Bulletproof Biohacker News with Dave Asprey Episode 2

I'm Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof. I'm here in lovely sunny Southern California, recording Biohacker News for you. And biohacking is the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside of you so that you have full control of your own biology. The Lancet just published a new study of 90,000 people establishing a clear connection between circadian disruption and mood disorders. And what that means is that throughout history, we've had these anecdotal reports or very small studies, but this was 90,000 people properly recorded. And what they did is they proved beyond a reasonable doubt that when people have disturbed sleep, when they go to bed too early or too late, they don't get enough sleep, or they just don't sleep well. That we get mood disorders. And mood disorders aren't something that happen just either you have it or you don't have it. It's actually a sliding scale. So what that means is, now we know. We already knew this, but now we actually know with science that if you don't sleep well and you have this disturbed circadian rhythm, that you're going to act like a jerk. And it could go so far as depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, it's actually that important. Those are the extreme manifestations of it. And there are other causes. But one of the easiest things you can do is fix your sleep. And that doesn't mean sleep all day. It means go to sleep at the right time for your body and sleep enough for you to fully regenerate. Different people need different amounts of sleep, depending how healthy they are. Someone who's really healthy, who's not under a lot of stress, probably is going to need closer to six or six and a half hours of sleep. And someone who's really stressed or exercising really heavily or in a bad relationship or flying all over the place might need 10 hours of sleep. It's not about just getting eight hours. It's about getting quality sleep at the right time. So here's what you can do in order to have a better circadian rhythm. The number one thing you can do is you can get bright sunlight in the morning. What this means is that after you wake up, go outside, have your coffee, take off your sunglasses, take out your contacts because they block ultraviolet light and get about 20 minutes of light in your eyes, which talks to something called the SCN of your brain. And that bright sunlight is going to tell all the cells in your body, especially if you get it on your skin without any sunscreen. Hey, it's time to make energy. It's morning. And when you do that, you're going to sleep better that night. At the same time at night, dim the lights in your house, turn off lights you don't need, minimize screen time, dim your screens, put software on that moves it more to an orange or red spectrum and don't look at bright lights even for one minute before bed because it's going to tell your brain, oh, it's daytime again. When you do that, you're going to feel much better. On top of that, I like to use sleep mode, which is formulated with 0.3 milligrams of melatonin, a very low dose of plant based bioidentical melatonin and and an unusual amino acid that breaks down ammonia. When you eat protein, which most people do, even if you're a vegan, you're going to be getting some plant based protein. It breaks down into ammonia. And ammonia is a stressor in your body. So if you can take an amino acid that helps you to detox ammonia, which causes that stress, you're going to get better sleep. When you pair that with melatonin like we do in sleep mode, you get a good result from that. So less light at night, more sunlight in the morning, and maybe some sleep mode, as well as even just breathing, relaxing before bed, you can fix your circadian rhythm. That way your risk of every disease, not just mood disorders, goes down when you sleep like a rock star. Next up, should you stop wearing sunscreen to get more vitamin D? Last year a study was published in the Journal of the National Osteopathic association talking about how a billion people worldwide were deficient of vitamin D because of inadequate sun exposure and use of sunscreen. And recently, some other news pieces came out quoting one doctor saying, well, reducing skin cancer is more important than vitamin D levels, which really raised some biohacker alarm bells for me. And the reason for this is that the best strategy is to take some vitamin D as a supplement and to get sun exposure. If you get sun exposure with sunscreen on, it doesn't work what sun does. And you'll hear about this on Bulletproof Radio with Stephanie Seneff. Is that sunlight, when it hits your skin, it transforms vitamin D into vitamin D sulfate. You need sulfated vitamin D to be active. And vitamin D is involved in more than a thousand different metabolic processes, not just skin cancer. And it turns out that a big risk factor for skin cancer. Are you ready for this? Is exposure to indoor fluorescent lights. In other words, the more time you're out of the sun, the more likely you are to get skin cancer unless you end up getting a sunburn, because sunburns are correlated with skin cancer. So what we have here is a classic example and of someone saying, well, if too much of something is bad, none of it must be good. And this is not how biology works. As a biohacker, what you learn is there's something called a U shaped response curve. You get a little bit of something, it does something. You get a moderate amount, it does less, or sometimes more. And when you get a lot of it, oftentimes has different results. So here's the deal. If you live a life with no sunlight, you are going to be unhealthy, subject to circadian disruption, and more likely to get cancer. And if you live a life in the sun all the time with no protection, getting burned every day, you're likely to get skin cancer. It's critically important for us as human beings that we recognize sunlight is a nutrient. And junk light, this indoor LED and fluorescent light is an anti nutrient, just like corn syrup is junk food. So our job is to reduce our junk light, increase our natural sunlight exposure, but to not get a sunburn. One of the problems with Western medicine that we've broken everything down into like single little buckets, and all we do is we look at each of those buckets. But the truth is that your body is a seamless system in itself and with the environment around you. And sunlight is a critical signal to your body that tells it when to make energy and when to go to sleep. And your body, as you're red and headstrong, actually uses sunlight to make extra energy. So what do you want to do? Get that morning sunlight. Not too much, not too little. And. And don't put on sunscreen unless you're going surfing, swimming, or things like that. And even better than sunscreen, we have this amazing technology. It's called a hat. You could always use that. Recently, Eurekalert published a consensus from 22 different health researchers and doctors who said that different calories do different things to your body. Particularly, they determined that extra sugar calories do things that are bad for your body. This is particularly impactful for us as a country in the United States, because the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is now looking at whether sugary beverages should specifically have a warning label. And the bottom line is they probably should. At least that's what I would tell you. And these 22 health researchers all came to the same conclusion. Even if you have normal metabolism, having calories from sugar does worse things to you. That harms Your metabolism that than calories from other sources. What this means is fat and protein. At least some fats and some proteins don't do the bad things that sugar does. And this is why specifically high sugar, added sugar. Beverages or foods are not something that you want to put in your body. Science Daily just announced a new study that's really interesting. They found that meditating increased the amount that you move. In fact, it did it as much as a structured exercise program. So one path to making yourself move that 20 minutes a day recommended in Head Strong, the stuff that makes your mitochondria healthier. Well, you could have a trainer come where you could be in a structured program, or you could just meditate. And the act of meditating when you become more mindful makes you move that same amount without any effort whatsoever. So you can flog yourself with the trainer, or you could meditate and just naturally move more because you're happier. Or what would happen if you did both? You had a trainer to help you move in ways that are best for you and, and you meditated. So it just didn't feel like work. It comes down to mindfulness, mattering for everything you do. When you're more mindful, you naturally eat the better foods, you naturally move the way your body wants to move and needs to move for you to survive and for you to actually thrive. What this means is that paying attention to how you're doing right now really matters. And taking steps to change it is one of the first things you can do as a biohacker. Happy people perform better. So do what it takes to make your brain happier. This just came in. The BBC just announced a new tool to tell you how long you're going to live. And you enter these three important pieces of data where you live, your age and your gender. And magically they tell you how long you're going to live. Here's the deal. It's more complex than that. In fact, that's not enough data to do much other than just look at basic actuarial tables. Do you think you're an average person? I guarantee you you're not an average person. In some areas you're way beyond average, and in other areas you're way below average. You have different genes, you have different bacteria in your gut, you've had a different ch childhood, you've had different traumas, you have different stressors, you exercise, you don't exercise. All of those matter more than your age, your gender and where you live. So when people say, oh, it's just that simple no, it's not. I can tell you why I think I'm going to live to at least 180. And I can tell you what's likely to take me out on the way if I don't manage it right. But I still might not make it. I'm willing to die trying to live that long. Here's the deal. No one knows. And when we say it's that simple, what we're doing is a disservice to ourselves. Because if you believe you're only going to live as long as that study or that tool says, you might actually only live that long. Here's the deal. Tell yourself that you are going to have an amazing, thriving, full of health, happy, amazing, elder part of your life. And that's going to come a very long time from now. And I don't care if you're 80 years old, do that anyway and you're much more likely to have that happen. So focus on what you can do now to minimize damage and increase regeneration and you're probably going to live longer. And even if you don't, you're going to live better. So when I see tools like that, they actually put you down a very negative path. That's not good for you. In order to learn more about this kind of thing, you should head on over to blog.bulletproof.com where I write about this or listen to Bulletproof Radio, where I interview some of the world's top leaders in performance, people who are breaking new ground in science, or people who are just very high performers at the very top of their game. So we can all collectively learn what are they doing that works? What have they discovered that is going to impact what we can do to have control of our own biology? It's a lot of fun.