Sex With Emily - Bulletproof Sex with Dave Asprey

Episode Date: February 23, 2018

On today’s show, Emily is joined by Bulletproof founder and Headstrong author Dave Asprey to talk about ways to biohack your sex life to make you happier and healthier. The pair discuss the distinct health benefits of orgasms for men and women, how limiting how often you ejaculate can actually make you more productive, why stress is the number one killer of libido, how to pinpoint why your sex drive is lower than you want it to be, and why hacking your sex life can motivate you in all aspects of your life. If you want to connect with Emily, click here. If you want to connect with Dave, click here. Thank you for supporting our sponsors who help keep the show FREE: UVee, Magic Wand, DONA, A&E Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. On today's show, I'm joined by Bulletproof Founder and Headstrong Author Dave Asprey. We're talking about effective ways to improve your sexual performance, so you can become the best version of yourself. We get into the distinct health benefits of orgasm for men and women, including why men shouldn't always ejaculate. And hey, you might just develop a six pack of abs. The three basic elements that can inhibit or enhance human performance and how by hacking your sex life, you can influence your motivation in all aspects of your life to become the healthiest version of yourself. All this and so much more.

Thanks for listening. Book into his eyes. Then the eyes of a man obsessed by sex. Eyes that mock our sacred institutions. Betrubized they call them in a fight on me. Hey, Evelyn, you got a boyfriend? Because my man E here, he just got his heart broken. He thinks you're kind of cute. The girls got a hair standard. Oh my!

The women know about shrinkage. Isn't it common knowledge? What do you mean like laundry? It's shrink? Can we not talk about sex so much? Are you kidding me? You're listening to Sex with Emily. We're talking about sex relationships and everything in between for more information, go to our website, sexwithemily.com. Check out all the blogs we have there. And our recent podcast, I think you guys will love this one. We have one called The Mask of Masculinity with Lewis House.

And if you haven't listened to the episode, we talk about one of my favorite themes, breaking through toxic masculinity and discovering the importance of the other v-word vulnerability, which can actually be incredibly transformative. You guys would really like this episode so you can check it out on our site or wherever you are listening to the podcast. We love when you subscribe to the podcast. That's also fabulous. You can do an iTunes or wherever you listen.

We so appreciate it. It only takes a few seconds. And you can also get more sex with Emily on social. It's all at sex with Emily across Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and you'll know the second a new episode is posted, not to mention you really get to see what goes on at sex with Emily.

And my personal life, it's a good time, so check it out, and I can't wait to hear from you. And message me and all those things on all the social media. I can't wait for you guys to hear this interview I did with David Asprey earlier this week. You may be familiar with his name or his bulletproof brand or one of his New York Times best selling books like Headstrong. So I'm a Dave when I was co-hosting Love Line of Fierce back and he was a guest on the show. And we've stayed in touch as I've been on his Bulletproof Radio podcast and I've become a huge fan of his work.

Perhaps because we're both clearly on the same page about helping people be the best versions of themselves. I love how he marries science, energy, and his exploration of the human race to demonstrate how changing your environment from the inside out will allow you to have full control of your biology and reach a state of high sexual performance. So Dave is his own guinea pig as he works to develop his work around biohacking and the mission behind it. Wait, let's stop there for a second. If you're not familiar with biohacking, you're not alone. Let me break it down for you. So you know how I'm

driven by helping you and inspiring you to involve your sex life, your relationships, your communication life, your relationships, your communication skills, all that stuff. And while there's always the basics, there's also some different ways to learn about your needs and your turn-ons and how to communicate them to a partner. So that's why I always share tips and advice so you can really push the envelope,

to evolve sexually. So I suppose this is my version of biohacking, which simply put, is just taking control of the environment around you and inside of you to implement effective change. You know I also love talking about sex hacks, which is like a close cousin to biohacking. You know like ways to make your orgasm stronger, to enhance intimacy and to strengthen your mind-body connection. I really take control of your environment and something within yourself. You know, biohacking. So, now that we've defined it, here's the rest of the story.

My conversation with Dave fuses science, sex, and experimentation in a digestible and truly eye-opening way that can't help but spark some new ways of approaching your sex life. So I really hope you guys enjoy this interview with the founder and CEO Bulletproof Dave Asprey. And I can't wait to hear your thoughts about the episode. I was on your podcast. So I became familiar with you, set me the books, I drink your coffee, and then I was on your podcast for as soon after that. And we opened up and you said to me, so I didn't orgasm for 30 days. Tell me what you think I've heard about that. And in my mind, I'm thinking I wasn't prepared for this. Like I've heard about it. I've studied Taoism a little, you know, Taoist sex practices

and I've studied tantric sex. And I thought, well God, you know, tell me about it. We talked about it a little bit, but you kind of jumped over it. Cause I was like, I can't imagine me telling my listeners on sex with Emily, who for 13 years are texting me and sending questions because they're just happy if they can get laid, right?

And they can have sex. And so this was like a whole nother level, which again, it was more of like an intellectual thing. And then just like you, I'm always evolving and working on my sex life in the, you know, and my relationships just like I practice what I preach and what I'm learning. So I'm very much understanding now.

I've studied, understanding what you're talking about. I've studied tantric, and I've actually practiced with people. So I'm very new though to this. And I've been wanting to kind of talk to my listeners about this, and we're gonna get into everything that you do and your bulletproof and headstrong, but I want you to talk to me about the experience of, because I feel like if anyone can make anyone do this, you could explain the benefits.

When I told the guy to not to masturbate for 30 days or have an orgasm, they would just like stop listening. But I feel like you can explain this process about the power that orgasm and the energy that comes along that has on mind. Oh, I'm so excited to get started. You are the first person.

And you're the one podcast I just want to say that I listen to consistently. I've never said that to anyone, so you actually know it's true because I'm like, I'm a listen to podcasts because I'm super busy, but I feel like you're the guy for the job. Oh, wow. That's a high hurdle and I'll do my best there. So it's funny, I just finished a chapter. I have a new book coming out in December and there's a chapter on exactly this topic

because we're wired with these three basic behaviors as human beings and they go in order and these actually come from what keeps every life form, whether you're a plant or an amoeba or a bacteria alive. And our bodies are basically based on bacteria, like inside all of our cells of these ancient bacteria called mitochondria.

And bacteria care about three things in this order. The first thing that matters most over anything in the world is run away from kill or hide from scary things. And go to the right now, otherwise someone is going to eat you and it's game over. The second thing we care about is eat everything. And you eat everything because you starve within like a few days or a month and then it's game over. And the third thing we care about if those firsts who are handled is have sex with everything else. Because if the species doesn't reproduce, it's game over. And the third thing we care about if those firsts who are handled is have sex with everything else because if the species doesn't reproduce, it's game over. And we're wired that way. So our bodies put huge amounts of energy into beating up or running

away from or protecting ourselves from scary things, including criticism and also things that aren't really life threatening, but that our body thinks is life threatening. And then we spend huge amounts of energy going, what will go on my plate next time? Like, when are we going to eat next? And the energy that's left over is like, all right, can I bang that to put it in the most fast? Exactly. Where do I put it in the meanest?

No, right. Right. And so these are our big wells of energy that are not going towards making the world a better place, not going towards bringing joy or creativity or love into our lives, any of that sort of stuff. Their primal needs that are artificially elevated in our consciousness to be most important. So if we can find a way to turn off those things,

or to harness that energy that goes towards your business species and put it back into our lives in order to do something that we chose to do. Instead of something that our biology chose for us to do, that is one of the biggest upgrades you could possibly do. And you don't have to drink coffee or do an event that's like headstrong, upgrade things I talk about. And it's very different from men and women.

And I came across this because I've read all sorts of strange books about how do you get superpowers in human beings and what are the outer limits of what our biology is capable of because that's at the core of biohacking. I've studied into bet with meditation masters and looked at Taoism and things like that. One of the Taoist practices is a for men. You actually don't ejaculate as frequently as you might. They don't tell you don't have, it's that you actually don't ejaculate as frequent as you might. They don't tell you don't have sex.

They just tell you don't ejaculate. You have sex, right. But men are like, well, yeah, but orgasm and ejaculation is what are you talking about, same thing. Or have sex. Right. You have to have an orgasm when you have sex, and that would be ejaculation. It's pretty normal, right?

I mean, that's how we're wired. And if you read the advanced Taoist texts, they say, well, you can actually have an orgasm without ejaculation as a man or a woman. That's kind of interesting. What really caught my attention to be perfectly honest, I mean, this was 10, 15 years ago, they say, here's the rule. If you really dig deep in Taoism, it's about, how do you live forever? They wanted immortality.

Part of their mortality practice was, what do you do with sex? And for men, they said there's an equation. And it's your age in years minus seven divided by four. And that yields a number. So if you're the time, I think I was like 42 and I was doing this experiment. So 42 minus seven, whatever that was, 35. Yeah, I did it for a friend of mine, 38. It came out to 31, so yeah, I'm like, okay, right. And so then it was basically only ejaculate every eight days if you wanna maintain your health. But if you wanna live forever,

just ejaculate once every 30 days. And I'm like, that seems physically impossible. Right, exactly, right, you're like, what? Right. But here's the hook, and they go, but make sure you keep your orgasm to less than an hour. And I'm like, I'm a dude, like we're like 30 second orgasm,

we're pretty happy about that. You're gonna be over like months, right, right. Like you turn yourself inside out, like how does that exactly work? That's not even a thing, right. So I'm gonna run an experiment because I'm a little skeptical here. And so for a year, I tracked my daily happiness.

And just on a scale of one to ten, how much do I like my life, my job, my relationships at home, just like how good was today. And grind it. That's very subjective, but isn't it always subjective whether you like your life? It is, right. Yeah. Okay. Isn't it always subjective? Whether you like it like that? It is, right. What for? Yeah, okay. Yeah, so I kind of created this graph and I also tracked how often did I have sex?

How often did I ejaculate? And I came up with some really interesting findings about myself that I didn't know, that mirrored what the Dow has said. And it turns out when I ejaculated just once every eight days, I actually liked my life better. And when I did ejaculate for about two to three days afterwards, I liked my life less. So that they call us like an ejaculation hangover. And like the Taoists will say, a man or a woman walks away from sex undiminished, but I'm misquoting it terribly,

but it takes something out of the man, that in other words, it costs you something biologically. Because you're taking all of your hormone production, your prostate gland ins, and you're taking those in, you're basically making ejaculate, and you're using it. There's something called spurmidine in there

that's actually potent, anti-inflammatory, and there's actually a whole body of study about like what does seem and do from a health perspective. It's like, wow. Okay. So the thing is about, it's about the energy, right? So the men, the more they're spending the energy and they, they have an orgasm and they ejaculate, but I'm wondering like, because I do see the benefits, especially for men, I know it helps with focus. Like let's talk about that. So you had more, you had more pleasure in your life. However, you measure happiness because everything that you do, Dave, you gotta be honest, can I do this every day

for a year, I'm gonna be able to track that. If I did it for a week and I set up a journal, I'd be so proud of myself of every night, right? I tried, my systems are way better than they used to be. But even for that, what you felt was in a new relationship, trying and failing is not so bad, when you're like, oh, I don't wanna jockey late and I do. But the benefits, how did that work with your sex life,

like the quality of your sex life and your intimacy? The quality of my sex life went up dramatically, because this amazing thing happens when you don't ejaculate. You totally want to have more sex. Right. So what ended up happening is the frequency of sex goes up. The longer you go with that ejaculate, the more often you have sex.

So I'm married. I have two young kids. Anyone who's married with two young kids knows you generally don't have sex very much. So, just because my kids are like an anti-sex thing and what ended up happening was, especially when I was doing the 30 day experiments, by the way, publishing the data was kind of embarrassing.

I'm like, oh, day 24, oops, you know, I kind of start that experiment over. But exactly, like someone day 24, right? But over time, yeah, I mean, and I don't know how much you've talked about this in your show since, but it's been so much, I know. But it's like, but now, so that was like 10 years ago or eight years ago, you did it.

I was something with 42, that's about five years ago. Okay, five years ago. So now is it still something that's become part of your life? Like you still think about it as like another resource in your body that you're like not always going to. But, we'll say I don't ejaculate unconsciously. Okay. You're going to have sex. But I'm going to say, I wouldn't if I've just, you know, flew to New York and back in,

you know, 36 hours to be on the Dr. Oshoe or something, which happened. Like, I'm not going to come back and then, you know, have sex because I missed my wife and ejaculate because I already took enough of a hit. I traveled across the country twice. I was in an airplane. I breathed that air like I'm tired. Right. So when I'm at full power and have an ejaculate for a while, I'll ejaculate.

But will I have sex? You all have sex. But then sex becomes less about like getting to ejaculation more about like having fun. And what does that do that raises oxytocin, which is like the love hormone? Exactly. And the benefit for women in this whole deal is, well, the Taoist studies and lots of other studies show that when women have regular orgasms, like your emotional intelligence goes up, your oxytocin levels go up.

And it's generally biologically really healthy for women to have regular orgasms. Now, guys in this kind of practice can have orgasms if you can figure out how to have an orgasm without ejaculating. I find that to be a challenging thing to do. But what I also found to be like off the charts, not even like putting words to it, the thing about having any ejaculation for an hour or less, or tonight ejaculation, sorry, having orgasm for an hour or less. Right, or guys without the good, I'm sorry, having orgasm for an hour or less. Right, or guys' laughter with your full body, right? Yeah, like, I don't know how it's possible like start a stopwatch if you're gonna do that, but- Yeah, you're not gonna wait, it's coming, let me start.

Yeah, exactly. But like after, I can tell you at least like 15, 20 minutes, kind of times, where I'm like completely, you know, I don't mind, you're not exactly in the whole time, that would be destructive. But essentially, like, my abs hurt, I'm like, could I just be done? Like, I just need to stop and literally like growing a six pack from the intensity of an orgasm.

And it's like a nice six pack, you're like, it's the orgasm. Like that's all you got to do nowadays, that would help you, maybe, in other fields, in other, in other, to answer your audiences. On my screen. On your programs, Emily, you got it, you know, six pack orgasms. I, there's a whole, abs and 15 minutes or less, but yeah, you know, or another, but like, I know, it's just, it's what we're talking about. Cause we don't talk about, we don't, you don't, guys don't talk about anything.

So what, what they do talk about is they email me all the time. I, my listener is 50% man, 50% women, but they, a lot of the questions I get asked, which is why I love that you're here. And I wanted to bring you on because all the time. My listener is 50% men, 50% women, but a lot of the questions I get asked, which is why I love that you're here and I wanted to bring you on because all the work that you do around biohacking and being the best performer in every area of your life, how do we become the best sexual performers?

And so there's a lot of things I talk about when they're like, I can't ejaculate, or I can't say hard, or I'm too hard, or I have no sex drive or low libido and we just send people out, and I always say, get checked by your doctor or you certain medications. And I just feel like that's so limited, especially knowing what we know now and blending eastern and west medicine and supplements, everything that you do, what you've done with

both of the proof and what you're doing now. So I would just love to kind of give some background to your work to headstrong, which I loved. I'm like, I live two blocks from Airwan, so I feel really lucky that I can kind of indulge. But I just want to give some history about it and the work that you've done with Biohacking. Let's just define Biohacking and then kind of get into how that can help people be best performers sexually.

Oh awesome. Biohacking is a field that I helped to create and kind of build a community around, it's become a movement. And the original definition from that first infographic was the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside of you so that you have full control of your own biology.

Now from a sex perspective, let's see, do you want to be able to get it out when you want to be able to get it out? That would be control of your own biology. Do you want to be able to not ejaculate too quickly? That's control of your own biology. And that same body of knowledge, those same techniques, I want to get swole or I want to have a ton of energy or I want to pull an all-nighter and, you know,

perform open heart surgery or whatever. Like, it totally depends. I just want to come home from my commute and be with my family. All of those are control of our own energy of our own biology. And the techniques are always the same. And the two big things that apply to sex are make sure that the hardware, the energy production in the body is working. I mentioned these little mitochondria that are worried about dying. You got to make mitochondria sex, it matters. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Like, all the things that happen both for the woman and the man in sex, or say for women and men in sex, because it doesn't have to be a woman and the man, but those things are all driven by electrons in the body. Like we're powered by the same things that power our iPhones. We just happen to instead plug it into the wall, we eat food and we breathe, and then we combine those.

But if you suck at combining food and air, instead of getting like the erections or the other kinds of stimulation that you want, all these electrons that should have gone to your performance in bed, in the boardroom, in wherever else you're executing in your life, they can go to inflammation, you get muffin top, and you get brain inflammation,

and you're tired and you're cranky. So if you can do something in your diet or in your lifestyle to turn down inflammation, to turn up energy production, you can put that energy to work in the bedroom. And then all of a sudden, wow, I've got like a ton of it, I feel really good. Like this is a really energetic love-making session. I was able to provide more pleasure for my partner.

Like I had a better time. And maybe I had more self-controlled. And I was able to go, you know, for 45 minutes and at the end of this, the ultimate actable of our little power for a guy is saying, all right, even though every fiber in my being is screaming at me to ejaculate, I'm just not going to do it because I know that all that screaming is going to go back into me

and I'm going to use that energy for something else. There is masses of energy that we expend this way kind of unconsciously as guys. And I'm not saying don't have sex. I'm not saying don't be intimate. I'm saying if you can get to that end and be like, all right, like this is even harder than skipping a meal. I'm doing an intense workout. I'm just gonna take a deep breath and I'm just gonna say, no. Yeah, what do you do? I'm not gonna do it in this moment. You're gonna be there to it.

There's practices right. And then, do you want the shortcut for having to do that? Yeah, do please. Yes, hacksacks for me. Do it for everyone. Okay. So if it's up to you, whether or not you're going to ejaculate and you're a guy, there will be, there will come a voice in your head. And this is the voice of your mitochondria

screaming at you. You'll at the beginning of, you know, love making. You'll say, all right, I'm not going to ejaculate today. And by the time you're getting close, you will have created a thousand reasons why it's such a good idea to ejaculate right now. And you'll believe every one of them because that's the way we're wired. This is how our biology gets inside our head. It's part of what's inside our head. And it'll make you go, you know, just this once. Today I'll start tomorrow. Right.

Yeah, exactly. So if you're in charge, you're probably going to make bad decisions some of the time. So what you do is you just ask your partner, hey, I'm trying this thing out. And so I want you to decide if I'm going to or not. Right. And as soon as you take yourself out of the decision loop, so it's no longer your decision, it becomes fantastically easy to make the decision because there was no decision to make. And of course, some partners are going to like that more than others. And for a lot of women. Right. Well, because you have to make, right? And of course, some partners are gonna like that more than others, and for a lot of women. So you're like, right, well,

because you have accountability then, right? You're like, I'm trying to do this thing. Can you help me and support me in this? It's okay, that's it. That's okay, that's a good idea. I can draw. You can say, yeah, so it's not like, just tell me, no, it's like, you decide.

And then you don't have to decide. And then you'd be like, I think it's a good idea, but your partner is gonna be no, except, and I've talked to a lot of couples privately who just are approaching about this. For a lot of women, a lot of women are said to raise like, it's your job to be responsible for your partner's pleasure and thus their orgasm. So it can be really intimidating for a woman to be in that position and to be like, well, but if I say no, am I a bad person? And this isn't the logical thought.

No, exactly. This is what, yeah, it's so important person? And this isn't the logical though, these are like emotions. No, exactly. This is what, yeah. It's so important to get to this because it is true that we don't women are, and I was hoping this has changed because like the way I was raised and what I got into this was it was about pleasing the man.

Sex was not about my pleasure at all. It was that I felt successful if he orgasmed and he had a good time. And that would therefore make me believe that I had a good time. But the way we're reversing this also is that it takes pressure off women so women can really get into their bodies

by him not having to ejaculate. But understanding that mentality that it can still be great for both of you is a whole twist of their mind. Like it's completely different than what we've been taught. Still. It's completely different. And I've had a lot of guys say like,

like I would die if I did that. And like that's just your mitochondria talking. What they're telling is the species will die and that's just your mitochondria talking What exactly? What they're telling is the species will die and that's not a true statement How many times it take do you feel like it wasn't as bad? How many days in a row and then we are getting move on from this? So I can tell you that doing eight days at first was like was really a challenge and doing 30 days was That took a couple tries because after like 27 days, you're like, what's going on?

But I can tell you, my frequency of sex increases the longer I go without ejaculating. So I was having a lot of sex, lots of oxytocin. And I was like full of energy, just like really full of energy. And then it gets to be like, finally, like 30 days, like this is great. The surprising effect then for me was that

you've 15, 20 minute whole body orgasm thing, but that won't happen if you don't have enough energy in your body. If you're running on an empty fuel tank, and that's why the body of work, the lowest hanging fruit for people of those three things that are holding us back, what am I going to do for my next meal? That voice in your head, let's shut that up. Because I mean, who wants to have sex when you're hungry?

No one's gonna do that. No way, no. Or anxious, because stress, here's the other thing, David, the stress is one of the biggest killers of our sex drive, right? Couples are saying, I don't want to have sex because I'm too tired, I'm too stressed, I'm too anxious.

You know, when I've talked about all these things, you meditate, you relax, we'll kind of, medication are you taking, you should talk to your doctor, but let's talk about all that, like, what can people do, like, to kind of get that energy because if you're, you relax, what kind of medication are you taking, you should talk to your doctor, but let's talk about all that. What can people do to kind of get that energy? Because if you're not eating out, that you're not in a good place with your body, you're not going to be able to perform sexually. If you can find a way to get ketones into your body, and ketones happen when you fast

for four days, when you go on a very, very low carbohydrate, high fat diet, and the pull up your diet was about how to do that, right? And headstrong is about how to upregulate the mitochondrial function. There's an ingredient in bulletproof coffee called brain octane that puts you in ketosis. The reason you care about ketosis is simply this. You can make energy from sugar or you can make energy from fat. And we're biologically wired to do one or the other. If you use the brain octane, you have energy from fat and energy from whatever sugar is in your body,

and now you have more energy, and you can go into the bedroom, and your brain works all the way, and your body works all the way, and you don't get like, like dips, so you're like, I was tired. Now, you don't even have to have the coffee, just put some brain octane on your dinner, and you're like, I have more energy afterwards.

So it's just up-regulate your energy, and maybe you have some other meal, whatever it is, but this for me is just a reliable thing. I have more energy than I use to. So, number one, add on the energy. Number two, let's turn off the stress. And there's so many different stress management practices. The one that's probably most useful that I found is called heart rate variability training. And this takes a relatively cheap piece of equipment. There's clinical grade stuff that we do at Bulletproof Labs in Santa Monica where there's

chest straps and all. But though I'm talking about, you can buy it on Amazon. It's called HeartMath. I've been advised to those guys that there's no financial relationship or anything. It's just something I use with my executive clients. You clip it on your ear and you look at your phone and it tells you the spacing between your heartbeat. And you play this dumb little camera,

it tells you breathe in, breathe out. And when you do it right, the light turns green on the phone. And when you do it wrong, the light stays red. And what it's showing you is how to take your body out of a stress mode into something called parasympathetic mode or rest and reset mode. So once you learn how to play this game, you don't need the phone anymore.

So you're laying there in bed, you're like, all right, I'm getting kind of close here and I've decided I'm not going to ejaculate. So what you do is you, you just do that some kind of breath and you do the thing that takes you out of fighter flight mode. Because I'm telling you, right before you ejaculate, your body is convinced the species will die if you do not ejaculate. This turns that off. So you're laying there like, okay, I'm going to close.

You breathe in, breathe out, and do the little thing, you feel it in your chest, but the game teaches you this thing. Otherwise, you could do like a compassionate meditation for five years in a cave and learn it or something. That just takes you long. That's the shortest hack. So I was able to have way more control there, just by getting control of that part of my nervousness

and that was trying to convince me that the world was gonna end if I didn't ejaculate because that was not a true statement, but I sure believed it at the time. Right, the world's gotten a lot better since, too. Right? Right, and so this is it. It's like breathing combined with consciously moving

out of fight or flight through heart rate variability and just having more energy in the first place because more energy goes to more willpower. And headstrong, which is, I think, one of my best books. Tell my listeners who haven't heard of headstrong or what headstrong, talk about that. New York Times best seller, I'm very proud of all your work, tell me.

Thank you. Headstrong was about how do you have more energy in your brain and in your body, because energy drives willpower. And if you wanna talk about an example of when willpower matters most, it's in the bedroom, we're like, I'm not going to ejaculate right now.

That is one of the most extreme uses of willpower, at least as a man that you can possibly have. And so in order to upregulate that, it's all about energy metabolism. So I wrote this book saying, how do you have more willpower? What is the effect of food and environment on willpower? And I wrote it as an advice book. So here's the science, here's what to do.

And it hit the New York Times science bestseller list, like right next to like homo-duse and sapiens and all these other books that were like baller books. I was blown away because I never expected that to happen. But it's about a hundred thousand people have read it. It's getting printed in multiple languages now. And it's not about sex, but it's about energy. And sex is about energy. And what I'm just talking about here, what I want people to understand is one of the ways you can double the amount of energy in your body is turn off hunger cravings. And then what if you could get

control of that? I'm going to die if I don't have sex right now thing. All of a sudden, like, two thirds of the energy your body spends on survival goes back into the quality of your life. So now we're gonna take a quick break for amazing sponsors. I'll be right back. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FOR

FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪-FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING--FADING OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING-FAD-FADING OUTRO MUSIC- Can we just go back to like basic like biology like in Western medicine, we're going to get put on different meds, we're going to get, we're just not going to give in the whole picture. So I just want a basic lesson for my listeners about that. We have these parts of our cells that used to be bacteria that are responsible for our ability to do things. We like to say that two billion years ago, if you remember seventh grade biology, that we were these cells,

and somehow we harnessed these bacteria to become our power plants. But the real story is that two billion years ago, there was some cell floating around, and these bacteria were like, hey, if we move in and take over, that's our mobile petri dish. How cool was that?

And that was like the first multi-cellular organism. And now we have these humans walking around. But we have many times more angiabacteria in our bodies than we do cells in our bodies. And they drive our decision making. The other thing that these mitochondria do, we call them power plants, but they also make hormones. People don't know this. But all of the hormone production in your body is powered by the electricity they make, and they directly make something called pregnant alone, which is the mother hormone that turns into a DHA, that turns into testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone.

So, 48% of people under age 40 have, with, you know, early onset mitochondrial dysfunction. This means that you should be at the prime of your life when you should be getting some frequently and have a high sex drive and everything working right, but half of us don't have the raw power it takes to do that because we broke our biology by staying up too late at night by eating the wrong foods by too much stress probably who knows too much social media all sorts of things like that. And the other half of us under age 40 actually have functioning mitochondria, but we might still not have good hormones and good sex live, but at least we have the raw power to do it. Everyone over age 40 has mitochondria's function. We call it aging. My plan to live to 180 years old is really straightforward. I'm going to make energy like I was 25 years old,

except when I was 25 years old, I weighed almost 100 pounds more than I do now. I'm going to make energy like I should have made it when I was 25 and I'm going to do that when I'm 125. The technology is understood We didn't know this 20 years ago. We know how that system works and with the food you eat with the way you sleep the way you exercise You can take control of these things and so before people go on a medication for this my argument would be well Maybe we could take a look at some of these lifestyle things, like improving the quality of your sleep. Because when you sleep better, your testosterone goes up.

And testosterone for women and men, testosterone drives desire in women as much as it doesn't meant, different amounts of it, but you got to have it. And are you getting enough fat that's a precursor in your diet to testosterone? It turns out cholesterol is what turns into these hormones, not corn oil. It just doesn't work like that. So you go through and you say, what are the things I can do? And then how do I just blood flow?

Because get this, if there's no blood flow in the penis, there's also no blood flow in the brain. So if you are under age 40 and you're having a hard time getting it up or you have low sex drive, this is a sign of a much bigger problem in your life. Because healthy animals can reproduce, unhealthy animals can't reproduce.

If you tell yourself you're healthy and you can't get it up, I got news for you. You're not healthy. Well, exactly because if they're sex driving, sexual function are like such a reliable barometer of health. If you have any problems there, you should be looking at this bigger picture here. If you can't function. Right. And I suggest go out and get a full hormone panel.

That's going to say, you're first thing. Because you don't go to the, did I talk about your mitochondria? I get that you've made, and I've actually been become fascinated with it and everything that you're doing and supplements. But where do they start hormones? I think is where you would start. Yeah, and in fact, if there are problems for women or men,

just be like, I'm too tired to have sex. Like, you're supposed to when things are working right, you know what, I was too tired to have sex, and then I saw someone naked and I was like, oh my God, I'm not tired anymore, I'm gonna go have sex. And if you're not getting that response anymore, okay, maybe you're just tired because you've been working way too much or whatever else. It's possible you had a heavy workout,

you really are tired, you just need more sleep. But if this is a regular occurrence in your life and it doesn't just happen after a particular stressful situation, you've got something bigger going on and it comes down to your hormones. So you get a full hormone panel and they're going to tell you how much testosterone you have, how much estrogen you have, how much progesterone, and it's different for women to men because women have basically a monthly swing that's very predictable in progesterone levels, for instance.

So if you're having particularly fertility problems, which is the search for my very first book, what you end up doing is you get like a saliva test and you get your saliva every day for a month to see what your monthly curve looks like. But for most of us, just a blood test that tells you, what are my hormone levels? What do they look like right now? When I was 26, I had this done. My testosterone was lower than my moms. That's amazing, your whole story.

Right, you healed yourself from that. Yeah. At 26, when it says to be super high, it was lower than your moms. Because what was your life like then? Let's talk about Dave. I mean, I was. I was 20 years ago.

Let's see, when I was 26, I made $6 million at the company that held Google's first server. And I lost it when I was 28 So I haven't been like rolling in money my whole life I've been working with a paycheck and you know mortgage payments and all that But I did have two years of like extreme wealth which was nice because I at the time I'm like my brain isn't isn't working. I bought disability insurance So like I can't remember stuff anymore like something's wrong right

And I was not in a happy relationship to be perfectly honest I was convinced that if I could only make $10 million, then I'd be happy. How stupid was that? Like if $6 million doesn't do it 10 million won. Right. So many of us are chasing that next thing, that $6 million 10 million filled to me,

and that will be happy. That'll be successful. And that's just not the way that life works. My whole next book is about this. And the data is really clear. Happy people are more successful, but financial success people are not more happy. So true, money does not buy happiness, but seems so cliche when you say that, but this is now you actually, of course, have the data behind it. It really doesn't.

It's not about that. So you realize then you weren't healthy and then you started to make these changes. But my normal doctor was unable to help. Literally literally they couldn't order the right lab panels. The ones I asked for, we don't even know how to do that, and besides it doesn't matter. And I'm like, that's weird. So I fired my doctor. I learned all this stuff over the course of four years of studying and because I had all the money I needed at the time,

I'm like, I'll just buy $500 a supplement and stuff. And I don't care. Well, anything that I think might be useful, I'm just going to try it. And I became really experimental because I lost hope in medicine. And when I went back to a doctor, I went back to a doctor who specialized

in treating very old people to make them younger. And I'm like, you can do my hormone panels. And he's like, you actually look like an old person. Let's see, our high risk of stroke and heart disease, like very high risk, actually. You're pre-diabetic. You have arthritis that you've had since you were 14 in your knees. And now you have the equivalent of C-N-L-A-Cognitive dysfunction.

Like your brain doesn't work very well. At 26. I'm like, I'm old. So I started hanging out with people three times in my age and I ended up running an anti-aging non-profit research group. I'm still, I think, on the board, at least, or maybe Chairman today. And in Silicon Valley, called the Silicon Valley Health Institute. So I got to meet all these like luminaries in the field looking at reversing aging. I'm like, I'll reverse my aging when I'm 26, 28, 30, 35.

And what I found was that I got on top of my biology, but there's this whole level of performance that's there for all of us. And we never feel it. We don't know it's there because we're aging slowly, This death by a thousand cuts. And we suck as human beings at going, you know what? Today, I'm 0.1% weaker than I was yesterday.

We don't feel that. But over the course of five years, like what just happened? Maybe I'm a little bit, and by the time you notice, you got to dig out of a hole. If you address it right now, you're like, I didn't just not lose the 0.1%. I gained 10% of energy. And like, I need an hour less sleep to get restored and I'm able to go out and do these things that I've been dreaming of. That's what motivates me to do a bulletproof because if someone had told me this when I was 20 years old, like, do you know how different my life would have been?

Exactly. I mean, that's why I love the work that you're doing. And the thing is, how do we guide people, though, because if you do go to your western and new medicine doctors, they're not not gonna be telling you this still. It would still say go on this hormone replacement or take progesterone, take testosterone, which sometimes is okay, but it's not a healthy decision. And they wouldn't have all the information that you have.

So how do you balance all this out and find out what's right for you when it's limiting what people, what are doctors know today? The first thing you can do is get your mitochondria working, right? Because they're gonna help you make more hormones. And it's like, okay, do the things that give you some ketones. You don't have to be on this, especially for women.

If you're on a ketosis, a keto diet all the time, it can submess up your gut bacteria and women tend to lose sleep quality and hormone regulation relatively quickly. So you can do that, but you need to eat some carbs and then stop eating, eat and stop eating. You can cycle, which is the recommendation in the Bulletproof Diet, or you can just add some of the way I do with the brain octane oil. And either way, start there and eat less stuff that disrupts your hormones. And there's a roadmap on the Bulletproof website. It's a gift.

There's no cost for anything associated with it, but it's basically the entire Bulletproof Diet book on one page of infographic. You print it out, put it on your fridge, it says, eat more of these foods. These foods might cause problems for you, they might be okay, and these foods just suck, don't eat them. If you do that right, you're gonna win. What are the common foods that you see

that people are eating there? It's like wrong, that you're like, no, cut this now. Here's the number one food, and it's probably now what you think I would say, probably think it'd be like gluten or margin or something. It's actually fried stuff. That's so bad. When you fry things, you damage the oil. You can't make hormones out of damaged oils.

And the amount of inflammation in your body from one meal of fried foods, I don't care if they're fried Brussels sprouts, that your favorite paleo restaurant. Oh, I can't do fried Brussels sprouts, really? Okay. If it's fried, it's fried. Okay, I got it. I got it. You stick so Brussels sprouts, it doesn't matter.

And that actually causes 24 hours of inflammation in your vascular system. The thing that brings blood to your sex organs, whether you're a man or woman, and guess what? Smoking only does that for four hours. So I will tell you straight up, smoking a cigarette, one cigarette is better for you than eating fried vegetables or fried calamari or whatever fried stuff you're going to eat at the restaurant next time. Get it baked instead, it's not that big of a deal. But this will actually protect your vascular system in a major way. It's a small change and I know you might love your fried whatever.

I don't care if you love it. You probably love getting laid more. What are some other sex hacks that are like some foods or some of your supplements or plans that could help people like today? You're like, I, okay, I hear what you're saying. I don't know if I'm gonna get the orgasm thing down at 30, I work on that, but what can we do now? Cause I think for couples to have ones doing it

and the other isn't like, how can couples work together? Well, there's a lot of relationship stuff on couples, but if you decide you're gonna try this stuff that we just talked about at the beginning around, all right, we're going to see what our sex frequency looks like if the guy doesn't, you know, doesn't de-jaculate it frequently. If both partners like, what's experiment this for a week,

I promise you, you'll have some fun in the bedroom with that one, right? And even if you utterly fail at the experiment, at least you had fun with it, right? Like, there's very little downside to that. But when it comes to actually having more energy for sex, one of the things it's a supplement, and now this is a thing I make, but I make supplements for a reason, and so it's called keto prime. And this is an unknown compound that's part of how your cells make energy,

and you suck on these little lozenges that taste kind of like a sour candy, but this allows your body to make energy the way it's supposed to. It's the thing you need to take food and air and then to turn them into energy again. So even if your system doesn't work very well, it's a patch for about 48 hours. So you suck on one of these things, do it an hour or so before sex and you'll be like, you know what, I just have more energy. I feel like more like myself now. And it's not as stimulant. There's no herbs.

There's nothing like that. It's literally the compound you need to make energy. OK. It's called keto primes on the bulletproof website. That's one thing. And there's another thing that's in the cookbook. And it's called bulletproof Get Some Ice Cream. And this came out, my first book, 1,300 references

in five years to write it about how do you turn fertility on in women and men. My wife was in fertile when I met her. She's a medical doctor. So we did all this research and put together about 1,300 references in five years to write it about how do you turn fertility on in women and men? My wife was infertile when I met her. She's a medical doctor. So we did all this research and put together the thing that allowed her to get pregnant at 39 and 42 without IVF or anything like that. And today she's like a fertility consultant for like celebrities and CEOs and things like

that. What we did for that, that was particularly effective, was the size cream. And it's got, believe it or not, raw egg yolks in it, but it doesn't things like that. What we did for that, that was, particularly effective, was the sice cream. And it's got, believe it or not, raw egg yolks in it, but it doesn't taste like that. Real ice cream always had that. And instead of milk or cream, you actually blend in some butter and you put in the spray and octane oil in it.

And you blend it up, and it's like the richest, creamiest, smoothest ice cream you've ever tried. I mean, like really good. Okay. And here's why it's called Get a Simeis Grant, because you eat this and about an hour later, your body gets a signal that says,

you know what, I've got everything necessary to make a baby. Come on, I said that. Like all the wrong ingredients, let's go try. And it's called Get some, because it works better than bobcat. Right, right, okay. Like make it for your significant other and just wait an hour and just see what happens.

And they'll be like, you know, I just, I have this. Can I get it, AirOne, where can I get it? Can you build with cafe? Not to make it. We make it a bullproof cafe. Okay. You can make it at home, like the recipe's on the bullproof website. Search for bullproof or ice cream whenever.

And it's relatively simple to make you blend it in your blender and you put it in an ice cream maker, little, you know, $75, like a queesonite, little frozen bull thing. And it's the most decadent dessert. And it, but it's more about what happens on the body is like, I got what I needed. Right.

The other thing is, is simple, like, fish oil or krill oil. These are associated with fertility forever, and most people don't take that stuff. And it works really well. So these are basic biological things. Dave, I'm gonna have you answer. We get so many questions from listeners. And this one, I thought you could really have with. Hi, Emily, my boyfriend, domestic partner,

Steven and I are going on six years together. Steven are our best friends and extremely close. We tell each other everything, love spending every possible second together, and only cheat on each other with food. We're experiencing some disruption in the relationship because lately, I haven't been in the mood for sex and I can't pinpoint the exact reason because it could be one of many. I have a hard time shutting down my brain sometimes I feel uncomfortable in my body, I'm sure I'm not putting myself in the mood for sex. I also recently moved to New City, but I'm focused on the feelings I'm having within myself.

After listening to several of your episodes you really helped expand mine on how to approach this conversation with Steve. But I think alive it has to do with me and my mentality. My last relationship ended because we became better friends and lovers. I'm afraid my situation has a lot to with my mind and not being in the right mental space to allow someone else literally inside. Any thoughts or advice would be amazing. Thank you.

What would you say to this, Dave? She's not in the mood for sex, low libido. I just feel like there's so many other things going on than just like I don't want sex, you know. It sounds like for this listener that there's a lot of of cognitive stuff going on and here's the interesting thing. Through the work that led to headstrong and all that, I am absolutely convinced and part of this is also just neuroscience and running the 40s and neuroscience thing. There's a voice in your head that actually isn't you, right? It is that ancient mitochondrial system telling you to keep the petri dish alive based on their priorities, not yours. And so a lot of times we have guilt and shame and

things like that that come because we think like, why am having those thoughts like why do I have these things you know Like it's my fault, but here's the thing you have something that's working to keep your body alive using simple rules That's working against your best interests and that voice in your head the inner critic It's actually that it's not you and the fact that it's present doesn't change But now you can drop the shame and guilt about that. And for this listener, she's already identified that she's having these racing thoughts and all that stuff. The racing thoughts are there because there's some part of her nervous system that feels like if she goes into her body and feels the feelings, because sex is all about feelings.

There's nothing about thinking. If she does that, it's not safe. And the fear thing is never you deciding its fear. This is nothing about thinking. That if she does that, it's not safe. Right? And the fear thing is never you deciding its fear. Fear is a feeling that happens before you can think that something is fearful. So the feelings are happening from that. And I would suggest doing something like EMDR.

I love it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Just sociative, was it response? It's a kind of therapy that's very fast. And what you do is you go in and you sit down with a therapist and usually one or two sessions and they move your eyes until your brain goes into this weird, you said that.

Is it trauma, like, is it more trauma? It can be with trauma, but it just that every fear is based on trauma. But you can have sexual abuse kind of trauma, which is a big use for that stuff. But you can also just have a trauma around some time in your childhood, you learn that it's not safe to go into your feelings, you have to think about it. And a lot of people spend their whole life, including me, so I was about 30.

I was like, all about what's going on my head and everything below the neck. It's like, that's all just noise and you should just ignore all that. Right. For your listener who asked that great question, here is something that is shocking, just shocking at turning on libido.

And it is having someone take care of you. And for the vast majority of women, I'm pretty sure that washing socks and doing dishes are absolutely not turn-ons. In fact, it's the same for men. So there are times when you're at a point in your life where self-care involves actually accepting help for things that you really don't like.

And if you're at a place in your relationship in your life where you can even once a week have someone come in and help out at the things that you find most drudgery, there's actually really good evidence that is going to increase your libido. And it may be something as simple as your partner cooking you dinner, but quite often it might just be like, you know what? Between my commute my job and all the household tasks That just by virtue of tradition that I've been tasked with because I'm a woman because I was raised that I'm a good person If I vacuum on my own floors every day or whatever programming you have that stuff sucks your sex life. That's it. And for entrepreneurs like you and me, we can always do more, no matter what.

And for a lot of listeners like that, even if you have a day job, the odds are you have a side gig at this point, you're probably thinking, I should be driving in Uber right now, whatever it is, since you could always do more. And if you lie to yourself to always do more and you don't prioritize self-care,

your libido will crush, it'll just crash. And you want to be able to do then is figure out all right What are the things in my life that suck the most energy that make me feel least cared for and how do I get help on those things and From for many of us asking for help is an admission of weakness Right, and this isn't about weakness This is about asking for someone to care for you. And for women more than men, but for both of us, just biologically, knowing that you are cared for is an incredible effort to jack. I hope you guys enjoyed the interview with Dave Asprey. I find him fascinating. And if you want to find more about the Bulletproof lifestyle and his book Headstrong, you can check it out at bulletproof.com and you

can also find more about it and all the links to his social and his books on our website. Oh, also you guys. Bulletproof Labs open in Santa Monica, California. This is open to the public and think of labs as a place to help you achieve the highest state of physical and cognitive performance. AKA labs to help you kick ass. You can check it out at bulletprooflabz.com. So thanks everyone for listening, thanks to my amazing team, Ken, Jamie, our volunteers, Shannon and Jenny, producer, Lark, and Michael. And thanks everyone for listening, was it good for you?

Text Ask Emily to 7979-7979.