Dave Asprey talks with Matt Gallant and Mr. Noots about using glucose, ketones, and nootropics to boost brain energy and cognitive performance. They discuss how carbs and ketogenic diets affect mental clarity and when each fuel source works best for peak thinking.
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. You guys talk about something else that's actually not in your formula or in your different formulas, but something that's in kind of the guidebook that comes with it that is worth mentioning. People think that I'm, you know, anti sugar because I'm like, don't eat sugar all the time. But when people ask, like, okay, if you really want to, like, nail a migraine, or you just need to have like the best day of your life, put glucose, which is half the sugar molecule, but the kind your body likes most, put it in your bulletproof coffee. Like, don't do it every day. It's gonna. You could increase advanced glycation end products, but your brain will be really freaking happy with mcts and glucose galore. And you're gonna have the best day of your life and then chew a little bit of Lucy gum for some nicotine when you're done. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa. And of course you take your nootropics and it was that, you know, I aced the bar exam and the, the MCAT on the same day because, like, hey, you might crash later. But you actually talk about micro dosing glucose as a performance enhancer, but you recommend fruit, which isn't high in glucose. So tell me why you guys are like fruit versus just give me a scoop of glucose.
Well, a lot of fruits are 50. 50, right? 50 glucose.
Yeah, that's what glucose is.
Yeah, I mean, your body's going to break it down either way. But yeah, we're talking a micro dose. Like 10 to 20 grams is typically enough. And again, you, like, if, like right now I'm drinking Nectar X. I took about half a cup of strawberry juice, like fresh strawberry juice, and mixed it in. So I'm just streaming in a bit of glucose. I talked to Dom d'. Agostino. He's a. And he's a keto guy.
Yeah, I like Tommy's. I think he was in the first hundred guests on the show going way back.
Yeah, Dom's awesome, but he's a big fan of using glucose even during a workout. Like 40 to 80 grams. If you're training legs. 80 grams, you're going to scorch that. Like, it's just gone. There's no. Your body's just going to burn it in real time. So it's the same thing with, you know, your body. You've got 20% of your energy normal, just normal days is what your brain uses. But let's say you're doing a 40 years of Zen, which I've done five times. I think you go to like 40, 50%. Like the amount of calories that I've monitored it, I need another a thousand to fifteen hundred calories a day, but I'm pushing my brain that much.
That's why there's a chef there, an executive chef, and that's why it's not a zero carb kind of a week whatsoever, because you have to have it. You're. I found out you can do two and a half times more neurofeedback if you've got your mcts and some carbs. Right. It. It's that big of a deal because it's like running a marathon every day. So. And you're saying for your microducing glucose, you're not doing that every day, though, just when you want to hit a certain peak state. Or are you doing that every day?
I mean, yeah, exactly. Like if. When it's the most demanding. Like, for example, right now, it's a podcast. I want to be hyper focused. So, yeah, a little bit of glucose, 20 grams. It does wonders.
Yeah. And. And you. Nootropics speed up mental processes. The brain eats glucose. The brain loves glucose. Yes, ketones work, but the brain loves glucose.
And yeah, although the neurons, this is what I believe is going on there. The neurons, demonstrably in studies, prefer ketones, even in the presence of glucose. But the astrocytes, the other half of your brain that does all the pruning and organizing, it wants glucose. And I think when you have both, that's not a natural state. You cannot do that in nature. But when you get in both, both parts of the brain are there and like, all right, I got this. It's pretty cool. And if you're doing that in conjunction with. With the nootropics that you guys are talking about, well, certainly getting them into the brain using the fat. Right. That's a good thing. You know, with bulletproof coffee or butter or, you know, eat a steak, whatever. But it helps to have the fat to get it in. But then if you have the glucose and you have the MCTs, assuming those were present, you end up with this magic state where the compound itself is present. It's calling on the cell to do something, and the cell has enough energy to do it. And that's when it starts to get really interesting. But if you say are undernourished and you take these things are going to turn up the volume and put you in God mode and my brain's going to work so well. And the brain's like, I can't make enough electricity to do this. It doesn't work right. And so I love it that you're willing to talk about that, because in a certain part of the world, the keto Bros. It was like, if you have one gram of carbs, you're a bad person. You. It doesn't work for the extreme states of cognitive performance. It does for some of them some of the time. But I. I just love it that you're willing to go out there and say that. And I'm the last person to say, you should be in keto all the time. I. I talk about how that that causes problems for me and for others. But people still think bulletproof equals keto, and it's like, no. So kudos to you for. For putting that.
