From Michelin Stars to Mental Clarity: The Nootropic Revolution | 1114 | Dave Asprey

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today we are live from Austin, Texas. I love doing live episodes for you because, well, it's just easier to make a connection that way. So you'll hear some amazing zoom interviews, but nothing beats good old fashioned meat space as opposed to virtual space. Sorry, Mark Zuckerberg, I don't want to do my podcasts in virtual reality. Don't know why. Our guest is Dan Fried. Dan is a chef, a burned out chef who decided to become an expert in nootropics. I was sitting there going, did Dave just called me a burned out chef? That's probably not what you wanted me to say, but hear me out here. He's got some really interesting thoughts about nootropics because like me, he has a brain that doesn't behave itself all the time. I've talked openly about having Asperger's and ADHD and not having those anymore and how things change from that. I don't know, maybe I do have some adhd. Hey, is that a squirrel over there? Dude, you maintain you don't even have adhd? What's going on? You have a really interesting story. I thought our audience would want to hear about this. And people send me buckets of nootropics all the time. And you can tell something that's formulated in a new and interesting way. So you're working on some cool stuff, to be perfectly honest. So I thought it'd be fun to just bring in here, have you. Tell me why you're doing some of the things you're doing. I have a bone to pick you about one of your products. And so I haven't told you about that ahead of time. So no need to be nervous now that you're nervous.

Well, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. You were somebody where. You know, when I was getting started in biohacking, there was nobody out there talking about it. And so I found your content, obviously through Bulletproof and then some of your books. I actually went to see one of your events in the very, very early days of starting Thesis back then. So this is something the company, when it started, it started in my apartment. It was never meant to be a company. And.

And Thesis is your. Your nootropics company, I should say.

Yeah. And I started just selling to friends and friends of friends, and then it grew organically like that. And the original name of the product was Placebo Proof. It was A play on Bulletproof. And it acted. It's the absolute worst name you can think of for a supplement company. And the concept of it, this is crazy to actually think of it was structured like a four way crossover clinical trial. There were actual placebos in the box and users would just go and there would be a packet of pills that says day one, day two, day three, day four. And they wouldn't know what was in each packet.

Right.

And so they would take it and they would record, you know, subjective measures of energy, mood, productivity, sleep. Sleep. And then at the end of the month, we would unblind them, we would do basic statistical analysis and we would tell them which ingredients worked and which ones didn't. But in those days, I remember you were one of the only voices for the biohacking community and that's started the movement.

But thanks for being an early adopter. I think the event in New York was I used to do book signing tours when I would launch a book. And it turns out it's really hard to do this because you have to fly there and you have to sell a bunch of tickets and it just, logistically it's a nightmare. But it's always just fun. I love connecting with my community. And by the way, thank you for listening today and being part of the community. But. So you were, I guess just you'd finished being a chef.

So let me, I'll take you all the way back to the beginning. I have always struggled in the structured environment of the American educational system, as.

Most free humans do.

Most but not all. So what's interesting, I was expelled from preschool.

That's actually a pretty solid street cred right there.

At four years old, I don't know what it was for, but my parents won't let me forget about it. And I was formally diagnosed with ADHD when I was six. This was in the late 80s.

And that's exercise deficiency in young boys. Is that ADHD? I'm sorry, there's no way a four or five year old can really do ADHD. If you put them outside for six hours running around, they don't have ADHD. They can still have medical issues and things like that, but I kind of feel like trying to make a preschooler behave any certain way other than rambunctious. Seems like mean. Could you have just had bad teachers? I'm not saying you don't have brain stuff. I do too.

But like, so I'll explain kind of like my views on it. So for one thing, I have a sister. She is a triple Board certified physician. She's a medical school professor. We grew up together. After school I would come home, I would try as hard as I could to study. And it felt like I wanted to put my head through the wall. I just could not like the amount of energy to try to force myself to do that. I couldn't do it. Yeah, I look over at her and it's just like natural. It's like it's nothing to her. She could just go through. And in that respect, I believe our brains are fundamentally different.

Oh yeah, I believe it absolutely.

The way that I look at it, kind of like when you go up to kind of like the meta level, my great grandparents never stepped foot inside a classroom. It just didn't exist. And so when you look at the timescale of human evolution, this environment sitting in front of a laptop, the types of work that we have to do is very different. And some people are able to adapt to it well, like my sister. For me, it was impossible for me to conform to this without some type of pharmacological intervention either. Medication, nootropics, something and behavioral intervention. That's, that's kind of how I look at it. And so I, I ended up not being medicated. I dropped out of high school at 16. I went to work in fast food. I watched my friends graduate high school, go off to college. I was still working for minimum wage. It was demoralizing. It was a very difficult time period in my life and I got a lucky break and ended up becoming a chef.

That's actually kind of a good thing if you have adhd, right? Because as a chef, it's a constantly changing environment. It's kind of stressful and not that healthy. I've had a few chefs on, on the show.

It was a superpower. So I went from being called stupid lazy. I knew that I was motivated and I tried as hard as I could to be successful. I just couldn't do it in that environment. As a chef, it was like flipping a switch. I was, for once I was good at something. I didn't struggle with focus and I could do 10 things at once, which is like pretty incredible. And I spent my 20s traveling the world, cooking in some of the most incredible restaurants. I worked my way up to a Michelin three star restaurant in France, where I became saucier.

Oh, do you speak French?

I did, fluently. I still understand it very well. I haven't spoken French daily for about 15 years now.

When you say the word croissant, do you feel stupid if you say it.

In French a little bit. My accent is so bad. Je pout comprendes tout un francais. Mais mexant, c' est papant. When I was in France, actually I was studying to be a citizen. I lived there for two years and that's a whole nother story. But I burned out in a Michelin three star restaurant. I thought I would never work as a chef again.

What does burnout look like?

That time I was so sick, I was surviving on caffeine cigarettes. I was smoking a pack a day.

Very French.

All I did was work all day, every day. I was the first one into the kitchen, the last one to leave. It was at the end of that. I was physically sick, I was mentally sick. I bought a one way ticket to Thailand. I gave up my dream. I had worked at that point for five years as a chef. My dream was to be the saucier of a Michelin three star restaurant. The most technically skilled position you could get into. And I worked day and night for five years to get there. And when I had it, I hated my life. I was miserable.

How old were you?

I was 24 when I made it. And I think about 25 when I burned out the first time. Really bad.

Wow. It's funny, I'm giving you a hard time about French because both my kids speak French reasonably well because of the Canadian education system. And I still have a hard time saying croissant or however you're supposed to say it. I do my best. Sorry, sorry, French friends. That is not my superpower. And the burnout thing is something. I had this similar thing happen in my late 20s where you just realized no matter how much you're doing, there's always more and you sort of just kind of lose it. How did you come back from that? Because that's part of your story for why you started thesis. I wasn't going to call it your thesis, but you started thesis and you really got into some precision cognitive enhancement stuff. But is this like a brain problem? That was the fixed tier burnout. Was it an adrenal problem? Was it meditation? Was it, you know, getting a girlfriend? Like. Like what. What fixes all that?

I haven't really talked about this too much publicly, but I bought a one way ticket to Thailand. A Michelin three star restaurant is a brutal environment. There were people who I was close with that committed suicide.

I've heard it's just really high intensity.

It was. I was so done with life. My plan was to become a monk. That's one of the Reasons I. And so like I shaved my head.

Once I got it.

And so I ended up in Thailand and I started dealing with severe depression. I just couldn't because this was the dream that I worked for for so long and it was gone. And I didn't know what to do with my life. And that was the first time that I read PubMed and discovered clinicals. Because I was in such a deep depression and I was in Thailand, I didn't know what to do. So I started looking up antidepressants and I read a bunch of clinicals, chose one antidepressant. I forget what it was back then. Just in Thailand, you walk into a pharmacy, you buy it. Took it for a couple of months and it got me out of bed. It got me dealing with people. I spent a year in Thailand. I tried to start a non profit. I was like, I didn't know what to do with my life. And then I got to the point where I was healthy enough that I. I also ran out of money and failed at starting a nonprofit. And so I went to work on cruise ships. And that was my last role as a chef. I did it for about two years. The burnout there was a different type. So I would sign onto a ship, I would work six months straight, no days off, six, seven days a week. There was, you know, you talk about biohacking and sunlight and all of this. There was one rotation that I did in the production kitchens. So all of these are below deck. I would see the sun once a week. I would work from when I woke up in the morning. Sometimes we'd have to start work at like 4 or 5am if we had inspections, all the way till midnight. You know, sometimes I'd get a little break in there. And it was overseeing the butcher, the baker. I used to do ice sculptures on the ships. It was a very intensive environment. And the other thing that happened there was I was cooking a lot less. So my role was more managing people, supply chain, budget scheduling. And that started hitting up against that ADHD barrier that I had. And so when I burned out from that, I somehow. Well, I know how. I had a boss on the ship who was a burned out investment banker who became a chef, which is crazy. And he taught me how to use Excel. He taught me how to do some of the basic business functions and mentored me. And he told me one day, if you've come this far without an education, at that point I was a high school dropout. Never took the SATs, never went to college. He said, imagine what you could do with an education. So I got it into my head that I wanted to go back to school and I wanted to get an mba, which was pretty crazy considering where I was.

You know, I did the same thing. I decided when I was 29 I wanted an MBA.

Yep. I was 28 at the time. And so I got a GMAT study guide and I started studying. It felt like I was back in high school. I would read the page five times. I couldn't internalize the information. I never had any high level math. I never. It was a completely foreign concept to me to study like this. And that's when I went back to PubMed and started looking for nootropics and different ways that I could improve my focus.

Oh, so instead of being just kind of helpless, you decided to control your own biology. Who would have thought? How dare you?

That was such a huge thing for me. And it was, you know, I discovered Reddit, all the different nootropics forums back then, there was very little. So this was 2013.

Yeah, I just started the blog at the end of 2011, and I was, you know, I was actively saying, guys, nootropics are real. But I'd been mentored by the guy who ran Smart Drug News, which was a print newsletter in the 80s named Steve Folks, who was an advisor to the anti aging nonprofit that I ran. And so he'd sit down and tell me these things. And it was funny. I'd ordered him from Europe and spent a huge amount of money. I was like, oh my God, I got my brain back. And I feel like they saved my career. And I would have failed out of Wharton absolutely if I wasn't on nootropics because that's not what my brain does. And I like to think I'm smart. But if you want to feel really dumb, if you have a brain that's smart in one way, just do the standard education system. You'll feel like an idiot overnight. So I don't do standard education anymore, but I like to think I'm reasonably successful.

There's this standard path, and if you don't fit into, you know, like, my sister's a perfect example and there's nothing against her. She, like, is able to succeed in that environment and do incredibly well.

Is she really happy? Does she love it? Or did she just like, you can. Some people can make themselves do that better. I'm not sure that's healthy for anyone because there's just better ways of learning. It's just, it's more work to Teach someone in a way that's customized, just like Nootropics. You can't. You can't say everyone needs X amount of this vitamin, or everyone needs X amount of running or X amount of sleep. It's all customized, including learning. And when they try to cram everyone into, you know, you will have six ounces of skim milk and one scoop of military grade peanut butter and seven pounds of wheat and, you know, two scoops of soy, and that will be your meal. Oh, and a cricket for dessert. I'm like, how about you go fuck yourself? Because it doesn't work for almost anyone except for that one person who's at the middle of average. And even they probably don't want to eat crickets. So you have to be like, well, what works for you with your brain, with your electrical signaling, with your neurochemical signaling and your learning style? Right. And you're probably familiar with Jim Kwik, right?

Yep.

Dear friend, same thing. He had a brain.

He's great. Yeah, right.

And he's been on the show a bunch of times and on my stage at the biohacking conference so often, because same thing, like, okay, how is it that you can be successful, I can be successful, and everyone listening can be successful? It's because we changed our environment for learning and for the type of work we do so that it suits our strengths. And then we found teammates who could do the other stuff. So you've managed to do this for yourself.

It sounds like exactly the. My story is almost exactly like yours in that, you know, I bought a bunch of stuff from Europe, from Mexico, from anywhere I could find nootropics. And I methodically tested different ingredients. Most of them did nothing. I used to be. And, you know, this was again, back in the 2013, I would go into a coffee shop to study. I would take out a milligram scale, and I would be weighing white powders. And everybody's like, looking at me like, what the fuck is this guy doing? And then I'd put it under my tongue or I'd take it. And while most of the nootropics did nothing, I just kept going. I was desperate more than anything. I needed to pass the GMAT. And when I went in to take the GMAT, I ended up scoring in the 99th percentile. Surprised the hell out of me. I wasn't even shooting that high. And it was almost. I knew that I was intelligent, but I didn't think that I could function at that level. And once I was able to focus, everything else became Easy. And that score changed my life. I ended up doing an MBA at insead. So I'm somebody.

Oh, no way. I've been to lectures at insead. They're a sister school to warden. So we went out there to Paris and spent a day. I remember I fell asleep in the front row. Jet lag. Hadn't hacked jet lag back then. Sorry, Insead, but okay.

It's such an incredible school. So I went. And I'm a chef. I. The last time I was in a classroom, it was 10th grade. And now I'm surrounded by people from McKinsey, Goldman Sachs. We're doing some serious MBA stuff that, you know. And I leverage the benefits of nootropics and behavioral intervention. So, you know, back then, it was kind of like exercise, cold showers, some of these things to really help me increase my level of focus. And I started to do well.

Did you feel guilty that you were maybe doping and cheating in business school?

No, I did.

I was like, okay, guys, I don't know how to say this, but, like. And I put my smart drugs on the desk in front of me. I'm like, I'm on these substances because, like, if you tell people what you're doing, it's not cheating. So, like, okay, I'm on Modafinil. And I'm on. And I would list all the stuff. I just have it right there. And of course, now the positive full disclosure side of me is like, that's great. The other side of me is like, there is a psychology game. So, of course that means everyone else here is like, oh, my God, I might fail because someone else is on smart drugs. And if that lowered their scores, which had the net effect of raising my already shitty score on average, I'm not going to complain. Explain about that.

I hear a lot that people think, Adderall, Nootropics, smart drugs are cheating. That's a topic that I'll address in a second. So after insead, I got offered a partial scholarship to do another master's degree at Yale. And that's when I kind of like, did a deep dive into nootropics. I really. Once I could focus, I ignited this intellectual curiosity that I loved school in a way that I never imagined possible. And so when I was at Yale, they had a cooking competition with students, and I went and I just. I beat every. Every single person. Like, hands down. I had, like, this little team, and people were complaining. They're like, this is a fucking professional chef. Like, this is bullshit. And all this.

I bet you got A lot of.

Dates after that, though, that was one of the benefits. I went to the dean and I had a conversation with him and I was like, listen, like, people are really mad. Like, obviously I won this competition. Maybe I shouldn't do it and like, you know, give away the award. There was. I forget what the prize was. And he's like, listen, you're in classes every day with investment bankers, consultants. They've been doing this for a decade. And you're at such a. You're coming from a kitchen. You've never been in a classroom. Like, this is. This isn't cheating. Like, you're at the disadvantage 99% of the time. And I look at that as like, I don't think. I think one of the greatest gifts that humans have at this stage of evolution is the ability to modulate our brain chemistry.

Yeah.

And to not take that is. It's not cheating to do it. Like, I would. I wouldn't be able to function in my job today if I didn't have nootropics. And it makes no sense to limit myself. I think that nootropics need to be in everyone's hands. Probably not my sister, but why not? There are some people that don't need it.

Would she like, turn into Lucy?

The way that I look at it is for her, it just. We're so different. It's hard, just like it's hard for me to explain to somebody that doesn't struggle with focus what it's like to try to complete something and the amount of motivation it takes and where it's basically impossible for me to do it alone without some type of pharmacological help. I can't understand how easy it is for her.

Have you ever asked her about this?

Yeah, we've had debates long into the night on nootropics and different types of smart drugs. She had something where she was just. She knew what she wanted to do. Were very different personalities. So I would not be happy with her life. It would make me miserable. That's nothing. No judgment against it, but just kind of like that structure. And the way that she thinks about things is very different. She would absolutely hate my life. Like I. Oh yeah. Just traveling, doing all these different things. It's a very different experience.

I suspect. And most of the real high performing people that I know at that level have some degree of stress behind it all. Like, it's a desire to perform or to be good enough or something. The idea here though is that if you have control over your biology, which is the Core definition of biohacking, it includes your neurochemistry, right? And that means if you're super high performing, and this is after 1500 people have come through 40 years of Zen or thereabouts, 1500, and you know, we've looked at their brands and talked with them and all that stuff and people are just killing it in the world of business. And they have, you know, families and kids and you know, picket fences and cats and all, whatever, you know, the, the standard things. There's a lot of miserable people who are really, really high performing and they're just barely hanging in. And some of them are triple board certified and some of them are in a situation like us, where like we kind of had to come from behind or come from a different perspective on it. Having that control means that if you're super high performance, you can be chill, right? And if you're too chill, you can be focused. And if you're too unfocused, you can be focused. It doesn't have to be pharmaceutical, it doesn't have to be nutraceutical, which is the area that you're playing in with thesis. It can be electrical, it can be changing sleep, like you said, exercise and cold. And these are all just tools to let you select your state. But to throw out this set of tools because people say it's cheating, I'm like, well wait a minute. If you don't go get shitty drunk every night because it makes you feel bad, then you're cheating, right? Because avoiding things that cause harm so you perform better, that's okay. Doing things that make you perform better, specifically, that's not okay. That's probably because you've been programmed by some weird puritanical zombie virus. I don't understand the mindset, but it's a common one. So nootropics isn't cheating any more than eating to lose weight is cheating, right? Like selecting helplessness is stupid.

So I would love to hear your opinion on this. I told you my grandparents never stepped foot in a classroom. What I see is technology is outpacing human biology. So when you look at food and the obesity epidemic, we got cheap, mass produced food. They started looking at putting sugar into different things to sell it faster, to sell more of it. And then we are faced with the obesity epidemic and now we have things like ozempic and GLP1s that are starting to kind of like tip the scales. And it's essentially at its core, human evolution isn't equipped to deal with the modern day food supply. I look at it as similar where it's technology for focus. So I went out to eat with my fiance's family and she has a cousin who's 1 years old, can't even talk at dinner.

They're not supposed to talk at 1 years.

I know. That's what I'm saying. There's nothing wrong with him. He's perfectly healthy.

What's wrong with that kid?

They gave him an iPhone.

Yeah.

And he's just. He can intuitively use it. He loves it. He's giggling, he's swiping. We have no idea what that's doing to that child's brain. Even from when I grew up, I just turned 40. The types of, you know, we're constantly bombarded with notifications. You have smartphones that, you know, TikTok work from home. We're not equipped for this modern environment. And I think that one of the things that allows me to function here are one behavioral intervention. So I limit my use of technology in certain times. I exercise, meditate, do things like that.

How do you limit your use of technology?

So the best biohack, hands down, that I do now is I will leave my phone and my laptop at the office a couple of nights a week.

Wow. See you go. How do you find your way home without a phone?

I walk.

And you just know how to get.

There without Google is such a liberating feeling.

So I cannot even tell in New York City.

In New York City to walk out of my office, no phone, no way anybody can get a hold of me. And I run a large business, big team. There could be a catastrophe. I trust them to handle it.

How big is thesis now?

We're about 50 people.

50. Wow. By the way, guys, takethesis.com and yeah, I always ask for a discount for you, so use code Asprey. Was it Asprey? Asprey 10.

Whatever. I can make any code you want.

It's asprey. Use code aspreekthesis.com okay, so a sizable team. Things are cruising for you and no one can get ahold of you. Does anyone die when they can't get a hold of you?

It was very difficult for me to do this at first. I. I would have this anxiety when I left the office, and I would constantly be checking my phone. First thing I do when I wake up is check my phone. And I don't do it every night, but when I do this, it. I can feel my blood pressure go down. That feeling of anxiety in my chest, it just. It doesn't completely go away, but it gets Much, much better. And it allows me to connect more with people outside of the office. It's been really, really incredible. It's hard to do. It seems so simple. I've recommended this to so many of my friends who have very stressful work lives like mine. Almost nobody ever does it.

Way back in the early days, before biohacking had a name, when I was struggling in Silicon Valley, I was having the brain fog. And I didn't know I had chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and, and all the mitochondrial dysfunction that oftentimes comes with ADHD and all that. I went and I did neurofeedback. And I was sitting there. This was like a dumb little Pac man game on a green screen. In fact, it was the only place you could do it in the Bay Area back then. It was a chiropractor's office. It was not the cutting edge 40 years of Zen experience. So I'm sitting there and I'm playing this dumb little game with two electrodes, and then the phone rings. The old fashioned ring. And then I'm like. And I can see my brain waves. And I go, what just happened? And the Dr. Thomas, he goes, oh, yeah. He goes, see, when the phone went off, like you had a full fight or flight response. And I was like, oh, my God. An alert signal caused a stress response. And I saw it in my brain. And then I correlated that with the experience. And I realized when I was a kid, the phone would ring and would, like, you know, coming. And like, if you didn't grow up at the right time, you wouldn't know this. But if the phone would ring, it was like an emergency because, like, someone had to answer it for no good reason. And then like, the kids would run for the phone and the parents would pick it up and it was this whole big stupid drama for no good reason because someone wants to talk to you, right? And now we have that same neurological response every time an alert goes off. That's why I turn off all the alerts on my phone. And I mean, I've had, I've had someone break up with me because I didn't see a text message for a day. I had 200 text messages that day. And, like, didn't come to the top. And, you know, shit happens. And my people who know me well, they'll text me more than once if I don't answer or they'll call me because I'll probably see that before I'll see a text, because other people's priorities are not mine. But to get to that point for me was like 20 years of work and to the point where and alert on my phone is. It's not neurologically interesting anymore. Right. That helped me a lot. And that means I can turn them off without feeling like I'm going to die. But I mean, that's kind of ninja level for me anyway. Are you there where you just don't care about an alert on your phone or you still are driven by alerts a lot less.

So work is really the only thing that gets me. I don't have TikTok, Instagram, any of those things on my phone. I don't get sucked into rabbit holes like I used to. I used to just like. That's one of the things with adhd. I would get interested in something and just go on a deep dive that would take away my focus. One of the things, as I'm sure you know, like, running a company is hard and my brain goes into problem solving mode. So if, like, there's something that's not working, I'm just constantly thinking about it in the shower, when I wake up, when I'm, you know, having dinner with a friend, it'll be in the back of my head. And being able to disrupt that and put a little bit of space in there so that I'm not constantly in problem solving mode for the company has been incredibly helpful. Again, nootropics have been really foundational in that. And behavioral interventions like leaving my phone at work, it's putting friction in it that I can't see my phone.

So the nootropics are a big deal for you. And I want to get into what you're doing with Thesis, because Thesis is. It's a different approach. And so, guys, you know, if you're a longtime listener, I've been doing nootropics. Yeah. 25 years now. And I've probably spent, I feel comfortable saying, at least $100,000 on nootropics over the course of my life. Probably more. I haven't tallied it up, but a lot. I mean, a lot a lot. And I've probably tried. There's probably some weird forms of racetam that I just like. I don't care about fassoracetam versus call you racetam. I just don't care because my brain works so well. Like the net benefits I haven't played. I have bottles of those. I just don't take them because I don't want to spend a day figuring out if I got a headache or not. So. But I'm like really into this, but it's like a labor of love, it's a passion. I've wrote a major science book about brains that included nootropics. I interview guys like you who are experts all the time. So coming from that mindset, I'm saying that what you're doing with Thesis is interesting because personalization matters. I keep trying to tell people, look, if you're going to try this whole racetam class of, of nootropics that are actually legal even though they're not approved, and that's a whole different thing we're not going to get into in this podcast. But to know which one works for you, there's only one way to do it, is to try them. But if you try them all at once, you're probably going to scramble your brain because one works, one doesn't work, and you just don't know what feels good and what doesn't feel good. So it's a personalization scheme. And most of us, unless we have a ton of money and a ton of time and a ton of curiosity or a burning need to have a brain that can do what the world wants it to do, we're not going to actually go to that trouble. You went to the trouble, I went to the trouble. But then you built a process around it which is something ADHD people are good at. And you build a process to help people customize how they're using nootropics, which I find really helpful because I, I mean, I keep publishing content on it, but it's like, hey, you should take artichoke for this. And you know, you could do this and you could do that, but it gets overwhelming. So what, what do you do at Thesis to test nootropics and to customize it for people? A lot.

So alt, we have a formulation process where we're constantly iterating on, on the formulation. We're changing dosages, ingredients, and we're doing internal beta testing. Anyone can go to our site and sign up to be one of these beta testers. They are blinded and they're taking different iterations. Usually they're placebo controlled, but not always. We have multiple arms and then we do statistical analysis to see can we beat one of the current existing formulas, can we create something new that's better? So that's one thing that we do that you'll see. Our formulations and ingredients are very unique because it comes from this data driven process of formulation. What we do from a customer standpoint is, you know, this is what I wish existed when I was looking for nootropics. I felt like I was kind of blind, and it took me a long time to get to something that worked. Most people give up along the way, and that, that breaks my heart seeing people where they're like, hey, I want to try nootropics. They'll try one, it doesn't work, and then they just immediately give up. So what we do is for most people who come to our website, they'll go through a quiz and we'll recommend them multiple formulations to try in their first month. They'll go through, they'll try them, and they'll report back to us which ones they liked, which ones they didn't like. We have coaches on staff. They can pick up a phone, call us, and we hold their hand through the process and we guide them to find the right nootropics for their goals and their unique brain chemistry. And that makes such a huge difference. Difference.

Having a, we'll call it a nootropics coach is super cool. The only thing that comes close to that, when people come into like 40 years of Zen, they have a week of neuroscience. We work with a bunch of different nootropics to try and get them tuned in on that and make recommendations afterwards. Other than that, I don't really know how to do that at scale. And so you've actually got people trained, you've got algorithms and in quizzes, and this is how it ought to be done. So I, I very much approve of that, that perspective. And I want to go deep with you on some of the ingredients that you're using in your blends, because I think our listeners are going to be interested. Some of these a lot of people don't know about. So I get, I get so many things sent to me, and the vast majority of people are saying, oh, you know, I want to come on the show, or like, like if you're going to copy Alpha Brain, which itself was a copy from a company called Super Beats, and that goes way back in the history of nootropics, and in itself was a copy of the Life Extension foundation formulas from the mid-80s. They had a nootropics blend called Cognitax that looks an awful lot like those things. So these are not exactly new. If you're going to do that, sorry, I don't want to interview you because you probably don't know what you're talking about. But then I talk to you where you're like, burning need. Had to do it myself to go from ADHD failing in order to go to a top school and succeed. And by the way, I'm going to be really blunt. I did graduate from Wharton, but there's a special name for it. You know what they call the person with the lowest score in the MBA class? No mba. So I'm just like, I'm not here to get good grades. I don't care about grades. I never have. So I'm here to not fail out. So I barely scraped through and I did, for the first time in my life, actually get. I've never showed this before. I actually got extended time on tests because I would sit down to do a test and there was nothing in my brain at all. I couldn't do it. My first thing, I'd get like 80% on the question. The second one 50, third one 30. And after that it was zero. I couldn't even read my handwriting. Like, what's going on? It was Dr. Daniel Amen's work. And now I'm on the board of directors of Amen Clinics. He's going to come back on the show soon. I had a harder problem. As soon as I tried to focus, all blood would leave the front of my brain. It would just shut down. And I'm sitting there feeling like an idiot. So it was actually kind of humiliating. I didn't want to tell people I had extra time, but I did have extra time because otherwise I probably would have failed. And it was a medical psychiatric need and I got around it. That was when I started Modafinil and I took all these other nootropics and I did graduate and. And I felt like my brain worked better than it had before and it was a lot to climb out of it. So based on all that, I'm pretty impressed with these mixes because you've got some really cutting edge ingredients that I don't see a lot of people use. And you're guiding people on how to use them. So that's why you kind of earned a spot on the show.

Thank you. That really means a lot. One of the important things to know about our formulations, we're constantly testing and improving. So we thesis is short for hypothesis. We have, you know, we think that this will outperform this mix of ingredients. I'm constantly going to all the different ingredient vendors, keeping on the cutting edge of what's available, and then we just do tons of testing. And I would encourage our audience to go to our website if you want to be a part of these tests. One of the core hypotheses of the company also was that we could conduct something that was similar to a clinical trial but with fewer controls. So in a clinical you would have doctors, blood tests, double blinded, placebo, controlled randomization, things that are very difficult to do outside of academia, or not difficult, but incredibly expensive. And the core hypothesis was, could we have fewer controls but sample sizes that were orders of magnitude larger, thousands of people, and use data science techniques to filter through the noise and create a more effective product. And then once we do that, we were at the beginning phases of taking those effects of products and putting them through clinicals so that we can actually publish data on the efficacy of the product.

One of the things that holds supplement companies back and at Bulletproof, I formulated a good number of different types of formulas for longevity, nootropics and things, in fact a couple of them using ingredients that you're using that almost no one else uses. So you have cutting edge stuff. If you want to change an ingredient, you can't make any claims from the previous version, mostly due to weird regulatory nonsense. So you know, if you're saying, well, we tested our formula with these four ingredients at these levels and we added 10% more of an ingredient, you can't make the same claims. Or maybe you can, but it's a little bit of a fuzzy zone. So doing like dot iterations to go from alpha to beta to version 1, version 1.2, like we do with our iPhone updates, but do that for nootropics can make explaining what they do a little bit difficult. How do you get around that?

So I think that that's holding the industry back significantly without going on a rant with fda and well, you shouldn't.

You shouldn't go on around against the FDA because they just, they'll come after you for that. But I'll just say in other countries we don't deal with these problems.

Well, I think it's innovation where it's, if it should, because there you're making claims on different ingredients, but as soon as you add something or subtract something, all of the work that you did up to that point is invalid and it holds back innovation. So one of the things, if you look at the way innovation works in pharma, so looking at ADHD medications, you had methylphenidate, it was approved in the 60s, but it really became popular for ADHD in the 80s. Then you had Adderall, which is a mix of amphetamine salts in the 90s. Then you had Concerta, time release mechanism, then Vyvanse, Liz, dexamphetamine, each one of these goes through clinicals. It's incredibly expensive to bring them to market, and then the pharmaceutical companies will patent that specific innovation. Almost all of the innovation is in pharmacokinetics. So how it's metabolized by the body, and then they 10x the price, they make their money back for going through clinicals, and then they move on to the next one. What I believe is the future of pharmacology innovation is a multimolecule approach, which is what we're doing with Thesis and even more interesting, our second brand, Stasis. So Stasis is a supplement that is meant to be taken alongside stimulants to mitigate some of the downsides like jitters, crash, and trouble sleeping, where you're specifically targeting some of the mechanisms of action that cause the downsides. So, you know, adaptogens to modulate levels of cortisol, antioxidants to fight oxidative stress, and free radicals that come with chronic stimulant usage. This is a groundbreaking new category of products that I think is going to have a huge impact on the world.

Absolutely. Stuff that goes along with either pharmaceuticals or just lifestyle stuff is, I think, important. So if you're going to run a marathon, there's probably stuff you should do, but you don't do that on days you're not running a marathon. If you're running a marathon with your brain because you're studying for your GMAT or because you're giving the most important presentation of your life, you want to be dialed in with the same level of rigor, right?

Yeah. I mean, so with Thesis, the main value proposition is we find the right ingredients for everybody's unique brain chemistry and we walk them through the process. With Stasis, we have one piece of information that a customer is taking. Stimulants. They very predictably altered their brain chemistry. So they've elevated their levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. That's the primary mechanisms of action of most of the common stimulants. They've also elevated levels of cortisol and oxidative stress. With that one piece of information, we've created a precision targeted formula that is able to disrupt some of the damage that comes along with that. And it's interesting. So we have a daytime formulation that's meant to be taken alongside stimulants. Stimulants can mean anything from caffeine, even can cause elevated levels of cortisol.

This one. That caffeine.

Yeah.

Because I'm showing off my caffeine tattoo. The only tattoo I have that you can see. It's the only one I have.

Yeah. I think it's a groundbreaking product. I think that there are tens of millions of people that wake up every morning and take a stimulant. And there's no judgment on our part. We stay away from that decision on whether or not somebody chooses to take a stimulant. That's something that. It's between them and their. Their physician. We strongly believe that supplementing knowing, kind of like what that's doing to your body is a really healthy way to think about it.

I like that perspective. And for people who are using stimulants, taking care of your neurochemistry while you do it seems like a good idea.

And we'll. We'll give you the same discount code. The website for that is takestasis.com and codes asPrey. Yep.

So takestasis.com, that's asPrey, and takethesis.com, which is your nootropics use code Asprey. All right.

And it's really easy. If you're not taking a stimulant, you should take stasis. If you are taking. Or if you're not taking a stimulant, you should take Thesis and go to takethesis.com and we'll get you set up with the right nootropics. If you are currently taking a stimulant and plan on continuing to take a stimulant, you should take stasis to support your body's natural mechanism of homeostasis while you're taking a stimulant.

Now, I told you they had a bone to pick with you.

Yes. Let's go.

Can we talk about vitamin B6? Okay, so I just. I did a post recently about this. People who are either on the spectrum or have ADHD have a much higher chance of having MTHFR mutations. Right, guys? If you're listening, MTHFR means you have a hard time handling some forms of B vitamins and you can't detox some molecules. You have a genetic thing. I have that. By the way, you probably do too, right?

I've actually never gotten a genetic test.

Oh, no kidding. All right, so I would. I would lay odds that you do. So if you're one of those people, you need things like methyl B12 instead of Sano B12. But for vitamin B6, you need P5P instead of pyridoxine, which is what almost everyone uses, and pyridoxine, which is the form of B6 that's out there, 95% of it clogs up your receptors and doesn't get converted to the active methyl form. So if you have a healthy methylation system, 5% of the B6 you take will be useful in the body. But your receptors are clogged up and to unclog them from the synthetic form takes a third thousand days. So if you replace B6 with P5P, which is methylated B6, then everyone can use all of it. But if you use the other form of B6, it can create some backups in your cells. And the issue is that if Multiple companies throw B6 and it's in energy drinks, it's all over the place. One of the symptoms of this is peripheral neuropathy or like numbness in your, in your, like your feet and your legs and things like that. So I feel like a lot of people are getting a B6 overdose in a form they can't use. And the way to unlock that is to switch to P5P, which is slightly more expensive, but it's not going to change your cost of goods almost at all. You open to doing that change?

I am. So we had something with B12 that was very similar. When we initially used our motivation formula, we use cyanocobalamin and we saw that people were reporting side effects and again, like everything is going to have some level of side effects. And we monitor these very closely and we're constantly iterating. And so we upgraded to methylcobalamin, which.

Solves the cyano, which is cyanide.

Exactly. And we saw a much better response. I will commit that. I will put that change through our beta testing process. We do. What I can tell you is we very closely monitor kind of like how people respond to our formulas and we're always trying to beat them. So I will put that on a backlog that we're going to test and I will reach out to you and let you know what the results are.

Please do. And I don't know if you're going to see a change in cognitive function, except among people who have the genetics to need extra B6. By the way, I'm one of those, which is why I know so much about this. I think that's comt that does that. But regardless, if someone's getting a bunch of B6 from all over the place, getting P5P in your formula is going to be beneficial. And if people listening start reading labels and saying, manufacturers, let's switch to the form that's biologically Compatible, that is human identical versus a synthetic form, then we're going to cause the supplement industry to shift towards making a better decision.

Yeah, I mean, so the supplement. And we talked about the pharma industry and kind of how it runs on IP and incentive structures and I do think that there are, I don't think pharma is evil, but I think that some of the regulatory systems are not functioning properly. And that's not to say that there aren't people in pharma that are doing some things that I would not approve of.

There are actually some really cool pharmaceutical companies out there. I'm not especially some of the early innovative ones doing polypharma. I'm not against the pharmaceutical interventions whatsoever. I just don't like it when any industry, whether it's oil or chemical or pharma or seeds or pesticides, uses regulatory capture as a way to have a monopoly. If you do that, frankly, you're an enemy of humankind and we will find you. Just to be really clear. There we go.

So my, my problem with the supplement industry is there isn't enough regulation in some parts. So I don't know if it's.

Wow, that's a surprising thing.

All of our products are third party lab tested for not just identity but potency. And I can tell you that in the last year we've rejected at least five different ingredients where it comes with the COA from a manufacturer certifying that this is it. But when we send it to a third party lab, they test it and it's not hitting the active ingredients that it needs to. And this is not required by anybody. And very few companies do this and even fewer make it public. So for us, you can look at the coas and you can see when, where the lab test was done, who did it, the sign off the HPLC results. I think that anything I put in my body, I want to be sure that what's on the label is what's in the product. That's kind of like the bare minimum with pharma. I'm confident that when I go to a pharmacy it's highly regulated. You know, you're getting that medicine because there's a lot of regulatory processes in place to ensure that. When I go to CVS and I buy something, there's several brands that I know take Horizon quality very seriously, but a lot don't and especially this is. So I told you about nootropics, where it breaks my heart, where people will give it one chance and if it doesn't work, they just Give up. So many people tell me, you know, nootropics is bullshit. I tried it. It didn't work. Part of it is because of, you know, brain chemistry and finding the right ingredients. Another huge part is they bought something that is a crappy product that doesn't have what's on the label in it.

Can we talk about lion's mane for a minute here? Which is something that you have in your clarity formula, which, by the way, is a really cool formula. We'll talk about that one in a minute. I was so excited when I read all the PubMed 12 years ago saying, Lion's Mane increases BDNF. There's really only kind of two things that are behind my book on cognitive function and the brain. It's increase mitochondrial function, increase bdnf, which is your signaling molecule that creates synaptic plasticity so you can form new neural connections more easily. So if you get those two things right, you have a younger brain that works better. Like, who would have thought, right? And that was like a major monthly science bestseller between homo deuce and sapiens. It was kind of cool. I'm like, yeah, that's a big list, man. That was a good day. I think there's a poster around here with that on it. So I look at that perspective and then I look at lion's mane, which raised bdnf, and I'm so excited. It doesn't do anything. Anything. But then I find out I'm getting lion's mane that's not heat extracted, it's not alcohol extracted. And you mix a little bit of lion's mane roots and sawdust essentially into coffee and say, look, I've got a lion's mane thing. Actually, it just doesn't work. But if you get a proper extract of it, what I noticed was increases in REM sleep. Very noticeable and predictable. I take that I get more rem. I don't take it. I get less remote. Very, very reliable. So I'm a fan of lion's mane when it's extracted. Right, right. Which is. Which is really important. So the quality of the. Of the substance matters more than most people would imagine. And you put some good stuff in there.

So let me tell you about lion's mane. Here's two. Two problems that I see very often. One is it's underdosed. So everybody knows what lion's mane is. You can look and all these companies are saying, hey, there's lion's mane in these gummies. It's here, it's there, and you Actually, look, if it. So we don't have proprietary formulas. We tell you the exact milligrams of everything. You can look on our website. Some companies hide it through proprietary formulas, some will put it there and it's like 15 milligrams. That's not going to do anything.

So vanity dosing. Yeah.

And then you have. The other side is nothing about the extraction process. So you'll see like 10 to 1, you'll see, you know, mycelium, fruiting body, all of these things. It's not regulated, so they can basically say anything they want for us. I do have a lot of opinions on extraction process, where it is, the DNA, all of that stuff that you can look at. But what we said was the molecules that increase bdnf, the active ingredients that increase BDNF are erinicine and erinacine. We standardize our lion's mane to that. So we have a bar that it has to hit. We have tested every lion's mane on the market, so different suppliers. We test regularly. Our competitors, we developed a test that we can see how much is in there and we publish those results. We've standardized it so that you read these clinicals and it's like, wow, this is great. And then you buy a product and you don't get the same results. It's because they're not doing the same standardization process that we are. We're very public about it.

What percentage of lion's mane stuff on the market has reasonable levels of those two compounds?

There are companies that I think are doing well and there are companies that don't have proprietary formulas and they're just few and far between. I can't tell you how many times I'll go and I'll pick up a product and it's laughable. And it's just supplement. Companies innovate primarily on brand. And I don't want to throw companies under the like, I don't want to badmouth competitors. There are some really reputable companies out there, but most of them it's like a brand or an influencer or something like that. And when you actually look at the label, they don't have effective dosages in there. They're not sourcing it well.

And the influencers don't even know because they haven't studied it. Like, it's like, oh, I white labeled this thing from some website that does that. And they're genuinely trying to help their followers, but they don't have the science behind it. And those are the ones where I just say, no, when people want to come on the show, but when you're willing to go to the trouble of third party lab testing. Same kind of stuff I did when I was running Bulletproof before I started Danger Coffee and all that. It's expensive and it's kind of unrewarding some of the time. You know, your board of directors, like, why are costs so high? You're like, because I don't want to sell crap, that's why. Right. And so I still maintain those, those things. But for people listening, you'd never know this happens. And it's more about who's running a company. You know, do they care? And, you know, is it about the money or is it about making a change that's worth it? So I. I got a good vibe just even looking at how you put stuff together. So I want to go through a few specific ingredients.

Sure.

All right. So one of them we talked about was Lion's Mane. Another one you have in your Clarity formula that I really like is dihydroxy flavone. I haven't seen anyone really talk about this, but I think it's a massively, massively important nootropic. Why did you choose it? And what does dihydroxy flavone do?

So it also helps with BDNF and neuroplasticity. It is. I'm heading hesitant to say what I take because everybody goes and buys that and my brain chemistry is different from other people. Clarity is my go to. Clarity is the one that I take most often out of all of our products. 7, 8, Dihydroxy flavone, Lion's Mane, all of these things that are increasing BDNF neuroplasticity, and they help me with focus. It brings like, it's. It's been transformational for me. And one of the best things about it is the longer you take it, the more potent it is, like the more of the effects that I notice. And that's why I always go back to it.

There's probably some things I can say because. There's some things I can say because. Well, there's this weird thing. It's called the First Amendment. Some people have heard of it still. It's like this old retro thing that says you can say stuff. So what dihydroxyflavone does is it's a small compound, like a flavonoid colored thing like you would see from flowers or herbs or something. And it can cross the blood brain barrier and it can attach to the BDNF receptors and activate them. So I've been looking for 15 years for a compound that I could do intravenously or inject in my muscles or swallow. That would raise bdnf. But BDNF doesn't work because it won't cross the blood brain barrier, so you can't do it iv, you have to puncture your spine and inject it in your cerebral spinal fluid. I think to get it into the brain, it's not viable. But here's this little compound that so far, yours is the only formula I've seen that uses it. It's something I've used for several years, but it activates BDNF directly. So that's like. For people who want to focus or have a young neuroplastic brain, this is some serious stuff. So that's in your clarity formula, by the way, guys, take Thesis.com, code Asprey, save. Save yourself a bit of money. And I'm. I'm just talking about the stuff that I actually do. Right? So good quality. Lion's mane. Yes. Dihydroxy flavone. Yes. These are core BDNF activators, the two most effective we know of, along with a couple other ingredients that I support. We don't have to go into the kind of tea because I also want to talk about something in your logic formula. Mm. Now, I've struggled with how do I describe the states, like a state of logic? Like, isn't that the same as clarity? Because if you're clear thinking, do you have logic? So why would I take logic versus clarity? And should I just take them both?

So this was a problem that we had when we were placebo proof when I launched. There were no names to anything. So it was formula one, Formula two, all of that stuff. And it was like, blinded. And we would just tell people what ingredients worked and we would make custom formulas stimulus. What we did back then, similar to, like a clinical trial, we would have a dropdown that's just like, do you feel motivated? Do you feel, you know, focused, energized, confident, all of these things? And it was kind of like a word cloud. And we saw very clearly, hey, Formula 3, people are focusing better. Formula 2, a lot of people are tagging energy. And so really, the customers and those early trial participants are the ones that named the formulations. It's good because people have kind of like expectations on how to use it, what to expect. It's bad because logic might not work for you, and it's not a good way of looking at it. Like Logic isn't a great fit for me. I don't take logic. And that doesn't mean it's a bad formula. It's a great formula for some people. There are, it's kind of like grouped around different neurotransmitter systems and different mechanisms of action. So confidence and creativity are primarily targeted towards serotonin and gaba. Logic and clarity. Bdnf, ngf, acetylcholine. Energy and motivation are dopamine and norepinephrine, kind of like the psychostimulant type. So there's groupings like that, but I would pay a lot less attention to the names and just this is what we're here for, to help you find the right ones.

That's why you have coaches and kind of consultants to figure it out. So this is a, a bit of a cheat code to be honest to say, how do I know which nootropics I should be taking? You've, you've got a pretty good one set up here where you have logical buckets that work on specific systems. You're using synergistic ingredients and then you're guiding people, people to tell them what to take. So if you're saying I want the benefits of smart drugs, I don't want to spend, you know, a couple years or maybe more like five or ten for me going through every single thing and dialing it in. This is a great way to do it. And the formulas are cool. Like in logic you have something called try acetyl uridine.

And so we switch that out to just regular routine.

Okay, I was going to ask you. I'm not sure that it makes a difference what the formula is, but talk to me about uridine. It's a very say it's a little known cognitive enhancer. I wrote about it in Headstrong, my brain enhancement book. But just talk to me for a minute about it because I think most people don't have any idea it's a nootropic.

Yeah, I mean, so we had triasidal iridine which I really liked. The logic formula is primarily targeted to acetylcholine. And let me see, we have things like bacopa for memory ginkgo, we have dha, phosphatidylserine, theobromine which is in chocolate, and then irudine. And again we've.

You call it urudine versus uridine. I don't know, I don't know how to say it. I just always read, I haven't read about for 10 years.

But one of the things about me is I do a lot of reading and that's why like the pronunciation, I just go with whatever it is with, with, with what I'm reading. We have similar brains.

All good.

And yeah, logic is primarily targeted to working memory analytical thinking. Surprisingly it's very popular with kind of like the quant heavy type jobs in finance and it's great for long term brain health.

I like both of those.

So I think about this a lot and this is my opinion. I am just as intelligent now as when I failed out of high school. The only difference is my ability to focus. What I see in most people is their limitations are not their intelligence, it's the ability to focus. It's, you know, and thank God, like that's something that we can change.

Yeah, focus is teachable and hackable.

Exactly. And I can't tell you how many times I see incredibly intelligent people not living up to their potential because, you know, their amygdala, they're not able to control themselves, they're impulsive, they can't stick to things. It's, that's what causes most people not to live up to their potential. That's what almost destroyed my life and caused an incredible amount of pain. That's a solvable problem. And that's what thesis does is we help people modulate the levels of neurotransmitters in their brain so that they can focus and achieve their potential. As far as iq, I can just tell you for me, I don't think my IQ has changed from when I was in high school. I do think that I'm able to function in a way that I never even dreamed possible. And it was just kind of like that horsepower was there, I just couldn't tap into it.

I love that, that picture of it's there and tapping into or unleashing and things like that. It's part of it. But there are studies that show you can raise your IQ. Even Dr. Amen came on a while ago saying, yes, you can raise your iq. And if you don't believe that, get shitty drunk, wake up the next morning and take an IQ test and it'll be 15 points lower than normal and take a different test that correlates so you don't have a learning effect from the test two days later when you're not hungover and your IQ will be 15 points higher. So if we can suppress our IQ, we can also raise our IQ. And then there are multiple studies showing things like some of the training I've talked about can do it. And probably modafinil, which is a prescription nootropic, has some effects on it. And so there's evidence that we can improve our iq, maybe by detoxing, maybe by increasing efficiency. But I know it's doable, but it doesn't matter very much as long as you can increase your focus and you just have a bunch of cool stuff to do.

I don't disagree with what you're saying. It's fundamentally what is it that you're increasing? So like the thought of me getting a 99th percentile score on the GMAT, I never had high level math, combinatorics, permutations, like that was completely new to me. I never took the SATs. I never passed 10th grade. Like, I'll tell you a story. We just raised our series A. There was this investor and I told them the whole pitch, kind of like I did here. And they're like, we're really interested in everything. And then they came back and they're like, one of the partners doesn't believe you.

Oh, that's easy. Give them a bunch of your stuff.

Right, I did. So I sent them pictures of my graduation from Yale from insead. I sent them my high school report card before I failed out that like fail, fail, fail, all of this stuff. And they're like, they still don't believe you. And it was so unbelievable to that and. But you think there's a lot of founders that lie about their backgrounds and all of this stuff. I sent them a newspaper from France with me on it, cooking in a Michelin three star restaurant. And they paid somebody to do a background check because they just found it so unbelievable that somebody could do this. My fiance's mom, when she heard all of this stuff, same thing, she's like, let me see your diploma. This is so outside of the norm. It doesn't have to be.

No, it doesn't. People say I'm a liar all the time. Is my fat picture from Entrepreneur magazine when I'm 23 not evidence enough? But it's not because they're just haters. But these aren't haters. These are people who've been sweet screwed by liars.

I, I, and I understand that. But like when I, when I go back to like what's Thesis's mission? I think back to when I was 16, making sandwiches at Subway. I thought that I was stupid, I thought that I was lazy. I didn't know what was wrong with me. And I just needed a little bit of help and guidance to meet my Potential. And once I got that and I, I got lucky, like, I got a lucky break to become a chef. And then I was very determined and had some lucky breaks to find nootropics. And I didn't give up. How many people just give up? And that's. Yeah, that's kind of like what keeps me going. And seeing the reviews on our product and how transformative and life changing it is for some people. And then with stasis, thinking about how many people are damaging themselves with stimulants and like, this is finally a way that they can still be productive and healthy.

Well, Dan, thanks for coming to Austin. Coming on the show live. I think you're doing some groundbreaking work in the world of nootropics. And guys, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I wanted to try some nootropics, maybe you have tried them. There's some really interesting formulas. They're very nicely broken down into different buckets so you can just see what works for your brain. And the reality is, don't do what Dan does. Don't do what I do. Because you probably don't have our weird brains. I think we have some similarities here. But you have your own weird brain. And thank God it's weird because the worst you could have is just a completely average brain that's average at everything. You want a brain that's completely crappy at some things because you can outsource those, and a brain that's just amazing at other things. Find the things where maybe you have some areas to fill in and take the supplements that work for that. So you're kind of below average, but those are handled. And then double down on the nootropics that enhance your superpowers. And when you do that, I can't believe I can do this. And you're a prime example here where you've failed a couple times and then magically you got your brain working through conscious action. So that was what I wanted our listeners to hear about. You did a great job, guys. Takethesis.com code asprey. Or if you're on stimulants, take stasis.com, code asprey. Save a little bit of money. But more importantly, have a brain that works.

Thank you so much.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.