Inspiration for the Bulletproof Movement - with Dave Asprey | The Empowering Neurologist EP. 5

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Welcome to The Empowering Neurologist. Today I'm going to be interviewing Dave Asprey. You may know Dave Asprey as the founder of The Bulletproof Executive. He is a Silicon Valley investor and technology entrepreneur who spent 2 decades and over $300,000 basically to hack his own biology. As he did that, he lost 100 pounds without counting calories or excessive exercise, and he used techniques to upgrade his IQ, lowered his biological age while learning to sleep more efficiently in less time. Learning to do these things, which were seemingly impossible, transformed him into a better entrepreneur, a better husband, and a better father. He's the creator of the very, very popular Bulletproof Coffee. Host of the radio show and number one health podcast, Bulletproof Radio. I'm sure many of you have listened to that. And he's the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Bulletproof Diet. Through his work, Dave provides information, techniques, and the keys to taking control of and improving not just your life, but your biochemistry, your body, and your mind so that all of these things then, then will work in unison. And this will help you execute at levels far beyond what you'd expect without burning out, without getting sick or allowing stress to control your decisions. His newest venture is the first Bulletproof Coffee Cafe and Shop, which has just opened in Santa Monica, California. His Bulletproof Films released the company's first documentary film, which is called Moldy, and that happened in June of 2015. He also recently launched Fat Water, which is a first-of-its-kind beverage which combines purified water and a patented form of nanoparticles of Bulletproof triglyceride, medium-chain triglyceride oil, which is really a very potent new way to hydrate yourself, and we're going to talk about that. His new book, Bulletproof: The Cookbook, which I have here, is actually very, very exciting. You know, for those of us who are looking for recipes And looking for ways of expanding the knowledge in terms of eating right and eating low carb and high fat, this has been a terrific find, and I'm certain that you're going to find it to be as helpful as have I. So let's just jump right in and say hello to Dave. So I want to start off for our viewers to take a step back a little bit. So just to figure out who you are and what has motivated you For this cause? I mean, it's— you're swimming against— upstream, against the grain, if you will, by recommending this diet that seems revolutionary. But now there's so many of us that are adopting it and finding good results with it. What was your epiphany? What happened to you?

I was obese as a kid, and I ended up hitting 300 pounds in my 4th year of university, which is just not okay. And I'm lean and reasonably muscular for a 43-year-old guy.

Marvelous.

I'm pleased with how I look, although the stretch marks from when I was fat are still there and probably will be, but I can deal with that. What really got me, though, was my brain stopped working. I'm in my mid-20s. I'm at the company that hosted Google's first server, like the very beginnings of the internet as we know it today, and this exciting career, and I don't have enough energy to make it through the day, even though I love what I'm doing, and I can't remember words, and I'm inflamed all the time, and I just feel like I'm hungover. even though I'm not. I was scared for my brain, so I started looking at what can I do for my brain. Eventually, I ended up spending more than a decade and more than $300,000 first trying what's supposed to work. Exercise 6 days a week, eat lots of grains and not a lot of fat, and all these other things that were harmful to my health. They actively hurt my performance. There was an epiphany where I realized that willpower and trying weren't actually what it takes, that I was using all of my willpower to force myself to do things that didn't help my performance. It's a brutal trap because you get stuck in this cognitive loop that says, it's because I didn't try hard enough, so I'll do it even more, when the old saying is, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, I was insane by that level. I said, I'm a computer hacker. My job is to know how to take over other systems and how to take over things when you don't really know all the answers. There's lots of hidden pitfalls and things, but it's a complex system, but you can still manage it. Our body is the same way. So, I became the chairman of an anti-aging nonprofit research group, and I learned from hundreds of experts. In fact, I read all of your books, of course, anything I could about brains and about human performance, and I eventually became an expert in it and started sharing it with people with the goal being If I could help one person who was where I was when I was 20 years old avoid all of the crap that I've been through, just personally, that I would have done a great service. If I could help 5 people, it was a huge win. I already have a good career as an executive in Silicon Valley, so I ended up quitting my job when I found out I was helping literally millions of people. That's what I do because it's far more satisfying and it means more than some change in technology.

Well, right off the bat in your explanation, you called attention to the fact that with your big belly and your obesity, you declined cognitively. Yes. And, you know, we tend to segregate cognitive issues from morphological issues. People get fat on the one hand and develop diabetes on the one hand, and on the other hand, they're starting to experience cognitive decline. And, you know, it seems that the mainstream understanding is, well, those are 2 very separate entities, and you should deal with a neurologist for your cognitive issues and maybe the endocrinologist for your weight gain and perhaps diabetes issues, although you didn't mention diabetes. I'm simply joking.

I was, I was, I was, I was pre-diabetic.

My fasting blood sugar was 112. Probably half of American adults, I might say. Correct. And probably Canadians as well. And I'm saying that because you're currently in Canada. So I'm sure that people in Canada are going to watch this. That said, you know, what we know is that obesity is basically an inflammatory issue, and that those inflammatory chemicals are specifically toxic to the brain as a structure and also moment to moment to the brain in terms of its functionality. What were the nuts and bolts of the dramatic change that you experienced?

Well, there were a bunch of them, but the first was when I eliminated wheat. I didn't eliminate wheat because I knew this. This was going back more than a decade. I knew that if I cut carbs, that it might make a difference. I cut carbs, which just meant I eliminated gluten, and my personality changed. People said, Dave, you're a lot less angry, and I noticed that my middle finger I wasn't getting joint pain from being used so much when I was driving. So, like, I was a calmer, nicer person with better emotional regularity. And I found I could lose half of the 100 pounds I had to lose by cutting carbs. And then I hit this wall where the other 50 pounds stuck. And that's the inflammation, that's the toxins, and that's the bad fats. And maybe even eating too much protein can cause that. So, I got stuck there for several years where my brain doesn't work. And eventually, I found out I'd been living in a house with toxic mold, which triggers inflammation, which triggers obesity, and triggers cognitive decline. So, I was dealing with the wrong foods, I was dealing with the wrong kinds of exercise when I was over-exercising and not getting benefits from it, and I was dealing with external man-made and nature-made toxins. So, it's that nasty combination, and it turns out that's what everyone deals with, even if they're a super high-performing celebrity or athlete. They're also doing Bulletproof stuff because no matter where you are, toxins affect your human performance. They just do. They affect meditation performance. They affect whether you're a good parent because your emotional regularity is there, and they affect your waistline. It's not like it's an on/off switch. It's a question of degree. Just by having fewer toxins, you feel better.

No question. We live in a very toxic world. No matter where you live and what you do, you're going to be exposed to things in the environment. That said, you really have to do everything that you possibly can to make sure that your detoxification systems are amped up and ready to go to confront, you know, this very toxic world in which we live. And, you know, going into this, it sounds like you at your weight and already with cognitive issues were experiencing difficulties in terms of detoxification. And, you know, we're certainly going to get to the food choices that you've made and certainly talk about the new book, which I think is over-the-top fantastic.

Thank you.

Let's just talk for a moment about the, the shift from thinking that low fat was your friend to realizing that you needed fat, and what were the choices that you made as far as that goes?

There was a time in my, my early 20s, I had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and I also had Lyme disease and like every bad thing you could have. But one of the things that was bothering me was arthritis in my knees starting at age 14. So I'd had 2 knee surgeries and I said, never again. That was what stimulated me to really work out and really push hard, push hard. And I was sitting one day at a fast food restaurant with my friends from college and I looked around and they're all thin and I could bench press any of my friends, but I'm fat.

3 at a time.

Exactly. So I'm like the strongest guy there. I can max out every machine at the gym and I'm still fat. And I'm eating like the salad with a chicken breast and no dressing. And they're eating french fries and double bacon cheeseburgers. And it's just a good way— I'm eating less than all my friends, and I work out more than all my friends, and I'm still fat. Like, it's, it's not working. And that was a big, a big part of the epiphany for me.

Stop the insanity. I remember that from the '80s. And, you know, you said something really incredible there, that some people seem to eat garbage, and at least in the short run, they don't seem to gain weight. And, you know, now we've, we've come to an understanding of the role of the microbiome in terms of regulating caloric extraction from the very foods that people eat. And really, when, when people learn about what your changes were, aside from just the signaling of carbs versus dietary fat and adding in more fiber, I think what happened to you is you basically rebuilt your microbiome and in that amplified your ability to detoxify as well as reining in your metabolism.

The evidence would support the hypothesis. I did one of the uBiome tests where we looked at the genetic makeup of what's in my gut, and I'm sure you're familiar with the research about the different species of bacteria that are more common in obese people in their gut. And I don't know what my obese bacteria looked like because we didn't have genetic screening back then for what's growing in your gut, but there is a study, it's a Chinese study on mice, but they tested butter and coffee. In mice to see what it would do to the gut biome. And I had predicted the changes. I hadn't seen the study. And I said, well, given what we know, coffee feeds thin people bacteria. The polyphenols, the antioxidants in coffee, are a fuel source for bacteria that are common in thin people. And carbohydrates feed the bacteria that are common in fat people. So by eating no carbohydrates and eating coffee and butter, then you're giving a— performance evolutionary advantage to the thin people bacteria in your gut. So I hypothesized this, and then I found a study that said, oh my goodness, this is the case. And in my own case, I did have more of the thin people bacteria. They're called Bacteroidetes, is the family. So you can, just by using oils and vegetables and antioxidant-rich vegetables and beverages and everything else like coffee and tea and chocolate, you can shift the bacteria. And if you take probiotics and you eat especially the vegetables, It will change. In my case, I'd been taking antibiotics every month for 15 years for chronic sinusitis that wouldn't go away, which is probably an environmental condition from the environments I was living in.

But that destroyed my gut. I'm loving this. I mean, you are absolutely the typical case study. I mean, you're the kind of person that we report that, you know, has been on antibiotics for all the wrong reasons for a long period of time, challenging your microbiome. And then knowingly, and to some degree unknowingly, you rebuilt your microbiome, and now look at you.

And get this, I did a brain scan because I was brain-focused. I hadn't had the mind-body connection yet. I didn't understand that the body controls the mind, not the other way around so much. And I did a brain scan with radioactive sugar, a SPECT scan, an imaging scan through one of Daniel Amen's clinics. And What they found was a brain that looked like someone who was doing street drugs and living under a bridge. It was huge holes of no performance. When I tried to pay attention, my prefrontal cortex had no blood flow, no metabolic activity at all. This is the front of the brain that's responsible for emotional regulation, sort of our higher human functions. Here I am, I'm going to Wharton, one of the top business schools. I'm working full-time at a startup, and my brain shuts off when I try and pay attention. I was struggling greatly. I actually had to get extra time on tests because I just didn't know. I'm a reasonably smart guy, but I couldn't bring it. I didn't have the energy. I didn't understand the toxin connection and all that, but I did get in touch with the inflammation connection and really got on top of my inflammation. And every time you crank inflammation down, you crank up cognitive performance. And when you crank down on toxins, you crank up cognitive performance. And I ended up developing the protocols where I went off one of the very powerful smart drugs, modafinil, that I was taking. I used natural substances and I still take some smart drugs that are good for you in the long term. Man, my ability to perform at 43, I had more energy than most of the 20-somethings working for Bulletproof. I have this energy that I never had in my whole life and that's from cranking down on inflammation and just getting control of what my body does after I eat foods, after I'm exposed to an environmental input. Everyone has that level of control. We're just not good at seeing, if I do this, 2 hours later this happens, 4 hours later, 2 days later this happens, but it's all there.

Well, you mentioned being scanned, brain scanned with Dr. Daniel Amen, and I will invite our viewers to watch for the Daniel Amen interview. We just completed that, and he's going to walk us through what these images mean and again, how important lifestyle factors are in terms of brain function moment to moment. can demonstrate that on some very sophisticated studies. Then you began to popularize this combination that became known as Bulletproof Coffee. How did that come about?

Well, I went to Tibet. I'd already become aware of the power of the mind and how I could change how I felt and my energy levels. I finished my degree in business and had a break and said, I'm going to take 3 months and go learn meditation from the master. I went to Nepal and Tibet and went to a monastery. I was like, I'm going to get on top of my brain. And I'm in a very remote part of western Tibet called Mount Kailash, which is the headwaters for the Ganges River. It's considered a holy mountain in Hinduism and Buddhism. And you go to this 18,000-foot-high, very, very high place, and you walk 26 miles around a mountain. And it's about as rugged and remote as you'll get. And it was so cold, the water in my CamelBak was freezing, and it was rough. You're supposed to feel like you're dying at altitude because you kind of are. Instead, I was feeling wretched and I drank yak butter tea, which is something that Tibetans have had for thousands of years. It's yak butter blended with a little bit of salt and some weak tea. I felt better after I had that than I had in a long time. In fact, I felt elated at altitude when I should have felt like death. So I sort of skipped around the mountain, not really, but I had a lot more energy than I should have. When I came back to the States, I said, I want to recreate this. So I bought some butter and I bought some tea and it tasted vile and I didn't feel good. And I said, maybe it's the butter. So I tested all these butters, and I tested all these 100-year-old teas and all these different kinds of teas. And I added in first coconut oil and coconut milk, and I tried all these different things, but I settled on something called Brain Octane Oil, which is one of the many medium-chain triglyceride oils. There's 4 kinds, but it's the one that raises ketones in the blood the most. And ketones are these fat-burning molecules that parts of your brain prefer to sugar. So, the idea is that all of a sudden, I'm getting a supercharged fat, not sugar-based energy. My blood sugar can be low or high, it doesn't matter. My brain still has a backup power source. I did that and I made sure that the coffee didn't have mold toxins in it. This is something I'm a little bit outspoken about, but I've got a president of the Specialty Coffee Association saying, oh, this is a big problem. In the US, it's not addressed, but it's addressed in Europe and China. So, the US government doesn't protect our people from neurotoxins that form during fermentation in coffee. And I even did a little study in my first book, The Bulletproof Diet, about executive function and exposure to these low-level toxins. So, what's going on here is if you have too much mold byproduct in coffee that happens during fermentation, you get anxiety and jitters and that sort of cranky, too much coffee feeling. If you make coffee that doesn't have that during the green coffee formation process, you feel different. I noticed a difference, a very big difference in my energy levels a couple hours after I had coffee. It was a question of, do I crash and need another cup or am I stable? I engineered a process for coffee. Bulletproof Coffee is special Bulletproof coffee beans free of the toxins, plus grass-fed butter, which has the CLA and the vitamins that were present in yak butter, plus Brain Octane Oil. Which is about 1/16 of what's in coconut oil. So, 16 pounds of coconut oil equals 1 pound of Brain Octane Oil, and that's the stuff that gives you sustained energy in the brain without any sugar, gives you all the vitamins from the butter, and it gives you the antioxidants and the good stuff that's in the coffee without the bad stuff. And man, that precise combination, after like thousands of iterations, I've had that every morning for years now, and it's completely changed my ability to be free from food cravings. liberating on many fronts, including the ability to pay attention to what I'm working on. Instead of thinking about tacos, I'm thinking about work. Like, that's cool.

I think about tacos, tacos in terms of why are people eating things like that. But I guess we do them for different reasons. I'm with you there. What's happening here is, uh, for our viewers, here's a guy who did the work and had an amazing experience and now is here to tell us all about it for no other reason Then he thinks it's the right thing to do. And, and Dave, I really want to commend you for that. Thank you. So then, uh, this became a real, a movement, a global event, really. Everywhere you go, people are talking about it. And now you've created this amazing cookbook, and I had the opportunity to look at it, as you know, in advance, and we were thrilled with it. I mean, we're always looking for these great recipes, and here you've put it together. And I think there are 125 in the book, aren't there?

Yep, there's 125 recipes. In fact, it says on the COVID to kick ass. And it doesn't say—

Oh, really? There you go.

It actually says that, and it's because it's not about eating just to lose weight. There's lots of ways to, at least for some people, to temporarily lose weight. You can induce a famine in your kitchen, but your brain isn't gonna like it. But if you wanna feel really good and get like a food high and just be supercharged with energy, your body will regulate how you look if you feel that way. But it's a very different process. So it's about feeling amazing all the time and looking good, but not the other way around.

And I want to get back to a statement that you made a moment ago, and that is that you recognize that you are powering your brain with fat, in this case what are called ketones, specifically beta-hydroxybutyrate, and that the brain is actually able to use fat as a power source. And it really flies in the face of what we were all told, oh, you've got to eat sugar and carbs because your brain needs sugar. And, you know, if you just take 5 minutes and look at the research, nothing is really further from the truth. Matter of fact, you know, even Gary Taubes has talked about the notion that a low state of ketosis might well be the normal state of us as hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years. So when you're in this mild state of ketosis, your brain is going to function not just well, but it's optimized. Yeah. And in the process of using ketones for energy, you're creating a lot of energy, but not as much in the way of free radicals as you would be creating if you're burning sugar as your flex fuel. So you're absolutely dialed in. And I'd like all of our viewers to really know that what you're hearing from me is that Dave is— everything he's saying is so supported by what we're seeing in the most well-respected peer-reviewed literature. And this is really a discovery that he made on his own, but it's really very, very much validated. So I love the book. And I want to encourage everyone to, to go out and buy this book. I'm particularly taken by the fact that as you look through the recipes, a lot of these recipes are very rich in prebiotic fiber to nurture the gut bacteria. And you've got a lot of cruciferous kinds of vegetables, recipes for vegetables as well. And that's really, I think, designed by you to help with detoxification, isn't it?

Yeah, it is indeed. And People usually do really well on sulfur-rich vegetables. There are a few people who have genetic differences and have a harder time with sulfur-bearing anything. That's called the transsulfation pathway. But most people on the planet, when they eat sulfur-rich vegetables, they feel better, they reduce their cancer risk, and there's something called DIM that is present in cruciferous vegetables that helps your brain directly, as well as just the parts that make it green, the polyphenols are higher. So if you wanted to name one really important brain food, it'd be cruciferous vegetables. However, a lot of people don't like broccoli. Was it President Bush?

Matter of fact, that was the COVID of my, of my book, Brain Maker. Is the brain made out of broccoli? You're exactly right. So what are you getting? You're getting this cruciferous vegetable that is really rich in these sulfur-based compounds that help you with detoxification, and also nice prebiotic fiber. Low carbohydrate. You know, you add to that, as your recipes have demonstrated, some healthful fat. Comment for us a little bit about good and bad fats.

Well, bad fats are fats that are already oxidized, or fats that easily oxidize in the body. And the reason for that is that our body will work to incorporate the fats we eat into our cell membranes. The membrane of every cell isn't like Saran Wrap or something. It's actually a bunch of little droplets of fat. that sort of coagulate around the cell, and they arrange themselves to push water away from the cell, push water into the cell. Those fats come from somewhere. They come from what you eat. So, if you're eating a lot of corn and soy and vegetable oils, your body takes those and it incorporates them into the cell membrane. And when that happens, they make free radicals all the time, and then you're stuck. In fact, it takes a couple years to replace half those fats with stable saturated fats or the right kinds of monounsaturated fats. So by controlling what you put into your body, you actually change the very makeup of your cells. And the bad fats are the polyunsaturated fats, the ones that have been touted as healthy by the people who sell them. They create free radicals. Free radicals hurt your brain performance. And it just comes down to it, it's that easy.

There's such an argument and pushback when you talk about the health value of saturated fat. I mean, and it's like I'm saying, shoot yourself in the foot if you want to walk better. Because we've just been inculcated with this knowledge that saturated fat is somehow terrible. And here, coconut oil, for example, is more than 90% saturated fat, and as such, is very resistant to that process of oxidation, which I like to call rusting. So I think you're right on point in talking about the fat replacement diet. That'd be a great name for a book, or fat transplant diet. Okay. That's really what this is all about, is replacing the, the hard and oxidized fats of your cell membranes with good pliable elastic fat that, that really lets the cell membrane do what it wants to do.

It's remarkable that today it's illegal for a company selling saturated fat to use the words healthy fat, even though there's a preponderance of evidence that saturated fats are a normal part of our diet. Our bodies only manufacture a saturated fat called palmitic acid. It's the only one we can make on board. from scratch. So the idea that we can't say it's healthy— what happened to free speech? What happened to scientific inquiry?

50% of the fat in breast milk is saturated fat. Oh, somebody must have made a mistake there in creating breast milk, I guess. And you know, when you look at the literature on, on coconut oil, for example, that goes back 3,000 years. The Vedic texts talked about it. So it's not like this is a new kid on the block.

Yeah, same goes for ghee, clarified butter, which is right there with coconut oil in the Vedic texts. If you're from India, Your grandmother gave you ghee, clarified butter, and white rice if you were feeling unwell. In the US, we'd probably give you saltines and margarine, and the difference in outcomes is really clear.

No doubt. Well, listen, I want to thank you for, for joining us on, on the program today and wish you all the luck. This is a terrific book, your new book, and I am thrilled that you, that you wrote it and that I was able to review it ahead of time. The recipes are over the top. Wonderful, healthful, and fantastic. And so, uh, we're really looking forward to having great success with it.

Thanks for your endorsement and your support on the book and, and the quote in the book. I, I'm such a fan of your work, and you are one of the guys leading the charge to tell people they're in charge of their brains. So, Dr. Perlmutter, great respect for you and your work, and thank you.

Well, I sure appreciate that, Dave. All the best, and we'll talk soon.

Looking forward to it.

Well, wasn't that exciting? Again, here is the book, Bulletproof: The Cookbook, and it's fantastic. Again, for those of you who are looking for creative ways of going low-carb and welcoming healthful fat back to the table, high fiber, good sulfur-rich foods to help you with detoxification, this book is a must. It's available everywhere, online, at bookstores. And I really hope you'll take a look at it. Thanks for watching. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter.