Overcoming Massive Adversity with Little Mind Hacks – Amy Purdy : 686

And I scooted to the edge of the bed. I put my feet on the floor and I stood up. And I realized that I couldn't feel my feet. When I looked at the floor, I saw that my feet were purple. And when I looked at my hands, my hands were purple. When I looked at the reflection in the mirror, I saw that my nose and my chin and my cheeks were purple as well. In that moment, I was dying. And I knew it. I was seeing tunnel vision. I was dizzy. I was scared. Right then my cousin walked in to. To to come check on me. My mom had called her. And she took one look at me and she cried. Amy, it looks like you're dead.

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 new research at the University of Helsinki and has discovered a new auroral form in the upper atmosphere. Now, you might think, what the heck, Dave? What does this have to do with me? And it turns out that Aurora Borealis is something that people always dream of seeing. I get to see it occasionally from my backyard, at least the edges of it. And it's. It's super cool. But this is a story about how we thought we knew everything, or at least most of everything, but we were wrong. The reason this is surprising is because these things called mesopheric bores, had never before been observed in the auroral zone. And it was considered to be impossible until researchers said, oh, there's an unobserved mechanism of interaction between layers of our atmosphere that we didn't know about. And what this means for you is that if you look around, just really look, you'll find all kinds of unexpected phenomenon around you. The problem is that we're taught by ourselves and just by the native operating system of our body that wants to pay attention to things that keep you alive, feed you, and get you laid. To be perfectly honest, it's so focused on those things that when something comes out that shouldn't be, you're likely to not see it. It'll be completely invisible to you. Because the filters that are. Before you can think about things, those filters will just filter it out. In this case, a rare human being noticed that and said, hey, that doesn't make any sense. Let me get to the bottom of it. You can do that every single day with what you put on your plate, how you sleep, what you do. And it turns out there's all kinds of stuff that's unexplainable all around us every single day. And that is real science. The opposite of real science is that can't happen, therefore it didn't. And that kind of skepticism is actually toxic. It's equally toxic to say, that must happen, therefore it did, which both of those are the roots of religion, whether it is an organized religion on one side that says, I will follow this script, that says, I will follow this strict set of beliefs even if they don't reflect reality. And the form of religion called science with a capital S, where you say everything that disagrees with your current hypothesis is quackery or is bad or cannot be or is the result of bad people, whatever that stuff is, both sides of those don't work. Be curious, be open. And who knows, maybe you'll discover a new form of aurora borealis. If not, at least you were curious. And that'll probably keep you living longer.

Anyway.

Today's guest has defied some incredible odds. And one of the things that we're all caring about right now is human resilience. In my case, I had the diseases of Aging, £300, arthritis, and I went through a lot of crap and frankly, a lot of suffering. I like to tell myself that. And then every now and then, I get to talk to someone like Sean Stevenson, who was on a while ago, a guy who's had brittle bone disease and has since passed away, and a good friend who had dealt with just an incredible level of this and had an attitude 10 times better than mine. And you get these, these times where you come across someone who's dealt with some serious adversity and said, I'm going to come out on top of this and I'm just going to own it and move forward, and I'm not going to identify myself as a victim. And I found one of those guests for you today. And I say I found in that, well, Oprah found her first and she probably found herself before that. I'm talking about Amy Purdy. She's a motivational speaker, New York Times bestselling author, model, dancer, actress, and the most decorated American Paralympic snowboarder in history. She toured with Oprah, spoke to stadiums of people about her life story, and just talks about perseverance and sticking to it in a way that's incredible. And even after all that, in 2019, she had a major health setback and she kicked its ass like she always does. And we're going to talk about what happened and how she hacked her body and her mindset. So if you think you're worried about some virus or whatever else you want to be a little bit more resilient. And this is a human being who's massively resilient. Amy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Dave.

We had you slated to be a keynote speaker at the 7th Annual Biohacking Conference in March of this year until, well, all conferences got canceled, so we moved it to July. And we'll see if July conferences are allowed to happen. I'm very hopeful that that's the case because we've got dates picked out and everything, so people will be able to see you on stage there. I'm excited about a live interview. In the meantime, we get this one perfect.

I know. I was really looking forward to that. Yeah. And so. But, yeah, we can do this right now. You have to adapt to this situation.

Well, you're, I would say, the queen of adaptation here. Talk to me about not having your legs. What happened? Just walk listeners through the story who don't know about what happened there.

So let's see. I grew up snowboarding with this adventurous spirit, just wanting to travel the world and thought I knew where I was going. I became a massage therapist because I wanted to have this job that could travel with me. And I was healthy. I was a vegetarian at the time. I was working out every day. I was doing massage. I was having massage done on me. I was. I was in a very healthy environment. And one day I went home from work with what I thought was the flu. I just started to feel a little bit run down as I was doing this massage. It kind of hit me. I had sudden fatigue, and I was thinking, well, maybe I'm just a little bit tired. So I took a break. And over my lunch break, I started to realize that my energy level continued to fade. And. And so then thinking, okay, maybe I'm a little bit sick, I decided to go home from work early that night. I had about a temperature of maybe 101. That's typical flu like symptoms. The next morning, my temperature actually broke. So my family went out of town. I told them, I'll just meet you guys later. We were doing this family vacation. I didn't think it was a big deal at all. But that afternoon, instead of feeling better, I started to feel worse. My energy level continued to fade. At one point, my mom called me to check on me, and I said, gosh, I feel like I'm dying. But, you know, when you have the flu or you have a cold, we often feel that way. I mean, even today, you know, if I have a flu any. Any time, I feel like God, like, I'm just exhausted. I feel like I'm dying. So that's what I said. And, you know, my mom said, you probably are a little bit dehydrated. Get to the hospital if you need to. And when I got off the phone with her, I closed my eyes and I fell asleep. And not long after closing my eyes, I felt this strong urge to wake up. But when I tried to, I couldn't. I was forcing myself awake over and over. I was trying to open my eyes. And finally I fell into the deepest sleep that I've ever felt. And then suddenly I heard this voice that said, amy, get up and look in the mirror. And I'm not sure whose voice this was. It was kind of a mixture of my own voice and a thought. But I heard Amy get up and look in the mirror. And I immediately opened my eyes. I looked around, didn't see anybody there. And as I was sitting up, I started to realize something was really wrong. My heart was beating out of my chest. I was so dizzy. I was so weak. It probably took a good three to five minutes to get into a seated position. And I scooted to the edge of the bed. I put my feet on the floor, and I stood up. And I realized that I couldn't feel my feet. When I looked at the floor, I saw that my feet were purple. And when I looked at my hands, my hands were purple. When I looked at the reflection in the mirror, I saw that my nose and my chin and my cheeks were purple as well. So in that moment, I was dying. And I knew it. I was seeing tunnel vision. I was dizzy. I was scared. Right then my cousin walked in to come check on me. My mom had called her, and she took one look at me and she cried, amy, it looks like you're dead. And I said, I'm dying. I know I'm. I have to get to the hospital right now. So we rushed to the hospital, and they didn't know what I had at first. I was immediately put on life support, given less than a 2% chance of living. All they knew was that my body was crashing. My white blood count was through the roof, and just every system in my body was not functioning proper. My organs started shutting down. And it took about three to five days to figure out that what I had was something called bacterial meningitis, which is a little bacteria. We have no idea how I got it, but it's highly deadly. So when it gets into your bloodstream, it multiplies. It, like, doubles every hour. So you think you have the flu for about 15 hours. And then it's like that last 15th hour that suddenly you realize, oh, my gosh, I'm dying. And so I ended up in the hospital for a couple of months. I ended up losing both of my legs below the knees because of septic shock. Which is actually a pretty incredible thing that your body does. It's to save your life. Your body pulls blood from your extremities to save your organs. And so my body did that. So I lost circulation to my lower legs. About halfway down my calf into my feet, I lost circulation. And my hands, I lost circulation as well. So my feet were black. My hands and my fingertips were black. I was in massive kidney failure and I was in a coma for a little bit. So, yeah, at 19 years old, I went through a lot of.

How old are you now?

Oh, my gosh, I'm 40. I'm 40.

So that was 21 years ago.

Yeah, well, about 20 years ago. And you know, it's interesting. I feel like my life has gone in 20s. I did 20 years totally normal, then 20 years just excelling and living my dreams and pushing myself as hard as I could and seeing what the possibilities are. And then I got hit with this injury last year right at the 20th year of that. So it's like 20 years normal, 20 years excelling at life, and then 20 years now kind of opening up a new chapter.

Well, we're going to talk about what happened recently, but part of this is your dad donated a kidney to save your life.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I was thinking about this today because I was thinking, what are the things that helped me get through some of my toughest challenges? And I was thinking, okay, 20 years ago, how did I get through what I went through? I had lost both of my legs at 19 years old. And then I was faced with losing my kidney function and having to have a kidney transplant. I mean, any one of those things on its own would be huge. And to try to deal with it at the same time was really challenging. I also lost all the hearing in my left ear when I had meningitis. So when I came home from the hospital, I was 80 pounds in a wheelchair, lost half my hearing, was stuck to a dialysis machine and didn't have legs. Like, that's kind of a death sentence.

For the average 19 year old. I mean, I look at what I cared about. When I was 19, I knew that my pants were size 46, but I mean, I was doing my part to try and solve that. But I might have Been really interested in a little bit more of the social side of things and all that. And you're, like, looking really at death's door.

Yeah, I was. And even when I survived, even when I survived, I think, you know, it made me have to really dig deep and figure out, okay, like, there's certain things I can change, there's certain things I can't. So I decided to really focus on the things that I could change. I decided to focus on what I could do. I still wanted to live a great life. I was still me. I very much so still felt like me. The same person, the same drive, the same aspirations. I wanted to travel. I wanted to snowboard all over the world. I still wanted to do all of that. I just now had to figure out how. And I had to get creative to find a way. Going back to my kidney transplant, I was thinking today of these little things that helped me get through some of my biggest challenges. A lot of it was just really mental, like you say. What did you call it? Mental mind hacking.

Yeah. I don't remember what I said. Hacking your mind?

Yeah, mind hacks. So one major thing that I did was I got really good at compartmentalizing because I was dealing with losing my legs, losing my kidney function, and needing a kidney transplant and then losing part of my hearing as well, all at the same time. Wow. And so. And just the leg part alone was massive. I mean, I was a massage therapist. I worked on my legs every day. I was a snowboarder. My plan was to travel the world and snowboard. I needed my legs. And trying to walk in prosthetic legs was so challenging, so uncomfortable, so confining, that I really thought, how am I going to do this? There's just. I had no idea how I'd be able to walk, let alone snowboard or run or work out or be active again. So just that. That alone was huge, let alone a couple times a week going in, getting my blood drawn for my kidney, possible kidney transplant that I needed. I realized I didn't learn this any other way, but through experience and just really through survival. But I realized that I learned how to compartmentalize. I learned how to compartmentalize, which was so one day I would think just about, you know, I'd have a leg appointment to learn how to walk in my prosthetics or get comfortable in my prosthetics, and I would only allow myself to think about that. I wouldn't allow myself to think about my kidney transplant that I probably need or the fact that I Have to use a hearing aid. I would only allow myself to think about walking for that day. So that would consume my whole day. Then the next day I would have to get blood work done and have a doctor's appointment for my upcoming kidney transplant. So that day I'd only allow myself to think about my kidney transplant.

Would you describe it as you developed the superpower of focusing or the superpower of ignoring?

I think somehow maybe it was both.

It was both.

Okay, because actually I definitely can hyper focus on. It's funny that you bring that up because when I think of all my accomplishments, the things that I've done in my life, I get very hyper focused. So I kind of shut everything else away and just focus on what needs to be taken care of.

It kind of shows. I mean, I mentioned some of the things you've done, but there's the whole Dancing with the Stars. Oh, yeah. Without my legs. And you danced in front of what, 300 million people at the Rio Paralympics? I mean, you've done very, very big things and most people who have that ability somehow learn that hyper focus. Did you have that when you were like, I'm assuming, a pot smoking snowboarder?

No, actually, for some reason, no, I don't think I did have that. I was a snowboarder, massage therapist, super relaxed and didn't really know. I mean, I knew I loved massage and traveling and snowball snowboarding, but I had never really set, you know, huge goals for myself necessarily.

I wouldn't want to stereotype, but sort of like, I'm a massage therapist, I want to snowboard my way around the world is usually not like the highest focus. You know, it's generally like, I'm going to take things as they roll. Which is, by the way, a pretty happy existence for a lot of people.

Right.

When did the switch get thrown? I mean, was it when you woke up, like, I'm dying? When you woke up in the hospital, when your dad looked at you and said, I'm giving you my kidney. Like there had to be a minute where you're like, holy crap. Like, I better get my shit together. When did that happen?

You know, it definitely was when I was in the hospital. And I think for me it really was survival. It was just something that kind of kicked in because I remember being wheeled into the operating room where they were going to amputate both my legs below the knees. And I was terrified, as you can imagine. I mean, I had no idea what my life was going to be like. I actually never had even seen anybody else with two prosthetic legs before, you know, I actually pictured what it's like to have to be missing your legs. And I pictured like a wounded veteran sitting on the corner, you know, in a wheelchair with a sign. So, I mean, I had no real vision of what you could do on prosthetics or what was out there or what, you know, what my life would be like. And so I remember I was being wheeled into the operating room and I was so scared. And I think the only thing I could do to get through that was to kind of set some goals for myself. That was like the one thing that I had to hang on to. So I thought, okay, I'm going to, first of all, never feel sorry for.

Myself because how did you know to do that? Did you logic your way into that? Did you get like a download from a higher power? Most people don't do that. Most people just like, oh, they end up, up being disabled, for lack of a better word. Like, you went the opposite in a very, like, rocket powered way. What made you do that? I mean, literally, was it a decision? I kind of have a hard time believing that.

I know, I know, because it's not like, like I said initially, it's not something that I was taught or something that I looked up online, like, how do I get through losing both of my legs? I don't actually know if we even had online, you know, in those days, Google or anything like that. So I, Yeah, I mean, I think, I think these survival things kick in when you literally are, it's life or death or it's survival at that point. Yes, I wasn't dying going in to have my legs amputated, but I was trying, you know, I was trying to. I got to figure out how to survive through this. And I knew I wanted to live a good life. And I just felt like there's no way that this is going to determine the type of life I'm going to live. That's just not fair. We all, I think, you know, we all should be able to live a good life. And I just, I knew so bad that I wanted to. And I know that my, my family, you know, of course they felt really bad for me. You know, they, they were heartbroken that I was losing my legs. And that didn't feel good. It didn't feel good when people feel sorry for you. You know, everybody's walking in the room going, oh, my gosh, what's your life going to be like? And can she do this again? And can she do that again? And it didn't feel good to have people feel sorry for me. And so I knew that I didn't want to feel sorry for myself. I thought that's. That's a bad spot to be in.

Pity is not compassion.

It's not. It's not. And feeling like a victim, why did this happen to me? I actually made the choice to never ask, why me? I made the choice to not do that. And if my brain would go there, I would just try to focus on something else because I refused to go into this, why did this happen to me? Victim role. And so that was as I was being wheeled into the operating room, that was the first thing I thought of, was, I'm not going to feel sorry for myself. I'm never going to allow myself to feel sorry for myself. I'm not a victim. Then the second thing was that I was going to snowboard that year because I had never missed a year of snowboarding before and I wasn't about to. I decided that I would sneak snowboard one way or another that year. And then the third thing was just, whenever I figure this out, I'll help other people do the same. Because I felt inside that I could see myself sharing. Like, yes, this was hard. Yes, I went through so much, but I made it through the other side. I felt it. I felt it inside. Intuitively, I knew that I would get through it somehow. So I think those three things that just those three goals that I set just really kind of gave me something to look forward to and hold onto and feel somewhat in control of a very out of control situation. And knowing that I had some control over something empowered me.

Did you ever tell those well meaning, pitying family members and friends like stfu, like, get out of here, guys, stop it. Or how did you handle that?

I'm sure, I mean, well, first of all, I mean, luckily really, my family was very positive. At one point, my mom told everybody, if you're going to cry, you can't come into the room.

Oh, good for her. So you had some good support.

But I had great support. Everybody dealt with it their own way. I'm sure my parents went home and lost it. But we really tried to not keep things so positive that we were blind to what was really going on. I was in multiple organ failure. I was losing my legs. I thought I was losing my hands. I mean, it was really bad. But we did the best we could with what we had and we just tried to. Nothing puts you in the present moment like trauma or tragedy or challenge that you have to somehow get through. It just puts you in the here and now. And I think we kind of allowed ourselves to embrace that and just be there and just figure it out one step at a time.

Do you worry now you have an organ? I'm assuming you have to be on immunosuppressant drugs for that. And this is kind of a time when being immunosuppressed is less popular than it once was, to put it politely. Are you concerned about that? Are you taking steps for that?

Yeah, it is really challenging, I'll tell you. So after having a kidney transplant for 20 years, and I'll tell you a little bit about how I believe mentally I accepted my kidney, and my body has also accepted my kidney.

Thank you for saying that. Go deep on that. That kind of thinking is welcome here.

Good, good. Yeah, so I actually. I'll get to that here in a second about taking immunosuppressive medication. Or maybe I'll start with that. We'll see. But you just touched on a lot of things that I wanted to talk about, actually. But definitely right now, we want to keep our immune systems up. And I was just thinking yesterday, I take handfuls of immunosuppressive medication every day in order to not fight my kidney off. That's really hard to. To want to do that every day when we're trying to boost our immune systems and hopefully not get this virus. So I'm definitely taking major precautions. I'm actually. I've been quarantined, self quarantined in my house for about two weeks now. So I'm pretty much probably at day 14 right now. My husband was traveling throughout Europe. He's quarantined against me and away from me right now.

So you're getting lots of sleep, you're relaxed. Things are okay.

I know, exactly. Relaxed. Yeah. But I. So, you know, but at the same time, I am trying to do, once again, do what I can. You know, I can't control the fact that I need to take immune suppressive medication. But at the same time, I can take my vitamins, I can get a lot of sleep, I can take care of myself in other ways. And so that's what I'm focused on. But I'll tell you. So my biggest fear with having a kidney transplant was taking immune suppressive medication. And I really fought the whole concept of having a kidney transplant. I just lost my legs. I couldn't wrap my head around having a kidney transplant. We were trying to boost my immune system at that time because I had meningitis we have no idea how that came about. Now I was going to have to take immune suppressive medication for the rest of my life. It felt like a catch 22, trying to stay healthy, get through the challenges that I was facing, yet now take immune suppressive medication to suppress my immune system so I wouldn't fight this kidney off. And so I really fought the idea of having this kidney transplant for as long as I could. I was on dialysis, which was so crazy. Just going to a dialysis center and hooking up to a machine and only being 19 years old, looking around and seeing everybody else who literally was, you.

Know, oh, yeah, I've done dialysis.

It's.

It's definitely an experience.

Really? I didn't know you've done it.

Yeah, I did it just recreationally.

Oh, well, that's fun.

There's a special filter you can use that pulls out autoimmune molecules.

Right.

Different than the normal dialysis filter. And I did that with ozone. I do that probably every quarter. I'm going to do an episode on that soon.

Oh, wow.

It's anti aging technique, but basically you sit there for two hours with a needle in each arm and it's. It's not the most relaxing procedure.

It's not. And it made me really sick. It pulled out all the minerals in my blood as well as the bad stuff and the good stuff. So that was part of the reason why I was 80 pounds and sick and hooked to a machine to survive, basically. But yet still the idea of a transplant terrified me because I didn't even like taking Advil, let alone immune suppressive medication for the rest of my life. That's something you commit to for the rest of your life. They tell you from the beginning you have major side effects from these drugs. They told me you lose the hair on your head, but then you grow hair on your face because of the steroids that you have to take. Your face gets full because of the steroids. You could have diabetes because of the steroids. Just all the things that could happen. And so, yeah, I was terrified to even make that decision. But then we decided to just follow through with getting everybody in my family tested to see, well, can anybody even donate to me in the first place? And would it be a family member? And my sister and my mom actually matched in blood type, and then my dad and I matched in blood type, and we didn't just match in blood type, but they look for six different antigens that they match up. If you have a twin, you'll match Six out of six. And usually you get three out of six from a parent, but my dad and I, we matched five out of six. So we matched almost like a twin. And that's really rare. And so that's kind of the, I guess the only information that I really needed to be able to kind of switch into a different mode instead of. I was excited to do this, and I thought, this is an opportunity I match with my dad. So I decided to go through with the transplant. But leading up to it, I did everything I could to mentally accept it instead of fighting it like, I have to have a transplant. No, I'm choosing to have a transplant. Instead of thinking of all the bad things that the medication was going to do to me. I was thinking how great of an opportunity this is that I even get to have a transplant, that I get to have a new kidney that's going to work well for me. I felt so grateful every single day, and I forced myself to think that way. I felt that way, but I also made sure that I was thinking that way. So leading into the transplant, I did everything I could to really just mentally embrace that this was happening. There's nothing else I could do. We tried everything we could. And what a blessing that I matched so well with my dad. So we did the transplant. And that first year is really kind of. It can be scary because they say if you're going to reject your kidney, it's going to be within that first year. You're on 30 pills a day of immune suppressive medication, completely crashing your immune system, antivirals, antibiotics, all types of medication. I really just every day did my best to focus on being grateful for what I had. And I chose to look at my medication not as I'm taking all these pills with all these side effects. I chose to look at my medication as, these are healthy for me. These are keeping me alive. This kidney is allowing me to live the best life possible. And so every day, even Today, this is 20 years later, when I take my medication, I think of it as, this is saving my life. This is actually really good for me. I believe that that's a huge reason why my body accepted my kidney as well as it did. I never rejected, I never had the issues that most kidney transplant patients have. I've been very lucky. I rarely get sick. I'll knock on wood. But I rarely get flus or get colds. My immune system's high, even though I'm taking this medication.

Hmm. What do you think? Do you just have superpowers? Like, oh, yeah, So I almost died. I lost my legs, and I just decided that I was gonna focus on the positive, and then I just did it. And then I decided I was gonna get a new kidney. I was gonna accept this amazing gift from my father. And somehow I just knew that if I practice gratitude on my medications, that they might work better, which actually, there's evidence of that. So. Okay, Were you just, like, born with this crazy, half enlightened kind of perspective? I'm not getting this. You're saying no one taught you this? I mean, how do you know to do these things? Because this is why most people listen to podcasts and read books and go to church, is to figure out these practices. And you're like, oh, I just did it when I wasn't snowboarding. Like, come on, tell me how it really worked.

I. You know, I mean, I'm happy you're asking me these questions because it's making me, you know, dig a little deeper into, like, how did I do that?

But you've told this story at least 10,000 times.

In answer, I've told it, but not this part of the story.

Okay.

We're talking about stuff that actually. We're talking about stuff that I normally don't talk about.

Good.

So that's why I probably don't have all the answers here. But. But I do know it's almost okay. I don't know. I mean, I grew up listening to Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer.

He was just on the show. How cool.

I love Deepak.

He's great.

He's amazing. He endorsed my book. He's amazing. But I grew up listening to him. I grew up listening to Wayne Dyer. Being a massage therapist when I used to.

You were more connected to your body. Okay, keep going. That's a big hint. Okay, keep going.

Okay. So. Well, being a massage therapist, it was like meditation for me. You're quiet, you're relaxed. You're connecting with somebody else's energy. You're not distracted. You're not thinking of Instagram or anything else going on in the world or anybody else. It really was kind of meditative for me. And so I think that I was more connected to my body, like you said. And I also felt so out of control. And it was. And listen, I mean, I cried and I fought everything that I went through, and I was scared for my future, and I had no idea what my life was going to be like. And I had moments of depression. I went through all the emotions that anybody would go through with sudden change and losing your legs. And not knowing, seeing a clear path of how to have a good life. But I think I started to just focus on what did I have, using what I did have. And all I really had at that time was my thoughts. I mean, I've looked back on some of my journaling, and I've said, you can't control what happens, but you can control how you think. That's all I had, was, how am I going to think about this situation so that I can continue to live a good life? And so a lot of these, I guess, things that I look back on that were techniques that got me through, I didn't look at them at the time necessarily as techniques. I didn't think well, and maybe I did think, like, if I accept this, will my body accept this? I mean, I couldn't fight it anymore. I think that's the biggest thing is I fought having a kidney transplant, and I tried to deny it, and I was so terrified that I just couldn't visualize my life with it. And once I accepted it, once I decided, I can't fight this, I'm either going to be healthy or sick, so let's go the healthy route. And whether or not I have to take medication or not, whether or not there's risk where I could reject my kidney or not, that was still ultimately the best direction for me to go in so I wouldn't be hooked to a machine for the rest of my life. And so I think once I decided to step into that and kind of own it, I was able to accept it, and I didn't want to fight it. I thought, I want to live a good life, so I needed to accept my circumstances, and eventually I was able to embrace it. But I think it started with just not fighting it and thinking, okay, how do I accept this? Okay? Instead of thinking, you know, this medication's horrible for me. I can't believe I have to take this for the rest of my life. What if I do the opposite? Oh, this is actually really good for me. This is actually what's keeping me alive, and that makes me feel good, and that makes me feel empowered and makes me feel in control. And so I kind of started realizing if, you know, my initial thoughts were negative and were scared and were out of fear, but if I decided to do the opposite, which is, you know, embrace what I'm doing right now, try to learn something from it, then maybe I could get through this and maybe I can continue to live a good life.

Okay, does that. It makes sense. You're one of the few people who, I would say 80% thought your way through this sort of thing. There's a lot of just listen to your words, decide, think, reason. But at the same time, you were steeped in Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and being a massage therapist. And most massage therapists who are good at their craft are super energetically sensitive. They sense where the person needs it. Just like most acupuncturists. They learn, oh, this is where the body, the other person's body needs it. So you had some degree of feeling that fed into your thinking and then you rocked it. Well, very, very well done. And that was just your practice run. Because what happened in 2019 just last year.

Your phone screen is aging your skin and wrecking your sleep at the same time. Artificial blue light goes from your phone screen straight into your eyes and deep into your skin. That light messes with your melatonin levels, interrupts your deep sleep and speeds up skin aging by breaking down collagen. The bodyguard's red light converter fixes this at the source. It's a first of its kind screen protector with real tech that converts blue light into beneficial red light before it hits your face. It turns your scrolling into a skincare routine. It supports healthier skin, reduced eye strain, improved sleep quality and fewer screen related headaches. Third party testing showed a 50% plus increase in in red light exposure within the optimal range of 620-770nm. And this comes with zero compromise on your screen. The red light converter preserves your screen's true colors and full touch sensitivity. Beyond its wellness benefits, the red light converter provides ultra thin edge to edge protection for your device and bodyguard stands by their quality. Enjoy peace of mind with light lifetime replacements ensuring your red light converter continues to protect and support your biology for the long haul. Visit bodyguards.com and use code Dave for 25% off. That's bodyguards with a Z.com for 25% off. Is the air you're breathing making you sick? Just because you don't see mold doesn't mean it isn't there. My friend Jason Earle has been on a mission for over two decades to help people understand the of history hidden role of indoor air in their health. He's one of the world's leading experts on mold and indoor air quality and he created the Got Mold Test Kit to make professional grade air testing simple and accessible. It uses cutting edge air sampling tech that top inspectors trust and it's engineered for you at a fraction of the cost. It takes just minutes to get samples using the patented Biovac air sampling pump. Then you send them, prepaid to one of the most prestigious microbiology labs in the world. No guesswork, no paperwork, and no hidden fees. You get fast results, intuitive reports, and great support. And since you keep the pump, you can retest anytime for less. It even comes with a lifetime warranty. Mold may be invisible, but its impact isn't. This kit helps you understand your environment so you can take action for your health. Go to gotmold.com and use code DAVE10 to save 10% and see what's in your air. Because the best biohackers don't guess. They test.

And that was just your practice, Ron, because What happened in 2019, just last year?

Yeah, it's funny that you bring it up that way because I feel like the universe was saying like, okay, you did it before, but can you do it again?

Yeah, it was too easy the first time. So come on, we got something special for you. What happened?

Right, so last year is almost exactly a year ago. I. Let me think, I'm trying to think how it even began because it started very, very slowly. So up until this point, I was snowboarding four to six hours a day. I also go to the gym every day. Healthy walk. I have a three story house. I've got two prosthetic legs. I'm walking up and down these stairs every day. Walking through airports every week I've gotten to.

And by the way, airports are not for immunocompromised people. And you just do it every week for a long period of time. So your resilience is kind of up there. So keep going.

I'm doing the things that the doctors, I'll tell you, the doctors originally said I'd never be able to do. So maybe there was just a little bit of, you know, being rebellious there.

Yeah, rebellious snowboarders.

Yeah, it's in us. It's in our blood. So up until last year, yeah, I mean, I, I function completely normal and, you know, and yeah, I'm walking through multiple airports a week. That's, you know, if you walk through the Atlanta airport, that's, that's a big airport to walk through. My legs rarely bothered me. They're literally extensions of me. And that's how I've chosen to look at them. And, and so everything was going great and I had to fly to Vegas to do a speech, and then I was flying from Vegas to Nebraska to do a speech and then I was flying back home to Denver. And when I was in Vegas, I Was getting ready to do this talk, and I left my hotel room and I walked to the elevator and my calf was cramping. And I thought, oh, that's weird. Maybe I put my. So you kind of. You put these liners on your legs that are kind of shock absorbers, and you put that on before you put the prosthetic on. So if you can imagine, too, I've got about 10 inches below the knee. I have my full calf. I've got my tibia, my fibula. I just don't have, like, my ankle and my foot. And so below the knee goes into this socket, and that's how you wear your leg. And the socket is carbon fiber, actually.

I totally want to see it if that's here. Oh, wow. Look at that. This, to me, is like the miracle of modern engineering. It's the coolest thing ever.

Okay, it is, but it's literally just pipes bolted together. If you look at it, it's like, those are bolts.

Got Allen wrenches and Allen wrenches. You guys have to see this on YouTube, by the way. It's fascinating. Okay, so positive side, I bet your shoe never smells on that foot, right?

No, they're brand new. They're like. They never smell bad.

All right, there's your upside.

No toe jam.

All right. What's inside there?

So it's hollow.

Okay.

And you probably can't see.

Yeah, I can see a slit in there. There's like a bolt hole in there or something.

Exactly. And so. And then here's a little button. So basically, on my leg, I've got this liner, this like, shock absorbing sock. Kind of like a rubber sock, if you can imagine. I roll it up my leg and it has. It has. Here, let me show you if I can. It has the bolts.

Thank you for showing me. This is so interesting.

Yeah. So this bolt goes into that rubber liner.

Oh, wow. And that's in your sock?

It's in my sock. Then I stand up and step into my leg. And it locks into that hole. Yeah. So then you're locked in there. Yep. And then to take my leg off, I push this button and it releases my leg. So when I, you know, you'll see pictures of me of, you know, dancing or snowboarding, walking around. This is pretty much my real leg is in here. You know, some people think that you're amputated, like at the knee. No, you've got. Everybody's different depending on what situation they had. But I got very lucky that my doctor, my surgeon who did the amputations, he knew That I snowboarded and wakeboarded and. And was athletic. And so he left as much kind of calf as he could so that I'd have leverage and have more muscle mass below the knee. And I think because of that, it's given me a lot of control over my legs.

Fantastic. But you got a blood clot in your calf.

It sounds like I did. So basically, walking in carbon fiber legs is not normal. Dancing in carbon fiber legs, snowboarding six hours a day in carbon fiber legs is not normal. Your body's not made to have carbon fiber pushing into it, especially being that active. And so when I look back on the last year, there were moments where my calf would hurt because my prosthetic was pushing, like, the back of my prosthetic back here, which is just all carbon fiber, was pushing into my calf. So we kept trying to fix it. I would go to my prosthetist, we kept trying to fix it, but we didn't think it was that big of a deal. Every time it would happen, I thought I was just bruising my calf, not actually doing anything major, but little did I know, I was actually damaging and injuring my popliteal artery. And your popliteal artery is your major artery that feeds blood below the knee. So you have your femoral artery, which is your main artery that goes down your thigh. It turns into your popliteal artery behind your knee, and then it splits into three arteries below the knee. I'm doing this speech in Vegas. I feel a cramp in my left calf. I don't think too much of it. I fly to Nebraska, I do another speech, and the next morning, the day I was supposed to fly home from Denver, I woke up in excruciating pain and sat up, threw the covers off, looked at my leg. My calf was cramping so bad, and my leg was as white as the sheet. I was horrified.

Did that fire ptsd? I mean, you've woken up with the wrong color. You must have just lost your shit.

Yeah. And it created ptsd, because now that's in me, this feeling of you think you're safe when you go to sleep, and you're going to sleep good, but how do you know you're not going to wake up in the middle of the night in massive pain and suddenly losing blood flow to a limb. I mean, I think that's in a weird way, like a nightmare that a lot of people have. I know I've always thought how scary it would be even though I've lost my legs, how terrifying it would be. To be facing something all of a sudden that, yeah, you can lose a limb. And so I woke up and my leg was as white as the sheet, ice cold. So I threw my legs over to the edge of the bed and just rubbed both of them as hard as I could and as aggressively as I could at the same time. I called my brother in law who's a chiropractor in Boise, and I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I was by myself in a little hotel room in Nebraska and it took about 20 seconds or so, which isn't too bad, but for the cramping to go away, the color to come back in my leg. And I thought, okay, I just need to get home as quickly as possible. I did not want to be in Nebraska going to the emergency room. I also googled blood clots and everything that popped up was like deep vein thrombosis. Well, that's in your veins and usually with that you get swelling and redness. And I didn't have that. My leg was actually the opposite. It wasn't swollen, it wasn't red, it had no blood. And so I thought, okay, I don't have deep vein thrombosis, but I jumped on an airplane, I sat in a wheelchair, actually I got crutches from the hotel, crutched down to my car once I got to the airport, sat in a wheelchair, ended up flying home, which is only an hour away. Went straight to the emergency room and, and I even said to the doctors, I said, you know, you guys are probably going to think I'm a little crazy because my leg feels okay right now, but this morning I swear it lost full blood blood flow. So they did an ultrasound and they came running in and said, we know the problem. You've got a massive blood clot from your hip down every artery of your left leg. My entire leg was one. Every artery of my left leg was one massive blood clot. And so then started this, you know, this whole new journey that I'm on of fighting to get back and really having to fight, you know, what I went through 20 years ago. I realized some mental stuff is what helped me get through it. But this time it's actually been more physical. Like I've had to knock down doors to find doctors to help me. I've had a really put different types of therapies into my day to be able to try to coax my body not into just healing, but more than healing, like regrowing arteries.

There you go.

And so, yeah, so the scary thing, though, at the beginning was that the doctors initially didn't want to touch me because I was already an amputee. And a lot of these doctors deal with people who are amputees because of diabetes, because of vascular disease. So they're used to seeing amputees with blood clots. But the reason these amputees have blood clots is they were sick, you know, and they're 80 years old. I mean, I'm still. Yeah, I'm 40 years old, but I'm an athlete. I was perfectly healthy a week before. So this was not normal for me. But I actually had to fight that because the doctors would say, we've met. One doctor said. One surgeon said, we've never revascularized an amputee before because you're already an amputee. You already lost your leg. And I was like, okay, but my legs have been perfectly healthy. That's the difference. And at that point, my leg was going to die. I did not have blood flow. I had basically a spider web of vessels keeping my lower leg and calf alive at that point. And that was about it. So I was able to convince one surgeon. I said, I'm not leaving the hospital until you guys get in there and do something. Because I actually knew somebody who had a similar situation, and they did surgery. They were able to go in and remove this blood clot. So I pretty much said, I'm not leaving the hospital until you guys go in there and at least try. And they were scared of making things worse. They said all it would take is just nicking the artery. All of a sudden, you're losing your leg above the knee. And at that point, in my mind, I thought, well, I'm probably losing my leg above the knee right now anyways. And so luckily they went in, they were able to remove the blood clot from my knee to my hip, thank goodness. But they couldn't remove the blood clot from my knee down. And so I left the hospital about two days later, felt. I mean, I was so mad and so frustrated. And basically they had said, you know, we can't help you. We don't know how long this blood clot's been in there. And basically, you're going to have to just get used to life not being what it used to be.

When doctors say that, I think you should just fire them. Is that.

Well, and I tried, but, you know.

Sorry, maybe not because you're just doing. But when they say that, what they're saying is, we don't know. But to tell you to just accept it instead of, we don't know, but we'll help. That seems so negative.

It was incredibly negative. And they, of course, thought they knew more than me, but I thought I knew more than them for sure. This all happened over a weekend. So we were trying to call every vascular surgeon. I called everybody I could. I called Dr. Oz, who's a friend of mine.

He's such a good human.

He's such a good guy. And he got me in touch with who he knew was top vascular surgeons. I had friends who are Boston bombing survivors, and they put me in touch with their vascular surgeon. So I was on the phone with him. I was sending him all the ultrasounds, and I was getting the same information from everybody, which was.

They all agreed.

Yeah, that there is not much you can do with arterioid, because this was in the artery. This wasn't in the vein. This was not deep vein thrombosis. This was an arterial. Major arterial occlusion. And the challenge is that if these blood clots stay in your arteries for more than a week or two, they become concrete, and you can never remove them at all. There was just this whole challenge with. They had done this surgery. I had this huge incision in my hip where they went into the artery, so they couldn't try other methods. But because I could bleed out, there was just all these different challenges. And it was the first time that I felt like no doctors are supposed to help me. Doctors have always been able to help me, and this is the first time that nobody can help me. And, I mean, no matter how positive I was 20 years ago, I was sitting in my hospital bed, just wailing, just crying, because I was thinking, you've got to be kidding me. There's got to be something we can do. Somebody's got to be out there who can help me. And so they released me. They sent me home, and I went on a mission. That's when I started calling everybody I knew and trying to figure out, how do I get to a doctor that can help me? And we had figured that I would maybe get on a private jet that a friend had set up, fly me to ucla. I had already been set up in their system, and I was going to try to see those doctors, but I got lucky that. So I. Let's see. So I went into the emergency room. Just a few days after the surgery. They released me. My leg was turning blue. I went back to the emergency room. They did an ultrasound. They said, your leg's even worse than it was before. It's completely occluded. There's not even much of a spider web of vessels giving blood to my lower leg. And they said, you need to call your surgeon who did this and see what he'll do. And I said, he's not going to do anything. He already told me he's not going to do anything, that I have to live the rest of my life like this. But I decided to call anyways because at this point, I didn't know where else to go. So I called that Monday morning to try to get back into my surgeon. And the receptionist said that he was out of town, but his partner was there. And if I wanted to see his partner and I said, sure, I'm willing to see any vascular surgeon I can at this point. And so I went in to see his partner and he was a much older surgeon. And he basically, he did an ultrasound on my leg and he looked at me and he said, you know what? You remind me of my three daughters. And if one of them was in this situation, I would do anything I could to help her. But then he sat there and he just said, what am I going to do with you? What are we going to do? But just hearing that, I felt some level of hope. I thought, somebody is willing to try something.

You have an unfortunate situation, you're kind of a big deal. That means that if a surgeon goes in and does something that he would do for himself or his own children and something bad happens, whether you lose more of your leg or you even die, his license and his career is told and his family are at risk for that. So the better known you are, the harder it is to get cutting edge care. Right.

I love that you say this because a lot of people would think the opposite.

It's not. So it's fear from. And it's justifiable fear because we have this hyper litigious society, Right. And also just reputational stuff. You know, people get crazy on social media and all of a sudden, like, well, I was trying to. Because the patient wanted to take the 5% risk in order to, you know, do something miraculous. We both agreed and she signed all these papers. But still my reputation gets dragged through the mud and it's not fair. And to the doctors who do it anyway, man, hats off. Like, that is a form of courage. That's rare. What did he do for you? Did he step up and do something?

He absolutely did.

I love it.

Yeah, it was amazing. And he said, you know, I've got a couple tricks up my sleeve. I've Been at this for a while, but he was like, we gotta get you in right away. Which is a risk because they did this previous surgery. So I had this big incision in my hip to open up my artery. What he was going to do was go in and try to dissolve this blood clot through a certain type of. Yeah, it's like a blood clot dissolve ETA or something. Yeah, I forget what it's called, but TPA might be called tpa, but. But it makes your blood really, really thin. So I could bleed out in my hip. But he even said, you know, I'm willing to take the risk. Let's figure this out. Let's get you in there. And at that point, I was willing to take the risk as well. So he brought me into surgery. It ended up being a two day process, a two day surgery. So the first day, he basically went in on my opposite hip and he put a catheter in. So it goes up around under your aorta, down your left leg, and down into my lower arteries below the knee. And he placed these catheters and then dripped what felt like acid to me. It was the worst pain of my entire life. Just I was in excruciating pain for.

Did they knock you out or put some lidocaine in there or something?

Nothing. Nothing worked. I was on every painkiller. I was on maximum amounts of the top painkillers you could be on. Nothing even touched the pain that I felt for about 48 hours. It was two days worth of nonstop pain. I had to take it. I've got video of me just literally moaning for two days straight. But I knew that this was the only option to try to do something. I faced it.

You could have said, pull it out. I can't handle this.

I could have.

Did you think of that?

Oh, no, I didn't think of it. But what I did think of is don't you pass out eventually. Aren't you supposed to pass out from pain eventually? And it never happened. It's like the pain kept me wired.

That's courage. Okay, good for you.

But yeah, I mean, absolutely, to me, it felt like you could have just chopped my leg off with no painkillers or anesthesia. And this is.

And you know what that's like. You're one of the few people who can say that with truthfulness.

Yeah. Wow. So excruciating amounts of pain. And so then he brought me into surgery the second day and used what he said was like. He said it was like a rotating brush to just plow through every artery. And he spent, I think he spent five hours, which the nurse came in and said, I've never seen him do this on a patient before. I've never seen him. Usually he goes in, he does what he can, he steps away. He did everything he possibly could to save your leg.

I love old doctors who have 20, 30 years of experience. They have something special. And his ability and willingness to do that, that's a lifetime of achievement right there.

And you're like, wow, I know, I agree, I agree. And I just think, thank God. There's always these angels that step in at least. I've been very lucky that at some point, if I don't give up, somebody is there who can help me. But I mean, in this case I really had to knock down doors. I really thought, I wasn't sure if I was going to get through this until I found him. Yeah. And so, so basically he was able to get this blood clot out. Two out of the three arteries below my knee opened up, one artery stayed closed. But we weren't too worried about it because your body can adapt. I mean, so his hope was to open one artery below the knee and he was able to open two out of three arteries below the knee. And so I went through about four months of just recovering from that. My leg was massively swollen, still had weird circulation issues. In fact, as the months went on, even though all my ultrasounds were running clear, my leg would turn purple and blue. So I was up on crutches at this point on one prosthetic leg. And when I would get upright on my crutches, my leg would turn purple and that would turn blue. And yet all my ultrasounds were running clear. And so he introduced me to another surgeon because he basically said, I don't want to do anything else because I've done so much that sometimes you can go just a little too far. And he was a little bit nervous to just take it any further.

That's also the wisdom that comes with age, to know that he knew, he.

Knew, but he knew somebody who was willing to jump in. And so I met this other amazing surgeon. His name is Dr. Mumbarek and he's here in Denver and he's a three time Ironman and so he's an athlete himself. And he came in to my room with so much energy and he just said, okay, we're going to go in, we're going to figure out what's going on and if I have to plow through more arteries, I'll do that like let's do what we need to do to get you snowboarding again. And so we set the surgery up for two or three days later. And what he found when he went in was. Yes. So Dr. Cooper had totally cleared out all the blood clots. Thank God. If he didn't do that, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. But the trauma of what my arteries went through shrunk my femoral artery, which your femoral artery is usually, let's say, like a nickel or pretty big, right? It's like a pipe of blood. My femoral artery was shrunk down to a string. I mean, to a string. When you look at the ultrasounds, you just can't believe any blood was getting through there at all. And that was just from my body, you know, just the trauma of what my body went through. And so he went in, then did an angioplasty, and you do it while you're awake. A lot more pain, too, where they. Yeah, they put balloons in all the arteries and expand the balloons to try to stretch out the arteries, bring more blood flow below the knee. So he did that, and then he prescribed. He was the first doctor to prescribe the hyperbaric oxygen chamber for me.

I was going to ask about that, because hyperbaric, just. Your body's crying for oxygen. You can just put it in there. How did that make you feel?

Well, I'll tell you so. I mean, it was a process I did. Let's see. So I did surgery a few days later, started hyperbaric. I did it for three hours a day, five days a week, for six weeks straight. Didn't take any days off except for the weekends, because I did it through the hospital. And I'll tell you, I didn't really notice anything at the time. But what I did notice, it was the first time that I didn't cry. It was the first time I didn't have anxiety because. Because I was actually doing something. I felt like I was taking action and doing something for myself, and that was empowering. Up until this point, I felt so out of control of my situation that at some point every day I would cry because I just felt panicked and overwhelmed. And, yeah, I started doing the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. After a month of doing that, I realized I had no anxiety, didn't cry because I was taking action. And so just that alone was healthy for me, just mentally. And so I ended up doing five weeks of that. I didn't really notice anything during that time. My leg was still kind of recovering from the past surgery that we did. And then let's see about. So something a couple months later happened that could have been really bad, which was I went in for an ultrasound one week. Everything was clear. I went in for an ultrasound a couple weeks later. We noticed that my popliteal artery had drastically narrowed, and my surgeon was sure that it was going to close. That was the first time that we actually realized that the injury started there. That's the point of injury. At this point, we kind of didn't know why did I have this blood clot down my whole leg. But that spot is right where my prosthetic pushed, and that's where my popliteal artery wanted to close. And so he said, let's wait a week. Let's just see what it does. Maybe it'll hold stable. I went in a week later. It had closed completely, 100%. However, my lower leg was warm. The color was great. It felt the same to me as it felt before. So my surgeon was like, well, we could go in and do another surgery there, open up this artery, but you might have to do that every couple months for the rest of your life, because clearly, your body wants to close that artery right there. And so we made the decision right there. I didn't want to have any more surgery. Let's just see what my body does. And after about a week, I went back in for another ultrasound, and what we found was that artery was still closed, but all these other collateral arteries were bright red, opened up, and totally bypassed the blockage, Totally bypassed that spot that closed.

I believe your hyperbaric helped that to happen. By the way, same thing happens with heart attacks. If you don't have surgery and you don't die from it, your body will, over time, grow those things. It's incredible.

And if you give it time. So time was definitely a huge part of this, because at the beginning, the reason that artery closed and I ended up with a massive blood clot Was my body didn't have time to create any more arteries. That happened so quickly. But this time, it did have time, because we were in there expanding my arteries. I was doing the hyperbaric. The hyperbaric creates pressure in your arteries to open up new little pathways. What's interesting is, months before that artery closed or that we knew it would close, we saw this little tiny artery, kind of this little collateral artery Just start at the top of my knee. It was just right above my knee, Right above where the spot ultimately closed. And it's like it knew that spot was going to close. And once it did close, suddenly that artery became just as big as my popliteal. Now it runs right alongside my popliteal. You. It literally just bypasses the spot that closed. It's amazing.

The body's so incredible with what it can do. It's such an elegant system that is just primed for survival if you sometimes get out of the way. But sometimes you can help it, like you did with Hyperbaric. Now, I want to run a few other biohacks past you. So as you're doing this, I am putting together my menu of things that are outside, mostly of what a typical surgeon would do. And I want to see if you've thought of them and if you've tried them. So I want thumbs up, thumbs down, or I'm going to call someone and ask about this. Okay? So this is like real world biohacking. Okay. First thing when I look at angiogenesis. Have you looked at shockwave therapy? Does anyone talk to you about that?

No, but I do. The Beamer. Do you know the Beamer?

I do know the Beamer, the. The EMF sorts of things, which is a very supportive therapy. I do a lot of pulse electromagnetic frequency work at 40 years of Zen on the brain, in other words. And that can raise. I know that there's evidence that that'll grow nerve growth factor, which you probably need some of in your leg also. But I don't know about whether it's going to raise vegf, which is what you're looking for. VEGF is what causes your vascular system to grow. So shockwave therapy. I know that it grows new blood vessels because I have used it on a certain male organ that likes to have lots of blood flow. And holy shit balls, it grows new blood vessels. Like, unbelievable new blood vessels. Without going into too much crass detail, I will just tell you that everyone's happy about that, who's tried it and what this is. This is sonic shockwaves. And you can do them depending on how deep the veins are or the arteries that you need to go for, but you can do this topically. And I know that it causes angiogenesis because there's been studies and because I felt it. And I mean, your surgeons can talk about risk and all that stuff, but they might not have put those things together. Has anyone talked to you about vip, nasal spray or lozenges or even. Do you know what it is?

No.

See, this makes me mad. Vasoactive intestinal peptide. VIP is something that raises levels of vegf, which is the compound that Causes you to grow your new vessels throughout the body. So if you can raise vegf, you're going to be very, very happy with what happens there. And VEGF is vascular endothelial growth factor. I was trying to think, what did that stand for? And so when you get VIP up, VEGF usually goes up. Or you can also take vegf. So you're trying to grow these things. Why don't you get these compounds? Because they're not pharmaceutical drugs.

Yeah, absolutely.

So that would be useful. But no one's ever told you to do these things. Hyperbaric, thumbs up. You did it.

Yes.

And have you ever heard of intermittent hypoxic therapy?

Is this where you stop the blood and then it flows?

Yeah. There's two ways to do that. Three ways to do that. One is stop blood. Like with blood flow restriction training with a band. Right. And that works very well. And guess what the bands do in studies? They crank VEGF through the roof, which is really good for you. So that said, I don't really like the idea of bands where you've had all these arteries compressed in surgeries. That seems icky to me, but I could be wrong. What am I, a doctor? No. So you can also do intermittent hypoxic therapy with one of the machines we use at Upgrade Labs, which allows you to breathe air that has no oxygen in it. So you get your blood oxygen levels down to about 87, and then you breathe pure oxygen afterwards.

Oh, wow.

And again, VEGF goes through the roof, and all of your cells that need oxygen can get oxygen because your body resets its hemoglobin sensitivity levels. For lack of a more detailed description. There's also a machine that we have at Upgrade Labs called cvac, which allows you to go up to the height of Mount Everest and then. But just for 20 seconds or 10 seconds, and then back to sea level. So you go up, down, up, down. It takes all the vessels in your body and it pumps them, all of them at the same time. And almost plays music on them. Right. It's awesome. And there's that. Let's see. We talked about the other one then, red light therapy. I'm hoping you've done that.

I have done that.

Do you know about the effects of amber light on specific blood vessels?

No.

There are studies. That's why I put amber light in the lights that I design. So you should look at amber light. There's specific frequencies of this. Have you done intravenous ozone?

No.

Have you done ozone bagging on your leg?

No.

The fact that no doctor has told you to do ozone bagging. Makes me mad. You put a bag on your leg with a band at the top and you pump it full ozone gas and sit there and watch tv and the ozone seeps into your leg. It sterilizes wounds and it gets rid of stuff. It causes things to heal faster and it oxygenates everything and it cranks up your mitochondria at the same time.

Wow. Wow. It's amazing.

Has anyone injected BPC157 in the area?

No. However, my doctor has been looking into a few different.

Good.

Yeah, a few different things.

It's time for peptides, exosomes. Anyone injected those?

No, but my doctor who saved my life 20 years ago is now injecting those. And so I was going to set up with that.

Please do that. You can also inject amniotic fluid and there's something called hydrodissection you can do because right now the layers of fascia in your tissue, they get stuck together and compressed. And what they're doing in pro athletes. I just had this done and there's a podcast coming out about it. But what they can do is they can inject a mixture of salt water and amniotic fluid protein, which causes healing to create space so your fascia can move again. And then two other things.

Okay.

Multi waveform electrical stimulation can cause everything to grow in a way that's unbelievable. There's a podcast about New Fit. N E U F I T is the one that, that I. I've seen people who are paraplegics get up and walk from this kind of treatment. It's what Terry Wahls is doing. So general systemic. I'd put it on the end of the leg. It'll cause blood flow to go there. Cause the body will say, oh my God, I have to exercise the muscles at the end of the leg that you can't exercise right now. It'll exercise them without your permission. It'll exercise them.

And that's what I need. That's what we've decided, that the more muscle, the more blood flow.

F I T. And the final thing is good old fashioned nicotine.

Okay. I'm curious what you have to say about this. My doctor said a little bit, but.

Okay. Nicotine increases angiogenesis pretty darn dramatically, which is why it's bad if you have cancer. But if you don't have cancer and you want angiogenesis and the fact you're 40, if you look in Superhuman, I go through the science. It reverses Alzheimer's disease. If you did one or two milligrams of oral nicotine. Not smoking, not vaping, Especially with all this crap virus stuff going around, man, I'd be doing that. Maybe even three. Lucy gum is the cleanest gum you can get. You might just do half of a lucy gum. They're 4 milligrams. Or you could, if you do it properly, you. Two chews, put it in your cheek. Two chews, put it in your cheek. There's also a spray that you can get from Canada or Europe. That is my preferred form, but okay with all these things. Or maybe beetroot would be good because it increases nitric oxide. If it makes you feel good, if it makes you feel like crap, then don't take it, because then you have a Nos 3 problem in your genes. So why don't doctors have all these biohacks? It drives me nuts.

It drives me nuts, too. It drives me crazy, too. And I'll tell you, I've done tons of research and haven't even come across half of the stuff that you've said.

So that was just from my mind. But okay, all these will be in the show. Notes will be transcribed. If you want resources for these afterwards, you know, just hit me up. I'll hook you up.

That would be amazing. One thing I've been looking into as well is I was trying to find what foods help create angiogenesis, but I had a really hard time finding that. But what I could find was what stops angiogenesis because of cancer patients.

You don't want to feed them, don't eat those.

Well, you know, and it's amazing. It's kale that actually. Kale. Green tea that stops.

Kale's not good for you.

Yeah, okay. Well, actually, I remember you saying that. So I've slowed down on it. I've stopped it now, though, because I'm like, I don't want to hinder my body from creating more blood vessels.

You don't need. Let me be really straightforward with you. You have one kidney, and it's not yours. Oh, by the way, newsflash, we share that in common. I only have one kidney, but it's mine. So here's the thing. Oxalic acid is really bad for your kidneys. And if you only have one kidney, then you need to not eat raw spinach ever again. And I wouldn't even do cooked spinach. And I wouldn't do kale, cooked or raw, given who you are. And even beets are also not a good choice for you. And this oxalic acid, it's a major cause of kidney stones. Way more so, actually, than fructose and probably than excess protein.

It's crazy that we don't learn this from our doctors.

There's a few of them who know it, and also there are probably doctors like, who does Dave think he is? He's a bad man. Yes, I'm a bad man. I'm just working based on data and science, and I could be wrong.

But this is why I was so excited to do this. This is why I was so excited to speak at the biohacking conference, too, because I wanted to sit in the audience and listen as well. And just, you know, this is where I'm at, is I realize the doctors have done what they can. Now it's up to my body to do the rest. And how can I support my body to not just heal, but literally do more than that, right? Like grow new connections, create new pathways. I need to support my body as much as I can. So anything that I can find, well.

I hope that at least some of those are helpful for you. I feel like the whole stack of those, all of those have evidence that they would help you achieve the goal you want, which is angiogenesis and stimulation of the leg and things like that. So I'm more than happy to give you the resources, and I'm happy we got to talk because, I mean, me too. What an awesome thing. I want to know how this comes out. So you're going to. I would ask you to stay in touch with me and let me know if you try these things, if you notice the difference.

Okay, I will for sure.

On that note, we are going to transition to Instagram Live now after we end the formal podcast episode. If you enjoyed the podcast so far, Amy and I are going to be taking live questions. All you have to do is follow me, Dave Asprey. And anytime I do a podcast and it works out for the guest, I'm going to let you guys ask live questions. And then the podcast itself comes out in a little while, which encourages people on Instagram to subscribe to the podcast on itunes. And if you're on itunes, follow me on Instagram and I will let you talk with awesome people like Amy Purdy. So, Amy, I will see you on Amy Purdy, which is your. No, it's purdygurl. P U R D Y G U R L on Instagram.

Amypurdygurl.

Amypurdygurl on Instagram. And I follow her. I only follow a few hundred people, so if you guys want to find her that way, do that and I will see you on Instagram. And if you don't want to do that, the best way to connect with Amy, just to follow in her journey and the amazing stuff she's doing is her Instagram account which is like we just said, amypurdygurl G U R L is what it's called. Thanks Amy.

Thank you so much Dave.

A Human Upgrade Formerly Bulletproof Radio was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels, and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.