Change Your Brain Every Day - Proven Tips to Keep Your Brain & Body Young, with Dave Asprey

Episode Date: January 2, 2020

In the fourth and final episode of a series with author and biohacking pioneer Dave Asprey, he and the Amens give you practical tips using proven science to slow down or even reverse the aging process. Use these tips to transform your mind and body to achieve the superhuman version of you.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are still with our friend Dave Asprey, the founder and CEO of Bulletproof 360. And we're having such a great time talking about your book,

Superhuman. I'm learning so much. And you're talking about, you're speaking my language with a lot of things. I've taken a lot of my training at the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. So we're talking about anti-aging. And in the last episode, we ended talking about peptide therapy. And I started to ask, compare that to growth hormone, which a lot of anti-aging doctors dabble in. Okay. With, for anti-aging, not in doses for athletic performance, but in very small doses to help people with muscle tone and things like this to age backwards. But there is controversy

with growth hormone because for some people, their blood sugar goes very high. For some people, or if they are prone to cancer, there is a theory and there's not proven yet, but that they might develop cancer faster. Um, but with peptides, I haven't heard any of that. So I'm curious that I know a lot of people are switching to peptide if they're concerned about that. And I have not tried it, but I have heard a lot of things with the injections. I haven't heard much about the, um, with the, um, supplements. So have you seen that used for anti-aging in that way, like to replace growth hormone? Absolutely. There are several peptides that release growth hormone, like growth hormone releasing peptides. Right.

Okay. The obvious one. So what it is, is like a precursor, correct? It's not really a precursor to it. What it does, it's a signal to the body to release more. Okay. And if your hippocampus is working right, it ought to all work. But a lot of people have problems with their HPA.

So if they've had a brain injury or whatever. Access. And so something doesn't work right. In my case, I actually was down to almost no growth hormone production naturally so i did the really advanced tests and they're like dave you're a candidate for growth hormone replacement so i did growth hormone for about three years at biological normal levels and then i did some more work on myself and other peptides and all the stuff that's in superhuman. And I went off growth

hormone and lo and behold, my body makes growth hormone on its own again. And it didn't before, which is really cool. Normally they say, when you go on it, you can't go off. I would say that's not true because I did it. And what you can do though, is you can take these things if you need them. But one of the underlying parts of superhuman, anytime you cause cells to grow faster, and it's not just growth hormone. It's any treatment you can do that causes regeneration will, by definition, increase your cancer risk. Everyone listening right now has cancer in their body at this very second.

It's okay. You also have natural killer cells in your body whose job it is to kill these precancerous cells before anything happens. It's the state of being alive, and kids have more of those things, right? But they're growing and their immune systems are really healthy. So part of the strategy in superhuman is, hey, if you're going to do some stuff that makes you regenerate, you should also do stuff that makes your mitochondria stronger because when you strengthen mitochondria, then your risk of cancer goes down because most cancer is mitochondrial

in origin. Since low mitochondrial function, low ability to turn food and air into energy, it's correlated with diabetes, which is one of the big four killers I write about in the book. Diabetes is a precursor to Alzheimer's, it's a precursor to cancer, and it's a precursor to heart disease. If you start solving your energy production problem and you regenerate at the same time, you regenerate better and you counter any risk of cancer that would happen there. So part of the strategy is you got to be good at turning air and food into energy before you do anything to be healthier because that alone is the first step. So we only have a few minutes left. Give us your top tips. What are things the brain warriors can do today to

age backwards and become superhuman? So when I ask you that, what are the first couple of things that come to mind? And what can I take away and do quickly? All right. I totally want to talk about stem cells, but you can't really do those quickly. And there's a whole chapter on that. So let's set that aside. We talked about sleep in the last segment of this. And one of the things you could do today that is very easy to do is go in your bedroom and unplug anything that has a light on it. I don't care if it's your alarm clock. I don't care if it's a little LED charging station, unplug it and then look at your curtains if light comes in from around your curtains you have a 68 increased risk of depression at least a study of 900 humans in japan showed that just from street lights coming around the curtains so get blackout curtains

and velcro the sides down if you need to double-sided velcro tape or for tonight hang a blanket over your thing black out your room and see how much better you sleep when you wake up in the morning wow i had better dreams or i just feel rested i'm not stiff there you go you started your anti-aging program your growth hormone is higher your testosterone is higher your hormones are healthier your brain will work better and literally that was all you had to do but if you woke up in the night to pee and you flipped on that bright led bathroom light you did it wrong so keep the lights off when you do it that first night. I like that.

The second thing, stop having sugar and carbs for breakfast. It is the wrong time of day for you. If you're going to have carbs, don't have sugar and have your carbs for dinner and stop eating fried stuff. I'm going to plug Bulletproof Coffee here. If you want to have a really good day and you haven't tried it as a brain warrior, I know you guys talk about it sometimes and I'm grateful for that. It has changed my life. It has changed millions of people's lives. Almost 200 million cups of Bulletproof Coffee served and you have that for breakfast. When you do that, you will

not experience hunger, but the oil that's in there can provide extra energy to your brain. You're like, well, I woke up. I had more energy and less hunger than normal. I did have a moderate amount of carbohydrates at dinner. I had my sweet chips. I had some rice that can help my sleep. And then I turned off the lights at night and I made sure my bedroom was like a cave. And I woke up the next morning.

And if you do that, you will actually age less quickly than all your friends. I love that. And I'm going to give you one little plug on the Bulletproof coffee because when I would go to the gym, I'd go early in the morning and didn't have time to make breakfast.

So I would take the Bulletproof coffee, which alone probably would have been enough. But because I needed a quick boost, I would drop a scoop of my protein powder in there, blend it all up and go. It tastes like a mocha. It was great. It works just fine to do that. And we even make a cold brew now. So you can actually take the cold brew, pour it in your blender.

There's one with collagen in it. The deal is it should be convenient. It should be fast. If you do this, coffee itself is now an anti-aging substance as far as I know. As long as it's clean coffee, right? Well, and most of it is not clean. It needs to be clean coffee. That's one of the reasons we like Bulletproof.

Thank you for mentioning that. Bulletproof Coffee is lab tested. We create the green coffee differently than other companies because a lot of coffee does have a toxin in it that contributes to inflammation especially attacking the kidneys and bladder yeah we prevent the formation of that and test for it and it's a big differentiator i'm afraid of normal coffee even though it tastes good yeah even though it tastes And also, many coffees have mold in them. And so you have to really be careful with that. Other tips?

Other tips that are really useful, and we've all heard this, you should exercise. But I also know that 8% of people actually exercise as much as the government tells them to. Good luck with that helping you because the government also tells you 16 servings of bread a day or something. Right. That advice probably will. They give you the very minimum at best. The science is really straightforward. Move for 20 minutes a day. Go for a walk.

That's the minimum necessary thing. And once a week, lift something heavy or run really fast for a minute or two. And if you do that, you're on a pretty good anti-aging regimen you can do more if you like to do that but that's what it's going to take from two different sets of studies to keep the mitochondria those power production plants in your body working really well yeah so if you get quality sleep you move doesn't have to be that much more moving is better but you don't have to do an hour a day of hard cardio that's not necessary that's probably not even going to

make you age in a healthy way but if you love it do it a couple times a week that's fine but it's it's it's stress recover stress recover you do those things and then you can get into hormone replacement you get into the true dark glasses you get into all those other things. But if you just move, sleep, don't eat fried stuff, don't eat the grains, don't eat sugar, you're going to be amazed at the difference. And those are the first things you do to live a long time. Then I would also add, and you do this in the book as well, floss. Because if your gums are not healthy, your brain is not healthy. In many ways, your eyes are the window to the soul, but your gums are the window to heart disease. Yeah, we spent, as a society, probably 15 years really focused on the benefits of nutrition, and it was really important. But what's really interesting is a lot of the new research coming out, especially for heart health, they're finding that exercise and movement, because we're such a sedentary community, society, is those studies are actually turning out to be

more impressive than the nutrition studies, which is wild. Yeah, but my clinical experience is get your diet right first, because I think that's about 80% of it, and then move, right? I mean, the more you move, the more you can move. Dave, it is just such a joy to see you again, my friend. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your work. The book is superhuman.

New York Times bestseller. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it anywhere. Books are sold. You can learn more about Dave's work at daveasprey.com. I know you're a brain warrior. I'm actually so proud of you that you're just serious about taking care of yourself, your brain, your body, which will help your wife, which will help your children. And now you've just literally helped millions of people.

What I love is that you've taken something that started personal and you have made it your mission to help others. And that's really important. And I think that's the best way for people to start. And your way of eating, your diet, if you will will i hate the word diet but your diet bulletproof diet is totally on target with what we you know we approve and your recommendations are so solid and just true true debt of gratitude i wouldn't be doing what i do today i wouldn't be here the way i am today if it wasn't for your continuous push to look at the brain for the science of it. And I know you, you took a lot of arrows, especially the very beginning when you stood up and you disrupted the way we thought about the brain and you've been proven right over and over. And if you had not written your first book, I truly don't think I'd be wearing today. So thank you. And thanks for

having me on your show. You're welcome. Thanks, my friend. Thanks, Dave. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.