Your Genetics but Better with DNAFit : 545

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 people with a variation of the CYP1A2 gene metabolize caffeine more slowly. And if they drink more than a couple cups of it, they have a higher risk. And fact number two, the ACTN3 gene influences your muscle fiber type. The more fast twitch muscles you have, the lower your capacity to burn fat, which is one reason sprint and power athletes tend to be a little bulkier than endurance runners. Among the six DNA variants that influence your heft, the most critical is called the FTO gene. And you may also have different genes. If you're redhead, that makes you more tolerant of certain types of pain than other people. And you might require way more painkiller than people who are not redheads. So genes do a lot of cool stuff. And the reason I'm bringing all this up is my new book, Game Changers, where I've distilled the knowledge from more than 450 interviews on the show into a set of 46 laws for high performers, which you can order now. And I would ask you, if you love the show, please support the show by picking up your copy of Game Changers online. Now, one of the laws in there is called track to hack. And the idea is that if you want to change something about the way your biology performs, the way your body serves you, the way you show up in the world, you might want to measure it, because then you'll know what to do and you'll know whether what you're doing is working. And because I am almost now a certified master of the art of foreshadowing, you can imagine we're going to talk about data, we're going to talk about what you can track and some really, really cool new things. And I'm going to tell you about the results of my test with a company called DNAFit. And I'm going to be interviewing an Olympic athlete who actually helped us start the company, which is a really cool way to look at not just what genes do you have. I've actually got my full human genetic everything you can do without any distillation or filtering a whole profile. It's a giant binder full of data that isn't that useful. And this is a much more nuanced view that let me confirm some things I'd already figured out through trial and error and also gave me a few other new ideas.

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Andrew Steele is the Olympian who's coming on the show and I'm live with him in Los Angeles today along with Avi Lazaro, who's the founder of DNAFit. Andrew is a retired Olympic track and field athlete who represented Great Britain for 12 years and has been part of national teams at European, Commonwealth, World and Olympic levels. So basically he's a guy who's Kicked a lot of ass and now has zoomed in on. Okay, what do genes do for this? Andrew, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Yeah, really happy to be here.

All right, you placed fourth in the 4 by 400 meter relay team in Beijing in 2008, and what happened after that?

I placed fourth at the time, and just recently that fourth actually got turned into third. So we finished fourth in the relay behind a. We had a Russian team who some eight to nine years later, were embroiled in the Russian doping scandal. Basically, they retrospectively were banned. And I was quite happily, after I retired from the sport, competitively upgraded to become an Olympic medalist nine years after I actually ran the race. So in 2017, I got an Olympic medal for a race I ran in 2008. So now I can. Yeah, I quite happily changed my social media bio to Olympic medalist as opposed to just Olympian, and actually got the physical thing as well. So quite a nice ending to my career, actually.

We're going to zoom in on what you've learned as an Olympian about your performance levels and about what works and what doesn't work. And eventually I want to know what you learned that you hadn't already figured out as an athlete. But first, I want to talk a little bit about what it's like to be an Olympic athlete. More about mindset and a body awareness.

So I say, like, you know, a lot of sports people, they come into the sport like super young. Like, they're really, really early in their life. And so you tend to. It's only once you actually leave the sport where I can really sort of zoom out and look back at the lessons that it taught me, what I, what I gained from the sport when I was, was actually doing it. And I think, you know, you take. I took a lot of stuff for granted that actually I was like, pretty excellent at a very specific task, and I was pretty sort of able to travel the world and perform this task, really elite level. And it's only now sort of, I'm a few years out of actually, you know, calling myself a competitive athlete that actually really, I can look back at sort of what I learned there. And I think the key for me is that you as an athlete, you end up sort of just being so invested in your performance at work, as it were. So it's your job. And I think the emotional, the physical investment you have to do for one single, like, piece of time, which is so small, you know, like, I would run for hopefully under 45 seconds, and that's what would matter. And that would define whether my previous four years were successful or not. And you absolutely have to nail it on that day. And the sort of the. The awareness that you have to have of working towards a goal and having a number of process goals along that route, even if you took them for granted at the time, is so extreme. And there's something like, I think, you know, we can probably all try and apply in daily, if we can.

How. How did you know what to eat when you were training with.

With difficulty. Right. So a lot of athletes, I think, were a lot more talented than me. Naturally talented, like, born just better at the thing. And I was always thought of myself as, actually, I have to work harder than the next guy to be there. And one of those factors was I found very early in my career, when I was about 18, that I was a bit chubby for. For Olympic athlete. I was a little bit, you know, bit too high body fat. Percent.

Yeah, me too. 300 pounds.

Yeah. So, you know, like, I wasn't naturally lean. Like, I wasn't naturally. Just this guy in shape. And so I actually enlisted a nutritionist pretty early in my life, and I was kind of ahead of the curve. So I ate pretty low carb for an elite athlete. And I remember sitting back in 2008, you were doing that. Yeah, yeah. And before. From 2003, actually.

Okay.

And that really wasn't. It wasn't trendy at the time? No, no, it really wasn't.

It made people mad.

Thankfully, I had this great nutritionist who. Who sort of, you know, got me on top of that.

So you hired an expert. Exactly. A lot of Olympians now, I think, do that, or they get access through their. Their countries and their team. But it wasn't data driven. It was. You had the opinion of the person you worked with or like, did you measure, I have more energy. I'm faster today. Or was there an awareness that you got from this? Or was this pretty much whatever the expert tells me.

So there's an element of trust. Absolutely. This guy had a good track record, and he's a good.

Did you say track record?

Yeah. No. You did that. His background's in rugby, actually. So a pitch record. Right.

So.

But actually, of course, the beauty of competitive sport is you get the most definitive data, which is, did you get faster or not? And that's. And that's really all that matters. And that's quite interesting because in normal life, it's not quite as clear.

Sometimes those metrics, there was some guesswork. You hired someone who's an Expert. And then you test it, you'd run and you'd see what would work. And that takes a very long time. And then when it came time even for what sort of training to do, there's. Well, this is what we've done since the original Olympics in Athens 2,000 years ago, or whenever it was, you know, it evolves a little bit. But did you follow the same process there?

No, no. So really, like the trial and error was hard work. Right. So this is, you know, you've got four years for one Olympics, four years to the next. So basically when we, you know, if I sort of look back over my sort of time as an athlete, I had two shots of success. So basically I had four years running to Beijing, four years running up to London 2012, the home Olympic Games. And the moment came for me, when I look back at it now, when I didn't necessarily have enough data about who I was, enough, enough sort of personal metrics, if you will, was that after the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, I did quite well there and there was a. There was a conversation to be had about how do I get better, how do I get to London 2012 in four years time and get half a second quicker? So literally, like half a second quicker. Like, that's all I need to do. And one of those things was actually, I need better understanding. I need to change to sort of the average advice. I need to say everybody else at the top level, they do it this way, you do it the other way. You should switch to the way they do it. And that was the decision made at that time, basically.

So you and I and Avi, who's in the room but not on a mic right now, Avi lassro, the DNAFit CEO, we all did our DNAFIT tests in preparation for this and with this data, if you were still competing, it looks like I'd kick your ass.

Well, we can try it out after. Sure.

So it's interesting. So your recovery speed was average, your trainability of VO2 max was average. Likely to be injured. Low response to fat. So you can eat fat. Doesn't do anything. Super high response to carbs. You metabolize caffeine like a boss and you shouldn't be having milk because it makes you poop on yourself.

Yeah, so. So, I mean, yeah, those are all.

Useful to knows now.

Sounds great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, so let me zone in on one. You know, you mentioned the act and 3G before. Let me zone in on this and my story there. So generally Consider the top level for 400 meter training. They say you should train like a sprinter, like a 200 meter runner who does some endurance on top of like you should be a sprint guy. And I didn't do that. I was in the old fashioned way. I had an old school coach and from Manchester in the north of England where we meant to be salt of the earth grafters and just do lots of work.

Right, right.

And it worked for me to Beijing. But afterwards when we said, hey, fuse, get faster, you need to do what everybody else does, that basically didn't work. And I went from number one in the UK in 2008 and I went downhill over the next four years and actually missed out on making the team for the home Olympic Games for London 2012.

Whoa.

So it was a big, big, big issue.

So the do what works wasn't what was supposed to work. Like the story of my life.

Yeah. Like the correct advice in inverted commas that you know, might be fine for every, for a lot of people, but it.

Did you say inverted commas? That's so British.

Well, I am British.

Those are called quotes here in the.

West in quotes, in quotation marks. The correct advice was incorrect for me. And it took me eight years to find that out, actually, you know, four years and then four years to London 2012. And only at that time, just after I dealt with the pain of missing out on London 2012, somehow Avi found me and sent me a swab of this new technology that he started this business around, looking at exercise and genetics and nutrition and genetics. And I was like, okay, well cool. I need some answers at this point in my career. What can I learn from this? And one of the big things that stood out for me was there's this ACTN3 gene. And a certain variant of this gene is present in basically every Olympic level sprinter there has ever been. 99% of Olympic level sprinters have the C version of this ACTN3 gene, so CC or CT genotypes. And I didn't have it. I was the tt.

So you were sprinting without the sprinter gene?

Basically, yeah, yeah.

If you'd have known you didn't have the gene from your DNA fit profile, would you have picked a different sport?

Far from it. No, very much not. And that's the. I think that's the key is that people think of genetics, that it's going to be like your destiny.

What you can, you can't be.

No. Like there's no basis for this. It just like there wouldn't be a basis for making your goal decision just on another metric. This is one of the metrics that you use to help you reach that goal rather than change the goal itself.

But you could have changed how you trained if you'd have known that or.

Validated the training that I was doing first, which was the wrong way. Right. You know, so, so basically like the, the on average advice was more applicable for me as a result of a few genetic factors.

ACTN3 included the, the results we got on our DNAFit profiles. And it's interesting. I'm 55% power, 45% endurance. You're 52% power, 48% endurance. That's why I said I could kick your ass at 3%. Right? But Avi here, man, I mean, he's like a total wuss. 10% power and 90% endurance. I mean, I could pick up the bear that was chasing us and just throw him back. But you'd be running longer than I would. But I'd sprint faster than you. Right, but here's my question before you yell at me, you have probably the biggest biceps in the room. So you don't look like one of those endurance string beans. What's going on with that? If I look at your jeans and I looked at you and your T shirt, I'm not sure that it matches what's happening here.

Well, I think you have genetics and you have environment. Of course, that's the key message. And in the UK you have a very famous athlete, Mo Farah, who's a 5,000 meter runner. He's become a sir recently, I think, just because of his work to the sport. But actually not many people realize he has a twin brother. And the twin brother is an engineer and no one ever talks about him or even knows about him. And I think that just hones into the point that genetically, some people, yes, are better. But environment actually plays a very important role. In Mo Farah's particular instance, he had the right environment, but actually his brother didn't. And I think just to emphasize what Angela was saying, you know, genetics isn't everything. It's definitely part of the picture. But knowing what we know now is so important. And Dave, you know, you talk about my 90%, 10%, I guess, split in terms of power and endurance. That's a really, really important metric. And as a company, last year we were invited to, this year, in fact, we're invited to Buckingham palace to pick up an award, the Queen's Award for Innovation, because that particular metric is the only validated algorithm that a genetic testing company has ever done where they combined genetics with an exercise intervention. And that's really, really important. So to just give you a quick rundown on what that is, we took a cohort of approximately 100 people and we put them onto an intervention once we understood their genetics. And with the two measurements, one was a counter movement jump to measure explosive power and the other was an aerobike test to measure, I guess, endurance. And what we found is put these people into two separate sort of cohorts. Exactly. Put them on a 12 week intervention. And after the 12 weeks we remeasured those individuals and we found that the ones that were matched to that award winning algorithm actually had three times the performance increase than the ones that didn't. And that was remarkable for us as just really changing sport. But we're talking about sport here because of course Andrew is a medalist and we work with a number of sports people and teams and such where we making a big difference to the game and different sports. But ultimately these are things that every day consumers can do to get benefits out of, for example, in this case their training regime. So why would I go to the gym and do things that don't work for me when I can clearly get biceps like these by doing things that do work for me and stuff like that? Right? Because I'm very busy, like you are. Time is everything and you want to make sure that what you do, you do well and you make sure you get results. And what we're learning now through the acceleration of research in the world of genetics is by applying the right learnings that we find from genetics to whatever you're doing can optimize the outcomes. Another small example. You know, you talk about lactose intolerance. I mean, I'm pleased to say I've arrived here very safely today. And what I mean by that is for years I'd get on a plane and blimey, my fellow passengers like myself, were uncomfortable as a result of myself. And I could never find out what that was. And this is a confession here, of course in openness, but actually. So over the years I started eating fruits and ordering fruit platters for the plane so I wouldn't have the unknown outcomes of what could happen.

And ultimately, I love this British politeness.

I'm having so much fun here.

Can you just say the word fart for me really quick?

Fart. Yes, he did it. And I don't share the story with many people, but it's a very relevant one because ultimately when I understood that I had a lactose intolerance issue through, you know, genetically. And that one small piece of information really changed everything. And, you know, it really has changed everything. And ultimately, that's an example of, you know, lactose. We talk about the power endurance stuff, how you can optimize your outcomes of your training, but actually, as the research continues to accelerate, we find so much more and we can do so much more with that to apply to our lives, to get better outcomes.

It is profound just knowing one little thing like that. And for me, I had dozens of things that I wanted to tweak because I didn't start biologically very strong with the arthritis and all the gut problems and things like that. Turns out I'm not lactose intolerant, but there's a bunch of other things that messed up my gut, and I'm more tolerant to them now than I used to be. But I had the similar problem on airplanes. You did. In fact, I'm going to confess this on there as well. Coming back from Heathrow one time, I had such a bad mismatch between what I ate and what I should be eating that there was a passenger five rows behind me who started screaming every time I would fart. Thank you. I was going to try and say fart with the right accent, but you nailed it for me, just right. So this actually did happen to me. And if you are the guy who was screaming, thanks for waking up my baby, man. I really appreciate it. Now, on that note, I'm saying that because if you can cut out the learning cycle, which, from an Olympic athlete perspective, you're looking at years of, well, this works, but you don't see the results. And for me, I'm lazy and I'd rather just do the thing that's most likely to work and then tweak from there instead of just guessing or doing what that one guy said. And when I got my DNAFIT results, I'm actually pretty stoked where you guys are saying, I'm highly trainable on VO2 max. I recover fast. And some pretty interesting capabilities here. But I was also interested in that you go pretty heavily on the diet side, and you look at things like carbohydrate sensitivity, and you're looking at genetics, not necessarily gut bacteria or something like that. And you're not looking at blood sugar levels, which is how we normally do this, which change 20 minutes after you eat. They're very different than two hours after you eat. And it's not that reliable of a marker other than fasting insulin. So you're saying, well, what is your genetic predisposition? So if you eat carbs all the time, are you likely to get messed up from that? How do you know from a carbohydrate sensitivity thing whether someone's high or low carb?

So basically all of us, our entire experience as humans is built on this interaction between how we're born and what we do. So our environment, our choices, our lifestyle. And there's a static part to that. There's our genetic component. We're very used to, like you mentioned, looking at a lot of those variable bits. So the, you know, your blood markers might be looking at your weight, your heart rate variability, any other of these bits which change quite regularly. But we only ever traditionally made, like, an assumption on the static part. I think I'm built a bit more this way, or I assume this is the right sort of area for me. So what we're doing is just shining a light on that nature part of this nature, nurture and sort of interchange and everything has both factors. But what we're doing is saying, let's consider the static part so we can better personalize and tweak the variable parts here. And so, you know, your carbohydrate sensitivity has many. There's many factors about how you respond to carbs. When it comes to the genetic part, there's a selection of genetic variants there which have a role in the way we assimilate glucose from our food, et cetera. And so what we're doing is, let's just say, here's you. This is how you are from the static part. Now you can integrate that into your life. Where we traditionally would only look at the variable parts.

It's that definition of biohacking, which. Yay. Now it's an official word in the English language. Thank you. Merriam Webster's this year.

Well done.

Well done. What you can do is you can change the environment around you so that you have control of your biology. So even if your genetics say that you're highly sensitive to carbs, you can probably blunt that. And in my case, I was medium sensitive. But I think you were highly sensitive to carbs, right?

Yeah, I was a very high response to carbs.

And so that means that if you're not exercising or taking chromium or vanadium or eating fiber or fat with your carbs, et cetera, et cetera, you're more likely to get a blood sugar spike and then a crash.

That's right, yeah.

And so knowing that, knowing what blood sugar spikes do for aging and Alzheimer's, and all that. You probably ought to eat ice cream instead of sorbet because the fat would slow down the absorption of the sugar. I'm actually serious.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. You need that fat content there especially. I'm a lower responder to fat as well. Right. So, you know, let's, let's get a bit more fat in there, balance that out. And as an, even as an athlete, you know, like you would think that you would know what was the right advice, but we didn't. And I needed this. You know, like that's, that's the, that's.

The learning there, there's definitely some humans. I'm not even just going to talk about athletes because there was just a study that said being a CEO took as much energy, I think it was even calories, as being an NFL quarterback. In other words, people who are performing at a certain level, if you know these numbers, you could say, do I need a honey stinger high fructose corn syrup injection pack or should I just take a big bite of butter? Okay, not really. You'd probably use brain octane, but you know what I'm saying, like there's a big variance in there. So you could probably be guided as to how you're going to best respond to fuel during an intense day or an intense event. Is that how you can use this data?

Yeah. So I mean it's tempting to think of this as like, oh, this is just something really at this kind of high achiever, elite level. But actually the people that are even more confused and don't have as much guidance as earlier on in that journey, it's not their job to be an elite athlete and they need a little bit more help because the evidence sources that they currently would consume is what did my friend do? What did I read recently?

Here's the thing. I think that having been an obese person and I think that everyone works really hard at what they do. So if you're working an eight or ten hour day and you have an hour commute home and you have kids at home and chores and maybe a second job and all that, you are actually pushing your limits in the same way that a pro athlete's pushing their limits. And I think people don't get respect for that. And so then it's like, look, how did I move the limits out if what I put in my body when I am taxed? And you just may be taxed, you just got home and you're tired and mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy, come play with me. That is a serious Energetic crisis. I want to show up for this. It's important to show up for my kids. I'm not showing up. I'm not fueled. Right. So knowing this stuff is actually going to be as valuable at that. When you hit your wall, just the wall is different for a pro athlete, but the wall is there for everyone every day, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. And I think you've got to think of this as like, there's really interesting research around increased adherence to change when you know genetic data as opposed to not knowing it. So breaking out of this average advice, there's so many general advice which we've been given for a long time, but people can't stick to it. They can't engage in that. So how do you engage in these healthy habits? And a much better reason to eat more broccoli than the next person is to say, well, actually I don't generate this enzyme genetically, so I need to get this enzyme from somewhere else. And one of the reasons I'm going to do that is because I've understood how I'm made here. Rather than just saying it's good for me.

I look at everything that I do and everything I recommend from an ROI perspective and the I, the return on investment, the I can be dollars, but it's actually much more time and energy. It's free to meditate, but if it takes three hours a day to meditate for 10 years to get a difference, the ROI on meditation is no good. And it doesn't take that fortunately. But for something like this, the return is exceptionally high. If you figure out I don't have this enzyme, if I take it, the quality of life can be different for 50 or 100 years. What is the I though on the DNAFit test? What does it cost to get the, this, this volume of data?

So, I mean, you know, thankfully, thanks to the genetic technology and, and the lab process becoming just the price of that. Just come down and down, down to do this profile as, you know, like 15 years ago, you've been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, yeah, yeah. So suddenly the investment is very small. So we go from like $49 if you've already got genetic data via 23andMe or via Ancestry DNA and, you know, up to $99 if you need to get like a kit.

But $49 isn't your normal price. That's for Bulletproof listeners. It's DNAFit.com Bulletproof is where people go, all right, so I didn't say that earlier on in the Show. Sorry about that. So if you decide you want to do this. DNAfit.com bulletproof and a kit is a spit. You spit in a tube.

Not even that, just a rubber swab on the inside of the cheek. So even easier, right? So the investment is so easy, such a low barrier there to get into this. And you have this data for the rest of your life.

That's a really high return on investment. And it goes back that track to hack. This is something that the highest performing people have been on, the show that they generally agree on, is that if you're going to improve something, you should get the data. So I would say for anyone listening who's thinking about improving something, diet, exercise, supplementation, et cetera, et cetera, knowing your predispositions here and also that they're not written in stone can give you a head start. And if this was $20,000, I'd be like, yeah, right. But it's a relatively small amount of money and I recommend this idea. You guys told me something that I was pretty excited about. I've known for a long time that one of the problems with the standard American diet and with Paleo is, is burning the crap out of your meat. And in the bulletproof diet, I talked about the compounds that are made, how they make you older, how they increase cancer risk, and how you might want to maybe turn that heat down a little bit and not have that caramelized charred crust on your steak. It's not a good thing. But you actually go through here and say genetically, whether you're more or less likely to be able to burn the crap of your meat and not die from cancer. How do you do that?

That's right. Yeah. So the Same enzymes are CYP1A2, that plays a role in caffeine metabol. Metabolism also plays a role in what's called phase one detoxification. And this is basically how quickly you metabolize. Let's say that input is char, grilled meat, seared meat rich in PAH and HCAs, which can be potentially toxic in excess. If you metabolize those, they're probably not.

Good in any level.

No, yeah, yeah, for sure.

They're never beneficial. But the more you get, the worse they are. Right?

Yeah. So the richest source of those, and if you've got so much of those that actually that's a buildup. If you're a fast metabolizer, that buildup is more pronounced. So you're getting an excess of these potentially sort of toxic compounds there through your phase one liver Detoxification on a chronic basis. So in your case, you're the fast metabolizer of that, which is actually the higher risk. So it's saying, like, this is why you need to be particularly careful compared to the next person.

It's counterintuitive because you would think if you metabolize things quickly, you wouldn't have a problem here. Why is it backwards like that?

So the best way I always put this is imagine you've got a trash can, and if you fill up that trash can really quickly with garbage, it ends up overflowing. You've got these garbage bags hanging around.

Oh, kind of like our oceans, right?

Yeah, yeah, there you go. That's right.

Yeah.

So. So your phase one liver is like our oceans filling up with this garbage day.

We got to fix that, guys. By the way, I'm working on it.

So that. So that's. That's exactly the process. Euc. Fast metabolizer. But turning the metabolism of that into its harmful waste products, basically. So we need to either do something to change the nature of that garbage that we're putting in the trash can, or we need to put less garbage in the trash can overall, and that's by reducing that consumption of char grilled seared meat below the average guidelines.

Now, I figured this out through trial and error. I'm like, okay, if I eat X, do I have lots of energy or less energy? And I tracked it just obsessively over years just to figure out, why do I have brain fog? What are all the variables that are there? Fortunately, my background is computer science and something called event correlation and a subset of artificial intelligence called decision support systems. So I was well trained to do this, developed a bodily awareness and came up with a set of principles. But when I looked at the PubMed biology, I couldn't find anything that said HCAs are good for you or PAHs are good for you. And so it's true that as a fast metabolizer, your risk levels go up. But if you're a normal metabolizer and you also reduce the amount you eat, do you still get benefits?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a case of like, say, well, okay, the average guideline is here, but where do you need to deviate from that? As in, where do you need to pay even higher priority, like, place a bigger importance on that?

So what that means in practical advice is that if. And you're not a fast metabolizer too, are you?

I am, yes.

All right. Are you as well?

Yeah, same gene. Yeah, yeah, same gene.

Yeah. Okay, so we all have that. So let's pretend that one of us doesn't. So we sit down at a table and there's bacon that's way overcooked. And longtime listeners, people have read the bulletproof diet. Bacon can be a religious experience and pretty good for you if it's cured properly from a healthy pig and it's not burned. So we're talking like the dark crispy bacon that's completely just bad for you. Now there are things where we could choose to cheat. I have a medium carbohydrate sensitivity and I'm actually in real life, I'm perfectly insulin sensitive, so I can handle sugar. But anyway, so now there's some kind of sugary whatever and there's some bacon. And based on this knowledge, I could actually say, you know what, that sugar is going to cause advanced glycation end products. But I really wanted it versus the overcooked bacon where for me it's going to be extra toxic. So this is a way of teasing out what is your personal kryptonite. Right. Just saying. All right, I know this is going to make me weaker than average. So this really isn't part of my food pattern. Do you do other stuff like that in your own life now?

Yeah. So it's like a risk benefit analysis with everything. So, you know, hey, if you really want to eat this high sugar food, you know, okay, well I really want that thing, so I'm going to eat it.

Right.

But if you're like, well, actually do I mind if I don't have this bacon which is overcooked here? And I know that for me particularly having that repeatedly with my genetic data is going to cause an increased risk of a pretty serious health condition rather than this sort of one time approach. So that's how we, that's how we use this. Just like put this into the picture. Integrate how you're made your static genetic profile into your decision making. And sometimes you will eat that overcooked bacon, I'm sure. But if you know that that's a higher priority for you to be aware of and take care of more than the next person, then that's a really good motivator to keep hold of that change. Whether you're. Your goal is actually, hey, I want to win an Olympic medal or it's just that I just want to live well and for a very long time. So it's just integrating this into the decision making process.

So would you consider the DNA fit profile results something that you would use in maybe an Aggressive anti aging plan to live to at least 180 like I am.

Well, you can use this in any realm of life, basically. So it's been used by professional sports people. It's been used by absolute beginners when it comes to like just I want to work out or I want to eat better. People are confused, like their motivation's fragile. And so we're saying let's understand and avoid this trial and error. Let's get better at this.

How long are you going to live anyway?

Well, probably seen as you're looks like your genetics, you might get a few years extra on me, Dave. But also I'll aim for like 160 maybe.

Let's race.

Yeah, okay, let's go.

But it's actually, it's actually a real serious question. And I know I'm putting on the spot. No one likes to talk about death, but you've been a pro athlete but now you know a lot about your DNA and you doubtless get access to extra analysis that people didn't like. That I probably didn't get in my results because you have geneticists and labs and you can do whatever you want. I know because, well, I have a neuroscience lab where I do that for my brain. I know stuff that people don't normally know. So given all that stuff and given how you live and all that stuff, I mean, realistically, 160 is a great answer, but do you think you have a chance of breaking 100? Yeah, I do.

And I actually think my sporting career probably shortened my. Which it does with elite sports people. Now I'm trying to live in a much more sustainable, healthy way than actually my elite sport career got me to. So I do want to live for that. And I'm sure Avi's trying to beat me as well and get over 162.

Or beyond that by far. Right. So I think what's really important just to communicate is that genetic research is moving at such a rapid pace and what we find in is in all aspects of who we are. How we operate is based on genetics. Right. And I think that in the next 10 years more and more is going to come out which is going to help us make the tweaks that need to be made to live longer. So companies like 23andMe, who we have an API connection with and you can connect your results into our system. These guys are spending $90 million a year just on their marketing. Similarly, Ancestry.com is doing the same. It's spending $150 million a year. And what that's doing is it's helping the industry, it's helping people understand the power of genetics. And as the research therefore accelerates and comes out, people are going to make those changes because genetics, by virtue of the power of this marketing that's happening in the background, is going to become a de facto standard, everyday thing. So to answer your question, I think we'll all be living a lot longer. And it definitely starts with the blueprint of who you are, and that's based on genetics.

That is a powerful answer. But specifically for you, it's got to be 180. 180. For real. You think you can do it?

Sincerely, I haven't even thought about that until today. But I do know for sure that if you pitch in at 160 and you definitely are a man, that's in the know of. Sorry. 180. 180.

These are American years. They're a little bit shorter than British years.

But certainly, but certainly as someone who has the depth of knowledge of always additional parameters, I think that we're going to have to align ourselves to yourself, Dave.

Here's the thinking on that. And a lot of people are like, oh, that's sensationalist. No, here's the deal. The three of us on Bulletproof Radio day, we have more knowledge about our biology than anyone in all of human history had, even going back five years ago. So we can make better choices. And we're in a position where. And this isn't fair, and we will change the world so that it becomes fair, where we can choose quality food if we just stop making crappy food. And that's my job with Bulletproof Disrupt Big Food. But if we get there, and so right now, not everyone can do that, but we can. So we can choose the right food, we can get enough sleep, we can drink clean water, we can do stuff like that. We know people who make it to 120, more than 1, so that's possible. And they didn't have the advantage of the knowledge we have. So 120 now, between now and the next 60 or 80 or 100 years. I'm pretty sure, given that I interview these people and I know them off camera, I'm taking stuff that extends rat lifespan by 93%. That's kind of an interesting thing. Maybe I'm not a rat, but I'm pretty sure I only need 30% from that. I know the technologies are coming. I was just at the XPRIZE Foundation. So if we can't get another 50% in all this time, Then it's because something really bad happened in the environment or something. Otherwise it's just going to happen. It's not going to be just us here. It's going to be hundreds of millions of people who are able to do this because the cost of these things are going to drop just like the cost of cell phones did. So everyone hears this goes, oh, it's not for me. No. If you're listening to this, the odds of you knowing your name and not needing a walker when you're 90, it's much higher. The way you get there now is you get the data, follow the advice. In Game Changers, which is not an anti aging book. It's a book about what people who perform better do. But the people who perform best, they track what they're improving. DNAFIT is about tracking these very basic things about what you put into your body, what you do with it. I think that is going to give me, having this knowledge, another little bit of a bump just to let the new technologies come in. I'm pretty serious about that. I really do think that those of us here in the room can do that. But everyone listening, maybe you won't live as long as 180, but your quality of life will be massively higher. But if you don't do this stuff now, you might just miss out if you're too far gone before the latest innovation comes in. I know from having been old when I was young, from having run an anti aging nonprofit group. Reversing aging is actually hard, and I'm doing it now on some variables, but it's terribly expensive and difficult and sometimes painful, but not doing it in the first place because you didn't eat meat you couldn't detoxify because now you have your data from DNA fit, not exercising in a way that breaks you because you're not genetically meant to do that. And knowing you have a genetic need for more B vitamins than the average person. So you take them and knowing you have this is. By the way, I'm going through my results. You have more Omega 3 requirements. So you take those because that's what your body wanted. But it didn't come with an instruction manual. I just fundamentally believe, okay, we're talking 49 bucks to know these things. And frankly, I'm going to forget a third of these. But the other 2/3 I'll probably incorporate. It's high value, low friction. It just makes sense. And that's why it's an inflammatory question about how long you're going to live. Because no one wants to face mortality, but I think you guys can do it because you have an unfair advantage.

I think we're definitely aligned and more importantly, I think as a company, we play a role in actually take that mission more forward. And how we're doing that is integrating, for example, bloods. We're integrating microbiome and we're looking at the data behind your genetics, together with blood, together with microbiome and your environment. And I think with what our mission has become, I think we'll use that data to help people like ourselves to live longer, stay healthier, and ultimately live a happier life as a result.

So there's a dark side to this. You're not going to like me asking you, but I have to ask you, in the interest of watching out for our listeners best interests, does MKUltra, the CIA and all the other bad people, including the Darth Sith, have access to all of our genetic information?

And we love the topic of data. And the reason why I do too, actually. You know, as a company, we are one of the few genetic companies which are accredited to something called ISO 27001, which is the international framework standard for data information security. So one thing we take very seriously is who has access to data, how it gets handled, where it goes and where it flows. And most importantly, our customer's data really belongs to them unless they've given us specific permission to do something with it at a point in time.

So your customer's data belongs to them. Okay, so that puts you more in the realm of like an Apple perspective where Apple's like, I'm sorry, I can't respond to your subpoena because I can't access my customer's data because it's their data. So you have that mindset. It's very different though than some of the other genetics companies that are out there who say they own your data and they're selling it like crazy to pharmaceutical companies without compensating, without permission and things like that. What do you think is going to happen when you put on your 20 year down the road hat and now I've got biomonitoring stuff from the Xbox in my house that could read my pupil dilation, stupendous amounts of data and I'm going to want to be able to stitch it all together and I want to have this. I don't want my insurance company to necessarily have that. Or maybe I do. What does the world look like when we have 10,000 times more data about ourselves in 20 years than we do Today. And that number is actually a real number.

Yeah, well, I mean, certainly as long as you're in control of your own data and the companies that you give your data to or you undertake testing with, for example, it's very clear on what they do with your data, I think that's fine. And you decide what you're going to do with it and how you're going to use it. And if you give permission to Xbox, Microsoft to use that to give you access to a system of some sort, then if you've made that decision, I think that's okay. In terms of insurance, however, I think people have always thought that insurers could use genetics for a negative pre selection of your policies and such. But actually that's quite a potential positive area because insurers want to have different conversations about genetics and managing your health as opposed to actually adjudicating your policy based on your health. So I think generally it's going to go in a real positive direction as long as the companies are responsible for how they work with you and your data.

I'm really encouraged that DNAFIT has the perspective that I own my data. It pisses me off when someone takes my lab data and my other stuff like my birth date and my gender and all that and thinks that because I paid them for my data that they can then sell my data. It feels like data theft to me. So I'm grateful that you guys are disclosing what you do with the data and that you have the mindset that the customer owns their data, because if my body generates it, I'm pretty sure I own it.

So I think where we people are very familiar with companies like 23andMe and Ancestry DNA, and where we come in, we see ourselves very much as actually different and complementary to those. So historically you would see these reports and they're just almost like reports for the sake of data. Right? So you say I've got this wetter than average likelihood of earwax being wet, or I've got curlier than average hair and there's no real action you can take off that.

Hold on a second here. I have the Neanderthal variant that says I have less back hair than average. And I actually put that in my online dating profile. Oh, wait, no, I don't do online dating.

Wouldn't recommend.

What was that guy's name? Something 54. Some guy's using my photos on Tinder. It's not me. And I just tweeted about it and asked everyone who's following him to Ask him out on dates and then stand him up. So anyway, that's not me. If you saw me on, was it Tinder, whatever it was. But anyway, I do have less back hair than average. But this is just a joke to say, yes, who cares?

Yeah, I think that's the point is turning being a solution rather than just being data for data's sake, giving this action. So what we do is basically somebody, even if they've done a 23andMe, they can upload their data file. We can then say these are the particular actions we recommend taking. And we only report on factors which have like a modifiable lifestyle environment change that you can make. So there's no bad news in this. There's just here's something you can do to either support or cancel out this genetic activity here. And so it's about changing that conversation. Say you've always been able to get lab data, but it's been up to you to somehow figure out what that action was or what the solution was that you took from that. What we're doing is taking this and turning it into actionable wellness, like long term health, sports, exercise, nutrition changes that somebody can make based on that data, rather than just saying, here's a lab report, see you later.

The future as I see it for this is that there's great value in having a set of data, but the real value is in how do you interpret the data. So I like the idea that I can plug DNAFit in on top of my 23andMe results and you'll use your algorithmic understanding to interpret that for me. And I could also go somewhere else. And if there's someone out there who says, I look at your genetic profile and your astrology sign and your crystal vibration level and I'm going to tell you your psychic abilities, hey, maybe there's some validity to that. I have no idea. But if I want to pay them for the algorithm and have them crunch my data, more power to them. It gives me a choice to say I want to look at this with this lens or that lens and to have a freedom to be able to do that. Because you could look at these results with calories in, calories out, saturated fat is bad, and the stuff that made me fat and obese and tired all the time and it probably wouldn't work. So the ability to have flexibility like that is cool.

So one that one of the things we did as a company was actually we built a whole team of dietitians and sports scientists who are there to speak to every customer through their report to put it in context for them. And that's exactly the point is actually we don't want to just give. Here's a blanket piece of advice. That's the whole point of what we do, is personalization. So we actually have this whole team available. Every customer can get a free talk when health coaching session with these dietitian sports scientists to put this into action for themselves. We have a whole host of other things we've built there around genetically guided exercise plans and nutrition advice, et cetera. But having that personal connection with an expert to talk through these in context has been really powerful.

I was a little bit skeptical on the diet stuff. And the reason is that there's basically three buckets you can be on low carb, low fat or Mediterranean. No one I know has ever been able to clearly define the Mediterranean diet. What the hell is the Mediterranean diet?

So somewhere around this kind of 30, 40, 30 split of starch to protein to fat is the sort of middle ground between that reducing that carbohydrate slice or reducing that fat slice.

So it's just a ratio of fat to protein to carbs. So I could basically eat margarine to get my fat and corn syrup to get my carbs and I guess soy protein for my protein. That's Mediterranean, right? 43.

You'll have a tough time if you stick to that for a while, of course.

But I guess what that really comes down to in the advice here is you're someone who, if you're exceptionally sensitive to fat, you're going to tell them to eat more carbs. A low fat diet equals a high carb diet. Because we all know what a high protein diet does for you. It makes you old and gives you cancer. If you eat lots of proteins, your primary fuel source, and then if you're someone like me who's relatively tolerant of both, even though I didn't used to be, but apparently genetically am, you're going to say, well, eat some carbs, eat some fat, et cetera, et cetera. But in terms of getting down into the real specific types of fat, do you need more olive oil, do you need more polyunsaturates? Or is this kind of protein good for you, bad for you? I don't think we have enough genetic data yet to know that.

Not for a lot of factors. There are. For some, for example, individual genetic variants are associated with a particularly, you know, sort of increased response to saturated fat as opposed to unsaturated. For example, the FTO gene you talked about before has a role in there. And there's some pretty good evidence around that. So it's about like delving into this in detail. So, you know, we don't just provide like, hey, here's a pretty picture of your results. Here's the report's pretty detailed. Here's the, here's the detail stuff, here's the expert to talk you through that and draw out things particularly that are relevant.

But if your experts are dietitians, this is another thing. Dietitians traditionally are the ones who give you jello and popcorn in hospitals, wherever that hospital food comes from. Dietitians, not our dietitians, okay? Because there are nutritionists and there are dietitians and by the way, I know some bulletproof fans who are dietitians. And I'm sorry, I just offended your whole profession. But go to a hospital and eat when hospitals serve real food. Dietitians, as a general rule are competent. Until then, I'm sorry, guys. The American Diabetic, I mean, Dietetics association, it's causing diabetes, it's not fixing it. So as a group, dietitians, the certified ones, you guys need to get your what together. I almost wanted to ask you guys to say that with a British accent, but I won't. And they're good dietitians. But as a general principal, the teachings from dietitian school are very much in line with 1970s wackiness. And I think we can do better. But you guys don't hire people like that. You're hiring well rounded people is what you're saying.

Where we are is we have, obviously we know what the evidence is, what's out there. We have a, like, you know, we are this company that involves is exactly this. We are, you know, a cutting edge technology. That's the future. So we're not stuck on old data from the sixth beers, which is the average advice that you're given and your example of being fed jello in hospital, for example. So yeah, we're very much not that. You know, we have like the best advice experts there to give that and then also a deeper understanding of the customer that we'd never have had before. So if you found a hospital that was using genetic data to personalize their dietary advice, I'm sure you wouldn't be in the sort of jello and corn syrup bucket of that.

It's actually funny. I'm picking on jello because it's full of sugar and coloring gelatin itself, which is basically not pre digested collagen. Bulletproof. Put collagen on the map as a high performance protein food. So that's actually not that bad of a choice if you just cut the crap out anyway. We'll get off my dietitians. Come on, get with the 90s, at least kind of perspective. But I did get real value for my DNAFit profile, and I thought it was exceptionally affordable for the quality and type of data that it got. So that's why I wanted to have you guys on the show. And thank you for comparing my results with both of yours, which was highly enlightening. I can now put on my thing that I have a 2% genetic advantage over at least one Olympic medalist, which is definitely going on my LinkedIn profile.

Good, good. Let's let the battle commence when we ever get a chance to race and we'll see if I can make up 2%.

There's this whole training effect that's epigenetics. I didn't say anything about that. All right, guys, I'm going to ask you this question, this question that's been on every episode of Bulletproof Radio. Someone comes to you tomorrow based on your experience as an entrepreneur, as a guy who studied your genes, as an Olympic athlete, just as a human being. Three pieces of advice to make me perform better at everything I do. As a human being, what matters most. Three things.

The first one would be that we're all different and you need to find your own way to that. There's not going to be one set black and white piece of advice to get you there. So that's number one. Secondly, I would probably say that it will require more dedication and sacrifice than you expect. So be ready for that and be ready to be number three. Avi, do you want to drop me a number three in there?

Yeah. Number three would be have a good emotional support around you to help you perform better emotionally, because I think that's very important in the scope of everything else we've been speaking about.

I appreciate that advice very much and thank you guys for being on the show.

Thanks, Dave. Thank you.

If you liked today's show, there's a couple things that you ought to go do right now. One of them is pick up a DNA fit test, because the return on investment for you there is going to be very good. The other one is order game changers right now. I put just so many thousands of hours into boiling down what I learned from this show so that you could pick it up in four hours. And you'll of course read the rule about hack what you're or track where you're going to hack, which is really good for you, and a bunch of other advice that you're not going to get anywhere else. The book is called Game Changers and you can order it wherever you like to order books. There are going to be some really cool prizes associated with the launch of the book, as in owe $100,000 worth of stem cells, which sounds pretty exciting. Follow me on Instagram Dave Asprey and I'll tell you more about the prizes for the book. Just order the book now and I would love it if you just DM'd me a picture of your order or a picture of you reviewing the book when it comes out and you get a chance to do it. Because I look at reviews, I read every single one of them on Amazon and whatnot, and I just appreciate when you take the time to tell me what you actually think of the work. This is a very powerful read for you and since you know you're going to read the book, you know you're going to like the law in the book, you know you're going to want a DNAFIT test as well. So to get your test starting at $49, go to DNAfit.com bulletproof it's a special gift for Bulletproof listeners. Thanks Gu.

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 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 quality 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.