Cut Your Cardio to 9 Minutes – CAR O L FIT AI

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that just one sweaty workout could boost some people's memory, at least in older people. These brain boosts from exercise can be almost immediate. According to a new study, cognitive neuroscientist Michelle Voss at the University of Iowa enlisted 34 people, average age 67, to go through brain scans, memory tests and exercise. And they underwent the big data of these things called functional MRI scans and took memory tests around remembering faces they'd seen before. And the researchers in part of the study looked for effects of a single 20 minute stint on a stationary bike, rigorous enough to make them sweat. And they did similar brain tests on a different day after participants spent 20 minutes on a bike that pedaled for them. That sounds like fun. On average, after 20 minutes of intense exercise, people are better at remembering the faces, especially when the task was hard, than when the bike pedaled for them. And certain connections between different areas of the brain got stronger too. And what's interesting here is that they looked at results after three months. And to their surprise, the people who improved a lot after 20 minutes had similar memory improvements and similar brain changes after those three months. And those who didn't improve after 20 minutes were less likely to have improved after three months. What does that mean for you? Well, the similarity between a single bout of exercise and months of training suggests that you don't have to wait three months to see an improvement in your brain. And you can get an improvement almost anytime you move a little bit more, which is kind of cool. That means if you're looking for the latest and greatest cognitive enhancing nootropic smart drug, perhaps you should, in addition to Mother Nature's finest, that would be coffee. Hop on a bike and move a little bit, or walk around or do something like that. And because you know that I am the grand champion of foreshadowing, we might be talking a little bit about what happens on a bike and how you can get more done in less time today. And if you'd like to see some pictures of the kind of stuff I'm talking about, make sure you follow me on Instagram. It's Dave Asprey. I'm pretty easy to find there. Onto the show. Today's guests are serial entrepreneurs with a bunch of experience, including in healthcare and startups. But they've put something together that I'm pretty excited about, something that I use at home that even my 12 year old daughter uses Believe it or not, as well as my wife Lana. My son hasn't gotten into it yet, but he just hasn't had a chance because, well, he hasn't asked to try it yet. And this is a new kind of exercise, looking at that minimum effective dose powered by AI. And the idea is, how do you get your cardiovascular system all it needs on a daily basis in a very short period of time? And this is possible due to the work of Ratna Singh, who's a microbiologist by training, but spent most of her career working with big brands, figuring out how to make stuff work better. And Ulrik Dimfle, who's figured out how to build a big piece of equipment that you can use. I think this is something that is going to really change how we think about exercise. I'm actually really excited to have you guys on the show. Radna Ulrich, welcome.

Thank you, Dave. We're very excited too.

Thanks for having us, Dave.

All right. You guys started a company called Carol and I heard about this about a year ago and I said, seriously, another exercise bike? This is just what the world needs. I remember my parents got one when I was maybe my son's age, maybe 9 or 10, and it had a little compression dial and you'd squeeze the tire with it like a little screw, and then you'd pedal on it. And my parents would sit there on this thing for like an hour watching Jazzercise videos or whatever they did back then. And I tried it a couple times and thought it was kind of ridiculous. So I have not been a huge fan of cycling, although I've done my share of it. Indoor cycling, outdoor cycling, I've always liked. But when I saw your thing, I said, all right, I'm feeling inspired because of what you guys talked about with minimum effective dose. Tell me, what is the minimum effective dose that you believe that we need for cardio and how did you come up with it?

Well, we believe that for cardio benefits, fat loss, even the cognitive benefits that you were talking about earlier, Dave, it's 40 seconds split into two 20 second sprints. That's the minimum effective dose of actual exercise. Our system, however, has you on the bike for about nine minutes, but the majority of that time is warming up, recovering and cooling down. The actual work is just two 20 second sprints. So that's your minimum effective dose of exercise.

Yeah. And so you don't have to do that every day. So we believe. And actually, so that's been proven by scientists, very serious scientists around the world, that three times a week maybe as little as two times a week. These two times 20 second sprints are enough to get you basically all the cardio benefits you can and that you, that you would like to get.

And you know, recovery is as important, Dave. So we don't want, we do not advocate that you do this so many times, even though the time is so short. And most people say, seriously, can I do it every day? And we say you don't need to, you really don't need to.

Wait a minute. If exercise is good, more exercise must be better. I mean, isn't that math? But in all seriousness, what you said there about recovery, the whole point of Upgrade Labs, the bulletproof spin out in la, by the way, we have a carol there is, it's exactly that. It's to say, look, recovery is the harder thing than to start out with, oh, let's just kind of hit ourselves over the head some more. But in head strong. This is my New York Science, New York Times best selling science book. I went really deep into it and I'd agree that you need some high intensity interval training probably twice a week. Three times I would say is probably max for most of the research I did. And the amount of time was 10 or 15 minutes. Most people can't even do 15 minutes of intense intervals. You can do what you're doing for nine minutes because it's got these two intervals and AI controlled heart rate monitoring and all kinds of cool stuff in there. But the idea that it's only two 20 second sprints, that's even lower than numbers I came up with. How did you come up with numbers that low? What's the backing on those? Because this is world changing. Most people, even if you're obese and you're really tired three times a week, you spend nine minutes with it and you don't get sweaty.

Yes. So the way we came up with this and a little bit of background might be helpful. Neither Ulrich nor I come from the fitness industry. Neither are we massive fitness freaks for the same reasons why people don't want to exercise. It's time, it's inconvenient and it's just dull, boring, mind numbing for me at least. Anyway, we ran into a professor called Dr. Niels Vollad from the University of Stirling in the UK. He had been experimenting with different lengths of exercise and his goal in life was to find literally the minimum effective dose. Most of the high intensity training intervals that you probably are aware of tend to be either 3 sprints or 30 second sprints or more. And what he did over years and years is to see what's the minimum. And he found that 10 seconds is not enough. Three 20 second sprints is not necessary. 30 seconds are absolutely not necessary. Other than completely fatiguing you and making you exercise phobic, they do nothing else. So the two 20 second sprints are all that are required. And the reason for that, Dave, and you know this because you've looked into the research and you understand the science. It's not about duration, it's about intensity. That intensity provides a very potent stimulus to your body which releases chemicals that lead to a fitter, leaner, smarter you. Because that powerful, potent stimulus stimulates our evolutionary flight or fight response that says, oh, Dave's gonna be extinct as a species if I don't give him what he's asking for, which is more power, more oxygen, more energy. And so your body changes. We adapt. We are fantastic at adapting as humans, otherwise we wouldn't be here. And so that's how it all works. Now, Niels has gone further and he did some meta studies of 34 different types of papers that have been published looking at various different durations. And it just came down to the fact that all the chemical changes that need to happen happen in the 2:22 sprints. And I can go into more detail of that in a minute. Beyond that, it really is unnecessary. So that's your minimum effective dose. Just to say that in the first 10 seconds of the first sprint, pretty much everybody will reach their peak power at the intensity that is set for them, and that will be for a split second, and they'll start to trail off. When you reach your peak power, you have done what's called glycogen depletion. You've depleted your sugar, your energy stores. In the next 10 seconds, signaling molecules are released, AMPK being one of them. You then have a recovery so that you can have a good second sprint. And in that second sprint, you activate the molecules. The main molecule that gets Activated in the second sprint is something called PGC1 Alpha. It is a master switch that cascades a series of other changes in your body. It is a very important signaling molecule because it helps to preserve the integrity of your muscles as well. It's really about the molecular changes that this very potent stimulus elicits. And that's why it works. Now, I'd like to say one thing which is that hit has been miss sold. Because everybody talks about high intensity training and they refer to the scientific literature, that refer to the scientists, but every single scientific experiment, every single Scientist that works in this field uses specialized equipment and they use a formula that has been developed by the Wingate Institute in Israel in something like 1975. So it's empiric. Yeah, it's empirically tested formula. And the idea is that the more muscle you have, the heavier you weigh. And therefore the resistance that you can exercise against can be quite high. And that tends to be a range so x percent of your muscle mass or your body mass. And in the laboratories, they see you, they'll see Dave, who's 6 foot 3, you know, he's got muscle. I'm going to apply that high resistance and that's going to be the point at which the glycogen will be depleted. And unless you choose that maximum resistance setting, which is unique for everybody, I won't be able to pedal at the resistance set for you.

Yeah, you should see these calves. I mean, I agree, you couldn't do it.

Yeah, your calves are beautiful. You should be on a fashion Runway. Seriously. Instead of hand models, we've got calf models. So, so, so, so that's the idea. It's about maximum intensity, which is why it's so short. If it was high intensity, you could do it for longer. Like you can and you know, like Tabata is high intensity. Like, I know CrossFit is high intensity, but they're all longer. And the reason they're longer because they're not intense enough. And so within those 20 seconds, we've, we literally put you in a pressure cooker.

There's one exercise program out there, I'm not going to name it. Actually, the guy who made it is a friend, but they talk on commercials about, we took high intensity interval training and we turned it on its head. So the breaks are brief and the exercise is the long period. And you're sort of like this is just kind of kicking your own ass over and over and over. But I'm not. I don't believe you'd get the same results from that that you would from these short, brief spikes. And in terms of intensity, what I really appreciate. You mentioned evolutionary stuff earlier. I mean, you hop on there, you put on the headphones, it looks at your heart rate and figures out how much you can pedal. It's that real time feedback that's changing the world. It does for neuroscience and neurofeedback. And this is really feedback based physical exercise too. But the headphones are saying, imagine you're walking through the forest and you're pedaling annoyingly slowly. I mean, you're sort of like I'm barely moving. And that's the warm up period. And then, oh, look, there's a tiger run and there's drums and whatever. And it sounds a little bit almost cheesy when I'm describing it, but when you're doing it, it works. And all of a sudden, okay, you feel your heart rate go up and you do that sprint. And so I know what it feels like. But what I really know is when I watch my wife Lana doing it, she's just kind of cruising along and you hear this like grunting and pushing really hard and you can tell it's all out as if just like the body's designed, somebody's going to eat you right now. And so to trigger that, you get the hormonal cascade. And then the other thing that I appreciated and I want you to talk about the science in this, is after the brief sprint where you get away from the tiger, you guide people to breathe more slowly and to calm back down, you're actually monitoring the speed at which your heart rate drops back into the normal zone, which is very different. Like most humans, a tiger almost ate me. And then the rest of the day like, oh, no, a tiger almost ate me. And you're actually agitated. But other animals you see on National Geographic, the tiger misses the deer. And when the deer knows it's safe, it kind of whole body shakes and it lets go of stress hormones. And then it starts eating grass and it's just done. And I feel like whatever you're doing in the cool down is taking the heart rate up and then right back down. So you get a very high peak to tell the body, be ready for peaks, but be chill the rest of the time. What is the cool down period? What stuff are you doing in there?

Yeah, the cool down period is exactly to bring your heart rate back down to normal. And we have mindfulness breath paces that also balance your nervous system. So it has a longer exhale and a shorter inhale. Because we want you to have had a mind and a body workout too. It's pretty intense, as you know, and it's great to feel relaxed by the time you have left. The other thing that happens is that your blood pressure normalizes during those three minutes. And so we do want to keep you there. And we keep you at about 60 rpm. That's the ideal RPM for your blood pressure to come back again. We don't want you passing out or stuff like that.

So the other thing that's really critical in those recovery periods, we obviously track how quickly Your heart rate recovers. We know how much power you've exerted and how much power you've produced and that creates. So first is the exercise stimulus is there, and it gets you amazing results in terms of how fit you can get with very little time investment. It also is basically like a controlled experiment, like a fitness test that you repeat like two to three times per week. And it gives you a highly quantified score of your fitness. So we can, we can see kind of how much faster your heart rate recovers, how many less heartbeats you need to produce a certain power profile. And that's a very precise score of your cardiorespiratory fitness. And this and that you can track over time. And we can track over time for you. For me, that's a great hook to actually stick to the exercise because you see very quick results, very measurable, very repeatable results, and therefore get that instant reward that you're doing something for you. And you actually can measure it, you can track it, and you have your results there.

Dave, what, what Ulrich is referring to there is what we call our octane score. But it's really a measure of your power per heartbeat. And as you get fitter, the more power you produce with fewer heartbeats. And most people will improve that over time. In fact, everybody does, even the fittest people. And so doing as you said, we're tracking quite a lot of information in the bulletproof diet.

I wrote about something called the ejection fraction, and this is one of the reasons I've been against chronic cardio for a very long time, even though I used to do it. And chronic cardio is these long distance things. I've had several interviews. There's a good one with Mark Sisson a while back about that. And when you jog for a long distance or just kind of cruise around at that 70% maximum thing, your heart learns to beat faster and to spit out smaller amounts of blood. Heartbeat. And when you're really fit, you can go from normal heartbeats to one single heartbeat, can shoot a huge amount of blood through. Now, is what you're talking about the same as increasing the size of your ejection fraction?

It's exactly that. It's power per heartbeat. So kind of one of the adaptations is that your heart as a muscle gets stronger and can just pump with a single stroke more blood through your veins and through your arteries. And that's exactly what we're measuring and kind of can then precisely track over time. That gives us great confidence. While we see that we can replicate exactly the lab results in the real world and kind of continue that over time. So we see across all our users after about eight to 10 weeks, and that's literally what the scientists in the lab see as well, about a 10 to 12% improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness. And if you then continue, for users who stick with it, we see it up to 20, 25%, which is very remarkable. That's kind of even the 10 to 12%, that's bigger a change than or as big a change as stopping smoking. So if you consider what you do for your health, it's a really big thing.

Wait a minute. You're saying if I use Carol and I start smoking, I could stay even?

Yeah, that's exactly the message we want to convey. Thank you, Dave.

Yeah, okay. Don't do that. Smoking's horrible.

I think the wise thing would be to do would be not to smoke and to use Carol and then kind of just live a few years longer.

I'm in alignment with you on that one. In these numbers that you're citing, are these people using it twice a week or three times a week?

So we have both. We have. And that depends a little bit where people are using it at home. We see most people are using it three times a week if they're going to studio. So we have across the country kind of a number of high, like really.

High end, like upgrade labs in Santa Monica or in Beverly Hills.

Right.

Okay, so there's. But you have those all over the country now.

We have a number of them. Yeah, we're growing. But yet, like many of the big cities have a studio with Carol in them. And there we see more like one to twice. Kind of in line with the rest of the schedule that people use Carol.

Now, when they use Carol that often. Those numbers you cited, though, around this 10 to 12% improvement. These are from basically one to three times a week.

That's the average.

Yes, correct. How, if you're willing to disclose this, how many people continue past six weeks?

Most people continue past six weeks. But what we do is say to them, because we track all the data. If we feel that they're not getting any fitter. Because remember, Carol also changes your resistance in every ride.

Yeah. Based on the real time stuff.

Exactly. So if you are getting fitter, she's continuing to challenge you. If you're struggling, she will ease up. Or if you are where we want you to be, there'll be no change. If we find that those people have got to the point where it's about as fit as they're going to get. We put them on a maintenance plan which is twice a week and most people can do twice a week without any problems.

So this is the least sucky way of exercising in the minimum possible amount of time.

Well, I wouldn't. Well, Dave, in all honesty, I'm really.

The master of good positioning, aren't I?

No, you're amazing. We love you.

Sorry. Keep going.

I won't lie to you in that those 40 seconds hurt.

Yeah, they're tough.

They're tough. I mean, I've got people I myself sometimes screen for an epidural, but I know that I'm not going to do anything else. And so for me it's a bit like ripping the plaster off, you know, just boom, get it over with and I can get on with my life. So let's not make any mistakes. This is max intensity. Personalize. It's hard, you know, you trade time for intensity.

Yeah, exactly. And therefore it becomes very doable. And then the other thing. So the vast majority of people who have a Carol bike at home continue to use it. So we have really good usage stats for the home users. Some of the bikes, like your bike at the Beverly Hilton, there are a few people who just stay overnight in the hotel and they use it once, so they push our average a bit down.

But they do like it. We get great feedback.

Yeah, I've got my bike at home. I just do it every other day.

Every other day, get out of bed.

And that's a habit. And kind of while I don't have to negotiate with myself anymore whether I do it or not, just because it's established, it is still hard because Carol kind of personalizes, optimizes and makes it harder for me every single most times. Yeah.

What I think is impressive now that you've shared that data with me and I didn't ask you that ahead of time for the show at all. I remember my parents exercise bike and after a very short period of time it became a clothes rack and most exercise bikes at home have that. But I think something about the AI engagement that you're doing and the way that it gets easier if you're just not on a strong day and it gets harder if you need to be pushed. And the fact that, you know, I'm just going to do these two nine minute things, I can deal with that. And it's a replacement for the going to the gym that I wasn't going to do this week anyway because I had a meeting at the same Time and all that. So that makes sense. I bought one for Bulletproof headquarters here in Seattle. So we have one here. The problem is I don't have a good space for it. We just open another floor of the building. So I'm putting it in a good space. Before it was sort of right there next door shipping and receiving, which isn't where you want to go spend nine minutes sort of kicking your own butt. So I actually think it's that worthwhile that they're willing to go in for the Bulletproof employee set. What I wanted to know more about though is that you guys have said straight up that the government guidelines of five sessions of 30 minute moderate intensity exercise are just obsolete. Yet my research, I went pretty deep on this in head strong to say how do I keep my brain healthy? I found one set of very clear data around high intensity things, but I found another set of data that said, look, if you just go for a walk for 20 minutes a day, that there was a mitochondrial set of changes that happened from just going for a walk where you can talk with the person next to you. Not a walk with weights and super fast or anything like that, but just like stepping around a little bit, that that was going to do something different than the high intensity training. Are you saying I can be sort of a couch potato and then do my training or what's the line there between this, this government moderate intensity or whatever that means and going for a walk? Is there one?

We have been very bold to make that statement, but we have made it because it's been scientifically validated. And yes, you can be a couch potato and only do this exercise. You can go for a walk for leisure purposes, for walking your dog because you want to, shopping malls, etc. Not because you have to. Now why do we say that the government guidelines are obsolete? The American Council on Exercise, you must know them. They are a huge nonprofit body in the U.S. this known as the watchdog in America. And the wonderful Dr. Cedric Bryant, who's the president, got to hear a bit about Carol and he was very intrigued by it, particularly because, you know, government sources are realizing that in the next few years healthcare systems are going to be on their knees. They're already crippled, right? Inactivity no longer is a noun, it's now a disease category. And he just wants to see if truly people don't want to exercise because of time. Etc, etc. Can Carol do what she says on the tin? So he paid for a research project that was conducted by Dr. Lance Dallek at The University of Colorado, they have a massive sports science department. And what they did was it was a randomized control trial. It lasted eight weeks. And they took 16 volunteers. Sorry, yes. 16 on Carol. And 16 people doing the government guidelines of 30 minutes per day, five days a week, totaling 150 minutes a week, and Carol three times a week. The results were spectacular. I mean, they even blew us away. The most important from a health perspective is what's called your Met score. It's the score that predicts your likelihood of getting those chronic diseases later on in life. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, other types of things. And Carol riders. MET score had dropped by 62% after eight weeks. The government guidelines group. Their Met score dropped, of course, but by 26%. So the difference was pretty phenomenal in terms of cardio fitness. The Carol group improved by 12%, the government group by 6%.

So twice the improvement in.

Twice the improvement, you're getting about eight.

Weeks, about 14% of the time.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. These have been such meaningful results that the same university then decided to do what you alluded to. Dave, I know you don't know about this, and I shouldn't talk too much about it because they haven't published the results, but they decided to see if a ride on Carol in the morning can reverse the effects of sitting all day. Now, they've got phenomenal results. They told me what they are, exactly. I don't know. But they are going to be published probably late summer, early or autumn, and we'll see. But if that is the case, then, yeah, be a couch potato. Do it. Carol, you are done and dusted.

All right. I imagine you're going to need some yoga or stretching or something in there.

Definitely.

And there's some lymphatic drainage. In fact, I kind of know this thing called the bulletproof vibe that helps with lymphatic drainage as well. Because there are times when I live in Canada, it rains all the damn time. So I stand on this thing indoors and I'm on a phone call, and I know that I'm getting some things that would have been like what I would have gotten if I walked out in a rainstorm.

Oh, great.

So, I mean, it's entirely possible for us to do what we want to do, which is quite often not exercise, and still do this. But I'm actually really blown away. They doubled their Cardiovascular improvement in 14% of the exercise time. So if you look at just return on investment, which is you have to look at exercise from an ROI perspective, unless you just like to Go to a spin class, the camaraderie and the sweat and the suffering or something. Great. Then you're doing it for pleasure. But you don't have to tell yourself you're doing it because it's going to make you healthier. It might, but it also could wear things out too.

Yeah. And so this has been published in kind of high quality peer reviewed journals. Maybe we can attach that to the show notes.

We'll put the links in there. Because I mean I looked at this before I agreed to let you guys come onto the show and sponsor the show is that I really wanted to dig on it. I can see that it works. I mean I tried it, I tried it on my daughter who loves it, and on my wife. And I dug in on this for quite a while and we put it at labs to see how customers liked it. So I think you've passed the bar there. But all of the science I'll put in the post because it's, it's important that people listening just understand you couldn't do this by going to a park and running for 20 seconds because you won't hit your peak output. It's just not possible without the tight computer generated feedback.

And then maybe just one thing. When we say the government guidelines are obsolete, we think it's just not the best advice and that you can do better than that and you can get that better roi. But don't forget, even the group that just went from sedentary to doing this five times half an hour, moderate intensity, they did see quite a remarkable improvement. So if you can't get a carol, don't just stay on the couch. I think the couch is the real killer.

So the government guidelines are quite often, but not always better than doing nothing. Sometimes they're worse than doing nothing and, and they're always 30 plus years out of date. Just always. That's how it works. I mean we've still got, in the US you're not allowed to put the word healthy on any food that contains any saturated fat with no differentiation between the different types of saturated fats. The fact that MCT oils are also saturated even though they don't even act like other ones. So we have this whole sort of weird cult like belief system. And we also know in the US that anyone who exercises every single day for an hour a day that they're a good person. And you're like, what? Where did this come from? I look at that and I might piss off some of my loyal listeners here. I look at that as wearing a Hair shirt or that self flagellation activity from old religious things where, look, I've got two kids. I could go play table tennis with my son or I could go for a walk with my wife. I could do all kinds of cool stuff. I could do another episode of Bulletproof Radio. I just don't want to do that because I have so many other things to do. But I will do that if it's necessary. And what you guys are saying is not really necessary. We haven't talked about insulin sensitivity. And I know the reason that you got involved in the company, because I did my research, was you saw that first study around 24% insulin sensitivity from a special bike, but you've since commercialized it. Have you done anything around improvements in insulin sensitivity for people who use Carolina?

Well, again, the ACE and University of Colorado study did that.

Oh, that was it.

No, no, no. This was the second one. The other one was a few years ago. The 24%. They've done it. And it's an input that goes into the MET score. Insulin sensitivity, the triglycerides, the HDL total cholesterol, blood sugar, Every single parameter was measured, and every single parameter was massively better than the government guidelines. So it works.

Are you just, like, tickled pink about that? You must be.

Well, we are tickled pink about it. I mean, I think we were really shocked as to how good it all was. And the reason I believe it's the case is because even the laboratory people, once the resistance is set for an individual, they don't change it, whereas Carol changes it every time. So if you're getting fitter, she continues to challenge you. And so you really do get that potent stimulus every time you get onto it, because you know this, Dave, better than anyone. Your body will give you what you ask for it. If we kept you on the same resistance, that's what your body will respond to. It'll adapt to that. So we change the goalpost every time, and therefore we keep chasing you. My own insulin, I hate to admit it was 11, which was bordering on insulin resistance. This is a couple of years ago. I hit Carol like a fiend three times a week, and it dropped to 4.3.

Wow. Okay.

In five weeks.

That's pretty incredible from 18 minutes of time. You said three times a week. But it's probably more cost effective than some of the cutting edge diabetes drugs if you were to look at that. And they don't drop insulin and they don't change insulin resistance to that degree. In fact, most of them do much Less than that.

Oh, yes, that's what Dr. Niels Vollard says. He says that no drug can deliver this level of insulin sensitivity improvement in such a short time. He's gone on record to say that.

Now, one of the beliefs that I have that is born from all of the scientific research around behavior of mitochondria is that the mitochondria, they control insulin resistance. If they burn sugar and they feel so motivated to do so, magically, you'll have lower levels of glucose and your insulin levels will drop like it's just a normal thing. The problem is that when mitochondria aren't working well for whatever reason, and quite often they have, we'll say lazy couch potato mitochondria sitting around, they don't have any inputs that says, oh, you need to get out of the way and allow young, healthy, strong mitochondria to come in. And when you practice fasting, the ones that can't handle it, they die and get replaced by new ones. It's mitochondrial autophagy. And then if you look at what happens when you do cryotherapy, the ones that can't generate heat, then they die, they get out of the way and young new ones come in. And then in the case of Carol, the ones, the mitochondria who cannot make energy to get away from the tiger, they realize, oh, there might be tigers here. Keep in mind, mitochondria are dumb, they're bacteria, they don't have a lot of storage capacity in the little brains, right? So they say, oh, there might be tigers here, therefore I better get out of the way and be replaced by a young, strong one. And I think it's the mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the new ones, and autophagy, which is removal of the old dysfunctional ones. That, that would explain why you're getting stronger heart muscle, why you're getting better circulation, why you're getting the improvements in insulin sensitivity. And it's because of the AI, you're tweaking that peak each time instead of just doing something that, oh, I'm already optimized for this. I don't need to change. It's that tiny little tweak in the pressure that you put on yourself. And frankly, I used to think, well, I have willpower, I'm a big strong guy. I'll just muscle my way through it. I'll make myself do it. But newsflash, mitochondria also control willpower. They're ultimately in charge. But when you use the AI system, they're not in charge. Of that. So they just do what's told. And it's a neat hack to sort of get yourself out of the decision loop around mitochondria.

That's a really interesting point. And I'll just say that we see people, Dave, from all walks of life, right? A 60 year old lady, for example, who comes here to do this. 20 seconds because it's timed, it's controlled, it's finite. People finish it. Even if you're a couch potato, they just finish it. If you left it up to them, they might not, they might give up earlier, but they seem to feel like they have an obligation to Carol if they finish it.

The other thing I loved how you kind of suggested that the different hacks that you could stack. And so this is not a massive research study. This is like n equals 1. But I've been doing Carol for a while and getting kind of really good results from it. After Christmas, after a period of traveling where I couldn't do it, and then too much turkey, I mix two other things into my regime. One is intermittent fasting. So I do actually do the bulletproof coffee in the morning and then have a longer fasting window.

It works well.

And the other kind of cold therapy is just like really cold showers for like a couple of minutes in the every morning. And so, so that took me on a new kind of S curve in terms of fitness levels, in terms of weight and body fat and just general wellness.

You saw a difference?

Oh, absolutely. So, so I had my genes tested from kind of the, the, the most advanced research scientists in this field. And they've said like, oh, you should be a low to moderate responder. And I've had my VO2 max tested and kind of with kind of Carol and then stacking in intermittent fasting and cold exposure. I've improved my VO2 max by 50%. So that is.

How old are you?

I'm 42.

Okay, so we're about the same age.

I'm now in better shape than I've literally ever been. And then the other things that happen is since Christmas I've lost about 28 pounds of weight.

He's obsessed now.

No, I'm not obsessed. It tastes very easy.

28 pounds in about six months. Okay. Wow.

Body fat from 26 to 15%. So it was actually comically effective.

I have to say, I love that word.

I think we'll have on our website soon a little case study where you might see before, after, you'll see his.

Six pack, which is now pretty.

Yeah, exactly. I follow your lead. Dave. I'll have a six pack photo. So kind of stacking those different little hacks. And this is really. It's not very invasive. And it doesn't cost a lot to skip breakfast, have a cold shower, and do three times a week, like eight minutes exercise. So the ROI on that is pretty phenomenal.

And so is the smug smile on his face.

It does. I love the words. Comically effective because, I mean, I had a guy a while back lose a pound a day for 75 days on the rapid fat loss protocol thing that I published. And it's literally every week you go back to the store and buy another pair of pants because the ones you wore last week don't fit.

Exactly.

Same.

I had to go to wedding in completely inappropriate dress because all the fancy suits.

Yeah, they don't fit anymore. They hang on you. Right.

Two or three sizes too big. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, congratulations on that. And the idea of stacking those. One of the things that upgrade labs that I'm intrigued with is we've got probably a dozen different pieces of tech at this point, but it's using machine learning, artificial intelligence to navigate our clients way. So you walk in the door, we can tell you, all right, do the carol first, do the carol last. You skip the carol today, you did it yesterday. Whatever the right things are to say, how do you get the highest ROI for the stack? But right now, what I understand about how to stack things is that when I'm going to do the carol, I want to do it in a fasted state. However, I want to do it with caffeine in my system. You talked about the AMPK impact of your exercise. It turns out there's a study from 2008 that shows caffeine enhances endothelial repair via an AMPK dependent mechanism. There's another study from UC San Diego that shows that the amount of caffeine in two small cups of coffee doubles ketone production. And that's without brain octane, which itself cranks ketone production up. So what I'm going to do before I do this is I'll have my bulletproof coffee, and I don't do collagen before, I'll do collagen after. And so now I've had my coffee, I've got the caffeine in for the AMPK mechanisms, then I will do it. And what I don't know yet is do I want to do cryotherapy before or after? It doesn't seem to matter. But there are some early studies that say you might want to do it first, which means take your cold shower first. And the reason for that is that icing after exercise may reduce the improvement from exercise. However, a cold shower isn't icing and you guys aren't creating delayed onset muscle soreness and all that stuff because you don't even sweat when you're doing it. I don't know with Carol, but I know if I was going to go lift, I would probably want the cold to come first. It'd be fast caffeine, cold exercise sounds great.

Yeah, we'll try that. So at the moment, my regime is Carol, cold, caffeine, Carol. But I'll permutate it a bit and see.

I'll tell you what, I get to try it out. And there's, I mean, now we're getting a little off the carrel, you know, the carrel's topic specifically. But there's something called mtor. And have you looked at what Carol does for MTOR levels?

No, we have not. Again, it's something that I'm sure Lance Dallek would love to look into. It's coming over time, but we have not.

I don't know that it would do much except in the heart. But MTOR is the mammalian target of rampamycin and it's one of the anti aging things. I just wrote about that in my new book called Superhuman that is now on Amazon. Notice that blatant plug there? It's a pre order.

Very good. Another blatant plug. It's very good.

But when you look at mtor, and this actually goes back to the bulletproof diet too, I've read about that. What you want to do is you want to suppress MTOR and then you want to let it spring back. And the things that suppress MTOR are exercise. So I am almost certain that Carol is going to suppress mtor. And then when you're done exercising, it comes back up. So you want a brief spike in mtor, which causes repair. But if MTOR is always high, like if you're a bodybuilder eating tons of protein, then it can lead to cancer and things like that. So you want low mtor, high mtor, low mtor, and this brief, intense thing you're doing with Carol seems like you'll do it. But the things that suppress MTOR are caffeine and exercise and fasting are the three things that suppress it. And that's why you do all those together. You do the caffeine before the exercise. So the fasting pushes it down like a spring. Then next the caffeine pushes down like a spring, and then at the end, the exercise pushes down like a spring. And then you're done, you go eat. And then it surges forward. You get. In this case, I would imagine it'd be more of a cardiovascular effect from the mtor. And then all the good stuff happens from there when you let it go, but then it returns back to low, normal levels where. Which is going to make you live longer. That's why I think about things the way I do and why I think your technology that prevents over exercising, I think it's pretty fundamental. I'm excited about it.

Thank you. Thank you very much. We're going to take what you've just said on board and try it out ourselves. And I'm going to propose it to lan Stalik to see if he'd like to research it, measure it.

Excellent. Now, I have another question. Okay. AI is one of those buzzwords where people are saying, I have an artificial intelligence in my shoes. No, you don't. What's real in the AI that you're doing?

Yeah, of course. So most visibly is the personalization and optimization of the exercise for each individual user, every single ride. So using machine learning and big data, we've developed algorithms that will basically keep challenging you and keep adjusting the exercise for you every single time so you don't plateau. That's the most visible thing.

The other visible thing is back to what I said earlier, Dave. Remember when the scientists are doing the research, you are in front of them and they can see that you are either, you know, you've got heavy mass, body mass, either because you are tall and you're muscly, or you're short and fat. So they can adjust the resistance. Remember, they use the Wingate formula and they can adjust the resistance on that range based on you because they can see you. We don't have that luxury. When you register with Carol, you give us your weight, your age, your height, we'll calculate bmi, but we don't know if you're short and fat or whether you're tall and muscly. So we have what's called calibration rides. And those are the rides where your first three calibration rides, we get to understand you. If you're likely to be short and fat, your power is not going to be very high. If you are strong and muscly, your power is going to be very high. Your total power, your peak power, all of this stuff. And so we use all that information to then when you do your proper ride, which is really your seventh ride. You've got that maximum resistance that's been calculated by Carol. It's using the Wingate formula, and she applies it in less than a second using the motor. That's the other machine learning bit. Carol, really, she's just tracking everything the whole time, so she's understanding your ability.

The next is about giving really meaningful and accurate metrics. We spoke about that already, that it's kind of almost like a fitness test every time you use it. Then there's a bunch of things where we use advanced machine learning kind of under the hood to make the bike as accurate as possible and as safe as possible. And then we're constantly developing that every bike is connected to the cloud. We're pushing quite frequent updates on. And we have a very exciting roadmap for Carol where she will be kind of at the moment, she controls the exercise for you, but where she will be your comprehensive, kind of artificially intelligent health coach that can give kind of really meaningful feedback based on your behavior on the bike, based on your physiological signs, and can even answer questions that you have. And the good thing is, as we develop that, we push that out to all our users and Carol will just get smarter and smarter.

So including heart rate variability, we'll be measuring that very soon. She will say, not today, Dave. You're too tired.

That is so incredibly cool. I'm excited to get that upgrade on my Carol because I use an OURA ring that shows me in the morning what my heart rate is, or, sorry, my heart rate variability is. So I get some sense of data from that. At upgrade labs, we get heart rate variability sometimes where we look at people's aura scores. And it's true, there are some days where through no fault of your own, you really ought to not do it. And to have a system that's smart enough to say, hey, don't come back tomorrow. I mean, what a blessing. Because what we would otherwise do without any knowledge, we'd go and we'd push ourselves, which is going to further deplete you, which is going to make you act like more of a jerk later in the day. It's almost guaranteed that it's that way. The more energy, the more willpower you have, the more of a nice person you are. And when you are weak physiologically at a cellular level, you just have less willpower. So you're more likely to snap at your kids or yell at your boss or do whatever that thing that you wish you hadn't done. So, yay, turn on that HRV and a piece of exercise equipment that tells you not to use it. That is actually really cool when it says, use me less. Seriously, that's what the world needs. That's the whole reason that I started this whole upgrade labs concept. And, and that's why I put you guys in there. Because that mindset, that's what is. Just because some exercise is good doesn't mean that all the exercise in the world is good for you, and it doesn't mean none is good for you. And it's the same with cholesterol. Just because crazy high amounts of oxidized cholesterol can be bad for you, it doesn't mean that you want zero cholesterol, because there's a name for that. It's called death. So finding the comfortable middle for your biology, for your exercise, for your food, for your fat, for your carbs, for everything. That's where we're going. And you're at the forefront of that. And so I'm stoked. But being at the forefront comes at a certain cost. And that leads to the final question for the show today. You might live longer than you counted on. And because my new book is around my quest to live to 180, I've been asking guests on the show for quite a while a really in your face question. So how long are you going to live? What do you think?

So that comes as a complete surprise, that question. I look at the data. Yeah. I'm 42 now. I'm way fitter and healthier than when I was 32. And also when I was 22.

Me too.

So if I just extrapolate that it's going to be a very, very long life.

Oh, darn right, yes.

So no, and I think you're onto something and I don't think your target is off the wall. So I can kind of, if I get those types of improvements that I've seen, I can see myself reach, you know, like the 120 level. And then if the magic happens in terms of what else is around there, with some help of technology, I think we can live a very, very long time. At the same time, I think we have, like, I speak for myself, it's a very blessed and fulfilled life, actually. Three wonderful children, wonderful wife, and you work with me and a wonderful co founder and partner. Absolutely. I wouldn't even like, even if it didn't come like that, I'd be grateful and would say life's not too short, kind of. It's a blessing. It's been a blessing so far. And it's wonderful what we can do.

My answer to that question, Dave, and there's no reason for it, but I'm just going to say 111 because there's three ones. I just like that number.

All right.

But it's beyond 100. And funnily enough, because Carol, there's a name to this, to the AI, and we hope that our users form a relationship with her. So Carol has a personality and she's quite funny and she has, I don't know, about 300 what we call Carolisms. And they're one liners, witty quotes. And one of them says, what's it like to be 100 years old? Question mark. And then she says, at this rate, you'll find out.

I love it. 111. I haven't heard anyone say, I just like the sound of those three numbers together. But I'm increasingly hearing people say, you know, I think past 100 is it could happen. And even just in the last year of asking this question, I've seen a shift in it. And it's very clear that if people don't believe something can happen, it does not happen. And even becoming more intelligent, the studies are crystal clear. If you tell kids that they can get smarter, they get smarter. If you tell kids they can't get smarter, they simply don't. So I'm looking at all the math, looking Ulrich like you, where I am in better shape now. I'm 46 than I was when I was 26. On every measure that I can think of that I'm like, well, wait, knowing all the people I've interviewed and other people I haven't interviewed, but I know who are working on these technologies and you stack those with things like Carol and things like cold showers and the coffee stuff and all the other techniques in just changing your environment so that you sleep better and everything works better. I just don't think it's unreasonable to say that most people listening to the show who are especially under 30 today, if they follow the basic stuff and we don't deplete our topsoil and poison our oceans to the point that no one's alive, then I think that the average listener is going to make it past 100. And not only that, they're going to do it with a brain that works and walking into their own power.

That's fantastically said. I love that. I love that. Walking into their own power. Yeah. You know, my husband's a neurologist and we have lots of medics in my family. Of course, I'm Indian, so that's not surprising.

Your last name was Singh.

I know every time I go to America, people just ask me if I'm a doctor and I just start laughing. Said I'm not, but I'm married to one. And I think all the doctors and my husband thinks it's possible. It's possible as long as it's healthy. And this is why our healthcare systems need to be viable. You know, we don't want them on their knees. Otherwise, what's the point in living till you're 111 without the ability to enjoy it?

Yeah, it's that idea that the picture of aging that we have is no longer being the wise village elder. It's diapers and tubes and hospitals and all the really unpleasant stuff. And that didn't exist except for the last 30, 40 years. That's never been how it was. And so we're undoing that really rapidly. And it's really amazing. But thousands of studies will show that remaining active is required for the brain to work. Like we opened with a in the cool fact of the day. So if you can get people to do that in 18 minutes a week and it leads to those shifts in outcome, that is an act of service for humanity. So you give me those results in less time, I'm more likely to do it. And it's not just me, it's everyone listening is more likely to do it. So I'm just on board with this. I think we're looking at a world coming up here that's going to be a lot cooler than people think it is, in part because of stuff like this. So thank you for making Carol, and.

Part because of you as well, and people like you who bring new things to people because some of it is a bit hard to believe, but you're the proof. You've got people who are following you and they're the proof. So it's thanks to you, Dave.

I appreciate that. But really, Ulrich is the proof. Yes, I did weigh 300 pounds. I had all my crap. But at this point, more than a million pounds people have lost on the bulletproof diet. And you get these critics who say, it doesn't work. And you're like, I'm pretty sure all the people who just lost all this weight and have brains work, they're going to come and find you if you keep saying that because they're a little pissed off that you're calling them liars. So I don't know. I'm just at peace with the fact that this stuff works and it'll directionally get it's directionally accurate and it'll get more tweaks. For instance, the conversation about at what time should you do your caffeine versus your exercise? We don't know. We have theories and ideas, but machine learning is going to help us dial that in. And funny enough, there's a big data set of information and I think you guys are very soon going to have an incredible data set because you're looking at it differently than guys like Peloton, where it's more of like an entertainment feedback thing. You're getting the physiology and then we have a whole bunch of brain Scans on the 40 Years of Zen side of things and my friends at Muse and all these other things and then upgrade labs, we're gathering a bunch of other data sets and there's hospitals and medical things and stuff all over the place. We put all that stuff together and dump it into a big machine learning system. It's just going to be nothing but a cool world. So I think you're a very meaningful part of that and I'm grateful that we're all going to get more results. That's fine. On that note, for people listening, if you've enjoyed this interview, I think that you really should check out the the Carol bike. It's a carolfitai.com it's very reasonably priced, it will save you so much time. And if you're like me, where, look, I don't really want to sleep. I have cool stuff to do. So I found a way to sleep more and less time. And I get what a 20 year old gets in eight hours, I can get in six hours and I'm 46. And if you thought you had to invest six hours a week in getting your cardio, an hour a day to drive to the gym and change and go do whatever you're going to do and come, none of that, you can get rid of it. So this is just a much higher efficiency to free up time to do the stuff that you really care about. And that's carolfitai.com so go there, check it out. If it's a good fit for you, great. If not, take a cold shower, skip breakfast, do something good like that. And if it worked, tell someone, leave a review for the bulletproof diet, leave a review for the podcast. Just do stuff like that. Just tell people, hey, this stuff works. And that's how we can all combat the trolls and skeptics and the people who tell you the 40 year old advice that says workout for 30 minutes a day, six days a week. Yeah, right, whatever. Have a great day.

Healthier than when I was 32 and also when I was 22.

Me too.

So if I, if I just extrapolate that it's going to be a very, very long life, like.

Oh, darn right, yes.

So no, and I think you're onto something and I don't think your target is off the wall. So I can kind of, if I get those types of improvements that I've seen, I can see myself reach, you know, like the 120 level. And then if the magic happens in terms of what else is around there, with some help of technology, I think we can live a very, very long time. At the same time, I think we have like, I, I speak for myself. It's a very blessed and fulfilled life, actually. Three wonderful children, wonderful wife and you work with me and a wonderful co. Founder and partner. Absolutely. I, I wouldn't even like, even if it didn't come like that, I'd be grateful and, and would would say life's not too short, it's kind of, it's a blessing. It's been a blessing so far and it's wonderful what we can do.

My answer to that question, Dave, and I'm not, there's no reason for it, but I'm just going to say 111 because there's three ones. I just like that number.

All right.

But it's beyond 100 and funnily enough, because Carol, there's a name to this, to the AI and we hope that our users form a relationship with her. So Carol has a personality and she's quite funny and she has, I don't know, about 300 what we call Carolisms. And they're one liners, witty quotes. And one of them says, what's it like to be 100 years old? Question mark? And then she says, at this rate you'll find out.

I love it. 111. I haven't heard anyone say, I just like the sound of those three numbers together. But I'm increasingly hearing people say, you know, I think past 100 is, it could happen. And even just in the last year of asking this question, I've seen a shift in it. And it's very clear that if people don't believe something can happen, it does not happen. And even becoming more intelligent, the studies are crystal clear. If you tell kids that they can get smarter, they get smarter. If you tell kids they can't get smarter, they simply don't. So I'm looking at all the math, looking org like you, where I am in better shape now I'm 46 than I was when I was 26. On every measure that I can think of that I'm like, well, wait. And knowing all the people I've interviewed and other people I haven't interviewed, but I know who are working on these technologies, and you stack those with things like Carol and things like cold showers and the coffee stuff and all the other techniques in just changing your environment so that you sleep better and everything works better. I just don't think it's unreasonable to say that most people listening to the show who are especially under 30 today, if they follow the basic stuff and we don't deplete our topsoil and poison our oceans to the point that no one's alive, then I think that the average listener is going to make it past 100. And not only that, they're going to do it with a brain that works and walking into their own power.

That's fantastically said. I love that. Walking into their own power. Yeah. You know, my husband's a neurologist and we have lots of medics in my family. Of course, I'm Indian, so that's not surprising.

Your last name was Singh.

I know every time I go to America, people just ask me if I'm a doctor and I just start laughing. Said I'm not, but I'm married to one. And I think all the doctors and my husband thinks it's possible. It's possible as long as it's healthy. And this is why our healthcare systems need to be viable. We don't want them on their knees. Otherwise, what's the point in living till you're 111 without the ability to enjoy it.

Yeah, it's that idea that the picture of aging that we have is no longer being the wise village elder. It's diapers and tubes and hospitals and all the really unpleasant stuff. And that didn't exist except for the last 30, 40 years. That's never been how it was. And so we're undoing that really rapidly, and it's really amazing. But thousands of studies will show that remaining active is required for the brain to work. Like we opened with the cool fact of the day. So if you can get people to do that in 18 minutes a week and it leads to those shifts in outcome, that is an act of service for humanity. So you give me those results in less time, I'm more likely to do it. And it's not just me, it's everyone listening is more likely to do it. I'm just on board with this. I think we're looking at a world coming up here that's going to be a lot cooler than people think it is, in part because of stuff like this. Thank you for making Carol part.

Because of you as well, and people like you who bring new things to people because some of it is a bit hard to believe, but you're the proof. You've got people who are following you and they're the proof. So it's thanks to you, Dave.

I appreciate that. But really, Ulrich is the proof. Yes, I did weigh 300 pounds. I had all my crap. But at this point, more than a million pounds people have lost on the bulletproof diet. And you get these critics who say it doesn't work. And you're like, I'm pretty sure all the people who just lost all this weight and have brains work. They're going to come and find you if you keep saying that because they're a little pissed off that you're calling them liars. So I don't know. I'm just at peace with the fact that this stuff works and it's directionally accurate and it'll get more tweaks. For instance, the conversation about at what time should you do your caffeine versus your exercise? We don't know. We have theories and ideas, but machine learning is going to help us dial that in. And funny enough, there's a big data set of information and I think you guys are very soon going to have an incredible data set because you're looking at it differently than guys like Peloton, where it's more of like an entertainment feedback thing. You're getting the physiology and then we have a whole bunch of brain Scans on the 40 Years of Zen side of things, and my friends at Muse and all these other things and then upgrade labs. We're gathering a bunch of other data sets and there's hospitals and medical things and stuff all over the place. We put all that stuff together and dump it into a big machine learning system. It's just going to be nothing but a cool world. So I think you're a very meaningful part of that. And I'm grateful that we're all going to get more results. That's why on that note, for people listening, if you've enjoyed this interview, I think that you really should check out the Carol bike. It's a carolfitai.com. it's very reasonably priced. It will save you so, so much time. And if you're like me, where, look, I don't really want to sleep. I have cool stuff to do. So I found a way to sleep more in less time. And I get what a 20 year old gets in eight hours. I can get in six hours and I'm 46. And if you thought you had to invest six hours a week in getting your cardio, you know, an hour a day to drive to the gym and change and go do whatever you're going to do and come, none of that, you can get rid of it. So this is just a much higher efficiency to free up time to do the stuff that you really care about. And that's carolfitai.com so go there, check it out. If it's a good fit for you, great. If not, take a cold shower, skip breakfast, do something good like that. And if it worked, tell someone. Leave a review for the Bulletproof diet. Leave a review for the podcast. Just do stuff like that. Just tell people, hey, this stuff works. And that's how we can all combat the trolls and skeptics and the people who tell you the 40 year old advice that says work out for 30 minutes a day, six days a week. Yeah, right, whatever. Have a great day.