Bulletproof Biohacker News with Dave Asprey - Episode 1
In this monologue Dave Asprey outlines a series of bio‑hacking insights aimed at giving listeners control over their biology. He begins by highlighting a study that shows many people on gluten‑free diets still ingest gluten, arguing that undiagnosed gluten sensitivity is linked to a long list of diseases and that eliminating gluten can improve mental clarity, focus, and weight. He then reviews a Time‑magazine list of “anti‑inflammatory” foods, explaining how many of them are double‑edged: red bell peppers (nightshade toxins), pears (high fructose → advanced glycation end‑products), mackerel (omega‑3 benefits but histamine risk if not fresh), black tea (milk binds anti‑inflammatory compounds), buckwheat (needs proper cooking), spinach (iron overload, oxalic acid → kidney stones and other issues), and pomegranate seeds (beneficial enzymes but high sugar in excess). Asprey stresses the importance of testing individual responses and eliminating suspect foods to reduce cravings. He moves to a public‑health warning about antibiotic‑resistant bacteria proliferating in industrial animal farming, recommending grass‑fed meat and ozone therapy as a broad‑spectrum, low‑cost antimicrobial approach. He warns about synthetic marijuana (K2) contaminated with rat‑poison‑like brotiffacum, urging use of natural cannabis products if any. Finally, he cites a study showing cravings drive over‑paying for junk food, and proposes a bio‑hacking solution: mild ketosis via Brain Octane oil in Bulletproof coffee to lower ghrelin and raise CCK, thereby suppressing cravings and achieving “freedom” from food desire. The episode ends with a plug for Bulletproof Radio and the goal of extending human lifespan to 180 years.
Chapters
Hey, I'm Dave Asprey with the latest what's going on in the world of biohacking? 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. A new study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition just found that almost half of people who are on gluten free diets are still being exposed to gluten because they're finding gluten peptides in people's urine. What that means is that if you're trying to avoid gluten, you may not actually be doing it. And. And it turns out that avoiding gluten is important for a ton of people who don't know that it's important. According to some estimates, about 99% of people who are sensitive to gluten don't know it and are regularly exposed. The New England Journal of Medicine cites 55 different diseases that are associated with undiagnosed gluten sensitivity. Things like osteoporosis, canker sores, autoimmunity, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, neuropsychiatric symptoms, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, and all sorts of other things where you're like, oh, my joints just hurt a little bit, or I'm doing pretty well, but you're not. So my recommendation as a biohacker is, look, there is not a benefit to eating gluten. There's none. Gluten is a low quality plant protein. You can get much better sources of protein somewhere else. And when you cut gluten out and you do it reliably, you might find that you feel very different. One of the reasons you also might find you feel different is that gluten itself can turn into something called gluteomorphine in the gut. And it is what it sounds like, morphine. There's an opiate receptor in your brain. In fact, the first cellular receptor we ever discovered was the opiate receptor in the brain. And when gluten is digested, it can trigger that which gives you that craving that you get. You can't have just one piece of bread. You eat it one day, the next day you're likely to have two pieces, the next day, three pieces. When you find you cut out gluten and you do it all the way, your mental clarity goes up, your ability to focus goes up, and you usually get thinner. So since there's no benefit to eating it, why are we doing it? Recently, Time magazine came out with an article about seven foods that are anti inflammatory. And what I found over the course of being a biohacker is that almost every food is a double edged sword. So on this list was something called red bell peppers. We've all heard of those, obviously, but did you know that those are a member of the nightshade family? And a very meaningful percentage of people, probably around a quarter and potentially even more than that, who eat these things get arthritis, inflammation, they get holes poked in the lining of their gut, brain fog, food cravings, all sorts of things like that. And this happens because, well, vegetables don't want us to eat them, they don't want any animals to eat them, surprisingly. So they cover themselves in toxins. Not everyone responds the same way. So if you're a non responder, these are anti inflammatory. But if you're one of those people who's adding cayenne and red peppers to things because you think they're anti inflammatory and you have inflammation, there's a pretty good chance these actually might be a cause of the inflammation. So, double edged sword, next up on the list is pears. Now you might say, who cares, pears? But then you'd be a poet and you'd know it. But here's the deal with pears. Pears are a fruit. In fact, they're one of the highest fructose fruits out there. And if you eat a lot of fructose, probably more than about 20 grams a day, you're increasing something called advanced glycation end products that are tied to inflammation and aging throughout the body. This is not a good thing. And this is why those high fructose corn syrup things aren't good for you. So does that mean you should never eat a pear? No. Does that mean that they're the most inflammatory fruit? No way. You should eat foods that are high in polyphenols, like berries, blueberries, raspberries, even cherries that are high in fructose, but have a lot more of these brightly colored compounds. So enjoy a pear occasionally, but. But don't have four pears a day in your smoothies because you think they're anti inflammatory. There are way better ways to do this. Next up on the list was mackerel. Mackerel is one of those things that you might not like the taste of it very much, but it is anti inflammatory because it's high in omega 3s and something called RNA. So this is one of the things that doesn't have a high downside unless it's not fresh, because fish that isn't particularly fresh is very high in something called histamine. And You've heard of histamine because it's tied to allergies. So if you're walking around with hives all the time and you have allergies and you eat mackerel that isn't really fresh and you don't feel so good afterwards, that's because histamine is also a neurotransmitter. Again, double edged sword. Next up on the list was black tea. And black tea works really, really well for most people and there's lots of studies around black tea. But if you're from Europe and you put milk in your tea, did you know that milk in tea or coffee binds to these anti inflammatory compounds and inactivates them? Which is why people in England who drink black tea don't get the production in stomach cancer that you would expect from their black tea because they disable the black tea with milk. That's one of the reasons you might want to put some butter in there instead of milk. Just saying. Next on the list was buckwheat, which is relatively high in carbohydrates, but is much better because it's a seed than any of these so called healthy whole grains, most of which aren't healthy because they're trying to protect you. But if you're going to eat buckwheat, you need to cook it properly, which means either pressure cook it or cook it very well so that it's less inflammatory and it's a better choice here. Also on the list is spinach. Spinach is one of those things that's also maybe not so good for you. What, what about Popeye? Well, here's the deal. Spinach may be full of iron only if it's grown in soil that's full of iron. And iron itself can be pro inflammatory. So if you're a guy, there's a pretty good chance that you actually have too much iron. And you can measure this with something called ferritin in your blood. And too much iron causes advanced, accelerated aging. You don't want that. But if you're a woman, there's a pretty good chance you might not have enough iron. But you don't really know without testing. And since you don't know what's in your spinach anyway, that's not why you'd eat spinach. What spinach does have that's of concern, especially if you don't cook it, is that spinach is high in something called oxalic acid, which is one of the four main ways that plants defend themselves from being eaten by animals like us. So if you've ever felt that weird feeling in your mouth after you eat raw spinach where it's kind of rough, that's actually the oxalic acid. It forms tiny crystals with calcium in the body. And if you're on a high raw spinach or high raw kale diet, you increase your risk of getting kidney stones. And there's even a condition where these little crystals form throughout the body. And it's now being implicated in some cases of autism, but more importantly, arthritis, things like gout, you can get these little crystals in your joints. And the worst part of this is that for women who eat a lot of high oxalic acid foods, including raw spinach, you can actually get a condition called vulvodynia where the crystals form in the genitals and it creates extreme pain even from sitting. And I know lots of people who this actually happened to. So who would have thought that raw spinach could be both good for you and bad for you? So have an occasional spinach salad, but don't put two pounds of it in your smoothie every day. You won't like your life if you do that for a year, and neither will your kidneys. And finally, pomegranate seeds. Pomegranate seeds are really, really good for you, except if you eat tons and tons of it. You might get a lot of sugar, which is inflammatory, but pomegranate contains something called the PON1 enzyme, which is tied to your glutathione levels and your ability to detoxify things in your liver. So definitely eat some pomegranate seeds already. So there you go. Foods are usually double edged on the bulletproof diet on the roadmap that you can get for free on the website. What I do is I tell you these are the foods that have the most benefits and the least likelihood of causing harm. There's a set of foods that are suspect foods like red bell peppers. They might be good for you, they might not be good for you, but you don't know until you eliminate this potential suspect and see if it's guilty or not. And when you get your food dialed in, you're much more of a biohacker. But most importantly, you have no more cravings. Your brain works all the time, you have more energy. You lose the muffin top that you have, well, where you're supposed to have a muffin top, but you lose the muffin top in your head, which is the most important thing. Recently some news came out where they talked about 27 states having nightmare strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria. And this is a real problem because we're creating antibiotic resistant bacteria by feeding huge amounts of antibiotics to cows and chickens and any industrially raised animal. And what happens when you eat those is it changes your gut bacteria and it makes you more susceptible to these bacteria that have already become resistant to all these things. And this could become a really big problem. The way you can protect yourself is you eat grass fed meat. If you're going to eat meat, don't eat things that are sprayed with antibiotics or things that ate things sprayed with antibiotics. You might not know this, but ranchers can save 30% on the cost of their food just by adding some antibiotic mold derived toxins to the ear of their animals, which causes them to gain weight with 30% less calories. Well, it turns out that when they're doing that sort of thing, they're also increasing antibiotic resistance to the things that end up in nursing homes and schools and maybe on you. What you want then is to eat a diet that gives you lots of healthy gut bacteria that keep the unfortunate ones in balance. And if you do find that you have one of these antibiotic resistant bacteria, there are some biohacking things you can do that your doctor probably doesn't know about. One of the most broad spectrum, cheapest things you can do is something called ozone therapy. This has been in use for more than 50 years and it kills almost everything. So if it's on your skin, you can literally use ozone gas or ozonated olive oil. That can really make a difference because it doesn't really care what it's killing. No bacteria can stand up to that much oxidative stress, but your cells can. So if you find yourself in a desperate situation, you've got things that don't respond to antibiotics. This is something that most hospitals don't know about, but something that many functional medicine practitioners use in their practices. And it works. You might have heard some things going on about synthetic marijuana or something called K2, very different from vitamin K2, which is good for you. This is K2 that has made a bunch of people sick and killed a couple people. And what happened is companies have been trying to make something that acts like thc, the active ingredient in marijuana or in cannabis. And they're doing that because they can get around drug laws to do it. The problem is that they haven't been making clean stuff and it's not identical to what comes from the cannabis plant anyway. And the stuff they made was contaminated with something called brotiffacum, which is A type of rat poison that works much like warfarin. And what it does, it causes incredible amounts of blood thinning to the point that you start to bleed out. So people who are using this to get high were inadvertently dosing themselves with something that made them basically bleed through the arteries in their body. That's a bad thing. That's not to say that synthetic marijuana caused this. It was a contaminant in the synthetic marijuana. But honestly, why would you be using a synthetic when if you're going to use this stuff? And it also is not always good for you. So CBD oil can't be really good for you, but it might not be. And THC itself might be good for you, but it might not be. There is evidence from Dr. Amen, who's been on several episodes of Bulletproof Radio, where he talks about a decrease in blood flow in the brain. So, bottom line is, some brains work really, really well with CBD and thc, and some don't. If you're going to do it, you might as well use the real stuff, not the fake st reduce your chances of getting contaminants like the stuff that caused people to die. The most prestigious medical science journal out there, the Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences, just came out with a study that found that people are willing to overpay for junk food when they have cravings. And the conclusion from this is that cravings aren't just bad for your health. They aren't bad for your brain only. They're also bad for your wallet. And that's kind of interesting. So what's going on here is they found that when people are working hard to be free of cravings and to eat a healthy diet, that they're not achieving that because they're willing to pay extra for things that they crave. In fact, they'll pay 66 cents more for an item they're having a craving for versus 26 cents when they're not having a craving. So if you could engineer a food that caused cravings. Oh, like, say, a diet soda, maybe people are going to actually pay more afterwards for. For junk food. This is a way to inadvertently get people hooked on things. So what that means is you want to create a diet so that when you eat, you have no desire for food for at least four hours. If you eat and you want a snack two hours later, you either didn't eat enough, you ate the wrong things, or you ate something that caused a craving. Yes, that craving is your fault, because you control what you put on your Plate cravings are not your fault in that they happen because of biological reasons, not because of weakness in your character or something like that. You can use so much willpower to resist a craving, but it's so much easier just to stop the craving by not eating the things that cause the cravings. And this is the stuff I write about in Head Strong in the bulletproof diet stuff that's all over the bulletproof website. Because foods do cause cravings. We understand the biology of a lot of that more now than we ever did before. And one of the biggest hacks for cravings is to turn off the craving hormone, which is called ghrelin. And how can you do that? Well, if you go into a mild state of ketosis and we make something called brain octane oil that you can put in your bulletproof coffee as part of the recipe, that'll raise your ketones, your fat burning molecule levels just a little bit, enough to drop ghrelin, at least in some studies it does that. And it also raises a hormone called cck, it being ketosis, does that. So if you can get some ketones in your body, you get the fullness hormone of CCK and you get a lack of the hunger hormone. And all of a sudden, what would have been a huge source of cravings loses its power. It loses its sirens call. You don't want to spend 66 cents on it. You don't want to spend 26 cents on it. You just don't want to eat it. And that is my definition of freedom. And that's why I'm a biohacker. If you'd like to learn more about what you can do to have control of your own biology, check out Bulletproof Radio, where I interview some of the world's top performers and the world's experts in various types of science to help you understand what you can do in order to feel better now, have more energy now, and maybe join me in my quest to live to at least 180 years old, it's possible.
