The Plants That Reverse Aging And Block Daily Toxins — with Darin Olien : 1293

The reason we cook plants is to reduce toxins. We ferment them, we process the hell out of them.

We have compounds in plants that we ingest and they actually support us in our health. And improves virtually all longevity markers in the body. So there are studies today that are reversing Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia. We induce this high active compound naturally in plants and it binds to pathways in our body and our bodies start freaking healing.

Known as the Superfood Hunter, Darren Olien is the author of the New York Times bestseller Super Life and the host of the number one health and wellness podcast around the Darren Orlean Show. He also co hosts the Netflix series Down to Earth with Zac Efron about the global search for healthy, sustainable ways to eat and live.

What's the most shocking thing you've come across that people do every day that's making them sick? You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey into it. Our episode today is with a true pioneer in health and wellness. And there's a lot of us out there, and everyone has different perspectives, different lenses to look at this and you might find one person who's, you know, it's all about meat is bad for you. I would suggest that person's wrong, although maybe there's some edges there or someone else. Could be it's all about EMFs, or there's one guy who's like, the world.

Is full of toxic blue light and emfs and you're all gonna die.

And the bottom line is everything is good and bad for you to some degree, depending on what you want to do. So our job is to figure out what are the most distributed things that are having the most negative effect and what we can do to change those, either to make ourselves more resilient or more importantly, to fix whatever the root cause is so that it stops happening so we don't have to be resilient anymore. And our guest today is Darren Olene, or if you were to spell it, Oen is an environmental activist and a bestselling author looking at hidden things that affect your health. If you saw the Netflix show Down to Earth with Zac Efron, Darren's traveled the earth looking at how do we fix the environment so that we can fix ourselves. This makes me really happy because I do not believe in fixing the environment for the environment's sake. And I'm sure he'll yell at me as soon as. As soon as I finish the introduction just because I don't think hungry people care about the environment. So we gotta take care of ourselves. So then we'll take care of the world around us. We'll get into that. And Darren's also the founder of Barucas, which is a superfood company that makes nutrient dense foods. And he's into biohacking and adaptogens and metabolic flexibility and all the good stuff. So we're going to do this combination of environmental stuff and mitochondrial stuff in this episode. I'm actually really looking forward to it. Darren, welcome to the show.

Thanks Dave. It's been a long time and we're finally at least connecting in this, in this way. I look forward to it.

I do too. You're in Malibu, right?

Yeah.

I thought you cared about toxins.

Luckily I'm far enough away from some of that stuff and I'm, and I'm, you know, I found a piece of land with 50 acres surrounded by the national park and so it's usually me, oak trees and a couple dogs. So.

Okay.

Yeah, I like that.

That's actually super cool.

Yeah.

And you're not worried about all the plastics and metals from the fires?

Of course, if you're closer to it. And I'm certainly not surfing at the moment. And you know, it's a lot largely is underreported too because if they did they would have to basically take up the entire beach of all the water runoffs and stuff. So it's, it's a big problem for sure. And you know, and I, I'm sitting on the property that I lost in 2018 to a fire, the Woolsey Fire. And it was started by, it was started by a derelict power pole from Edison and that started 96,000 acres. So you know, we have to be careful when we say wildfires because even. And then, yeah, they take off. But largely so much of it starts with us. It starts with stupid things that we're doing that create a lot of issues which also, you know, speaking to your, the environmental piece, I think there's probably a lot more that you and I will agree on because I also am very clear that the, the climate change stuff has been co opted and taken the narrative and spun it in the sense that, you know, it really comes down to. And also what I wrote about fatal conveniences, how we're being affected, it's the same thing. So as within, so without, as above, so below, you know, so if, if, if we are being polluted by a deodorant that, or a shampoo or a fragrance or petroleum clothes, largely the creation of those things are wildly polluting to the environment. So it really comes down to if you're dumping toxic things into a river, you all can realize that that's not a good thing to do. So a lot of this stuff comes down to just poor choices that we're making from a individual perspective. And some of it we don't know or we didn't know about. And then from a, from a wide lens of industry, which is largely polluting as well. So for me, the climate change comes down to we're polluting, we're, we're causing dangerous things in our environment. And that is just, I mean, look at, look at Chevron in Ecuador. They didn't even try to not pollute the rivers in Ecuador and they just polluted people down the way. And of course, what did they come up with first time in their history? Cancers. So we can, we can make the argument that, yeah, it's a big global thing, but it really comes down to small things that people are doing and corporations are doing. But, but yeah, there's a lot we can do and, and it takes obviously waking up to it first in order for us to change any of it.

What's the most shocking thing you've come across that people do every day that's making them sick?

There's so many, you know. You know, I spent two and a half years and, and I didn't even use AI. I used 15 real researchers studying my book. And one of the first things that just, I don't know if it's the most toxic, but it pissed me off. It was a, it was PFAS laden on dental floss.

Oh yeah.

So it's like, okay, the easy slip in between the teeth, they just laden it with, with pfas. And now we know that PFAS is very, very destructive. And it's a, it's a compound that does not even come close to being natural because it's got a hydrophilic and a hydrophobic end to it. And so you, it's very difficult to clean up largely. You can't really, they don't, we don't know how. So it bioaccumulates in the environment, bioaccumulates in us. And now half of us are being exposed to PFAS just from our tap water because of the proliferation, because of 3M using it and, and, and not doing safety studies or at least doing safety studies and then realizing they got caught finally since the 50s. So, you know, when you start, you know, initially people think of it as Teflon on pans, which is largely, is still a really big problem and a lot of eco washing that the PFAS is still on the pans. 98% of them still have PFAS. So people are cooking with this stuff. So yeah, that pissed Dave. When you're like, it's dental floss, you're putting it in your mouth, like get that out of your mouth.

So Darren's number one recommendation is to stop flossing to live a long time. Thanks Darren.

I'm not sure. Yeah, no floss, floss. I'm just kidding. Just don't, just don't use plastics and pfas.

One of my love languages is putting words in other people's mouths. They didn't say so. No, I, I use 100% silk dental floss. It's not that hard to do. It might break every now and then, but it work better and I know that I'm not moving the needle in the wrong direction.

Yeah. And again, you know, again there's lists of, of these things and, and you know the ones that people can easily change is tap water. You know, it's, it's a great convenience that we can turn on tap water and have running water because 2 billion people on the planet don't have that. But.

So how dangerous is tap water really?

Well, like I said, probably at the top of the list, one of the most dangerous forever chemicals, bioaccumulators, linked to cancer and kidney disease and metabolic conditions and endocrine disruption is pfas. So if you don't filter your water, your chances are your, that number one contributor is going in your body. Plus we have pharmaceutical drugs, we have pesticides and herbicides. The thing is the, the municipalities are great at making sure we don't die acutely of typhoid and dysentery, but they're not sophisticated just like this. Just like the scam of recycling. There's no sophistication to be able to, to, to break apart any of those things or to filter any of those things. They don't have that. So, so we're getting water on demand, but we don't have clean water. But an to that for people that are freaking out right now is that you can get a reverse osmosis filter and get rid of most of it and it drops the parts per million down to almost nothing. So, and there's no safe limit. The epa, even though they do put a limit, they put a safe limit on PFOs, it just doesn't exist. So that's, that's a danger. I just saw a documentary in New York that it's called how to Poison a Planet. And that was the. With all the attorneys that have been fighting 3M for the better part of three decades. And it was all the dark water guys. So the Mark Ruffalo film that they, they did the film on the dark water and the, and the pfas and the chemicals and, and this documentary really brings it out because 3M ultimately settled with a huge number, but the attorneys were actually pissed because they had. They found 50 years of smoking guns. So that's a big one. PFAS exposure is very dangerous. It's not like a heavy metal where you and I know how to chelate that out of the body. You can do that, it can build up in the environment, but also different chelation protocols and chlorellas and, and green stuff and, and zeolites and stuff can get rid of that, but we, we don't currently know how to get rid of PFAs. And so that's the big one in, in the water.

From my perspective, one of the things that. That drives me crazy is in the US we have this idea of corporate personhood, which means companies now have constitutional rights, which they should not have. Is the thing about people is you can throw them in jail, you can separate them from their kids, and you can deprive them of food and sunlight. The things the government does to punish you anyway, which are very nasty, but you can't do that to a company. So I don't think companies should have rights like people do, but they do in the US now. And you can give a person the death penalty, but you can't for a company. And what I've been thinking about for years is that rather than these financial fines, if the government would simply say, you know what, here's the amount of the fine. So we're causing you to issue that much additional stock in the company which dilutes existing shareholders. And that new stock is the highest preference stock that has more rights than existing shareholders, and it goes to the people who would have received the financial damages. So what happens? Every time a company screws up, it loses ownership of itself into the hands of the people it harmed. This would solve the problem. I've never seen any country do that. But if you're, I don't know, Supreme Court justice or some law scholar listening dude do that. What do you think? Would that fix the problem?

Yeah, well, it put, you know, you know, the bottom line is it would put the pot, the, the pressure, the, the economic pressure on. Because if, if you, if you can't get the profits, then you're going to lose, you know, the share and it's not going to work. But at the same time, you have this game that's played even before that. And that is, we perceive that there's regulatory bodies that are governing these things, but largely they leave it in the hands of them to go follow our rules. And we'll just take your word for it. And, and therefore they're just, it's wild west. So they do whatever they want. And if they don't reveal those tests that are causing damage, they claim plausible deniability. So then there's, we didn't know about it. So therefore how can you prove that our product is dangerous? So, so it's a game. And the fda, the epa, the nih, the fcc, the ftc, all of these people or governing bodies or regulatory bodies, it's a joke that they call them regul bodies because they're not regulating anything. And it's then to your point, it's only upon this damage that then becomes proliferated in the lexicon of our, our world. And then hopefully we catch on and, and we start talking to people about it. And then of course there's no way, right? There's whole generations of people, hopefully, that's falling away that believe that there's no way people would actually do that. There's no way the FDA would allow that. There's no corporations would, would do such a thing. And the truth is, I'm sorry to say, but the, our history proves otherwise. And, and so when you have these very, very big companies doing these things over a long period of time, the, the God of their power is this prophet. So you got to punch them right where they're at, for sure. And so I think that can definitely help, without a doubt. But we actually have to prove safety. We actually have to do the thing that every mom, every consumer walking down an aisle is assuming that on some level what I'm buying is not going to directly harm me. And the challenge with all this, Dave, is you know, that acutely, our bodies are so resilient. Like, it's amazing. So acutely, if I'm dental flossing or if I'm drinking tap water, I'm fine, I've been fine. But you know, you don't know how great you can be and you don't know how good you can feel. If you're used to feeling a certain way, and especially when the wheels start falling off, then you just, you know, it's, you don't even know where to start at that point, because it's death by a thousand cuts. It's, it's, it's just this hit from. Yes. Even with your opening, when you're talking about all these things, there's people that are standing in the electromagnetic field space and really shouting. There's people from, you know, clothing to personal care to ultra processed food. The truth is, all of it is this quagmire of destructive behaviors. And, and all of this is affecting us. And you, you can't. You can do all you want, and we're still being affected by our air, water, food. And so this is, this is, this is where I'm going. We have to educate through it. We have to wake people up enough to create this new earth that we know is possible. And, and unfortunately, it. People, There's a lot of people that don't even want to listen to stuff like this. They don't want to know it, and that's okay. They don't have, like you said, like in the beginning, there's a bunch of people that are in the hierarchy of needs. They're just trying to find their next meal. And I get that. So let's. Us and everyone else who has the ability to tune in to something like this, you're doing pretty fricking good. So let's do something about it. Let's. Let's vote with our dollars, without a doubt. Let's avoid toxins. Let's not give our attention to all of this stuff, and let's demand these changes because we do have to clean our own environment. Starts there, number one, because clean mind, clean body, clean spirit. I now have the space to be a steward, to do more of this, to tell my community, to tell our communities to go, listen, we're not just saying this just to waste our time and for clickbait, we're actually saying this because God damn it, we need to do something different. Because when that baby's born today in our western world, it's got 200 plus chemicals in the umbilical cord. Back when they thought there's. There's a barrier, just like a blood brain barrier, nothing's gonna penetrate. Just like the digestive barrier. Nothing. All the doctors would always say that that's not true, right? So all of these barriers we thought were impenetrable are very penetrable and were affecting unborn children and existing children and dogs and pets and ourselves. And so we have to say, hey, man, listen. And I'll just say this too. I have friends in big industry that have created alternatives to PFAS today and have scaled it. And I don't know the companies because they haven't told me it's okay to say it, but large, the biggest companies are now infusing and testing those things to then have it in their packaging, to have it in there. So there's, there's hope, there's possibility. We got to turn off the faucets of some of this destructive behavior.

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In the world of biohacking, I teach people, well, the first thing to do is stop doing the things that make you weak and then do the things that make you strong. Because it's kind of dumb to, you know, go try to get stronger when you're carrying around a load of stuff that stops it from working anyway so you don't get a lot of results.

And we agree.

You talk about endocrine disruptors and heavy metals and EMFs and microplastics. These are all things that make you weak. However, even if you go live in a cave, you're still going to get some of these things. So there has to be an order of importance. So I'm going to ask you a few questions and see what you'd say. You have a choice. You can have food with glyphosate or food with pfas. Which one and why?

That is a really good question. I think that I would pro. Wow. I. I think at this point, I know so much about pfas and of course, glyphosate. I would. Oh, my God. I. I think that's a great question. I think I would choose glyphosate just because the gnarly nature of how these fluorine gases are created to create the molecules of PFAS and how strong this stuff is. Because then I go to glyphosate, I'm like, okay, if I tore my gut up and ripped it apart from. On a micro level, I can start to repair it. I can know what to do. We just don't know what to do with PFAs. So that. So I. Yeah, PFAS is harder to.

Get rid of than even glyphosate because once you rebuild all of your fascia and collagen, if you're in a no glyphosate environment and rebuild your gut bacteria, you might be okay.

Yeah. But not. Not from the alien invasion of pfas. So.

Okay, well, then here's your next one. You can have toxic metals. You can have EMFs.

What are you gonna pick toxic metals? Because I know I would know what to do and how to get rid of that, too. EMFs are invisible, persistent, and. And everywhere. So if I could create a world where we're not getting electrosensitively harmed. And the thing with the emfs is, it's so pervasive. The thing that scared me about emfs is when I saw the blood brain barrier open up in studies as a result of proximity and duration. So how.

That was like 1974 or something when that research came out, right?

Yeah, there's, I mean there's more studies now, but I, I saw one and I think it was 2017. But the first study was like a great friend of mine 30 years ago, 25 years after I met him, 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 5 years after that, he showed me the first EMF study and freaked me out. So emfs and then the proliferation of, of, of, you know, satellites and I in our ionosphere blasting down on us and we can't hide from it, we can't run away from it. If it was up to me, I'd, I'd plug back in and you know, put lines in the ground and, and do that.

So yeah, that surprises me because heavy metals are also environmentally really persistent. They're multi generational.

Sure.

And it, it does feel like, at least in your home you can be reasonably shielded from EMFs if you know what you're doing. You get EMF underwear.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, but again, I think it depends on how you ask, ask that from my home. I'm infinitely. But from a global perspective, EMFs are very, very tricky. And these are, these are great questions, but impossible because I would not, I would not consume any of it.

So of course neither you nor I, although frankly I would probably consume some EMFs because there's a lot of value to having mobile data like mobile networking.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I still use my phone. I just don't have it on in my pocket next to my balls. Right. You know, it's like same here. It's just comments, it's just, you know, listen, we gotta flip the switch of common sense with some of this stuff. And the FCC punted those studies 20 years ago. The EPA actually was doing the research in the 90s and found that the EMFs were very, very dangerous. And then as soon as the report came back, the funding left, the EPA went to the FCC and we never saw any changes based on the studies that they found and it went away. So, you know, this is something that, you know, we've got about 20% of the population now that has electrosensitivity, that's consciously aware of how it's affecting you. And I think it's only going to grow. Keep in mind, Dave, that 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G are all still here. We're just adding to the electric smog. It just keeps growing and growing. And growing.

It's almost like relying on the government to care about your health would be a really stupid move, wouldn't it?

It's stupid move again. When you look at the government does not have your back like it it is. It has failed several times over every chapter of my book from clothing to fragrances to food to EMFs. All of it had some point in there where the government should have regulated it and wasn't.

So I'm glad you said clothing because your next devil's bargain. You can have microplastics or you can have synthetic endocrine disrupting fragrances. Which one are you going to take?

I think because the fragrances took my dad down in the 90s, I would probably go with the clothing for sure.

The microplastics. You'd rather have microplastics versus fragrances?

Yeah, I think this is, this is, this is going to suck because it's going to be edited and I'm going to say I want microplastics in my balls. I.

That's a great ringtone for you. It's every time my phone rings it's going to say I want microplastics in my balls.

I've done the research and my balls are happy. So. So yeah, you know the thing around fragrances is because we have one of the most sensitive and under understood organs and all our olfactory system. Right. So back in the day when we were food selecting, when we weren't manipulating food, all mammals select their food by smelling it first because you know that the ripening was correct. You knew that your body in that bio individualization, in that moment your body knew what to do. And it was a great book 25 years ago called Gene Fit and they dove into this subject and we're the only ones that were manipulated by all of our other senses. But our olfactory is super sent and it's a gateway to the brain. So so that one and the fragrances and the undisclosed fragrance world that will not reveal the sometimes hundreds of carcinogenic compounds that goes into their proprietary blends. If you see a fragrance and there it's not telling you what it is, you want to run the other way.

Because I don't use any synthetic fragrances and I usually get an Uber black even though it's more expensive because they're less likely to have 14 little pine trees in them.

You know what Dave, let's. Can we have a, can we have a campaign for Uber and can we campaign them to not have that? Because I've turned down tons of Uber. Because of that, I can't even sit in there.

I always feel bad about this. I know how crappy it is to be an Uber driver. Uber does not, over time, take care of their drivers. And these guys are working really hard, and they don't know any better, but they're sitting in there destroying their health and their children's health with these. Sometimes you'll see 10 of these little fragrance things, and the car smells like basically one of those chemical outhouses. And I don't want to sit in there for a half hour because I protect my health, and I don't want the person to be exposed. I don't want to give them bad ratings as it takes away their livelihood. So sometimes I'll leave a little comment, but I don't even think they see it. And if they do see it, they probably give me a bad rating. So I don't know what to do about it. But if you're driving an Uber and. Or you're hearing this in an Uber, what I do is I say to the driver, just as politely as I can, I say, hey, I get a migraine from the fragrance stuff. Would you be okay just putting it in the glove box so that, you know, as we're driving, I don't have to smell it as much?

Right.

And if you do it with kindness. I've never gotten a bad rating. I have a high rating as a passenger because I like to think I'm nice, and I don't give bad ratings unless they're, you know, drunk or blind or something. So maybe that's the path. But, but like Uber, if you're listening, how about a requirement? If the car smells like poop, maybe they should wash it. They shouldn't hide it with something. That is a direct assault on my endocrine system. What do you think?

Exactly. I agree. And. And I. And it also reminds me of a very good friend, Sheila Moravati. So you know what she does? She has this nonprofit called Habits of Waste, and she's a juggernaut. And what she did with Uber Eats, and this is an example, right? So Uber eats. When you buy food, they automatically throw plastic cutlery in your. Your prepared meal. She got them to. To put a toggle. She put so much pressure on them and put a toggle on that. So only if you toggle. I want that. Then it will give it. And she saved billions of millions of pounds of unused, unnecessary plastic crap in our environment just by a button. Right? So what if we put. What if you could put. Next year Hit a button next to the Uber driver and say, no chemicals.

Like just one. But hey, I'd pay $3 more per ride for a tent. Free car Uber. There are tens of millions of chemically sensitive people. I used to be chemically sensitive when I had toxic mold and chronic fatigue syndrome. I'm generally pretty tolerant now, but I still hate it.

Yeah, so it's a, it's an assault on your system. Like you, you, you can feel it now because you're also more sensitive. So I feel abused when I smell that stuff. It's, it's just very toxic.

From a legal perspective, it's not okay for me to spray people around me with pepper spray. Okay. Because people feel short term pain, they shouldn't be allowed to spray us or expose us to these endocrine disruptors just because the pain happens over time instead of upfront. I almost wonder if there's some kind of class action lawsuit against Axe Body Spray or somebody like that. What do you think? Are you working on that?

Should be, should be, should be. I mean, these, again, these fragrances should be regulated and they're not. And they have this loophole of proprietary blends. And this is again, something that's not regulated in an assault on our, the very fat. Think about this. When we say, we say these flippant words like endocrine disruption, but what does that really mean? The whole idea of the human race is to move the race forward. Like you could drill it down to just that alone. And the fact that we are under. Undermining the very nature of our nature and not able to get. Have children as a result of the stuff we're doing is so alarming to me. So when we say things like fragrances and endocrine disruption that is leading to pcos, it's leading to, to sperm going down, testosterone going down, motility. And the, the alarming rate of infertility is just screaming at us as a society. So so many of these things are just causing such an issue. And you know, we can poke fun at this fragrance saying, but we're actually not, we're not laughing about it. It is, it is the dangerous game that we're playing. And, and I, Dude, I actually am going to call Sheila today and say, since you did this with UberEats, is there a way that we can change. I'm gonna call her.

I swear, my whole body relaxed when you said that.

Like that.

That's a signal to me that that's probably a good move.

Yeah, exactly.

And I'm serious. I will pay More for that. Just like they have handicap cars or. I don't know, maybe that's the wrong word. I'm exposing my seventh grade training. Whatever. Disability. I don't know the right word for it, but I was in a special needs class in high school. Anyway, whatever that right word is in the politically correct world we live in, people who need extra help. Yeah, I think fragrance should be one of those because I need extra help with fragrances.

I need extra help with clean air. Dave, just like you. There you go.

It's kind of funny when I'm at home, I like you. I do everything as best I can. And it turns out taking care of water is pretty easy. Have a reverse osmosis unit. We might get some microplastics from that. What do you think? Is there a microplastic problem with reverse osmosis?

If there is, it's not that much. The filters are pretty sophisticated and, and we, we are finding that you know, it, you know, the other, the other side of it is distillation, right? So distillation is that obviously it evaporates and recondenses and it's all about the, the, the total dissolved solids that are in it. So you can easily get a little meter and you can put it in there. And if, if you test that and it's between 0 and 20, the chances are you have next to nothing. True distillation is between 0 and 15 or so parts per million. So you can test it. And also it's good just to have one of those around because you should be, you know, changing your filters every six months kind of thing. But easy solution to, to change. And it's. And then use glass, a bottle, and then boom. You don't, you're not exposed. It's such a huge lift, right? You're such a huge lift that change.

The other thing that, that I'd love to chat about for listeners, it's not just water you drink A whole house charcoal and ceramic filter is not very expensive at all. And it takes out most stuff for the water with. Or the water that you put in your skin and you breathe. So my ideal setup, you have a whole house filter and then that helps you when you're taking showers and all that kind of stuff. And then you have reverse osmosis for drinking. So that, that's easy because those are one time changes. You change a filter every now and then, but that's good. And then air filters, you turn the damn thing on, buy it and leave it on forever. You got your water and your Air Done. Now all you have to do is deal with light, which you can affect easily. And then you have food. And food's the hard one, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think those, those are massive changes you can make in your indoor air quality and indoor life quality because 93% of our lives are spent indoors and our, our living areas and all the off gassing of the furnitures and the flame retardant bedding for your dogs or whatever the hell you got in there, we need to filter that, that air and also open the windows when it's appropriate based on your environment. So these are, these are great. Yeah, the whole, the home, the overall home. I mean, if I count I actually have two RO systems connected, plus my whole house filter, plus a vortexer. And it's like, you know, that's obviously overkill, but, but these are easy fixes in that indoor world. And plus, then how are you cleaning your home is a incredible way to either infect yourself more with stuff or to minimize. And one just, I'll leave people with this, you know, a third organic white vinegar, reverse osmosis water, add your favorite essential oil and you got the best cleaner in your overall house and you actually uplift and support your parasympathetic response and it's fantastic. So there's a lot of, you know, Dave, you've done this all your career, but these things just have to be aware. You have to have an awareness first, and then you can take an action. And sometimes the action's already out there because people like us have done the work for you. We've created options so that you can just go, oh, okay, I'm just gonna switch over here. And once you switch, the habit is formed. And now you don't have to worry about it. See, like, I'm probably like you. You know, I superfood, hunted around the world for 20 years. I've integrated things. I've used the best plants in the world. I've, I've, I've created a healthy world. But that was, you know, from the 90s when I was in school. I've been operating habits and implementing habits every day. So habits are our wealth out of this stuff. But if no action is taken with information, that's where things go sideways. So people shouldn't be overwhelmed by your daily routines or my daily routines. They should just go, okay, I should start with, with that damn dental floss and, and my water just.

Yeah, and food obviously make better daily routines. Don't make perfect daily routines, just improvements in the right direction. That's all it takes. And just keep doing that. It doesn't take more work once you know the right thing to do. And that's a big part of what you write about in your books and your work in the world in mind, too. Like you're going to eat something. Put the better choice in your mouth, but not the perfect choice. You don't have to. You said something, though, that kind of triggered me. Okay, not really.

Awesome.

Just wrote a book about how to not be triggered, but something I noticed.

Yeah.

You said add your favorite essential oil. Lavender is a potent endocrine disruptor that causes man boobs within six weeks of using it and should not be used on children.

Okay. Where is that study?

Oh, it's easy to find. Just ask your favorite AI or search engine. Just Google lavender. Man boobs.

Lavender man boobs. Okay. That's the first time hearing about it. But for, for me, I use lemon, I use rose oil. And you know, lavender's been lavender. When done correctly, the, the, the essence of lavender from the lavender flower has been used as the utility knife of all essential oils for, for nearly a hundred years.

Oh, no, no doubt about it. Medically, lavender is useful. Smearing out all over your kids on a regular basis might not be what you want to do.

Yeah. In fact, depends on the quality.

Obviously, it's from a website called Estrogen Free, but I'm trying to figure out which of those it is. And it's not that you shouldn't have any estrogen, but they've got a bunch of research on the site about phytoestrogens or plant estrogens and what they do. So I'm, I get concerned about smearing lavender oil on kids every single day, using it for a brief period of time. I'm all over that. So when you're like, use your, your favorite essential oil, I'm like, let's go for frankincense and myrrh, because those don't seem to have the downsides that a lavender can have.

Maybe. But, but, but also, you know that back in the day that, that study saying that tofu also had that phytoestrogen. That's a completely. And they jump to like, that's going to give you estrogen dominance and man boobs and all of that stuff, which was absolutely not true. Right. So, so when I hear phytoestrogens and I don't understand the pathway, that's where I like, listen, if it's true, it's true, but if it's not, then all of These things just, they're, they're not biochemically looked at correctly and then these flippant sound bites and so listen, I've eaten, I've eaten. I don't go out of my way to eat tempeh and tofu all the time, but, but I've eaten a ton of it. And you know, how are your kidneys?

I always look at oxalate in, in that, I'm like, oh yeah, it's one of those foods. It's better than starving to death.

Oh, come on.

No, I wouldn't touch it.

Tempeh and tofu are infinitely nutrient dense and oxalates largely upon preparation of almost any food, your oxalate level goes down or if not goes away completely. So obviously if you're eating beans with oxalates and phytic acids, the only reason you're doing that is because you're eating, then you haven't prepared them, you're eating raw and you're going to die from other things.

So yeah, I feel like you're eating those beans because you couldn't find any animals because you're a bad hunter. Or am I just missing out on that? I'm just messing with you. But I did find the study I was looking at, it was presented at the Endocrine Society's hundredth annual meeting in 2018 that showed that lavender and tea tree oil had the most endocrine disruption and that there was a link between abnormal breast growth in young boys.

So that's quite a big jump. I'd love to look at it.

Yeah, everyone here can look at it. It was niehs. They selected for analysis of eight compounds and figured out some compounds in the both of them. And then they demonstrated estrogenic or anti androgen properties, some with high, some with low. So I'm just saying, even with natural compounds, Mother nature wants to kill you too.

Well, yeah, I mean, listen, just be cautious. Dose is a poison for sure. I mean it depends on the dose. I mean, I mean, listen, like even taking an adaptogen, you know, the, the stress response in 14,000ft of maca making macamides and macamines as is compounds that affect you. When you take those in, your body has a minute stress response. But then the adaptability that's triggered is huge. Right. With all of these adaptogens. So again, dose is either the benefit or the poison. So all. There's so many nuances with all of this stuff. And, and that's where like you know, you take a test, you can find, you can find you can find MRSA and on your skin right now. Like you know, it's, it's like you, you. We have these things floating around everywhere. So you know, it's. But if my balance just as using that as example, if my microbiome is off, if my immune system is down, if I'm putting antibacterial soap on, I then actually create an opportunity for these things to proliferate. So you know, everything is so nuanced with all of this. Which is why, you know, I I prefer podcasts over over flippant, you know, stories that so many people say.

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I get a little stuck with the whole Instagram thing and TikTok. My traditional way of communicating is about 3,000 word blog posts or I read big books with scientific references. And then you boil it down to a 30 second thing on Instagram and then you get a bunch of the people going, well, where's all your references? Like, Instagram doesn't let you link out. They're destroying hyperlinking because they hate you. But that's how people are communicating. So I'm generally frustrated by it and do my best. I think you do too. But I want to get into some more of the biohacking stuff that you and I are both interested in.

Yeah.

So one side of this is, okay, what are the things in the environment that we could change so that we change our performance? By the way, that's the definition of biohacking. Change the environment around you and inside of you so you have control of your biology. So let's get into adiponectin and let's get into other compounds like it.

Oh my God.

Like maybe osmoten, which a lot of people haven't even heard of. Talk about.

Oh my God. Oh my God. I love it. So glad you brought that up. So, so, so this is a, this is, this is the thing I'm most excited about right now. And I'm working with the Italian government and some universities who've done a lot of this work. So osmotin is a compound naturally found in all plants, some higher and others. And the interesting thing, most all longevity researchers know of osmotin in plants and then these pathways of adiponectin in our body. The cool thing, and this is where I love the world, right? We have compounds in plants that we ingest and they actually support us in our health. To me, it kind of blows me away. Osmotin binds to adiponectin pathways and improves all, virtually all longevity markers in the body. So osmotin was studied and then through genetic sparking in the plant, the plants were able to make more osmotin. Now, more osmotin in the plant makes defensible plants infinitely greater. So plants become super strong. They don't need anything outside, pesticides, herbicides, all that. So that alone is amazing. But when you ingest high amounts of osmotin, it, it Turns on all these adiponectin pathways and so shit starts reversing. So there's studies today, dude, that are reversing Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia and studies. There's a, there's a phase two trial on ALS right now. And Parkinson's, like I said, and Alzheimer's, like when you have this high amount of osmotin, the body starts to perform its own healing responses. So that's really where we induce this high active compound naturally in plants and it binds to pathways in our body and our bodies start freaking healing. It's almost like when, you know, I did a lot of work around stem cells and worked with one of the godfathers of stem cells. And it was similar to like, if you support your body's inner ecosystem, your stem cell production, you can actually, you can actually toggle your own endogenous stem cells quite a bit. And that's something that most people aren't talking much about.

Is that the stem regen guys? Is that Christian Depot or someone else?

No. So this is a guy in the. So, so Dr. Henry Young was at Mercer University in the 80s. So he was a PhD researcher and he realized that everyone was looking at all these functional stem cells and there was this one stem cell that they were. Does, does it even exist? And it's called a totipotent stem cell. Dr. Kahn calls it a mu stem cell. But either way, whatever the definition, it's the stem cell that is by definition is immortal and it can turn itself into any tissue or any organ. Because most of the stem cell stuff that's going on in the last 20 years has been grabbing a bunch of stem cells that largely have already been programmed, whether it's adipose tissue or whatever. They're grabbing all these stem cells and then wondering why stuff isn't working because they don't have the right stem cell. They're not looking at the right STEM cell. So Dr. Young was able to find it circulating naturally in everybody's blood, take it out, proliferate more of that person's stem cell and put it back into somebody's body and, and everything started, started healing and, and reversing and cartilage and knees would replace itself. Heart disease would go away.

So from osmotin?

No, this was, this is stem cells. So this from stem cells, stem cell. So, so, so they are. Anyway, so I jumped to the. I got so excited about this.

I got the connection between osmotin and stem cells. Does osmotin drive stem cell release or.

There just wasn' There's Not a connection that I know of. But. But I will say this just to button up the stem cell part. The. If you take a cup of blueberries every. This is the work that Dr. Young did way back. If you, if you ate a cup of the anthocyanins from blueberries for a month, your stem cell, endogenous stem cell went up by six times. And, and then by taking blue green algae and the totipotent stem cells is. Is created in the connective tissue. So then taking blue green algae from that 30 days of blueberries would. Would circulate. This would take out. Allow the stem cells to come out of the connective tissue and start circulating. Then the body would choose the hierarchy of its need. So if you had acute injury, it would go there. If you have a chronic issue, it would go there, depending on your own body's needs. So, and then, and then you have other things that can. Stress is not good for stem cells. High amounts of caffeine is absolutely not good for stem cells. So there's a bunch of stuff. But anyway, back to the osmotin. The osmotin is this incredible breakthrough because in the labs, understanding high amounts of this adiponectin from osmotin, they realized that, oh my God, this is. But it was like, I don't know, $12,000 a gram. But when they were able 20 years ago, start to inducing it into plants, then all the, all I have some today, all they have to do then is allow those plants to continue to grow with high amounts. You let it grow, you dry the plant, you pulverize it, and you take that in. Now the chief science officer of this company, he had fourth stage Parkinson's. He called me in 2019. He put his hand up to the camera and this guy, a PhD, Dr. William Bitney, he. He had, he was a medical doctor, worked at mit, Stanford, you name it, a huge cv. And he had to retire because he had violent Parkinson's. He no longer. He will say as a medical doctor, he will, he will never say, I don't have Parkinson's. But he says, I exhibit no symptoms of Parkinson's.

Why, why would. Why do people do that? Like, oh, like I had a cold, now my cold is gone. But no, I still have a cold. I just have no symptoms of a cold. Is this a symptom of mental deficiency because of some brain damage or what?

I. It's the scientist in some people, scientists, that is.

That is a guy who learned that if he ever says anything to be true, that he might not Get a grant. Like that's cowardly behavior. Well, maybe, but Parkinson's. Own it.

Yeah, maybe, maybe. But, but he, he's a. But that.

I mean, you're not supporting my argument here.

No, I understand. I just know him and he's such a sweet guy, but I know he's such a. You know, again, he's. Yes, he's conservative. Because these guys are scientists and they're going down the path because the last thing we want to do is like come out with something and not be supported in some wicked science. So that's kind of where he comes from. But this is an incredible. This is between some of the advances with NAD that are happening that haven't been published yet and some advances in the osmoten. These things are, these things are some of the most. And I've seen a lot of freaking plants and I've seen a lot of compounds and I've been to a lot of facilities around the world. These couple things are some of the most exciting things I've seen a long time.

And one of the things that's a bummer is that no plants have that much osmotin in them.

Right.

The ones that have the most are all in the nightshade family.

Yep.

Which means they're the highest in lectins and then the next highest ones are in the most aggressive of the bean family, like fava beans, which also have lectins and usually phytic acid and usually oxalates. So it's almost like the plants that have the most plant toxins also have the most osmotin. And then there's a company that makes a supplement for it. But sadly instead of selling the supplement, it looks like they're trying to make it into a drug. Right. So you can't buy it yet. Or is there a way to buy an osmentin supplement that I couldn't find?

Yeah, you really can't buy it yet because it's all research based material. But, but that's what we're trying to solve. And I'm, I'm heavily involved in, in, in solving that. And it's just a matter of, and we've isolated how to grow it's really supply at this point too.

Okay, you're working with the people on that. Okay, good deal.

Yeah, yeah. And to your point, like, listen, like. Yeah, I mean it is a wild kingdom of, of whatever's going on with plants too. Because, but, but from my perspective, I'm not too concerned with, with lectin and oxalates. You know, I think you would be concerned if all you're eating are those things and, and, and if you have current kidney damage. I think for the most part a well balanced diet with a few of these thrown in there is nothing to worry about. But yeah, it is interesting and even tobacco has high amount, higher amounts of, of osmotin, which is interesting. Right. So you know, and that's been, that's been demonized a little bit in the chemical nature of how they've created that. And I think, I think tobacco's, there's a reason why the Native Americans use tobacco quite a bit and it was quite powerful and obviously now I like to see the nicotine support that's coming out that's cleaner and, and more effective. But I, I think dude, I, I've spent a lifetime looking at plants and I'm just blown away every day. It's, it's, it's really cool.

Does nicotine have osmentin in it? I don't think it does.

Does it not nicotine. No, not nicotine. But the, the tobacco plant.

Yeah, tobacco plant does, has.

Yeah.

So maybe I should start chewing organic tobacco instead of using the nicotine lozenge I'm doing right now. So you're telling me that I should have heavy metals instead of EMFs and I should start smoking from what I'm hearing out there. And.

What'S wrong with that, Dave? I mean, come on. No, actually I, I grow, I have, I have my little garden out here and I grow for a couple of reasons. I have, I have three tobacco plants.

You know, I did that in my, on my regenerative farm. They're great for fighting insects. Right?

Yeah, yeah, I, I, I, yeah, I, I've started too here and there and I think it's, I largely just didn't even think about it forever and then I started looking at the research there's very compelling and I started grabbing leaves and just start chewing on them. I still and listen. Admittedly so when I was playing college football right before I had a career ending back injury, I used to put a wad of just straight leaf and play play in a game. I don't know what I was thinking but I had a moment where I did that.

Are there any herbal adaptogens or other things that could raise either adiponectin or osmoten?

Not that in terms of osmotin. Osmotin is just, it's, it's, it's really the compound so the, the osmotin levels and I haven't seen in adaptogens any extra Higher in rhodiola is the highest.

I could find, but there's no dosing information on it.

What was that?

Rhodiola has the most I could find. But yeah, I. You don't take that much rhodiola. How much osmo could be in there?

I don't know. Right. You know, from my perspective, if you eat a wide variety of plants on a consistent basis, you're going to get kind of, you know, micro doses of osmotin for sure. And in terms of adiponectin. Yeah. So you're gonna turn on that pathway naturally within diversification of foods and diversification of whole plants, you know, so, so at least just in a natural level, you're, you're, Keep in mind, everyone, if you're just eating a wide variety of unprocessed whole food, you're going to get a level of osmotin and adiponectin sport.

So, like, if you eat a wide variety of unprocessed whole food, you're getting all of the wheat germ that has some good benefits and also has all of the toxins in whole wheat and relatively high oxalate load. And if you eat a wide variety of whole plant, eat the rind of the watermelon, the seeds of the cantaloupe. Like, what is whole food? It's nonsense. Like, come on. Wide variety of. Like, what does that even mean? Do you cook it? It has to be raw. Like, like the reason we cook plants is to reduce toxins. We ferment them, we process the hell out of them. In all of history, until the 70s.

I don't know, I mean, you're talking generally we don't do that with all of our plants. We only do that with the ones that we've learned.

So, like getting rid of brown rice to make it white in every rice eating country, and getting rid of the brown part of the wheat for everyone who can afford to accept the peasants.

Right, Yeah. I mean, again, I'm not so sure.

With you, but also.

Yeah, but well, again, like, I think it's, I think again, all of that stuff is blown out of proportion a bit because. Yeah. I mean, if I was taking Swiss chard, which I grow and which I eat, if I was, if I was juicing that. Listen, come on.

Like, this is fascinating.

If you're juicing that and eating that every day, that might cause you problems. But again, from a wide variety of foods on a general basis, the general healthy person is not going to be affected at all. And it's not. And also it shows to promote beneficial activity in the body as well. So. So not all of these things are, are poisonous. It's like you can look at everything and start to drill it. But again, I think the, you know, if you're looking at Swiss chard or whatever oxalate, you know, deemed any preparation of those things, like I don't eat raw Swiss chard, I saute it. And then 65 to 70% of those oxalates are, are gone anyway.

So here's a, here's a thought for you. Pathology outlines studies. What do they find in dead people? 79% of normal appearing thyroids at autopsy have oxalate crystals and it increases with age.

I haven't seen that study.

You want me to send it to you? It's on Springerlink.

Sure. Okay. Say the study again.

It's 79 of normal appearing thyroids at autopsy have oxalate crystals under 10 years old. There's no crystals over 70 years old. It's 85% prevalence.

And from what population, from where?

What I think is going on here is that we may have lost some of our gut bacteria that helps us get rid of these.

So without a doubt, we've lost a lot for sure within the microbiome.

I'm going to post this here too. And AJ Producer AJ Will you put this in our show notes as well? And I'm not like, I'm not a takedown, you know, be a, you know, debate. I'm just curious about learning. And you could be like, oh, that doesn't matter and it's caused by metabolic whatever or they all have xylitol, I don't know. But like, I'm asking questions because I'm genuinely curious and because I've known, I've noticed that when I learned how to modulate the amount of this I get from plants, that all of the musculoskeletal pain that I've had my entire life went away. I'm like, okay, that's kind of a big deal.

Well, again, you know, you know this. It's so I've gotten humbled over the years of everything is so complex. And that. You brought up a very good point. The microbiome, if, if it is you and I, because we probably eat a little differently, if you and I were sitting down eating the same meal. I'm uptaking a lot more from probably the plants in my Swiss chard than you are because my microbiome has adapted to those foods and that has taken some time. So right or wrong that you can be Eating the same amount of food. You can be eating exactly same amount of food. And what your microbiome is ingesting and pooping out and transforming and transmutating is all based on. Then that nutrition and information is absorbed into your body. Because it's not the food that's going directly to your body, obviously, it's your food going to the microbiome, and the microbiome's going through that food, and then it's, then it's transferred into the body. So this is so goddamn complex that I always take. Again, I don't mean to be flippant with the diversification of food. I just really mean that. And I have practiced that in my life. And again, I'm not suggesting anyone would eat raw beans or, or eat Swiss chard from the. And just have Swiss chard smoothies every day. Like, like, yeah, like, that's just a dumb idea. Anyway, we're aligned on that.

Yeah, I know we're coming up on the end of the show, and I, I, I think your work is, is fantastic. You and I probably will never agree on Swiss chard. I'll eat it if I'm starving to death.

I don't even eat it that much, but it's fun.

Yeah, right. But, like, it doesn't matter if we agree on that or not that. So I, I deeply appreciate the work you're doing, both on the environmental side and on the nutritional side and just paying attention to this. What are the toxins we can eliminate? Your website is superlife.com you work with nucalm, n u c l m.com and fatal conveniences is your book. And I, yeah, I appreciate the conversation very much. It's been super fun.

Yeah, man. Stoked. Stoked to, to bat the ball around a little bit.

Oh, yeah, this is great. And I will start smoking after this interview. Thank you. Not really. All right. Have a wonderful day, my friend.

Thanks, brother.

See you next time.

On the Human Upgrade Podcast.

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