In the fourth and final episode of a series with author and biohacking pioneer Dave Asprey, he and the Amens give you practical tips using proven science to slow down or even reverse the aging process. Use these tips to transform your mind and body to achieve the superhuman version of you.
Dr Daniel Amen: Welcome to the Brain Warrior's Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen.
Tana Amen: And, I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body.
Dr Daniel Amen: The Brain Warrior's Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain SPECT imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.
Tana Amen: The Brain Warrior's Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com
Welcome back. We are still with our friend Dave Asprey, the founder and CEO of Bulletproof 360, and we're having such a great time talking about your book, Super Human. I'm learning so much. You're talking about, you're speaking my language with a lot of things. I've taken a lot of my training at the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. We're talking about anti-aging. In the last episode, we ended talking about peptide therapy and I started to ask, compare that to growth hormone, which a lot of anti-aging doctors dabble in, with for anti-aging, not in doses for like athletic performance, but in very small doses to help people with muscle tone and things like this to sort of age backwards.
But, there is controversy with growth hormone because for some people their blood sugar goes very high. For some people it's or if they are prone to cancer, there is a theory and there's not proven yet, but that they might develop cancer faster. But, with peptides, I haven't heard any of that. So, I'm curious that I know a lot of people are switching to peptide if they're concerned about that. And, I have not tried it, but I have heard a lot of things with the injections. I haven't heard much about the with the supplements. So, have you seen that used for anti-aging in that way? To replace growth hormone?
Dave Asprey: Absolutely. There are several peptides that release growth hormone, like growth hormone releasing peptides would be the obvious one.
Tana Amen: Okay. So, what it is, is it's like a precursor, correct?
Dave Asprey: It's not really a precursor of a [inaudible 00:02:24] to it. What it does, it's a signal to the body to release more and your hippocampus is working right, it ought to all work, but a lot of people have problems with their HPA.
Tana Amen: So, if they've had a brain injury or whatever.
Dave Asprey: Access and so something doesn't work right. In my case, I actually was down to almost no growth hormone production naturally, so I did the really advanced tests, and they're, "Dave, you're a candidate for growth hormone replacement," so I did growth hormone for about three years at biological normal levels and then did some more work on myself and other peptides and all this stuff that's in Superhuman, and I went off growth hormone and low and behold, my body makes growth hormone on its own again, and it didn't before. Which is really cool. Normally they say when you go on, and you can't go off. I would say that's not true because I did it.
And, what you can do though is you can take these things if you need them, but one of the underlying parts of Superhuman, anytime you cause cells to grow faster, and it's not just growth hormone, it's any treatment you can do that causes regeneration will, by definition increase your cancer risk.
Tana Amen: Right.
And, everyone listening right now has cancer in their body at this very second. It's okay. You also have natural killer cells in your body whose job it is to kill these pre cancer cells before anything happens. It's the state of being alive and kids have more of those things. But, they're growing and they're, their immune systems are really healthy. So, part of the strategy in Superhuman is, "Hey, if you're going to do some stuff that makes you regenerate, you should also do stuff that makes your mitochondria stronger. Because, when you strengthen mitochondria, then your risk of cancer goes down because most cancer is mitochondrial in origin." Since low mitochondrial function, low ability to turn food and air and energy. It's correlated with diabetes, which is one of the big four killers I write about in the book. And, diabetes is a precursor to Alzheimer's that's a precursor to cancer and it's a precursor to heart disease.
So, if you start solving your energy production problem and you regenerate at the same time, you regenerate better and you counter any risk of cancer that would happen there. So, part of the strategy is you got to be good at turning air and food into energy before you do anything to be healthier because that alone is the first step.
Dr Daniel Amen: So, we only have a few minutes left. How, give us your top tips. What are things the Brain Warriors can do today to age backwards and become super human? So, when I ask you that, what are the first couple of things that come to mind?
Tana Amen: That we can take away and do quickly?
Dave Asprey: All right, I totally want to talk about STEM cells, but you can't really do those quickly. And, there's a whole chapter on that. So, let's set that aside. We talked about sleep in the last segment of this and one of the things you could do today that is very easy to do is go in your bedroom and unplug anything that has a light on it. I don't care if it's your alarm clock. I don't care if it's a little led charging station. Unplug it all and then look at your curtains. If light comes in from around your curtains, you have a 68% increased risk of depression. At least the study of 900 humans in Japan showed that just from streetlights coming in around their curtains. So, get blackout curtains and Velcro the sides down if you need to. Use double sided Velcro tape or for tonight, hang a blanket over your thing, black out your room and see how much better you sleep.
When you wake up in the morning, "I had better dreams" or "I just feel rested. I'm not stiff." There you go. You started your anti-aging program. Your growth hormone is higher, your testosterone is higher, your hormones are healthier, your brain will work better and literally that was all you had to do. But, if you woke up in the night to pee and you flipped on that bright led bathroom light, you did it wrong. So, keep the lights off when you do it that first night.
Tana Amen: I like that.
Dave Asprey: The second thing, stop having sugar and carbs for breakfast. It is the wrong time of day for you. If you're going to have carbs, don't have sugar and have your carbs for dinner. And, stop eating fried stuff. I'm going to plug Bulletproof coffee here. If you want to have a really good day and you haven't tried it as a Brain Warrior, I know you guys talk about it sometimes and I'm grateful for that.
It has changed my life. It has changed millions of people's lives, almost 200 million cups of Bulletproof coffee served and you have that for breakfast and when you do that, you will not experience hunger, but the oil that's in there can provide extra energy to your brain and you're, "Well, I woke up, I had more energy and less hunger than normal. I did have a moderate amount of carbohydrates at dinner, had my sweet potatoes, had some rice that can help my sleep and then I turned off the lights at night and I made sure my bedroom was like a cave and I woke up the next morning." And, if you do that, you will actually age less quickly than all your friends.
Tana Amen: I love that. And, I'm going to give you one little plug on the Bulletproof coffee because when I would go to the gym, I'd go early in the morning and didn't have time to make breakfast. So, I would take the Bulletproof coffee, which alone probably would have been enough. But because I needed a quick boost, I would drop a scoop of my protein powder in there, blend it all up and go, it tastes like a mocha. It was great.
Dave Asprey: It works just fine to do that. And, we even make a cold brew now so you can actually take the cold report in your blender. There's one of the collagen in it and the deal is that it should be convenient, it should be fast. And, if you do this coffee itself is now, it's an antiaging substance as far as I can tell.
Tana Amen: As long as it's clean coffee, right?
Dr Daniel Amen: Well, and most of it is not clean.
Tana Amen: It needs to be clean coffee. So, that's one of the reasons we like Bulletproof, yes.
Dave Asprey: Thank you. Thank you for mentioning that. Bulletproof coffee is lab tested. We create the green coffee differently than other companies because a lot of coffee does have a toxin in it that contributes to inflammation, especially attacking the kidneys and bladder. We prevent the formation of that and test for it and it's a big differentiator. I'm afraid of normal coffee even though it tastes good.
Tana Amen: Even though it tastes good.
Dr Daniel Amen: Many coffees have mold in them. So, you have to really be careful with that. Other tips?
Dave Asprey: Other tips that are really useful and we've all heard this, you should exercise, but I also know that 8% of people actually exercise as much as the government tells them to. Good luck with that helping you because the government also tells you eat 16 servings of bread a day or something. That advice is probably wrong.
Tana Amen: They give you the very minimum, at best.
Dave Asprey: The science is really straightforward, move for 20 minutes a day, go for a walk. That's the minimum necessary thing. And, once a week, lift something heavy or run really fast for a minute or two. And, if you do that, you're on a pretty good anti-aging regimen. You can do more if you like to do that. But, that's what it's going to take from two different sets of studies to the mitochondria, those power production plants in your body working really well.
Tana Amen: Yes.
Dave Asprey: So, if you get quality sleep, you move, it doesn't have to be that much more. Moving is better, but you don't have to do an hour a day of hard cardio. That's not necessary. That's probably not even going to make you age in a healthy way, but if you love it, do it a couple of times a week, that's fine, but it's stress, recover, stress, recover.
You do those things and then you could get into hormone replacement. You get into the True Dark glasses, you get into all those other things, but if you just move sleep, don't eat fried stuff, don't eat the grains, don't eat sugar. You're going to be amazed at the difference. And, those are the first things you do to live a long time.
Dr Daniel Amen: Then I would also add, and you do this in the book as well, floss. Because, if your gums are not healthy, your brain is not healthy. That it in many ways your eyes are the window to the soul, but your gums are the window to heart disease.
Tana Amen: Yes. We spent as a society, probably 15 years really focused on the benefits of nutrition and it was really important. But, what's really interesting is a lot of the new research coming out, especially for heart health, they're finding that exercise and movement because we're such a sedentary community society is those studies are actually turning out to be more impressive than the nutrition studies, which is wild.
Dr Daniel Amen: Yes. But, my clinical experience is get your diet right first because I think that's about 80% of it. And, then move, right? I mean the more you move.
Tana Amen: You got to do both. The point is, you got to do both.
Dr Daniel Amen: The more you can move. David is just such a joy to see you again, my friend. Thank you for your time.
Tana Amen: It really is.
Dr Daniel Amen: Thank you for your work. The book is Superhuman, New York times bestseller. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it anywhere books are sold. You can learn more about Dave's work at daveasprey.com.
I know you're a Brain Warrior. I'm actually so proud of you that you have, you're just serious about taking care of yourself, your brain, your body, which will help your wife, which will help your children and now you've just literally helped millions.
Tana Amen: Right, what I love is that you've taken something that turned out, that started personal and you have made it your mission to help others. And, that's really important and I think that's the best way for people to start. And, your way of eating your diet, if you will. I hate the word diet, but your diet, Bulletproof diet is totally on target with what we approve and.
Dave Asprey: Your recommendations are so solid and just true, true debt of gratitude. I wouldn't be doing what I do today. I wouldn't be here the way I am today if it wasn't for your continuous push to look at the brand for the science of it. And, I know you took a lot of arrows, especially the very beginning when you stood up and you disrupted the way we thought about the brain and you've been proven right over and over. And, if you had not written your first book, I truly don't think I'd be where I am today, so thank you and thanks for having me on your show.
Tana Amen: That's so kind.
Dr Daniel Amen: You're welcome. Thanks my friend.
Tana Amen: Thanks, Dave.
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