Dave Asprey ON: Simple Steps to Reduce Your Biological Age by 12% & Ways to Manage Your Emotional Stress to Change Your Life

What if there is a way to help reduce aging? What if it is something you can do on your own and make it a daily habit? There is a way and today’s guest will offer insights about aging and managing emotional stress. Today, we welcome back Dave Asprey, the founder of Upgrade Labs and known as the 'Father of Biohacking'. He Is a four-time New York Times bestselling science author, host of the Webby award-winning podcast The Human Upgrade. Dave shares the science behind the concept of biological age and how to calculate it, shedding light on the surprising power of laziness and how working hard without the right tools might not yield the results you desire. Dave also exposes the secrets to optimizing your metabolism, upgrading your body with cutting-edge technology at places like Upgrade Labs, and boosting your mineral intake for better overall health. We also get to learn the connection between a malnourished body and emotional stress and why staying healthy often takes a backseat in our busy lives. Learn the art of maximizing the benefits of meditation and how to reset your body, paving the way for holistic healing. Plus, get the lowdown on protein needs, the truth about chicken products, the merits of a plant-based diet, and various types of milk and their unique benefits. In this interview, you’ll learn: How to exercise effectively How to eat right to avoid inflammation How physical health affects emotional health How to reset your body for better performance The foods that are causing inflammation How much protein the body needs How to stay healthy How to age without feeling old This episode is packed with valuable insights on how to prioritize your health and well-being, so you can truly live your best, youthful life. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 01:03 Introduction 03:34 Figure Out How Old You REALLY Are 04:33 Laziness Can HELP You?! 07:21 How To Hack Your Body 08:47 Exercise Less & Be Healthier 11:24 How The Metabolism REALLY Works 14:10 Your Health Is Missing THIS 16:58 Vitamins & Minerals You Need 19:42 Figure Out What You’re Missing 23:06 Secrets To Becoming Fitter 26:01 The Reset Process 28:06 Why Forgiveness Is So Important 31:14 You NEED To Let Go- Or Else 34:40 How Much Protein Do You Need? 37:40 The Truth About Veganism 40:10 Which Protein Source Is Best? 42:16 The Role Of Genetics In Diet 44:30 What Kind Of Milk Should You Drink? 50:11 The Truth About Oils 53:50 Should You Eat Palm Oil? 55:36 How To STOP Aging 58:02 Conclusion Episode Resources: Dave Asprey | Website Dave Asprey | Instagram Dave Asprey | TikTok Dave Asprey | LinkedIn Dave Asprey | Facebook Dave Asprey | Books Upgrade Labs See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on.

• 1:29Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:16Jay Shetty?

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• 3:00Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special with all you tea lovers out there. And even if you don't love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling sodas that are good for you, listen to this. Radhi and I poured our hearts into creating Juni Sparkling Tea with adaptogens for you, because we believe in nurturing your body, and with every sip, you'll experience calmness of mind, a refreshing vitality, and a burst of brightness to your day. Juni is infused with adaptogens that are amazing natural substances that act like superheroes for your body

• 3:45Jay Shetty?

  to help you adapt to stress and find balance in your busy life. Our Super 5 blend of these powerful ingredients include green tea, ashwagandha, acerola cherry, and lion's mane mushroom, and these may help boost your metabolism, give you a natural kick of caffeine, combat stress, pack your body with antioxidants, and stimulate brain function. Even better, Juni has zero sugar and only five calories per can. We believe in nurturing and energizing your body while enjoying a truly delicious and refreshing drink. So visit drinkjuni.com today to elevate your wellness journey and use code ONPURPOSE to receive 15% off your first order.

• 4:29Jay Shetty?

  That's drinkjuni.com, and make sure you use the code ONPURPOSE.

• 4:36Dave Asprey?

  If you can be triggered, it means you're walking around with a loaded gun. Seventy percent of the emotional stress that we feel on a daily basis comes from our body being malnourished. Dave Asprey. New York Times bestselling author. He's the founder and CEO of Bulletproof Coffee. We've all been shamed for being lazy. Talking about laziness, the only thing worse is talking about death. We are living in a world today where you can measure as 20 years younger than your calendar age. You don't have to get old.

• 5:06Jay Shetty?

  Before we jump into this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed. All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  The bestselling author and host. The number one health and wellness podcast.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

• 5:35Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now you know that I'm curious about biohacking, about becoming better, about improving my energy, my focus, my strength. And there's a guest that we've had on twice before, who I'm so excited to have back on because he is the father of biohacking, someone who has brought this movement to the fore, helped create so many products, insights, books that have guided us through this. I'm talking about the one and only Dave Asprey, entrepreneur, four-time New York Times bestselling author, and host of the top 100 podcast, The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, which is more than 200 million downloads.

• 6:21Jay Shetty?

  Dave is the co-founder of Bulletproof Coffee and a leading voice in the movement to take control of our own biology. News outlets like The Today Show, CNN, Wired, Good Morning America, Fast Company, and many more call him the father of biohacking. And over the last two decades, Dave has worked with world-renowned doctors, researchers, scientists, and global mavericks to uncover the latest, most innovative methods.

• 6:46Jay Shetty?

  And what I love about what Dave does is he makes what could cost a lot of money extremely accessible, relevant and practical. And he's doing that in this new book called Smarter Not Harder, The Biohacker's Guide to Getting the Body and Mind You Want. Go and grab a copy of this right now. We're going to put a link in the captions. You can order it while you're listening to us. Welcome back to the show, Dave Asprey. Dave, third time.

• 7:08Dave Asprey?

  Jay, it's always such a pleasure to get time in person with you.

• 7:11Jay Shetty?

  I know, me too. I really love seeing you. And I said it to you today. I see you like, you know, whenever we're connecting, maybe it's at a conference or obviously on the podcast, you look better and younger and fitter and healthier every time over the last few years. And I think that's testament to everything you say working and everything you're saying, you're practicing it. And honestly, I saw you today and I was just like, who's this big, bright light in my house? Like, you know, it's really special to obviously practice what you preach, but to actually see the benefits. You must feel great, too. I mean,

• 7:41Dave Asprey?

  I feel amazing. I wrote a big book on longevity that I published a few years ago. And I went really deep. For 20 years, I've been running a nonprofit and just working in that field. But I went really deep and I started doing this stuff more aggressively. And I am now, let's see, 11 years younger than my calendar age. And last week, I just got some gene therapy that'll take another nine years off my measured age. So I should test to be about 30 years old, even though the calendar believes something different.

• 8:11Jay Shetty?

  What is that measuring? So I've heard people talk about measuring their age before. How is that calculating? Obviously, we know how your calendar age marks, but how are they calculating a biological age? Like, what does that look like? What are the processes?

• 8:24Dave Asprey?

  You draw a little bit of blood and then they look at something called DNA methylation, about 800,000 different data points. And you can say, well, normal people have this much methylation in this pattern, but people who are younger look this way. So if you take two people's blood, you should be able to tell their age. But if they take my blood, they get a much younger age. So this is now the gold standard for measuring how old you are. There's other more affordable tests, like Viome has an age that's based on a lot of things that are happening in your gut bacteria and in your body. And then there's old fashioned blood telomere tests that don't work very well.

• 8:58Jay Shetty?

  So yeah, don't trust those ones. You may feel like you're 10 years older, but that's not accurate. Well, I want to dive into this new book. There are so many chapters that really stood out to me as we were going. And I picked out some lines here that really kind of hit me. This one I thought was huge, and I love how you start the book on laziness. And you talk about tapping into the power of laziness. And I was just thinking, this is so true because whenever anyone's trying to shift their health, whether it's biohacking, whether it's mental health, whatever it may be, laziness seems to be like this big elephant in the room, right? It's like that thing that slows you down. It makes you lax. It feels like it's negative, but you say you're not lazy. Your body is. And you talk about tapping into the power of laziness. Tell me how you do that. And what does that mean?

• 9:43Jay Shetty?

  Because I think you're going to make a lot of people happy today.

• 9:46Dave Asprey?

  I will, but even talking about laziness, the only thing worse is talking about death. I mean, people, they don't want to do it. So when I would do an Instagram post about laziness, people would just not watch it. Because like, I don't want to face that. And we've all been shamed for being lazy. There's that coach who's like, don't be so lazy. Run around the field again. And the teacher, you know, you're not performing or your parents. So we have all this shame about it. The reality, though, is that your body has an operating system. I call it the meat operating system. And a lot of spiritual work is actually accessing that. And it has a very strong desire to not waste energy. And that is a sacred thing, right? Imagine if we had two people and one of them says, working hard gets results.

• 10:30Dave Asprey?

  And I said, all right, guys, go dig a ditch. And one of them says, I got my shovel. And the other one says, I got a tractor. Okay. The guy with the tractor was done in 20 minutes. And the other guy works for three days. And we somehow believe without thinking, the virtuous guy is the guy with the shovel because he worked hard. And we're unconsciously believing that working hard gets results. So we shame ourselves when we don't work hard. And sadly, when we work hard and we don't get results, we start feeling like victims, which is really toxic. We all know people work really hard and don't get results. Maybe it's because we have a belief system in there that doesn't work. And when we say, well, couldn't I do this in an easier way? We start feeling shame.

• 11:12Dave Asprey?

  No, it's not okay to do it the easy way because the virtue comes from the struggle. But in the world that we live in, the virtue comes from getting it done. And understanding that you will always have a desire.

• 11:26Dave Asprey?

  To be lazy and think about it, you wake up and you say, all right, I could go to the gym or there's a couch and there's donuts and Netflix. The couch is always going to look sexier and there's we start, well, I should want the gym. No, you shouldn't. Your body really does want the extra energy from the donuts and not using any energy in case there's a famine. So embracing that your motivation from your body is to save energy and there's nothing wrong with that. So then how do you use that to motivate yourself? That's how to hack laziness. Well, if you go to the gym, let's say you're going to do cardio, go to span class. If you did an hour a day, five days a week, that's aggressive. You're going to improve after two months, 2% improvement in your fitness.

• 12:10Dave Asprey?

  If you do the lazy way, the thing I write about in Smarter Not Harder, you're going to spend 15 minutes a week, you will not sweat. That's the amount of time you spend brushing your teeth, by the way. You'll improve by 12%, six times more. So you wake up and you say, today I'm going to save 50 minutes of not working at the gym because I'm going to do it better. And all of a sudden, it's really motivating because the body says, I get to save energy at the gym. And then the body aligns its motivation with what your mind wants. And then the resistance fades. And it's a really important thing. It's something that I've never seen written about anywhere. So use the savings of time, the savings of energy to motivate yourself. But you know who does know about this?

• 12:51Dave Asprey?

  Big food companies. They will send you a 25 cent coupon. And oh, look, I saved 25 cents. Because to our body, saving money feels like a lot more than it really is. Right? So it's about our unconscious view of reality. So since we know our body does that without our knowledge or permission, let's just use it to our advantage instead of against us.

• 13:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. So you're using a 15 minute workout per day?

• 13:18Dave Asprey?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 13:19Jay Shetty?

  No, you're using a 15 minute workout?

• 13:20Dave Asprey?

  Five minutes, three times a week.

• 13:21Jay Shetty?

  Five minutes, three times a week? How is that having a 12% change?

• 13:25Dave Asprey?

  Well, maybe working hard doesn't get results when it comes to exercise. And I want to be really clear, the ability to work hard is necessary for you to get things done in the world. But working hard without the right tools is a fool's errand.

• 13:39Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 13:40Dave Asprey?

  And one of my companies, it's a franchise, we're about to be over about 30 locations signed. So we're opening across the country. It's called Upgrade Labs. You can go to own and upgrade labs.com and open one in your neighborhood. And We have the technology to do this. It uses artificial intelligence and it causes you to move slower than you want and then way harder than you really, really want to, but only for 20 seconds. And then here's the trick. As soon as you're done, you take some really deep breaths and it guides you with the AI to say, breathe deeper and it brings your heart rate down. So what your body really responds to is really strong stimulation, like a tiger was going to catch you. And then a feeling of safety and calm. When you have enough minerals, you have enough nutrients. It says, oh,

• 14:24Dave Asprey?

  I guess I should improve my performance. But if you go to the spin class, okay, the tiger chased you on the first sprint and then you keep running and then you sprint again and you keep running and the body believes I'm being hunted and it doesn't get away. And if you're combining that with a low calorie diet, oh, there's a famine and I'm continuously hunted for an hour a day. No wonder it's not going to improve. It doesn't have any energy to improve. It's just stressed. So the precise dose of exercise, it matters so much. And the liberating thing, you're going to hate me for saying this. So you notice I'm in better shape than before. 20 minutes a week is my entire workout regimen. And I'm like, I'm doing alright.

• 15:05Jay Shetty?

  You're stacked. Yeah. That's epic, man. And you said it beautifully on page 21. You said, "Your body does not care how much time you do something hard. It cares about how quickly you do something hard, how hard it is, and how quickly it returns to baseline."

• 15:21Dave Asprey?

  There you go.

• 15:22Jay Shetty?

  Page 21. That is, that is, and that resonated with me a lot because, and we'll talk about this later on. I don't want to get into it now, but you talk about this in the book as well. Why the infrared sauna and why cold plunges kind of, that, that explains exactly that process.

• 15:37Dave Asprey?

  Yes.

• 15:38Jay Shetty?

  Especially if you're doing both back and forth. And you'd think they're getting in the cold for, you're like, oh, I'd have to sit in there for a long time. But it's actually, how long is it uncomfortable for?

• 15:48Dave Asprey?

  Right.

• 15:49Jay Shetty?

  That, where it's actually working. Because you're saying, once it becomes normalized, once anything becomes normalized, whether it's spin class, whether it's sitting in the cold or whatever it may be, it's now not having that effect.

• 16:00Dave Asprey?

  It doesn't work. In fact, if you got in a, in a normal warm bathtub and slowly cooled the water, you would have no benefits from doing that. And instead, it's that you got in and it was a rapid drop in temperature and then you got out and the body warmed itself up again. And it's teaching the body that it is safe to warm itself up. And then it becomes better at creating heat. If your body's better at creating heat, it means your metabolism works better. And so we've unpacked all of this using machine learning and artificial intelligence. And today, most people, they buy gym memberships and they don't go. There's $400 million a year of ghost memberships where people pay and never show up because, well, if I have the membership, I might show up, but the lazy impulse of the body wins

• 16:43Dave Asprey?

  because the gym doesn't have a good return on investment of your time.

• 16:48Dave Asprey?

  And I'm not saying you shouldn't work out.

• 16:49Jay Shetty?

  No, I know.

• 16:50Dave Asprey?

  And if you go to the gym, awesome. I enjoy that as well, but I'd frankly rather go to a yoga class in my spare time. And then you can get the muscles in about three to five times less time than going to the gym. You get the cardio in, I don't know, 15 minutes versus five hours a week. I don't know the ratio there, but it's crazy and it's much better cardio anyway. And so all of a sudden you're saying, wait, I got my strength, I got my cardio. And that was what led me to create Upgrade Labs because people want to come in and do this. And what do you do with the extra time? Well, how about we train your brain with neurofeedback? How about we train your stress response so you can be more resilient when things are weird at work or at home or things like that? Or how about we just make it so your body recovers better than it ever did?

• 17:34Dave Asprey?

  And what we're dealing with now is a world full of stress and never any recovery time. So let's use technology to handle the easy stuff like muscles and cardio. And then let's take the extra save time to make our brains better and to make our stress handling better. Absolutely has changed my life.

• 17:51Jay Shetty?

  Have you got one in LA, Upgrade Labs?

• 17:53Dave Asprey?

  There's one at the Beverly Hilton, although that hotel is about to get renovated. And there's one in Santa Monica underneath Arnold Schwarzenegger's office.

• 18:00Jay Shetty?

  I want to go.

• 18:01Dave Asprey?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 18:01Jay Shetty?

  I need to go. Yeah, I need to come in. Yeah, this is, I didn't realize. That's awesome.

• 18:05Dave Asprey?

  Yeah. In fact, the first one opened eight years ago in Santa Monica. I've been working on this for a long time before we decided to let anyone open a business at Upgrade Labs. And part of this is it's a global movement now. Biohacking, it's a thing. You go to Latin America, you go to Japan. It doesn't matter. There's biohacking all over the world. And it's expensive to build a million dollar lab like I did at my house with all this advanced tech. So what if we just made it available for everyone?

• 18:30Jay Shetty?

  Hmm. That's awesome. I can't wait to check it out.

• 18:32Dave Asprey?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Jay Shetty?

  All right, let's dive back in. There's a couple of things that you talk about. So we talked about laziness. One of the things that you talk about in the book is removing friction. So you have these six steps to energy's success, and I'll let people get the book to dive into all of them. I don't want to go through everything. But you talk about removing friction. And I think when you, when you dive into that, I was like, that's the right word. Like, it's friction that we experience. What are some of the steps or some of the highlights that you see of like removing friction? What does that look like?

• 18:59Dave Asprey?

  When you think about something that you want to do, oftentimes, it's the little things that feel really big because your body's creating resistance. It's like, don't waste energy. There might be a famine. Don't waste energy. So if you can't find your gym shoes, right? Because you, you're not organized, right? And there's a lot of things that we do that make it so that there's many steps and each step is a decision. So you, you remove decisions to make it really easy. And a big source of friction is you wanted to do it, you went to the gym and you didn't get results. Well, one of the things that's holding you back is that either you're exposing yourself to toxins that lower your testosterone, things like extra plastic, BPA, or you're just lacking minerals. And right now, we have an epidemic

• 19:43Dave Asprey?

  of people who just don't have enough minerals. Our food used to be full of minerals because our soil was full of minerals. We've been kind of strip farming the land. So even if you're eating plants that are supposed to be high in iron, they're probably not because the soil doesn't have iron anymore. And when you get enough minerals in the body, then the, you send a signal through your exercise that says, hey, improve. The body says, well, I wanted to improve, but I have this big sticking point. I don't have enough zinc and copper. I can't improve. So then you just feel stress. So one of the things that's really helped me lean out is I focus very heavily on my mineral intake. They're the least sexy supplements on earth. And to make minerals go where they're

• 20:25Dave Asprey?

  supposed to go, we need something called vitamin DAKE. And you can go to vitamin dake, D A K E dot com. And it's there, it's about 20 bucks a month for what it takes to do this. It's a combination of vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K, and a special form of vitamin E. And those things, when you take those in combination with a broad spectrum mineral supplement on the same site. Your body suddenly has the power to build bones and to build muscle and make energy and your focus can improve. And then I put the trace minerals that are just broadly lacking for all of us in my new coffee brand called Danger Coffee. So the idea is it's easy. You're doing coffee every day, probably anyway. And you end up going, wow, something different. It feels different than this. And it's called Danger Coffee, by the way, you're gonna like

• 21:10Dave Asprey?

  this, because who knows what you might do. You know, you might finally ask that girl out, you might start a company, might start a podcast. The idea is you can handle it now because you've got the energy and minerals are the key.

• 21:24Jay Shetty?

  And why are the minerals, you talked about this, like, we always talk about supplements, talk about vitamins, we don't hear about minerals as much. And you make that point in the book. Are those the four minerals that you're saying, the DAK and special form of E, like, those are the?

• 21:36Dave Asprey?

  Those are vitamins, they're the fat soluble vitamins, and each of those directs minerals to go to the right place in the body. And then the minerals, there's macro minerals, things like magnesium and potassium. And there's trace minerals like zinc and copper and manganese. And then there's ultra trace minerals that are present in Earth's crust and you need a little bit of those. So there's in the coffee, there's 54 different kinds of minerals at super tiny traces. And in the supplements you take, it's three pills to get enough minerals, just enough minerals in your day. That's why one pill thing that has vitamins, minerals, there's not enough of anything in that. And when you do that, those are the first two most important foundational and affordable supplements that you need to take before you do B vitamins.

• 22:20Dave Asprey?

  And I've formulated nootropics and advanced anti-aging longevity things. I love doing that and I take those too. But the last thing I would ever stop taking would be vitamin DAK and minerals 101, because they're foundational to everything else your body does, whether it's meditating better, whether it's running faster, whether it's thinking better, or just staying calm in a stressful situation. Without minerals, your body cannot do what it's trying to do.

• 22:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with you more. I've definitely, we've talked about this before, and I've definitely had periods in my life where I was so low on minerals, or vitamins, of course, which are then impacting the minerals, where I'm like, wait a minute, I'm sleeping right, I'm working out, I'm eating right, like, what is going on? And so often, I think we make it a mental challenge where we're like, oh, maybe I'm dealing with something. And actually, what you realize is your body's just not dealing with stress well. And now it makes it feel like everything's mental when it's actually biological and chemical.

• 23:14Dave Asprey?

  Uh, you said it. So my body's not dealing with stress right now. I believe that half and maybe 70% of the emotional stress that we feel on a daily basis, it comes from our body being malnourished.

• 23:27Jay Shetty?

  Yes, I agree. Yeah.

• 23:29Dave Asprey?

  And then it feels like

• 23:29Jay Shetty?

  I've experienced that.

• 23:30Dave Asprey?

  Okay, you have. So me too. And it feels like it's your mother-in-law or your boss or like, like it's someone else's fault. Or maybe it's you and your mind is running in circles. Well, when the body feels like, okay, there's not a famine. I've got everything I need. All of a sudden, things that felt like Everest, oh, that's just a photo. I could walk up that no problem. And to create a feeling of peace in your tissues and then do the hard work on the mental and spiritual aspects of meditation. It's a lot easier to work on those when your body's working. But if you're constantly feeling that what your body's telling you, because it's hungry, is you and it's a flaw or it's something to work on, you can spend your entire life trying to deal with your emotions, not knowing that it's what's on your plate that's causing it.

• 24:12Jay Shetty?

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• 24:55Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision-making and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

• 25:38Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I want to fully double emphasize that. That is so true and so real. And I think so many of us are climbing up a steep hill, trying to solve the wrong problem first.

• 26:23Jay Shetty?

  And this way around is going to make all of it much easier. I think you're spot on. I'm so glad, so glad that we addressed that. I wanted to dive into this one. Like for everyone who's listening and watching, the book goes into depth into exactly the minerals, exactly the vitamins you need. Like I want you to know that the book's giving you a breakdown. And so make sure you grab the book so that you actually get all their insights. I just want to give you the breadth of the insight that Dave has, so that you're like, oh, wait a minute, I need to work on that, I need to work on that. Something you talk a lot about is picking a target area and tracking it. And you talk about these core target areas. You talk about strength, cardiovascular, fitness, energy, metabolism, brain function and stress resistance. And I've found that that's probably our biggest mistake

• 27:06Jay Shetty?

  when it comes to our health is we either are measuring nothing or we're trying to measure everything.

• 27:11Dave Asprey?

  You nailed it.

• 27:12Jay Shetty?

  Right? Where should one start? Like, how does one, I guess intuitively or data-wise, know what they are missing right now? Because I feel like most of us don't know. Most of us live quite unconsciously. And we may be feeling a bit tired, we may be feeling a bit of body pain, but we're not really that aware of what the challenge is and what we need.

• 27:33Dave Asprey?

  I have a lot of data on this because we ask people this when they come into Agri Labs. And that was one of the things that inspired me to structure the book this way. And it's kind of funny, the only people on earth who are going to say when they wake up in the morning, the first thing they want, I want to be healthy today. There are people who are like me. When I weighed 300 pounds, I had chronic fatigue syndrome and arthritis and massive brain fog. And I was a wreck. So being healthy was a top priority for me. And you might get there when you're 75, right? As well. I just wish I was healthy. But when we're reasonably healthy, health is number 17 on the honey do list. I want it. And what's really motivating us oftentimes from our body is we want to be powerful. We want to be energetic. We want

• 28:16Dave Asprey?

  love in our life. And those things, they trump health. So health never gets enough priority. And what does health even mean? Most people can't tell you. So I broke it down into those five or six categories. And, okay, what are you going to work on first? And every person is individual. So where are you today? And then what's your first goal? And everyone says, well, I want all those. But pick one. And in fact, I encourage you in the book to pick two and really think about it. And when people come in, we actually use a conjoined analysis survey and like we go through data to help you figure out your goals. But in the book, I teach you how to do it. So if your first goal is, you know what, I noticed that I'm I'm weak. I can't hold on to things long. My grip strength is gone. I don't have the

• 29:01Dave Asprey?

  muscles I want. Okay. So you're going to focus on muscle first. Or like a lot of people, I'm stressed all the time and my brain doesn't work. I'm going to focus on my brain first. So then you go to the section of the book on brain, and I list all the technologies and techniques, whether they're free or cost a couple hundred bucks or cost thousands of dollars, that work really well to bring your brain back online. And when you do that, your muscles will work a little bit better as a side effect. Right? So maybe that was it. First, I want my brain, then I want my muscles. But someone else could be totally different in their desires. I want to be able to run a marathon. I just need the endurance to walk up the stairs because I can't take care of my kids. Stuff like that happens all the time. So you you go through the book and say, Okay, this is my goal. And then there's a variety of technologies that will support that. And some of them I say technologies,

• 29:46Dave Asprey?

  they're just techniques. And if it's muscles, picking up rocks is the entire history of building muscles for humans. We concentrate the rocks into kettlebells now, but they're still rocks. And then for endurance is run away from tigers. Like you could run away from a slow tiger or a fast tiger. And that's all of exercise. Well, with machine learning and AI, we are doubling the amount of knowledge of biology that we have every 73 days. There's so much magic happening right now that you can use this new knowledge that your doctor is probably never gonna know. And you can use that to say, oh, I can do this in a lot less time. So then you get your muscles back and your brain works better. Or you get your brain back and then you have the energy to do the muscle work,

• 30:29Dave Asprey?

  or to do the endurance work. And then say, okay, I'm gonna work on these stress management techniques. And you have so much wisdom that you've offered people on dealing with stress and the meditation side of things. And there's a couple of chapters towards the end of the book, where I talk about, you know, spiritual hacking, which on its face is a bit offensive, I admit it, but you know. No, I knew it came from a good place. It did. Yeah. And the idea here is, is what would have happened in Tibet, or in India, or Nepal, or a place like that is, okay, we have a cave. And you can go to the cave. And 20 years later, you're going to be enlightened. And you could call that fast path. But most of us have other

• 31:13Dave Asprey?

  things that we want to do. So how do we get the maximum amount of meditation benefit per minute? Like hurry meditate faster? It's an oxymoron, except if you can say, well, I'm gonna do breath work with my meditation. And studies show that your brain gets into these states more quickly, then maybe you should consider finding the kind of breath work that works for your body. Because for every 10 minutes of work you do, you might get into the state faster. And for some people, they say, well, that's not okay. The Dalai Lama, years ago, offered $100,000 reward to neuroscientists who could help him get into a special esoteric state. He says, it takes me four hours of meditation to get there, and I don't have four hours. If you can

• 31:55Dave Asprey?

  get me there in an hour, I'll pay you $100,000. Okay, this is possible today. I run a neuroscience clinic called 40 Years of Zen. And in five days, people have the brainwaves of someone who spent 20 years in the cave. And I've spent six months of my life with the electrodes glued to my head, meditating every day with a computer, teaching me how to not do it wrong. And for me, that was faster. But I also did five years of Art of Living. Breath work every single morning because I found it worked better than just sitting and meditating, which I also did every morning. And I want people to understand, any of those approaches is better than not doing it. And you've got to find the one that works for you. And there's a list of exercises in here, including the reset process, which is one

• 32:39Dave Asprey?

  of the most important things I teach.

• 32:41Jay Shetty?

  Can you walk us through that?

• 32:42Dave Asprey?

  The reset process is something that I pioneered with the neuroscience practice, because you can measure when it works. And what you do, and the whole recipe is in the book for it. But what you're doing is you're finding something that is a trigger for you. And I want to be really straightforward. If you can be triggered, it means you're walking around with a loaded gun. You need to unload the gun. It's not everyone else's job to not make you shoot them. It's your job to say, I'm not carrying a weapon anymore. And so you find something that triggers you, and you sit and you think about that feeling. And it's usually something will pop into your head. You were bullied. Something a parent said, someone cut you off in traffic. It doesn't really matter. Something's gonna pop in your head, say, okay, I'm gonna run the reset process on that. So you sit the

• 33:26Dave Asprey?

  person who made you angry, down across from you, in your mind's eye.

• 33:29Jay Shetty?

  Visually, yeah.

• 33:30Dave Asprey?

  Yeah, visually. And you're also in your mind's eye, you imagine some sort of infallible deity. Some people use God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or, you know, any of the deities that you like. Or it could just be, you know, a light bulb that's always right. It doesn't matter. But this is your double checking thing. And then you sit there, and you actually say, you did this, and it made me feel this way. And then you tap into how bad you felt. And you actually turn on the bad feeling. You're like, what? You want me to actually? Yes, I want you to feel it. And then, once you're sure that you've really felt the bad feeling, you might have tears in your eyes. I mean, it might have been a big thing. Then, and this is the key, that's missing from a lot, even of older literature, before you

• 34:14Dave Asprey?

  work on letting it go, you have to find gratitude. So you find one thing. It doesn't matter how big of a gratitude is. You just need a spark of gratitude, and say, oh, here's one good thing that happened. And all of a sudden, that flips a switch in your brain. And then you can step into the F word, called forgiveness. And

• 34:36Dave Asprey?

  Forgiveness.

• 34:38Jay Shetty?

  Depends where everyone's mind went. Yeah, I was like, yeah.

• 34:42Dave Asprey?

  And the reason I call it the F word is a lot of people, I'm not going to forgive that person. They wronged me. You don't have to tell them you forgive them. This is just you unloading the weapon. This is you no longer being triggered, right? And then you look at it from the other person's point of view. And you realize maybe their mom was mean to them. You know, maybe they didn't know. Maybe the guy who cut you off in traffic was on the way to the hospital to see his daughter being born. You just don't know, right? And you start looking at that and all of a sudden, because you did gratitude first, you feel your heart open and you go, oh, my gosh. And when you're done, and sometimes it takes neuroscience or a facilitator or some coaching. But when you're done, you can look at someone who wronged you greatly. And all you feel is peace and love.

• 35:26Dave Asprey?

  And you can no longer be triggered. This is very important because what we normally learn to do is to say, well, I know that every time this situation comes up, I'm going to feel triggered. I'm going to notice that I'm triggered and then I'm going to take a deep breath. And I'm going to choose to behave like an adult. Hallelujah for doing that. We all need to do more of that. It's just biologically expensive because it takes a lot of effort and time and focus. What if there was no trigger? So the reset process lets you turn this off at a very deep and profound level. And when you're done, you can look at your greatest enemy and you can say, I love you. I forgive you. We are one and you are done for the rest of your life with that trauma. And I have done this on every single trauma that's ever happened. I've had a very successful conscious uncoupling in the last two years.

• 36:11Dave Asprey?

  I had an employee embezzle money. I've had people try to ruin my reputation, all of it. Around the reset process on it and I'm absolutely at peace with it. And to be able to get there, running, I mean, you run at a very big level, so do I. And the amount of stuff that comes at us, no one's ever going to know. It is an enormous thing when you're leading millions of people and making the world a better place. And to be able to do that without the constant stress and the constant tension and the constant questioning in your mind, that all comes from unresolved forgiveness. So the reset process in the book is how do you get there most quickly? And you may say, I don't want to do that. That sounds awful. Do some EMDR. That's another way to get to a similar state.

• 36:56Dave Asprey?

  But this process. Is so powerful and it leads you to amazing spiritual states where you no longer are carrying a grudge because I mean smarter not harder, the power of laziness, how expensive is it for you spiritually at a soul level to carry a grudge against someone who wronged you for the rest of your life? Life is too precious to waste it that way. And this is the fastest way I've found for people to learn how to let go of something. And I put it in a book, you say, well, I thought that was about exercise or biohacking. Look, the biggest thing you can do and the hardest thing you can do is to let go of something that your body is holding on to because it thinks it's keeping you safe. And I thought it was just worthy of including in the book. That's what I mean by spiritual hacking. Find the technique that lets you fully

• 37:41Dave Asprey?

  let go of something so that you can be present with your family, with your friends, with your loved one, and then you can be present for your mission, or maybe you can find your mission and your purpose.

• 37:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I think it's so well said. I'm so glad you included it because I think for the sake of simplicity, we talk about our body, our mind, our soul, or spirit, or whatever we call it. But the truth is that it's so interconnected in that, as you're saying, if you can't let go of an emotional disconnect or a misalignment, chances are that's going to lead to your eating habits. And then that eating habit is going to link back to a lack of that spiritual cleansing or detoxing or whatever that may be. And so we're kind of just stuck in this vicious cycle. And I wanted to talk to you about that because using that spiritual hacking the other way and going, what are some of the blocks that are created physically because of the lack of letting

• 38:34Jay Shetty?

  go? What are some of the habits that you've seen develop physically in our diet, in our, you know, in our physical practices because of a lack of that?

• 38:42Dave Asprey?

  I believe that every cell in your body has its own small consciousness. And even inside the cells, the mitochondria, each of them is an ancient bacteria. And ancient bacteria have a consciousness. It's a pretty slow, dumb consciousness. Actually, it's a very fast consciousness, but it's, it doesn't have much awareness. But when you have billions, actually, for those things, almost trillions inside the body, they function as a distributed consciousness for your meat, for your hardware. And they're just trying to keep the Petri dish alive and they think you're a Petri dish. And you realize that they're storing traumas. And when you do this really deep forgiveness work, you're causing the body to relax and you're causing the body to feel safe at a cellular level.

• 39:27Dave Asprey?

  And when a cell feels safe, it will expand and grow and thrive and it'll maintain itself. And when a cell feels like the environment around it is hostile, whether it's because of self hate or whether it's because of a lack of nutrients or because you're over exercising or under exercising, then they don't feel safe and then they don't do their job right. So when your body is in that place, your energy field gets bigger and stronger. And we can even measure that at the neuroscience clinic. We measure brain voltage and people will increase their brain voltage. And when that happens, suddenly that injury that you've had that won't heal, it heals. The cancer that you have can shrink just from doing meditation, right?

• 40:12Dave Asprey?

  Because if there's conscious or unconscious loathing around a part of your body, like, oh, you don't like your love handles, right? They're probably not going to go away. In fact, they'll probably get bigger, right? Because they don't feel safe. So this deep loving of your body, of your tissues. And I was working with a teenager recently and she said, you know, some of my friends don't like their bodies.

• 40:39Jay Shetty?

  Very common occurrence.

• 40:40Dave Asprey?

  Yeah, and they think they're fat or they think they're thin or they don't like their nose or whatever. And she said, I thought about it a lot. And I realized I really like my body because it can do all these amazing things. And I was like, that is the most enlightened, cool thing I've ever heard from a teenager, right? Because if you have that self-love for your tissues, even if they're not working right. And I say this as a guy who was 300 pounds with arthritis and a knee that I couldn't trust because it would just like, it would just fold in the middle of walking. I would fall over, like I was such a wreck. And to be able to go through and forgive yourself, that's actually the hardest forgiveness. And you can run the reset process on a part of your body that you have an issue with. You can run the reset process on your entire body.

• 41:22Dave Asprey?

  And the feelings of not being enough, not being good enough. All of those things you can just let go of. So you're just at peace and things are as they are. And you don't have to have an emotional reaction to everything. And that allows you to have so much more energy for your spirit.

• 41:38Jay Shetty?

  When that spiritual lacking is draining all your energy, you don't have the energy to pick the right foods and to do the workout and to put into your creative processes or creative endeavors that you have going on. And I want to dive into a couple of things which I thought really, I'm glad you talked about this in the book because I think the challenge is, as we know with health and wellness, there's always a new fad, a new trend, a new kind of thing that comes up and everyone gets behind it. And then afterwards, a few years later, we realized that there was more research to it. I think one of those big areas is around, there's two areas in the book that you cover really well that I want to dive into. One is around where we get our protein. We know protein's important.

• 42:21Jay Shetty?

  I mean, remind us how much protein we need to get every day, like good protein?

• 42:24Dave Asprey?

  You need between 0.8 and one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So I weigh 200 pounds and I'm about 7% body fat. And that means I need about 200 grams of protein a day.

• 42:37Jay Shetty?

  7% body fat?

• 42:37Dave Asprey?

  Yeah, it's ridiculous.

• 42:39Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Dave Asprey?

  As a guy who was the fat computer hacker from the first Jurassic Park, it's totally ridiculous. And in order to do that, if you're obese like I was, you might say, well, if I weighed 300 pounds, I had 100 pounds of fat, you really only need 200 grams of protein. You can subtract the extra fat from the number. But 200 grams of protein.

• 42:57Jay Shetty?

  It's a lot.

• 42:58Dave Asprey?

  And protein isn't all the same. And this is something that.

• 43:01Jay Shetty?

  That's what, yeah.

• 43:01Dave Asprey?

  Yeah, the big food companies are trying to tell us, cricket protein or gluten is protein. There's a company making keto cookies that are all protein. They're just gluten and canola oil. That is not food. So a while ago, the story was, oh, all calories are the same. So you can drink this, you know, high fructose corn syrup. It's just calories. As long as you keep your calories low, you can drink a Diet Coke and a Snickers bar. They cancel each other's out. It doesn't work like that. Protein's the same way. So different proteins send different signals to the body. And there's something called amino acid availability score. And it turns out that animal proteins score much higher than plant-based proteins. And I say this

• 43:40Dave Asprey?

  as a former vegan, a former raw vegan, and you just cannot get enough protein from plants unless you're doing heavy industrial processing of the plants. And that comes at a cost. But even then, the highest quality plant-based protein powders don't hold a candle to dairy protein, which is vegetarian, or egg protein, which is vegetarian, or sort of the king of proteins is beef or buffalo or bison. As a vegan, I had a problem with this because while I was a vegan, I was in Tibet at a monastery, and Tibetan monks love to argue. They're trained since they're about eight years old, or they have an eight-year-old sitting on the ground, surrounded by older kids standing up, all arguing at the same

• 44:24Dave Asprey?

  time, doing these like aggressive things. And it's to teach you to be calm in the face of arguments, so that you can still be at peace. And it's beautiful to watch. So I knew this. And so I'm kind of teasing the head Lama. I said, well, you tell me no killing, but you have a yak skin on your prayer pole. So I think you're a hypocrite. And he starts laughing. And he looks at me, goes, one death feeds everyone. I'm like, mind blown. Because I had been a vegan until I went to Tibet. And I realized I cannot be a vegan in Tibet because there's just very little food. And if there's, you know, some yak butter tea, or there's, you know, a little bit of meat, you just eat it because there's just not enough food. So I really thought about it. And that led me to think about deaths per

• 45:05Dave Asprey?

  calorie. And as a guy has built a regenerative farm on Vancouver Island and raised all of my own animals for most of the last eight years, I will tell you that a cow will feed you for an entire year. And if it's grass-fed and from a local farmer, no other animal died unless the cow stepped on a frog. I mean, it is literally one death. And if the cow was treated with respect and ethically, Then you're killing fewer animals than an industrial plant protein. Because when they do those, the tractor comes through and it chops up every creature that's there, including the bunnies and the mice and the butterflies and all the ugly ones like worms that no one likes that are important for life. So I feel really clean about it, but the most important thing that I can say, if you

• 45:49Dave Asprey?

  choose to eat animal protein, which I do, is that practice gratitude before you eat. I believe because of my shamanic training, because of all the spiritual work that I do, that humans, our energetic field as a species, made a sacred agreement with the animals that we've domesticated. And they come here to nourish us in exchange for our gratitude. So if you're going to eat meat, you practice gratitude because that's the deal we made. And if you disrespect the animal and you're eating industrial meat and you're eating it with mindlessly, I don't think that's a good practice. But I do think it's ethical to eat meat because I'm killing fewer lives when I eat beef than when I eat plant-based protein.

• 46:32Dave Asprey?

  And since that nourishes me better, which gives me stronger energy and stronger bones, and it gives me more energy to put back into the world, including building better soil via farming of animals, I feel like it's a good deal and it's within integrity for me.

• 46:47Jay Shetty?

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• 47:29Jay Shetty?

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• 47:51Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  On October 2nd.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped moving? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 48:21Jay Shetty?

  But even in some animal protein you are recommending, and we'll talk about the plant proteins as well, but some of the animal proteins you were saying are not as strong and reliable. I believe you mentioned chicken, turkey. I think there were a couple of others in the book that I saw.

• 48:33Dave Asprey?

  Birds are not that, they're dinosaurs. So they're less like us. And the fat that's present in birds is similar to soybean oil. It's a lot of omega-6 that causes inflammation. And you would know this. If you're in India and you're not feeling well, your grandmother's going to give you white rice and ghee, which is clarified butter. In the U.S., you get saltines and margarine or something, and it doesn't work very well. But the reason is that ghee, that saturated fat, is very nourishing for you and that you actually need that. You don't get it from a chicken. And also, one chicken, to get the amount of protein, I'd eat a chicken a day. I'm killing 365 chickens a year. That doesn't feel very good. In addition to that, real chickens, the kind that I grow on my farm, take nine months to mature.

• 49:18Dave Asprey?

  And their fat is rich and yellow and full of vitamins, even though it's not the best kind of fat. But the chickens they were eating at the store takes six weeks to get that big because they've been modified and bred to have these incredibly large breasts, and they're terribly mistreated. So unless the chicken is pasture-raised and heritage breed, at which point it's not affordable. They're terribly expensive to raise. Chickens exist to make eggs. Eggs, if you're not allergic, are really a good source of fat and protein. And when you eat eggs, you want to cook the whites and leave the yolk runny. And then you get the most nutrients that way.

• 49:54Jay Shetty?

  And we talked about the plant protein from a... Ethical standpoint, but but even from a nutritional standpoint, I mean, I as so me and my wife are both plant based, but plant protein is like not a big part of our diets at all. My wife's like not into eating any of the burgers or any of the meats.

• 50:10Dave Asprey?

  That's probably a good move. The fake meat is not good.

• 50:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's yeah, explain why, because I think that's slightly the challenge for a lot of people who try and make that switch. And I feel everyone who tends to that then goes back because it's not satisfying.

• 50:22Dave Asprey?

  Are you plant based to the exclusion of dairy?

• 50:25Jay Shetty?

  Yes, I am. Yeah, me and my wife, we have been for years.

• 50:27Dave Asprey?

  Yeah, and it's working for you. And by the way, if you're from India, you probably have the genes that are going to support that much better. And so if you look at what your great grandmother ate, that's going to be an indication of what you can handle. And if you look at you, your skin is really good. And that's unusual when most people go vegan because they eat a lot of industrial processed seed oils. Yeah. So if you're eating a diet that agrees with your body, and I totally support doing that. Then what you want to do is you want to make sure that you're getting complete amino acids. And you can do it from rice and beans, but here's the issue. To get enough protein.

• 51:04Jay Shetty?

  It's definitely hard. I'm fully like, I'm thinking about it a lot.

• 51:07Dave Asprey?

  It's like 300 grams of carbs to get 20 grams of protein. So then your best bet for plant based proteins have the highest amino acid score. It's actually hemp protein with the fat removed. Because hemp oil isn't particularly good for you. So then what you end up doing is saying, okay, I'm going to do that and I feel good. I've also helped a lot of a lot of vegans. In fact, this was at David Wolf's vegan conference. I explained the virtues of ghee, where no animals die to make ghee. And ghee helps to escort the nutrients from plants into the body. So you make better use of the plants. So sometimes adding a tablespoon of ghee a day gives you like a healthier skin glow and it feels more nourishing.

• 51:50Dave Asprey?

  And people can choose to do that or not choose to do that. And people get mad because I tease vegans. Dude, I was a vegan. Like it's teasing, guys. It's not. It's not a disrespectful thing. It's a, in my case, it actually harmed me. And some things like spinach. Kale, even raspberries and almonds are very high in oxalic acid, which I write about in the book, and it causes crystals to form. Seventy percent of kidney stones are from plant-based compounds, not from eating meat and beer. Thirty percent are from meat and beer. And so you can overdo either direction, right? So I want people to say, choose the right plants when you're plant-based. And I would consider, if I was plant-based, adding

• 52:31Dave Asprey?

  hemp-based protein powder, even though it is a processed food, it's going to be a processed food that has the best amino acid score that you can get.

• 52:39Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Thank you so much. Very useful for everyone who's listening. And I wanted to dive into drinking the wrong kind of milk, because I think milk's been this, you know, there's, obviously, there's been the almond milks and the oat milks, and then there's been debate on either side. Walk us through milk, because I think like, that's, again, I'd love to hear your side of it, because, again, it's one of the, I find all of this so confusing, because you hear something new come out, everyone gets behind it, it works for people, maybe it doesn't work. Stopping dairy milk from my diet helped me with my gut, but I also don't drink a lot of oat milk or almond milk. That's not really, that's not really part of my diet. I don't, I don't have cereal and stuff like that. So I'm not drinking that, but then there's a lot of debate on that side of it as well.

• 53:22Dave Asprey?

  There is a lot of debate.

• 53:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Dave Asprey?

  Dairy milk has been a part of human food for at least 5,000 years. And it's a convenient way to not kill an animal and to have it continuously produce fat and protein, which are the hard things for humans to get enough of, because carbs are relatively abundant in nature. So what do you do? Well, normally, you would just drink milk, but the milk we would drink was from a breed of cows that makes A2 milk, and they ate grass. And that works well with our biology. The kind of milk that you get now is from cows that are bred to eat grain and, and corn and soy. And that milk has the wrong kind of fat, and it has a kind of protein called A1 protein that's very inflammatory. So a lot of people who can't drink milk, which include me because it messes up my gut

• 54:07Dave Asprey?

  roiling. It just makes me, it makes me stupid. Actually, my brain swells up from it.

• 54:11Jay Shetty?

  I get a lot of mucus. I used to get throat, like I used to get more throat infections.

• 54:15Dave Asprey?

  Me too. It's very similar. So sometimes you can handle A2 milk, but raw A2 milk is how we used to drink it. And in many states, it's still illegal. And why the government thinks it has a right to tell you what you're allowed to eat, I don't know. They don't have that right. So it doesn't matter if they make it illegal. They didn't have the right to make it illegal. So therefore it's not illegal in the world that I live in. Then again, if you're selling it, they might still try to arrest you. Then you gotta go to court. But here's the deal. Raw milk for many people is very, very healing. And for some people whey protein, especially if you're vegetarian but not vegan, it's a source. Just get grass fed whey protein because the animals are treated better and because it's a higher quality nutritional product. But let's assume you're not going to drink cow's milk because for a lot of people, it just doesn't work, including me. I don't

• 54:59Dave Asprey?

  touch it. Butter and ghee usually are acceptable, especially ghee won't trigger allergies and mucus like that for almost anyone. Well, what about the fake milks? Right? So these are all industrial products unless you make it yourself. And what they figured out with almond milk was, oh, we can take leftover parts of almonds and the ones that are broken and unsightly, and we can use those to make milk. And it's just a few almonds and some canola oil and some high fructose corn syrup, some flavorings, and we blend it up and we sell it for like $8 as a health food product. It's not a health food product. So almond milk is high in phytic acid that sucks minerals out of your bones. You have to take more minerals. And it's also high in oxalates, which are the things that are causing kidney stones

• 55:42Dave Asprey?

  and things that are causing gout and joint pain when you wake up, even if you have really bad skin and you're eating a ton of these high oxalate foods like almond milk and kale smoothies and all, this can be why, because it's making tiny razor sharp calcium oxalate crystals in your skin that are coming out. So I don't recommend almond milk. Also, if you're a vegan for animals, the number of bees, about a third of all bees die pollinating almonds every year. Like it is not a particularly clean product. So then we say, well, oat milk. Okay, that is the biggest scam on the planet right now. It raises your blood sugar as much as drinking a Coke. It is not a health food. And it usually has glyphosate and it's

• 56:25Dave Asprey?

  high in phytic acid that sucks minerals out of your body. And I know you might not like hearing this, but

• 56:32Dave Asprey?

  Do the math. There's a tablespoon of oats blended into a bunch of water and you spent six bucks on that? Like, are you dumb? Right? It's not a good move. Right? So what should you drink? There's two kinds of milk that are okay. One of them is macadamia milk, which is really expensive and you have to make it yourself because macadamias have the right kinds of oil in them. But the other one that's abundant and healthy is coconut milk. So if you're going to do it, use coconut.

• 56:59Jay Shetty?

  That's the worst tasting one.

• 57:00Dave Asprey?

  I know, right?

• 57:01Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Dave Asprey?

  It is the worst tasting one.

• 57:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 57:03Dave Asprey?

  Here's the problem, though. If you say, okay, I don't like the taste of coconut milk, and I'm with you on that. So I'm going to

• 57:10Jay Shetty?

  I don't drink any milks, but yes.

• 57:11Dave Asprey?

  Yeah, that's, that's really the key. You don't need to drink a plant milk. It's a made up product that you don't have a need for. But if you say, I'm going to do one of these other things, you're spending a lot of money, you're getting anti-nutrients, you're getting mostly water, and you're usually getting a toxic burden. So like, why, why am I doing this again? The thing that milk has that's most important is it has protein. And the second most important is it has good fats. When you have a replacement milk, even coconut milk, there is no protein. So the coconut yogurt you like, it doesn't work because it doesn't have protein. So you have to take that and add whey protein or add scoops of maybe hemp protein if you're doing plant-based. But you've got to add

• 57:52Dave Asprey?

  a whole bunch of protein to it because normal yogurt has that. Most people tolerate grass-fed yogurt pretty well. I still don't. I can't touch cow's milk unless it's ghee for the most part, or I could do some butter. But if I was to have, you know, two tablespoons of regular milk, it messes me up. My gut's wrong. It's just not right. So that's an immune response. So I just want to tell you, you're not getting protein in your plant milks and you're getting stuff you don't want in your plant milks. So just don't do it.

• 58:20Jay Shetty?

  You've mentioned canola oil a few times as well, and I feel like oils has been Obviously, in the biohacking world, it's it's been known for a while, but I think it's finally coming into like the forefront of checking the back of something and going, oh, my gosh, wow, this has canola oil, palm oil, you know, the millions of different oils. Walk us through that, because I think that's kind of still for the majority of people like an under understood area like it's it's we're just not aware. Unaware is probably the right word like.

• 58:47Dave Asprey?

  Yeah, we're unaware. We've been taught first calories are what matter. And it turns out, well, calories do entirely different things. So we've tossed that out for most people have understood that's different. And then we say, OK, well, it's how much fat are you eating? But who would imagine that different fats do different things in the body? Oh, my gosh, you mean the kind of fat matters? Oh, and different proteins. So even saying fat, carbs and protein, it doesn't mean anything unless you know what it is. So we zoom in on fat. Well, it turns out omega six fats, which is canola, corn, soybeans, safflower, even grape seed oil. Those are fats that when they enter the body, they slow your metabolism and they cause inflammation because they're unstable fats. They're called polyunsaturated fats.

• 59:30Dave Asprey?

  And when you eat saturated fats, things like coconut oil or butter or ghee or most animal fats from like sheep or something or from cows, but not from chickens. Then you end up saying, oh, the saturated fats, they can't oxidize because they're stable. So you eat those and they stimulate your metabolism and they allow your body to make testosterone and to make other hormones that your body needs and to make stable cell membranes. So we understand the biochemistry of this, but the food companies are saying, well, it's cheaper to do canola oil, so let's fry our french fries in those. Canola oil and its its cousins there, they're a major cause of diabetes and cancer, which are skyrocketing because they're unstable, especially when they're heated a lot.

• 1:00:13Jay Shetty?

  And they're pretty much in every packaged good.

• 1:00:16Dave Asprey?

  They are, but change is coming. So before about the 1970s, all french fries are made with beef tallow because it's a very stable oil that's fat from cows. At McDonald's, that's what they use. And then they switched to these seed oils and then all the diseases went through the roof. So we have a problem. Food needs to be affordable for everyone. One of the companies that I've invested in and that I'm backing that I'm most excited about is called Zero Acre Farms. And I don't work for them. I did put a small amount of money in them, but it's because of the mission. They found a way to use fermentation to make an oil that is mono unsaturated like olive oil, that is stable for frying at 25% the cost of canola oil for a restaurant.

• 1:00:58Dave Asprey?

  And they're scaling up to get to that price point. But what it's called Zero Acre because it'll remove millions of acres of corn and soy from being grown to squeeze oil out of them. And they can take sugarcane, just the entire sugarcane, not sugar, and they can ferment it and make a healthy edible oil for humans. And this is going to change the world's metabolism. It's a huge thing. So in the meantime, you can go to a place that has duck fat fries or tallow fries, which you wouldn't eat, or you don't eat fries. Don't eat fried food at restaurants is a great rule to live longer. And don't eat the salad dressing either. Tell them I want real olive oil that's not cut with canola oil. And I want vinegar or lemon juice. And you do that, just those two things, nothing fried and do that. And all of a sudden, you find you lose

• 1:01:40Dave Asprey?

  weight, your brain is focused, your body makes more hormones. It's that big of a deal.

• 1:01:44Jay Shetty?

  I'm so glad you raised that because that's the, it's such a tiny, simple change, but it could save you from so many different things. Like I switched probably, it might have been a year now, but I traveled a lot this year on tour and that was hard because my diet on tour was not as easy to maintain because I was in different cities every day. And I didn't have a chef who was traveling with me or anything like that. And when I'm back here, I've been eating like a whole foods diet, only eating plants, not eating anything out of packages.

• 1:02:13Dave Asprey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:14Jay Shetty?

  You know, not eating pretty much no packaged food whatsoever, maybe now and again. And like that in and of itself has transformed. I used to love a bag of chips.

• 1:02:23Dave Asprey?

  Right.

• 1:02:23Jay Shetty?

  Even if they were like the healthiest chips that I could possibly find. I love a bag of chips. I love, you know, I love a little bit of crackers, biscuits, whatever, any of this kind of stuff, knickknacks. And just taking out packaged foods has had a massive impact on how I feel.

• 1:02:37Dave Asprey?

  It's kind of life changing to do that. And I missed an oil that should get a shout out. It's palm oil.

• 1:02:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Dave Asprey?

  So. Palm oil is saturated and I would much rather eat something cooked in palm oil than canola oil. The issue with palm oil is mostly environmental. So there's deforestation and orangutans and things like that. But if you are at the store and you want to buy some chips or crisps or whatever.

• 1:03:01Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, crisp is what I would have called it. I've adapted bag of chips. We'd call it a bag of crisps back in London. Yes.

• 1:03:07Dave Asprey?

  So you want to eat those, look for something that's cooked in coconut oil or palm oil. And when you do that, you're going to be much healthier and they're going to taste better and they're going to be more satisfying. Cause when you eat those bad oils, the omega six oils, they make you hungry really quickly. Cause your body says, I gotta deal with all this inflammation. Have some sugar. So all of a sudden you ate a chip that felt good. And I don't generally eat stuff like that. Maybe at a barbecue or something. I'll bring a bag of those.

• 1:03:34Jay Shetty?

  Of course. Yeah, I'm not perfect. Yeah. And Dave, I want to thank you for doing all this research because you know, as, as I've got older and I'm 36 now, and as I get older every single year, my health goes up and up and up on the priority list. And I think for me, it's been so challenging because I grew up, I would say with no health education.

• 1:03:54Dave Asprey?

  Right.

• 1:03:55Jay Shetty?

  I'm benefited by having a wife who's very disciplined and focused and understands more. I'm grateful to have my podcast where I get to sit down with incredible people like you. And I get introduced to books like yours that I have over the years on longevity and now smarter, not harder. And to me, I'm just like, I want to get this right to make getting older easier. Right? Like to get, make getting older like.

• 1:04:18Dave Asprey?

  Your goals, your goals suck.

• 1:04:21Jay Shetty?

  Oh, sorry. That's a bad goal.

• 1:04:23Dave Asprey?

  I want to make, I want to make getting older easier.

• 1:04:25Jay Shetty?

  No, you know what I mean.

• 1:04:26Dave Asprey?

  I want to stop getting old.

• 1:04:29Jay Shetty?

  That sounds great.

• 1:04:30Dave Asprey?

  And I want to stay how I am now or better every single year.

• 1:04:33Jay Shetty?

  I want to be better. I want to be better.

• 1:04:34Dave Asprey?

  There you go.

• 1:04:34Jay Shetty?

  Let's do that one. Let's do that one.

• 1:04:35Dave Asprey?

  Isn't that a different vision?

• 1:04:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:04:38Dave Asprey?

  It feels different, right? We have it so built in that we're going to get old. We are living in a world today where you can measure as 20 years younger than your calendar age.

• 1:04:47Jay Shetty?

  I want that. I want that.

• 1:04:48Dave Asprey?

  You don't have to get old. Right? You might age, but the getting old thing, that's, that's what we did in the seventies.

• 1:04:56Jay Shetty?

  It made me happy. I was, I was, I've been playing a lot of pickleball and that's been like my, my form of exercise that I love and I enjoy and it's, it's, it's start and stop. It's fast. It's competitive. I love every part of it. And I just got beat by a 70 year old a couple of weeks ago and I loved it because I, I just, I was like, I want to be like you. And I was so like,

• 1:05:14Dave Asprey?

  It's so inspiring.

• 1:05:15Jay Shetty?

  He destroyed me.

• 1:05:17Dave Asprey?

  One person can do that.

• 1:05:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Dave Asprey?

  And, and that brings up something that, that's actually really important.

• 1:05:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, please.

• 1:05:22Dave Asprey?

  Learning from our elders. The reason I can do all this biohacking is I was so desperate for my health in my twenties. I started running an anti-aging longevity nonprofit group near Stanford University. So I was learning how to maintain my health from people in their eighties who could run circles around me. Like, that's possible. I saw it and I saw it in the nineties. And if they could do it back then, we can do so much better now.

• 1:05:45Jay Shetty?

  Thank you for calling me out on that. That's good. I like it.

• 1:05:48Dave Asprey?

  You're welcome.

• 1:05:48Jay Shetty?

  You're allowed to. Yeah. I like that. That's awesome.

• 1:05:50Dave Asprey?

  I learned from my elders. You learn from the guy in the pickleball court. You can be that guy when you're 70.

• 1:05:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Dave Asprey?

  And what's really going to happen when you're 70 is you can be that guy, but look and feel like you do now.

• 1:05:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Dave Asprey?

  And we're building this world for all of us. And it's really important because the birth rate in all developed nations is so low right now. We're not replacing our population, which means it's our job to be strong and young forever.

• 1:06:10Jay Shetty?

  Well said. Well said. The book is called Smarter Not Harder by Dave Asprey, The Biohacker's Guide to Getting the Body and Mind You Want. I highly, highly recommend that you grab a copy of this book. I, we have just skimmed over some of the things that I found interesting, some of the things that I felt were front of mind for me. I know a lot of you have been asking questions about these things. I see tons of videos on TikTok sharing all sorts of advice. I felt it was great to dive into it with Dave. Please go and grab a copy. Go and read it with your friends. Figure out that one thing that you're going to focus on. Remember, you don't need to try and do all of this. Pick that one area that you want to solve, master it, move on to the next. Uh, I promise you that as much as it sounds hard and complicated and difficult, once you start seeing a win in one area,

• 1:06:55Jay Shetty?

  it's going to have that domino effect. So go and grab it. Dave, thank you so much for always coming on and being such a, you're such a, you are, you are an elder truly, but you don't look like one, you know, you don't, you don't. Feel like one, which is amazing. And I'm very grateful that I get to have these conversations with you because I always come away more inspired and uplifted and my goals get bigger and bolder and better. So I'm glad that you're not letting me settle. So thank you for not letting me settle. I appreciate it.

• 1:07:19Dave Asprey?

  You're so welcome.

• 1:07:21Jay Shetty?

  I mean it, I mean it.

• 1:07:22Dave Asprey?

  I appreciate your work so much. You are inspiring millions of people to be better. And I see it every day online and you're just, you're doing such amazing work. So true appreciation.

• 1:07:31Jay Shetty?

  Well, thank you. Thank you, David. If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Maté on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.

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