named, Andrew Clark and he’s gonna talk to us today about weight loss, boosting your IQ, adding muscle, improving sleep and just all sorts of crazy stuff. He’s a very good writer and he’s a great guy. He contributes to the Bulletproof Executive and he worked with Dave Asprey and he’s gonna tell us all about it again. Hey Andrew!
Andrew Clark: How’s it going man? Happy to be on the show.
Co-host: Well, good. Now, for those of people who maybe didn’t hear the episode with Dave or aren’t really very well-versed on all those kind of stuff, what exactly is bio- hacking? For those of you who don’t know.
Andrew Clark: Before, we add the “bio” in there, I will just start with, “What is hacking?” and I think when you hack a computer, you want to gain full control over the system and its control that you’re not supposed to have. So, when we talk about biohacking, your body, mind, or spirit is the computer and that’s what you’re trying to hack. There are a few distinctions though between biohacking and actual hacking.
Since we don’t fully understand ourselves at the physical, biological, or like psychological, metaphysical levels, as it were, I would define biohacking as gaining more control than you have now and it’s not really a perfect analogy because I don’t think you can say that we’re not supposed to have control over ourselves. That control is there for the taking, but when you increase control you’re sort of achieving more than you or other people think is possible in less time and with less effort. So, I think that’s what biohacking is.
Co-host: So, some of the key principles are basically trying to do the minimum work to get as much control over your body as possible?
Andrew Clark: Yeah, or just to push the limits. Achieve more than is currently thought possible.
Co-host: Cool, okay.
Andrew Clark: At this point in history, I think we’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of really extraordinary things. I think a lot of the things that we achieve with biohacking are to do it ourselves and to do it without, you know, devoting your entire life to it.
Co-host: Right, so it’s kind of simple, self-experimentation that you can do on a small and large scale.
Andrew Clark: Mmhmm.
Co-host: Cool. So, how did you get interested in or start biohacking?
Andrew Clark: Well, a couple of years ago, I met Dave Asprey through a mutual friend and I was immediately interested in the stuff that Dave had to talk about. He was really interested in nutrition at that time, as he is now and I was all ears when he started talking about all of his knowledge and all of the changes that he had made. So, you know, I had a chance to stay with him back in January 2010 and I just saw what he did every day and I started copying it and I felt amazing improvements in my health and I learned a ton. Before I stayed with him though, I had exchanged a bunch of e-mails and this is really where my biohacking started. I was signed up to take the LSAT in 2009 and after I practiced tests, I realized that this thing was actually pretty difficult, at least for me and I was looking for a competitive edge. So, I asked Dave some questions, you know, like what should I eat, what should I take, what sorts of supplements and technology for brain performance did he recommend and he sent me an e-mail that pretty much had the early version of the Bulletproof Diet and I started eating it and I started taking all the supplements and I had amazing improvements in my score.
Co-host: So, what were some of the things that Dave was doing and you emulated, well, I think we covered the Bulletproof Diet in the last episode, what are some of the supplements you took back then?
Andrew Clark: The main supplements that we discussed were Extension IQ. I’m not sure exactly what is all in it, but I know that the main ingredient is acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. It’s the same thing that’s pretty high in eggs, as long as you don’t cook them and that was a really key nutrient. So, I was eating raw egg yolks and taking the acetylcholine.
The other thing was acetyl l-carnitine, which helps escort energy into cells and that made a big improvement and then the last is like my personal favorite, aniracetam. It’s a pharmaceutical drug that increases oxygen concentrations in the brain and it is like flipping a light switch on when you take it.
I guess, there’s one other one that I found and at the time when I was shopping around for these supplements on the websites Dave gave me, there was a Sulbutiamine, I’m pretty sure it is an analog of Vitamin B and that stuff will keep you energized and clear for hours after you take it.
Co-host: So, wow. That’s cool. What were some of the things that you started doing that Dave was doing when you were living with him?
Andrew Clark: The main things that I learned from Dave were ways to eat the diet and ways to eat it every day, not spend all day on it, and ways to make it taste good. So, I think, the main things there were Bulletproof Coffee, you know, how to cream, how to steam and cream vegetables with excessive amounts of grass-fed butter and then just grilling and eating the grass-fed beef consistently for the first time made a huge difference.
Before that, I had been eating a decent amount of poultry still, and really, my clarity of mind increased a lot and I think that is mainly from not eating all the oxidized omega-6 fats from the poultry on such a regular basis.
Co-host: Great! Obviously, this isn’t about Dave completely, but what are some of the ways you all like eliminated mycotoxins? Because I know he talks about that a lot and that’s something a lot of people and a lot of health experts really don’t cover.
Andrew Clark: Mmhmm.
Co-host: What are some of the things you all do to keep those away?
Andrew Clark: The main thing is sourcing your food. Mycotoxins can be in almost anything and they would be in a lot of things that you don’t expect, like meat for example, because the animals might’ve eaten grass for example, well not grass usually, but grain that is contaminated and so, it can be anywhere. You have to source your food, do trial and error on your food sources, and see how you feel. The main symptoms of mycotoxins are going to be like when your skin breaks out, when you get tired, if you get sort of fuzzy in the head or if you just get irritable for no reason. Those are the main things that happen to me when I know I have eaten mold, and you can just tell, for example if I’ve had coffee that has some left over mycotoxins in it after processing. I mean, it’s not live mold, so you don’t really know until you’ve tasted the coffee and drank about half-a-cup, but if you start to get thirsty and your head starts just getting not really that clear, then I’d usually just put the cup down. The other thing is you can tell a huge difference when you eat plenty of grain all the time if the grain has mold on them pretty quickly because I’ll break out from it within a day and the other main source of mold to be careful of is berries and nuts and you would get the same symptoms, but the nuts will be the ones that would have some really noticeable ones, that would especially give me a bad mood, so you get different types of mold on different food products and they cause different things to happen. It’s never quite predictable, but when you get irritable or get fuzzy in the head for no reason at all, it’s usually something you ate.
Co-host: Right, yeah I remember back in December I actually had kind of a minor knee injury, it wasn’t like anything big. It didn’t even stop me running or anything.
Andrew Clark: Mmhmm.
Co-host: One day I remember eating a few ounces of cashews and the next day my knee hurt so badly. It was ridiculous and my head was kind of like fuzzy. I normally don’t get acne, but I got a ton after eating that, so yeah, you’re probably right.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, absolutely.
Co-host: Cool, so I would just kind of go back to the biohacking part of things. Is it really just about staying healthy or is it just kind of, as you said like improve test scores, like improve performance, all that kind of stuff?
Andrew Clark: I think it depends on your personal goals. For me, the one was sort of a prerequisite for the other. I think if once your body is working and your brain is working, then you can do better on test scores. You can focus on improving your body rather than just running your body and yeah, definitely depends on what you are trying to achieve and I think that’s a lot of what biohacking is about. It is if you want to achieve a certain goal, you go and do some research and then after the research, you do trial and error and figure out what works for you because most of the time something that works for other people will work for you too, but sometimes it doesn’t, and you have to figure out what works for you.
Co-host: Cool! Now, when you upgraded your IQ by 18 points in 20 days with all those supplements and everything, what else were you doing? Was it just supplementation and the diet or were there some other techniques you were using?
Andrew Clark: No, I used a software that we have on Upgraded Self called I-Cubed and that is what was mostly responsible for the IQ increase. It was the exercise because it caused, I think, a lot of the networking in my brain to reorganize to be able to increase my working memory and all of the supplements provided the raw materials or the configuration for my brain to reorganize the way it did, but it was the exercise that prompted the reorganization. What I-Cubed is it’s a Dual-N-Back training. There was a study that came out a couple of years ago, I think, that proved for the first time an exercise that increased fluid intelligence, which is your brain’s ability to work with a number of things at once and remember what all of the different elements are and then relate them, juggle them, switch them around and gain new insights into relationships or potential other elements that you haven’t thought of yet, which would be one example of creative imagination. When you’re doing the N-Back training, you would have a block on the screen that’s divided into 9 sub blocks and the screen flashes a colored block in one of the 9, its actually 8, the center one is not used and a letter is spoken at the same time that the block flashes in a certain location and then a few seconds go by and then it happens again, perhaps in a different location of one of the eight other locations and perhaps with a different letter and your job as the person taking the exercise is, its called N-Back because N starts at 2 and increases, you’re supposed to remember what was the location of the block and the letter spoken N flashes ago, and so you start with two flashes in one location, flashes again, letters are spoken and then if you, for example, was in the lower left, then you get G and then its in the upper right, you get L and then it’s in the lower right again, and you get G, then you have got a match for two ago on both the audio and the visual and then you press keys if it’s a match and then that increases as you are able to pass the levels as high as you can go.
So, what you are doing is you’re developing your brain’s ability to remember and work with lots of elements at once. And that’s for example an element to a successful chess player, it is being able to do all those look-ahead moves and actually remember what they were and then execute your plan. And chess of course is one of those things that is listed a smart game.
Co-host: Yeah.
Andrew Clark: That’s what I did. The IQ increase was measured before and after an IQ test and they were pretty good free online tests that were selected by neuro-scientist named Mark Ashton Smith, who is the maker of the I-Cubed software. So, I think they were pretty good and there were a lot of questions about measuring IQ and measuring IQ increase and stuff like that, but I think we did well as we could.
Co-host: Cool! Now, is that a permanent increase or do you have to keep doing these Dual-N-Back training games?
Andrew Clark: It is permanent. I did the exercises and my IQ increased by the 18 points and then I came back nine months later and immediately was able to do the exercises again at least as well as I had been when I left off. So, that’s the part that amazed me the most about the N-Back training. It really does permanently reorganize your brain.
Co-host: I may have to try that man, that’s cool! Yeah, I was playing out that free IQ test and it didn’t seem to work quite as well. But, yeah, it was cool.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, a lot of them seem a little big inflated to me.
Co-host: Yeah, yeah, they didn’t seem, they were kind of like games I used to play in kindergarten.
One of the other things you did was you lost 20 pounds of fat in 6 weeks and added 10 pounds of muscle at the same time. What did you do differently that a lot of mainstream people would advocate about health and diet and advice and that kind of stuff?
Andrew Clark: Well, the mainstream advice is to not eat saturated fat and to watch your calorie intake and to burn more calories than you take in and I had tried that and it didn’t work for me just like it hasn’t worked for so many people. And so at the same time that I was talking to Dave, you know, when the LSAT was over and I had just sort of continued to eat this diet that he had recommended because he had really talked about the healthy fats to me, and Garry Taubes’ book Good-Calories Bad-Calories had come out at around that time and we all sort of learned what’s going on with obesity, and so I cut out grains and processed sugars and that made all the difference in the world in terms of the weight loss and once the weight just started coming off, I was punching new holes in my belt in very short order. What I did was, in order to accelerate that, I combined it with a unique exercise routine that takes just 15 minutes a day and it’s called T-Tapp. It was put out by Teresa Tapp. I believe she worked with models in the fashion industry in Europe at one point and she developed a very concise workout routine that pumps and cleanses your lymph system, so it helps detox a lot, which has a ton to do with inflammation, puffiness, and inch loss even its not necessarily weight loss, so by doing that 3 or 4 times a week combined with all of a sudden not eating any sugar, the transformation took place really quickly.
The other thing is I was able to gain so much muscle because once you start eating plain fat, it’s been my experience, that you don’t really lose muscle mass from not exercising anymore. So, I was doing really light minor weight lifting that time and I noticed after not working out for a while after that, I could come back and still do the exact same numbers of reps of the same weight. I could do even more and my muscle mass had not decreased at all, and I was really surprised to see that and it turns out, Dave explained to me that when your body is burning fat for energy, it won’t scavenge your muscle to create sugar out of it. So, that’s how I was able to, I think really my body normalized my muscle there, I think that is why the increase was so fast.
Co-host: All right. So, if you are basically eating sugar all the time and then all of a sudden your blood sugar gets even a tiny bit low, your body starts to try and catabolize muscle tissue to feed that kind of sugar dipping?
Andrew Clark: Exactly, it doesn’t burn the fat because it’s not in fat burning mode. Once you teach your body to burn fat, it’s like a whole different style of living.
Co-host: All right. Did you notice any kind of mental increases or increases in mental performance when you started, kind of shifting your body to more of a keto-adapted metabolism?
Andrew Clark: The main thing there would be, I did notice a little bit of an increase in sharpness. I think that comes a lot more from the brain exercises and the supplements, the main thing I noticed was the mental endurance. It increased a lot during the LSAT, but you know recently I took the GRE, just out of curiosity and I got done with it and I practically could have taken it again, now it’s not nearly as difficult of a test as the LSAT, but the mental energy that you’ll get from eating a high-fat diet is considerable.
Co-host: So, where do you get most of your fats?
Andrew Clark: Yeah, Bulletproof Diet, straight up, avocados, coconut oil, MCT oil, grass-fed butter, salmon, smoked sauté salmon, egg yolks and there’s some MCT and some coconut fat in that coconut protein formula. The Paleo Pemmican mix, that’s on Upgraded Self, I take that stuff all the time, so I’m getting quite a cocktail of fats every day.
Co-host: Cool! So, what are some the basic supplements you take every day, you mentioned some coconut protein mix and some other things?
Andrew Clark: Yeah, I take that, I take collagen, the collagen that we have up there is pretty much the best you can get. It’s extremely bio available and it comes from grass-fed cows. That definitely helps with sleep, with repair, with skin health, and with detoxing because it reconstructs and hydrates a lot of the structures in your body that can get isolated where toxins are stored because your body is actually trying to isolate them. What the collagen will do is reconstruct that, rehydrate it, and detox it. So, you will notice a lot of improvements in joints and skin health and stuff like that. The other thing I take that was really one of that makes huge difference for me is magnesium. And that’s especially key if you drink coffee, you know I do drink a lot of coffee with the butter blended into it, so that just helps. I’m not wired at all when I drink plenty of coffee if I take my magnesium, I mean that’s nothing new, you know, it’s been talked about a lot, but it’s a huge deal to make sure that you’ve got plenty of magnesium.
Co-host: Now, that coconut protein stuff, is that like protein from coconut?
Andrew Clark: It is coconut flower, I think it’s got some MCT powder in it or it’s the equivalent of MCT powder that’s been formulated straight from coconut. That’s a unique mix because it has got tons of vitamins in it including a lot of the brain vitamins that I mentioned including a acetyl L-carnitine, it’s got L-glutamine in it which is also good for brain sharpness and focus, and the MCT is great for that. The other big thing in that formula is colostrum, which has got lots of IGGs and growth factors. There was a European study that came out recently that actually found colostrums to be more effective than whey protein. You know what I would take away from that is saying that it is very effective at building muscle and stimulating growth, so there’s really a lot packed into that formula.
Co-host: So, it’s kind of like a super supplement.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, that’s why we call it Pemmican, it’s full of collagen, it’s got the collagen in it too and it’s got the fat.
Co-host: Cool! Do you take vitamin D, I’m just curious?
Andrew Clark: I do take vitamin D. I take it all the time.
Co-host: How much?
Andrew Clark: I take about 5,000 to 10,000 a day, sort of depending on how I’m feeling. I’ll take a mega dose of about 30,000 to 40,000 before I get in on an airplane for example. Your body does store it when you take it, so you can sort of space it out, it will get used if you take it, which is how Dave explained it to me. I have been taking that for about 2 years and I haven’t had so much as a head cold since I started taking it. It’s actually a pro-hormone and your body makes its own antibiotics out of it.
Co-host: Cool, so now, sorry, I can’t find my next question. In your experiments and stuff with yourself what are some of your most successful ones? What things have been the biggest improvements you’ve made?
Andrew Clark: I think a lot of that would be the emotional type stuff and learning more about yourself, getting into your subconscious mind and figuring out how you tick and how your subconscious mind is guiding you each day and then realizing that you actually have control over that. I think that has made the biggest difference for me and it’s something that’s very subjective, something that each person sort of needs to do on their own. There’s no formula out there. It’s not as easy as body hacking so to speak. Each person is so unique, but there are some really good organizations out there that work with people on this. For example I’ve been to the Star Foundation in Arizona where you basically study yourself for a week and it’s a very interesting experience, but when you get out you realize sort of why you do things and I was able to build on that and learn about fear and how our fear stop us from things or causes us do things that are damaging and by gaining that self-awareness I’ve been able to sort of use techniques like HeartMath, the EmWave2, and the emotional freedom technique, there’s a lots of info available about that online, to sort of clean out the energy blockages that build up from wrong ideas that we learned to believe as fact and that’s really made the biggest difference for me.
Co-host: Cool! Have you made anything like mistakes? Have you ever had anything like problems or anything that came up as a result of all this biohacking?
Andrew Clark: No, I haven’t. If I was ever going to do anything risky, I sort of had Dave who went before me, it’s a sort of let me know what has something that might not turn out so well, so in that category, no.
Co-host: Cool! Now, what kind of sleep hacking stuff have you done?
Andrew Clark: Sleep hacking, the main thing for me was being able to fall asleep and it always had been. So, I would lie in bed at night awake for about an hour before I fell asleep and I was able to cut that down a lot by taking certain supplements, by increasing my magnesium, and by listening to certain audio and stuff like that. There was a really unique audio program that I started using within the last couple of months called Pzizz and that actually creates a unique track for you every night and even though it sounds the same to you, it’s different to your brain, so it does use a lots of new brain entrainment techniques like binaural beats and isochronic tones and stuff like that and what it’s, it basically guides your brain into a sleep state. So, I have had great success with that and since I have got my Zeo, I’ve noticed how my activities during the day change how I sleep at night, which is pretty interesting.
Co-host: Cool! Now, where can somebody find that kind of thing if they want to check out Pzizz?
Andrew Clark: We have information about all that stuff on bulletproofexecutive.com and on Upgraded Self.
Co-host: Cool!
Andrew Clark: So, it’s all there in one spot.
Co-host: Awesome. So, does biohacking have to involve like fancy gadgets or expensive equipment or can people pretty much do it on their own with just kind of some basic skills?
Andrew Clark: Yeah, you can do it on your own with basic skills. I mean, look at Zen monks and what they’ve achieved with no gadgets at all. I think they’ve done some of the most incredible mind control type things and you know completely transforming physical reality with their mind and they don’t have any technology at all. At the same time, I think for a lot of us who are not able to meditate for years, gadgets can speed things up for us a lot and teach us how to get to places in short times with small effort that you know are very rewarding and would have before taken significant effort.
Co-host: Cool! So, what are some of your favorite gadgets?
Andrew Clark: My favorite gadgets are for sure my EmWave2 and I just love that thing. Every time I wanna center myself I just sit down and turn that on and I’m basically able to use that to measure the quality of my meditation state and its just tells me right there how I’m doing. It measures coherence and measures your heart rate variability, your heart is actually supposed to speed up and slow down all the time along with your breathing and when you get into a situation where your brain and your heart are sort of fighting over this situation that would be like if you are frustrated, then the communication between your heart and brain is disrupted and you get a more even heartbeat or a more sporadic heartbeat and its actually supposed to be in a sine wave, so that’s the biology of what’s going on there. What you get out of it is an extreme feeling of peace and happiness that you can achieve within about 5 minutes of doing the exercise coming right of a really frustrating experience and that’s why I love that thing so much.
Co-host: Now, does that give you a number or is it just like a little red, green, yellow light thing?
Andrew Clark: It’s a light. You can increase the difficulty up and down and that’s the number, but its starts red and the red is a state of what they call low coherence and that basically means that your heart and your brain are not as in sync as they could be and then as you increase into a state of coherence, you’ll move into the blue zone and that’s a state of medium coherence and then when you’re in high coherence, it will turn green. So, you can feel a huge difference, sometimes when I’ve been in high coherence for a number of minutes it’s pretty amazing. You almost can’t avoid smiling sometimes.
Co-host: That’s one of the things that still I have to try. I have played with the Zeo and stuff like that, which I absolutely love, but I would have to get an EmWave and it is cool.
Andrew Clark: Yeah. I love the Zeo too. And from using the EmWave, I can tell my REM sleep will go up.
Co-host: Yeah, that’s actually one of the things I’ve noticed. The biggest thing that affects my sleep is the stress during the day. I can stay up late, I can expose myself to like computers and LEDS and all that kind of stuff. I am sure, obviously it isn’t great and I try to minimize that as much as possible, but all that stuff just pales in comparison to only if I have a really stressful day, I can’t sleep at all somehow.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, it’s a matter of quieting the mind and each person has got to approach that their own way, but I think magnesium has helped me a ton on that, just on the relaxing. You never really know exactly when it’s kicking in, but if you were to run a baseline it’s pretty helpful there.
Co-host: Yeah, I love Natural Calm and that tastes good too!
Andrew Clark: Yeah.
Co-host: So, what are some cool cheap tools that people could use by themselves if they don’t have an EmWave2 or Zeo and any other this kind of stuff? Are there any ways people can start tracking their own progress?
Andrew Clark: I think that anytime you start doing some tracking even if it’s just a journal you’re going to be able to start to pick out patterns and figure out ways to improve. Our brains are amazing pattern finders, so you can start with as little as a piece of paper and these devices are actually not that expensive, a lot of them, I mean considering what you’re getting out of an EmWave for example, it’s only 200 bucks. There are brain hacking and different biofeedback devices that are just thousands and thousands of dollars and you know the EmWave2 and the Zeo are each just $200.
Co-host: Cool! So, kind of go full circle again. I know I am kind of skipping around here, but I had some other thoughts. What would happen to somebody if they ate a low-fat diet? What kind of things generally would occur?
Andrew Clark: The thing that strikes me immediately is that the person would likely end up with some sort of a hormone building block shortage and then they would start to have unexplained problems, which can be very diverse raging from person to person, but one of the biggest things in health is getting your hormones right and fats build hormones, so when you’re not eating enough healthy fat, your hormone levels can get low and the classic scenario here would be you’re a little bit stressed out and your body starts taking all of the hormone building blocks and making cortisol out of it when you need to make other things like progesterone, testosterone, and other stuff like that
Co-host: Right, so basically it would make somebody as pretty whacked out and that could often be unexplained and things that they really don’t even understand are related to that and are directly target of diet.
Andrew Clark: I’m sorry, I lost you there over the phone.
Co-host: Oh! Sorry! Okay. Yeah, I was just saying that basically a lot of these problems can be caused by things that people don’t even understand, but really it is just the fact they are not eating enough fat.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, I think so, each person is unique and I always suggest to work with a holistic doctor or an anti-aging doctor. Those kind of doctors tend to understand hormones pretty well, but if you get an unexplained problem that does not really seem to be coming from anything, I mean if you just developed a certain habit, it’s usually going to be a hormone problem, I think.
Co-host: All right. Now, one of…
Andrew Clark: Especially, if it’s not really… I’m sorry.
Co-host: No, go ahead, go ahead, sorry.
Andrew Clark: Especially if it’s not really life threatening, it’s just uncomfortable. These are sorts of problems that often have to do with hormones or food allergy and stuff like that.
Co-host: Right, now one of the kinds of predominant biohacker people is Tim Ferriss. Well, I really like his book and everything. I think he kind of dropped the ball in the nutrition section and I would like to kind of discuss, I’m not trying to just hammer on Tim Ferriss, I love the guy, he’s awesome, but I think some of the things in there might be good of clear up like #1 the binge day thing. Now,I know Matt Edlund has talked about this to some degree, but what are some of the problems people run into when they do that on a repetitive basis or like a weekly basis?
Andrew Clark: Well, you know, when I read the diet section in Four Hour Body, it was quite refreshing actually, he has got a lot of details in there, and a lot of the things that he recommends are pretty close to the Bulletproof Diet. One thing that he sort of touches on there is the ketogenic diet and they think that that is a little bit closer to the Paleo Bulletproof-type diet. In terms of the binge day, I tried it just to see if the exercises that he talked about would fend off the effects and they actually did work pretty well. I did not get super puffy the next day even though I ate lots of carbs, but even if it’s possible to do it without a lot of direct consequences, I think that doing it over time is probably not the healthiest thing specially because a lot of those foods contain not just carbs and sugar there, there’s a lot of toxins involved specially mycotoxins in those like grain and sugar type things like, I think, he talked about Snickers, bars and stuff in there and that’s just not really something that’s ever going to be healthy in my opinion, but to each his own.
Co-host: Yeah. I remember the thing Matt Edlund talked about was how Tim Ferriss was measuring his blood glucose levels, but he wasn’t measuring his insulin levels and how lot of sugars he was taking in, obviously his muscles build up pretty quickly as he is eating a ton and he himself has fairly good insulin sensitivity, I mean, he’s a pretty young guy, he turned like 34 not too long ago, and basically what Matt Edlund was saying was what was happening is his liver was basically soaking up all the excess, which probably is not too good in terms of liver function.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, and that happens a lot when you eat , he talks about that heavy, heavy protein intake for the weightlifting. I’m doing my muscle building a little bit more slowly and eating less protein at once because of the load on your liver that protein can bring, so, yeah, you do have to be careful when you are planning a diet like that, at least for me, it’s very easy to just start eating tons of everything and you think you are doing a good thing at that time because you have picked high quality products and stuff like that, but over time you just have to listen to your body.
Co-host: Right, so, oh, go ahead, sorry.
Andrew Clark: I was going to say, for example I have gotten a really quality whey protein to do this latest, I’m actually doing Occam’s Protocol right now out of Tim’s book and I’ve definitely seen some improvement in my dimensions, but when I did go to start doing that I got some whey proteins and I started taking it. I had a discussion with Dr. Bernd Friedlander before that and we were talking about proteins, and you know whey protein is pretty high in tryptophan and some other amino acids that really aren’t too healthy for the intestine and I did notice soon after probably after a week into taking lots of whey protein, I started not feeling so good in my gut and so I cut it and I’m sure that puts a load on your liver, I mean when your digestion is not working, everything gets complicated.
Co-host: So, you just started using more collagen instead, was that your plan?
Andrew Clark: I just started using more collagen, but the other thing that I started taking was I take lots of coconut protein because it has the colostrum in there and it’s got more collagen and I take the a Super Plasma. There’s a Super Plasma product take, that’s like 50% growth factors, I think it’s made of straight bovine blood serum, I think, and a I’ve noticed that stuff has been pretty effective. I think it’s a much bigger molecular weight protein than the collagen, so I started to use the collagen as a post workout and then I take just a small teaspoon or a level tablespoon at a time of the plasma every 90 minutes throughout the day, so that it’s just a small little bit, there’s not a huge load on my liver and kidneys at any one time, but I’ve got a constant flow of big protein that will last in my system and break down slowly for a constant supply
Co-host: Cool, cool! I haven’t seen that bloodstream stuff on Upgrade Self. Is it there yet?
Andrew Clark: It’s going to be soon.
Co-host: Cool! So, if you have any advice for some people who are just starting out with biohacking what would it be? I know you said keep a journal, but anything else?
Andrew Clark: I think that set some goals and do your research. Each person, if they sit down and think, they are going to have a list of things that they want to achieve. You know, I want to lose, I want to look like this, I won’t say lose a certain number of pounds, but you know I want to look thin and muscular, I want to have be awake longer throughout the day, I want to sleep better at night, those are the sorts of goals that you’ll have. If you have that problem, it’s an individual thing on how to get started, but once you do, do some research online and develop a trial and error system on how you are going to move through the things that you find, you know read books as well, not everything is online and once you find something that works don’t be afraid to keep trying new things to see if you can find something that can works even better.
Co-host: Right. So, what are the some of the best resources that you used that you think people can use in terms of books or magazines or blogs and that kind of things.
Andrew Clark: I love the Life Extension magazine, that’s always got a lot of good stuffs in it in terms of supplements and you know other than that I look on Amazon, I find books, I just sort of see what people are saying about exercise routines lately. I’m relatively new to body hacking, I’ve been doing the brain stuff for a while and I’ll mainly just do Google searches for new resources on brain hacking. Dave sends me a lot of cool stuff and of course there’s always bulletproofexecutive.com, which is where we put all of the best things that we find.
Co-host: Cool man! So, what are you working on right now besides Occam’s Protocol?
Andrew Clark: I’m actually having a little bit of trouble gaining the results that I want out of Occam’s Protocol. I think I’m not quite eating the way that Tim recommends because of some of the issues that we discussed earlier with liver and I don’t really like to eat a lot of beans and stuff like that. So, I’m trying to get the right ratios and the right frequencies of the super high quality Bulletproof Diet foods right, so that I start gaining muscle the way I want to. It’s been a little bit hard for me to tell because I don’t go get a $100 BodPod scan every week, so I don’t always know whether I’m losing weight or gaining muscle, but my main goal right now is to get my weight up.
Co-host: Cool, cool! Well, Andrew thank you so much for doing this man, it was awesome talking to you as usual.
Andrew Clark: Definitely. I really appreciate you having me, and as always a good conversation
Co-host: Cool man, thanks!
Andrew Clark: Thank you!
Co-host: Cool, all right, thanks man for doing that, that was fun.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, definitely. Lots of good questions there, always tons of amazing content to talk about on these issues.
Co-host: Yeah. I could talk about this all day. One thing I was actually trying to do is get that Bernd Friedlander guy on the podcast. Do you think you could give me his email address, like send that to me or anything?
Andrew Clark: Yeah, I know that he goes on shows and stuff like that, so I will dig that up and send it to you.
Co-host: Thanks man, yeah. I’ll send you that link to the Whole Health Source thing on carbohydrates too.
Andrew Clark: Yeah, yeah, I’d love to hear it
Co-host: Yeah, it’s pretty cool! I think he has like 500 comments on that article already. It’s crazy.
Andrew Clark: Oh yeah, on which site?
Co-host: The wholehealthsource.com. They’ve got Blogspot. Yeah, it’s cool! All right well, I won’t keep you too much longer man.
Andrew Clark: Okay, thanks! Send me the link to the interview when you got it up.
Co-host: Yeah, sure man, thanks, I think I will send that tomorrow.
Andrew Clark: Okay, thanks a lot, have a great day!
Co-host: You too, bye!
Biohacker Report
Dave: Now, we move into the biohacker report. This is a section of a show where we quickly review a few important reports that where introduced in the last week.
Co-host: Right, the first study is called ‘How a fatty diet gives you type 2 diabetes’, go.
Dave: Well, this study was published by UC Santa Barbara. Given that I went to UC Santa Barbara for my undergrad, I can definitely see the appeal of the ocean and the beach and the sun there and I’d have to wonder if the guys who did this research maybe were spending a little bit extra time in the sun because it’s an interesting study. They appear to have found a new pathway that contributes to diabetes, but in the research report they don’t talk about what kind of fat was fed and they don’t talk about the source of the fat. So, it’s kind of like if you say the study that said a high-mineral diet causes death or a high-mineral diet is good for you, you’d look at that and go, “Well, that doesn’t make sense? Was that calcium or was it magnesium or was it zinc?” Because obviously too much of any mineral is going to kill you and arsenic is a mineral, but when it comes to things like vitamins and minerals, no one is going to dispute the fact that you have to say which vitamin or which mineral is causing the effect, but because fat is so demonized by researchers just in the way they think and by the press in particular, you get reports like this where they say, “fat did this” and that just doesn’t make sense and it’s not even scientifically valid until we know which kinds of fats, whether they were oxtrodized or not, or where they came from.
Co-host: I think another important point to bring up little quick is just on a low carbohydrate diet especially like ketogenic diet like I’m doing, Dave, there is evidence that makes you insulin resistant, but again it’s not pathological, it’s because your muscles are trying to make sure all the glucose that you do get goes to your brain and completely reverses itself the second you taste the carbohydrate and so, these people are acting like mild non-pathogenic insulin resistance leads to type 2 diabetes because you’re eating a lot of fat.
Dave: Yeah!
Co-host: All right, our next study is called ‘Scientists highlight the link between
stress and appetite.”
Dave: This report just came out from the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine and it quantified and detailed what happens when people are stressed and this may be kind of amazing, but people who are stressed, eat more food and they have more appetite. Now, the traditional view of things is that, “Wow! Getting people to eat less is really good for them.”
The Bulletproof point of view is that actually providing adequate and efficient fuel for the body and the brain is really important. If you are in a stressful situation, you really should eat more and you should eat more healthy foods, so that your mitochondria can work and you don’t get exhausted. If you want pull an all-nighter and you don’t eat, well, you are not going to be very awake and you’re not going to be very efficient. If you want to pull an all-nighter and you eat an extra meal or two and you keep your glycogen stable and you keep eating lots of fat, you’ll actually do all right in the all-nighter, and that’s one of the reasons I can sleep less than 5 hours a night for years on end and that’s because I eat the right amounts of high-caloric density, high nutrient foods, so when I see a study that says, “oh look! Stress and appetite are there, we should lower stress, so that we can lower our appetite.” It doesn’t actually make sense. It’s natural to increase your appetite when you’re exposed to stress because stress makes you want more food so you can use the food to deal with the stress. That’s the way it works for animals and people.
That’s it for this week’s Biohacker report on Upgraded Self radio. If you really enjoyed this, it would help us a lot if you left a positive ranking on iTunes for us, so people can find the show. We always appreciate it when people follow us and ask us questions on Twitter, our account is @bulletproofexec or check our blog at bulletproofexec.com. If this was really useful to you, please consider ordering something from our small business sister site called upgradedself.com.
Co-host: Well Dave, I’ll be seeing you soon man.
Dave: Thanks, always a pleasure.
Co-host: Bye!
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