There have been major breakthroughs in the science of anti-aging in the last few years, and this week’s guest, author and Bulletproof 360 founder Dave Asprey, has been testing and using these methods to hack his own biology in order to share the results. In this episode, Dave and the Amens discuss some of the latest science that can keep your eyes from going bad, or even keep yourself from going bald.
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.
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Dr Daniel Amen: Welcome back. We are here with Dave Asprey having just the most fun.
Tana Amen: Yes, really informative.
Dr Daniel Amen: Learning new things about how to take care of your brain and your body and your eyes and your fertility organs.
Tana Amen: Crazy.
I have a question, Dave. You mentioned in the last episode you were talking about the glasses that you're wearing. They have this sort of cool factor, but you're not wearing them for that reason you're wearing them because they actually block blue light. And, I have a question about that because I think that's really important. I'm getting a little weary of all of the experts out there talking about how to not sleep, because you can't not sleep. And, so I like that you're talking about the importance of sleep. And, blocking blue lights at night it's really important. But my question is, because I have blue light blockers in my glasses and you mentioned that's not blocking all of the lights. And, that's a really good point. Can you get those glasses that you're wearing in prescription?
Dave Asprey: Yes. And, there's a lot more of them coming right now.
Tana Amen: Okay.
Dave Asprey: So, these are called True Dark. And, what's interesting during the day, these blocks 75 about 75% of blue light. If you get no blue light coming into your eyes during the day, your body doesn't know it's day time.
Tana Amen: You get tired, yes.
Dave Asprey: So, the ones that block all the blue won't work. Your prescription glasses with a coating only block about 40% so you'll still get digital eye strain at the end of the day, but you'll feel better than someone with no glasses. But, the real trick, and this is the True Dark patented technology, these glasses, they're called the True Dark Sunsets. These block all of the frequencies of light that interfere with sleep. So, these go way more than blue blocking. And, when you wear these, it's like noise canceling headphones for your eyes. And I've been able to eliminate my jet lag when I fly anywhere on the planet using the color of light coming in my eyes.
So, the deal is blue blockers at during the day, it's too much. If you block all the blue lights, you want to block some, but at night, even if you block all the blue light, you didn't do it right. So, what I do is indoors under bright lights, like in the studio today, I'm going to wear the daytime ones from True Dark and the nighttime ones I put on after the sun goes down.
Tana Amen: Interesting.
Dave Asprey: And, here's the effects of this. And, I write about this in Superhuman. I went to a very detailed kind of eye hacker doctor, the level two eye specialist, and she said, "Dave, I've never seen someone your age." I just turned 26%. that's 26% of my minimum acceptable age 180, so I just turned 47. But, as she said, "Dave, your eyes have none of the reduction of flexibility that we expect at your age. You can still read the finest print that a teenager can read. And, I've not seen anything like that. This is unheard of. So, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I think it's your glasses and your supplements."
So, I take these and I made a supplement called Eye Armor and I take several of those a day to support the tissues in my eyes because let's face it, if I'm going to be 180 I would like to be able to look at my beautiful wife and to see the scenery. I like to be able to hear everything and have a brain that works. Those are the most important things. And, after that I'd really like to be able to walk around and have full control of my sex life and my ability to use the restroom. Those are really important. That's what people think aging is going to be, is having none of those. And, that's not true. Aging is an accumulation of wisdom and energy and power and having a body that works perfectly normally and eyes are part of that. And, these are True Dark glasses.
Tana Amen: Interesting. Thank you.
Dr Daniel Amen: So, there's a chapter in the book I'm really interested in called Don't Look Like An Alien : Avoiding baldness, grays and wrinkles. So, I'm screwed. But, I don't know, maybe I can get this back. I decided to just cut it all off because when you don't have much, it's all over the place.
Tana Amen: Jason Statham is one of the hottest guys in the whole world.
Dr Daniel Amen: It's so funny. I went to the barber and I showed him a picture of Jason Statham, the actor and I said, "Can you make me look like him?" And, at the end I'm, he showed me, and I'm, "Oh I can't pay you. You made me look like the Rock."
Dave Asprey: You got to say Jeff Bezos.
Tana Amen: I love them both, so it's all good. You should have paid him.
Dr Daniel Amen: So, tell us what's in that chapter. And, I mean is that really true? Could I have avoided the bald head of mine, which of course I got from my mother's father.
Dave Asprey: It turns out there's three kinds of balding. Three things that cause it, and most people are familiar with a testosterone analog called DHT. And, that's in some people what causes it. But, in others it's not that there is a genetic cause, I have the same thing. All the men on both sides of my family are completely bald and I've managed to do pretty darn well given that genetic legacy. And, in the book I talked about it, it's receding a little bit, but not too bad. And, I'm working on that.
We've just turned his huge amount of knowledge about how we can control what our skin and our cells do. And, we're doing that with light sometimes. And, the reason light is so powerful for making hair grow back or at least keeping hair healthy. We're talking about red and infrared light. You can get caps that do it. There's treatments you can get at various hair salons or beauty salons. And, what in fact, the company that makes the glasses even has a panel you can put up next to your head with the right frequencies in it. But, the idea there is the cells in your skin, in your scalp, they make energy using electrons or they make energy in the form of electrons using mitochondria. So, there's a decline in mitochondrial function in the scalp because we get poor blood flow. So, this is going to sound dumb, but even just massaging your head, you get a little massager off Amazon that does things.
Tana Amen: I rub your head all the time.
Dave Asprey: There you go. You can outsource it to a loved one, right? But, getting the blood flowing there and you know very much about blood flow inside the brain and blood flow on the very surface there. It's a problem because a lot of people that don't touch their head regularly, and how do you get the blood to move there when there isn't that much going on? So, red light, infrared light and massage can help.
And, then there's other compounds that are now, we're now just discovering that cause hair to grow. I write about something called Carbon 60. A compound in the book that is used for anti-aging in rats. They extend their maximum lifespan by 90 to 95% in multiple studies. That is like doubling your life span. In fact, if I thought I was going to live to 90 and that stuff worked the same way on humans, which it might, there I've got my 180 already. And, there's a few other things in the book that could, Oh the 20% increase, 10% increase. There's all kinds of stuff that has those effects. Some studies are small some are in mice, almost no studies in humans because there, if you're 120 years old, whatever, they started studying 120 years ago. It was probably ground up mercury mixed with bat heads or something. I mean, our medicine has moved on, so I'm going to go with the animal studies and the mechanistic action.
But, for hair, you get blood flow, you get the light, you can do oxygen or ozone treatments and the things that we've most heard of the compounds that block DHT formation aren't going to help with bioenergetic positive baldness, but they oftentimes not often, they occasionally creates a visceral chemical neutering effect in men where they turn off all hormone production. That can just be really destructive. Your quality of life. There's a lot of Facebook groups for people trying to solve that problem.
So, I would say I'm not a fan of oral pills for that, but when you take enough collagen, Bulletproof, put collagen on the map as a nutrient work doing, you will usually see your hair grows faster, grows healthier, grows thicker. And, so the idea is you stack all that up. There's also something called copper tried peptide, which is really important for skin thickness and for hair growth. So, now you can get a copper tripeptide serum that you put on your head and, Dr Amen, if you'd been able to 20 years ago, have access to these technologies and said, "You know what? Three times a week I'm going to do something. I get out of the shower, smear some stuff on there." Or, "I'm going to sit on my computer and I'm going to use this light on my head." Your hair might look really different than it does today.
Dr Daniel Amen: I'm reading that chapter for sure.
Dave Asprey: Let me see your [crosstalk 00:09:29].
Dr Daniel Amen: Hack your longevity like a Russian. We only have two more minutes in this podcast, but I'm very curious-
Tana Amen: That's funny, I like that.
Dr Daniel Amen: -about this.
Dave Asprey: The Russians have always thought about hacking the human body differently than we have in the West.
Tana Amen: Oh, we're not talking about our election? Okay.
Dave Asprey: Fair point, yes. Hack your body like you're hacking an election, it's a whole tagline.
So, going back even to the Olympics 30, 40 years ago, they were willing to push humans beyond what's reasonable and so the mindset, how do we change ourselves to do what we want? And, when it comes to this, there's small signaling molecules called peptides that our bodies make, and in Russia they figured out a bunch of these things that you can use topically, you can take orally or even inject, right that radically make you act like a young person. Originally they came from young animals and now they synthesize these things.
One of the compounds in that chapter called Epitelon, a $50 injection, by the way, it is not approved by the FDA in the US although in Russia it's used commonly. And, Epitelon increases telomere length dramatically, way more so than almost any other treatment and it's 50 bucks. But, there's another company selling a supplement that costs a couple thousand dollars a month that also increases telomeres. So, if you want to attack that pillar of aging and support it, maybe this is the way to go. The future of anti-aging is definitely in some meaningful way, tied to this research on peptides that came out of Russia. There's a whole chapter on what are they, what do they do and how would you use them today.
Tana Amen: I have a question. Okay, so on the peptide front, that's becoming a big thing in antiaging medicine. I know that.
Dave Asprey: Oh, yes.
Tana Amen: Because, for a long time, well, even still, growth hormone used in therapeutic doses, not used in sports medicine doses like for athletics is another thing that a lot of people are really interested in because they feel like it helps people to age slower.
Dr Daniel Amen: So, hold that because that's really important.
Tana Amen: Okay.
Dr Daniel Amen: When we come back, we're going to talk about Dave's top tips to be super human and maybe even live forever.
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