5 Quick Biohacks for Skin, Memory, and Muscle Growth

December 14, 2016 by Team Asprey

Sometimes the easy, quick biohacks are the most satisfying. These five are simple and cheap enough to do this weekend. Give them a try and see how you feel.

1) Use topical astaxanthin for smoother, stretchier skin

Astaxanthin is a strong antioxidant found in algae. It’s the compound that turns salmon orange and flamingos pink. Astaxanthin won’t turn you flamingo pink, but it will make you more resilient to the sun. Think of it as an internal sunscreen. It’s especially useful if you burn easily.

It turns out that astaxanthin is useful topically, too. Rub it on your skin to decrease wrinkles and age spots and increase elasticity and moisture retention. This study found that participants got the best results when they took astaxanthin orally and also used it topically. You can buy astaxanthin creams online for about $20. Here’s a good oral astaxanthin. Bonus points if you take Upgraded Collagen to increase skin elasticity even more.

2) Roll out your muscles

Foam rolling is one of those simple biohacks that pays huge dividends for your body.

If you’re like most Americans, you spend a significant portion of your life sitting down. Sitting shortens a lot of your muscles, particularly in your hips, lumbar spine, hamstrings, calves, and ankles. Your muscles stay in a contracted state, and they’re not happy when you want to use them for, say, deadlifting or interval training.

Foam rolling shears your muscle fibers apart. Yes, it’s as painful as it sounds, but afterward you’ll feel looser and more powerful than you have in a long time. Foam rolling makes your muscles more pliable, decreasing stress on your joints. The increased flexibility also allows you to recruit more muscle fibers, which means you’ll do more work in the gym. Foam rolling speeds up recovery too.

Kelly Starrett, mobility expert and Bulletproof Radio guest, has a number of basic guides to foam rolling and stretching.

Make it a habit to warm up your muscles before you exercise. You’ll break through plateaus in the gym and stave off injury while you do it. Many gyms have foam rollers, or you can buy your own.

3) Get some sunlight on your eyes

Most of us are getting less and less sunlight thanks to office jobs. The trouble is, swapping sun for fluorescent lights and blue light from electronics screws up your biology, and your eyes in particular.

Light is a nutrient, and you want to get as much good light as possible while avoiding the bad. A recent study found that people who expose their eyes to sunlight are significantly less likely to develop shortsightedness.

This doesn’t mean you should stare at the sun. Don’t do that. Instead, go outside at some point between 10am and 3pm, when UVB light is highest, and spend 20 minutes in direct sunlight without sunglasses, glasses, or contacts. It will keep your eyes in good shape.

4) Make your memory more efficient with lutein and zeaxanthin

Cooked spinach, kale, egg yolks, and orange veggies like peppers and pumpkins are all natural nootropics, according to a new study. The mental boost is thanks to lutein and zeaxanthin, two carotenoids that sharpen your ability to remember things with less effort. Lutein and zeaxanthin are also both great for your eyes.

Carotenoids are fat-soluble, so be sure you pair your veggies with some butter or bacon to maximize bioavailability.

5) Peppermint oil for headaches and migraines

Next time you get a headache, rub diluted peppermint oil on your forehead and temples. Your headache will start to go away within in 15 minutes. Peppermint oil stimulates blood flow and the menthol in it has a cooling effect on your skin. This will work for migraines and tension headaches too, and studies find that peppermint oil is as effective as acetaminophen, without the stress on your gut lining.

Mix two or three drops with a tablespoon of coconut oil (or Brain Octane, if coconut oil makes you break out) and rub it on your forehead. Never use undiluted essential oils directly on your skin – it’s a recipe for disaster.

All these hacks are quick and cheap. Why not give them a try this weekend? And if you liked this article, subscribe below for more ways to upgrade your biology. Thanks for reading!

Mashup of the Titans – Part 1 w/ Tim Ferriss – #370

December 13, 2016 by Team Asprey

Today’s guest is none other than Tim Ferriss. Tim is the author of three #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef. In his own words “For the last two years, I’ve interviewed nearly two hundred world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. Guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists.” Today, Tim is here on Bulletproof Radio to tell you about the culmination of those interviews — his new book, Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers. Enjoy the show.

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Dave Asprey: You’re listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today’s cool fact of the day is that according to Entrepreneurship Magazine, there are 13 habits of successful people. This would be entrepreneur people obviously. The top five, we’ll call it six because I like it. They focus on minutes not hours. They focus on only one thing at a time. They don’t use to do this. They beat procrastination with time travel, they make it home for dinner, and they use a notebook. Simple things, but it’s probably not what you would’ve thought they would be. Before we get into today’s show, you put locks on your home.

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Now, today’s guest is someone who’s been on Bulletproof Radio before, someone that you’ve doubtless heard of, because it is none other than Tim Ferris, New York Times’ best-selling author of, “The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef,” and his new book which we’re going to talk about today called, “Tools of Titans.” Tim also runs a very successful podcast called surprisingly, “The Tim Ferriss Show.” It’s been downloaded 10 hundred gazillion times, and is one of the top 20 iTunes podcasts. My favorite description of you Tim, is you’ve been called, “The Oprah of Audio.”

Tim Ferriss: It’s got to be the resemblance. It must be the resemblance. I have special moisturizer for that.

Dave Asprey: Nice. Now, you’ve discovered the podcasting benefit, which is that you get to talk to cool people and ask them stuff you would ask them anyway, right?

Tim Ferriss: Right, exactly.

Dave Asprey: That’s why I do Bulletproof Radio, because I just wanted to talk to these dudes and these women who are just doing cool stuff. You went out and you distilled the knowledge from these people and to the Tools of Titans. You’ve talked to about 200 people and boiled it down to like, “Let’s copy successful people.” It’s a cool concept. What I want to know is out of all of the things that you learned in this book, the single most important one, what was that?

Tim Ferriss: Single most important one was probably the answer to what would you put on a billboard if you wanted to get a message to millions of people? The person was a palliative care physician. BJ Miller, he’s a triple amputee who’s helped more than a thousand people die. He’s associated with UCSF and his answer was, “Don’t believe everything you think.” If I had to boil down how these 200 or so people have excelled, got into the top 1% in their fields which are across the entire spectrum, and they’re very, very different from super athletes, to these physicians, to black-market biochemists like Patrick Arnold to special ops folks, et cetera. There are quite a few sharing habits. They all though come down to and are still on top of I would say belief system. The belief system is that of testing assumptions.

There are questions these people ask. There are deep-rooted operating system level, philosophies that they hold close to their chest, and they almost all come down to testing the basic assumptions or the conventional wisdoms, which end up to be very often completely off base. Don’t believe everything that you think is I would say the thread that runs through all that.

Dave Asprey: It’s really good to see how strong your powers of self-deception are. Because once you start thinking it, you’re going to reinforce it. Sometimes you’re wrong and it can be disastrously wrong, right?

Tim Ferriss: Oh sure, yeah. This is from my personal life and my entire life, but something that I’ve started telling myself in last year or two years really, which relates to some deep exploration and research with psychedelics also, but that could be a whole separate seven-hour conversation. We can get to that if you like but don’t retreat in the story. This phrase is something I repeat to myself but I don’t retreat in the story. On top of that, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Tony Robbins over the last few years. One of his principles that I think has been most powerful for me in the last few years is moving from state, to story, to strategy. Meaning, before you sit down to problem solve or look at a grand challenge ahead of you or a goal, optimizing your state, so optimizing your physiology first, which then allows you to tell yourself an enabling story or you see different opportunities instead of just problems and only then deciding on or try to come up with a strategy.

That’s state, story, strategy is related to the don’t retreat into story. Because if you wake up at a funk or you’re in a depressive period and you then have a disabling story about yourself or the world, your strategies are going to be, be player strategies at best. They’ll probably be really junior varsity. That’s been a good little sound bite and progression that I’ve used a lot as well.

Dave Asprey: It’s cool though, you get to go deep on stuff like this. When I do affirmations and I actually do a lot of them in the neuro feedback, stuff that I do the 40 Years of Zen. We write really powerful ones. If you look at many different spiritual teachers, a lot of times they phrase it in a positive way. How would you phrase, “Don’t retreat into story?” What do you do instead of not doing something? What do you do instead?

Tim Ferriss: This is I know a common preference to have a positive do as opposed to using the do not.

Dave Asprey: I couldn’t do it in my head.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, the don’t retreat into story has worked very well for me. It’s like a stop sign, which has been exceptionally useful as a pattern interrupt. If I had to convert that into a positive affirmation, it would probably be look through the right lens perhaps.

Dave Asprey: There you go or like to tell yourself the right story. Am I getting the vibe?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, maybe tell yourself the right story or more so look at what’s in front of you. Really trying to the extent possible non-reactively without emotional baggage that we’ve developed through trauma or past mistakes, assess the situation dispatchable. If someone on the phone for instance appears to be very curt and rude to you, don’t assume that they have some personal vendetta against you and they’re trying to ruin your day. Maybe they’re just hungry or maybe they need a sandwich, maybe they’re thirsty. Maybe they need to go to the bathroom and their boss won’t let them until the next hour clicks through, whatever it might be. I would say, look through the right lens is probably if I had to pick one as an adjunct of [crosstalk 00:09:30].

Dave Asprey: Okay. That really helps me understand the don’t retreat in your story, which makes good sense, but that’s powerful advice. I believe listeners will benefit from doing that, because yeah if you believe your own lies, and I mean you’re not going to like your life.

Tim Ferriss: No and there’s actually a great book called, “Radical Acceptance.” The title sounds very woo-woo and I resisted it. It was recommended several times to me. It was recommended twice both by a guest on the podcast and then by a friend of mine, a neuroscience PhD out of UCSF. Then last-

Dave Asprey: Is it Dan Kraft or someone’s?

Tim Ferriss: No, it’s actually Darya Pino. Now, Darya Pino Rose who worked with Adam Gazzaley at the Gazzaley Lab. On top of that, then Maria Popova who’s just an incredible woman who runs Brain Pickings, told me that Tara Brach changed her life perhaps more than any other person, because she was in story, Guided Meditations each morning. In fact, the same guided meditation, which is the 2010 smile meditation. You could find it for free online. Tara is the author of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance is very good at helping you to contend with any what’s called handicapping, driving emotions. One of my reflexive driving emotions for a long time and still to a certain extent now is, I use aggression and anger. I’ve utilized it as a tool. I’ve felt it to be in times an asset, but everything in its excess becomes its opposite of course. That helped becomes a major hindrance and I’ve wanted to [curtail 00:11:08] that and handle it, but trying to suffocate it and push it away never worked. It always came back tenfold.

Dave Asprey: The more you push, the more you push it.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. The book Radical Acceptance I found was very, very helpful. Tara Brachs, a well-known meditation teacher and buddhist thinker, her dharma talk is really good. There’ll be another example of learning to contend with and in some ways work with the stories that you’ve accumulated that are no longer serving you that you tell yourself.

Dave Asprey: I’m going to ask a question that may sound odd, but I don’t think it’ll sound odd to you, but to listeners it may but just bear with me for a minute. Awhile back, I think it might have been at yourself by self west talk. Like your first one, you mentioned something about how you had some birth trauma. I don’t remember what it was. Do you think and the reason I’m asking this is I was born with a cord wrapped on my neck. I had to do a lot of self-reprogramming, because my story was the world is a threatening place and I should kill everyone who’s going to even mess with me a little bit. That was causing me a lot biologically. I don’t have that programming and everybody was like, 10 years of digging and reprogramming and all that. Do you think that that’s why you went to anger or do you think there’s other reasons?

Tim Ferriss: I think there are probably other reasons that maybe a factor, I don’t know. I was born premature. I was in the ICU for a long time and had test blood transfusions. I couldn’t oxygenate my blood properly and my left lung still has issues. Actually, I have a lot of thermo regulatory problems as a result of that, so I’ve been hospitalize for heat stroke a couple times. I think the perhaps consequence of that that has led to using anger and rage as a coping mechanism is up until about sixth grade, I was very, very small. I was extremely small and just got my ass kicked on a daily basis. No, my ass is kicked on daily basis. The way that I was able in a few instances at least to fend that off was just by going 10 times batshit crazy and just being more of a hassle than the other punitive kids are getting their asses kicked, but I had to go completely insane and turn into a banshee.

Perhaps that was put into a container and never quite dissipated, but that’s also speculation. I think that if you look at some of the males in my family too, and I don’t want to absolve myself of responsibility certainly, but there seems to be just some genetic hard-wiring that makes us a little quick, a little quick on the draw. Maybe I’m closer to the Rottweiler than the Labrador of the human species, I don’t know.

Dave Asprey: That’s awesome. That’s by the way a great tweet. Now, did you learn more from writing Tools of Titans than you did from the discussions themselves or were the discussions really meaty or was it like a processing of the discussion that really brought the knowledge for?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, the discussions were very helpful in and of themselves. I clarified a lot of my own thinking talking through things in this two to three hour conversations. What I wasn’t able to do and in fact, I never planned on writing this book, so I wanted to put together a cliff notes for myself of all of the most practical, tactical recommendations of my guests, just for myself. I took a month off and I took my parents to Paris, which my mom had never been. My dad hadn’t been since 60s to digest, to go through 10,000 plus pages of transcripts to go through my handwritten notes and Evernotes on all the things I guess it taught me afterwards was we became friends and to create this condensed distilled version just for me as a reference book.

Then I got to 250,000 words and I was like, “What?” Okay. If I’m going to go to this trouble, I might as well just polish it up and share it, and this is something my parents have been asking for. The reason that or I shouldn’t say the reason, but one of the ways in which it became very interesting is that I was able to spot patterns across a two-year arc and so I would say, “Oh my God, that weird thing that Ed Cooke, the memory champion from the UK did when he was feeling overwhelmed to really to looking at the stars or thinking about the stars is exactly what BJ Miller, this M.D. I mentioned, does himself. They were just a year and a half apart and separated by notion and I wouldn’t have put them together had I not been combing through all of the details, or noticing that the ChiliPad, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this device, but-

Dave Asprey: Oh yeah, I was one of the first guys to launch the ChiliPad, yes.

Tim Ferriss: All right, well there you go. The ChiliPad came up multiple times for a handful of folks and long and behold. Actually, changing the sleep temperature from underneath can have [Fusion Pack 00:16:06] and/or documentaries. We are documentaries like the Up Series. Sometimes called the, “7 Up Series,” from the UK where they track the same people every seven tears from something like, from making this up from like 3rd grade until 50 years old.

Dave Asprey: Yeah, I know that study.

Tim Ferriss: This documentary series was brought up multiple times, but I didn’t remember noticing that because they were so spread out. For me, stepping out a bit and looking at a 3,000-foot view or 30,000-foot view enabled me to see the matrix or the patterns and the emerging properties, and all these weird things that I don’t think I would have been able to pinpoint or use properly had I not done it. This is the first book that was fun for me to put the other. I find writing really, really difficult. It’s not true for some people. I know Malcom Gladwell just loves writing, so the tougher it is, the more entertaining and fun it is for him. I’m not like that. I think that tends to be journalists who are accustomed to daily deadlines or tight turnarounds who develop that type of psychology or come into it that way. There’s a survivorship bias, but for me, writing is hard. It’s really punishing.

This book was the first one that was fun to put together. I noticed, as I was writing the book, it was just cool on a very mental level is that I got calmer and I got more effective, and the process improved for writing the book as I was picking up all these bits and pieces and absorbing them. It was really awhile. This is the first time I’ve had that meta experience. It just made sense at that point for myself and for I think other people to break it up in the way that I did in just with the Healthy Wealthy and Wise. What I also began to wonder as I was going through this myself, “Maybe I should include this in an updated version of 4-Hour Workweek. Oh, maybe I should include this in an updated version for our body. Oh, maybe I should include this in updated version of 4-Hour Chef.”

I was like, “Look, if Healthy Wealthy and Wise is good enough for Ben Franklin then why don’t I just effectively take everything I would update my last three books with and put it into Tools of Titans. It’s effectively what it is for me as well.

Dave Asprey: Just an update for all three books at once.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah.

Dave Asprey: That’s a good way to position that. I like that. How do you make the cut to be a titan? What makes you a titan?

Tim Ferriss: I would think to me, I think being a titan is twofold. You need to reach the top of your field, so let’s just call it the top 1%, the top tier of your field, however that is defined. You need to have overcome many obstacles or defeated many opponents to get there. If you’re just part of the lucky sperm club, and have inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, and have happened to somehow they go away through [inaudible 00:19:04] to be the CEO of a gigantic company, that does not qualify you. You have to have endured hardship. One of the reasons I decided to make this a book and not just keep it for myself is that there’s this really dangerous and unfortunate delusion and illusion out there, which is the people on the magazine covers have it figured out.

I can’t do what they do, because I’m this flawed normal human being. When you start looking at these profiles, and the book, it’s a long book. All my books are 704 pages, but about 350, 400 of it is based on the past interviews. The rest is all learning stuff. From new guests, from past guests, from me, and I wanted to really underscore the fact that all of these titans, these so-called superheroes that we think of as invincible and flawless creatures, no, they’re just like us. They’re walking around with their weaknesses, they’re walking around with their insecurities, they have extremely tough days just like we do. In almost every case, they’ve simply figured out there are one or two, maybe one or two core strengths that they can then develop habits and routines around and coping mechanisms around. I find that very encouraging.

In the process of interviewing a lot of these folks, its really helped build my confidence or at least willingness to try new things and to really stick my neck out there. Because you realize that all these people have some version of the same fear or fears that we all do. That’s very, very important, because people view Hero de Jour as someone they could never emulate, because that person started with a hundred times better materials in every possible respect and doesn’t have any of the same fears, or weaknesses, or insecurities, or bad days. They’re never going to take step one towards improving in that general direction for the most part. I want to completely dismantle and remove that excuse, because it’s an illusion. Don’t believe everything you think once again.

Dave Asprey: When you talk to some really successful people, a friend of mine, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley named “[Uas 00:21:27]” had a profoundly poor beginning in India. He’s a major power player at one of big D.C. firms. You see this over and over but you don’t know the backstory or you only know what you were told and so you’ve had a chance to hangout with some of these people. I have a different side of, but similar very successful business people. People in YPO, that Young Presidents’ Organization. I think you have some connection there too, I’m sure.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I’ve done a couple of events with them.

Dave Asprey: Okay, cool. I’m a member of this. Just like you were saying, you maybe thinking like, “No, nepotism here.” When you talk to these guys, some of them are really profoundly unhappy but they’re like, “Yeah, I’ve got a company that’s worth tens of millions. I have a helicopter or whatever,” but they’re working, and they’re struggling, and they have their crappy days. I think especially for your audience, the people who are listening to this, it’s a service you’re providing them by pointing that out to them. Because there aren’t really any superheroes like that. Some people feel less pain as we have more skills than others, but everyone works, right?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, everyone works or has work to do. Just to underscore something you said, I’m not going to name names here, but a friend of mine who is I would say a very content and reflective, let’s just call it happy guy at this point. It wasn’t always the case, extremely high achiever, he’s a brand name type folk. He went to this dinner in Silicon Valley and everyone at the table had at least $200 million. They’re drinking $10,000 bottles of wine that are just stacked up by the hundreds in the basement. They were in listening to the dinner he said, “You would assume that they’ve just been laid off from Burger King and had five kids, and couldn’t pay their mortgage.” They were so deeply unhappy and so depressing to be around, because of their pessimism or cynicism I would say even worse in a way that it highlights the importance for me.

This is something I’ve really tried to work on in the last few years and why this book is I think very different in a sense to The 4-Hour Workweek. It doesn’t controvert any of it. It doesn’t contradict it, but it’s an important supplement. The last section is wise section. It focuses a lot on how to program yourself, so that you’re taking care of not just the achievement piece, the type A, set goals, knock them down onto the next thing, but also the appreciation gratitude component, which is much more present tense.

I remember hearing at one point that depression is being stuck in the past and anxiety is being stuck in the future. If you’re stuck in the future as many people are, if you are good at goal setting and goal achieving, you are probably spending a high percentage of your time in the future, which is why I think or at least partly why so many successful people are highly anxious and take Xanax. A disturbing but not too surprising now percentage of CEOs I know in Silicon Valley are on Xanas and a whole slew of different I think many medications. I think that is impart, because they’re taking care of only half of the puzzle. The other half being a present tense, which would include different types of say meditative or mindfulness practices.

The most common or one of the most common patterns across all of these world class performance is they have some type of let’s call it, “Mindfulness practice.” By that, I’ll define that because I [guess 00:25:16] the word throwing around a lot. I’ll just say, “Mindfulness practice is something that it is a rehearsal, or practice, or routine that helps you to develop present state focus and an awareness of your thoughts. That’s it. It can take many forms. You have some people like Arnold Schwarzenegger who did transcendental meditation for a year twice a day stopped and then self-resistant affects for decades. He took the sensibility, the mantra approach and basically translated it, transferred it to his workouts.

Then you find people like I mentioned, Maria Popova who listens to the same guided meditation audio every morning from Tara Brach. Then you have let’s just say Vipassana and Zen but it can take or Headspace app, whatever you might want to use. Then there are a lot of these folks who listen to single tracks of music on repeat. It came up at least a dozen times and Matt Mullenweg who’s thought of as the lead developer of WordPress, which now powers more than 25% of the internet. He wrote a large portion of the code base listening to the same track or tracks on repeat, also following a polyphasic sleep schedule.

Dave Asprey: Yeah, that’s crazy events.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah and it came up over and over again. Alex Honnold, the superstar phenom of rock climbing, listens to the last of Mohican soundtrack over and over again, which I had to buy just to be like, “That’s in the movie maybe 15 years ago, but let’s try it out.”

Dave Asprey: I’m glad you said that. I never thought of it that way, but yeah there’s one soundtrack I’ve probably heard 20,000 times. It’s like a 1994 weird mashup of North African and electronic dance music stuff. I listen to it, because no matter how much I listen to it, it’s too complex to comprehend all things, so your brain goes, and then stops thinking. A lot of my books are written in that way. I go into a flow state but I have to have good music on to go into the flow state to write. Then writing is like a release for me. Otherwise though, it’s painful. It’s like if I don’t write, I’ll be unhappy, but if I do write without the right mental state, it doesn’t work.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. No, exactly. You might actually like this, but Beats Antique is a band-

Dave Asprey: Oh, I love it, yeah. I love Beats Antique, okay.

Tim Ferriss: Beats Antique is amazing. When I wrote this book, I listen to three sets of music for morning, afternoon, evening for different physiological states in some were from winding down, some were from winding up. In the case of say Beats Antique or any of these things, I think that it’s exceptionally similar to using a mantra in TM. You’re effectively turning on the equivalent of a thought white noise machine so that your monkey mind stops bouncing around your head like a ricochet bullet. These types of tricks are really common. I have to tell you man, the tools in say wise for instance, I would have in my 20s thought that they would make you weaker, that they would detract from your ability to be competitive.

What I’ve realized is for probably 15 years, I never recover properly mentally and emotionally. Physically, I was journaling all of my workouts tracking my strength ends, that I had covered but it was compartmentalized and that if you’re really driven in type A and you’re not willing to think of doing something called, “Meditation” it has terrible brand and he needs a new brain bath or something, it just needs new makeover because it’s carrying so much baggage. Then you can think of it as nonslip recovery. If you do this for 20 minutes, you will get the equivalent of a two to three hours of sleep in terms of restored of effect.

Dave Asprey: Just to reiterate that point. There was a time when I said, “I’m going to become a morning person.” I woke up at 5 a.m. everyday for two years. Biologically, I’m not a morning person. The power of when the recent book that just came out about chronobiology, that really helped me to see, I’m a night person and I’m happy as I’m actually biologically healthier if I stay up later and wake up later. I did this for a long time and the deal was I’m still going to stay up late, so I cut my sleep. I found an hour of breathing and meditation in the morning at 5 a.m. from five to six was equal to two hours of loss sleep. You could do that indefinitely. That’s the recovery piece you’re talking about.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, exactly. If we’re defining mindfulness also as, and we don’t have to dwell on this piece of it, because we could certainly go into all the crazy physical as well, all the drugs, and all the other goodies. Anything that involves counting, also this came up, can act very effectively as a mindfulness tool. Again, because it is making you aware of your thoughts. It could be an external mantra and it is focusing you in the present state. Any type of lifting with cadence, so let’s say you’re lifting five seconds up, five seconds down, two seconds up, four seconds down. Very effective. This is what Arnold Schwarzenegger does, or let’s just say you’re swimming and you’re breathing on every third stroke, or you’re keeping track of how many strokes you are using per length to try to optimize your stride length so to speak. That will also contribute to a mindfulness effect.

Dave Asprey: In 4-Hour Workweek, you mentioned art of living, breathing exercises, don’t you?

Tim Ferriss: I might have, I want to say. It’s been a while since I’ve read 4-Hour Workweek myself.

Dave Asprey: I respect that. Did you practice art of living?

Tim Ferriss: Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe it’s the amount of caffeine I’m consumed today, but I am not … It is not ringing a bell for me.

Dave Asprey: The reason that the [inaudible 00:31:28] is it’s a set of breathing exercises where you have to always count, that you do 20 of these and you put your hands in this position. You put your hands in this position. I did it for five years with a bunch of uber successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs came out of India. That thing about counting, it’s so legit. If you breathe without counting, it doesn’t work, but I figured that [crosstalk 00:31:50].

Tim Ferriss: I’ve never heard of it, so I’ll check it out. No, that’s not me. You’re basically doing a super slow motion macarena without counting as you do it and breathing.

Dave Asprey: You hold it with 20 seconds or something. I am going to go back and I swear, I can see it in my [crosstalk 00:32:08]. There’s other things like these that are also effective. It was [crosstalk 00:32:13]. I was guessing, you must have taken it.

Tim Ferriss: Oh, you know what I think you’re thinking of is there’s a portion on, I think it’s in the filling the void chapter where I talk about different types of retreats that I might recommend. That’s where it came from, that it wasn’t the breathing exercise specifically. It was-

Dave Asprey: The whole retreat.

Tim Ferriss: Exactly. There were set of retreats. I also talked about spirit rock in silent retreats. Then among those was the art living. That’s great.

Dave Asprey: Your caffeine problem was overcome there, because that was exactly where it was. Nice job. I remember again. I totally was guessing you must have done.

Tim Ferriss: It’s only 2005 when I wrote that.

Dave Asprey: Yeah, that’s remarkable. Some of those memory hacks appear to be working. Tim’s actually right about that counting thing. In fact, it’s such a big deal that I worked with my friends at Biohacked in order to create a new kind of brain training. We partnered with Bill Harris from Centerpointe. The guy has been a guest on Bulletproof Radio multiple times who spoken on the Bulletproof stage. One of the top brain-hacking audio experts out there. We’re using Bill’s technology from Centerpointe to put your brain into an altered state. Then we have you do a counting memory training exercise. It’s fascinating, because when you put yourself in an altered state using sound frequencies, an altered state where normally you can’t remember anything. You’re actually not supposed to be able to remember anything during that time, but that’s where creativity and intuition, and things like that happen.

With this new Neurominer software, you can actually mind what’s going on your nervous system, because we train you to remember what happens when you’re in different brain states. It takes about 20 minutes a day. Do it everyday for about a month and then you do periodic brush ups. For listeners of Bulletproof Radio, you can head on over to biohacked.com. That’s B-I-O-H-A-C-K-E-D dot com. If you use the coupon code “Bulletproof,” you can save 20 bucks off a Neurominer subscription. It’s an annual subscription. It’s all web-based, it’s very easy to use. You guys could put on a blindfold, put on your earphones, and you do the memory exercises while listening to the sound files. It’s amazing what happens to your creativity and your intuition. New memory training and it’s exactly what Tim and I are just talking about here. It’s counting and it’s using counting and other technologies to get you in the altered state where your creativity and intuition happen. Biohacked.com and the coupon code is “Bulletproof” to save 20 bucks off a subscription to Neurominer. Now, what do titans do in the morning?

Tim Ferriss: Okay, so there’s a good news, good news not good news, bad news. You were just talking about trying to become a morning person. There are general trends that you see in the interviews and the sample size that I have, which is about 200, maybe few more. As far as what they do in the morning. The good news on top of that is that for every pattern that you spot, there is someone who does the exact opposite thing, which I find very reassuring. I remember when I first started looking at the patterns I was like, “Jocko Willink, a superstar revered Navy SEAL commander wakes up at 4:30 every morning.” Then I went to the next breakfast and I saw 4:30 in the morning. I was like, “Oh no, I don’t want to wake up at 4:30 in the morning.”

Then I came across BJ Novak who’s like, “You know what? I stumble out of bed. It takes me until eleven o’clock to really kick into proper gear before I can do anything productive. I’m paraphrasing here, but the exceptions make the rule in a sense. In the morning, I’ll tell you that I can give you some of the things I’ve picked up. I could talk about what I do impart in the morning, which is reflective of a lot of what I’ve picked up. The meta observation is that if you were to ask what routine is the most important to have if I want to emulate these titans, I would just say, “The important thing isn’t the routine that you follow, it’s that you have a routine you follow.”

Almost every single person at least in a few areas of their lives including the mornings for many of them put as many things on autopilot as possible. For instance, Scott Adams creator of Dilbert wake up at exactly the same time and walk down the stairs. He will eat a particular type of I think Builder’s bar, same flavor everyday, press a button on his coffee machine, have his coffee cup the exact same cup of coffee everyday and so forth and so on so that he is not in any way expending his limited number of mental calories and decision making willpower on things that don’t matter and don’t correlate to his unique strengths. That you observe over and over again.

I will say one thing that a fan actually observed. It’s funny when I asked him, “What do you do in the first 90 minutes of your day?” No one says, “I take a shit.” It never came up. I’m like, “Wow, these people are cyborgs. They never go to the bathroom.” I think there’s some artful ambition going on. Yet, no one says like, “I wake up and I go to the bathroom and I swipe right on Tinder for half hour.” That doesn’t come up very often. There are few things that do come up a lot. Morning meditation before any inputs is very common. That can be 10 minutes on something like Calm or Headspace. Quite a few people also use Headspace to go to sleep.

Then you have let’s say the 20-minute TM people. For whatever reason, and again, I don’t know the explanation for this, but a high percentage of the men end up gravitating towards transcendental meditation and a high percentage of the women end up gravitating towards Vipassana meditation, so go figure that. Yeah.

Dave Asprey: I see that too and we look at their brainwaves in the 40 years of zen program and that people do TM, it’s interesting. Some of them have profound brainwaves and some of them have flat brainwaves. There’s a way to do it wrong, and if you’re doing it wrong and you don’t know it you’re like, “Oh,” but we see some really powerful brains that way and Vipassana it’s so intense for 10 days. It’s hard to get 10 days off, it’s a miracle.

Tim Ferriss: Oh yeah, to do a retreat is intense. There are exceptions, like Sam Harris who I think is an expert meditator and has very good guided meditations tends more towards the Vipassana side of things. Then okay, so here’s one pattern, in 45 year old or older males, not eating breakfast, very common. Not eating any breakfast at all or one meal per day primarily you say in early-ish dinner like 6 p.m., 7 p.m. That came up over and over again whether it was or at extremely minimal breakfast. You’d have Deneral Stanley McChrystal, primarily one meal per day, Wim Hof, Dutch Daredevil, same story. You just go down the line Malcolm Gladwell. It’s a long list, they’re all male, the ones who skip breakfast or skip two out of three meals of the day. That was very, very exceptionally common.

High percentage, make their beds in the morning. Keep in mind, a lot of the people extremely rich and this one came up from me in two ways. It seems like such a small thing. There was this small thing that makes a big difference to the extent that even when I’m in a hotel, I will put “Do not disturb” on the door for the entire time I’m at the hotel generally. I don’t like people touch my stuff.

Dave Asprey: I do that too.

Tim Ferriss: I will make my own bed and it’s not because they won’t make it, it’s because there were a few reasons, so let me backpedal or just rewind. Dandapani, this former Indian monk I met at one point in Toronto, and he after listening to begin a presentation, talk about so much. He said, “You should start making your bed.” I was like, “What?” He explained his rationale and I think it’s very well explained by, there’s military figure, he’s a navy commander named McRaven. He gave his presentation in a commencement speech. He talked about why making your bed was so important.

There are few elements. Number one, and there are a few of this he mentioned, a few of these are observations of mind. The first is you’re starting with exerting control of a one thing you have control over. There are many aspects of your life that will be subject to external factors fortune outside of your control. This is within your sphere of control. Your first exerting control and exerting order on one thing, you have total controller. If you start your day there, chances are you’re also going to end your day, book end with seeing something you’ve accomplished, even if the entire day go silence.

You bob this momentum with that first snag, and what I’ve observed is that for people who spend a lot of time in their home environment. External clutter tends to create internal clutter. Even if it’s just a little bit tousle and things are kind of throw it around, if you are exposed to seeing that on a regular basis, I find that it creates an internal disorder. That might only be 5% off, but that 5% over the course of a 100 days, 300 days, adds up. For me, it has become this tiny thing that allows me to book in my day and I go straight from that to meditation.

It has an incredibly disproportionate positive effect on my days. It sound so ridiculous to say, but if McRaven saying it, if Dandapani is saying, and I’ve talked to a number of people. These are worth hundreds of millions of dollars who will make their own beds in their hotels when they stay in places. Okay, maybe there’s something to it. Also, a big part of vetting things for tools of tightens is just testing everything and I tested everything that’s in there. No matter how absurd, if I saw it as a pattern I’m like, “Okay, that seems ridiculous.” I don’t see how it could work, why it would work, but if it came up five times oddly enough, people in the different countries they don’t know one another. “Fuck it, I’ll try it.” Then I’m going to be home. Who knew?

I should point out also, this is not a four seasons situation. I’m not spending a lot of time on this. The sheets are still disaster. I just take the blanket and straighten that out on top, and then put the pillows in some symmetrical fashion so it literally takes me three seconds to do it. It is not very involved at all.

Dave Asprey: Now, I can see it. You remind me of a trauma I probably have to resolve. When I was a kid my mom will say, “Make your bed.” It was, “I’ll pay you a nickel to make your bed.” I will them like, “No way.” It’s just like a dime. I’m like, “No way.” I was like, there’s no amount of money you could pay me to make my bed because I just don’t want to make my bed.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, there’s that.

Dave Asprey: Until this day I don’t but maybe I should thought about it.

Tim Ferriss: The nice thing about all of the stuff is if you have a buffet of options to choose from. Let’s just say you study too successful people or in this case 200 plus lead performers, you don’t have to do it all. I have let’s just say four or five things that I try to do or I would like to do in an ideal morning. If I check off three of those, then the likelihood of me having what I would consider a successful day is three X higher. You have the making the bed, and then I will meditate, that’s step number two, and that takes different forms. I do in different ways. One is the guided meditation, like smile meditation I mentioned, or do something with Sam Harris.

Typically doing a transmedial meditation session at least a few times a week because it’s not gear dependent which I like to have as just a form of adaptability. Then, I’ll have any type of blood draw or urinalysis that I would want to do first thing in the morning. That tends to be more frequent if on aiming for ketosis or fasting in some fashion. Usually it’s looking at my normal or ketone concentration. Any type of supplements or drugs that might be better absorbed on empty stomach or low glucose/insulin levels, and then, I’m doing primarily tea these days.

Very often, that will include either some type of say MCT or like the XCT which I have at my house or some type of [crosstalk 00:45:14]. Yeah, chrolic acid of some other type or coconut oil but it’s generally going to be heavily MCT or beta-hydroxybutyrate weighted. I’ve been playing around for instance with the products have been actually no affiliation with. I’ve been quite impressed with how palatable they’ve made some of the stuff importable.

Dave Asprey: Have you tested it from all the Hydroxyacetone?

Tim Ferriss: No, I haven’t but-

Dave Asprey: You might want to. I’ve tested every BHB salt on the planet but I looked at [inaudible 00:45:47] to synthesize my own ketones, three years ago ketone esters. I can’t find the manufacturer Tim anywhere that doesn’t hit alarmingly high, but still legal levels of formaldehyde. If you’re doing multiple doses, seriously, pay attention to that, because you know about metabolic pathways from the body hacking stuff.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’ll check it out. I knew that it’s based on formulation. Of course the formulation manufacturer are different, but a formulation developed at least in part I think wholly by Dominic D’Agostino. The formulation won’t be the issue but yeah you’re right, it’s the manufacturing issue.

Dave Asprey: It’s the manufacturing issue, it’s not the molecule, it’s the impurities present. There’s a reason that there isn’t a bullet proof round of ketone salt. I’ve been like salivating over this. I can’t get to the standards that’s why I want to put my name on it. Just be aware of that.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, this is something and I also have straight from the lab of Dom ketones but that’s the drinking diesel kind.

Dave Asprey: Yeah. I have those too.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. This is generally, if I’m taking something like that, it’s got to be generally speaking no more than two or three servings a week because I’m very often doing it during say a three day fast where I want to see if I can simply boost like preexisting ketone levels by say even 1 to 1.5 millimeters additional. I’m also doing sometimes half servings. Anyway, that’s part of it and then journaling, journaling is a very consistent habit among dozens of the people that I interviewed also tends to happen in the morning. The journaling can sound and is very nebulous if you don’t explain version I’m referring to.

There are many different types. Morning Pages, along lines of Julia Cameron, the artist way of three long hand three or four pages a day came up repeatedly for writers specifically entertainment writers. Brian Koppelman, who has a great podcast of his own, but he’s an incredible writer of, “Rounders,” cover of that, “Ocean’s Thirteen,” and then co-created “Billions,” which is a hit show in Showtime right now, fantastic. He’s recommended Morning Pages to he said probably a hundred people, ten actually took him up on it and did it. Of those ten, something like nine have had multiple hits on the stage, on television, and sold screenplays many of which have been made into films.

The percentage hit rate is very, very high. I tend to use something called find it journal quite a bit which I also have no affiliation with.

Dave Asprey: Yeah, those guys are friends too. It’s great journal.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, they’re good guys. It’s really a way of particularly in the Morning Pages. It’s a way of locking your thinking on paper so that you can improve it in my mind. Well there are two different actually purposes. The first I would say is purging your demons, and anxieties, and weird undefined worries onto the page that you can see A, how ridiculous they are, and to simply remove them from your mind for the majority of the day so you can get things done.

Secondly, I found it very helpful for problem solving because the emergency breaks of life meaning this petty concerns, or monsters that we’ve made out of molehills mentally that we think involve all of these high stakes and consequences. Once you put them on paper, you see that they have little or no consequences whatever. The risk is really low and writing for me is a way of developing and refining my thinking, at least in the journal form generally that’s what I’m looking at.

That pops up a whole hell of a lot. There were other weird things that people do in the morning. I remember one Mike Birbiglia, whose a very, very successful, one of the world’s most successful comedian and stand up comics, also writes a lot in terms of screenplays. He realized he was putting off his screenplay. He was procrastinating. He will do anything but continue working in a screenplay, but he didn’t procrastinate if he had meeting. If he had a lunch meeting or conference call, he was always early.

He took a post-it note and he told me when he was explaining, he said, “I’m embarrassed to even explain this because it seems so silly.” He said he took a post-it note and on the post-it note which he put next to his bed that said, “Mike!!! You have a meeting with yourself at 7 a.m. at such and such coffee shop to work on your screenplay.” It actually worked for him. There are these tiny little things like that that a really small and the downside of testing them is very minimal or you take someone like Noah Kagan, very successful entrepreneur who uses quite a few different technological tools to help him.

You might use what a browser extension for or it’s called Facebook newsfeed eradicator. It just removes your Facebook newsfeed. If you visit Facebook which you still can do, you just can’t look at your newsfeed and things along these lines. Freedom is another one that Neil Strauss, eight-time New York Times, best-selling author has used to prevent his lesser self from getting lost on the internet when he’s supposed to be writing. He’ll just then batch, meaning he’ll open a separate document and list all the things he wants to research later using TK as a place holder as he goes through.

When he’s writing, he’s writing, and when he’s researching, he’s researching as oppose to getting two paragraphs sending and being like, “Ah,” like in your case, “Oh that study, that citation will be on mitochondria and blah, blah, blah. Let me go to PubMed.” Then two hours later like, “Oh my god, I only have 30 minutes left to write and I have two paragraphs,” to avoid that whole problem.

Dave Asprey: You’re friends with Maneesh Sethi, you know Maneesh the Pavlok guy that [crosstalk 00:51:57] and go to Facebook?

Tim Ferriss: Yeah, I know Maneesh. I know Ramit better than I know Maneesh probably but I know both of them, yeah.

Dave Asprey: Have you played around with shocking yourself and you do things you don’t like? Because Maneesh swears but I think he’s a bit crazy. I’m an investor in his company so like full disclosure or whatever, a very tiny investor because it was too funny not to invest in.

Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I’ve experienced it. I’ve experienced demo of his device. I think there is something to it. I saw it very, very early on, so I think it is improved a lot. At the time, I wanted a software layer that would allow me to involve slightly more complex behaviors. With geolocation, I like the idea of being able to shock oneself based on location, so that if there are places you shouldn’t visit like there’s an ice cream shop in San Francisco that is very close to my house, it’s extremely famous, and I don’t always get lost at the end of my way there. As a pattern interrupt, I would say, “No, maybe it would be helpful to get a little buzz like, hey I’m about to punch you,” and then a shock.

I think there are some very interesting applications to it, particularly I think if you can couple it with addictions like nicotine addiction. I’d been so focused at least on breaking addiction at looking at compounds like psilocybin, and ibogaine, less so LSD, but funding research at places like Johns Hopkins for that. I’ve been taking a slightly different path in the same arena.

Dave Asprey: At this point, we’re going to pause and end the first episode with Tim. We had enough time to get two full episodes in. Go on to iTunes and make sure you’re subscribed to Bulletproof Radio. While you’re at it, leave us a five star review. I’m always grateful for those. It helps other people find the show. The next episode with Tim that you’ll hear, we get to talk about some pretty cool stuff like Ibogaine, which is hallucinogen that’s used for drug and alcohol addiction treatment in a pretty meaningful way and Tim’s own experience using this in a very unusual way. You’ll also hear about Tim’s wine consumption and some of the other nutritional hacks that he’s used to make himself more alcohol tolerant.

Of course, we are going to talk about Tim’s experience with Lyme disease. If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I had a chronic Lyme disease for a long time. I actually don’t believe that you get chronic Lyme without also having an exposure to toxic mold at the same time. Tim is fully recovered and is doing really well. He talks about through the nine months of where his brain just didn’t work. It’s pretty enlightening to see how when someone who definitely is also in a biohacking world, also dealt with something like this.

I think you’ll learn a lot in this next episode and you’ll have a good time here. While we’re at it, we talked about in this episode counting and the effects of counting and have on your mental processes. You definitely should go to biohacked.com and checkout the new Neurominer software. It’s really cool. You get a one year subscription. If you use code “Bulletproof,” you can save $20 off of your subscription. This is a software that teaches you to count and remember when you’re in altered states. We’re using technology from Bill Harris of Centerpointe to help you put in an altered state using sound files. Very advanced technology. Really cool stuff. A stuff that I actually do myself that has helped me to tap into my creativity and my intuition.

I didn’t really plan to talk with Tim about counting, but it just naturally came up. I wanted to put this out there for you, because if you’re into improving what your brain works, this is a new and very unusual type of technology. That’s biohacked.com and the product is called, “Neurominer,” N-E-U-R-O-M-I-N-E-R. Just use code “Bulletproof” and you can save 20 bucks.[/expand]

Is Marijuana Bulletproof?

December 8, 2016 by Dave Asprey

Marijuana is getting closer and closer to federal legalization in the U.S. That’s good news for the simple reason that no one should be able to dictate what you put in your own body to make it do what you want, whether it’s raw milk or entheogens. I’m happy to see more and more states legalizing pot because it makes it much more likely you’ll remain free to use other substances – like vitamins – of your choosing.

Whether or not marijuana improves your performance or is even good for you is a more complex question.

The short answer is that, for some people, used properly, cannabis can be really beneficial. On the flip side, it’s a fine line between using marijuana as a tool and using it as a crutch. The good news is, a lot of the new delivery systems and cannabinoid extracts make it easier than ever to biohack your pot so you get the good without most of the bad.

Let’s look into what marijuana can do for you, and how you can make is as Bulletproof as possible.

[Tweet “Marijuana legalization is on the horizon nationwide. But is it Bulletproof? Let’s take a look. “]

A quick primer on cannabinoids

Marijuana’s power lies in its cannabinoids. Cannabinoids are a group of 85 molecules unique to the cannabis plant [1]. The most famous one is ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the substance that gets you high. From a performance perspective, though, the most potent cannabinoid is cannabidiol (CBD), which does all kinds of good without putting you in an altered state (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). There’s also THCA, a non-psychoactive precursor to THC that’s showing promise as a biohacking tool. We don’t yet know much about the other 82 cannabinoids in pot, but cannabinoid research is one of the most promising fields out there.

Your brain has a system dedicated entirely to cannabinoids. In fact, you produce your own endocannabinoids, which help you build new memory cells [2] and play a role in sleep, inflammation, and pain expression. You can use marijuana and its various extracts to tailor your cannabinoid system to your liking.

With all the new legalization going on, it’s easier than ever to get isolated cannabinoids and control the dosage to fit your biology and your specific goals. Here’s a breakdown of what we think the individual cannabinoids do, and the best way to take them.

THC

You’ve likely heard of THC. It’s responsible for the euphoria, altered thinking, creativity, decreased pain, and enhanced sensory input that constitutes getting high [3]. THC also increases your heart rate and can cause anxiety, impaired memory, dizziness, and paranoia [3,4,5].

THC can be psychologically addictive [3]; if you’re using it every day as an escape, or you feel like you need it to function, you probably have something in your life you’re not dealing with. Drop the weed, see what comes up, and address it instead of running from it.

There’s also a fairly strong correlation between pot use and psychosis in adolescents [7,8]. It looks like pot affects teenage neurodevelopment, and possibly development into your early twenties. There’s also a study showing that regular smokers have lower blood flow to their brains [9]. None of this is causation, but it’s something to think about. If you have low blood flow to your brain, you won’t be nearly as sharp as you’re capable of being. This should steer you away from smoking pot regularly if you can get the benefits another way.

I’ve seen people who get high a day or two before doing neurofeedback (in this case, 40 Years of Zen) not perform as well as they do when they’re off THC. You can see a change in their EEGs (electroencephalogram), too, with lower alpha waves after the pot wears off. Alpha waves are usually high in deep states of meditation and reduce depressive symptoms and boost creative thinking. (Pot raises alpha when you’re on it, but you won’t be as good at learning to raise your own alpha at will, which is a pretty cool superpower to have.)

On the other hand, THC shows promise as a way to inhibit cancer and reduce inflammation, and to manage pain [6]. That’s Bulletproof. I’d reach for marijuana over oxycodone and other heavy-duty painkillers any day. THC will also decrease nausea from chemotherapy [10].

Then there’s the recreational factor. Getting high can be fun, and doing it every now and then probably won’t kill you.

Is THC Bulletproof? Maybe. I’d say THC is easier on your body than a night of drinking, and can be useful in certain situations. I just wouldn’t start using it for fun or escape regularly. If it helps your inflammation when CBD doesn’t, do it!

Cannabidiol (CBD)

CBD is THC’s non-psychoactive cousin. It won’t get you high, but it will do plenty of other things for you. Watch this extraordinary video to see CBD in action (warning: you may get emotional). A single drop of CBD eliminates a Parkinson’s patient’s symptoms in 3 minutes.

CBD isn’t just for people with neurodegenerative diseases. It can boost your performance even if you’re already on top of your game.

A low (15mg) dose of CBD increased alertness in both people [11] and rats [12].
A moderate (160mg) dose of CBD can help you sleep better [13].
A high (500-600mg) dose decreased social anxiety, both in general [14] and during stressful events like public speaking [15].
CBD prevents seizures and is an effective way to treat epilepsy [13, 16].
CBD is a potent antioxidant. It outperformed both vitamin C and vitamin E at preventing oxidative damage [17]

CBD also curbs the negative effects of THC. You’re far less likely to get anxious or paranoid when you take CBD and THC together [11, 18]. Researchers are even looking at CBD as an antipsychotic, with promising results [19,20].

You can either get pure CBD oil or a high-CBD strain of pot like Charlotte’s Web. You only absorb about 6% of the CBD you eat [21], which may explain why participants in some of the above CBD studies had to take such a staggering amount. You’re better off vaping CBD to get the full effect of the dose.

THCA

Fresh pot leaves actually won’t get you very high. They’re low in THC, but full of THCA, a related compound that turns into THC as the leaves dry. Most marijuana you’ll find has been aged to the point where it contains almost pure THC and no THCA.

However, a new subculture in the weed world is focusing on keeping that THCA in. THCA is a strong anti-inflammatory and mitochondrial enhancer in mice and in human cells [22,23]. It destroys prostate cancer in rodents and in petri dishes [24] and may help with sleep, too.

People who smoke or vape high-THCA pot report a bright, creative mental state, almost like they’ve taken a smart drug. THCA doesn’t create the stoned effect that you get from THC – although heating will convert some of the THCA to THC, so you’ll still get high with THCA-heavy strains.

Unless you have access to newly picked pot plants, THCA can be difficult to come across. Some places offer marijuana juice made with fresh squeezed pot, and really cutting-edge dispensaries sell THCA distillate. If you don’t find those, you can opt for one of the following high-THCA pot trains:

Skittlez
Rosé (like the wine)
Gelato
Sherbert
Acai

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What’s the most Bulletproof way to consume pot?

Smoking

Burning things to over 1000°F tends to produce carcinogens, and the classic way to consume marijuana is no exception. Bong, joint, blunt – it makes no difference. Burning the plant and inhaling it fills your lungs with toxins. There are far cleaner ways to get your pot.

Oral (CBD)

CBD has 6% oral bioavailability [21]. Eating it is simply not a good use of your money.

Dabbing

Dabbing involves superheating nearly 100% pure THC or CBD concentrate and inhaling the resulting vapor. You’ll still get a few toxins from impurities, but dabbing is much cleaner than smoking. The issue is that dabbing is incredibly potent and it’s difficult to control the dose. 100% pure THC behaves more like a prescription narcotic than like a legal recreational drug. Unless you have a medical need, you’re probably better off not dabbing THC.

Dabbing CBD is a good way to get high doses quickly, although it can be difficult to find CBD wax suitable for dabs.

Oral (THC)

Bulletproof pot cupcakes, anyone? Like CBD, oral THC only has about 6% bioavailability. But if you’ve ever tried a pot edible, you know how intense eating pot can be.

Thank your liver for the intensity of edible highs. It converts THC to 11-Hydroxy-THC, which is far more powerful and gets to your brain more easily.

Cannabinoids are fat-soluble, so be sure you cook your marijuana with a fat source before eating it. Grass-fed butter and coconut oil are both good options.

Vaping

Vaping is a good, clean option. Vaporizers only heat to around 300°F, which means you inhale far fewer carcinogens than you do when you smoke. You can buy a vaporizer for pot in its natural form, or a vaporizer for oil extract. The oil extract will, of course, be stronger.

So is marijuana Bulletproof? It depends. CBD is a powerful addition to your biohacking toolbox. THC can be useful in certain situations, or fun as an occasional indulgence, but it carries some risks and downsides with it. THCA may lie somewhere in between.

If you’re going to use pot, choose a clean way to take it. Be aware that it can be addictive and proceed with caution. Always go organic, too. Pot may not be food, but it’s still a plant, and a lot of growers use heavy pesticides.

Do you find pot enhances your performance? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading and have a great week!

References:

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Performing Like An Olympian with Hans Struzyna – #369

December 6, 2016 by Team Asprey

How do you become a superhuman with the ability to perform amazing physical feats that most mere mortals would never dream of even attempting? That’s the question Dave asks Olympic athlete and member of the US Rowing Team, Hans Struyzna on this episode of Bulletproof Radio. Hans reveals how hard work, intense physical training, mental conditioning, and nutrition transformed him from an average person into an elite athlete with godlike strength and physical endurance.

Plus, as an added bonus, the tables get flipped when Dave answers a few of Hans’ questions. Make sure you stayed tuned for that.

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Announcer:
Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

Dave Asprey:
You’re listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today’s cool fact of the day is that rowers are rated to be the most physically fit athletes in the world. Apparently ahead even of Crossfitters. Although I wonder about that. Physiologists say that rowing a 2,000 meter race or one and a quarter miles is equal to playing a bunch of back to back basketball games. There’s a unique cardio stress that’s put on your heart during rowing, which means that rowers have the biggest hearts of any athlete. That’s actually why the National Space Biomedical Research Institute trains their astronauts on elite rowing machines before they launch them into space. Which is kind of cool and maybe a reason I should start rowing. Although actually I don’t really row, even though I live near the water. It would be cool, but who knows? I might get wet.

Before we get into today’s show, you know how important it is to eat meat that’s 100% natural meaning it hasn’t been injected with hormones and that the cows were fed high quality sources of food. Not everyone has access or time to hunt around for high quality grass-fed meat. That’s where Butcher Box comes in. They deliver healthy 100% grass-fed beef, organic chicken and pork directly to your door. Their products are humanely raised and free of antibiotics and hormones. Each box comes with seven to 10 pounds of meat which is enough for 20 individual size meals. You can choose from four different box types. All beef, beef and chicken, beef and pork or the mixed box. That’s enough food to last you almost a whole month.

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We should talk about InstaMix. InstaMix is something that makes Bulletproof coffee easy. All you’ve got to do is get the Bulletproof coffee beans, which are lab tested to be free of the toxins that make you crash. These things come from mold. Normally you blend with butter and Brain Octane Oil. When you travel like I do about 120 days a year, you don’t want to carry butter and oil like I do because it’s messy and requires a refrigerator. After a couple of years of developing products, we made this stuff called InstaMix. It comes in little packets. It gives you the butter and the Brain Octane Oil with zero insulin effects. It even gives you a little bit of pre-biotic fiber. When you do this you actually can travel with a lot more convenience or if you’re at the office and you want to have a quick Bulletproof, you stir this into a cup of freshly made Bulletproof coffee beans and you’re good to go.

It’s just a way to make breakfast faster. You can find it on Bulletproof.com, it’s called InstaMix. It also works while you’re rowing. You can actually just eat it right out of the bag and then cough really bad because that’s a really poor idea. Now if I didn’t foreshadow that today’s show was going to be about rowing, I think then you need to listen again because today’s guest is Hans Struzyna from Kirkland, Washington. He now lives in the Bay area. Hans is a member of the Elite USA Men’s Eight rowing team. He’s won or placed at the World Rowing Cup’s Senior Word Championship Trials, National Selection Regatta and many more. He’s been basically doing all kinds of crazy high performance athletic rowing things that put me to shame for any of my bio-hacking. Not only is he going to tell us what he does to be really high performing like this, but he’s going to ask me a few questions as well. Definitely of the bio-hacker mindset. Hans welcome to the show.

Hans Struzyna:
Dave thanks for having me. It’s a real pleasure and honor. I’ve been a fan of the show for some time. It’s kind of surreal to actually be on it this time.

Dave Asprey:
Well it’s my pleasure to have you on. I love to mix it up and get a picture of people who are putting principles to work at elite levels, which you’re totally doing. Then other people who are doing elite level research. We hear it from both sides because we’re all our own guinea pigs. You’re even more of a guinea pig than normal because you’re doing a very quantitative amount of work. Either you move faster or you didn’t. Either you pulled harder or you didn’t. There’s no wiggle room. there’s no self deception there, which makes it a very pure form of guinea pigmanship if there is such a word.

Hans Struzyna:
Sure. Absolutely.

Dave Asprey:
Let’s talk about how you got into rowing because frankly it’s an odd sport. It’s inconvenient to find water for one thing.

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah.

Dave Asprey:
Why rowing of all the things you could have done?

Hans Struzyna:
Well I was an athlete in other sports growing up. I tried football, basketball, wrestled a little bit, track and field, all the traditional stuff. It wasn’t until I believe the summer between my sophomore and my freshmen year of high school that my parents thought we should get out of the house and do a family activity together. We decided rowing, what the heck. We lived near Lake Sammamish at the time. We signed up for a class. We got in these big fat singles that were supposedly unflippable, but we proved that wrong very quickly, the four of us. Anyways, it just evolved. I joined the rec program for the summer. Then I didn’t want to go back to track or football or basketball or anything like that. I was like, “What the heck, I’ll give it a try and just kept going.” I found out I had a knack for it and got the bug so to speak.

Dave Asprey:
You found something you loved and just pursued it until the very highest elite levels.

Hans Struzyna:
It just was always about figuring our what the next level is. What’s the best I can be? Can I maximize this level? I found out, I can go to the next one. I can go to the next one. Here I am.

Dave Asprey:
What level is next for you? What’s past all of this because there’s always levels? What do you do at the top?

Hans Struzyna:
Athletically I mean you make it to the Olympics in a non-professional sport so-to-speak, an amateur sport. That’s kind of the pinnacle. Then it would be I guess going back for trying for a medal or trying to be a multi-time medalist or something like that. That’s really for each person to decide if that’s the way they want to go.

Dave Asprey:
What about you? What do you want to do next when you reach the pinnacle?

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah. Phenomenal question. I don’t really know what my plan is as far as athletically continuing because I’ve been to the Olympics already. To go back is a lot of work first of all and of course there’s no guarantee. You’re only as good as your last performance. I don’t know if it’s what I want to do next or if I want to retire and try something else.

Dave Asprey:
When my mom was a teenager she was invited to try out for the Olympics for swimming. She looked at that and said, “It seems like a lot of work.” She decided not to. Her unfair advantage was that she has abnormally large feet so it’s like built in flippers. She passed them down to me, which has been a curse ever since. I’ve got size 16 feet. I can’t buy shoes, it’s terrible.

Hans Struzyna:
Oh my gosh.

Dave Asprey:
I guess I’m a good swimmer as a result. Given that I’m unlikely to ever be in the Olympics one of the things that I know that the Olympic nutritionists do is they pre-screen the crap out of you. They do urinalysis, skin fold tests, resting metabolic rate and a bunch of blood work to see what’s going on. When they did that for you, did you learn anything useful? Was it helpful or were you already too dialed in, so it didn’t matter?

Hans Struzyna:
We worked with a nutritionist. Her name was Liz. She’s a member of the USA’s staff. Phenomenal nutritionist. She did an analysis of every athlete. Diet, how much you’re sleeping, how often you’re eating. What kind of stuff you’re eating. I had spent a fair amount of time dialing in my regimen so-to-speak. She liked what I was doing and we just added a few things here and there. It was more like implementing some supplements. Then trying to figure out how to get a few extra calories in every so often and try and gain some weight. The biggest thing that some of that information provided was that a lot of us on the team were actually low on vitamin D. There’s some varying opinions on Vitamin D versus performance. Don’t leave any stone unturned. We tried, I got on a vitamin D supplement. That was the biggest thing that came out of that. I was trying a lot of things. I can’t say that was the one thing that made the difference for me. I’m sure it didn’t hurt.

Dave Asprey:
It’s scary because vitamin D comes from sunlight exposure. You’ve got to get sun in your eyes and on your skin to get vitamin D. You typically see the sun more as an Olympic rower than almost anyone else, but you were still deficient so you went on a supplement. What about just rowing with your shirt off? When I go kayaking I wear a life vest, but no shirt for that exact reason. Did you do that?

Hans Struzyna:
Part of the thing is we train, the National team is based in Princeton, New Jersey. We were at the time we got tested we were coming out of winter on the East coast. It’s 40 degrees on the water, you’re not going to go shirtless on a day like that.

Dave Asprey:
It’s called hypo-thermic training.

Hans Struzyna:
I don’t know if you’ve ever had to be on the water when it’s that cold. It is not very fun.

Dave Asprey:
It’s brutal. Absolutely brutal.

Hans Struzyna:
We wear tights. We wear hats. We wear vests, you are covered.

Dave Asprey:
It’s because you’re in the middle of winter in New Jersey, which is very high up towards the North Pole. Of course you just didn’t have any. Then during the summer I’m guessing your levels would go up?

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah.

Dave Asprey:
I live that far North. I’m in Victoria, British Colombia. It’s crappy right now. In fact I’m going to go spend a week on an island with sunshine pretty soon here, because you need to get that vitamin D up some way. I use a suntanning lamp when I’m here too to activate the stuff.

Hans Struzyna:
That’s great.

Dave Asprey:
What did you eat when you were training? Walk me through a typical day.

Hans Struzyna:
I would start every day with some Bulletproof coffee. I know you were talking about the InstaMix, I had a bunch of that in Rio with me. We didn’t have refrigerators in our units. That was out, it was really great that I had the InstaMix for my coffee.

Dave Asprey:
It always sucked to try and control your nutrition for this huge important event without a refrigerator, that’s just primitive.

Hans Struzyna:
Luckily the dining hall was always open. They had a huge amount of food there, so you could really get anything you wanted.

Dave Asprey:
Oh that’s good.

Hans Struzyna:
Typically it would be the Bulletproof coffee before training or on my way to training. Maybe throw a banana. Then I’d do something like a goo while I was training depending on the type of workout we were doing. For an AT or high intensity work, then you would do the goo. You’d need the carbs. For a steady state, probably not. Then it looks like [crosstalk 00:12:09].

Dave Asprey:
I was going to say do any of your rowing friends on your team or your crew any of the other ones you know. Do any of them row with zero carb keto adapted rowing? I haven’t heard of that.

Hans Struzyna:
No. Not that I’m aware of.

Dave Asprey:
There’s some interesting camps out there. Some people are saying you can do the keto adapted Iron Man and all. I think it seems biologically complex and unnecessary. It’s nice to be able to burn two kinds of fuel even at the same time, which isn’t normally possible. That’s what you were doing because you still had ketones left from the Brain Octane and the InstaMix. You’re able to burn some of those and get some of the carbs from the goo. Could you feel a difference when you did it that way versus just a carby breakfast or scrambled eggs or something? It’s okay to say no. I’m not looking for a plug here. I’m wondering.

Hans Struzyna:
No, because before I found Bulletproof coffee I was doing a pretty big hefty shake that had peanut butter, oatmeal, bananas, I think I was doing coconut fat in there and some berries, frozen fruit basically. Then I found the Bulletproof coffee and like that way better.

Dave Asprey:
Got it.

Hans Struzyna:
Just flavor and taste, but also the way it made me feel. I can’t say that I had a huge profound performance impact. I think that over time my body responded better to doing the Bulletproof coffee for sure.

Dave Asprey:
What about protein? You are one of those people who works out enough that you’re going to need more protein than I do. I don’t work out nearly as much as you do. What do you do to get your protein in? Your breakfast is Bulletproof coffee, what else?

Hans Struzyna:
I actually started playing around with putting collagen protein in the Bulletproof coffee and that was a good start. Our nutritionist was asking us to do 25 grams of protein per meal five times a day.

Dave Asprey:
That’s a lot of protein.

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah, because of the amount. Basically her thinking was the amount of cardio we’re doing she doesn’t want us to trim down. She wants to keep the weight on and actually gain some weight in a lot of cases. You don’t want to emaciate yourself basically down to lose all this powerful muscle that you’re trying to build in the weight room and that sort of thing.

Dave Asprey:
Cool. What kind of protein do you normally use as a rower? You said collagen for sure. That’s not a complete protein. It’s the least inflammatory protein. I like to bulk up my protein. In fact because you get extra protein without excessive aminos that are inflammatory. That can’t be all you use. What other kinds of things? What forms were good?

Hans Struzyna:
That was really the only supplement. When I was doing the whey protein that you have as well. I was just playing around with different mixtures and combinations and just seeing what was good. Then it was traditional stuff like eating eggs, and beans, and meats, and whatever was available.

Dave Asprey:
Got it.

Hans Struzyna:
Cost effective as well.

Dave Asprey:
I know what you mean. It gets expensive if you’re only going to eat collagen protein or any other kind of high end supplement.

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Asprey:
Now are Olympic dietitians pretty cutting edge or are they whole foods like, “Everyone should eat more whole grains and a balanced healthy meal.” Like a bunch of platitudes. How progressive did you find the advice you got?

Hans Struzyna:
That’s a really interesting question because it definitely was be whole all around. Eat your whole grains, eat your vegetables, eat your fruits as well. It was for me I felt like because I listened to your podcast and done some other research. I had a little bit better of a base to start from. My mom actually was really into nutrition for about five or 10 years for herself for fitness. I rode her coattails in that. I had a little bit of a base to start from. We were able to have a little bit of a maybe more advanced conversation. She also had to work with multiple teams. Every sport has an interesting starting place and has these opinions on the type of supplement you should use. She was with some athlete. She was saying if it has the word jacked in the title you can’t use it. That’s also where she’s coming from on some of that stuff.

Dave Asprey:
It’s really frustrating. I’ve spoken with a few nutritionists like that where they actually want to take the time to dial in and have highly compliant athletes, like Wiki would have been. Where they can talk about it. Like said if somebody was like, “If you’re going to eat M & M’s could they at least be the peanut ones because they’re better than the regular ones even though neither of them should be on your diet.” There’s a lot of frustration that happens there. You got some good advice there.

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah.

Dave Asprey:
It sounds like.

Hans Struzyna:
She liked more or less everything that I was doing. She had some few tweaks which definitely, we tracked over time. Definitely made some good improvements. I didn’t have to do a wholesale change. I wasn’t doing McDonald’s every day and not eating some meals. She’s trying to get people to eat regularly, that would be a big step for some people.

Dave Asprey:
I hear you. What about race day? You talk about supplements that say jacked on them. I guess I’m going to have to cancel my upgraded jacked formula. What do you do on the race day? Ergogenic aids, caffeine, FADE alanine, there’s all kinds of people. L-Glutamine, Acetyl-L-carnitine, I don’t know. What do you do if anything?

Hans Struzyna:
We as a team we’re trying the three basic supplements. Everyone has their form of caffeine. Some guys are popping caffeine pills, some people are up for two hours grinding espresso shots and putting back eight shots of espresso. I was more of a just do my Bulletproof coffee, try to keep my routine as consistent as possible. I would add in, I would do a nitrate shot about two hours or so before the competition.

Dave Asprey:
This is a oral shot just for people listening, not an injection.

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah.

Dave Asprey:
Beet juice kind of thing?

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah, it was concentrated beet juice. It had 400 milligrams of nitrates in it or something like that. I can’t remember the specifics of it.

Dave Asprey:
Okay.

Hans Struzyna:
We did that. We were also on a beta-alanine load and a maintenance phase through for about four or five months for our various training cycles leading up the the Olympics. We were just constantly dosing every day, two beta-alanine pills.

Dave Asprey:
That helps your mitochondrial function. You’re just making it so your muscles can make more energy, which is kind of cool.

Hans Struzyna:
Then those two were the big supplements that the team was doing. Then everyone had their little things that they would do. Whether it would be, I don’t know as simple as a goo or something like that right before we were launching or it could have been I didn’t go question everybody’s specific details. For me it was those two things. For me it was to make sure I’m well hydrated and feeling not full, but also not hungry. Which is an interesting place to try and put yourself. You don’t want to be so full that you’re vomiting at the end because you’re carrying around all this blood is going there. You’re trying to pull it out of the stomach and push it into your muscles. You also don’t want to be that hungry because then that’s distracting as well. Everyone has got their different way of doing it.

Dave Asprey:
I hear what you’re saying there because you really don’t want to be completely jacked up. It doesn’t feel good when you’re too full and you’re trying to exercise or you have to eat another meal. I totally get that.

Hans Struzyna:
As far as rowing is concerned those were the main things that we did. I heard people having other things or altitude and trying to include that kind of stuff in, which is cool but not something we did. That’s really what we focused on primarily as far as supplement and aids if you will.

Dave Asprey:
How about avoiding gluten, dairy, soy. Did you cut some categories of things out for higher performance or are you exercising so much you’re like a human garbage disposal? By the way, I’ve always wanted to be one of those. Where it’s like, “I eat anything and I feel great.”

Hans Struzyna:
There was a time when I tried to go gluten free. I found it was really really hard to get the amount of calories in. I think I lost 10 pounds when I went gluten free. When I was really trying. It was just very, very difficult for me to keep weight on. I decided I had to introduce it back in just to keep my weight up so I could be competitive. I’ve now gotten to the point where I can be fairly … I don’t call myself gluten free by any stretch of the imagination because I’m not. I definitely choose things other than bread and wheat when it comes to getting my calories in. Like rice for example. I do a lot of rice. As far as soy goes, I’ve never been much of a soy fan. Just the whole thing …

Dave Asprey:
It’s just not right.

Hans Struzyna:
I just don’t get it. Then maybe someone can explain this to me that makes sense finally. Then you’ve got all the … There’s the whole ethical thing with Monsanto. Then there’s the whole is it even good for you in the first place? I don’t know. I just don’t go there.

Dave Asprey:
I hear you. There’s plenty of reasons not to do that as far as I can tell.

Hans Struzyna:
It’s like Brussels sprouts. I don’t like Brussels sprouts and there are so many other vegetables if I want to eat green vegetables that I can do that I like more so why go there?

Dave Asprey:
I hear you there. What about on the physcial training frequency to perform at an Olympic level. How many days a week? How long each day? How much time goes into being an Olympic rower?

Hans Struzyna:
It’s definitely a day to day thing. It’s roughly speaking three to four hours a day, your heart rate is elevated. Ideally you’re in a zone for that many hours a day. You’ve got to ramp up through the workout sometimes. Especially if you get in good shape. Then you’ve got to push harder to get your heart rate up. Then it’s also a real … It’s an endurance sport. The longer you stay in it, the better you can get. Really what happens with rowers is that you become better as you get a little older. They say somewhere between 27 and 30 is typically a peak where you’re going to hit. Then you can maintain that for a couple of more years if you want.

Then you’ve got to adjust once you get in your early 30’s adjust your training so that your body is responding and you’re not killing yourself basically. At the level we were at it was four hours a day split over two practices. We would do one 24 hour period off every week. Which would be a Saturday afternoon to a Sunday afternoon. We wouldn’t actually have a full day. It would be 24 hours. Then you just rinse and repeat. Then go from there. Once you start to taper, you bring the volume down, but the intensity might go up. Instead of doing those four hours. You might only be doing two hours, but you’re doing race rehearsals and warm ups and stuff like that.

Dave Asprey:
What about the cognitive side of it? You’ve got your mental training down like that. US rowing team has more medals than any other country in the world. There’s no pressure. How do you deal with the pressure of something like that?

Hans Struzyna:
That’s a really good question. Rowing is as you can imagine very repetitive. You’re just in a boat. You’re moving back and forth. Blade goes in the water. Blade goes out of the water, repeat. There’s no trick plays and stuff. It’s all about focusing on these minute tenths and hundredths of seconds as far as your timing with everyone else on the boat. As well as being able to get all of your training, all the miles and all the hours you did of training into this roughly five and a half to six minute race and having the best strokes come out at that point. That’s part of why we train so many hours is because you need to get those repetitions in so that when the pressure comes on, autopilot will hopefully take over and you can just repeat what you’ve always done.

Dave Asprey:
You cut the thinking out of it because you don’t need to think because it’s just built in your nervous system?

Hans Struzyna:
Right. One thing we’re really big on in this sport was creating a plan and having plan before you go and sit on that erg for an erg test or go to the line for a race. The reason for that is at some point you’re going to get in there and you’re going to switch out of that aerobic into that anaerobic or vice versa, wherever you’re at and it’s going to hurt. You’re going to want to stop. You’ve got to have this plan. If you don’t have that the pain is just going to take over and you’re going to stop. You’re going to let up or something. If you have this plan you’re like, “No, no I know this is coming, I expected it, it’s like 90.” We’re 80 seconds into the race, I’m switching over into this aerobic. All of a sudden, “Okay this should feel this way.” Three big deep breaths and now we’re back into it.

Dave Asprey:
What about trust and flow states. It’s one thing to be in a flow state when you’re an extreme skier. You’re connected to a group of other people. How do you get in the flow? How do you do it with your team at the same time?

Hans Struzyna:
I think that is actually one of the biggest areas of improvement for rowers in general is recognizing that whole concept of flow. Everyone can say a time that they’ve been in it. Very few people know that it’s even potentially called flow. Even fewer know how to try and repeat that for themselves or for a team. That I would have to say again is just where like you said the trust, that’s huge. Also the repetitions come in on the water where it’s just like, “We’ve done this before, we know what to do, let it take over and just relax and breathe.” Not worrying about the result as much as worrying about taking the strokes. That’s usually when a crew really dials in on that concept, that’s when the best strokes happen.

Dave Asprey:
Do you guys do any sort of hippie stuff? Do you all sit in a room and meditate together so you can get in the same state at the same time. Do you like to sing Kumbaya together? Naked showers, I’m kidding. I have no idea. What do you do when you’re not rowing to build brotherhood. I don’t know the right word for it. There’s something you do when you’re really connected to a group of guys where you just know each other really really well. How do you foster that outside of whatever you call it. The whole?

Hans Struzyna:
Great question. That’s a challenge of course because everyone, especially at this level we’re all adults and we all have lives. We’re not in college any longer. Where in college it’s easy, you go to dining hall.

Dave Asprey:
Get drunk together.

Hans Struzyna:
Whatever, whatever it is. NCAA doesn’t need to know what we did or didn’t do.

Dave Asprey:
Amen.

Hans Struzyna:
Anyways what we did was we came up with a forced fun activity where we would go actually do mini-golf or bowling together as a team.

Dave Asprey:
Cool.

Hans Struzyna:
Those were pretty fun because it was like everyone has to be here. We’re going to have fun with each other anyways. Those were actually I think super valuable in the long run. You get out of the rowing boat. You get out of the practice. You see people in their normal clothes, there’s something about that.

Dave Asprey:
There’s a lot of research in building teams for business that’s similar. There’s a social aspect. No one can really tell you why. I can see how that would apply here as well. I’m thinking there’s got to be some hacks. Maybe there’s some Olympic or even pro trainers doing this. If everyone does heart rate variability training at the same time, interesting stuff happens. I’ve done that with an executive team before meetings. Sometimes we’ll all do five minutes of heart rate variability training all at the same time. We’re all in the same zone at the same period.

There’s some advanced stuff that … My little wheels are turning. With the 40 Years of Zen neuro-feedback facility outside Seattle. It would be interesting to get a team of four people through there. Then do everyone’s training at the same time. Then there’s things we can do to actually train you to be in-sync with someone else at the same time. That’s a pretty powerful thing. Where you actually you get a signal when your brain is in the same state as someone else’s. I imagine that would affect rowing. There’s no data about that it just seems cool.

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah, and one of the challenges with rowing is it’s not basketball or football, the money’s not there for all these kinds of things. If your team has a $3 million budget every year, that’s huge in the sport. You just got to decide where the money is going. Are you just going to have a small group and have four or five, six guy whatever. Spend a lot of money per head or are you going to bring a 30 person group together and just let the cream rise to the top in that sense?

Dave Asprey:
I like the $99 sensor heart rate variability version of that because that’s within the budget for everyone. You’ve just got to get over the dorky feeling. “Okay, we’re all going to sit here and we’re going to put these little clips on our ears. We’re all going to look at our phones and make them make bonging sounds together.” We do that at Bulletproof and it works.

Hans Struzyna:
I’d love to try that. There’s definitely a type A macho whatever thing you’ve got to overcome first, definitely in the rowing world. I’m sure everywhere too.

Dave Asprey:
That’s what I call the hippie BS. I see that too. When someone joins the company for the first time. It’s like, “You want me to do what?” We’re like, “Just try it.” Same thing with hedge fund managers. I’ve had an opportunity to talk to a bunch of high end money people about Bulletproof because they’re all interested in the stuff. This one guy calls me after international flights. “I finally did it.” It’s the opposite of, “Yeah, I control a billion dollars.” Now you’ve got to take a deep breath and focus on your heart. I can see that being a really big thing just from the people who I knew that were on crew at UC Santa Barbara. They probably weren’t the meditating types. Then again, that was 20 years ago. That might have changed. What about mentorship? Did you have mentors that helped you? What’s your take on that becoming a world class athlete. It seems like learning from someone who’s done it before would be the easiest way.

Hans Struzyna:
Yes. I can’t remember who said this quote. The essence of it was if someone has been there, it can be repeated and done again. I think that’s a huge part of mentorship or just of being better at something. You’ve obviously done a great job being a bio-hacker and putting forth all of this information and these products. Your results show that someone else could follow your plan or follow some version of it and get a similar or hopefully the same result. Now that’s biologically we can have a different conversation. Everyone is a little different and that’s for sure. Nonetheless I think it applies.

With rowing it’s really simple. If you have these numbers as far as power and strength and endurance and stuff, you can expect this result. We have years and years and years of data to prove if your boat average is on the erg, whatever it is 550 or better you have a really really good shot at getting a medal. It’s ridiculous how high it is. If you go for a second Olympics your shot of winning a medal is twofold higher or something like that. There’s just all this information. Then to get to those places. You think, “Okay, I’m like this high school kid for example. I have no clue how I could even get in the ballpark.” I think that’s where the mentorship part of it comes in.

Dave Asprey:
That makes a lot of sense. What are you doing to be a mentor now that you’re an Olympian? What are you doing to help other people.

Hans Struzyna:
My, I won’t even call it a side project. One of the things I never had is I never had someone really sit me down and say, “This is what you need to do. This is how we can do it. Let’s make a plan.” I had coaches who had various inputs into that, but it wasn’t one consistent person. I thought I’ve been through the ringer. I’ve been 12 years in the sport. I’ve seen every part of it. Why don’t I try and be that person for somebody? I’ve started this website called CoachHans.com. It’s my personal website where people can go on there, reach out to me if they have questions, concerns, comments whatever about the sport of rowing. I can give them my two cents on how to improve. We can work together for an extended period. I usually try to do three months at a time. Basically make a plan. Have weekly check-ins. Have someone who’s accountable, but also a little more knowledgeable than them. That’s one of the things I’m doing right now. As far as giving back and mentoring.

Dave Asprey:
Thanks for doing that by the way. When I was a teenager I didn’t realize that people actually wanted to help. It was sort of like, “If you want something you have to go out and take it.” Which isn’t how the world is. It’s amazing. It actually feels really good to help someone without getting paid for it or anything like that. I was too stubborn and frankly angry to be a very good recipient of mentorship until I was a little bit older. Then it dramatically changed my career, I’m really grateful for that. I think it’s cool you’re doing it. Thank you.

Hans Struzyna:
No. Thank you. I appreciate that. You’re right, that’s exactly right. You never knew that these older guys would actually care frankly. It’s so true, everyone I know on my team would at least hop on the phone every once in a while with you and talk for 15, 20 minutes no problem. Whether they turned it into a more formal thing or not, I don’t know, that’s their decision. I can say honestly that every single guy on the Olympic team spend time and mentor young kids if they had the opportunity. To some degree, maybe not full time.

Dave Asprey:
Sure. For the kids listening, here’s the deal. Nothing pisses off a mentor like them taking their time to share basically wisdom that they accumulated from making mistakes which is where wisdom usually comes from. To either have you A, not show up. Which is really shitty or to show up unprepared and ask really basic questions that either they should have already known or were easily Google-able or in your book or something. The thing is they give you really good advice and you don’t do anything with it. You come back six months later or two months later, how’d that work out for you? Oh yeah, I forgot. It’s like no, take notes. Some of this stuff is precious knowledge somebody who won four Olympic medals that’s somebody who sweated blood. You should respect it enough to at least try it.

Hans Struzyna:
Absolutely. It’s cool that you don’t have to make every mistake in the book, you can go learn from somebody. It’s like reading somebodies book. You can ideally get 10 years of a couple hundred pages and hopefully pull one 10 year mistake out of it. That you then won’t go and make on your journey. Whatever your journey is. Whether it’s athletics or bio-hacking or relationship or whatever.

Dave Asprey:
Well said. Now you had some questions for me. This is going to be an unusual interview, where you’re at a very high level and some tweaks for Bulletproof. Let’s turn the tables. I’ve never done this on Bulletproof Radio. It seems like a cool idea. I’m excited. This maybe would be what I would do on a coaching session. If we had one where I was coaching you on the Bulletproof stuff.

Hans Struzyna:
My first thing going back to the whole vitamin D thing you said. You’re a rower, take your shirt off basically. Unfortunately it wasn’t that simple because then there’s also the concept of sunscreen. You don’t want to get sunburned because that will zap our energy. Then, thus hinder our performance. Some rowers wear a lot of sunscreen. Some literally are lobsters, so ignore them. For those of us who do wear sunscreen, do you have any advice or hacks around sunscreen because I know some have a lot of terrible chemicals. You’re sweating, you’re absorbing that stuff as well. That’s probably not good either.

Dave Asprey:
If you wear sunscreen all the time you’re depriving your body of a really important biological signal. Ultraviolet B radiation activates your vitamin D and activates your cholesterol. You’ll have more rowing power if you get some vitamin D in your skin because you didn’t use sunscreen. That’s not saying you should never use it. My most powerful form of sunscreen is a hat, but when you’re on the water it’s going to reflect up on you. You’re going to want to put sunscreen on your face. The safest sunscreen is also the very sexiest. It’s non-micronized zinc oxide. Like the lifeguards from the 70’s with the big white thing on their face.

Hans Struzyna:
Exactly.

Dave Asprey:
It looks like crap, but if you’re already married, who cares? I’m kidding. There’s also room to put a brand right there, like a small [crosstalk 00:39:25] on your nose. That’s ridiculous, but if you expose a small amount of your skin to sunscreen on a regular basis. That would be your face, the back of your neck and your ears. The sun is going to age you there. I would tell you don’t wear sunglasses all the time. Probably excessive, not probably excessive ultraviolet causes cataracts. A lack of ultraviolet causes metabolic dysregulation. We have this weird thing we do because we’re simple animals. We’ll always say if too much of something is bad, therefore none of it is good. We did this with sodium. The current recommended sodium consumption if people actually did it would increase heart attack risk because sodium consumption is so low. Salt isn’t good or bad, you want it in a range. The range depends on the amount of stress that you’re under and a bunch of other stuff. Telling everyone to be at the lower end of the range is scientifically invalid.

Hans Struzyna:
Sure.

Dave Asprey:
I’ve think we’ve done that with sun. Sunburns are bad for you. If you go out there with your shirt off for a half hour every day and you develop a tan. You don’t want to look like a lobster ever, but if you have a tan you’re actually going to perform better. There’s some intriguing new research out there. It’s in my new book actually around melanin. The compound that makes you tan. Melanin has the unique power to break water in the presence of ultraviolet light, has the power to break water down into extra electrons and extra oxygen. When you’re rowing, you want extra electrons in your body every way you possibly can. I think having a tan and especially on race day. If you have a base tan, would go without. That’s every tiny little advantage.

There’s one group down in Mexico who believes that at least in the eye 26% of the oxygen inside the eye comes from melanin, not from your lungs because there’s no physiological … There isn’t enough blood flow to get oxygen levels where they are. That’s an interesting sun hack that’s the opposite of sunscreen. What I would consider doing, and you know your sport better than I do. They have the skin tight rash guard, but even a little bit thinner. Basically a sun protecting tight shirts.

I’m going to Hawaii in a little while. I’m going to not use sunscreen the whole time I’m there, except maybe on my face. If I’ve had enough sun, if I turn very lightly pink but don’t get sunburned, I’ll just put on a long sleeved rash guard and be good to go. Your legs are probably not that exposed. I guess it depends on … I’m used to kayaking where you’re a little bit more covered. You tend to not burn on your legs nearly as easily as your upper body, for blood flow reasons. You’d have to decide what to do there. I find more sun exposure on the legs is relatively safe.

Hans Struzyna:
I have as well.

Dave Asprey:
Melanoma on your shin is not going to come from a sunburn, it’s just not. My grandfather died from Melanoma on his big toe.

Hans Struzyna:
Wow.

Dave Asprey:
He got a lot of sunburns on his big toe. No, he walked in cotton field full of pesticides as part of his career. There’s also a correlation of a lack of sun exposure can also contribute to skin cancer. You also don’t want to look old and toasted.

Hans Struzyna:
Wrinkly and stuff.

Dave Asprey:
I think put it on your face, use that very high end cosmetic grade stuff. The other thing is Astaxanthin which comes from eating wild caught sockeye salmon, shrimp and frankly from supplements. I would be taking, if I was getting a lot of sun like I will in Hawaii. I’ll be taking Astaxanthin probably 12 milligrams a day, which is a pretty heavy dose. Take it with your Bulletproof coffee. Don’t blend it in, that would probably taste gross. It might even harm the acid. You just want to have fat in the system when you take the capsule.

Hans Struzyna:
Cool.

Dave Asprey:
I actually did eight hours in the sun without sunscreen at 7,000 feet elevation with no sunburn. When I was doing lots of Astaxanthin and I had my vitamin D levels at 100. You can get some protection, where your skin is like, “I’m ready.”

Hans Struzyna:
Natural.

Dave Asprey:
I think as an athlete Astaxanthin can be really helpful for that.

Hans Struzyna:
I never heard of that. That’s a good one.

Dave Asprey:
It’s A-S-T-A-X-A-N-T-H-I-N.

Hans Struzyna:
Astaxanthin, cool.

Dave Asprey:
All right. That’s like internal sunscreen.

Hans Struzyna:
Perfect. Another question I had and it rolls into this. I listened to the interview you did with Dr. Tammy. She was talking of course about hormones. More broadly I was thinking do you have a recommendation as to getting your hormones and your blood work done? How to do that? When to do it? How often to do it? Then what to do with that information, once you have it.

Dave Asprey:
I believe that you should get yourself tested at least once a year. Probably as an athlete I’d want to do four times a year, like once a quarter. I’d want to see my inflammation markers and my sex hormone levels would be really important. If you’re dealing with any other things, like your inorganic acids can be really helpful to tell whether your mitochondria are working well.

Hans Struzyna:
Okay.

Dave Asprey:
Bottom line is if you have your lipid panel, advanced lipid panel that tracks all these inflammatory markers, you can figure out if you’re over trained. I see this a lot in the population that I work with, which is often times type A. They’re CEO’s of big companies or they’re like, “It’s not enough that I’m CEO. I also have to be an Iron Man.” All right, here’s the deal. People who are heavy duty athletes. They sleep and they recover and they eat all the time. You’re a CEO, so you get on an airplane and you fly all night, then you’re going to train heavy. Then you go to meetings all day. Then oh, go out to dinner and drink a bunch of wine. What they end up getting over trained and they break themselves. It’s a function of managing overall stress in your environment really matters. As someone who has a job and is working out like this. You’re at that risk.

Getting your information markers and your sex hormones is going to tell you when you need to recover more. You might need to dial back on the workout because your testosterone dropped. Your sex hormone binding glob went up and all the informational markers went up. Okay, “I’m in the, I need more sleep and I’m just going to do some stretching and just a light work out, instead of killing it.” We love to be very structured. It’s so easy to wake up every morning and exercise. I hate to tell you that’s kryptonite for most people. Probably not for you because you worked your way up to that and because you eat for that. You probably sleep for that too. By the way, do you focus on sleep quality and recovery as part of what you do?

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah, that’s another thing I implemented was the sleep app. I think I heard you and I’ve heard some other friends talk about the sleep app where you track it and it figures out what level sleep you’re at. Then also the notes have been really fun to play with. I’ve been wearing an eye mask to bed and it sounds totally nerdy but it’s like when I did that my sleep quality went up about 15 percent by itself.

Dave Asprey:
Isn’t it kind of crazy?

Hans Struzyna:
It’s weird and now I do it every night regardless. I have this silly airplane mask. You know untied air mask they gave us but honestly it made such a huge difference for me. Yes, tracking sleep and I know just anecdotally more than anything, eight hours is my number for right now. When I get less, I can do it once in a while but if I’m consistently seven or less hours four or five days a week, I can feel it. Having some of this information definitely helps. Of course now I’m not training nearly the same level just because I’m off right now. Then I can get away with a little less sleep or a little bit of this or that. I’m definitely tracking and paying attention to it.

Dave Asprey:
That is one of the things that’s really going to show in your blood results. If you get those every quarter or every six months, you can get them online now and that’s most affordable. Where you can go, there’s a variety of lab services like that. I’ve worked with WellnessFX. I was an advisor to them before they got acquired. They’re relatively pricey but their dashboards really good. It tracks over time, you pay a little bit more get a better data analysis. You can get those same results somewhere else and track it yourself but those sex hormones are so important.

Oh your thyroid, you should always get an advanced thyroid panel at least once a year. That makes a huge difference. What I’m looking to see in the Olympics and even in pro sports is a little bit of enlightened thinking. Yes, people abused synthetic testosterone in the 70’s, then even then roid rage and all these people dying. It was very over wrought in the media. If your testosterone or growth hormone levels are low, you should be allowed or even required. I wouldn’t require it but I would make it highly encouraged, to supplement those things appropriately and under a physicians care. It is unethical to take a healthy young guy like you. By the way, how old are you?

Hans Struzyna:
27.

Dave Asprey:
27, right. Between 30 and 40 your testosterone is going to decline, your stomach acid is going to decline. We have this bizarre double standard where you’re allowed to take Betaine HCL capsules to help you digest your food better if you want to even though it’s a normal part of aging to have less of it. You’re not allowed to top up your testosterone to keep it within range if you get it to the bottom of your range. You will have more injuries and more likelihood of dying because you didn’t keep your testosterone where it should be. It’s not cool, it’s part of aging. The idea is that well, if you’re going to compete you’re not allowed to do this. I interviewed a guy named Andrew who write the Doper Next Door. He used testosterone supplementation without permission as a semi pro cyclist. Then came clean, gave back all of his awards and wrote a book about it. He’s a journalist, he did it as a journalism thing.

Hans Struzyna:
Right.

Dave Asprey:
He’s like I was able to keep up guys, he’s in his mid 30’s. Keep up with guys 10 years younger than me. It was amazing. I got myself back. Why do we torture ourselves without having these things? You’re not allowed to do that as an Olympian but you are allowed to eat a lot of egg yolks that are raw. Like the get some ice cream recipe in the book. I’d be pounding that stuff and then look at the results in your labs and see if your testosterone’s where you want it to be.

Hans Struzyna:
Sure, that’s super helpful. My father has this thing and I don’t know if you’re familiar with it but it’s called Meniere’s disease, does that ring a bell to you?

Dave Asprey:
I’ve definitely heard about it. Tell listeners more about it. What it is.

Hans Struzyna:
My understanding of it is that there’s not one thing that causes it, it’s like a ton of symptoms lumped together. He describes it as vertigo, nausea, just foggy, general fogginess. Like you have a sinus infection but there’s no sinus thing going on. When he got diagnosed with it, what they recommended was limiting or almost eliminating sodium intake. For him, he’s like oh this is easy. I don’t really eat sweets, I don’t eat a lot of baked goods. I don’t whatever else they told him in the office. Salad dressing was one of the big things he had to pay attention to. They said 1,500 milligrams or less a day is what you’re allowed. He’s been sticking pretty strictly to that. He’s like as soon as I get, as soon as I can add up my milligrams because he’s pretty aware. Once I get to about 1,500 is when I start to feel dizzy and nauseous, and vertigo, and all these other things. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about what he can do or not do in this case?

Dave Asprey:
You live in the right part of the world for him to come and visit. He’s not in the Bay area is he?

Hans Struzyna:
No, he actually lives in Seattle.

Dave Asprey:
Well there’s a guy in Alameda who’s been on Bulletproof Radio. Dwight Jennings is his name, Northern California, cranio-facial something. What’s going on there and I don’t know the specific causes I’m not a doctor. I’m not an expert in this, but I’ve looked into this a long time ago for another client. If you adjust your jaw alignment, the pressure on the nerve that runs basically through the ear, goes down. It’s the stuff that causes TMJ pushes on the nerve and eventually it effects the vagus nerve. There’s another Bulletproof Radio interview with Stephen Morris, the guy who created something called poly-vagul theory, the different parts of that nerves that cause different things.

What Dr. Jennings had found and this is work that I’ve had done on myself that profoundly improved my nervous system function. Is that he can quite often, reverse ringing in the ears and vertigo by allowing the jaw to relax. You actually lower the jaw through a splint you sleep with and allow your jaw to move forward. Suddenly ringing in the ears go down, pressures in the ear can go down and that could be a profound thing. It’s non surgical. Literally you go in and you 24 hours a day you have a little thing that raises the height of your jaw. That alone can be important.

The other thing is there is progressive hearing loss with that condition so increasing mitochondrial function would be terribly important. You can do that with even beta-Alanine, some of the supplements you do. The other mitochondrial enhancing substances, I talk about those all the time. Those are all going to be really beneficial. The other thing that I would consider that’s completely not studied, for this, at least if it is studied I’ve never come across the studies. It’s unlikely to have been studied. It’s called cerebral electrical stimulation. In fact I did it last night.

Hans Struzyna:
Oh wow.

Dave Asprey:
It’s also known as a russian sleep machine. What you do is you hook a little electrode to each ear lobe and you run a very small current between the ears. It synchronizes the brain, it causes increases in brain-derived neurotrophic factor and a bunch of other things. It’s usually used for depression or things like that. Russians invented it because they figured you need less sleep when you use this thing. If they can make astronauts sleep less, they could pay to send less astronauts to space. “How do we burn them out without burning them out?”

Hans Struzyna:
Right.

Dave Asprey:
They run about 1,000 bucks. It’s a prescription item. Most of the time, there’s a couple consumer grade ones out there. Cerebral electrical stimulation CES, I would want to try that for a couple months and see what happened. The reason I’m interested in that is that running that small current actually enhances mitochondria. It provides electrons there. If you’ve got parts of the ear that are at risk. If you relax the jaw, allow better blood flow there do that. Maybe throw in some hyperbaric oxygen and cold laser in the ears, I’ll be damned if you couldn’t feel better. I know that’s hackable but none of those are you going to see at a normal clinic.

It’s just considered too bizarre. All of those are mitochondrial enhancers at one level or another. I think that could be a powerful stack. Man, I’m not a doctor, approve it with his doctor. These are supported things I would do if I had ringing in my ears without a diagnoses of anything. Take that with a grain of salt. If there’s 10,000 people listening to this. I don’t think any of that stuff is even remotely dangerous, CES probably has some very, that’s the most edgy of those. Good God, it’s been around for 40 years and I don’t think anyone has died of it.

Hans Struzyna:
Sure.

Dave Asprey:
So I think it’s pretty safe.

Hans Struzyna:
Definitely. You have time for one more question?

Dave Asprey:
One more, let’s do it.

Hans Struzyna:
All right. Protein, obviously a lot of my teammates are all in the whey protein category. That’s what’s pretty popular in the sports world, as I’m sure you’re aware. I’m really liking the collagen protein as well. Do you do a cocktail of the two? Do you recommend one versus the other? What’s your thinking on that?

Dave Asprey:
Whey protein is really powerful as a detoxer and an immune stimulator. It also raises insulin pretty quickly. It contains a lot of inflammatory amino acids like Cysteine and Methionine. You need to get those amino acids, but you don’t need excess amounts of them. You see a lot of these body builders and pro-athletes like, “Protein, it’s all about the protein.”

Hans Struzyna:
Yep. Yep.

Dave Asprey:
Here’s the deal. If you get bad protein farts. Almost all body builders have, it’s because your body is trying to turn the protein into fuel. Protein is not meant to be a fuel. Protein is meant to be a building block. When you use protein as a fuel you tend to get inflammation. You tend to get extra ammonia. Your kidneys and your liver don’t thank you for it. Your job is to eat as much protein as your body needs for muscle mass, but not more and to get the rest of the energy from fat and even from carbs. Like slow burning starches. Collagen protein is unique. The collagen that I manufacture is predigested so it goes in very, very easily so it’s highly available.

It’s also high in Glycine, which is an amino acid that doesn’t cause inflammation like these other ones. It’s really good for repair of the bone scaffolding is made out of collagen. Your skin is collagen, your joints are collagen. If you’re doing repetitive motion you want your hips, and your knees, and your elbows, and wrists, and all that stuff to hold up forever. Replacing those tissues with appropriate building blocks that aren’t present in a normal diet works very well. I found that I can increase the net protein consumption using collagen without increasing the consumption of the inflammatory amino acids.

You can have more protein than otherwise. At your level, not more than four tablespoons of whey would I recommend. There’s many different types and kinds of whey. The whey that I work with in the Bulletproof product is from grass-fed dairy. It’s not a cheese by-product. We actually take the fresh raw milk from the cows and take it straight to manufacturing whey. It’s not a fermentation by-product. Most of what you buy out there in those big burlap sacks of whey that you see body builders often times do. Other body builders that are super health conscious and all. This is traditional got to get the protein.

Hans Struzyna:
GNC stuff.

Dave Asprey:
Yeah, even GNC has started carrying some quality stuff.

Hans Struzyna:
I don’t mean to knock them, but you know what I mean, the traditional …

Dave Asprey:
The stuff you find at any bulk store, where it’s like your mass gainer 5,000, $6 for two pounds of protein. You’re like, “What’s in there?” The answer is whatever they can find is what’s in there. Straight gluten protein. I don’t think that it’s wise to turn to protein as a fuel source. A lot of athletes do that. “I’m just going to have protein and a salad for lunch.” It’s like actually there’s just building blocks in there. Salad, you can’t burn salad. There’s a few vitamins in there and you have some protein. You’re actually starving for energy when you do that.

Your body will convert the chicken breast into energy, but it comes at a much higher cost than pouring some Brain Octane on there, which goes to energy very quickly or for that matter having some rice with it. Then using that for energy and having the protein available as a muscle building material. Four tablespoons a day for athletes and two tablespoons a day for non-athletes. The whey that I use also has 20% colostrum in it, which is mother’s milk. It’s because they value of whey is the immune signalling these IGG molecules. I can get way more of those in there. I’m like whey is precious. It needs to be done right. It needs to be in moderate to low amounts. If you’re doing eight scoops of whey a day, you’re actually not benefiting yourself. I don’t think that’s a healthy practice.

Hans Struzyna:
Sure. Sure.

Dave Asprey:
Lots of eggs if you’re not allergic to them.

Hans Struzyna:
For me I do a scoop of collagen in my Bulletproof Radio. Would you even say throw in a scoop of whey as well? That’s enough protein for the morning kind of thing or is that …

Dave Asprey:
I would do two scoops. The collagen scoops are around what eight grams?

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah. I think that sounds about right.

Dave Asprey:
Seven point eight if memory serves. Like this morning I had three scoops of collagen in mine. That’s 21 grams of protein. Whey you can put in coffee, but the coffee needs to be cooled down a little bit first.

Hans Struzyna:
I tried that one time and I was drinking little chunks of whey, it was weird.

Dave Asprey:
Yeah, I’m not a huge fan. It doesn’t need to be cold coffee. Not super hot because at least if you’re going to use my whey. That stuff is expensive because it’s 20% mother’s milk, colostrum. It’s biologically delicate. If you blend the crap out of a whey like that which is full of peptides. You end up breaking them down mechanically. What you want to do is blend up the coffee. Then add the collagen. It’s cooled down a little bit from being in the blender. Add the whey, just pulse it enough that it’s not chunks, but it’s not all beaten all to crap. Either that or just have the whey separately. You can mix it with a little bit of almond butter, it goes in real easy.

Hans Struzyna:
There you go.

Dave Asprey:
It’s literally like a ball. Just put it in a bowl. You can mix several days worth. Just stir it up and just take two big tablespoons. There’s your whey and you get some nice … Add some salt in there, that would be good.

Hans Struzyna:
Sure. That’s awesome. This is great. Hey, that makes a lot more sense. I’m going to totally try some of these things and figure out exactly what the results are. That will be exciting.

Dave Asprey:
Awesome. I’m really eager to hear what you learn from that. Just if you in three months from now with your dad, just drop me a note if you would and let me know if any or all of those things made him feel better? That’d be really cool because if so we can talk about that. Talk about that just because there’s probably a couple thousand people listening right now with that same condition.

Hans Struzyna:
Sure.

Dave Asprey:
The benefits of having half a million people hear an episode are that we might help some of them.

Hans Struzyna:
Definitely. I’ll talk to him about some of that stuff and see what he thinks.

Dave Asprey:
Awesome. We’ve got one more question for you.

Hans Struzyna:
Please.

Dave Asprey:
This one you’re probably expecting. That is if someone came to you tomorrow and said, “I want to kick ass at everything I do. What are the three most important things I need to know?” What would you tell them?

Hans Struzyna:
That’s a great question. I would say first of all it would be about your mindset and your … To me all this other stuff is … bio-hacking is awesome, but to what end? What are we trying to gain out of this? Are we trying to be the best family person we can be? Are we trying to be the best athlete we can be? I don’t know. That’s for them to decide. I would make sure they’re pretty clear on why we’re doing this in the first place. Secondly I would say, start tracking your food. If you feel sluggish at two o’clock, I actually had a friend who was a little overweight. He was sitting in an office for a long time. All he started doing was just tracking his food on one of those food tracker apps. I can’t remember which one it was. He was just writing it down. Between that and going for some jogs in the morning he lost 30 pounds.

He just became aware. It gave him a budget, how many calories he was allowed. Then slowly he started to educate himself more. Then third I would say is basically don’t take yourself so seriously all the time. Have some fun, laugh once in a while. That’s really hard for me to do. I’m as serious as I can possibly be all the time. My girlfriend is constantly trying to get me to laugh and relax a little bit. I’m too high strung sometimes and too serious. I know that I need to do that. What I found helps is first of all just finding funny things through the day and being willing to laugh at them. Also come from a place of some gratitude. Tell people when you’re thankful for them. I’ve literally started calling a couple people every day who I think about. I’m really thankful for their friendship. I call them and tell them. It’s unbelievable how much that little thing will make a difference in my day.

Dave Asprey:
Excellent piece of advice. Hans, where can people find out more. You said CoachHans.com?

Hans Struzyna:
Yeah. My website is CoachHans.com, you can drop me a note there. That’ll send me a direct email on Facebook. I don’t really have a page. I guess I have a Twitter, but I don’t really use it. I guess the website is probably the best place. It’s CoachHans.com.

Dave Asprey:
Awesome. Thanks for being a guest on Bulletproof Radio. Thanks for kicking some ass at an amateur sport. It’s so cool to see people pursue excellence just for its own reward instead of just for a paycheck. Nothing wrong with a paycheck. Still it’s cool that you found something you love and you’re doing it.

Hans Struzyna:
Dave, hey thanks for your time. Thanks for the opportunity to be on. Have a good rest of your week.

Dave Asprey:
Awesome. Have a great week.

Hans Struzyna:
You too. Bye.

Dave Asprey:
Bye. If you liked today’s episode you know what to do. Head on over to Bulletproof.com com and pick up some InstaMix or some Brain Octane or some coffee and give it a try. If you haven’t actually tried Bulletproof coffee made with right ingredients it’s a whole other level. Coconut oil simply cannot do what Brain Octane does. If it did, I would tell you. Here’s the deal. You feel a lot more ketones. There’s a new study from the University of California that actually talks about ketone formation and Brain Octane. It turns out it raises ketones way more than coconut oil. Putting coconut oil in your coffee makes it taste like a pina colada and it doesn’t raise ketones. Give it a shot. That’s at Bulletproof.com Brain Octane Oil.

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Why You Shouldn’t Fear Fasting with Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore – #367

December 2, 2016 by Dave Asprey

Dr. Terry Wahls on Mitochondria, Health & Vegetables – #366

November 29, 2016 by Dave Asprey

On this episode of Bulletproof Radio Dr. Terry Wahls talks about the power of food as medicine and how the right nutrition feeds your mitochondria, along with a fascinating breakdown of the origin of mitochondria as bacteria adapting to toxins (oxygen!). You’ll learn how to use glutathione, vegetables, and healthy fats to increase energy and slow aging.

Dr. Terry Wahls is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine where she teaches internal medicine residents and does clinical research. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2000 and went from being wheelchair-bound to running on treadmills through her use of nutrition and functional medicine. Her latest book is The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine and be sure to listen to her two previous interviews on Bulletproof Radio.

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Dave:
Many people in the biohacking community have had trouble with how much they overpay their life insurance provider because these companies haven’t caught up with new scientific studies that have changed the way different diet types and exercises are viewed by the scientific community. For example, people who are committed to the Bulletproof Diet may have an increased level of a good kind of cholesterol called HDL, but some life insurance companies lump all cholesterol into one negative category like they were created in the 1950s. Oh, wait. That’s because they were. A decision like this can greatly increase what you would pay for life insurance.

Well, Health IQ is a company that’s decided to change that. Health IQ advocates for a health conscious lifestyle. They use science and data to fight for lower rates on life insurance for health conscious people including cyclists, runners, vegans and vegetarians, weightlifters, and other people who are in diets that actually make them feel better, perform better, and live longer. In fact, research has shown that people with a high health IQ are 42% less likely to be obese and have a 57% lower risk of early death. Many people don’t even know their health IQ, let alone realize they can get a lower rate due to having a high health IQ. Health IQ has special rates on life insurance for the health conscious, and right now, Bulletproof listeners can learn more and get a free life insurance quote by going to HealthIQ/Bulletproof. That’s HealthIQ.com/Bulletproof to learn more about life insurance for people who care about their health.

Female:
Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

Dave:
Hey, it’s Dave Asprey with Bulletproof Radio. Today’s episode is a remastered version of one of the best interviews I’ve done to date. You’re totally going to love it. I promise you that I will not take your time to direct your attention to something that isn’t absolutely stellar, so enjoy this episode. We’ve remastered it for you. What this is doing is it’s freeing up a little bit of time for me to finish the new book, and it’s also making sure that you’ve seen the most important, most impactful, most useful content because I believe really deeply with Bulletproof Radio that given that we’re pushing 50 million downloads, the number of hours that are consumed just listening to Bulletproof Radio is more than 100 human lifetimes. That’s a big responsibility, so I’m not going to waste your time, not with numbers like that. This is one of those interviews that you absolutely have to hear.

Today’s cool fact of the day is that Lachanophobia is a condition in which someone is intensely afraid of vegetables. The root word means vegetable in Greek. Not much is known about that phobia, but it’s possible that George W. Bush was a Lachanophobe because in 1990, he banned broccoli from Air Force One. You know how important it is to eat meat that’s 100% natural, meaning it hasn’t been injected with hormones and that the cows were fed high-quality sources of food. Not everyone has the access or time to hunt around for high-quality grass-fed meat.

That’s where Butcher Box comes in. They deliver healthy, 100% grass-fed beef, organic chicken and pork directly to your door, and their products are humanely raised and free of antibiotics and hormones. Each box comes with 7 to 10 pounds of meat which is enough for 20 individual size meals. You can choose from 4 different box types. All beef, beef and chicken, beef and pork, or the mixed box. That’s enough food to last you almost a whole month. You can also customize your box with add-on items like bacon, rib eye, and beef bones.

Each box also includes step-by-step recipe cards and a note from the butcher describing the cuts and forms featured that month. Plus, they deliver for free nationwide except for Alaska and Hawaii. The price is just $129 a month which works out to less than $6.50 a meal. At that price, it’s a steal. Order now and get free 100% grass-fed burgers. That’s 6 6-ounce burgers for free in your first box. Use code Bulletproof to get an additional $10 off. Get started by visiting ButcherBox.com/Bulletproof. You can cancel anytime without penalty, so give it a try. Head on over to ButcherBox.com/Bulletproof right now and get your free 100% grass-fed burgers and $10 off with this code Bulletproof.

Today’s guest is a friend and a former guest on the show, Dr. Terry Wahls. She’s a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa with more than 60 peer-reviewed scientific abstracts, posters, and papers. In short, she’s a real doctor and a real researcher, but what really helps her stand out is that she gave TED Talk and just published a book called The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine. This is pretty hardcore stuff. Terry was in a wheelchair and nearly disabled from MS and used a high fat diet, which we’re going to talk about today, along with tons of vegetables to reverse her symptoms, and even some electrical stimulation. I have met with Terry multiple times in person, and she walks around, and you would never guess that she had MS and was wheelchair bound. Terry, welcome to the show and thanks for coming on again.

Terry:
Great. Thank you so much for having me.

Dave:
Now how long ago were you in a wheelchair?

Terry:
In 2003 is when I made that transition. 2007, I was still in a wheelchair, began the interventions. By 2008, I was out of the wheelchair, walking with a cane, then walking without the cane, then biking 18 miles.

Dave:
That is remarkable. It just completely … In just, what, 4 years or so, you reversed. What has been going for a long time?

Terry:
Well, in just one year, I went from struggling to walk 25 yards to being able to walk … with 2 canes. 2 walking sticks. In about 6 months of my protocol, I was walking with a cane very comfortably, and then walking without a cane, and in a year, able to bike the 19 miles. I continued to slowly improve. This last weekend, I was on the treadmill, and I’m very excited about this, Dave, because I was at 4 miles an hour for 20 minutes, covered a mile and a half at a slow jog or a brisk walk in between the 2.

Dave:
Wow.

Terry:
It’s thrilling, and I’m quite hopeful now. Within another year, I’ll be able to jog pretty comfortably.

Dave:
Is jogging a good, useful form of exercise?

Terry:
Well, actually, I think intervals are much better. I do interval work and weight training, but being able to jog or run again, it just feels miraculous.

Dave:
I can’t imagine, after having been in a wheelchair like that. Maybe in a small relationship, I always had flat feet and terrible pain. I had arthritis on my knees when I was 14, and I didn’t know you were supposed to be able to walk without it hurting. I just thought that was part of walking. Until I was about maybe 20 or so, I got orthotics, and for the first time, I’m like, “Wow, I walked across campus and it didn’t hurt,” just because it was outside my universe that you could move without hurting. I imagine it must be about a thousand gazillion times more when you get out of the wheelchair for the first time.

Terry:
Well, since I had progressive MS, my physicians have been very clear that functions, once lost, never return. In the process of coming to terms with my illness, I had accepted that that would never come back. I was just going to get progressively more disabled, [inaudible 00:07:57] become bedridden. When I started my intervention, my goal was simply to put that off a few more years if I could. I had no idea that I was going to recover and walk again easily, bike again, and now even jog.

Dave:
It’s so remarkable. How did your family respond when you suddenly stopped declining even though all of medicine said you were going to continue? What was it like for you? I don’t think you covered that so much in your book.

Terry:
We had all accepted that I had progressive MS and things would get steadily worse. It’s interesting for all of us. [I’d 00:08:38] get remarkably better, I’m walking around the neighborhood without a cane, and we were all still not sure what to expect. I remember the day that I decided I was going to try riding my bike for the first time. I put my helmet on, I was rolling my bike out, the family all rushed out, grabbed the bike, and we had this family meeting. “Could I try riding my bike?” My kids were terrified. They were crying. They were really upset. They were afraid I’m going to get hurt.

Fortunately, Jackie says, “Well, I think this is going to be okay.” She told Zach to run on the right side, my daughter to run on the left side. She would follow on her bike. I got on the bike and biked around the block. At the end, we’re all crying, sobbing. That was the first time that I, probably my kids, and my wife realized things really were changing, that we didn’t know what was going to happen, and quite possibly, I was going to continue to recover and get close to normal function again at some point.

Dave:
Wow.

Terry:
That was a very, very big day for us.

Dave:
How does your path of healing MS … A lot of our listeners don’t have MS, and actually, some percentage of them are bound to get it and don’t know it because it’s a neurodegenerative disease and it takes 10+ years from you when you might first have some autoimmune stuff happening. If you don’t know that you’re one of those people, how does what you did, which is superhuman, honestly, how does that apply to a normal guy?

Terry:
Well, actually, it’s very interesting. In my clinical research lab, I have a lot of undergraduate students who volunteer in the lab for experience and credit. One of the requirements I have if you’re going to work with me is you have to adopt the diet for at least 2 weeks and keep food blogs, you turn them in. If you actually do all of that, then I’ll say, “Okay, we’ll let you join the lab.” These kids in their mid to late 20s, in their prime, are quite surprised with how much more energy they have, how much clearer their thinking is with this 2-week change. Several kids have discovered that their migraines have gone away.

Dave:
Magically.

Terry:
Their aches and pain stiffness have gone away. The vast majority of kids become converted, like, “I had no idea I could feel this good.” Even people we think they are well often discover that they were just mediocre, and suddenly their energy and mental clarity is vastly better.

Dave:
One of the goals with the Bulletproof Diet is to just get people for one day to feel that way because I think, as you’ve experienced with your students, when people get on a diet with the right nutrients and a clean diet, and we share a lot of common philosophies and recommendations, that once they feel that, why would you ever want to feel what used to be normal for you again? It doesn’t matter how old you are.

Terry:
I think a good way of thinking about this that I try to explain is it’s like seeing the world either in black and white or color. Once you see color, who wants to dial back to black and white? Once you experience full health and vitality, why would you like to go back to feeling exhausted and befuddled again? No one does.

Dave:
Did you ever use Modafinil or Provigil to try and get your energy up?

Terry:
As a matter of fact, I did. Just like most people with severe MS fatigue, they gave me Provigil. First, 100 milligrams, then 200, then 300. It didn’t do a lot, but the small amount that it did, I was very grateful for it, so, yeah, I stayed on that. If I go back to 2007, I started everything in November, and in February, I’d realized, “Man, I just was not sleeping.” Then fortunately for me, Jackie said, “You know, Terry, why don’t you stop the Provigil so [you could sleep 00:12:48]?”

Dave:
It is an anti-narcolepsy drug, so if you get it in 300 or 400 a day …

Terry:
Like, “[Yeah 00:12:52]. Let’s stop that.” I stopped that, I slept well, and my energy continued to be great. Then in April, I called my neurology doctor. By this time, I’ve been walking around [and flying 00:13:08] without my cane, and I tell them, “There’s been a change. I should probably see him.” I’m over there in the waiting room. His nurse is walking around with a chart looking for people. I bet she’s looking for somebody in a wheelchair and doesn’t realize that I’m not in it anymore, so I stand up and go, “Hey, Cindy! Over here!” She looks at me and her jaw drops. “Dr. Wahls! Oh my god, what’s happened?” I walk in, see her, see my neurologist, and he is incredibly impressed and very excited by the changes. He, of course, was thrilled that I stopped the Provigil. At that time, we talked about slowly tapering my disease modifying drugs, which we did. We have the CellCept for a week, then have it again for another week, and then I was off. I’ve been off that since 2008 and I’ve done extremely well.

Dave:
The reason I was asking is that we’re going to about to start talking about mitochondria. I was on Provigil for 8 years and I didn’t have MS. I had Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which I cured, and I certainly had some autoimmune conditions brought about by toxic mold exposure and some other things. I was pretty darned unhealthy, you could say, but I was on Provigil for about 8 years, and when you talk about just being tired and fatigue and all … Also, I’ve largely gone off of it. It was something that was a daily thing.

What sparked that was, when you said it was like living in color or black and white, when I didn’t understand the principles behind how to eat properly, I felt like I was always in black and white. I would take Provigil, and then the colors would come back. Like that scene in, whatever, Alice in Wonderland, the original movie, where suddenly, everything wakes up. You just triggered that memory for me. It’s interesting that you did experiment with performance enhancing substances like that and got some benefit, but you’re not on it now and look how you’re performing. It’s amazing.

Terry:
Yeah. The real performing medicine, food.

Dave:
I know. That old Hippocrates’ “Let thy …” What is Hippocrates’ “Let thy medicine be thy food”?

Terry:
Yes, absolutely.

Dave:
Now you are a white-lab-coat-wearing university professor. You’re one of those doctors who obviously doesn’t get it because you’re a doctor. There’s almost a backlash against Western medicine, but you are not part of that backlash. What do the other more straight-laced conservative physicians say when you say food is medicine? It’s almost flies in the face of what the drug companies are preaching.

Terry:
Because I’m also a researcher and I write grants, get funding, do clinical trials, and every year, we have 2 research days, one for the Department of Medicine and one for the College of Medicine, where my lab presents our data, and so my colleagues have seen the progress with other progressive MS folks and the remarkable results that we are showing. Physician scientists, we love data. We like to give each other a hard time, of course, but it’s very exciting. More and more people are coming by, and now that we have videos before and after, the gate changes. People are very excited, very thrilled. I’m going around to various departments at the university, giving research seminars, going nationally and internationally to present our research.

Dave:
That is so cool. I just want to say thanks because when you can get people who are in a position to help so many people, like physicians are, to bring the food side in with hardcore medical physiology, biochemistry, and pharmacology that they’re trained in, to bring all that together, it seems like as a biohack, I’m not opposed to pharmaceuticals, hormones, exercise, food, whatever the tools are that help me to improve a system, so for you to take the credibility you’ve earned throughout your career and then to help apply that to helping other medical professionals help more people, thank you. We just need so much more of that, so keep it up.

Terry:
Right. I talk about chemistry, physiology, we talk mechanisms. I have more basic scientists asking to join my lab because they know I have all this frozen blood and these very interesting results, and so people are now talking and pitching ideas as to how we’re going to analyze our frozen serum.

Dave:
That’s even cooler. Do you have access to the military blood? Someone was talking about … I think it was Tom O’Bryan from the Gluten-Free Summit who was on the show. He was talking about how they looked at autoimmune markers going back like 20 and 30 years from the military samples that they get from the draftees.

Terry:
That would be very, very interesting to get access to that, writing another grant, getting funding, proposing, et cetera. That’s more of a basic scientist, so I would find one of my partners to do that. I do this radical thing known as seeing patients intervene with people and seeing what happens overtime, and then I get my basic scientists who are the lab rats to analyze the blood to figure out the biochemistry and the physiology. Zuhair Ballas who’s the chair of Allergy Immunology, he and I are planning what are the cytokine analyses that we’ll be doing on the blood, and that’s going to be really, very, very interesting to get this detailed immunologic analysis to see how things changed as the year progresses on our study diet.

Dave:
Now I have to ask this, and I apologize to all of our listeners in advance because most people don’t know about this, but melanocyte-stimulating hormone or MSH, are you looking at that by any chance?

Terry:
Yes.

Dave:
Yay! That’s part of the new Bulletproof Diet book. I have a little bit in there about how diet affects MSH in the gut, so that’s cool.

Terry:
We had not yet finalized our panel. We have to sort out what we can do within our budgetary constraints, so I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Dave:
All right. My MSH is low, which happens when you have the genes that 28% of us have and you’re exposed to toxic molds through breathing it. It’s funny, I just got my test results back I’ve known for years because of symptoms that I was low, so I’m actually treating that now. We’ll see what happens.

Terry:
Interesting. Well, I look forward to hearing more.

Dave:
Again, everyone, I apologize. Sorry, I just have to ask these questions when I get an awesome expert on the phone. Let’s talk more about mitochondria. Would you give an overview of what is a mitochondria, what is ATP for people who are listening? Then let’s talk about how you hacked yours and how other people might be able to hack theirs.

Terry:
If we’re to go back 1.5 billion years, the earth is covered with a terrible poison which is killing off large swaths of life. There are a few bacteria that have adapted to this toxic poison, and they’ve learned how to use the poison oxygen more efficiently in generating ATP. These ancient bacteria are engulfed by other bacteria and they develop a symbiotic relationship. This new bacteria will evolve overtime to become animals and eventually us, of course, so that means all of our cells have these ancient bacteria that help us generate adenosine triphosphate. Our mitochondria are really bacteria. In the most energy-intensive cells, our brain, our retina, and our heart, we have about 10,000 mitochondria per cell.

Now in medical school, I had to memorize lots and lots of reactions involving my mitochondria, but no one taught me what I needed to feed my mitochondria to be sure that they could have optimal function and from what kind of things were particularly toxic. That’s one of the things that I investigated as I figured out from [reading 00:21:35] that likely, mitochondria were the root cause of my fatigue, my brain fog, and the atrophy or shrinkage of brain tissue in MS, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s, Huntington’s, all these neurodegenerative processes.

With more [reading 00:21:56] study, I figured out that I needed all the B vitamins, zinc, magnesium, sulfur, antioxidants, and essential fats because the mitochondria have lots of membrane around the cell and within the mitochondria to run that chemistry. They’re also incredibly dependent on Omega-3, Omega-6 fats. You want to flood your body with that nutrition so your mitochondria can perk up and come back to life. It also means you particularly need to protect them from heavy metals. Aluminum, arsenic, lead, mercury being the 4 most toxic.

Dave:
Would you say that if someone potentially was at risk of getting MS, everyone is at some risk, but someone maybe has it in their family, that by maybe feeding their mitochondria a little bit better, avoiding some metals, detoxing regularly, are they going to improve their odds of just not getting sick?

Terry:
I’ll tell you, if you have a sibling with MS, 5% risk. Parent, 3% risk. 2 parents, 30% risk. Always, your diet and your environmental factors are 95% to 70% of your risk. To that end, nutrient-dense diet, detoxing is profoundly, profoundly helpful to make sure you keep a healthy, vital brain and healthy, vital mitochondria. That really goes true for all these complicated chronic diseases that many of my colleagues erroneously let their patients think, “You know, it’s my DNA. I was just destined to get heart failure or diabetes or obesity or obsessive compulsive disorder or whatever,” when it’s really probably at most 5% genetic and 95% nutrient density of your diet and your toxic exposures.

Dave:
Now when I say detoxing, a common response I get from the skeptic crowd online is, “Oh, there’s no such thing. Detoxing, there’s no such thing. Your body has natural detox systems and all that.” Why do you focus so much on detoxing? We do have livers. We do have kidneys. We have skin. We secrete toxins. What’s different?

Terry:
Those definitely are the organs that are going to process and eliminate the toxins, but in order to do that, that’s still a biochemical process that’s dependent on having the proper substrates. It’s dependent on having a lot of … You could induce those enzymes, up-regulate them, particularly if you have a lot of sulfur-rich vegetables, which is why my protocol stresses the sulfur-rich vegetables because that’s going to really amplify your ability to detox. If you don’t provide those systems the proper substrates, they’re not going to function very well. The toxins that are being excreted will get placed in your fat and in your brain where they ramp up the inflammation, ramp up the neurodegeneration, and lead to progressively more damage.

Dave:
In a lot of the work I do with Bulletproof clients, coaching work, for people who don’t have MS and don’t have chronic diseases but they just want to perform better, similar recommendations seem to work remarkably well. People who think they’re well, and by all measures are well, when they add the sulfur-rich vegetables, they eat a lot more vegetables. They take the vitamins and all of the things that increase mitochondria function. The 2 things I focus on most are mitochondrial function and inflammation, and if you can get both of those one up, one down, magically, it seems like normal people become gifted with strange abilities they didn’t know they had and sick people become well. Is there a set of people where this doesn’t work or is this a universal thing we should all be doing?

Terry:
I would say this is a universal thing. We’re biochemical beings. Life exists because of self-correcting chemistry. That actually keeps the concentrations of minerals at a very narrow range in the cell, out of the cell. If they get too far out of whack, you die. Our body is as well-tuned as it can be, given the substrates that we give it. As a result, as we ramp up that nutrition, that self-correcting chemistry gets healthier, healthier, and healthier. Your health continues to improve. You tend to continue [youthening 00:26:51]. Obviously, you’ll begin aging again at some point, but very typically, in my clinics, in our clinical trial, people are [youthing 00:27:01]. It looks like they [youthed 00:27:03] for about 10 years and then they begin to age again.

Dave:
My own experience is that I certainly have more energy, more performance, more focus than I did ever in my 30s, and I’m just over 40. It’s remarkable. Even things like skin quality and things like that are better than they were. Some of the other markers of aging, like there’s a heart rate variability thing that predicts your age reasonably well, I score younger than I actually am. I’m certain that the fact that I’ve been “minding” my mitochondria for more than a decade and doing everything I can think of to make my myelin stronger, it seems like it just helped even though I didn’t have MS, but who knows? Maybe I was on that path. It’s very hard to predict.

Terry:
Well, when you look at chronic disease on a molecular level and a cellular level, what we see, Dave, is that it’s all the same disease. You have mitochondria that are not working well, too much oxidative stress. You have inflammation that’s inappropriate and attacking the cells. You have nutrient deficiencies. You have toxins that are present, revving up the inflammation. We see that whether it’s an autoimmune condition, whether it’s a mental health problem, whether it’s a neurodegenerative problem. Schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, MS at the molecular level are surprisingly similar. That is why if we treat people at the cellular and molecular level to address those broad categories, health improves.

It makes [clinic 00:28:47] vastly easier because now, I make a diagnosis, I give my prescriptions to take care of the acute problem, and then I make diagnoses of the nutritional adequacy, the probability of mitochondria’s function, whether or not there’s inappropriate inflammation, and the toxic overload. I address those problems, and it’s a pretty straightforward addressing for whatever the underlying condition is, and coach people these lifestyle changes. They come back every month with more and more energy, more excitement, more vitality, and they’re so grateful for getting their lives back.

Dave:
It’s certainly been my experience when I was 100 pounds overweight. I felt like I got my life back. I see this quite often with Bulletproof people who aren’t treating medical conditions, but we all want to live more life. I’m sad that when I went to the doctor many years ago and said, “Something is wrong. I can tell something is wrong. What do I do,” and the answer was, “I guess you should eat healthy and lose some weight.” I’m like, “Ahh! Why didn’t anyone tell me the kind of things that you’re telling people?” Granted, we know a lot more now, but you’re still at the forefront of getting the word out there through medical professionals.

Terry:
It’s interesting. I’ve taken an unusual approach. I’m doing a clinical research, writing grants, writing papers, and going down the academic route, but I care so much about the world that I’m also teaching the public, doing TED Talks, creating a website, writing books, and giving the public the same tools that I’m researching and letting them know, “Here’s the science behind why I’ve designed it this way and why I’m doing the science this way.” The public can decide, “Okay. It looks safe. I’m going to give it a try,” or they can say, “Well, I think I’m going to wait for a few more trials, FDA approval,” and they can sit back, but more and more, the public are ready to evaluate science simultaneously and take these very common sense, very easy … Well, behavior is not an easy thing to change, but far easier than taking chemotherapy or disease modifying drugs that are going to shut down your immune system and give you life-threatening side effects, that could let you get your life back from an autoimmune condition, or a serious psychiatric problem, or a severe diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, things that are completely under their control.

Dave:
Yeah, I’m grateful that you’re helping people directly and doctors. One thing that not a lot of even Paleo people talk about as much but you talk about because you’re a physician is myelin. I’ve been particularly fascinated with the types of fats in myelin, and I’m working on some new ways of increasing myelin strength. Because you had MS, I know that you would know a lot about myelin, but can you talk about what this is and why people who aren’t sick should care about the state of their myelin?

Terry:
Okay. Well, I’m going to go back even a little bit further. All of our cells are wrapped in a cell membrane which is made of fat. That fat is going to include saturated fat and cholesterol about 70%, Omega-6 fat, Omega-3 fat in about the 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 ratio. First, it’s critical that those cell membranes have plenty of saturated fat, plenty of cholesterol, plenty of Omega-3 and Omega-6 because the cell membrane is how our cells communicate with the world and the cell functions. The myelin is that cell membrane wrapped around and around and around and around and around and around, so it is a very dense layer of fat. Saturated fat, cholesterol, Omega-3, and Omega-6 fat. It makes me completely sad and crazy when people are talking about a low fat diet for somebody who has a myelin problem because myelin is made of fat, and you need to have saturated fat, you need to have cholesterol to make that myelin. You also need Omega-3 and Omega-6 fat as well.

Dave:
You need undamaged fats, not deep-fried Omega-6 and saturated fat.

Terry:
Oh my god, yes. I talk about this a lot in my book. Fat is a very, very important thing. If the fat is liquid at room temperature and you heat it, you will oxidize it and make trans fats, and it’s catastrophic. You don’t want to go near any vegetable oil that’s been heated. If you’re going to heat fat, it should be solid at room temperature, and then that fat is not going to be damaged. It’ll be okay to consume.

Dave:
One of the things, in fact, I haven’t even showed this with you, it’s a secret, but by the time we publish this podcast, I think it won’t be a secret anymore, is I’ve been working for a long time to get a stable supply of grass-fed butter so that I can get ghee. We have Bulletproof Ghee coming out which is made from grass-fed animal because it’s solid at room temperature for cooking. That’s what I use it for, right?

Terry:
Yeah, this will be great.

Dave:
Yeah, I’m pretty excited. I’ve been working on this for years to try and find a supply that … I don’t know if it’s a big enough supply, but there’s a shortage globally of grass-fed butter, thanks to your work and to things like Bulletproof Coffee. Let’s keep the shortage happening so we’ll get more cows and more grass-fed farms, and maybe we’ll have more grass. It could be good for the environment, too.

Terry:
Yes, it’d be very good.

Dave:
We talked about fat being stable at room temperature. What about things like canola oil and soybean oil? What’s your take on those if they’re “unheated”?

Terry:
Well, I think they’re catastrophic compounds. Canola oil is genetically modified. It has a lot of [erucic 00:34:56] acid and is toxic. Soybean oil, again, genetically modified. I would avoid that. I would prefer a combination of flax oil, sunflower oil to get the Omega-6 and Omega-3. Look for products that will help you get 3-to-1, 4-to-1 Omega-6 … 3-to-1 Omega-3 is that ideal ratio.

Dave:
That’s an area where I’ve come across different information in that vegetable Omega-3s don’t convert very well in the body, like a ratio of 45 to 1, into the really useful Omega-3s. “Flaxseed oxidizes so fast. Why do you do flax instead of just fish and krill?”

Terry:
To get the Omega-3 for your EPA and DHA certainly is ideal. If you’re going to use any kind of oil on your salad dressing, [I’m with that 00:35:59] in that 3-to-1 ratio.

Dave:
Okay, if you’re going to use it for salad dressing. Okay.

Terry:
Yes.

Dave:
I typically use an avocado.

Terry:
I should clarify that.

Dave:
Okay, that makes sense.

Terry:
[You’ll 00:36:07] use cold oil on your salad dressing, [I’m wanting 00:36:10] that 3-to-1 ratio. For your daily use, I’d much rather you eat cold water fish, wild game, grass-fed meat to get plenty of that EPA and DHA.

Dave:
That makes sense. For my salad dressing, I usually use an avocado, and I’ll blend it with Brain Octane Oil which is a saturated, medium chain fat. That way, I’m not doing it, and if I want the flavor, I’ll splash in olive oil, but I try to keep the Omega-6s down even from olive oil. That’s, of course, extremely fresh, dark glass, packed olive oil kind of thing. I did, however, though, in a recent test, depending on … There’s different labs and they’re saying I’m low in Omega-6 fats. At least in one certain kind. In GLA. The question is are most labs, because so many people eat so much Omega-6 these days, are the standards off? Have you come across this?

Terry:
No. If we’re taking a lot of Omega-3 oils, we can end up over-replacing the Omega-3s and not having Omega-6. Particularly, you and I, we’re attuned to the dangers of Omega-6, so we’ve taken the vegetable oils out. If we keep supplementing the Omega-3s, we can overshoot and get the ratio of Omega-3s and Omega-6s swung too far to the Omega-3. That’s a potential hazard. Ideally, you get a fatty acid analysis so you know where your ratio is and realize, “Oops. I overshot. I’m going to cut back my supplements so I can get things back in a proper balance.” That is frankly the hazard. Anytime we’re supplementing minerals or fats is to figure out how to do that without getting the ratios off the optimal range.

Dave:
It’s tough, too, because so many of the optimal ranges, like, “Whoa, you’re 45? So if you’re 45, the average for the world is this, so that’s about the middle of the range,” and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want that average. I want average for an ass-kicking superhero,” if only we know what that is.

Terry:
That is exactly true. What is the reference range that we should use for, for example, our optimal Vitamin D level or optimal Vitamin B12 level? Total levels are hard to interpret. It’s the ratios that are most useful. Finding somebody with enough nutrition experience to help you know what is that target ratio is difficult, and this is an emerging field, Dave, so you’re not alone.

Dave:
I am so fascinated by this stuff. I also think there’s a big genetic component to this. The more I look at how people’s immune response happens based on this presence of this gene or that gene, the more complex it is and the more it’s really apparent that what you do with your environment is so much more important than the genes you have, for most genes. Some genes, you’re just screwed if you have it.

Terry:
True, but mostly, it’s in our environment. The other thing that I think too many people are not aware of, my epigenetic heritage, which is how the environment interacts with my genes without changing the DNA, has been passed on to my 2 kids, Zach and Zeb, but my choices get passed on for 4 generations.

Dave:
Now why do you say 4 generations? Because we know the Indians said 7, and I know 2 we’ve proven, but 4 is an unusual number to choose for that. Why 4 generations?

Terry:
That’s what I have read from other geneticists, and part of it has to do with Pottenger’s work. When they fed the cats diets that were not so optimal, the cats progressively deteriorated, and at the fifth generation, they were sterile. They did that repeatedly. If at the fourth generation, he gave them the optimal nutrient-dense diet, in 4 generations, the cats would have a normal phenotype.

Dave:
Interesting. I remember that is 9. My memory is just off. I covered that in the Better Baby Book, but, okay, it’s 5. That’s cool.

Terry:
The epigeneticists are presuming that, and we don’t know this obviously for humans, but we’re presuming if it took 4 generations or 5 generations to create sterility for the cats and that with 4 generations you could recover them back to a normal phenotype, that we think it’s likely 4 generations for humans. We don’t know for sure.

Dave:
I hope it’s only 4. Humans and pigs are so sensitive to toxins compared to rats, mice, cats, and all these other things, way more sensitive because of the way we process, the way we bioaccumulate. I suspect that we may be more sensitive, but this research didn’t apply just to girl cats. This means that if you are going to be a father someday, that what you do with your food affects your offspring as much as what the mother ate before pregnancy. Then during pregnancy, obviously, what the other mother eats is of vital, vital importance, but we’re talking big stuff. If you think you’re going to get drunk, have pizza, beer, or smoke, but you’re the dad, it’s okay, it doesn’t work like that.

Terry:
No. Our health that we have was dependent on the previous 4 generations. When people say, “Oh, grandpa smoked, drank alcohol, and he lived to be 80,” well, his previous 4 generations were all working really hard, had great nutrient-dense diets. To think that we could smoke and have terrible choices and have that not affect our offspring is just so wrong and so naïve and so unfortunate.

Dave:
Now this is probably a rough question, but are you concerned about a global population problem?

Terry:
Well, it’s out of my area of expertise. I think that having 9 billion people in this planet is probably not going to be a good thing, but my observation is the chronic health is declining. The chronic health is worsening. When I look at our kids, one in 3 being obese, or one in 2 if you’re African American or Hispanic, I don’t know what the world population is going to be, but I see fertility rates falling. I see chronic disease cropping up. I think our ability to fight infection is declining. I don’t know what will happen to the population, but I don’t see continued growth. [That was 00:42:59] going on infinitely because we’re wrecking the environment. We’re wrecking ourselves. Fortunately, I do see segments within the population understanding diet and lifestyle and returning to more health promoting ways.

Dave:
It seems like given this 4 generation problem, it seems to me like we have a population problem now, but we’ll have less of one going forward because it is vanishingly difficult to conceive. One in 8 couples, they can’t conceive without artificial help, and it’s getting worse.

Terry:
Exactly. This is happening internationally. Sperm rates are dropping globally internationally. Yes, I completely agree.

Dave:
It’s amazing. Lana has a small sample size, my wife, Dr. Lana, but because of the Better Baby Book, she does fertility coaching. She’s got clients in the Middle East, in China, in the UK, in India. They do it over Skype, but it’s interesting. It’s not just in the US. It’s not just in North America. It’s even in so-called younger countries or countries that haven’t had the Westernization for more than a couple of generations. It seems like it’s global. I look at my kids and I’ve done everything possible since before they were born to try and reverse this trend. They eat the cleanest stuff I can find and afford, and I devote more time and energy to it than I’d like. I just hope that when they turn 18, they’re not out eating pizza and god knows whatever else and undoing it because I know when I was 18, that’s probably what I would have done. I’m really hoping to pass the values on.

Terry:
I’ll tell you, my teenage kids did fall away from the good nutrition, but fortunately for me, my daughter gets migraines, so she pretty quickly like, “Okay, these migraines are miserable,” so she’s back eating a really good diet. My son is also coming back to eating really clean. Your kids will probably do that, but hopefully, it’ll be for a very brief time and they’ll come back.

Dave:
I was just about to ask [because 00:45:12] my next question was what happened with your kids, so you’ve been down that path already and you gave me great hope there. Let’s talk about intelligence for a little while.

Terry:
Sure.

Dave:
I am putting together a really comprehensive brain program, and I would love to know what you recommend for increasing IQ.

Terry:
Physical exercise is probably one of the most important because physical exercise stimulates nerve growth factors. You’ll also want to do learning. If you could learn a new language, that’s very, very powerful. Take care of stress. [HeartMath 00:45:55] and other programs to help you decrease your sympathetic tone, [boost 00:46:01] your parasympathetic tone a little bit, that would be very helpful. Maximize your mitochondria and fat. You need lots of good, healthy fat for your brain. Very nutrient-dense diet. That would be my approach.

Dave:
Sounds like a wonderful approach to me, very similar to the one that I do. When you talk about toxins, what about glutathione which is one of those big things in the liver? What do you do about that? What’s its role with mitochondria?

Terry:
Glutathione synthetase is stimulated by [brassica 00:46:41] vegetables, vegetables in the cabbage family, in the onion family. It’s another great reason to include those in your diet. Lipoic acid can be helpful. Now unfortunately, taking glutathione by mouth does not work very well unless you have liposomal, or you could take … Some programs use IV glutathione which can be helpful.

Dave:
I’ve done IV glutathione a few times. It definitely worked.

Terry:
[You like 00:47:10] that, huh?

Dave:
Yeah. I do the liposomal plus some other molecules for better absorption. That’s one of the products that I make. Do you use glutathione?

Terry:
As a matter of fact, I use your product every morning.

Dave:
You are using it.

Terry:
Yeah.

Dave:
That’s amazing. Okay. I knew that you’ve tried some, but I didn’t know if you still use it.

Terry:
No, I still use it. I discovered if I miss a few days, I can appreciate the difference, so that keeps me very consistently with it. I find it to be quite helpful.

Dave:
Thank you. That’s amazing.

Terry:
I didn’t mean to give you that infomercial, but you got it anyway.

Dave:
Yeah, no, I was really not sure if … I know I shipped you some a while back, but I haven’t asked you about the feedback from it. All right. Raw meat. I was a raw omnivore for a while when I was recovering from being a raw vegan. Most people freak out about eating raw meat. What’s your take on raw meat?

Terry:
If you look at the arctic Inuit, I think 10 months out of the year, they’re consuming meat. It’s mostly fermented, and traditionally, it would have been fermented and raw. They had terrific health and vitality. I believe the [Maasai 00:48:25] in Africa have a lot of raw meat, raw milk, and blood mixed in with the milk that’s part of their culture and traditions. Certainly, we have traditions that thrive on that. In our environment, we have some challenges doing the raw meat in terms of finding safe sources from a public health perspective. I talk about raw meat in those societies in my book with a big caution that because of the challenges of how you find that product, I can’t make that recommendation, but we absolutely have societies that have thrived on raw meat.

Dave:
Yeah, it’s risky. What about parasites? Do you cover those? Did you look at those in yourself? Is that a role? Do they play a role in MS?

Terry:
Actually, it’s very interesting. There’s a study using whipworm. People ingest the whipworm and they’ve had decreased numbers of lesions and improved functional activity.

Dave:
For MS, not just for [crosstalk 00:49:30]?

Terry:
For MS.

Dave:
I took the pig whipworms.

Terry:
That’s it. Isn’t that interesting?

Dave:
Yeah, I did it.

Terry:
That study is done in Madison and they’re continuing to work on that. I believe there’s application to do, another level of trials, and patent applications, et cetera.

Dave:
Did you do it?

Terry:
Did I do it? No.

Dave:
Okay. I can tell you that if you scramble the whipworm eggs, they’re delicious.

Terry:
Well, I’ll keep that in mind.

Dave:
No, I just drank a little vial of them, and it was scary. This was maybe 6 years ago or so. I tried it. I ordered some from Thailand, and I never felt any difference. I have no idea if they did anything, but it was spooky.

Terry:
Around the globe, 80% of humans have parasites of some type. There’s a big hygiene hypothesis that as the infections go down, you use vaccinations, you have fewer viral infections, antibiotics [inaudible 00:50:26] fewer bacterial infections, and the parasites are removed, that also in that same sequence of time lies a dramatic uptick in the autoimmune problems. One of the theories that’s getting more and more traction is that those infections help regulate and mature our immune cells so they are not attacking self, and that perhaps these parasites have more of a symbiotic relationship than we appreciate. Now those answers aren’t fully in yet, so we don’t know.

I think we’re having a huge experiment what the long-term consequence of vaccinations [inaudible 00:51:09] our children aren’t getting these viral infections, the antibiotics, they aren’t getting the bacterial infections, what is the long-term consequence in 30, 40, 50 years? It’s not quite so clear what the health risks are. It could be that we’re saving a few lives by using vaccines and antibiotics, and I don’t argue that, but we may be increasing the burden of chronic disease as a result. Then you have a public health policy, lost a few lives versus the chronic poor outcome, lost the quality of life, and health care expenditures, productivity, et cetera. These will be debates that we’ll look back at at 100, 200 years. They’ll have a very interesting perspective on the wisdom of those vaccines. [inaudible 00:52:12], we may decide that it was not such a good thing. Who knows?

Dave:
It’s really a tough thing as a parent of young kids. My wife, a trained physician from Sweden, they have an entirely different protocol and timing for how often and what vaccines you give to a child versus in the US where it’s like you just pump it all in pretty quickly as soon as they’re born. Those differences seem to have a huge effect and it’s just not that well studied on either side. It’s concerning for sure.

Terry:
I think it’s concerning. Another area that’s not well studied … You have the killed virus attenuated so it’s not going to cause infection, and then you add an adjuvant so you get more of an immune response. We don’t have a lot of studies to guide us how many doses of adjuvant can you give at one time in one day safely and what are the health consequences of all those adjuvants. I think there are a number of unknowns. The other question I would ask is how many of these vaccines are lifesaving? I don’t really know. I’ll freely admit that the vaccine question is outside of my area of expertise, but as the hygiene hypothesis is gaining more and more ground as one of the contributing factors for autoimmunity, it gives me a great deal of pause.

Dave:
My kids play outside in the dirt 2 hours a day, and sometimes they wash their hands, so let’s hope …

Terry:
Don’t let them [wash them 00:53:50] too often. [Crosstalk 00:53:52].

Dave:
Exactly. Let’s hope it’s the right thing, and let’s hope it was the right dirt. Who knows? All right. I have a couple more questions for you if you have time.

Terry:
Please.

Dave:
All right. 2 other things for mitochondrial function because everyone benefits from better mitochondria. There isn’t a downside to having highly functioning mitochondria. Number one, electrical stimulation. How does that improve mitochondrial function? Because you’re one of the few people who talks about using it besides me.

Terry:
Well, the electrical stimulation, for the other listeners who may not know about it, it’s done through the skin. We use cutaneous pads that get applied to the muscle. You find the motor point which is over the nerve going to the muscle. You have a battery-operated device, usually handheld. You turn up the current, and the current flows through, causes a muscle contraction. You do a volitional contraction at the same time. By working the muscle more vigorously, the muscle will end up adding more mitochondria per cell and the mitochondria will be more efficient. There’ll be less oxidative stress. You also have more nerve growth, more insulin-like growth factor and nerve growth factor locally at the muscle to help you get larger, healthier, and more bigger muscle cells.

Dave:
Is that going to increase your IQ, too, because you’re getting that effective exercise?

Terry:
It might. We don’t have any lab studies to confirm that, so that would simply be speculation, but the potential mechanism is there, yes.

Dave:
What an amazing answer. I feel like there might be something there, but I have no idea. I was hoping you would say, “Oh, there’s 15 studies,” but, all right, so maybe.

Terry:
Maybe.

Dave:
The other question is around our good friend MCT oil. What is its role in mitochondrial function?

Terry:
The mitochondria can utilize sugar, amino acids, and fats to generate energy in the Krebs cycle. The MCT oil in the liver will be converted to ketone bodies such as hydroxybutyrate which can enter past the the blood-brain barrier, go up to the brain, and enter the Krebs cycle and generate energy very, very effectively and efficiently. The ketone bodies are great stimulators of nerve growth factor, and so they are fabulous, fabulous fuel for the brain. The other beauty of MCT oil, it cannot get converted into fat as in your fat cells. It’s only going to be burned as fuel in your mitochondria. It’s terrific stuff.

Dave:
That is one of the many reasons that it’s there in Bulletproof coffee, and, man, I feel the difference versus no MCT oil. It’s something that I travel around the world with in a little bottle. You saw me pour it on my asparagus I think the last time we had lunch together just because it matters.

Terry:
Another beauty of MCT oil … I like to be in ketosis. I feel better and more energetic in ketosis. By using MCT oil to maintain that ketosis, it lets me get more carbs in my day, which lets me have a nutrient-dense diet that has all the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. If you do ketosis without MCT oil, you have to reduce your carbs to about 20 grams, and at that level, you’re going to develop Vitamin C deficiency, Vitamin K deficiency. You can probably maintain your Vitamin A with liver. You won’t have enough with the phytonutrients. You eventually are going to start running to chronic disease because of nutrient deficiency, but with MCT oil, we have a buffer, so we can get the best of both worlds.

Dave:
That is an elegant way of expressing it. What about just eating coconut oil?

Terry:
Coconut oil, I love to cook with it. That’s another fine option. The MCT oil taste is a little easier for some folks. They don’t care for the taste of coconut oil. It’s just another very nice option.

Dave:
Got it, and there’s that difference in the percentage of MCT in coconut oil about lauric acid versus the shorter chain.

Terry:
Yes.

Dave:
Awesome. We are down to our final question, one you’ve answered before, but one that I’ll ask you again because usually, people come up with different answers. What are your top 3 recommendations for people who just want to perform better at whatever it is they do? It doesn’t have to come from MS or anything medical or not. Just your top 3 most important things. What matters?

Terry:
Well, you want to take out the foods that are at highest risk for food sensitivities. From my perspective, that’s gluten, diary, and eggs. That’s Step Number 1. Step Number 2, I want you to get more vegetables in. I do the green sulfur color. Then Step 3 is you have to have good, high-quality protein. Those are the first guidelines I lay out.

Dave:
I recommend that everyone check out your book. You have an amazing background and an amazing story. Your book is well written. If you haven’t seen your TED Talk, if you haven’t seen Terry’s TED Talk, you should see it. It’s quite amazing. We’ll put links to your book, we’ll put links to the TED Talk, but tell everyone the title of your book, give everyone your URL, and just how they can find you.

Terry:
Sure. The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine. My website is TerryWahls.com. That’s T-E-R-R-Y-W-A-H-L-S.com. I invite all those just to go to the website, download the free materials that we mentioned in the book. There’s a terrific recipe guide and some information on toxins. Follow me on Twitter at TerryWahls. Follow me on Facebook, Terry Wahls MD.

Dave:
Terry, thanks for being on the show again. I’m always pleased to get a chance to support your work and to let people know that you’ve got a new book out. What you’re doing is important and I really, really appreciate it, so thanks for being on the show.

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