Change Your Brain Every Day - Hack Your Biology to Uncover Your Potential – Part 1 of an Interview with Dave Asprey

Episode Date: April 4, 2017

Dave Asprey is a Silicon Valley investor and technology entrepreneur, the creator of Bulletproof Coffee, a New York Times bestselling author, and host of the top rated health podcast, Bulletproof Radio. In this episode of the Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dave talks with Daniel and Tana about how fixing a “hardware problem” led to finishing business school and setting out on a new path to success.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics. Amen Clinics represents a true paradigm shift in mental health, utilizing SPECT imaging technology for assessing brain function. Amen Clinics focuses on personalized treatment plans and has an 85% proven outcome rate for patients. For more information, visit amenclinics.com or call at 1-888-288-9834. Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond and welcome to the Brain Warriors Way hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health

is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I am here with Tana and we are here with our good friend, Dave Asprey. Thank you for being with us. We're so excited. Dave is the founder and CEO of Bulletproof, the world's first human performance and nutrition company.

He's also the creator of Bulletproof Coffee, the host of the number one health podcast, Bulletproof Radio, a Silicon Valley investor and technology entrepreneur who spent two decades and over $1 million to hack his own biology. Amen Clinics was actually part of that. Dave created Bulletproof Coffee and the Bulletproof Diet out of a sense of self-preservation. For much of his life, Dave was overweight and struggled with multiple autoimmune diseases and cognitive decline.

After decades of dieting and calorie counting, Dave switched strategies, applying tools and tactics from the worlds of human physiology, nutrition, and burgeoning technologies. With a new understanding of human biology, Dave hacked his health to lose 100 pounds, increase his IQ, and lower his biological age. Dave has a new book called Headstrong, which I've already read and endorsed. I think it's awesome. And he is going to be with us this week where we're going to talk about his biohacking journey. We're also going to talk about the brain and business. We're going to talk about the mitochondria and much more. So welcome, Dave. Yeah, welcome. So exciting to have you with us.

Thank you. It's a pleasure and an honor. When I was really struggling with my brain, back when I weighed closer to 300 pounds versus 100 pounds of fat that I've lost. I was really kind of desperate. I was just about failing out of Wharton, my business school. And I got a spec scan done after reading, I believe it was your first book. This is going back like 15 years or something. And man, it absolutely set me on a different path. So to be able to be on your show here a number of years later, it's an honor. And I really appreciate your work. Oh, it's so awesome. Well, thank you so much. And as I always say, if you don't look at the brain, you don't know. And you can come up with all sorts of interesting theories about why you're not doing well. So you read Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and then you got a spec scan.

What was that like for you? I was already taking some nootropics back then, and I'd already been really working hard. I'd lost a bunch of the weight that I needed to lose. But I was really struggling, and I was concerned that I might not be able to hang in business school. And I started telling myself, well, I'm working full time. This is an executive program. I'm in here with a lot of these smart people. It's a top school. And maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am. Maybe I'm just not going to make it. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. And I was actually kind of feeling a little bit stupid. And some of that's self-confidence related, but some of it's because

my test scores were crappy. And when I went in and I sat down with a psychiatrist, I didn't have a chance to, I went with someone who trained with you, who was certified by you, but I hadn't met you yet. And it was pretty clear that he thought I was hitting him up for Adderall, which a lot of business students will do. A lot of college students are trying to take this as a performance enhancer, even though it's not an appropriate use of that drug. And when I came back after I got the injection in the arm and did the scan, he looked at my brain scan and he said, Dave, you have the best camouflage of anyone I've ever met. Inside your brain is total chaos. I don't even know how you're standing here in front of me. And the conversation shifted. I was an interesting referral, according to the

Silicon Valley brain imaging guys. And this was scary on one hand, but on the other hand, I got to tell you, Dan, it was absolutely liberating because I'm a computer hacker by training. The first guy to sell anything over the internet, it was a t-shirt that said caffeine, my drug of choice. It was me, like the first e-commerce product ever, like I'm a computer hacker by training. The first guy to sell anything over the internet, it was a t-shirt that said, caffeine, my drug of choice. It was me, like the first e-commerce product ever. Like I'm a geek. And that minute when I heard that, I was like, literally, I almost had like a tear in my eye.

I'm like, finally, someone believes me because the doctors didn't believe that. I'm like, no, someone's not right in there. And then it went from being like, oh, it's just, it's not that I'm not trying. It was like, oh, I have a hardware problem. It's like, like if you're writing code on your computer trying to fix it, but the processor is not getting enough power, well, what do you think is going to happen?

And that's what it was for me. It shifted from moral failing to basically a hackable problem. And that's informed a lot of my work, which is that we have way more control over our biology. And then our consciousness, our thinking, our thoughts, our emotions, everything, they are emergent properties that come out of our energy production in the body. You don't make enough energy, you won't have enough energy to regulate your emotions. You don't make enough energy, you won't have enough willpower. And that was what inspired me to write Headstrong was just how do you manage

that energy that powers the brain first and foremost that's awesome that's actually a really good way to describe it too um the hardware if your processor is not working right i really like that um that was a really good description that when people come in here they have that we notice they have that same feeling of relief and so i like the way you said that that's why i got hooked on imaging because almost immediately people lost their shame they lost their guilt and they went oh it's medical not moral and they became more compliant with what i asked them to do so i love that part um we are because i know part of the story is mold exposure and that's what caused some of the the damage we're going to do a whole podcast on mold dave actually produced fabulous movie called

moldy that i think everybody should watch because it's an epidemic problem that very few people actually know about or take serious before we go though i mean i just at least have to know so things got better at school we're just starting so i want to know you can't leave me hanging the big biohacking lessons and then of course uh for tana's sake tell her the rest of the story here her the rest of the story. Here's the rest of the story. I found out that when I was working to pay attention, that there was just about no metabolic activity in my prefrontal cortex. So what would happen is I would sit down to take a test. And the first question, I get 100%.

Second question, I get like 60%. Third question, 20%. And after that, I couldn't even write. Like it was a linear decline. And like, what is going on here? And I just, I felt dumb, really dumb. And then when I'm like, oh, no wonder there's like no blood flow in my prefrontal cortex when I work to pay attention. That explains it. And all of a sudden it wasn't that I was dumb. So they have a name for the guy who graduates at the very bottom of medical school, like the very lowest grade. Right. And you know what that is, right?

Doctor. Doctor, right? Well, same thing in business school. So MBA. So I wasn't, I probably wasn't at the very bottom of my class. We'll say I wasn't near the top, but I wasn't, my goal wasn't being at the top. My goal was to get an MBA and learn what I wanted to learn and ignore everything I didn't care about and still pass because that was more effective and more efficient, even though that probably irritated some of my finance professors. Sorry, guys. And so I did graduate. And what was really touching is I got a chance to meet, this was probably eight, nine years after this had really changed my life. I had a chance to meet Daniel at Joe Polish's Genius Network Conference.

And I just went up and said, wow, I get to shake your hand and say thank you because you have no idea how much you've changed my life. Like a lot of my biohacking journey came about from switching this from being like I need more cognitive enhancers, I just need more willpower, to oh no, I need to fix the hardware and then I'll work on the willpower. Then I'll work on the voice in my head and work on dealing with past trauma and all that stuff. And it was interesting because when you actually saw my real brain scans, I remember you said,

Dave, if I saw your brain, I didn't know who you were. I would think that you were living under a bridge doing drugs. I was like, wow, OK, I felt like I was. So I did graduate and I was working at a startup that. I felt like I was. That's so funny. I did graduate, and I was working at a startup that ended up selling for $600 million. I was working full-time while getting my MBA. That's awesome. I was succeeding.

The point here, everyone listening to this, if you did a spec scan right now, I guarantee you, well, actually, you guys know, but the vast majority of people do not have super healthy looking brains. They're still good people. They're still performing well. Like they're still doing good things, but they're not everything they could be. And that's what I want to get to come through here. Even in Headstrong, the idea is the subtitle the bulletproof plan to activate untapped brain energy the thing is it's always there but you don't know it's there because you never tapped into it it's

sort of like you know if you're you're living on a property with an oil well that could be in the backyard but isn't and one day like oh there's some oil then all of a sudden you have limitless energy and and flowing in your backyard but you just don't know and i think it's there for everyone and some people have a huge amount and some people just have, oh, 20, 30% more energy, but like what else is more precious than that? I actually love that you said that. Cause when I met Daniel, I didn't believe in ADD. I thought like it was a religion or something. I was like, it's nonsense. It's an excuse for people to fail. It's an excuse to not try. I did not believe in it at all. I thought you just needed to work harder, try harder.

And when my family got scanned, I'm like, oh my God, this explains my entire life. So all the chaos, trauma, trauma. But it did the exact same thing that you just said. What I love about what you just said was I was actually succeeding. I just didn't realize how hard I was having to work to do it. I didn't even know how hard I was having to work until after we got it straightened out. Then I'm like, oh my gosh, I never knew I could be so much more, you know, or I didn't have to work as hard at it. Well, and there's a mantra that we all repeat. It's like, it's like try harder. And

here's the thing. When you get your brain working all the way the try harder goes away and you just do it and it feels effortless like the amount of struggle in my life has gone down by 90 and the amount of big things i can do that like help a lot of people has gone up dramatically right and it's because of of getting that out of the way because every time you try you're burning mitochondrial energy like you're actually taking energy that could have gone to doing something just to try to do something. And it's because there's internal resistance. And a lot of that internal resistance isn't thought patterns. It's actually energy that underlies the thought patterns.

And that energy is a known system, at least mostly known. And it's hackable. So it's like you can take your car and it's kind of slow. And you take it into the race car mechanic and they bolt a couple things on change the fuel and all of a sudden you have a car that's twice as fast right i love that that's actually great it's a great description so what dave described uh in looking at his scan when we do a concentration scan, we actually have them doing a task. And in, quote, healthy brains, not normal, because normal's not common, his brain started to turn off when he started to concentrate rather than turn on. And it's that deactivation that occurs in people who have ADD

that begins to explain their whole life because the harder they try, the worse it gets. The chaos, the drama, the craving caffeine, yeah, all of that. And there's a lot of negative mind stuff around that deactivation pattern. And when you turn it back on, we'll talk about that coming up, it can just make a radical difference. just fixing that one thing caused my children from going to people that i hated trying to manage to oh aren't they cute right it's amazing just amazing how it changed changed her life and grateful that it changed your life dave did want to, just one complaint. I lost some muscle mass in one part of my body as a result of this.

The muscles in my middle finger totally got atrophied after this. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. You are a man after my own heart. That's hilarious. Forethought will do that. Forethought will do that. That's great.

Dave Asprey's new book is called Headstrong. It's available for pre-order. The website, Dave, is? Orderheadstrong.com. Orderheadstrong.com. The flagship Bulletproof coffee shop is now open in Santa Monica. There's a second location in downtown Los Angeles coming soon. I just have to say one thing about Bulletproof Coffee.

So I really love Bulletproof Coffee. It was such a great idea. But you guys sponsored one of our events. And of course, you hire the best people. They were amazing. And everyone at our event just absolutely loved them. They were just adorable. But I love it because it's not too much caffeine and it's loaded with these with this great stuff you know the mct oils and it's just in

the short chain fatty acids and it's it tastes great it's like the perfect amount of coffee and it's just delicious and it's not going to it's not this like you know venti size thing that's gonna just amp you up like crazy it's it's just the right amount and it's really yummy. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk about amping your brain by strengthening your mitochondria. Stay with us. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond,

and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode. you