I listened to the podcast of Giel Beelen with Dave Asprey. Dave Asprey is the founder of Bulletproof, famous for its Bulletproof Coffee. He is called the father of biohacking.
I have been following Dave Asprey for more than a decade now. I am a Certified Bulletproof Coach and met Dave Asprey a few times.
The podcast takes 1,5 hours. So, to save you some time, I'll share the highlights of this podcast.
About upgrading yourself
Your brain reacts faster to circumstances than you are aware of. There is a third of a second where stuff is happening in your body that you can not know about. There is an automated system in charge of you that gets to do whatever, a third of a second before you decide unless you train it. And that's why you better focus on upgrading yourself. Otherwise, you will be at the mercy of an ancient operating system that runs all your life and makes you act like a jerk.
We operate at pure reactivity, especially when hungry or afraid. And then we make up a story about why we decided to do it. But it is your conscious doing it. And your conscious is exceptionally fast and exceptionally dump. So we are doomed unless we are going to change it.
The system that runs us is not just humans. It is the system that runs all life. And you can design it.
Mother nature has an operating system to stay alive. We are run by the four F's:
- Fear: run away from scary things
- Food: eat everything
- Fertility: fuck/love
- Friends: relationships
Every bad thing we do is the operating system of mother nature. It operates in that third of a second before we think about it. So all we have to do is desensitise ourselves from fear, hunger, and lack of love and friends.
There are ways to do this so that you can become in control of your nature and, in the end, become an upgraded version of yourself. Here are some ways discussed in the podcast.
Upgrade your sleep
The quality of your sleep is more important than the length of it. The quality of your sleep has a profound effect on your brain. This is how you can improve your sleep quality:
- Black out your room like a cave
- Eat dinner earlier - the longer the time between dinner and sleep, the better the quality of your sleep.
- Avoid bright lights around the bed. A few seconds of bright light can completely turn off your melatonin production.Therefore, use a red night-light.
- TrueDark glasses work way better than blue blockers. Blue blockers don't work very well because blue is one of the three colours of light that wakes you up. TrueDark makes glasses that are patent pending for all colours of light and all angles of light.
- If you want to sleep well, get (sun)light in the morning right after waking up. Go outside within the first 20 minutes after waking up.
Mitochondria
Use your mitochondria as a programmable antenna for reality that creates power and awareness for you.
Mitochondria are the ancient embedded cells in our body. People think these little things are power plants in our bodies, but that is inaccurate. They sense the environment, and based on that, they decide what to do. They can make power, inflammation, protein, hormones, and neurotransmitters. They are actually the puppet masters of your body. And they are exceptionally sensitive to the environment. The mitochondria initially sense anything your brain or nervous system picks up. They are a distributed system connected to all living on the planet. And that is the nature of intuition and the nature of manifesting reality.
Maybe you could program that network inside your body to be more aware of the environment and look for things you want to happen in your life. And when you do that, they will happen.
Sex and living longer
There is a formula for how often you should ejaculate. Don't ejaculate more than once every (age in years – 7, divided by four) days. If you do ejaculate, let it last for an hour. If you want to live forever, ejaculate only once every 30 days. One of the reasons is that men experience a drop in testosterone after their ejaculation, which can last for a day. And that means that you can perform less.
The rules for women are different. Frequent orgasms are associated with EQ and all other kinds of stress relieving and anxiety things. There is not a formula for women as there is for men. However, Dave comes up with his own formula. The optimal number of orgasms for a woman is the number before she thinks she will die plus 2 :-).
Program your mind with neurofeedback
What if you could program your mind you want it to? There is a technology for that, and it's called meditation. And the newer version of that is called neurofeedback training. Train your brain to turn off notifications, just like on your phone.
Every intrusive thought that's mean voicing your head is just a bunch of bad notifications from an ancient operating system that needs a serious upgrade. All these notifications cost you performance, focus, and peace. You can turn these notifications off with any of these practices.
Neurofeedback shows you when you are in a state of learning. There is a name for this state: forgiveness. Forgiveness is about not carrying a grudge against somebody else. Forgiveness is what turns off the notifications in your head.
Neurofeedback helps you authentically let go of the grudge, so it never triggers you again. Dave Asprey founded the company 40 years of Zen, offering intensive neurofeedback training*.
Routines
When Dave wakes up, he checks his sleep score. Then he thinks about what he did in his behaviour that could have improved or possibly worsened his sleep. It gives more clarity as to what practices are providing the most benefits for him. Then he does some breathing exercise or audio meditation. If he drops his kids at school, only after that does he turn his phone on. He will take some supplements, some nootropics and drinks Bulletproof coffee (coffee with some butter and MCT oil).
He has an hour of biohacking scheduled on his agenda in his full upgraded lab at home.
His evening is about darkness. He turns on the red lights. After 9 pm there is time for relaxation, reading, and meditation. He has his phone in airplane mode during the night.
Supplements
Dave takes supplements on intuition. You choose your state, and once you decide your intention for the day, you reach a bottle of whatever and honour that feeling of your body, not your brain. You have to know who you are, what switches you can turn on or off, and what other stuff is in and on your body. Some are supplements, and some are food, etc.
Some vitamins he takes every day.
All kinds of new technology emerging enable us to make educated choices. For example, DNA tests, bloodwork, and gut biome tests are available. With these, you have more information about what will work for you. Before, it was a shot in the dark, now, it is at least showing a direction in the dark.
Avoid mycotoxins
Mycotoxins are toxins bonded by mould. About 200 species of mould make really bad toxins for humans and animals. US and Canada have no laws protecting consumers from toxin-moulded coffee. That is why he created Bulletproof Coffee, which is tested on mould and toxins.
Speed up your metabolism
Practices intermitted fasting. All you have to do is have dinner a bit earlier and breakfast a little bit later, and you already have fourteen hours without food in your stomach. If you get up to about 18 hours, your metabolism will naturally speed up.
Water
Water outside the cells is inflammation; not enough water inside the cells is dehydration. What controls water in cells is not how much water you drink. What controls how much goes into cells is minerals. It's potassium, sodium, in other words, electrolytes!
Food while travelling
His advice is to don't eat on airplanes, or drink (bulletproof) coffee.
Pay attention to choosing the right restaurant. Avoid industrial meat.
Dave prefers lamb (because grass-fed) or wild-caught fish and some veggies. See Bulletproof diet for how to avoid anti-nutrients in veggies.
The Vegan diet
According to Dave, plant-based food makes you hungry, they have the wrong fats for your body, and they suck you dry of minerals. The vegan diet is one of the things he is most concerned about: For the destruction of the environment, the destruction of fertility and IQ in humans.
The amount of energy that you have every day is entirely up to you. It is how you waste less energy and ensure your body gets the right nutrients it needs. And for the vast majority of humans, this requires healthy animals as part of your diet. Avoid industrial meat. We must bring back distributed food generation. Whenever possible, support a local farmer.
Dave Asprey's Top 3 books to read
- Thinking grow rich by Napoleon Hills
- 48 loss of power by Robert Greene
- Snow crash by Neal Stephenson
*I wrote a blog post about my experiences with similar neurofeedback training provided by the Biocybernaut Institute.
