Announcer (00:00:00):
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.
Dr. Gundry (00:00:14):
Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Coffee; not only is it absolutely delicious, but it contains some of the most powerful polyphenols in the world. But if you’re one of over a billion coffee lovers across the globe, my guest today says there’s something you should know. He says that due to toxic contamination, certain coffees may actually be doing more harm than good.
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Today, he’s here to share how you can experience all the benefits of coffee with none of the drawbacks. He’s Dave Asprey, legendary biohacker, award-winning podcast host, four time New York Times best-selling author and entrepreneur. In just a minute, Dave and I will introduce you to his new coffee brand, Danger Coffee. Coffee designed to help you rid your body of toxins and feel dangerously good.
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We’ll also share our favorite caffeine-free methods of boosting your energy and how to hack your body for a healthier, stronger, younger feeling you. So don’t go away, we’ll be right back.
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I’ve worked in medicine for more than 40 years and I can tell you firsthand, there truly is no magic prescription drug or supplement for any health issue. It all comes down to healing your gut and removing inflammatory foods from your diet. That said, I’ve recently found a supplement that has made a dramatic improvement in many of my patients’ gut health that I need to share with you all. It’s Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotics, the holy grail of microbiome health, and my favorite good gut buddy.
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I rave about it all the time and time again, but that’s because there simply is nothing else like it on the market. This lectin blocking powerhouse strain naturally makes up 1% to 5% of our gut bacteria, but it diminishes as we age. And the only way to replenish it is through supplements, it’s not available via food. This gut changing good gut buddy is critical in restoring your microbiome and you can try it for yourself with a 20% discount.
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Go to www.pendulumlife.com and use my code Gundry20 at checkout. That’s P-E-N-D-U-L-U-M-L-I-F-E dot com and use my code Gundry20 for a 20% discount on your first month of membership.
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What’s the issue with most of the coffee today?
Dave Asprey (00:02:56):
Well, it turns out that when coffee is fermented, which almost all coffee is, toxic mold will grow. And when it grows, it leaves behind something called a mycotoxin or a toxin similar to penicillin. Doesn’t take very much to have a big effect on the body. In fact, penicillin is also a toxin from mold. So when you drink your coffee, you’re getting a dose of something called Ochratoxin A.
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Now, most governments around the world, China, Japan, Europe, and most of South America, put limits for how moldy coffee can be for their population to drink it. The US and Canada have no limits. So when it’s illegal to sell it in China, they’ll send it to the US, we’ll drink it, and then an hour later we feel jittery, cranky, we want sugar and really it has all kinds of systemic inflammatory effects.
Dr. Gundry (00:03:49):
That sounds like a good business practice to me.
Dave Asprey (00:03:52):
It’s a great one because then you can put more extra sugar, caramel frappe whatever in your thing, and maybe we could just clean up our coffee act here in the US.
Dr. Gundry (00:04:01):
Why do other governments regulate this and ours doesn’t?
Dave Asprey (00:04:08):
I would never be one to say that commercial interests have any influence on the US government. That would be terrible.
Dr. Gundry (00:04:14):
No.
Dave Asprey (00:04:15):
It turns out the levels in different countries vary based on economics. Bottom line is that in the US, we like to set levels that make stuff cheap. And if you want to make it better, sometimes it costs more. In fact, I have a former president of the Specialty Coffee Association on video at a plantation for one of the companies I started and he says, “Oh, I was in Japan when the trade minister rejected a thousand shipping containers of coffee because it was too moldy.” And I said, “Well, where did it go?” He said, “We sent it to the US because it’s legal there.” So this is a real thing and the coffee industry in the US gets very mad and they say, “We solved this problem in the ’90s.” No, they didn’t solve this problem in the ’90s. They don’t even measure it in the US because they don’t have to.
Dr. Gundry (00:05:02):
So there’s no requirement?
Dave Asprey (00:05:03):
None whatsoever.
Dr. Gundry (00:05:05):
Well, now what about the argument that high heat or steam is going to deactivate these toxins? Like if we make espresso, we don’t have to worry?
Dave Asprey (00:05:18):
Well, I’ve looked into this extensively because if that was the case, I would just make espresso and drink whatever coffee I could find. I never would’ve had to figure out how to do all this stuff. I’ve got 34 studies on my website, daveasprey.com. The post is called One Ugly Mug if you want to search for it. And in it, there are three or four studies that talk about the fact that roasting does not break down the primary mold toxin, which is called OTA or Ochratoxin A.
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There are others that show it is present in brewed coffee, including espresso brewed coffee. Sadly, it takes above about 450 degrees at sustained time in order to break down this toxin and if you do that to coffee beans, they become ashes. So we don’t know how to do that. Fortunately, we know how to test for this and testing in coffee is also very difficult, but we figured it out finally.
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You can get coffee that’s clean, that’s tested like Danger Coffee, and there are other things that you can do if you’re not drinking Danger Coffee and you’re saying, “I don’t know if I’m going to get the jitter, the shakes, the heartburn,” all the things that people think are caused by caffeine. No, for most people, those are caused by your body having an inflammatory mass cell reaction to Ochratoxin A that’s present in the coffee.
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It’s also present, by the way, at high levels in beer and in grains. And your job is to get as little of it in your body as is reasonable because we know this toxin interacts with other mold toxins that are present in our food, things like Aflatoxin, things that we’ve heard about. In fact, a lot of them are most present in high lectin foods, who would’ve ever thought?
Dr. Gundry (00:06:54):
Imagine.
Dave Asprey (00:06:55):
So that’s a side benefit of cutting out lectins, is when you get rid of all the peanuts and things like that, magically you don’t get the mold either and you realize that you feel so much better, you’re calmer, you’re more focused, and the inflammatory stuff goes away. I used to weigh 300 pounds. I used to have debilitating brain fog. I quit coffee for five long, dark years I can barely remember.
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Finally, I had to create a mold-free coffee in order to be able to do this. This is my second coffee company. My first company is called Bulletproof. It’s still my baby, I love it. It launched mold-free coffee. Danger Coffee is mold-free. It also contains trace minerals that actually bind to toxins, including mold toxins, as well as toxins in the gut. So you get a boost in minerals because we’re all getting mineral depleted because we’re eating all these foods full of phytic acid, as you well know. So I’m looking to fix people to upgrade them with their coffee.
Dr. Gundry (00:07:50):
But why call it Danger Coffee? That’s scary.
Dave Asprey (00:07:55):
It is a little scary and I am building people with so much energy, so much zest for life that they’re actually dangerous. Who knows what they might do? They might ask her out finally, they might ask for a raise, they might say no to eating junk food. They might say no to something that’s wrong. I want people like, “I am full of power. I will do the right thing.” Those by definition, are dangerous people. I want peaceful, kind, dangerous people. That’s what I’m surrounding myself. That’s how we’re transforming society so everyone can handle their own stuff.
Dr. Gundry (00:08:27):
Okay, all right. I’ll buy that. You mentioned high temperature. Back when I was a surgeon, we would actually make coffee in the autoclave where we sterilized things. I’m going, “Wow, we were way ahead of our time.”
Dave Asprey (00:08:42):
You were.
Dr. Gundry (00:08:43):
We were destroying micro toxins in the autoclave. No, folks don’t do that at home. All right, now I see that we’re having dark roast and I warned you that I was going to call you on this. You and I both know that the roasting process, interestingly enough, lowers the polyphenol content of coffee. And you and I both want the polyphenols from coffee and elsewhere. And we know that the darker the roast, the more the polyphenols are inactivated, destroyed.
Dave Asprey (00:09:17):
Yup.
Dr. Gundry (00:09:17):
I love dark roast coffee, but I quite frankly don’t drink it anymore, I drink medium roast. We talked light roast is probably really smart to drink, but it tastes terrible.
Dave Asprey (00:09:28):
Yeah, it’s not worth it.
Dr. Gundry (00:09:29):
Yeah, so medium roast works pretty good. So why dark roast?
Dave Asprey (00:09:34):
I believe somewhere in the medium to medium dark has the most benefits. We’ve got a dark roast out because so many people have been trained to enjoy dark roast coffee. That’s because you can take coffee from anywhere in the world with any toxin level, you can burn it to an even amount and you can standardize the flavor profile.
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At any one time, the largest coffee company in the US with a green logo has about 800 million dollars of coffee in inventory and they have to make it taste the same even if it grew in a different region. The way you do that is you just get it really nice and dark.
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If that’s what people want, dark coffee’s good for you. I just think medium roast is better for you and with a high quality coffee, and this is very high end coffee, it’s ultra clean, it’s lab tested, it’s got the minerals that are built into it. And so why would you want to burn it? But some people just like it that way, so I’m willing to help them drink coffee because you got to say drinking dark roast coffee versus no coffee, dark roast coffee still has way more benefits than just water.
Dr. Gundry (00:10:33):
True.
Dave Asprey (00:10:33):
So that’s why.
Dr. Gundry (00:10:34):
Okay. Yeah, there is this certain very large coffee company that have had their polyphenol content analyzed and it’s almost undetectable in chlorogenic acids in.
Dave Asprey (00:10:50):
It’s funny because when you roast more, chlorogenic acid goes down, which is one of the primary reasons that you drink coffee. There are many others, but that’s a good one. The thing though, as you roast it darker, caffeine also goes down. A dark roast is lower in caffeine and some people like that effect of it. There’s also acrylamide. Now people would think, “Oh, acrylamide is a probable cancer causing toxin and if you have less of this in your coffee, that would be a good thing.”
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Dark roast has less of it because surprisingly, even though it’s more roasted, it burns off some of the acrylamide when you do that. But here’s the thing about acrylamide in coffee. For years, the state of California would torture coffee companies by making them put a sticker on that said, “Warning: this contains a carcinogen.” The amount of acrylamide in a cup of coffee is so tiny that if you drank a cup of coffee every day for a year, you would get less acrylamide than you get from one piece of toasted rye bread. Don’t eat rye bread.
Dr. Gundry (00:11:53):
Right. Right. You heard it here, don’t eat rye bread, don’t have toast.
Dave Asprey (00:11:59):
Exactly.
Dr. Gundry (00:12:01):
Okay, one last thing on brewing since we’re on brewing.
Dave Asprey (00:12:04):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (00:12:06):
There’s a lot of talk that coffee raises your cholesterol levels because some of the acids in coffee are known to increase cholesterol production in the liver and that a paper filter will help with that and that we all, even if we say, like espresso, we should take our espresso and pour it through a paper filter before we drink it so we don’t raise our cholesterol. What say you?
Dave Asprey (00:12:40):
Well, given that cholesterol is what all of your sex hormones are made out of and that you need it for life, there’s a great argument for lowering your cholesterol. Oh, wait. Here’s what’s going on. The two compounds in question are called cafestol and kahweol. Sone would be cafestrol, there’s probably an R at the end. Cafestrol, thank you and kahweol. I’ve looked into the research on these.
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Now, they can in some people raise cholesterol, but not oxidized cholesterol and not the small particle size if you’re into particle size. But most interestingly, they are shown in studies to reduce inflammation throughout the body, especially in the brain. That means if you use a metal filter instead of a paper filter and your cholesterol goes up a couple points and your bio float increases, which helps you get rid of toxins and your LPPLA2 doesn’t go up, which is a marker of damage to the arteries.
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I’m telling that to the audience, you know all this better than I do. But then why the heck would you pour it through a paper filter? Oh, there’s also the bleaching agents from the paper filter. There’s also the papery taste and there’s the environmental destruction from that. It’s better for the environment and better for you to drink your coffee through a metal filter, including espresso or French press or any of the other metal ways to do it, unless you have probably familial high hypercholesterolemia, in which case you are in a very, very small percentage.
Dr. Gundry (00:14:09):
Yeah, and also in terms of longevity studies and dementia studies and Parkinson’s studies, it would appear that Turkish coffee, which is basically coffee boiled in grounds for hours and hours may have the best benefit.
Dave Asprey (00:14:26):
Who would’ve thought that a heat extraction, a maximal heat extraction would be better than just a little bit of extraction? I believe it is better. In fact, the way I make my coffee when I’m on the road is I have Turkish grind. I grind my Danger beans at home to be super fine like flour. Then I boil water in my hotel room and I pour it over the beans and I just let it sit there for a while, stir it around, coffee settles out, pour off the top and I drink it.
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It’s not boiled as long as you’d boil Turkish coffee, but it’s as close as you can get, completely unfiltered. And if there’s a little bit of fine coffee grounds in it, it just gives it more body. People really freak out about this I think, because Mr. Coffee sells coffee filters or something. But there’s something else I want to mention about brewing.
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When you buy a normal drip coffee maker, it only heats the water up to 176 degrees. Proper coffee gets up to 199 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. This gives you a much better extraction of all the beneficial things. You think about it, you’re using an herbal preparation that has physiological effects, so you should extract the good stuff right.
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So if you buy a good coffee maker that’s certified by the SCAA, Specialty Coffee Association of America, it’s going to cost maybe twice as much as one of the bargain, low end coffee makers, but it’ll make much better coffee with more health benefits because the water got hot enough. Or you can just do a French press and that’ll cost you eight bucks.
Dr. Gundry (00:15:53):
I was going to say, are you an investor in the Specialty Coffee Company of America?
Dave Asprey (00:15:58):
No, this is an industry trade group that goes for high end coffee. Not an investor at all. It’s like a management body to make sure that high quality coffee actually is high quality coffee instead of street grade coffee.
Dr. Gundry (00:16:12):
So it’s more of a certifying agency?
Dave Asprey (00:16:15):
Yeah, but there isn’t even a [inaudible 00:16:16]. I think it’s just everyone pays some amount of money to be a member, it’s not a big business.
Dr. Gundry (00:16:21):
Perfect. All right, anything else we should know about coffee before we go on?
Dave Asprey (00:16:29):
There is.
Dr. Gundry (00:16:30):
Okay.
Dave Asprey (00:16:31):
It turns out that fat enhances the absorption of polyphenols. I know that’s news to you, right? If you were to, I don’t know, take a shot of olive oil, which has its own polyphenols, and then drink your coffee or you were to blend fat into your coffee, the good fats, magically, you’re going to get even more benefits from your coffee. One of the reasons is polyphenol absorption. Another one is the pharmacokinetics of caffeine, by the way, caffeine.
Dr. Gundry (00:17:02):
Oh, wow. Great.
Dave Asprey (00:17:02):
On my arm is a tattoo, if you’re just listening. Trimethylxanthine, go chemistry. What happens when you blend it with fat, or even when your body does it, is it changes the structure of the water that is in coffee so that your body can more quickly use it inside cells. This was validated by Dr. Gerald Pollack at University of Washington. I did fund that study, but it was a basic biochemistry study, not a test of my coffee. He tested MCT oil and ghee and found that they made a very large exclusion zone when you put water up against them, larger than he’s seen from anything else.
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What I think is happening when you have fat with your coffee is that in the gut, as it gets mixed up, you get some of that and if you just blend it or add some to it, you get benefits from it. But if you add heavy cream to your coffee, the amount of protein that you get from cream, or even worse milk, is sadly enough to bind to the polyphenols. And there are multiple studies that show that milk cancels out the benefits of all those good polyphenols. That’s why Brits who put milk in their tea have three times the stomach cancer that you would predict, given the amount of tea they drink. It’s because they’re canceling out their tea with milk.
Dr. Gundry (00:18:22):
No, it’s absolutely true. You’re just doing yourself a huge disservice by picking up a latte or even a cappuccino. In fact, smart Italians will have a macchiato with just a tiny bit of foam instead of a cappuccino or a latte. It’s the worst thing you can do.
Dave Asprey (00:18:46):
It really is the worst thing you can do. I love it that you know all these details. You’re the only medical doctor that I know who’s got all these tiny little details about it because it matters, right? If you’re going to do something every single day. When I was young and a lot heavier than now, I would have a triple shot, extra hot latte from the green coffee logo company and I’d drink it every day and the caffeine was doing me some good. But man, that milk was not doing me good. It was making me really tired. And when I realized, “Gee, maybe I should stop doing that, I got more benefits from my coffee and well, I feel a lot different.”
Dr. Gundry (00:19:24):
Well, and it is fascinating that the casein molecule will absolutely bind to polyphenols and it unfortunately doesn’t let go of them. There are other protein molecules, particularly in plants, that may also bind polyphenols, but that may be a reversible binding and that the polyphenols are released by bacterial digestion of polyphenols. So just because you may want a color in your coffee that happens to be white, something like coconut milk is probably vastly superior to whiten your coffee.
Dave Asprey (00:20:05):
It’s my recommendation, one without carrageenan, which tends to open holes in your gut lining. There’s all this stuff, I just did a video on Instagram about oat milk. Seriously, it’s a tiny bit of oats blended in water and they sell it to you for five or six bucks and tell you it’s healthy. And the oats have their phytic acid and all the bad things they do. That’s not what you want to do to your coffee.
Dr. Gundry (00:20:29):
No, and oats they have a protein molecule that cross reacts with gluten. I can’t tell you the number of people that oatmeal and their oat milk is one of the reasons they have leaky gut. And when we take their oat milk and oatmeal away from them, everything gets a whole lot better.
Dave Asprey (00:20:50):
They get better so fast. Also, if you’re monitoring your blood sugar, like I’m doing right here, I’ve got a Dexcom blood sugar monitoring system. I’ve been doing this for about six years now, where I periodically wear either on my arm or on my stomach, so it that monitors my blood sugar. Oatmeal spikes blood sugar. Just go eat ice cream. I mean, if you’re going to trash yourself, why would you choose oatmeal? Have a croissant. I mean, seriously I’m not saying either one’s good for you, I’m just saying you might as well enjoy if you’re going to smack yourself in the face, make it feel good.
Dr. Gundry (00:21:20):
No, it’s absolutely right.
Dave Asprey (00:21:21):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (00:21:22):
In fact, what the latest study out of Tufts University showed ice cream is a much healthier food than a whole grain bagel.
Dave Asprey (00:21:33):
Amen. I have given my kids ice cream for breakfast, but we make it ourselves either from raw milk or just from coconut milk and egg yolks from our own chickens. As long as you don’t put a lot of sugar in it or you put a safe sugar thing like Stevia in it, magically it’s a perfectly good breakfast.
Dr. Gundry (00:21:51):
Yeah. Hey, how about would you allow me to put allulose in my coffee?
Dave Asprey (00:21:57):
You know what, I am a fan of allulose.
Dr. Gundry (00:21:59):
Me too.
Dave Asprey (00:22:01):
For years have said sugar alcohols are a pretty good choice and xylitol has been the one that’s been around for about 25 years and it stops cavities and even stops sinus infections and ear infections. Problem is xylitol is associated if you eat too much of it with getting the runs. And so then most people switch to erythritol, which has issues because it may be from GMO corn with glyphosate, but also that stuff is like gas city. So you can have little sprinkles of it unless you just eat it all the time, then you get used to it.
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But then allulose comes along and allulose doesn’t seem to have any negative metabolic effects. It’s much easier on the gut, I can feel a change in my digestion, but nothing that’s bad when I take even reasonable amounts of it. For people who want a sweetener, I think allulose, monk fruit and stevia are the most likely ones to be beneficial.
Dr. Gundry (00:22:55):
Yeah, and allulose is even better than that. Number one, there’s some really good human studies that it actually lowers blood sugar and so it’ll stop whatever blood sugar spike that you may get from drinking coffee. Some people do, but-
Dave Asprey (00:23:09):
Yeah, let’s talk about that, why they do that. But keep going about allulose. I’ll look at my blood sugar while we do that.
Dr. Gundry (00:23:14):
But one of the cool things about allulose, allulose was actually approved by the FDA as a prebiotic. That’s the first time this has been granted by the FDA, which is really cool. Nice.
Dave Asprey (00:23:26):
74 blood sugar.
Dr. Gundry (00:23:29):
The other cool thing is that an allulose makes your bacteria, because it’s a prebiotic, make short chain fatty acids.
Dave Asprey (00:23:37):
So good.
Dr. Gundry (00:23:38):
And it’s been compared in one study that it’s almost as effective as metformin in long term reduction of A1Cs.
Dave Asprey (00:23:49):
Allulose?
Dr. Gundry (00:23:49):
Allulose.
Dave Asprey (00:23:52):
I did not see that study on-
Dr. Gundry (00:23:54):
Yeah, I’ll send it to you.
Dave Asprey (00:23:55):
Okay, that’s exciting.
Dr. Gundry (00:23:55):
It is exciting.
Dave Asprey (00:23:56):
Because it tastes good. You can put allulose in anything.
Dr. Gundry (00:23:57):
Yeah.
Dave Asprey (00:23:59):
I’ve seen pancake syrup made out of it even.
Dr. Gundry (00:24:01):
Yeah. Oh, it’s actually a good pancake syrup that’s got a maple leaf on it.
Dave Asprey (00:24:05):
Right. Right, even though it’s not from maple.
Dr. Gundry (00:24:08):
Yes. Yeah. Great for kids by the way, but serve them Gundry pancakes. But that’s another story.
Dave Asprey (00:24:14):
Exactly.
Dr. Gundry (00:24:15):
Yeah. No, and it turns out that allulose actually is the short chain fatty acids are mitochondrial and couplers and they increase your metabolic rate and they’re thermogenic. So this is the only sweetener that’s ever been shown to do this, so I’m-
Dave Asprey (00:24:32):
Wow.
Dr. Gundry (00:24:33):
But you’re right, make sure it says non-GMO. You can get it. Look for it, because you’re right, we don’t want with a cute little corn mischief maker in it and glyphosate.
Dave Asprey (00:24:44):
Yeah. We do not need more glyphosate in our bodies. It’s interesting too, if Allulose turns into that butyric acid of the short chain fatty acid, that acid is twice as ketogenic as MCT oil. And I turn MCT oil into a billion dollar category with bulletproof. And also it’s a thing everyone knows about it now. And it turns out that butyric acid tastes bad. It smells like cheese, it was first discovered in butter. It’s why it’s called butyric acid.
(00:25:15):
So if you can get your body to make that, it’s twice as ketogenic and that’s strange. You put allulose in the coffee, then you get that benefit of ketogenesis, but there’s a study out there that says that the amount of caffeine contained in two small cups of coffee, so basically what most of us drink in the morning is enough to double keto production in the morning.
(00:25:39):
That research was from Dr. Kannan at UC San Diego. So this is interesting now. So you put some stuff in your coffee and you can do allulose and MCT oil, get the danger coffee, it’s got some minerals in there. You drink it and you’ve got the caffeine boost. You’ve got the allulose butyric acid keto boost and the MCT boost all at once.
(00:26:00):
And what ketones do for you and caffeine even all by itself is they reduce hunger. So then you had that for breakfast and you’re like, “Wow, I feel like myself all morning and I’m focused and I’m feeling good. I did my intermittent fasting.” This is a very meaningful hack for improving your health. I like not weighing 300 pounds.
Dr. Gundry (00:26:18):
Yeah, it beats weighing 300 pounds. All right, let’s go on to more biohacking. You are infamous or world famous or both for biohacking. Tell you what, for people who are maybe just tuning in, what the heck is biohacking? You’re having a conference next week on biohacking and I think this segment is going to air after that conference, but-
Dave Asprey (00:26:46):
It will, yeah.
Dr. Gundry (00:26:47):
So what the heck is biohacking?
Dave Asprey (00:26:50):
Well, first thank you for speaking at my conference.
Dr. Gundry (00:26:52):
Thank you for having me.
Dave Asprey (00:26:52):
I’m really excited to have you there. Biohacking is a movement that I started in 2011 and the definition when I first put it out there, it’s the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside of you, so you have full control of your own biology. So it encompasses lifestyle and some aspects of functional medicine. But the idea that’s different from that from just being healthy is that your body doesn’t listen to you very well, but it does listen to everything going around you. And you can control those. Now we can pick the kind of light we have, we can pick the temperature, we can pick when we wake up, we can pick whatever we want to eat. There’s so many things we can do, but there’s no manual with the human body.
(00:27:37):
So this has become a vibrant global movement. There’s biohackers in Japan, there’s Latin American biohackers all over the US and this conference has been running for 10 years now and we have thousands of people who come every year. And we’re just learning from experts like you, what are the things that work better than what we used to do?
(00:27:58):
And it turns out because of all the big data, because of the internet, because of things like sensing to be able to measure your sleep and all that, we’re starting to crack the code on how to get way more of what you want out of your body so you look the way you want, you feel the way you want, you don’t have brain fog, you’re not in pain all the time, your gut is all messed up the way mine used to be. I started this because I felt like I was a crazy person. It turns out there are millions of people who do this. We just didn’t have a name.
Dr. Gundry (00:28:26):
So you crazy people out there, you now have a name.
Dave Asprey (00:28:30):
Exactly.
Dr. Gundry (00:28:31):
Good. If you’re following lectin light diet just like I am, then you know how hard it can be to find yes foods all in one place. For much of my life, I found myself making two to three stops just to check off the basics on my grocery list. Thankfully, I’ve said goodbye to those hassle filled days. Since finding Thrive Market, grocery shopping has never been easier.
(00:28:54):
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(00:32:44):
All right, so we talked about coffee and how we can biohack with coffee. What other kind of energy tricks do you have that we can take advantage of on a day to day basis?
Dave Asprey (00:32:59):
Well, the first thing to do is make sure that your mitochondria never uncouple. We have to do that to save energy in the world around us, right? Because if we burn less calories by just sitting there and growing large, wouldn’t network.
Dr. Gundry (00:33:11):
Not a good idea.
Dave Asprey (00:33:11):
Okay.
Dr. Gundry (00:33:12):
Not a good idea.
Dave Asprey (00:33:14):
So how do we make it so our cells do a better job of turning air and food into electricity and heat, which is the uncoupling thing? If you do that job really well, you’re going to feel great, you’re going to age less quickly and you’re going to show up to the point that you could do whatever you want, which would make it dangerous. So one of the things that controls this is our circadian rhythm. I was fanatically opposed to sleep when I was a computer hacker and a tech entrepreneur. Why would I want to do that? There’s so much fun stuff to do.
Dr. Gundry (00:33:49):
Sleep when you’re dead.
Dave Asprey (00:33:50):
Exactly. And that didn’t work very well. So I started tracking my sleep about 15 years ago every single night. I used to sleep with a headband and I’ve got the whoop strap and things like that.
Dr. Gundry (00:34:03):
Hiding under ear. I don’t know what you’re wearing.
Dave Asprey (00:34:05):
Nice. Yeah. I’m not wearing my whoop, my earring fell off in my luggage somewhere, so there you go. And what you-
Dr. Gundry (00:34:12):
Product placement.
Dave Asprey (00:34:13):
Exactly right. What you find is that you can track your sleep to the point that you don’t have to sleep more. And that was always my problem. I just want to sleep better. So studies show that the people who live the longest sleep six and a half hours a night. If you sleep eight hours a night, your odds of dying from all cause mortality go up, not down. Not saying to reduce sleep. What I’m saying is when you’re healthy, you’ll automatically need less sleep because your energy production works better.
(00:34:44):
In one of the studies in my book on cognitive function, we actually showed that the glymphatic system that washes your brain when you’re asleep, it’s driven by mitochondria. And that means that if you’re full of energy when you go to sleep, not caffeine energy but just biological energy, you’ll do a better job of cleaning all the toxic proteins out of your brain. Stuff like that.
(00:35:05):
So what do you do to go to sleep? Well, the full list of everything, and this is absolutely free is at the favorite URL of my entire career, it’s called Sleepwithdave.com. So I’ll teach you everything I know about sleep because the world is a much better place when everyone gets good quality sleep. What you do before you go to bed, don’t eat after the sun goes down, dim your lights or put on glasses like the true dark glasses that block more than just blue light. And true dark is one of the companies I founded. I wrote the patents for it.
(00:35:38):
So what you’ll find is that there’s stuff you can do with temperature, with controlling the temperature of your mattress. And some of the stuff is very cheap. Some of it is free and some of it costs a little bit of money, but most people at this point, if you have a phone, you can track your sleep without having to have any other devices into a reasonably good job.
(00:35:58):
Sleep Space is the app that I used to do that and you can invest in a monitor, but if you just fix that, even if you still eat that oatmeal for breakfast, seriously, you should stop. But even then you’re going to not have the blood sugar response to oatmeal that you did before, because one night of bad sleep reduces your ability to regulate blood sugar by about 40%. So it’s a big deal. What if we just start there? That’s important.
(00:36:22):
The other thing that I’ve been recommending to my community for, geez, now a dozen years is some form of cold exposure. And this is the cold shower in the morning. Water hits you on the forehead and chest where the most peripheral cold and temperature receptors are and you do a one minute cold shower. You won’t do it the first day. In fact, you’ll swear and say, “Dave’s a jerk.” And then-
Dr. Gundry (00:36:49):
I hate this.
Dave Asprey (00:36:50):
Exactly. The second day, you might get up to 25, 30 seconds and still say, “Dave’s a jerk,” and you’re shivering and you hate it. The third day you’re going to do it and maybe you’ll make a minute. In the fourth day, you’ll feel amazing. And no one could quite explain this, but they did some studies in mice and what they found was that three days of brief cold exposure was enough to change the levels of a compound called cardiolipin in the mitochondrial membrane.
(00:37:16):
And as you and I both know mitochondria, that’s where uncoupling happens, right? That’s where heat generation happens. So it takes three days to train your cells to better make heat on demand. You can do three uncomfortable showers after that. When you get out of the cold shower, you’re like, “Man, I feel great. This was invigorating. It was not unpleasant.” So that’s a big thing.
(00:37:35):
And if that’s too much before you go to bed, close your eyes, take a deep breath and stick your face in a bowl of ice water, just face exposure to cold will do it for some people. And that’s a great way to get acclimated if you’re just thinking you could never do it. It’s a little bit of cold, learning how to sleep better and making sure it’s dark at night and then don’t eat all the time.
(00:37:56):
Intermittent fasting has been a part of my nutritional recommendation since the beginning of biohacking. So the science says you should peak your calories at 2:00 in the afternoon, which is exactly the opposite of what society says. So for most people, a later breakfast and an earlier dinner is the best thing to do. But if you’re going to have a later dinner, just try to make it not after 10:00 or something and you can have a later breakfast.
(00:38:22):
And when you do that, magic happens at least 12 hours of time without any food going into your body is enough, even just three days a week to start shifting your body metabolically. And that’s a study out of Australia that was extra study on women and premenopausal women, which are the hardest group to work with for weight loss.
(00:38:41):
So if it works there, imagine what would happen if you did only 14 hours and you did that four days a week. So it’s not that hard because the time your asleep counts.
Dr. Gundry (00:38:50):
Exactly. Yeah. In my last book, Unlocking the Keto Code, the Italian athletes study that I just think is proves the point. And those of you who haven’t read the book or heard me on the podcast, they take Italian cyclist trained athletes, put them on a training table for three months, they all have to eat the same food. One group has a 12-hour eating window. They eat breakfast at 8:00 in the morning, lunch at 1:00 in the afternoon. They have to finish dinner by 8:00 at night, 12 hours. So they have a 12-hour not eating cycle.
(00:39:29):
The other group has a seven-hour eating cycle. They eat breakfast at 1:00 in the afternoon, lunch at 4:00, have to finish dinner at 8:00. Same food, same calories, the seven hour guys lose weight. The 12-hour guys don’t lose weight, but the best part is the seven hour guys their insulin like growth factor one, IGF-1, which is still one of the better markers for aging that we have plummets and the 12-hour guys stay the same.
Dave Asprey (00:40:02):
Wow.
Dr. Gundry (00:40:02):
So just changing the time interval is one of those potent things. And in my practice we measure IGF-1s and it’s amazing how many people, if they’ll commit to that, their IGF-1 plummet, almost plummets 50 points in some people and they’ll go, “Wow, okay, I can do this.” And all I ask is just do it during the weekdays. Take time off from the weekend with family or-
Dave Asprey (00:40:33):
Have brunch. It’s okay.
Dr. Gundry (00:40:36):
Yeah, it’s okay. Yeah, but just do it during the week. It’s amazing how potent that one thing is.
Dave Asprey (00:40:44):
And what that study should say in the body of your work and certainly all the things I’ve seen, if someone looks you in the eye and says you have to count calories to lose weight, they are simply not informed. Maybe they have a PhD in something from 30 years ago, but they are not up to date. That it’s actually dangerous advice that enables big food to sell you diet sodas that are provably bad for you and to sell you other junk foods as long as you don’t eat too much and you exercise off your potato chips. It doesn’t work like that. It never did, and it was that advice that led me to weigh 300 pounds. That’s why I’m like, “I’m not going to do this anymore.” The other thing though, I want to add in there is there’s a new flavor of that calorie counting that’s coming along and it’s protein counting.
Dr. Gundry (00:41:30):
Yes.
Dave Asprey (00:41:31):
So this is when big food says, “Well, since you caught us on our calorie lie, we’re going to make up a new lie.” And that is that all protein is the same, which let me introduce to you the keto cookie, which is all protein and fat. It is gluten, which is protein.
Dr. Gundry (00:41:48):
That’s right.
Dave Asprey (00:41:49):
And canola oil. I’m not joking this exists, because hey, all proteins are the same. Crickets and soy, those are the same as beef and eggs. No, they’re not. So when someone says how much protein you should have, it doesn’t mean anything because P-protein, any lectins in there?
Dr. Gundry (00:42:05):
Just a few.
Dave Asprey (00:42:06):
Right? Is that the same as way protein? No, they’re completely different. I’m not saying one is even better for you because you might be allergic to weigh, but you just can’t say calories are the thing or protein is the thing or amount of fat is the thing because different fats do different things. Different proteins do different things and calories are really not that important. And let’s just say what they are and when they are, at which point they’re not important. So if we just get that, we can all relax. We have to feel guilty if you eat something that has calories in it, because calories give you energy if you can use them.
Dr. Gundry (00:42:37):
Yeah, if you can use them.
Dave Asprey (00:42:38):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (00:42:39):
And we have a very bad system for using them as you and I have written about and preach.
Dave Asprey (00:42:46):
Yeah.
Dr. Gundry (00:42:48):
Oh well. You say that we can increase energy using nature’s original medicine. Can you explain that to our listeners and how they can utilize it?
Dave Asprey (00:43:02):
Sure. Well, nature’s original medicine has been studied for at least 10,000 years of recorded history, depending on how long you think history has been recorded, maybe only 5,000 or [inaudible 00:43:14]. But we do know that the first trading roots ever recorded were to trade salt. Well, that’s because sodium. No actually, it’s because minerals. The salt that they were trading was from the ocean or from mines and it’s full of all the full spectrum of trace minerals that are required for your mitochondria to make energy.
(00:43:37):
So the original mineral supplement was rock salt and people would die going over the Himalayas to bring this precious substance. We would pay people with it because it was so necessary for life. Let’s see, can you think of a coffee that’s full of trace minerals? More than 50 of them for that reason?
Dr. Gundry (00:43:53):
I think I heard of it, but it’s dangerous.
Dave Asprey (00:43:58):
Exactly, right? So minerals are that important. And right now, because of all the junk food that people have been eating, and I say junk food, even if you think it’s healthy like oatmeal, it’s full of phytic acid. And phytic acid pulls these precious minerals from your bones and from your mitochondria, from your cells so you’re depleted. And then even if you eat the right stuff, if you are depleted, you can’t fire up those mitochondria at full power. You must get minerals back.
(00:44:26):
So mother nature’s original medicine was, oh my god, salt. And it turns out when it comes with the full complement of minerals, more salt helps you deal with stress. So I’m not saying everyone needs to go out and just take more salt than they want, but if your body’s telling you to eat salt, there’s really good evidence you should do that, because when you cut your sodium intake as low as the FDA recommends right now, it actually increases something called renin, which as you would know given your profession, increases cardiovascular risk.
Dr. Gundry (00:44:55):
Yeah.
Dave Asprey (00:44:55):
So I’m not saying to go crazy on salt, but I’m not saying that you need to go low. Historically, we would have up to 20 grams a day. I get about six to eight grams to feel good and the FDA recommends 2.42. So salt is one. But the second of mother nature’s medicine that they used the same trade routes for was something you’re going to love and it was for herbs and spices and for tea and in some places, coffee and chocolate.
(00:45:24):
Why would they do that? Because pound for pound, those are the substances highest in polyphenols. So let’s say you’ve got your minerals and you’ve got your polyphenols. These are the original compounds. People don’t even know this about vanilla. So vanilla was originally an aphrodisiac and the vanilloid receptors in your cells are the things that are activated by capsaicin, which is the spicy part of peppers. And I don’t eat peppers anymore, even though I grew up in New Mexico, because I am lectin sensitive to those lectins. They shred me at arthritis in my knee since I was 14. Thank you green chili.
(00:46:00):
But for people who can take a capsaicin capsule and not react to it in a bad way, you could do the same thing with vanilla. So over time, a lot of these things that we flavor our food with you go back and say, “Oh, was oregano helping with parasites? Were these helping with digestion of meat so you don’t form TMAO?” They didn’t know about TMAO, which is something that probably causes heart disease if you don’t put some herbs on your steak, if you have bad gut bacteria, it’s one of the things they’re using to try and get to eat crickets and soy instead of meat. No, that’s not how it works, but these are the true original things. It’s polyphenols and salt.
Dr. Gundry (00:46:36):
Yeah, I mentioned on podcast recently, and I wrote in the book that there were the wise men brought three gifts to the little baby Jesus. One of them was gold, that sounds good.
Dave Asprey (00:46:48):
That’s a good one. Yup.
Dr. Gundry (00:46:49):
That’s a good one. But the other was frankincense and myrrh. So they’re bringing some gum from a tree and an herb and it’s like, “What the heck? What kind of gift is that?” But these were great gifts of health. And so when the little baby Jesus got his gifts, two of them were polyphenol compounds.
Dave Asprey (00:47:11):
I love that story because it’s true. And there are signs throughout any religious or spiritual tradition. You look at traditional Chinese medicine, you look at Airavata, you look at the indigenous practices in South America, there’s always, even during a fast, there’s always a tea. Why are they making a tea out of plants to get polyphenols? Because they’re such powerful signals for your gut bacteria and for your mitochondria directly. And it makes me sad when I see these processed bars with junk protein, junk fat, and no polyphenols whatsoever. And people wonder why they don’t feel good. Well, maybe that’s why.
Dr. Gundry (00:47:49):
You speak claim that we can reverse our age. No, come.
Dave Asprey (00:47:55):
Well, I have been claiming this for a long time because in my mid-20s I started hanging out with people three times my age who ran an anti-aging nonprofit group in Palo Alto. I was the only young person there. And I’m like, “These guys are amazing.” My friend Mike, who was 88, would call me at 11:30 at night. He’s like, “Dave, I have this great idea. We have to talk about it.”
(00:48:16):
I’m like, “How does this guy have more energy than I do?” Because I’m lagging, my mitochondria are broken. I’m dealing with toxic mold, fibromyalgia, a lack of mitochondrial, uncoupling, all that kind of stuff. And I realized I can learn from these masters. And I watched them get younger 20 years ago and they taught me how to do it. And I’ve been saying straight up, “Look, I’m starting early. I am going to do this now.”
(00:48:38):
And well, I felt vindicated when about three years ago, my friend Davidson Claire at Harvard Little Institution, not quite warden when I went to school, but I’ll give him some credit, he stood up and said, We can reverse aging, biological, aging in cells. Now, when I started this nonprofit work, if any mainstream academic person said they were going to reverse aging in human cells, they would lose their tenure because they were crazy. It was like being conspiracy theorist and believing in aliens and things like that. They would cancel you.
(00:49:13):
Well, now we have billions of dollars flowing into this. I am more confident than ever that we can do it to the point that I’m predicting that I will live to at least 180 assuming that a bus doesn’t fall out of the sky on me or something. The reason for that is that the world’s best today is 120 and someone who’s 120 today, they were born before the car, I think right about when the Pony Express was still running.
(00:49:44):
World War 1 was going to be fought with biplanes and horses largely. They couldn’t spell DNA, they didn’t have antibiotics. The world was so different, they’re still alive. And by the way, they’ve survived through all the childhood diseases and all the things that we’ve largely solved. So if we can’t do 50% better than today’s best in the next hundred years, it’s because we destroyed our top soil with glyphosate or because a comet hit the planet. So assuming we don’t do those two things, I think we got this in the bag. Do you think I’m nuts?
Dr. Gundry (00:50:15):
No, I think I get more and more depressed that glyphosate just seems to keep going and going and going and may be the end of this as we know it did.
Dave Asprey (00:50:28):
Did you see the study about earthworms?
Dr. Gundry (00:50:30):
No, I haven’t.
Dave Asprey (00:50:31):
Man, so people have been saying forever like, “This is bad for the soil. And there’s all kinds of bacterial reasons for it.” They just discovered that at levels 300 times below the allowable level, it causes seizures in earthworms. Our entire food web is based on earthworms and soil, but the EPA doesn’t measure any pesticide or herbicide effect on any insect except honeybees. Honeybees don’t touch soil ever unless they fall down.
(00:50:59):
So they’re saying it doesn’t cause harm, but every creepy crawley that lives in dirt, that makes life, that makes forests rich, they’re all based on that. And if levels 300 times below what’s allowed causes earthworm seizures, that means even if there’s no spray where you are, your worms are already sick, which means your soil is sick, which means the food from your garden will have less minerals.
(00:51:19):
This is a big problem. The people who are doing this, it is my sincere hope that we put them up on charges for crimes against humanity. There is no excuse. And this is why Monsanto tried to change its name. This is why Bayer bought Monsanto. And I hope lawsuits bury that company. It is evil and it needs to be stopped.
Dr. Gundry (00:51:39):
Well, tell us what you really think.
Dave Asprey (00:51:41):
I was trying to hold back to that, because I failed too much coffee.
Dr. Gundry (00:51:44):
No. When I give lectures to doctors, one of the slides I put up is a US senate document and it says, our soil is so depleted now of minerals and other substances that we could eat as much food as possible and we would never have the proper amount of minerals in our place.
Dave Asprey (00:52:10):
Yes, thank you.
Dr. Gundry (00:52:11):
And so I asked the audience, I said, “Okay, when was this in the Senate?” And people would go, “Oh yeah, in 2000, Oh, 1990.” It was 1936, all climbing up on a hundred years ago. We knew what we had done to our soils almost a hundred years ago. And you and I both know it. I mean, the nutritional value of any food 50 years ago when I was younger was so much better than it is now. But in 1936, they knew that we were in big trouble.
Dave Asprey (00:52:49):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (00:52:50):
Because one of my favorite sayings is, you are what you eat, but you are what the thing you’re eating ate and that includes our plants. And our plants get their nutrition delivered to them via the soil microbiome. And that microbiome gets the nutrients that makes the plant. So you could have a stalk of corn that looks like corn, but it isn’t corn anymore. Not that it isn’t corn, but in any vegetable. I mean, you might actually be able to make kale that wouldn’t kill you if you worked at it.
Dave Asprey (00:53:26):
I think with a little bit of genetic engineering, I’m sure we could genetic engineer kale to taste good and be good for you but maybe then it wouldn’t be kale anymore. But I live on a 32 acre organic farm that we started and we got our soil from the bottom of a pond from an organic farm that had been there for a hundred years. So it’s this black, rich, amazing soil. Everything explodes with growth. It tastes so different.
(00:53:54):
The animals that eat things from our farm are sheep and our cows and our pigs and our chickens, they taste different. They’re full of minerals. People will go to the local market and they’ll buy a pork chop or something and they’ll come back the next day and they’ll buy all of it because they feel different when they eat it. It’s the minerals in the soil.
(00:54:13):
And I got to put these back in my body. I travel all the time and everyone needs more minerals, which is why just doing it in your coffee makes sense. So this is a call to action for everyone is to make sure you get your macro minerals, particularly magnesium and potassium are lacking in all of us, and maybe calcium, but probably not. And some sodium, which we don’t have a problem getting, but then it’s the trace minerals and even the ultra trace minerals that are lacking, which is why we’ve got all of them in the coffee here.
(00:54:42):
And the way I did that is ancient beds of plants that over the course of millions of years, all of the lectins and other bad plant compounds have been taken out. And what’s left is just the ionic minerals that are there and you can take those. And when we coat the coffee with those, they have all kinds of beneficial effects in the body. So I’m a big fan of doing that.
Dr. Gundry (00:55:04):
All right. Getting back to age reversal, any tests that you can use?
Dave Asprey (00:55:09):
Yes. The original tests that we all relied on about eight years ago was a telomere test. And I’ve seen over and over that it’s not very reliable. And the reason is that well, your blood has different telomere length than all the other tissues in your body. So it doesn’t tell you what tissues are aging when and your blood is replaced every four months. I’ve seen people also lose 20 years in two weeks. That doesn’t actually happen. That’s not a real number.
(00:55:35):
So I don’t look at telomeres as anything but sort of like, huh. But what I do look at is DNA methylation. And you can look at about 400,000 different data points from a small sample, and that’ll tell you pretty well how old you are using something called, “The Horvath Clock.” And I’ve spoken with Steve Horvath for a couple days actually about this. And there are many different lenses to look through your data to see how old you are, but using the most trusted one right now, I am 11 and a quarter years younger than my chronological age.
Dr. Gundry (00:56:08):
You’re 12 now.
Dave Asprey (00:56:10):
I’m having a problem with Dr. Gundry. Maybe you can help. I’m having a hard time finding age affirming care. Doctors keep telling me that I’m almost 50 and I keep, “No, no, no, guys, I’m almost 40.” And they just won’t recognize my reality. So I’m working on that. Any advice?
Dr. Gundry (00:56:27):
Stay away from doctors.
Dave Asprey (00:56:28):
I didn’t think you’d say that. That’s awesome.
Dr. Gundry (00:56:32):
I saw a friend of my wife who was being treated for atrial fibrillation that she didn’t have, but that’s another story. And they put her on a blood thinner and they put her on a blood pressure pill and she is a fitness freak. And she said, “Gee, I don’t feel comfortable doing this.” And I said, “Well, they told you you’re having skipped heartbeats. Did they look at your magnesium level?” “No.”
(00:57:08):
“Did they look at your potassium level?” “No.” And I said, “Well, even if they had, will preserve our serum magnesium and serum potassium at incredible cost to intercellular magnesium and potassium.” So one of the things I learned as a heart surgeon is people were so depleted of magnesium that we would put them for 48 hours after heart surgery on a magnesium IV drip to keep them from having these extra beats and to get their magnesium, their total body magnesium stores repleted.
Dave Asprey (00:57:47):
That’s interesting.
Dr. Gundry (00:57:48):
Yeah. And so the first thing I do when I see somebody with skipped heartbeat, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, is I put them on potassium and magnesium supplements. Just, “Okay, here’s your prescription. Go down to the health food store, start taking this. I’ll see you in a few weeks. We’ll repeat the Holter. And oh, by the way, get lectins out your diet.”
(00:58:13):
Yeah, I became very good friends, this is a true story with a professor at Cedar Sinai in LA who’s a cardiologist, world renowned smart guy who I was treating a fellow patient. And this guy swore that every time he ate lectins, he went in atrial fibrillation. And when he avoided them for a few days, he’d flip out of atrial fibrillation. And the guy didn’t know me and he called me a quack and blah, blah blah.
(00:58:43):
And then his patient proved it to him. He said, “You’re coming to lunch with me right now and I’m going to have some bread and I’m going to have some pasta and I’m going to have some tomatoes and we’re going back to the office and hook me up to the EKG.” And he went into atrial fibrillation. And so he called me up, he said, “Okay, can we talk?” So then, we become really good friends.
Dave Asprey (00:59:05):
Wow. I love doctors and scientists who are willing to consider their beliefs and their assumptions ’cause that’s how progress happens. So what an admirable guy.
Dr. Gundry (00:59:15):
Yeah.
Dave Asprey (00:59:15):
I’ve got a good AFib story for you.
Dr. Gundry (00:59:17):
Okay.
Dave Asprey (00:59:17):
Little biohacking one. So we’ve all heard that melatonin is good for you when you go to bed? Well, I’ve been experimenting with it for years ’cause I’m a sleep hacker and I know that your body makes about 0.3 milligrams of melatonin. And a lot of commercial preparations have three or six or nine milligrams, so a lot more. So 10 times more up to 30 times more.
(00:59:39):
And there’s a few health proponents saying that you should take 20 or 30 milligrams at least for brief periods of time to help with the brain. And because it’s antiinflammatory, especially if you had some kind of a viral infection, it could help with that. So I said, “I’m going to try doing just 30, 30 milligrams.”
(00:59:58):
And the next day I had atrial fibrillation. And I know, ’cause I have my own EKG equipment ’cause I’m a biohacker, I can monitor all sorts of stuff. And so I went in to the hospital like, “What the heck is going on?” Just to double check things. And yes, I did have AFib, but it went away after a little while and not a problem. And I figured out that’s what it was. And I found a couple things on PubNet about that. So very high dose melatonin can cause atrial fibrillation. So for people who are listening, if you’re taking really large doses of melatonin, maybe you don’t need them that high, especially if you’re having cardiac issues.
Dr. Gundry (01:00:29):
Interesting. I have some cancer patients on a hundred milligrams of melatonin a day in divided doses.
Dave Asprey (01:00:37):
I think it’s a good idea for cancer patients in particular, that’s probably Dr. Collins’s recommendation. That was actually the book that I read for that. So if any of those patients suddenly gets AFib, they may be melatonin insensitive.
Dr. Gundry (01:00:49):
All right. So far it’s working on their cancer [inaudible 01:00:53] another story. Yeah, we don’t cure cancer folks at least on this program. How’s that?
Dave Asprey (01:00:59):
There you go. Only drugs can cure cancer. That’s what it says in the law, so that must be true.
Dr. Gundry (01:01:03):
That must be true. It must be true. All right. So is there a supplement you most recommend to support longevity? Or are they too numerous to mention?
Dave Asprey (01:01:14):
There are a lot of supplements. And what it comes down to is you have to decide whether you’ve got your basics cup first. And there’s really two things that are non-negotiable. One of them is vitamin DAKE, D, A, K and E. If you’re low on those, even if you have minerals, you won’t absorb the minerals right. So the fat soluble vitamins used to come from eating grass fed animals and grass fed animal fat from dairy, but that’s largely missing from our diet. So you need to supplement vitamin D.
(01:01:52):
If you do that, you’ll go low on preformed Vitamin A retinol, which is not the same as beta-carotene. Plant-based vitamin A is largely marketing. It’s not actually a thing. Just like plant-based meat isn’t actually meat and makes you hungry and tired after you eat it. So real vitamin D, real vitamin A, vitamin K2 is critically important if you supplement vitamin D, been recommending this for many years to keep calcium where it goes. And some amount of real vitamin E that includes all the tocopherols and tocotrienols.
(01:02:21):
And if you get those three things, then that’s your first anti-aging thing. Your second thing is going to be your mineral supplementation. You’ve got to have your macro minerals, including magnesium that we just talked about. And you’ve got to have your trace minerals. If you just get those right, you’re likely to have less of all the things that kill you.
(01:02:41):
And from there, we can talk about biohacks and sleep and all. And from there, there’s all kinds of things that you can take that increase mitochondrial function. In fact, my anti-aging book is called Superhuman, and I list about a dozen things that are shown in animal studies of mammals to increase lifespan by 20%. Things like, ashitaba, which is a Japanese herb.
Dr. Gundry (01:03:03):
Yeah. I take it every day.
Dave Asprey (01:03:03):
There you go. Me too, but most people listening probably don’t take ashitaba, but you might say, “That one’s worth it, but activated charcoals a lot cheaper. And it also has a 10 to 12% lifespan extension because it binds gut toxins as long as you take it away from other stuff you want to absorb.”
(01:03:20):
So what’s going on here is you’re saying, “Well, how many of them am I willing to do and can I afford to do and are going to work for me? And how do I do that over time sustainably so that you just don’t get tired of doing it? And I’d maximize as much as I can, but there’s a limit to the number of pills I’m going to take too. It’s just a very large limit.”
Dr. Gundry (01:03:38):
Yeah, I know you talk about that you and I take a lot of supplements and you said that you’ve reduced those maybe in the interest of time or you get bored or you run out of money. Do you like the cycle supplements?
Dave Asprey (01:04:03):
This is really important. I’m so glad that we’re talking about it. Taking the same thing every day is the opposite of what your body likes. If you want to maintain strength and you want to maintain resilience and the ability to handle what life brings you weight, don’t give your body exactly the same thing. So what I do in the morning, there’s some things that are non-negotiable like my vitamin DAKE, I’m going to get those, my minerals, I’m going to get those. Those are just regular things.
(01:04:32):
But the other stuff, if I reach for the bottle and I feel, meh, I just don’t take it that day. Some days I take glutathione, some days I don’t. And this I think is a great practice for most supplements, is to just mix them up a little bit. When I travel, I tend to just take baggies I make that have 45 or 50 pills in them and that’s just what I do in the morning. But when I’m at home, some days I take 12 pills and some days I take 70. And that’s okay.
Dr. Gundry (01:04:59):
Yeah, no, I think really our ancient ancestors acquired different vitamins, different polyphenol compounds on a rotating basis. And we know that the microbiome in these hunter gatherers changes on a circadian basis depending on what these people are eating. I think it’s important to cycle these compounds. So I’m glad we’re talking about that.
Dave Asprey (01:05:28):
It seems like it’s missing. Everyone says, “Look, I want to do the same thing every day, because it’s easy to make a habit.” If you wake up every morning and you do 45 minutes of cardio, you’re probably not going to end well. You’re going to wear out your joints, you’re going to feel bad, and you’re going to teach your heart to have a small eject fraction instead of a large one, which is what a healthy heart should have. I mean, you correct me if I’m wrong, you’re the heart doctor, not me.
Dr. Gundry (01:05:49):
Yeah.
Dave Asprey (01:05:49):
Okay. So maybe doing cardio once or twice a week is good. And the other days you should have done some yoga or you should have picked up something heavier, done some squats. So for us psychologically and mentally, daily repetition is simple. But for us to actually work right, we have to mix it up every day. And it’s that friction that causes a lot of trouble.
(01:06:09):
My work now and my next book that comes out is around what have we learned from AI? What have we learned from studying human physiology from the cells all the way up so that we can spend less time doing those maintenance cycles and still get outstanding results?
(01:06:25):
We can beat normal spin class by about 12 times in efficiency without sweating. So we can increase your VO2 max by about 12% in six to eight weeks, and it’s going to take 15 minutes a week to do that. And this is at Upgrade Labs, which is my new franchise for bringing this biohacking thing to the world, ownanupgradelabs.com if you’re interested in franchising. See that, just slid that right in there. Truly noted.
Dr. Gundry (01:06:54):
True marketer. All right, we got wrap it up, but before we say goodbye, I like to toss the audience question of the week to you first day. Are you ready?
Dave Asprey (01:07:03):
Yes.
Dr. Gundry (01:07:04):
All right. This one comes from Libby Morgan on Instagram. She asks, “What are your thoughts on Botox and facial fillers? (I do understand that young skin can be promoted through diet) Do you think our bodies will have a reaction to an unnatural substance or object like the story you mentioned in the longevity paradox where the children that needed replacements for their heart had negative inflammatory responses?” All right, Dave, what do you think about these things?
Dave Asprey (01:07:36):
Well, Botox is a natural compound.
Dr. Gundry (01:07:39):
It is. That’s true.
Dave Asprey (01:07:39):
It’s found in botulism, which is just a bacteria. So we don’t have to worry about whether a compound is natural or unnatural. My favorite plant-based protein is serine or [inaudible 01:07:53].
Dr. Gundry (01:07:52):
Yes.
Dave Asprey (01:07:53):
Comes from beans, right? So maybe we don’t need to worry about if it’s natural or not because does it work? And what are the side effects? So with Botox, I’ve been opposed to it just on principle for a very long time because why would you want to do that to your nervous system? Except there’s a new compound which is Botox with all the protein removed. And so Botox itself can have allergenic effects that are not good.
(01:08:19):
And I even had a family member who likely had a very large clot in her leg because of an injection of Botox that likely hit a vein. And so there can be side effects from that. But the newer versions that aren’t actually Botox, something called Xeomin is the pure toxin without all the protein stuff around it. And it’s shown to increase collagen thickness. And they say that it doesn’t migrate around. I think it does, but it’s probably tolerable.
(01:08:48):
I’ve tried it, I try almost everything once. So I had some inject it up here and for about two days my mental acuity was off. And I can feel this because I’ve spent six months with the electrodes on my head doing advanced meditation. I’ve traveled around the world to learn meditation from masters. So you feel when you’re off, when you’re really tuned in.
(01:09:05):
And so I don’t think it’s without harm, but I think the harm is relatively low and it’s been studied for 35 years, not opposed to it, but I don’t think you want to do it all the time. And if you do it too much, you’re going to look weird and have droopy face and all that. It’s not a regular practice for me.
(01:09:19):
From a filler perspective, I have zero issues with doing hyaluronic acid based fillers. This is a natural compound that’s found in collagen. And I’m the guy who made collagen protein a big thing. So I like hyaluronic acid even for joints. If you screw it up, you can dissolve it with an enzyme so the risk is relatively low, but some of the other ones like hydroxy appetite or some of the calcium based ones can do very weird things.
(01:09:46):
So if it’s a preservative free hyaluronic acid, it’s going to last for six months or something. And if you want to have chipmunk cheeks, I don’t really oppose doing it. What are your take?
Dr. Gundry (01:09:56):
I’ve tried to get my wife not to do these things and actually doesn’t do the fillers. She’ll occasionally fiddle around with Botox. But then for instance, we live in Palm Springs and in Santa Barbara and Palm Springs is one of the Botox, plastic surgery capitals of the world like Santa Monica, Orange County and Santa Barbara is quite the opposite.
(01:10:25):
People actually have wrinkles and sun damage and so every time, time she says, “I think it’s time to get some fillers, because all my friends in Palm Springs, they’re fantastic.” I said, “Let’s just head up to Santa Barbara, spend a few days, look around.” And she goes, “You’re right.” So it is probably not going to hurt you, but you got better things to worry about.
Dave Asprey (01:10:50):
You do. And before you do that, do some red light therapy.
Dr. Gundry (01:10:56):
Yeah.
Dave Asprey (01:10:57):
I mean, I have a company that does that, one of the earliest red light therapy things called True Light. But even without that, you can do laser treatment of your skin, which really provably increases collagen thickness.
Dr. Gundry (01:11:09):
True.
Dave Asprey (01:11:09):
And you don’t need even to do a chemical peel. So I would just say hold off on the Botox and Botox like things and the fillers, but if you really feel like you need them to be happy with yourself, given the caveats I just said, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s probably not the best thing either.
Heather Dubrow (01:11:23):
Hi, everyone. It’s Heather Dubrow telling you to check out Heather Dubrow’s World on podcast one. Every week, we discuss the hippest hottest news trends in health, wellness, parenting style, and so much more, including all things housewives and botched. Download new episodes of Heather Dubrow’s World on Thursdays and Fridays on PodcastOne, Apple Podcast, Spotify and Amazon Music.
Dr. Gundry (01:11:56):
It’s time for the review of the week. This one comes from Must Love Dogs on Apple Podcast. Well, I’m already excited to read this because Must Love Dogs, you’re my kind of person. I just discovered your podcast a couple weeks ago and I’m listening to them every time I walk my dogs 60 to 90 minutes a day. I just listened to your podcast today with Tamar Geller and was so impressed I ordered her dog book.
(01:12:22):
Well, good for you. And I’m glad you got introduced to those fantastic people. Just like we, Dave and I want to live a really long time. We want our dogs to live a very long time. And one of the scary statistics that they’ve shared with me and with our listeners was that in 1970, the average Golden Retriever lived 18 years, and now the average Golden Retriever lives 12 years.
Dave Asprey (01:12:57):
Not good.
Dr. Gundry (01:12:58):
Yeah. And so we got a lot of work to do, and guess what? It’s big food doing this to us and doing it to our dogs. But thanks and Must Love Dogs, no truer thing has been said. So that’s it for today. Thanks everybody, and we’ll see you next week for a new episode because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
(01:13:26):
Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you want to watch each episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast, you could always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/dr.gundry because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
