Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - This Is Why You’re Tired, Stressed, and Not Healing | Biohacker, Dave Asprey

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

What would change if you stopped trying to push through fatigue — and instead learned what your biology is trying to tell you?On today’s episode of Finding Mastery, we sit down with entre...preneur, author, and biohacking pioneer Dave Asprey — founder of Bulletproof, Upgrade Labs, and widely regarded as the father of the modern biohacking movement. This is Dave’s second time on the podcast, and it’s a nuanced exploration of what it means to live with vitality and consciousness in a world obsessed with optimization.In this episode, Dr. Mike and Dave dig into the science and philosophy behind performance, recovery, and emotional regulation — from neurofeedback and cold exposure to trauma, forgiveness, and redefining what “health” actually feels like. Dave opens up about losing his company, being publicly criticized, and the deep internal work required to find strength and gratitude again. You’ll learn:Why “listening to your biology” may be more effective than pushing through fatigue.How Dave used neurofeedback and meditation to recover from collapse and betrayal.The link between emotional regulation, energy, and mitochondrial health.How to think critically about longevity practices — from fasting to peptides.Why darkness, stillness, and sunlight are as vital as any supplement.The conversation bridges biology and self-awareness — asking whether efficiency can coexist with depth, and what mastery really looks like when you align your body, mind, and purpose.Quick note from the Finding Mastery team: The views expressed are the guest’s own and do not reflect those of Dr. Mike Gervais or Finding Mastery. This conversation is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not medical advice. Please consult a licensed professional for questions on your own health. Thank you and enjoy the episode.Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our Youtube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindset Follow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. One of the core ideas we come back to again and again here is alignment, bringing the right people into the right roles at the right time so your culture can grow with clarity. And if you've ever hired for your business, you know how challenging it is to find someone who's not only skilled, but also the right fit. That's why I'm excited about what LinkedIn Jobs is doing right now. Their new AI assistant is designed to help you hire with more confidence. Surfacing strong candidates, you might not find out.
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Starting point is 00:01:39 We've made a practice lately of eating all sorts of weird plants that are higher in toxins, and we ignore the toxins, and we talk about the fact that they contain one beneficial thing. Spinach, kale, and we knew all about this until about 1950, and then we just stopped talking about it. what would change if you stop trying to push through fatigue, and instead you learned what your biology is trying to tell you. What's weird is we have this obsession with measuring cholesterol and blood because it was the easiest to measure in the 1930s. The people who live the longest, the supercentenarians, they have higher than average cholesterol. That's weird. And half of people with heart attacks don't have high cholesterol. That's weird. Welcome back. Or welcome to
Starting point is 00:02:19 the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. The idea behind these conversations is simple. It's to sit with the extraordinaries and to learn how they work from the inside out. Today's conversation is with Dave Asprey, entrepreneur, four-time New York Times bestselling author, and widely regarded as the father of the modern biohacking movement. For those of you have listened or watched for a while, you know that I have an issue with the term biohacking. Yet, anyone who's able to be disruptive enough to create a category? That's interesting to me.
Starting point is 00:02:56 Most people think their emotions are in their brain. They're not. They're in the body. Your mitochondria are pre-processors of reality. I understand the line of thinking that they can respond to the environment because, like, feel heat. They can move away. I just don't know if I want to call that consciousness. So are fish conscious? I don't know. Every fish I've interviewed, they don't have much to say. You should interview the right fish. Dave was a 300-pound, exhausted cognitively foggy entrepreneur. in his 20s, and he was being told by his doctors that everything was, quote, unquote, fine. His lived experience said otherwise.
Starting point is 00:03:30 I've gone to the gym 90 minutes a day, six days a week for 18 months straight, and I'm still 300 pounds. That's what inspired me to say, I'm not going to do what works. And the results have been profound. We talk out the origins of biohacking, how Dave pulled himself out of physical and emotional collapse and the philosophies that guide his approach to health. A study in Japan of 800 people show that So if you want to live a long time
Starting point is 00:03:57 So with that Let's jump into this week's conversation With Dave Asprey The views expressed are the guests' own And do not reflect those of Dr. Mike Javei Or Finding Mastery. This conversation is for informational and entertainment purposes only
Starting point is 00:04:15 And is not medical advice. Please consult a licensed professional For questions on your own health. you and enjoy the episode. Dave, it's great to see you again. Mike, what a pleasure. Yeah. So I think people might be like saying, okay, what is Mike and Dave, you know, have in common here? Because I talk about there are no hacks to the path of mastery. And you're the inventor, the founder, the father of biohacking. And so welcome to the podcast. I don't know why you'd say something like that, Mike. Yeah, good. I don't know why you would say something like that either. So
Starting point is 00:04:51 we're going to start up on the right way here. Yeah, I think that I've been uninterested in shortcuts and you have been deeply invested in what you would probably call the fastest route to a change. It's so interesting because in business, people who say that they want to work hard, they buy less effective ads so that they can work harder. What does that mean? Well, if you run a business, you're all about efficiency. You spend a dollar, you get the most value you can for it. But you're saying that you prefer to work hard. So you'd rather spend $2 to get the same results as someone who spends $1. Or you like the fastest path. I know which one is it. Yeah, that's good. I like what you're doing. I would not subscribe to that either or,
Starting point is 00:05:38 you know, logic step there. I think that what I've come to learn is that you've put a lot of time under attention to really know yourself. Yes. Yes. To understand. understand the contours of mastery just takes time. And I think my response is definitely, I get a rash thinking about, you know, foot massage at 10 and avocado toast at 9 o'clock. Yeah. But I am not ascribing to the hustle hard mentality. That I think is fundamentally flawed.
Starting point is 00:06:09 Very much so. Oh, you're in agreement there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Maybe just start in the back, start, rewind just a little bit. Why hacking? Why biohacking? Why did you start kind of down this path?
Starting point is 00:06:20 What was the thing you were looking for? Well, I used to weigh 300 pounds. I also had fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue in my mid-20s, but I was working in Silicon Valley at the company that built the first data centers. When Google was two guys and two computers, they came to us, and we scaled their first round of infrastructure. So careers taking off, brain is heading south. And my body hurt all the time.
Starting point is 00:06:46 I was so tired. I couldn't remember anything to the point that I bought disability insurance when I was 26 years old. I don't know what's wrong. The doctors say I'm fine and maybe I should lose some weight. But I've gone to the gym 90 minutes a day, six days a week for 18 months straight, and I'm still 300 pounds, and I still have a 46-inch waist. So this feeling of like being in a car and you press the accelerator all the way to the floor and it's still slowing down.
Starting point is 00:07:15 but you can't push any harder there's no push left so that's what inspired me to say i'm only going to do what works i'm going to measure what works including for mastery mastery mastery of my own inner state master of my biological state and i'm going to do whatever is necessary in order for me to feel the way i want to show up in the world the way i want and the results have been profound but it comes from looking for efficiency and one of the things that's made the biggest difference for me is hooking a computer up to my brain so the traditional path is sit in a cave for 20 years or meditate for an hour a day for 40 years and then you'll get there well i can do the brain state that you get after 40 years reliably if you can meet five days with you hooked up to my
Starting point is 00:08:08 computer systems so is that a hack or Or is it just a better way of training? Yeah. The reason I want to have the conversation with you is because you have spent the last 20 years investigating and understanding best practices when it comes to efficiencies for change. Yeah. And so the thing that I get nervous about with a biohacking phrase or the industry that you kicked off here, which is a big industry now.
Starting point is 00:08:32 $36 billion, a criminalist. Yeah. Who never thought, right? So I have a lot of respect for the position that you have. not the position you've taken, but how you've influenced so many people. Thank you. And I have a lot of respect that you've had, you've had the shit kicked out of you publicly.
Starting point is 00:08:50 Oh, sure. Yeah. It's part of the game. And I have a, well, you know, that's nasty. And I have a lot of respect on anyone that's gone through that. Yeah. So there's a couple of things I want to learn from you there. Okay, go back to the point, though, is that the idea about studying the brain and figuring out
Starting point is 00:09:10 best practices, I think you're on to something really important. You and I have a similarity in that 18 years ago. I was a founder of a tech company that was doing mobile QEEG. Cool. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And so a long time ago. We got to a seven sensor mobile headset. But I think the management and the funding, we got the business application wrong the technology was pretty good and we're just a little too early that was very early even now there's an explosion in companies making sensors for the brain and i've been doing this actually for 25 years since i bought my first eG machine and i'm really excited because it's not just the ability to know what's going on in there it's the ability to learn quickly how to control what's going on in there and some
Starting point is 00:10:07 people say well why would you want to control well so that you don't yell at people you love that would be one reason and so that you don't have a mean voice in your head sabotaging you and i've had the chance to do neurofeedback with top athletes and top CEOs and people doing really powerful things in the world and there are many altered states available to us we just don't know how to get there I imagine if you walk in the cockpit of a big jet, there's buttons and knobs and dials and levers and gauges everywhere. And if you're a pilot, you know what they all do. Well, we don't even know where the gauges are in our own consciousness.
Starting point is 00:10:48 But with tech or with advanced meditation and a lot of determination and time, you can learn that they're, oh, that's how I do that. That's how I do that. and I just wanted my own consciousness to be fully instrumented so that I could say, oh, I understand why I got triggered by that. I don't want to do that anymore. So how do I turn off that setting? Man, what a difference.
Starting point is 00:11:11 I don't think I could have gone through all the things that I've been through in business and in life without having those skills. I think I would have broken. I love the feeling that you're sharing this from. Yeah. Because this is not just this intellectual, you know, like, hacking, optimization, I feel the warmth in what you just said, which is you've been through a lot. Oh, absolutely. I've been through a lot. And it's enough that it probably would have broken most
Starting point is 00:11:40 people. And I think had I not had the benefit of knowing how to make enough energy in my brain with my mitochondria, how to manage my health, and then how to manage my mental or even consciousness states to be able to say, all right, I have a way. of where I am now instead of believing all the things my nervous system were telling me that maybe weren't accurate. When you were just describing what you've been through, what was the feeling that I'm feeling? Hmm. Now I just have gratitude for all of it.
Starting point is 00:12:14 But that's not what I felt just 30 seconds ago. No, the things that I went through, you know, I was likely, I had hundreds of millions of dollars of net worth, right? And I had some investors and board members and things like that where we'll say there was a misalignment there. I think I can say that. So it ended up where what would have been an obvious big win for Bulletproof was not a big win. I had to call friends who invested and backed me and say, you know, we all lost our money on this. And that's not a feeling any entrepreneur ever wants.
Starting point is 00:12:52 And so normally that would be like, There's shame. There's anger. There's, like, there's a sense of hopelessness. Like, you know, I did everything right. And in the book that we were just talking about and heavily meditated, my most recent one, it turns out for adults, some of the hardest traumas to deal with are injustice and betrayal. And I had both of those. So, you know, people who are supposed to be, you know, backing you doing something intentionally to harm you or at least to take away things that you've earned. So to deal with those just in a really raw state, that's the sort of stuff that can make you just kind of sit in an angry, bitter victim thing for the rest of your life. And I know
Starting point is 00:13:36 people who are there. And I'm incredibly grateful that one of my companies has the tech that allowed me to literally hook my brain up to a computer when I was really not in a good place and just see what was really going on. When it got dark, how dark did it get for you? It got pretty dark. To go from, you know, I'm set for life to facing possible bankruptcy, that's a pretty big shift to happen in a year or two, especially when, you know, you're hearing one story and you realize that there's another story going on. So, yeah, I mean, that can be, that can be pretty dark. And in that state, was it mostly loneliness or was it sadness? They're related, they're cousins, but they're different.
Starting point is 00:14:25 There's some loneliness because some people who I would, I would have identified as friends who lost money in the deal got really nasty about it. I'm like, really? You know, I lost it all too here. And so that was surprising. So there was some sort of betrayal, some loneliness. And it's one of the things that matters a lot is community. And I'm, I'm super grateful that I spend a lot of time with really successful entrepreneurs.
Starting point is 00:14:58 And I do that on purpose because we share information with each other. And it's hard when you're a CEO, especially if you're a founder CEO. It's lonely anyway, because the people on your team, they're trusted. They're your friends, except you can fire them. So they're your friends, but there's always a little edge where you're the one controlling their income and you can fire them and they can't fire you so there's things you won't tell your team because it wouldn't be good for the team so then you say all right is this somebody you're going to share at home and depending on the nature of the relationship you have maybe maybe not in my
Starting point is 00:15:39 case you know the mother my children and my wife at the time and a really wonderful person she's not a business person and to sit down with these these really complex things. Really, it just created stress for both of us. So having a community of entrepreneurs I could talk with, entrusted friends, thinking like Joe Polish from Genius Network and the amazing community that he's built, there were people who've been very successful and had big failures. So to be able to talk with them was really, really helpful. Just otherwise, it's lonely because no one understands your experience as a founder. to you by Branch Basics.
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Starting point is 00:19:30 things i teach this emotional hierarchy your emotions are like a a russian doll you know those things where you open it up there's another doll inside another doll inside so you can be feeling lonely or any of the so-called negative emotions. And when you peel them away, I wasn't angry, even though I felt angry. It was actually sadness. And then you peel away the sadness. Oh, look, there's fear.
Starting point is 00:19:58 Right? And then you peel away the fear, and then that's what's actually you, which is joy and happiness. And what I've learned through many hours of grappling with this, with the tech, and also they teach the same.
Starting point is 00:20:15 thing in Buddhist monasteries, where I've spent time as well, is that when you get through all this, it's ultimately your ego trying to keep you safe. That's what fear is. And when you realize it's a lie. So now if I'm feeling any of those emotions, I know they ultimately are backed by fear. And then what's the first time that I felt that way? And in one of the cases, there was a very public attempt to sabotage my reputation that was backed by some financial motivations was this around coffee and joe rogan yeah absolutely i'm aware of yeah yeah and i just shared the story and heavily meditated um so that was that was pretty that was pretty surprising so all the sudden you know like one day of dave thanks for changing my life to you know dave you're a liar
Starting point is 00:21:07 and a con artist i'm like wow what changed that was very disregulating for me. So it took me a while to realize I was being reactive. And in fact, it was a member of my team who was a convoy commander in Iraq. So his job was to drive generals past explodey stuff. So he's like, Dave, you're kind of acting weird. And so I said, oh, man, okay. And I sat down and we, especially if you're an executive, you live in your head a lot of the time, right? because you think about things. But all of the things we're talking about are somatic. They're in the body.
Starting point is 00:21:46 So I sat down and was like, what's the first time my body felt this way? Like, is this in my gut? Is this in my chest? And where is it? What is the nature of the feeling? And this experience from first grade popped into my head. And basically, I tattled on another kid for doing something. And then the teacher says, you know, little Johnny, did you do this?
Starting point is 00:22:09 I didn't do it. Dave did it. And I got sent to the principal's office. And I apparently was really enraged. I'd forgotten this experience entirely until it just popped in my head when I did the process of self-inquiry. And I realized, wow, I'm still playing back the anger that I experienced in first grade, even though I'm a grown-ass adult.
Starting point is 00:22:29 And understanding that if I went back and I reassess that situation, that the current situation would just completely resolve. So you've done a ton of self-exempt. discovery work oh yeah i did it with somebody or you did it i've done it with a variety of therapists i've i've undergone shamanic training i've spent time at buddhist monasteries i've gone down to the andes i've worked with like leaders of lineages uh and and i've worked with attack so for me this is in the realm of trans personal psychology a lot of people if you've done advanced breath work like holotropic breathing or Wimhoff's work you feel like I feel like I just did drugs well it neurologically you
Starting point is 00:23:16 kind of did and sometimes these states are more apparent when you're in these altered states so for me once I realized that and I went back and I basically ran a forgiveness process called the reset process in in the book yeah and I just as soon as I realized I let that old thing go instead of thinking, oh, no, what am I going to do, Joe Rogan saying I'm a bad man. It was like, every time Joe Rogan says I'm a bad man, I sell more coffee. That's the reality of it. But I was completely thrown off for about six months by this. Like, it's not fair.
Starting point is 00:23:55 And look, we're adults. Life isn't fair. And if there's some part of you that believes life is fair and that if you don't get treated fairly, you know, you're going to throw a tantrum, which is ultimately what this is about, Well, maybe you should work on that. And so in my case, I was able to work on it. And I have, you know, actually a lot of good things to say about Joe Rogen. I've been to his comedy show.
Starting point is 00:24:19 It was really funny. I might have worn a bulletproof t-shirt because that was funny, too. So you went to a show after? Oh, yeah. You guys had the public? Yeah, we both live in Austin. And so, like, I don't have any bad things to say there. It was a painful but beneficial experience ultimately for me.
Starting point is 00:24:36 Yeah. I mean, most things that we go through. through at some time at some point in our lives when we do the work do give us a stronger foundation some things we go through certainly um if somebody is listening right now that is in the throes of it it does not feel safe it does not feel sturdy yeah but you need to go through that work to get to the other side which is you know I think you're saying it's that I don't think that there's shortcuts I'm not sure you're saying there's a shortcut there are efficient ways oh yeah and QEG tech is a way go back to the dial of the cockpit,
Starting point is 00:25:10 it's a way to understand, like, oh, when I do this thing that I can't quite describe what I'm doing, I can actually downregulate my brain's activity from a high anxious state beta into something that's maybe even alpha-theta. You know, and I'm not, you know how to do it, I know how to do it with time under tension, with the apparatus.
Starting point is 00:25:30 I can't describe what I do. That's the biggest problem. And that's why I'm so into the tech for consciousness. when you say consciousness it means a lot i would love for you to say what you mean by consciousness i want to finish the point though about consciousness because it goes back to the time i spent at copan monastery um outside catmandu and this was early in my consciousness journey and i'm sitting there and i'm probably 30 or so and they're having a sit for two hours and visualize the Buddha for two hours and you have to really carefully imagine like the the seat that he's
Starting point is 00:26:13 sitting in and the number of fingers and incredible amounts of boring detail like why am I doing this and it's because in every lineage whether you look at ancient Hindu things traditional Chinese like ancient meditation practices you look at the Buddhist stuff they're all trying to use words to describe felt states and you look at some of the great writers. And you read their works, the ones that are harder to read. And they're all trying to transmit a state that doesn't have words. And my favorite word as an author is ineffable. And that's the word that means there isn't a word for it. And all the things that we're talking about, there aren't words to describe it. But I can say, stick these things on your head and then
Starting point is 00:27:01 take some breaths and visualize some stuff. And when you hear a tone, you did it right. It's so much faster to teach that way because the traditional way of teaching, I'm sitting there in the monastery, you know, my legs are folded, doing all the things. If I get the state right and there's a really good teacher who can feel my state and good teachers can do that, then they're going to raise their eyebrow. And if I notice they raise their eyebrow, that was my one piece of feedback for the day. And then you're pulled out of it because you're now focusing on a new stimulus. Yes. Yeah, that's the nice part about QEG. And are you using QEG before we go to consciousness? Are you using QEG for a scale motion?
Starting point is 00:27:42 So are you using the 256 kind of gel and the hair cap on or are you using something that is more portable? We use a 20 channel to do our cues. 20, okay. And so when people come to 40 years in, we do a queue on the first day, which means we get a map of your brain that we can compare to a normalized database of other maps.
Starting point is 00:28:04 And that kind of gives us a SWAT analysis of your brain. Ah, so you have a problem with emotional regulation or you have a problem with attention or socialization. There's various things we know. And then we set that aside and you spend three days doing a form of feedback that's not QEG-based. That's more around meditation where we're enhancing certain mathematical patterns in the brain and teaching you visualization to do while you're doing that. So you're gaining skills. And then once you've done that to drop.
Starting point is 00:28:34 Is it a focus or down regulation protocol? It's upregulation mostly. Upregulation for focus? Well, yeah, there's focus is a part of it, but it's also, we're teaching you these nuanced states where we're causing multiple parts of the brain to activate at the same time, but we're using a mathematical equation
Starting point is 00:28:57 that's different than you would normally do. So it's not coherence, it's something different. And I've found over the course of years that that's what generates the large, just transformation in the least amount of time. So after three days of going through and removing every trigger that you've ever been able to identify in your life, so they just don't affect you anymore. Instead of what most of us do, as someone says something wrong in a board meeting,
Starting point is 00:29:22 and then everyone kind of knows it got to you, but you started to smile, put on your game face and pretend like it didn't. But then you've lost congruance. And when someone, when their interstate matches what they're saying and it matches their outer state, we feel authenticity and we feel trust and we know that it's real. But when their outer state says one thing and they're hiding their interstate, then those of us who have that ability, like there's a little suspicion in there, a little lack of trust. So when people have learned this congruency because they've got rid of their triggers, then we go back on the last two days
Starting point is 00:29:57 and we do more training with Q around increasing or decreasing functional networks in the brain based on the desired goals of our client. So you may say, I know I'm really weak here. I want to put all of my energy into filling up a weakness. I'm going to guide you to say, don't worry about the weakness. Hire someone for that unless it's certain things. And then let's focus on the things where you're really strong
Starting point is 00:30:20 and let's make you super powered in those. Yeah, so that would be your tactical approach to helping somebody. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So that's your, if you will, your coaching philosophy. Sure. Finding Master is brought to you by Fatty 15.
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Starting point is 00:31:53 And use the code Finding Mastery to get 15% off your first order. Again, that's fatty15.com. slash finding mastery and the code finding mastery for 15% off a more resilient future finding master is brought to you by remarkable as we head into the holidays i'm reminded of the power of presence the family with ourselves with the work that matters and in a world that's built for distraction staying present is a skill worth cultivating that's one of the reasons i've come to really value remarkable in their paper tablet i love what they're doing the writing experience is incredibly natural it's just like pen on paper, but with the efficiency of digital. You can use it to capture ideas,
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Starting point is 00:33:13 Find the perfect distraction-free paper tablet at remarkable.com. Okay, so in my mind, like the three things I wanted to better understand was the kind of how you can teach and share some best practices from an emotional standpoint, a performance optimization standpoint, and longevity. Those are kind of the three buckets I wanted to hit with you. And when it comes, so we're kind of humming around the emotional stuff, your traumas, your unique experiences, you did a bunch of self-discovery work and you did a bunch of QEG work to understand how to toggle a little bit differently or to move through states more effectively.
Starting point is 00:33:51 Yeah. Correct? And the self-discovery work. You've also done a bunch of psychedelics that I want to get to. But just for a moment, move from the, okay, the reason I want to start with emotions is because emotions run the whole program. They sure do. They run the show.
Starting point is 00:34:06 And then the way we work with our emotions is basically the relationship we have with ourselves, which impacts the relationship with others, mother nature, experience itself, and maybe now machines. So emotions and relationships are foundation. That's why I wanted to start with that. Is there anything else you want to add about emotional regulation, emotional intelligence, emotional working with emotions? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:30 Most people think their emotions are in their brain. They're not. They're in the body. And then it's really funny. I heavily meditated. It's a book about meditation and related technologies for consciousness. But it became the best-selling philosophy book in the country. because this idea there, especially among Buddhist philosophers,
Starting point is 00:34:54 there's an idea in the book that says, your mitochondria are pre-processors of reality and that a lot of emotions are in a distributed system throughout the body. And we can actually prove this in multiple ways. So that means is your body is reacting to the world in real time. And then you get a signal about a third of a second later and then you think about it for the rest of the second. So we're living one second in lag time
Starting point is 00:35:25 compared to what's really happening. So all these emotions that are... This is Conneman's work, low road and high road, if you will. It's related to Connman's work, but Connman... Daniel Connman, sorry. Yeah, yeah, he's been on my show, actually. And what I'm proposing is that it's in the body, in the mitochondria themselves.
Starting point is 00:35:47 They're the frontline sensors of the world. And I read that in your book. I enjoyed the book. Thank you for that. I wanted to ask you about this piece on the mitochondria. I think that this is a new idea to the field. I haven't heard it. I don't know if there's any research.
Starting point is 00:36:02 I didn't. I was like, oh, that's an idea. And I think maybe you're going to go and kind of enlist some help to see if that's accurate or not. But so I like the idea. That's interesting because my mitochondria typically the workhorse of energy. production. We like to think of them that way, but when you look at Martin Paul's work, it's really incredible because they have their own consciousness. They move around inside the
Starting point is 00:36:28 body and all bacteria are conscious and that they are monitoring the environment around them. They don't have a lot of sensors, but they do have some. And then they take action based on what happened in the environment. I get really confused with this position that small little things have consciousness i get really confused here i understand the line of thinking that they can respond to the environment because like they feel heat they can move away i just don't know if i want to call that consciousness there's a i feel like that's something special consciousness so are fish conscious i don't know see every every fish i've interviewed they they don't have much to say you should interview the right fish there's uh see this starts to get really shamanic really quickly yeah and i don't
Starting point is 00:37:14 like doing that. Like I know. And you do a nice job of blending both. I like that you use the word shamanic, which is like another word for woo-woo out there, something. There's the thing that confuses me. So I'm a computer science guy. I didn't believe any of this stuff. I was an atheist when I was young. And having gone and done a lot of these practices and studied not just in practice, but also you read the college textbooks about shamanic practice. And the weird thing, is that shamans in remote parts of Russia have the same structure of shamanic reality as ones in South America. So people who have no connection with each other keep seeing the same things.
Starting point is 00:37:58 And then you look at people in the 60s and 70s who started doing their own work also arrived at the same picture of reality as these. So there's all kinds of, it's all kinds of woo-woo stuff that I'm like, really? I really don't think I had 500,000 past lives with whatever. Like people will say all sorts of stuff. So that said, when I see groups who aren't communicating with each other come up with the same results over and over, I'm starting to smell science here. And so I know that I see the world through my conscious part of my mind in one way. And my body is seeing the world in a very different way.
Starting point is 00:38:40 There's temperature fluctuations and all sorts of stuff that I ignore. that it's accounting for. Which means the very basic definition of consciousness for me would be sensing the world and then making a choice based on that, that seems like that would be the basic thing. The choice is the interesting piece. Yeah, that would be the hinge idea, as opposed to just purely reaction, you know, responding to the element. And that's why I feel like the choice thing is something that's really unique to, I don't know, we'll call it fish, but let's call it primates and, you know, mammals and I don't I don't know like yeah so let's not let's not travel down that path too much
Starting point is 00:39:20 but I do like the idea that that we're bridging the gap between sensory information and consciousness and I think you're you're kind of taking us to from healing emotional kind of wellness and well-being through optimization to longevity is what I want to get to but there you go yeah so consciousness or not you are saying that mitochondria is an important structure in the body and part of this arc that we're talking or this it's not an arc from performance the longevity is not the arc part of this through line is to understand how to be efficient with mitochondria I would argue that if you can make your mitochondria more efficient you'll live longer and you'll also be better emotionally regulated okay run down a list of people that are they do not care about the shaman perspective or this kind of wild world of consciousness, but they, they're like, I get that. Yep. You know, what are some, this is now putting you right in your lane, like, okay,
Starting point is 00:40:22 here's best practices. Well, your mitochondria, they are quantum entangled with each other. Oh, there you go. Hold on. Dude, that is hardcore PhD biology. No, I'm not arguing with that. Okay. I think you and I need some coffee.
Starting point is 00:40:40 I don't drink coffee. I'll do a tea, you do a coffee. and like like we'll go we should detangle this as much as we possibly can totally people start to get their their head starts to go oh come on i don't know if i have a second self in a parallel universe maybe but i just want to live great with my kids i want to argue less with my friends and loved ones and all that so so the reason i say it's important they're quantum entangled is number one we can prove that it's you prove it with proton spin changing simultaneously throughout the body like this is actually how how we make energy in our mitochondria is via a quantum tunneling effect. So we've proven that our bodies at a very base level are interacting in a quantum level. And what does that mean? It doesn't matter because we don't sense that in our normal reality. If you take a lot of LSD, maybe that's what you're sensing.
Starting point is 00:41:32 Who the heck knows? Right. So that said, they're all talking to each other, which is why if you, you know, whack a knee or get an infection, you can have really rapid inflammation and you can have really rapid changes of state and if something happens in one part of the body there's a chemical signal to other parts of the body
Starting point is 00:41:50 but there's a more rapid signal in fact there's four or five signaling mechanisms inside the body and chemicals are just one of them there's magnetism there's vibration there's all sorts of things light light there you go yeah we make light I think once every 20 seconds from our DNA it's so bizarre it's totally crazy so there's stuff that we're not meant to see with our conscious brains because our conscious brains can't handle the world that we live in.
Starting point is 00:42:16 So one of the jobs of the body is to make a user interface on reality that works for us so that we can walk around and not die. And what would happen if you had more fidelity, more pixels, or just more power in that system? And that's why mitochondria is so important. And we look at what happens when you have enough mitochondrial function in your system. your prefrontal cortex, the more rational human part of the brain. Well, emotional regulation improves.
Starting point is 00:42:48 So people have heard of being hangary or hypoglybitchy, maybe. We've all had times where we yell at people we care about. And then why did I do that? Well, you did that because you didn't have enough energy. You didn't have enough training to inhibit the impulse that you felt. Right. And functioning adults have the ability to say, I'm feeling this, but I'm going to take this action anyway.
Starting point is 00:43:13 Well, you're not going to do that if your mitochondria are running at 30% of what they could be because you just don't have enough horsepower to do it. Killers of mitochondria are? Lead, mercury, bright lights at night, lack of sunlight, bad stuff in your water like fluoride, anything that lowers thyroid function, which is a lot of modern so-called healthy foods,
Starting point is 00:43:36 lack of protein, seed oils, which affect the mitochondrial membrane in studies. So bottom line is eat better and expose yourself to a more natural environment that allows your mitochondria to figure out where they are in the time of the day so that they can then put on muscle when they're supposed to. They can turn off inflammation when they're supposed to. They can repair proteins when they're supposed to. And that you still have enough gas in the tank. So at the end of a long day, you got a lot of meetings, you come home, and your kids do something
Starting point is 00:44:09 really dumb, which all two-year-olds do, you don't lose your temper. That requires mitochondria that function really well and don't have a lot of inhibitors. I think a lot of people would say, oh, you're talking about resources. Like if I have the resources to be able to navigate that thing, spilled milk or whatever, then, yeah, I want more of that. Okay. finding mastery is brought to you by ag1 one of the through lines and high performance is consistency finding routines that support your mind and body day in and day out and for me ag1 has been one of
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Starting point is 00:46:58 whatever is next. If you're building something meaningful or dreaming up what's next, I'd encourage you to explore what Square can unlock for you. Head to square.com slash go slash finding mastery to learn more. Again, that's Square, S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash go slash finding mastery. I don't want to let you off the hook on the food piece because I know you have something to say about kale. You know, so, so hit, hit your take on food for just a minute as a resource. And then I also want to go to best practices, whether it's light therapy, meditation, you know, exercise, da, da, da. You need to have enough minerals. It's one of the most important things.
Starting point is 00:47:41 And most plants will steal your minerals, even if they're in the plant. And plants do this to stop over. predation. What say that word? Over predation. That means if you're an animal and you like to eat a plant, if you eat too many of the plants, then the plant will start to harm you by stealing minerals like zinc and magnesium and calcium so you can't absorb them.
Starting point is 00:48:04 Therefore, you won't be able to have as many babies. Therefore, the plants will be able to grow again. This is how plants and animals stay in balance in all of nature. So every plant contains some toxins. That's just how it is. and some of them are way less toxic than others. And we've made a practice lately of eating all sorts of weird plants that are higher in toxins, and we ignore the toxins, and we talk about the fact that they contain one beneficial thing.
Starting point is 00:48:29 So what this does over time, though, is we've been depleted of minerals, and your mitochondria and the rest of your body cannot function if you don't have the right minerals. So to me, the foundational supplements, you need to get either from food or from supplements, are vitamin D-A-K-N-E, and a broad-spectrum mineral supplement. When people do that, that means if you lift, now your body can put on muscle because it can respond. But otherwise, if you lift, your body says, okay, I wanted to put on muscle, but I didn't have enough zinc.
Starting point is 00:49:05 I can't. And that actually creates a subtle stress response. So are you more interested in the mineral part of the conversation or the macronutrients like getting the fats, carbs, proteins? You have to do both. If you get your macros right and your deficient minerals, your body simply cannot respond to the inputs you give it from exercise or meditation. And what are some of the foods that are on your no-go list?
Starting point is 00:49:28 Spinach, kale, these are terrible because oxalate is a nasty mitochondrial toxin. It's a whole body toxin. 70% of kidney stones are caused by oxalate. And we knew all about this until about 1950. And then we just stopped talking about it. So whole grains of any sort, most nuts. Whole grains, like whole wheat. Oh, wheat is bad for you.
Starting point is 00:49:55 If you're going to eat flour, which isn't really good for you anyway, it should be white flour. What is sourdough, by the way? Sourdough is the best you could do. If you get non-American wheat, because we destroy our wheat in this country, and then you make sourdough out of it, so many people who cannot eat wheat can eat sourdough. And sadly, you can survive on all kinds of stuff. And I say sadly, except that helps us during famines throughout all of history. But we start to say the stuff that we used to feed to peasants is now healthy.
Starting point is 00:50:27 We fed it to peasants because we didn't care about the toxins. So things like oatmeal, brown bread, brown rice, we're giving them the calories that come with all the toxins in the outer layer of the rice. so soaking rice overnight or 30 minutes before and draining it does not reduce enough of the toxins in your research not if it's brown rice no white rice white rice yeah white rice is the lowest toxin of all the carbohydrate sources what about so if you take on the vegetarian hat for just a minute you know because there's lots of people I was a vegan for six years I think I was really unhealthy I was a vegan too and it wrecked my health yeah I was unhealthy and sorry
Starting point is 00:51:11 for the vegan friends out there, however, I needed something different. I needed a different level of proteins that I was not getting. I think it's fair to say at this point that all vegans are protein deficient no matter what they do. Even if you're supplementing with like, I don't know, whatever protein powders and... Unfortunately, plant-based proteins are about 30% as efficient as animal-based proteins. And what I recommend, especially for high performers, is one gram of animal protein per pound of body weight per day. And that's ideal body weight. So if you're fat, like I was 300 pounds, and I wanted to wait 200 pounds, I would have
Starting point is 00:51:50 eaten 200 grams of protein a day. If you do that, your mental clarity, your amount of energy, your food cravings go down, everything improves in a very meaningful way. And I know that for some people, they hear that and they get angry. And I just have to say, if you're getting angry when someone disagrees, you're. with you about the optimal diet, that's a sign that the mitochondria and your prefrontal cortex are not making enough energy, either that you have childhood trauma, and you should work on either one of those, and you probably have both.
Starting point is 00:52:20 You're poking the bear, man. You're poking the bear. What did I say this even slightly controversial? It's okay to talk to people who disagree with you. And the fact that some people have told themselves a story, there's three reasons you'd be vegan. And one of them is, I don't want to kill animals. That's the most absurd, because if you've ever seen a threshold, you've ever seen a threshold.
Starting point is 00:52:39 sure go through a grain field and chop up the baby deer and the turtles and the bunnies and all the animals. The desperate calorie from tofu is way higher than grass-fed beef because I kill one animal per year to eat that cow. Okay, wait, hold on. You're saying all of the accidental carnage that gets slipped into the vegetarian grain mill, whatever, is a higher death count than... Oh, much higher. Come on. I mean... So I built a farm. I raised animals. Right. And I've talked with all kinds of farmers about this. And the guy who taught this to me was in Tibet.
Starting point is 00:53:16 And Tibetan Buddhists love to argue. So I'm talking with the llama, the head of one of the monasteries. And they're teaching no killing. And they're vegetarian at low altitude and not vegetarian at high altitude. But I put it at the yak skin on his prayer pole. And I said, no killing. Yet you killed a yak. And he goes, one death feeds everyone.
Starting point is 00:53:36 And he started laughing at me. And he said, yeah yeah and i actually don't eat chicken because i don't want to kill a whole chicken just for me to have one meal doesn't even make sense plus chicken's not that good for you so what what chicken versus fish versus beef and lamb beef and lamb yeah the reason i'm not eating beef so like i'd like to pet cows i had cows or we lived on a farm i didn't have any cows but there was lots of cows right i liked the way that that creature kind of just chills and i also like my dog i don't want to eat my dog right I don't want to eat somebody else's dog.
Starting point is 00:54:10 I don't want to eat dogs. I like kind of the nature of that animal. I don't really like the nature of chickens. Have you ever lived with one? Yeah, we had like, I grew up on a farm. We had like, I don't know, 20, 30 chickens. Yeah, chickens have personalities. They're kind of fun.
Starting point is 00:54:24 They drove me nuts. But so, but anyway, so I have less kind of affinity or attraction to it. So in my mind, I'm like, oh. But I do think the hormones injected and all that. I'm trying to avoid all of that. Yeah. You're saying just in general, though, if chicken is, a less optimal choice than beef.
Starting point is 00:54:40 100%. And that's because. Because the fatty acid ratio in chicken is not good for humans. It's better than starving and it's better than being vegan, but it's a low-quality fat. And the protein isn't, the amino acids aren't as good for us. It's lower in minerals. And most chicken today is very poorly treated. It's hard to find a healthy chicken.
Starting point is 00:55:03 Yeah. The free range stuff is a first choice, but I'm not sure. range they feed them flax and all sorts of grains that really chickens don't want to eat because i built that regenerative farm with chickens they're the biggest carnivores ever they will eat every bug and every scrap of meat and then they'll peck at the grains that are left over and when you feed chickens flax in particular it has so much estrogen in it so you would not supplement with flax seed never i wouldn't touch the stuff because of the flax is bad for you i want to come back on the the food thing one more time on chicken, beef, and lamb, just for a moment.
Starting point is 00:55:39 Let's stay on the saturated fat and conversation. Because my understanding is that saturated fat is that we should be concerned about is not from animal fat, but it's from saturated fat and meat, that that is not as dangerous as carbohydrates and sugars, right, in particular, that sugar and cholesterol are more highly linked than animal fat and cholesterol. Yeah, sugar will raise LDL cholesterol and certainly will raise triglycerides enormously. And what's weird is we have this obsession with measuring cholesterol and blood because it was the easiest to measure in the 1930s.
Starting point is 00:56:18 We learned how to spin blood and we could see a layer of yellow stuff and that must be the problem. And we've been trying to prove it ever since. And unfortunately, the people who live the longest, the super centenarians, they have higher than average cholesterol. That's weird. And half of people with heart attacks don't have high cholesterol. That's weird.
Starting point is 00:56:39 So when I'm working with people doing lab work, and again, I'm not a doctor, but I work with doctors to do lab work with people through unlimited life, my concierge's longevity practice. So what we find is that markers of inflammation are far more indicative of risk. So when I'm teaching biohackers, I say measure your homocysteine, which is do you have a problem with methylation? If that's high, your risk of heart attack goes up. Measure your C-reactive protein.
Starting point is 00:57:11 If that's high, either you worked out before your lab test or you have a chronic infection somewhere in the body, and you need to figure out what that is, and let's get that down. Mine's 0.01. Perfect. Yeah. And do you know where yours is?
Starting point is 00:57:24 My C-reactive protein? Yeah. Same place, actually. Yeah, 0.01 to 0.02's fluctuations. Yeah, very, very low. Yeah, okay. And that's where you want it to be. And a lot of people will come in and, I don't know what's going on.
Starting point is 00:57:36 Well, there's zeroactive protein can be five or ten or something. It can be really high. And then you're like, oh, you have an infection under one of your teeth or you have an infection in the gut. You have dysbiosis. Like there's something going on. And we're going to track down what that is so we can stop it. So if you drop your inflammation markers, then you can say,
Starting point is 00:57:55 but cholesterol, because the statin manufacturers have been telling us for years that's the cause. Are you an anti-statin? Well, the first statin drug was called Nystatin, which is an antifungal. I'm a huge fan of Nystatin. The rest of the statin drugs that inhibit mitochondrial function and deplete coenzym Q-10, the vast, vast majority of the time they're not called for. But for any pharmaceutical, there are some edge cases where there's probably someone
Starting point is 00:58:22 who's going to benefit from them. so i would just say that lowering cholesterol it does not make sense for the vast majority of people to do it by drugs if you really wanted to lower the thing that makes your testosterone that makes many structures in the brain and is a foundational element of life you could but wouldn't it make more sense to figure out if the cholesterol you have is causing damage your arteries and there's a simple blood test it does that. It's called L-P-L-A-2. You can run this. It's an enzyme that's released when there's damage to the lining of arteries. So if you have high cholesterol, oh, no, 220, which wasn't high until they had a big marketing campaign. But you can see if there's actually
Starting point is 00:59:09 damage happening. Are you talking about L-P-L-A? No, it's called L-P-L-A-2. L-P-L-A-2. And this, so I use the Boston Health as a, is this, is this on Boston Health? I don't know if it is. I don't know if that's on Boston Health, but LP Little A is a different marker, which is also a risk factor. Yeah, okay. So you're looking at the quality of the lining. The quality of the lining. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:33 This is where, so I had a calcium test. Yeah. And so I did, I did a full body scan that had a calcium test. And my calcium came back, not in a zone that I wanted it. So at that point, it's not good, right? It's already hardened, it's already stuck to the artery wall. So I'm trying to sort out best practices there. Got it.
Starting point is 00:59:52 So if I had high calcium, I would be going on a dose of 8,000 units of natokinase, which is an enzyme that's made by fermenting soy. And that resolves soft plaque throughout the body. So what's happening with you is you had soft plaque that then got calcified with calcium. So what you do is you resolve the soft plaque by taking on an empty stomach. 8,000 units of natokinase. You could use lumbrokinase or maybe serapapase, but natokinase has the most evidence.
Starting point is 01:00:25 That'll fix all your soft stuff so you don't get any more calcification. Then you can remove the calcium if you really want to, and you can do that via a process called chelation. And that you can do intervanously or you can do it with suppositories. Have you done both? I did a couple of suppositors.
Starting point is 01:00:42 I just don't have any calcium in my body. My calcium score is exceptionally low. It was like one or something. I mean, one of the great killers, the two big killers are heart disease and cancer. So that's why I wanted to talk about cholesterol and where we just went. Thank you for the gem. I'm going to go look this. Nano, nanokanez.
Starting point is 01:01:01 Natto. Natto. Natto, yeah. TTO, okay. Bonnie Master is brought to you by GoDaddy. One of the themes we return to often here is how do you express your purpose in this world? for many of the people we work with, entrepreneurs, creatives, vice president, CEOs, consultants, coaches. Part of that answer is showing up with clarity online. And that starts with owning your
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Starting point is 01:02:11 D. N-O-W. New customer purchases only. Products auto renew separately. See terms on site. Peptides? Yeah, I've been using peptides for 10 years. I kind of cycle through. I go on it. I go through phases where I stab myself every morning and phases were just too busy. What peptides would you suggest our community? Let's go men and women just for separation. BPC 157 is just so incredibly important for healing. You can take it orally. It helps heal your gut anytime you have body pain and injury this is a really important one TB 500 is another broad spectrum longevity one one of my favorites that's a little controversial is called melanotan or msh and you inject this and you go out in the sun and you get a tan in about a half hour
Starting point is 01:03:01 and then you have a protective tan like wearing sunscreen all the time but it's a real tan and the side effect is better cognitive function and it also makes you really horny. And the controversy around this is? It's controversial because people say, oh, it's not natural. And rats who had like hundreds of times the normal dose had an increase in cancer, but it appears to lower cancer risk as far as I can tell. If you have melanoma, it might make moles darker, which could be scary. That is scary.
Starting point is 01:03:28 Okay. A handful of best practices. I know you want to live to be 180. At least. One status update. How are you doing? I think I'm doing pretty well. I mean, I'm feeling great. I'm looking great. My labs are good. So yeah. Okay. A handful of best practices. And I want to say in advance, thank you for your time. Of course. Thank you for, you know, trying to discern things that are relatively complicated, very nuanced and doing it in a way that isn't an absolute this or that, but considerations. It's very personalized. That's probably the most important thing to start out with. You are not the same as any other person. And every study we've ever heard,
Starting point is 01:04:05 there's a middle of the curve you're not the middle of the curve no one is you're somewhere you're somewhere on a curve on each factor right so they're saying for for a million people this is the right level of this but for your genetics your level of this might be 10 times higher or 10 times lower so the personalization is breaking epidemiology because it just doesn't apply to you right so what's happening with that is AI and data driven and one of of my company's upgrade labs make something called axo dot health where we'll draw the blood at your house and then help you use AI to figure out the right biohacking practices that are going to work for you. So what I'm saying here, that's a big asterisk that says these are the average
Starting point is 01:04:50 practices, but you may need more or less of any of these because none of us is the same as the other. All right. So just a couple of practices that before they go to maybe your platform here, what are some things that you would hope people would do? Understand that darkness is a new and so is sunshine. And most of us have a complete lack of darkness in our life. We go to bed with light leaking around curtains in our bedroom and with little LEDs on and say it doesn't matter. I still go to sleep. Well, a study in Japan of 800 people show that the amount of street light that leaks around curtains increases depression by 69%. So you don't see the effect of the light in your conscious brain, but your mitochondria that are very light sensitive, they are seeing it and the
Starting point is 01:05:38 quality of your sleep goes down. So if you want to live a long time, sleep in a room that is dark and turn the lights down when the sun goes down. They don't have to be off, but the darker it is at night, the healthier you will be. And the more sunshine you get at the beginning of the day that sets your circadian clock, the healthier you'll be and the longer you will live. I'm not saying you need to be in the sun all day long. I'm just saying sunshine is a nutrient. If you get no sun, then you're going to have a problem. And this is about setting timing systems so the body will repair when it's supposed to repair. The other thing is practice intermittent fasting. Don't do it every day. You don't need to over fast. Studies of women show that a 12 hour fast three times a week
Starting point is 01:06:20 is where the beginning of benefits starts to come in. A 12 hour fast is easy. Have dinner, go to sleep and wait a couple hours to have breakfast. That's 12 hours. You can do it. But ideally, three times a week. Do four 14, 16, 18 hour fasts. And maybe once every three or six months, pass for two or three days. You can do a prolon fast or something like that if you don't want to. But this really affects our longevity.
Starting point is 01:06:46 It's cheaper to eat nothing than it is to eat. So it doesn't cost anything. Yeah, I've been playing with that for a bit, as many people have. And I'm like two, three, more like three, three times a week at 14 to 16 hours. Yeah. And then those days, it feels like
Starting point is 01:07:00 I'm playing a different game for protein consumption. you know so i've got to get protein kind of dialed in you know i went through this about five years ago i thought how am i going to get 200 grams of protein if i only eat two meals a day so i said i'm just going to eat 100 grams of protein at each meal and the science of the time said you can't absorb it 40 grams but that doesn't make any sense so you'll know if you don't absorb protein because you'll have bodybuilder farts yeah so i took my digestive enzymes with it but i never got bodybuilder farts and I got way leaner and then just last year a study came out that shows it's a very strong study too it shows there is no upper limit to the amount of protein you can absorb per meal yeah
Starting point is 01:07:44 so you can have 100 grams of protein eat the big steak take some enzymes if you're not able to digest that and you'll be fine so on the days when you're in fasting two one pound rib eyes you'll be fine. I wear just a close full circle here is I wear masks at night and I've got tape all over the little green lights in my house. And I the mask is also a cue because when I travel, I've got a queue for sleep, which is great. And then I am working to get about 40 to 50 grams per meal of protein. Kick it up to 50. Breakfast is like two. I mean, I'm not eating 12 eggs. You know, yeah. You know, like that's just I understand, but it's hard. And so you might need some protein powder in the morning.
Starting point is 01:08:27 Yeah. It is hard to eat that many eggs. Yeah, you're probably eating a steak in the morning. I like to eat steak in the morning, although usually I just wait to lunch. And then if I'm going to do it when I'm on the road, I actually bring protein powder with me. Okay, last little thing. I know you're going to point to sleep. I know you'll point to chronic stress.
Starting point is 01:08:42 We talk a lot about those. What about hyperbaric chamber? What about red light therapy? What about sauna? The data on saunas is really strong. Infrared saunas are something I prefer because they help you detox way better. and they very likely have the same benefits as the full heat saunas, although no one's done that exact research.
Starting point is 01:09:01 So infrared sauna, yes, do that four or five times a week if you can. I do it most mornings, at least when I'm not traveling. Then red light therapy, there's enormous evidence for that. Can you stack those two? Are there sanas that have both? There are sanas. Sunlighten makes one that has both. It's not going to be as much as a full-on red panel.
Starting point is 01:09:20 I have a little portable panel I travel with and I put it on before I go to bed. So getting some extra red light. is a really good thing, especially on days when you travel, then we should talk about cold therapy a little bit here. Yeah, I'm kind of underwhelmed with that conversation, but yes. So we'll just talk about it briefly. Yep. There is something called bicep, brief intentional conscious exposure to pain.
Starting point is 01:09:43 If you do a cold shower in the morning at the end of the shower for one minute, that intentionally exposing yourself to discomfort changes dopamine signaling throughout the brain, which is really good for you. Yeah. So there's a case for it. I love it. I love that you say that because I've been doing the whole cold intense movement thing. I was like, wait, hold on.
Starting point is 01:10:03 I get that. I know I get that same effect from like, I don't know, 50 some degree cold shower. Yeah. Cold shower all the way cold. I get it. You know what I get more importantly from that is the walk up. My internal dialogue. Yes.
Starting point is 01:10:15 I'm going to go do something hard. Get it together. Breathe. Calm yourself down. This is what makes you. Okay, good. That walk up, that psychological training on the walk up. And then the moment of exposure where I go,
Starting point is 01:10:25 give me out, turn it down, and I go, no, hold on, chill out. That psychological training is epic. Yeah. That's, I think, a big part of it. And there are some cold shock proteins and some other reasons for it. But a lot of people listen to your show, I'm imagining as business people, like, if something's good, more is better. And I'll just, you know, have the air conditioning blasting all the time and I'll sit in cold water for 10 minutes. That's actually bad for you.
Starting point is 01:10:50 So up to three minutes in a cold plunge. And it doesn't have to be mean-spirited cold either for you to get the benefits. So doing that occasionally, I think is good for you. In the cold shower every morning with the walk-up, that's the thing. Then hyperbarics, there's great evidence for 41-hour sessions of hyperbaric for longevity. And the studies in Israel that length and telomeres were doing 90-minute sessions. And for that, you can buy a chamber. I have a hard-sided chamber at home, but that's expensive.
Starting point is 01:11:20 You can also just go to a local place that does it. It's inconvenient and you need to space them closely. So 40 sessions I've ever barric can regrow brain injuries even from childhood. It's really important. It's pretty remarkable. Listen, I could go on and on and on. Dave, thank you for your contribution to helping people understand some best practices. Thank you for getting way out on the edge.
Starting point is 01:11:39 My pleasure. I don't know what percentage of stuff. I go absolutely like, oh, shit, that, you know, but I respect that you're a wild one. And I respect that you are working to back up to your, you know, using science to understand it at a deep level. Thank you for that. And thank you for talking about what it's like to have public daggers thrown at you and the kind of the challenge that comes with standing for something and standing tall in the mountain. So thank you for that. You're welcome. I just want to do what works. And I'm willing to be wrong about anything. I just like how I'm feeling right now.
Starting point is 01:12:13 Yeah, that's happy days. Dave, thank you so much. You got it. Next time on Finding Mastery, as we move through this holiday season, we're bringing you something special from the podcast vault. A conversation with Sharon Salzberg, one of the world's leading teachers of mindfulness and loving kindness meditation. Sharon and Mike explore what truly supports us, connection, compassion and the choice to meet ourselves and others with a little more kindness. It's a message that feels especially meaningful at this time of year. Join us Wednesday, December 24th at 9 a.m. Pacific for this From the Bolt episode. And happy holidays from all of us here at Finding Mastery. I want to take a second here to tell you about a morning routine that I've been using for years.
Starting point is 01:12:59 For me, it's a great way to switch on my mind, to ready myself to take on the day. So before I check my phone, my emails, market updates or text threads, I choose how to start my morning. That's always in my control. That's always in your control, too. This is the same morning mindset routine that some of the world's top performers across sport, business, and the arts are using. The best part, it only takes about 90 seconds to do. So just head over to findingmastery.com slash morning to download the audio guide for free. Again, head to finding mastery.com slash morning to get your morning mindset routine.

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