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[Music]
welcome back to the show Tom I love
being here in LA and just checking out
your awesome set thank you man so you've
got the new book smarter not harder you
talk in the book about how when you were
younger you did things not in the most
intelligent way I'm curious with all of
the hacks and stuff that you've put
together that you document in the book
for somebody that's at the beginning in
their journey and they want to do that
basic like I just want to lose weight as
a proxy for other things but let's start
with that what's the most potent hack
that you have for somebody that wants to
to Really trim down if you just want to
lose weight the most important thing you
can do is you can do intermittent
fasting
that was our last interview the problem
is that sometimes it doesn't work so
most people will go out and do what I
did when I was in my early 20s I weighed
300 pounds I said I'm going to lose
weight and it's the most important thing
in my life and I was an early adopter of
being obese but right now it's more than
half of people so I did my whole family
was early adopters it's crazy I remember
as a kid thinking my family is different
right because they were all obese and I
didn't have that word back then you can
guess the word that was floating around
oh yeah but I remember thinking wow this
is weird why is my family so heavy in
other people's isn't it was a strange
thing obviously that becomes a huge part
of what pushes me at Quest but being an
early adopter of that then because you
one of the things I found interesting
and I'd heard you say this before but in
the book you detail it out I think a
couple times where you like I was a size
46 waist I was going ham I was working
out I got really strong but I was still
a size 46 waist yeah now does have to do
with the energy
metabolism there are several things that
cause that to happen and one of them was
over training over training you can't
lose weight when you're over trained
because you can outrun a bad diet or
because you're breaking horizontally
your cortisol goes through the roof and
it perhaps the fat it absolutely does
there are tons of people especially
women today who make they do the same
thing I did and they say I'm just going
to work out every day and I'm going to
eat less and I know I'm going to lose
weight because calories in calories out
and then they don't it just doesn't work
and then they get frustrated so then
they work out even harder and they do
what I did oh I'll take the chicken off
the chicken side are they not in a
caloric deficit because so this is one
of the most fascinating arguments around
calorie in calorie out so are you saying
so there is for sure for sure complexity
yeah that we'll get to in a second but I
want to I want to attack this head-on so
do you have to be in a caloric deficit
in order to lose weight no
and if you are in a caloric deficit is
it possible to maintain your body fat
percentage and or increase your body fat
percentage if you're in a caloric
deficit you probably won't increase it
however the studies show that when
you're in a caloric deficit for long
periods of time you go crazy and these
are studies that were conducted you know
in caves with people where there was
really no level of control the guy who
wrote about them with the most detail
was Gary Tobbs and his classic good
colors bad calories so the idea that
you're going to just use willpower to
stay in a caloric deficit forever it
actually is cruel and it doesn't work if
it did we would all easily lose weight
when you say doesn't work though what do
you mean it does it break because people
just get fed up and they're going to go
eat yeah people will do that in fact the
number of people who are breatharians
who wake up with empty candy bar
wrappers next to them it wasn't me it
happens and what happens is the meat
operating system takes over and says
you're going to eat and if you want me
to pretend you didn't eat that's no
problem there's a separate intelligence
that runs your meat it's what I call the
meat operating system in the book it
does stuff before you can think about it
and if you've ever caught yourself
reaching for a cookie that you said you
wanted to eat who the hell reads for the
cookie it wasn't you dude that's one of
the most surreal things that happened to
me so I would be a stress eater if I
hadn't done a lot of work so we were
just talking before we started rolling
there was a period this last year was
working 120 hours a week
no one should do it it's terrible I
don't want anybody to be impressed it
was out of poor decision making that I
ended up working that much but it was
the first time in my life where I
suddenly I actually understood how
people end up eating out of stress
because I would find myself walking to
the cupboard opening it up to get
something because I only eat what's on
my meal plan right and I was like what
is happening so I would have gotten set
my computer down gotten up walked across
the room reached for the cabinet all
before my mind kicked in and I was like
whoa some part of me knew the way you're
feeling will be alleviated by eating
this thing it's a very discomforting
feeling of how much I could do sort of
in zombie mode
uh it's worse than that
we are all in zombie mode all the time
because when I snap my fingers right now
you picked it up right away right except
if we were to put electrodes on your
head and measure your brain waves it
takes for the average person about a
third of a second before the brain gets
the first electrical signal that
something happened so what was happening
in the third of a second between when it
actually happened and when your brain
got a signal and then you had to think
about the signal to figure out what it
was so we're all running with a third to
a half a second lag time on reality but
we can't see it and there is a system in
our body that is very much faster than
our brain and it does all sorts of
things
to you and then you take credit for it
and a lot of what is in smarter not
harder is how do we get a signal into
that automated system it's actually a
separate intelligence that keeps your
meat alive if you removed all of your
human stuff who's making you breathe
who's making you pull away from heat and
things like that there are reflexes in
there would it be true to say this is
the difference between the conscious and
unconscious mind or are you trying to
delineate something else
it's something else
the unconscious mind is a part of that
system but there's a distributed system
of decision making throughout the body
each
mitochondria and probably some of the
other subcellular parts is an
environmental sensor in and of itself
it's a tiny little computer that picks
up a signal from the world around it and
then it decides what to do and it does
that and it talks to its other little
friends they have a little system called
Quorum sensing which is like voting it's
similar to the way crypto algorithms
work so your little things are deciding
what's going on in the tip of my finger
right now
your brain is never going to get that
signal yet this is a part of your meat
and if they decide that there's
something hot there they're going to
send a little alarm signal up and
eventually all these different systems
that are made of tiny little compute
nodes come up with a consensus and
eventually it makes its way through your
nervous system up to your brain and then
your brain figures out what to do with
the signal and it's that lag time where
well the hand moved away so we've all
accidentally rested our hand on a hot
surface and we Jerk It Away good thing I
pulled my hand away before I got burned
you didn't your automated system pulled
the hand away and you took credit for it
so if we could acknowledge that there is
absolutely A system that does things
before our brain can do it and the
measure in the brain here is called
p300d and it's just how quickly can your
brain sense reality around you how fast
is your nervous system
young people say an 18 year old is
usually around 250 milliseconds and
people in their 30s 40s 50s gets a
little slower with age you get to about
350 milliseconds I'm still at 250
milliseconds because I've hacked my
brain I do all the weird stuff that I do
so my nervous system and brain's ability
to sense reality is a you know about 0.1
seconds faster than average for my age
but even so I have a meat operating
system it does things and a lot of our
anxiety that we think is emotional
anxiety it's actually physical anxiety
something's wrong in the system the
system maybe doesn't even know what it
is because it's some weird toxin that
didn't exist in nature or we're eating
the wrong stuff or we're in an endless
caloric deficit yeah so I want to
anxiety is interesting and we'll
definitely come back to that
um to to wrap the calories in calories
out oh yeah so
this is like one of the most hotly
contested things sort of like it seems
like it's getting more and more narrow
so what I want to understand from you
because as far as I can tell the people
that um get really agitated when you say
that it isn't just a simple math
equation I think what they're saying is
effectively that if you put a bit of
chicken breasts in a um
a bomb calorimeter that it is going to
give off however many kilojoules of
energy when burned
fine like that I I don't have a beef
with that I don't know if that's just
plain physics unfortunately it's not how
biology works but it's physics we'll get
into the statement it's not how biology
Works in a second so first I want to see
if I can neutralize some of the people
in this so what I would say is okay cool
I'm with you on that the body however
though is a chemical processing plant
that's influencing what you're calling
the meat operating system which can do
things like get people to do things
subconsciously uh and maybe that one is
even less interesting or controversial
than the idea of at a cellular level
they're coming up with a quorum they're
deciding what to do and they're turning
things on and off we had talked about I
think it was in our last time together
where mitochondria will actually become
less efficient depending on the type of
calorie that you consume and so getting
into the complexities of that so I'll be
interested to read the comments and see
if we just alleviated some of the yes if
you put it in a bomb calorimeter it's
going to kick off that much when you
burn it cool yes if you are chronically
in a caloric deficit you are going to
lose fat but once you get into the
day-to-day realities of living a life
the the one last thing I will plant
while you're here to steer me if I go
wrong is there are certain drugs that
you can take no even before we get to
drugs if you're a type 1 diabetic you
can eat and eat and eat and starve to
death because you can't store fat that's
the one that I I never I haven't seen
the argumentation I'm sure it's out
there and people will forgive me for my
current ignorance
so all right with all of that laid down
so the people hopefully argue with you
if they see differently that it's a
slightly deeper part of the argument so
did any of that strike you as untrue
none of it struck me is untrue the bomb
Colorimeter thing is interesting because
if you put a piece of chicken
in a in a chamber and you heat the
chamber with a known amount of heat
until it incinerates and then you
measure how much additional heat you got
that's great put the chicken in there
with some non-caloric flame retardant
and it's going to require a lot more
heat to get the heat out of the chicken
but they never talk about that what does
that mean you're saying that there's the
equivalent of that in the human body
yeah if you put a flame retardant on the
chicken it's hard to burn but they don't
question how much energy it takes to
burn the chicken they only question how
much energy they got from burning the
chicken
so isn't it reasonable that there are
things that inhibit metabolism even if
you eat X number of calories and there's
three things that absolutely destroy all
of these calorie trolls and the calorie
trolls are generally people who've never
been fat or people who have fetishized
starvation and they're unhappy people
they're usually people who spend an
enormous amount of time in the gym and
genuinely believe that you can cancel
out our Snickers bar with a Diet Coke
they are wrong and when they perpetuate
that stuff they're actually causing a
lot of harm to normal people who are
trying to lose weight and follow bad
advice I went to the gym for 702 hours
and went on a low-fat low-calorie diet
when I didn't lose 100 pounds and the
entire time I thought I was eating too
much or I wasn't working out in that 90
minutes a day of half weights and half
cardio it's not reasonable it may work
for some people here's three arguments
why colors and calories out don't work
number one
if you eat X number of calories from Y
type of food at noon
you'll get one biological response eat
it at midnight you'll get another why
because of circadian biology the body
does different things with the same
exact number of calories based on when
you eat it because that nutrition
partitioning meaning it's gonna burn it
or store it as fat or it'll store it as
fat you're more insulin resistant in the
middle of the night melatonin makes you
insulin resistant
okay so your blood sugar response varies
greatly based on that the fact that you
can gain weight from the same number of
calories depending when they're eaten
destroys calories and calories out it's
an oversimplified lazy way of thinking
about weight loss and it's actually
cruel to fat people the way I was the
second thing is the uranium has a
million
calories per gram actually more than
that I found the math on it once
so if you ate a gram of uranium you
should be really fat and be fine for
years right
you mean you can't process uranium you
mean oh how about coal Coal is a lot of
calories in it oh you can't process coal
oh
so it apparently isn't about calories
and colors out it has to be the right
calories that go in not the so wow
different colors do different things who
would have ever admitted that in a blind
calories and calories out sort of world
the third destruction of the calories in
calorie count myth is a drug that's used
in animal husbandry
it's called xerinol it's an extract of
zorena zarellanone which comes from
toxic molds it's a synthetic bio
xenoestrogen that's a thousand times
stronger than human estrogen they
concentrate this toxin they put it in a
cow's ear so it'll enter through the
skin where it's thin in the air
circulate throughout the cow and the cow
gets fat on 30 less calories it says
Ranchers a lot of money what's it doing
what's the it drives up estrogen which
causes you to gain weight on less
calories so if this drug can exist and
if they use it today to increase yields
in agriculture and if farmers who are
making hundreds of millions and actually
billions of dollars can measure feed
efficiency to see whether x amount of
calories from this food makes the animal
fat or not the calorie and calorie out
people are gym trolls and nothing else
okay that was very pointed so let's take
these one at a time so the first one
nutrition partitioning so the body is
making a decision as to what to do with
the calories that it's in taking and so
you have a lever that you can pull there
so the example that you gave is timing
of eating I'm sure there are others
that's probably the biggest one this is
based on Sachin panta's work at the Salk
Institute and I've gone down and visited
his lab interviewed him a while ago in
fact you should have them on the show
he's a fascinating guy and he writes
about how his mother in India just
stopped eating when it was dark and in
about 90 days her type 2 diabetes went
away she lost a ton of weight just from
changing windshield she didn't change
what she ate at all right so the body
has a system that says during the day
when it sees bright light directly
overhead
it expects the largest number of
calories and this goes back to billion
years to when we're basically bacteria
floating in the ocean you have the most
algae to eat and the most sunlight and
we're trying to figure out a timing
signal to synchronize all the systems in
the body
so when we are single-celled organisms
and we want to start working with others
of our little single-celled species we
all needed to agree on what time it was
so to this very day there's a timing
system in the body called the scn in the
brain that's primarily controlled
through five percent of the cells in
your eyes and when it turns on melatonin
because it's dark outside melatonin
makes you insulin resistant and when
you're insulin resistant what you do
with calories is different you don't
take blood sugar and put it in to
burning it to make electricities make
ATP and turning ATP to ADP the things
that we do you'll actually take into
storing fat and that's how it works okay
so very very complex process it is a
complex process it's not just nutrient
partitioning but it's circadian biology
there was a Nobel Prize for this kind of
work that was uh rewarded for I think
the clock or awarded for the clock Gene
sometime in the last five or six years
it's relatively new science but
circadian biology really does show the
timing of food changes everything
um
okay the second one can't process
certain nutrients is this where we get
into kale and things that have
anti-nutrient properties like would
there be a way to eat so that I could
cancel so if it's not a Diet Coke that
cancels out my candy bar are there
things that I could eat we had on the
glucose goddess she'll have to Jesse I
forget her last name she's interesting
uh and she basically talks about that
that hey if you eat your now I don't
remember if she said that it would
impact your fat accumulation but
assuming that there is a positive
correlation or a causation between the
amount of glucose in your bloodstream
and the amount of fat that you store she
says that you can blunt the glucose
response by eating your vegetables your
I would assume high fiber items prior to
the things with that would otherwise
have a high glycemic load that's using
protein first actually and fat just you
have have dessert for dessert not for
your appetizer and you will have less of
a blood sugar Spike which probably will
cause you to put on to put on less fat
but not always if you have a blood sugar
Spike and you've just worked out then
that drives something called insulin
which is similar to insulin like growth
factor which is related to human growth
hormone so bodybuilders actually will do
a heavy workout then they'll drink a
bunch of maltodextrin to spike their
blood sugar so they can put on muscle
more but that's because there's high
demand for it if you're in a system
where there's not a high demand for
glucose and you spike a blood sugar
you're likely to store fat okay and how
far do you think that we can push that
so if I wanted to eat junk food let's be
honest that's what I would want to eat
sure but I want to
pretty dramatically blunt that effect
yeah let's talk about that this is
another great example for calories and
calories at
you could take something called olestra
have you heard of this isn't that what
makes you not metabolize fat yeah oh
yeah leaky anus or whatever it was in
the packaging of potato chips and I was
like I do not want anything that's
leaking anus but it does block fat
digestion you can also take various
carbohydrate blockers some of them are
plant extracts and they're basically
blocking any of the enzymes that break
down carbohydrates to release sugar so
now you've eaten calories but you didn't
digest them and I guess I guess we're
not bomb calorimeters oh right if such a
drug is possible in calories in college
out also doesn't matter and then the
trolls will say oh but those colors
don't really count because you ate them
but you didn't absorb them so I'm like
oh so it's about calories absorbed and
calories out but they don't ever talk
about that they don't care about what
you put in your mouth so yeah you can
also take binding things like citrus
pectin and some other things that slow
digestion or even prevent digestion I
don't think it's a good idea to take a
carbohydrate blocker a protein digestion
blocker and a fat blocker because then
you're going to have undigested food
that makes it through your system and
you're going to be pooping out pieces of
food oh you could just drink alkaline
water it'll do the same thing if it's
alkaline enough because it stops stomach
acid from working but whatever it is you
can control whether those Foods even get
digested and absorbed and the scary
thing is Mother Nature knows this and
this is part of what I'm writing about
and smarter not harder
plant proteins generally come packaged
with the protein blocking agent
striptase Inhibitors and they do this
why would that be a plant protective
mechanism so assuming that all the weird
stuff that plants do is because they
don't want you to eat them is it to get
the consumer to be malnourished yeah so
that you can't use my plant-based
protein so you won't eat me so most of
human plant eating throughout history
has been this is a great way to stop a
famine so I don't starve to death how do
I remove the most toxins from this plant
so it causes the least harm and provides
the most calories as apart from the most
nourishment because those are different
things Define the difference please
calories are something you burn to make
energy nourishment is things you use as
building blocks for your cells you need
minerals you need polyphenols you need
specific lipids and you need specific
amino acids you don't really need
specific carbohydrates to build cells
less than half a percent of your body is
carbohydrate at any one time okay so
plants I when I get this far in our
conversation we will get to the third
one here in a second but when I get this
find the conversation with you I always
feel like you're going to say Don't eat
plants but you don't no I do not believe
that not eating plants is smart and the
carnivore guys I actually predicted this
at the beginning I said you guys are
going to end up eating less inflammatory
plants because very few people do well
over long periods of time on a carnivore
diet or on a vegan diet I did the
carnivore thing when I was riding the
bulletproof diet book I went three
months with no carbs just ate meat and
eggs and I did have butter which some
people would say isn't carnivore some
people would they can't make up their
minds I gave myself
autoimmune issues I didn't have in food
allergies I didn't have because I gave
myself leaky gut because I was having no
soluble fiber and it's not a good
solution My Sleep Quality went down and
down I wouldn't push on that so why is
no soluble fiber going to break the
tight junctions and the epithelial
lining of your gut it's because of
bacteria that eats the mucus in the
lining of your guts acromancia okay so
you get rid of the bacteria that stops
them from doing that no the bacteria
doesn't have any mucus to eat anymore
because mucus is made out of
carbohydrates So It Goes to Town on your
gut lining interesting
okay
so what I would say is is going
carnivore for 30 days a great idea the
truth is hitting your career goals is
not easy you have to be willing to go
the extra mile to stand out and do hard
things better than anybody else but
there are 10 steps I want to take you
through that will 100x your efficiency
so you can crush your goals and get back
more time into your day you'll not only
get control of your time you'll learn
how to use that momentum to take on your
next big goal to help you do this I've
created a list of the 10 most impactful
things that any High achiever needs to
dominate and you can download it for
free by clicking the link in today's
description alright my friend back to
today's episode
hell yeah reset your gut bacteria get
rid of all the Bad actors in there it's
it's great and if you wanted to increase
butyric acid formation which is one of
the most important things your gut
bacteria doing you could eat lots of
collagen and I'm going to make collagen
a billion dollar industry I'm kind of a
fan right collagen can ferment in the
gut to become butyric acid it doesn't
always depending on what gut bacteria
you have they call that animal fiber so
if you're going to go carnivore you
should be just eating a lot like a lot
of collagen along with your steaks and
your organ meats and after
a month of that you're going to do where
it goes oh I guess I'll have some carbs
just have less less inflammatory carbs
there's a great argument for herbs and
spices as being Mother Nature's original
multivitamins that's why we had first
salt trading Roots through Asia that's
because salt is where minerals come from
rock salt and that was all we had as
supplements and our we are made out of
salt water like is in the ocean so
getting enough of that salt was precious
the next thing they added on top of that
was spices and herbs so they were
trading these not just because they
tasted good their training is because
these were sources of Rare Minerals that
you couldn't get otherwise and
polyphenols that were useful for it so
all of herbal medicine is based on those
two things and I think eating no plants
at all is a bad idea I also think eating
a wide variety of rainbows without
looking at the pros and cons of each one
of those plants is a Fool's errant and
there is no historical record of humans
ever doing that we did not have frozen
blueberries from Peru when we were
cavemen we just didn't and we ate what
was seasonal what was around us and
there were a few precious things that we
traded with people who lived far away
for that provided things like manganese
or zinc or something that we needed and
those were herbs and it's so interesting
I don't know how people figure this
stuff out so okay you're you're back in
the day and you are just absolutely
slaughtering people to get their spices
yeah and what we're saying is there was
uh ancient wisdom I don't know what else
to call it around ooh eat these things
feel better or something and you're
saying that that is because you go
there's actually two sections of smarter
not harder that talks about minerals so
you're like load up on Raw minerals and
then charge up on Raw raw minerals
so can I not get minerals from eating
animal flesh you don't get very many
minerals from animal flesh you'll get
some iron but most of it is in the organ
mates
and because that's just as it processes
carbohydrate let me see if I understand
the process
I don't know how I don't know how the
minerals end up in in the soil other
than through excrement so this it
becomes a chicken and egg problem but
let's just say for a second that we're
at the level of healthy soil so the soil
has minerals in it the minerals get
absorbed by the plants certain plants
yep we eat those plants we thusly get
those minerals are from an evolutionary
standpoint our body has grown expectant
that we will eat these sources of
carbohydrate that do have these minerals
in them or from an evolutionary
standpoint so that that's option a
option b is same scenario up to the
animals eat uh the stuff with the
minerals so they eat the the plants we
then eat nose to tail so we're eating
the organs the organs and processing the
uh carbohydrates that it ate retain
trays minerals from what they ate they
use the trace minerals they don't just
retain them they have the minerals in
them because they need those minerals to
do their function as organs do we store
minerals in do animals store minerals
and body fat
not very many we store toxic Metals in
our body fat but there's not a lot of of
any metal in your body fat that I'm
aware of I don't want to derail on that
but is that to trap it uh yeah it's a
trap it so when you biopsy body fat from
people does poison get stored in body
fat absolutely okay it's one of the
reasons that I read about rapid I have a
protocol on Dave asprey.com where I talk
about the rapid fat loss protocol and
it's how to lose weight fast and you're
supposed to and it's got all these
warnings
um I had a guy lose a pound a day for 75
days and you just start releasing well
you have to take glutathione and
charcoal and all these toxin binders
because otherwise you get profound brain
fog because you're dumping metals and
pesticides and your fat is full of that
stuff it's ridiculous fat also though
creates estrogen it turns testosterone
into estrogen and I'll show you some
pictures actually I just found him when
I was moving to Austin a couple months
ago there were Polaroids from a photo
shoot I did for Entrepreneur magazine
when I was 23 when I weighed 300 pounds
and I can't believe I wore a double
extra large t-shirt but my estrogen was
so high and my testosterone was so low
because of the body fat and toxic mold
that I'm very androgynous in the
pictures that's weird
and that's what happens from fat but the
fat was storing mold toxins estrogenic
mold toxins rather than sticking it in
my liver and my brain
okay super interesting going back to the
organs are using the minerals in just
cellular function yeah so a lot of
biological processes use enzymatic
reactions and this is why bomb
calorimeters are a poor model for this
is in Biochemistry we take a reaction
that would have required a lot of heat
and we do it with very little heat using
what's probably Quantum tunneling but
using enzymatic reactions so enzymes
allow a chemical reaction to happen with
a lot less energy than otherwise would
be that's why biochemistry is different
than physical chemistry or just normal
chemistry and the people who are saying
well if I burn it in a chemistry well if
you wanted to get something done
chemically with just raw chemicals so
you want to break some down you pour
some acid in it it requires a lot of
heat but if you're in a biological
system and you don't want a lot of heat
there are more elegant solutions to do
this and they're almost always based on
enzymes and enzymes are almost always
based on something like Boron or zein is
that because it's a facilitated chemical
reaction we believe and this is outside
my official pay grade I don't have a
degree in this I haven't studied like
the wing it with me yeah I haven't said
like the materials science elements of
enzymes so you know guys if you're a PhD
please help I'm actually interested but
as I've had it explained from people who
are these kinds of people when we're
doing a reaction in the body say to make
body heat or something like that we're
not using it with a Bic lighter and
Flame and burning something and
oxidizing it at all we're using a more
elegant approach that requires moving
electrons around and we do that with
enzymes so that it doesn't make as much
heat so that it's the most elegant
efficient system that well probably that
you can evolve and it just works Works
differently than burning stuff so
burning stuff is a model for physical
chemistry but you actually take classes
in
biochemistry because we don't do it the
same way in life right there's a there's
a required Elegance if we had to light
ourselves on fire to do stuff we
wouldn't work very well we're not steam
engines that's really interesting so I
know nothing about chemistry but as you
were saying that that was sort of my
guess is I think of the body I was going
to be debated as to whether it's
conscious and intelligent I don't think
of it as conscious and intelligent but I
do think of it as they have their own
agenda they've got programming and they
run that programming and so if you need
something like a if a raw physical
chemical reaction is just two things
Collide and they will do the same thing
every time versus putting it in a system
that has little workers that move things
around and take care of they facilitate
that reaction okay that makes intuitive
sense to me though I'm sure I'm way off
the reality so I want to really
understand this using of the the
minerals so our our organs all animal
organs are using the minerals to
facilitate these trans
chemicals that allow life itself to
happen but you need those minerals to
make all of that work yeah you need
minerals to make your mitochondria work
if you don't have magnesium and calcium
and potassium at all in the body you
don't have a body you just have a lump
of gooey stuff like you actually they're
required for life and they're required
for thousands of different reactions in
the body and what is elegant and I would
argue intelligent in your meat your meat
is is blindingly fast and blindingly
stupid
and we are blindingly slow we have
that's like third a third of a second
delay we don't even know we have it
right but we're incredibly intelligent
so we have these these two opposing
systems which worked well in unison to
keep you from getting eaten by tigers
and to keep it from starving to death
because you saved some food for winter
right so it's kind of it's been a
successful system there's eight billion
of us floating around but you were
asking about some other aspect of that
around no just I'm trying to understand
minerals because I know it becomes a big
part of your the overall thesis of the
book but we I got it here's what what's
happening it's stupid but it has a stack
ranked list of important processes and a
signal for each one so it says I have a
thousand things that need magnesium but
this guy's only taking 200 milligrams a
day and he needed 1.2 grams so what do I
not do
right it's kind of like you know you're
playing with SimCity or something and
you're like okay I don't have enough
resources do I allocate it towards
building a muscle or do I allocate it
towards you know making more
mitochondria towards making the brain
work better we don't generally get to
say what happens there but what the body
will stop doing is getting rid of old
burned out zombie cells it doesn't need
to do that to stay alive now because it
cares about the now but if you give it
enough minerals it will do that as long
as it gets a signal that it's worth the
work
the thesis behind smarter not harder is
that our systems are elegantly lazy and
that we are lazy as a result and that
there's nothing wrong with that in fact
laziness has driven all progress in
humans yeah I'm going to paraphrase
something from the book which I found
interesting so when people come to me in
my sort of Realm it's always why do I
have this Grand ambition but I feel
super lazy yeah and I explain something
similar to what you go into in the book
obviously have a lot more detail but
that Evolution has given you two
impulses one go hunt and make sure that
you provide and the other is make sure
that you don't use more calories than
you absolutely need to otherwise you
have to go hunt too much it's too risky
um in the book you talk about how that's
actually embedded down at every single
cell it has that impulse which I thought
was a pretty useful Insight it's what
you open the book with why does this
matter so much how do we integrate it
um yeah it matters so much because
certainly when I was overweight and just
hitting at the gym and all that I it
constantly was I'm not trying hard
enough I I'm lazy right something must
be wrong with me because I don't want to
do this but when you understand that
that laziness motivates you to do things
better we have cars because we were too
lazy to walk we have fire because we
were too lazy to shiver under a blanket
we have blankets because we were too
lazy to shiver without a blanket like
everything we've ever made that makes
life good is because we didn't want to
do something yet we blame ourselves for
that have you ever
had someone come home and say I just
saved 400 on a pair of shoes
no no never not have that particular one
sure I get the idea okay good deal
how many times would that same person
not naming names say
I just spent 300 on the shoes of the
handbag
we don't focus on what we spend that's
effort we focus on what we save
and it's incredibly motivating and
companies know this save five dollars is
actually more important to us than
spending fifteen dollars like what the
hell
so you're unconscious and your meat
operating system values saving time and
money and energy because it's lazy so
why don't we use that as our motivator
and what I teach people to do and
smarter not harder is to say well the
history of let's take exercise is one of
the domains you pick up rocks or you run
away from Tigers all exercises is some
type of that but what if there was an AI
driven system like when we have at
upgrade Labs that allowed you to get six
times better cardiovascular Improvement
in a tiny fraction of the time of going
to a spin class would you do it and the
answer is most people say heck yeah I
only have to spend five minutes three
times a week and I get more results than
going to an hour class five times a week
I'm in well there is such a system it's
driven by AI it's customized for each
person and all that but when you do it
you're still not motivated to go do it
because no one's motivated to go to the
gym you could say I'm going to use my
willpower and form a daily habit I'm
going to Pat myself on the back and say
I'm a good person or you could say you
know what
I saved 55 minutes today and you focus
on how much time you saved and that
strangely motivates your hardware and
you're like oh I'm gonna do this I'm
gonna go save an hour so you're willing
to go do five minutes but if you said
I'm gonna go spend five minutes you
wouldn't have been willing to do it and
that's the laziness principle and just
understanding it's a good thing that you
don't want to waste your life doing
stuff that doesn't work very well and
the reason that I spent a portion of my
life writing the book is that I want
people to have their time and their
energy back I am not happy that I spent
702 hours not losing weight at the gym
following bad advice because there are
things that are so much more effective
than what people do so most of us buy a
gym membership and we don't go and we
say well I have it I know that I could
go I know that someday later when I'm
not feeling this lazy I'll probably go
and this is why there's 400 million
dollars a year of gym memberships that
no one ever uses I want to close the
loop on weight loss so the third thing
just because I said that we would cover
it was the zoronal those are well known
yeah so you've got the cows getting fat
on less calories yep
um so we're able to what's the what's
the mechanism that's breaking down is it
just the increase in estrogen and
estrogen's job is to signals fat storage
and oh God okay so now I'm way beyond
what I actually understand but uh okay
so obviously women have women actually
have more testosterone than estrogen but
they they have way more estrogen than
men have correct it is my understanding
that women store more fat than men on
average and it is my understanding that
the reason they do that is if you think
about fertility they would need to have
extra resources around to be able to
carry a child nurse a child Etc so it
makes them store more fat they store
more EPA and especially DHA especially
in their thighs brain development for a
child yes that's where the first child
has a higher IQ in part because it got
all of Mom's fish oil that was throwing
her fat for the baby my first book was
on fertility so I went really deep on
this
okay super interesting so uh so we'll
put that in the bucket of hormonal
effects yeah so in fact going back to
just calories not a calorie am I correct
that if you were to put a woman on
artificially high levels of testosterone
that she would begin losing body fat she
would absolutely begin losing body fat
if she'd put on muscle mass as well too
right she might also get a little voice
and body hair if you did too much of it
but body composition is massively
controlled by the amount of testosterone
you have so you get these usually it's
the same calories in calories out people
and they're saying well if you just work
out hard enough then you'll somehow grow
testosterone even though testosterone is
related to the quality of your sleep and
eating enough saturated fat but
saturated fat has calories so they're
oftentimes opposed to that and you're
supposed to somehow eat low fat things
and gain muscle mass and raise your
testosterone it doesn't appear to work
that way at this point on a high
saturated fat diet with grass-fed
protein inadequate protein it's very
important if you're trying to lose
weight
it helps with the toxin flushing out
thing from the fat it helps with protein
helps with cell membranes and people
have lost more than two million pounds
on the bulletproof diet and yet pissed
off all their calories and calories out
people but it's a lot easier to not be
hungry all the time and to lose weight
and that's what I want people to
understand is if you're hungry all the
time you're probably doing it wrong
there's nothing wrong with being hungry
every now and then you should teach
yourself to not feel like you're going
to die when you're hungry that's what
fasting is for
but when you eat it's getting enough
usable protein and something we haven't
talked about that's also in the book
plant-based proteins have a lower
biological availability than
animal-based proteins so if you eat a
piece of steak that's at the very high
end and you eat eggs it's in the middle
and milk is about in the middle and
plant-based proteins like rice protein
and soy protein and all those things are
much much lower so a gram of plant
protein is not the same as a gram of
animal protein when you're looking at
putting on muscle or losing weight
okay so from putting on muscle
perspective I'm assuming this is an
amino acid profile question availability
and profile they're different okay it's
called diaa is the the measure of that
but especially digestive I'm going to
butcher whatever it stands for Digestive
digestible available
um amino acids something to do with
digestion yeah I just remember what the
acronym stands for but you can look it
up okay what what you'll find there is
that just because they're amino acids in
something if there's something that
blocks your body's ability to break the
protein down into them it's not a
digestible protein right and if if you
don't believe in your hair is made about
protein like have a hair solid you can't
digest it it doesn't do anything so like
we know intuitively that what I'm saying
has truth in it but what we don't know
is why can't you digest hair if you
don't have the enzymes to break keratin
down
interesting yeah
but if I did I could eat hair I'm sure
there's an animal out there probably a
worm or something that is totally happy
to eat hair otherwise or cockroaches
otherwise we'd have piles of hair built
up like we do artificial fur fibers
everywhere nothing can eat that wow okay
that's super interesting
uh okay so now we I think have a pretty
neat container on fat loss but now talk
to me about why why can't I work out
hard enough that I can meaningfully lose
weight like if I had a reasonable amount
of calories I'm I'm maybe a tiny bit
over maintenance we know it's not as
simple as I eat a hundred extra calories
therefore exercise 150 calories and
you're gonna lose weight so we know
there's complexity in there but why like
if somebody came to me and said Tom in
the next six months I have to lose
weight and I can either exercise or die
I'd be like all day diet amen right just
just I know and be able to explain why
it works like you can but it is
certainly anecdote totally just obvious
to me in terms of what I've done with
myself my wife everybody that I know
it's like if you clean up your diet
you're gonna be way better off but why
like if I like when I think about a
marathon runner or somebody that's uh
and in fact let me make a statement I
believe to be true and maybe it's not
but
um I used to have an employee that was
an Olympic level swimmer so you know I
went to the Olympics but he was like one
place out from both right and he said
that he would just eat an unimaginable
amount of junk food and McDonald's
french fries all of it and he was like I
forgot I could be misquoting but it was
something like 10 or 11 000 calories a
day and he said tell them I had six pack
abs at all times but he was like the
amount of swimming I had to do was so
insane that's why so is it just that oh
you can get there but you're gonna have
to be professional athlete level of
working out or is he
lying wrong whatever
if you can do that level of exercise
you're already reasonably healthy so you
can keep up that regimen until you can't
anymore most people today are not
metabolically healthy enough that even
if they had all the willpower in the
world that they would be able to do that
amount of exercise were that unhealthy
but I have to ask a pointed question on
that I know you're going somewhere but
uh if you have somebody like that so
they're metabolically healthy they're
eating terribly but in my assumption
here is because their muscles are
screaming for glucose because you've
just beaten the life you've used them so
much it is my understanding that when
your muscles are in need of glucose you
don't actually need insulin to get the
glucose into the muscle tissue which
means your glucose levels would remain
low and whatever damage glucose does to
this or sorry insulin does to the system
making the cells insulin resistant
making it harder for you to put the fat
on making pre-diabetic so on and so
forth if I'm right about that that would
be why that person doesn't be become
metabolically unhealthy even though
they're processing a lot of food that
would make somebody else metabolically
unhealthy because the way this guy
described his diet if I wanted to break
somebody's metabolism I'd say eat 10 000
calories a day of McDonald's like just
go God I can feel the comments Lighting
on fire generically meaning you're
eating all the fried food the bun the
like everything everything so maybe now
you need either if anything I just said
is incorrect let me know okay so you're
just saying if you swim a lot
like an absurd amount yep exercise yeah
exercises I think swimmings in
particular an important part here
because of all the he's basically
teaching his body to make more body heat
by being in a cold environment so
swimming is is actually a form of cold
therapy as well as exercise and you can
get cold therapy without exercise that
does that when you drive more
thermogenesis that way it's called
mitochondrial uncoupling there's a
metabolic benefit to that but the
reality is this is a person who has
enough thyroid has enough testosterone
at the start and probably has one of
those genetic profiles that's less
susceptible to toxins in the environment
but they're not bulletproof I had a
friend who's like that he was a
semi-professional cyclist you know
friends with Lance Armstrong you know
wrote The 100 miles a day sometimes for
fun just hardcore Pizza beer hot dogs
junk food 10 000 calories a day
he wasn't doping he was just a semi-pro
cyclist okay um no he wasn't actually
competing he just rode with all the guys
competing and just just an amazing guy
he was also an early inventor of Blade
server technology it was a foundational
internet thing so he died on Sandhill
Road at 46 of a heart attack with abs
this is not uncommon for people who
exercise at that level who we junk food
if you exercise at that level you have
to eat even better because you're
putting an extra load on your system and
if you are blessed the way I was not and
you were not with a system that's
resilient to Mercury and resilient to
mold doesn't have systemic inflammation
doesn't have extra blood blood clotting
isn't susceptible to pre-diabetes all of
which I have
if you're blessed with one of those you
shouldn't abuse it you could probably
live a really long time if you were to
use a little bit of biohacking
techniques and you were to apply the
right amount of work for your body to
feel good and get the muscle you wanted
you'd also probably have a lot of extra
time left over but if you love swimming
for four hours a day and it's not just
endorphins driving you
then then you should do that but if you
do that and you combine it with junk
food the fact you can eat junk food
doesn't mean it's not harming yet the
fact you don't get fat from it doesn't
mean it's not harming you you look at
the labs of marathon runners of
triathletes these are not the labs of
healthy people they're Labs of people
who can be profoundly healthy if they
weren't over training and pushing
themselves over the limit so if you want
to run a marathon do it but don't
convince yourself that you're doing it
to be healthy you're doing it to prove
something to yourself and that's
valuable the first guy I ran a marathon
died that's why we celebrate the
marathon yeah yeah yeah no it's
interesting you talk about that in the
book if I remember I think I do yeah
um okay so we won just to to ask
directly am I off base with the if you
use the muscle you need less insulin to
get less insulin I don't believe you
need no insulin because a no insulin
person is a dead person and so it's kind
of important that's very important so
absolutely and if your muscles are
screaming for insulin or sorry screaming
for blood sugar
um they will need less insulin to get
the blood sugar in and they'll absorb it
quickly and this is why you know you can
eat some sugar and then do 20 squats
just air squats and your blood glucose
won't Spike yeah I I really have tested
this so this is really interesting in
fact let me I'm going to run something
by you so maybe you'll even know what's
happening okay so uh I was working 120
hours a week I start getting dizzy oh
yeah and I'm like well clearly a brain
tumor go to the doctor oh [ __ ] you
should have called me and uh got some
salt already yeah the the doctor was
like no no this isn't uh do they do all
the scans and everything don't know
don't know don't know exactly it was
like hey are you by any chance
um stressed and I was like yes and he
was like okay it could be that like try
to relax and see if it goes away uh to
say that I relax would be alive but
maybe push you know meditation a little
bit more try to one just know knowing
that it wasn't a brain tumor that also
helped and so it slowly goes away and so
I'm like okay cool uh Christmas time
this Christmas had just passed comes
along and I have learned the lesson that
you were just talking about that I can
regulate my blood glucose by working out
and so uh 98 of the Year I.E clean but
during Christmas I let myself eat
whatever I want regulate it only by
discomfort with having a body that I no
longer recognize is mine right and so
this Christmas I thought oh I'm going to
run an experiment I'm going to wear a
continuous glucose monitor the whole
time and I'm going to keep my levels
below 100 and see if for the day yeah so
for the day if I keep my my average in
the mid 80s how do I do so I keep my
average in the mid 80s I'm like this is
I have found the cheat code to eating
badly I'm like this is amazing one I'm
maintaining my physique because I'm
working out two I normally would resent
working out over a holiday like that but
because I had a goal it made it fun
right and so I was like wow this is
really cool I cannot believe this is
working and then I got dizzy and I was
like whoa and I was keeping my blood
sugar in the on average for the day it
would have spikes but on average for the
day I was at 84.85 so it's like this is
amazing and then I started getting dizzy
again and immediately I always ask the
question I've had the scan so I know
it's not a brain tumor and if somebody
if I have a symptom I always say what
would I tell somebody that came to me
and I'm like 100 at something you're
eating so I'm like okay well I'm I know
I get this when I'm really stressed I'm
eating food that's clearly stressing my
body in some way will this go away if I
stop eating the junk food I stopped
eating the junk food and it went away
and so I'm like okay what what is
actually happening like what's the is it
paralyzing the Cilia in my ear like
what's going on you had adrenal
dysfunction because your adrenals
couldn't make enough cortisol to keep
your blood pressure high so there's two
reasons people get dizzy that don't have
to do with the inner ear and it's
usually not the inner ear if it's
vertigo or like that weird thing you get
from swimming and standing upside down
with it it wasn't that it was imagine
drinking yeah and then when you lay down
the world spins low blood pressure
really yeah so one thing I didn't yeah
when you get stressed your body loses
the ability to make enough cortisol and
adrenaline to keep your blood sugar I
wasn't lightheaded right it's different
it's it's a dizzy feeling I know I've
had low blood pressure my entire life
it's a genetic thing interesting so the
spinning feeling like that so if you
would have had a big glass of water with
some salt in it or better yet some
electrolytes like that I'm gonna test
this which would have increased you're
so skeptical right now that seems
impossible that that would be because
I've had low blood pressure where you
stand up and you're like whoa it wasn't
that it wasn't that at all so if if
you've had that but you've never had
chronic low blood pressure that's low
even when you're sitting there not that
I'm no of no what I think would have
fixed you I have high blood pressure
when I'm stressed it turns out you can
have both at first you get high blood
pressure but when cortisol stops working
and your adrenals run out of the ability
to do this by the way they need minerals
to do that you might have been low in
minerals but then your body says all
right I can't do this anymore and that's
burnout all right so stress is high
blood pressure adrenals you say let's
just burn out of a person but yeah you
get adrenal burnout so because I didn't
feel burned out over Christmas let me
tell you I felt [ __ ] awesome [ __ ]
awesome all right I mean other than I'm
having a lot of sugar so maybe it's a
joint pain but I mean if you're not
experiencing low blood sugar at all I
definitely wasn't low blood sugar okay
good so you don't have a low blood sugar
that's the thing to rule out the next
thing to look at is low is blood
pressure you can get a blood pressure
cuff but when people are doing 120 hour
weeks or even when you're just dealing
with jet lag which is also profoundly
biologically stressing those little
cells in your body don't understand you
just move five time zones and then they
they send you feel like crap signals
what works remarkably well is
supplementing your body's ability to
handle your adrenals so step one would
be licorice root you take a couple
little licorice root capsules that help
support healthy levels of blood pressure
can I eat licorice it's full of gluten
and sugar but if you could find
something that's free of gluten and
sugar like little tiny black ones that
are really strongly licorice flavored
those work as well
if you get too much of it it's probably
bad for either liver or kidneys I don't
remember but licorice root itself is is
a good herb for that the second thing
would be adaptogenic herbs to help your
body turn off stress and the third thing
would be actually adrenal glandulars
which is what I actually adrenal
glandular it's extract of the adrenal
gland of animals just like you would
take liver liver powder this is adrenal
powder when you take that
it lets your body's adrenals work better
I promise you that if you're working 120
hours a week you're pushing Way Beyond
your biological capacity so what you do
then is you supplement your biological
capacity the fourth thing you would do
which is what I also do if I'm going to
be traveling to Dubai or somewhere
overnight and wake up and feel normal is
you take a small amount of bioidentical
cortisol like you would thyroid hormone
cortisol is not a bad hormone over the
counter no it's prescription it's called
cortef it's a drug that's been around
for just like 70 or 80 years and you
take a very small amount five milligrams
of that and you might feel a little
angry for a minute or two as it
metabolizes and then you get your energy
back so this is how you take someone
who's reached burnout and you you allow
them to recover faster from burnout and
you allow them to perform so you can
stand up on stage even when you've been
flying for 32 hours because of a flight
delay and you still want to show up and
be yourself you can do that but you
better manage your adrenals starts with
salt actually before salt
s for the blood pressure yeah and your
adrenals need extra salt so minerals yep
so you would use salt and trace minerals
so like here's what I do I land in the
morning somewhere else on the planet
where my body has no idea what time it
is I have this is going to sound like a
plug but it's not I have danger coughing
because you need coffee to raise your
cortisol to tell yourself it's morning
that's normal and I need the minerals
anyway or I could take a mineral
supplement actually and I take a mineral
supplement then I take my licorice root
then I take five milligrams of cortef
and I take an adrenal glandular and I
take adaptogenic herbs and when you do
all that your body's like I got this
stress I can handle this and you can
move the wall way out you can still hit
the wall
but you can get a lot of speed before
you hit the wall so if you're working
120 hours a week and you do this to push
through and to get the product to launch
and you do that for three weeks
it's going to cost you but it's going to
be a high performance three weeks and
it's going to cost you less than if you
just did it with willpower alone
there are tools for managing our our
state and the world and for making our
meat handle way more stress than it
thinks it can without taking damage our
might handle yeah your meat has to
handle more stress literally your meat
is doing this it's not you got it yeah
okay fair okay so coming back one more
time to why can't I work out
enough to beat a bad diet
well there is such a thing as an
obesogen
something that's just pro-fat story that
makes you store fat an example would be
MSG
so MSG when you eat it
will raise restaurant revenues by 30
because people who get MSG get profound
sugar cravings and then they order more
soda more alcohol and more dessert
so if you're eating some with MSG all
the time you're going to eat more it's
just how it works MSG also affects your
ability to regulate your blood sugar
effectively
so that's an example of one of those
things and when you get some of these
other things like artificial colors
artificial flavorings they have an
effect on the gut bacteria and that's
another thing that the calories in
colors out people absolutely hate and I
read about this in the bulletproof diet
my big diet book there's actually a
contagious form of obesity and I wrote
about a couple cases of it also on my
blog where people would get scratched by
a chicken and a certain kind of bacteria
gets into their body and you can't lose
weight no matter what from I said
bacteria it's extra virus as I recall
but it's treatable right it is a
condition though that you can pick up
that is infectious that should not be
possible I don't know how that one works
but the cases of it are crazy people
like I was completely normal weight and
then I got this scratch I got an
exposure and then I just got fat and I
stayed fat there's also very clear
evidence from mice and humans you can
take gut bacteria from thin people who
are usually calories in calories out
trolls because never had to deal with
obesity you take their bacteria and put
it in a fat person and magically the fat
person starts to lose weight in fact
they can lose all of their weight from a
fecal transplant you can then take the
fat person gut bacteria Which is higher
in firmicuties versus bacteria deities
what the hell is two different phylum of
stuff in your gut bacteria but basically
the ratio of these two controls whether
your body is likely to gain more weight
or lose more weight so you take the fat
person's got bacteria put it in the thin
calorie roll and then when they can't
lose weight no matter what they do then
they have to face reality that it's not
the way they really really want it to be
no matter how much their mothers yelled
at them when they were young which made
them growing up bullied I have a feeling
you've spent a lot of time with people
talking about calories and calories out
uh okay so what then if I have a person
whose diet is like on point so they're
not they're literally following every
bit of guidance you've given at that
point is exercise going to be beneficial
in losing fat or is that always just a
look it's you work out for something
else completely don't even think about
it for fellows it might be mildly
beneficial
it and people say oh you know do lots of
cardio for fat loss
um the only type of exercise that I
would recommend for fat loss
specifically is something I write about
in in the books it's not like just
running running good more running better
is kind of the way we think about it but
any sort of cardio there's very
different
patterns you could you could make and
the best analogy is music okay we could
have just a bunch of static or just like
city noise and it's just random right
well noise is bad for you but then you
take that same pattern and you rearrange
it into a beat and all of a sudden oh
that's not noise that's music it's the
same amount of energy it actually is
energy in the sound right but magically
how you order it how you arrange it
changes things it's the same with cardio
so there's something called zone two
training which you can really only do
with a heart rate monitor
and there's an equation in the book and
I don't have it memorized off the top of
my head but there's a very narrow window
I think it's around 70 of your maximum
heart rate and when you work out at that
level which is pretty much you could
have a comfortable conversation without
being winded but you're almost winded
but you're probably not going to be able
to feel yourself there you have to have
a monitor this is a rate where your body
will burn fat and it drives your
metabolism it's metabolically very
beneficial for you and that's a steady
state it's a steady state but it's at a
very specific narrow band if you exceed
the band it's not beneficial for fat
loss if you go underneath the band it's
not beneficial so there's studies that
show I think it's an hour and a half of
that a week has good effects on fat loss
and on metabolic function but an hour
and a half a week is a pretty big
investment of time I prefer what we talk
about in the book as rehit reduced
exertion high intensity interval
training and the big thing how does that
differentiate from Hit high intensity
interval training with high intensity
you basically Sprint for a minute
and then you walk for a couple minutes
then you sprint for a minute walk for a
couple minutes you do that three times
four times when I looked into that the
guys that like swore by it were shredded
oh yeah it totally works uh it works
right and it gives you uh conditioning
and less time and it's metabolically
really beneficial for your mitochondria
what rehit does though is it takes give
me those initials again
rehit r-e-h-i-t reduce r-e-h-i-t they
dropped an INF for some reason but it's
reduced exertion high intensity training
and what it is is an AI driven algorithm
and by the way upgrade Labs you can go
to own and upgradelabs.com if you want
to open a facility that does this and
all the other bioacts in here but what's
interesting
with rehit it's only 10 seconds of high
intensity exercise but the principle
that drives that is a principle that
supports every one of the biohacks in
the book it's that there's a way to get
a signal into your meat operating system
to make it change and if you can drive
the signal in very quickly and then take
it away very quickly you adapt but if
instead you push the signal on and you
leave it on for a while the body doesn't
adapt very well just gets stressed
so that as you play with the edge and
then return play with the edge and then
return what most of us do though is we
maybe go to the edge and then we hover
around 75 of the edge as long as we can
until we feel like crap and then we're
all sweaty we get endorphins and then we
go about our day and think we did the
good thing what is up my friend Tom
bilyu here and I have a big question to
ask you how would you rate your level of
personal discipline on a scale of one to
ten if your answer is anything less than
a 10. I've got something cool for you
and let me tell you right now discipline
by its very nature means compelling
yourself to do difficult things that are
stressful boring which is what kills
most people or possibly scary or even
painful now here is the thing achieving
huge goals and stretching to reach your
potential requires you to do those
challenging stressful things and to
stick with them even when it gets boring
and it will get boring building your
levels of personal discipline is not
easy but let me tell you it pays off in
fact I will tell you you're never going
to achieve anything meaningful unless
you develop discipline all right I've
just released a class from Impact Theory
university called how to build build
Ironclad discipline that teaches you the
process of building yourself up in this
area so that you can push yourself to do
the hard things that greatness is going
to require of you right click the link
on the screen register for this class
right now and let's get to work I will
see you inside this Workshop from Impact
Theory University until then my friends
be legendary peace out
it turns out with rehit it's how quickly
can I Spike My intensity without going
over
and then what's going over it going over
is when you produce a state of
disequilibrium where you actually
destabilize the systems in the body so
you create stress that's long lasting
but you you have to do this very quickly
so you're writing on this bike and it's
like really slow and there's an AI
algorithm reading or high rate and it's
like no you're going too fast and you're
like bored and all of a sudden it's like
Terror
and then it gets really hard to pedal
and you have to Pedal as hard as you can
for exactly 10 seconds
and then and this is where it gets
really interesting there's a voice in
your head looking at your heart rate
it's like okay you made it and then as
rapidly as you can you return to normal
heart rate and it's the speed that you
return from stress to normal that tells
the body that it was safe
so okay
past that fast so all right I create
this peak I get good either using the AI
or whatever at knowing I need to come
right back down but the amount of time
it takes me to get back to neutral is
going to have a lot to do with my
current level of Fitness
so and your current level of behavior
tell me more that violates what I think
I know if you were to go for 30 seconds
or a minute like you would in high
intensity interval training what you
said is true well you're doing a 10
second Spike like that it it dumps a lot
of glucose right it causes an immediate
response but it doesn't destabilize the
body the way running for a minute would
and so then what you're doing is you're
telling the body you have to be able to
do something really difficult but then
as soon as it's done you're safe and you
can return if you wanted to hack this
instead of doing normal high intensity
one minute intervals and I write the
full instructions in in the book and
smarter not harder what you do
is you can't do this on a on a treadmill
because you can't make the treadmill go
fast enough and be steep enough we'll
use you'd go to a park and you'd walk so
slowly like you're bored like you're
like kicking an acorn level board and
then you would Sprint with every fiber
of your body as if you are going to die
for 10 seconds and then when you're done
you'd probably lay on your back and just
like do deep breathing relaxation
exercise as fast as you can drop your
heart rate
and that is more effective when I say
more effective Tom more effective at
losing fat no at VO2 max increasing
which is correlated fat loss if you were
to do five days a week spin classes over
six weeks you'll get a two percent VO2
max Improvement if you were to do re-hit
three times a week for five minutes you
would get a 12 Improvement it is six
times more Improvement in a tiny
fraction of the effort and time it's
that big of a deal it's a hack it's a
little window to tell the body to do
that so what what is it about the rapid
reduction in exertion that tells the
body get better at this it just it's so
counterintuitive it's one of the
foundational principles in the book I
call it slope of the curve biology we
like to think using kind of our lazy
algorithms in our brains that it's area
under the curve it's the amount of work
you do that that's what has Merit like
that's the struggle that's the strive
but what the meat operating system is
listening to is how much work could I
handle and still be okay so it doesn't
like the grind it's lazy but it will
listen if you tell it oh look you can do
this and still be safe but if you tell
you can do this and go into the danger
zone and be in a state where you're not
safe and then you're just going to grind
it out using your willpower over time
your body can do that it just doesn't
adapt as well man this doesn't make
sense to me yet
I understand what you're saying it
doesn't it breaks something intuitively
so to the area under the curve okay I've
always had the thought when it comes to
the transformation I put my own body
through I always thought of it as I have
to give my body the impulse to adapt or
die right and so I put it under massive
amount of strain and I say I'm not going
to stop so you better get good at
dealing with this
and that feels like and again I I could
just be wrong but it feels like that was
exactly how I added muscle and loss fat
was by really putting myself in a
sustained difficult position
it works I when I did my 702 hours in
the gym I could max out all the two of
the machines I got stronger didn't lose
the weight but I got stronger it just
was not very efficient for the amount of
time it took to do that but what I I get
the impulse though if the if the meat
suit is like oh man we're really going
to be under these intense periods where
I have to run really fast for a long
period of time or whatever and if I
don't I'm not going to survive I get why
it would adapt if it's like oh I can
handle that and all is well why does it
adapt why it changed because it's all
what I what I think you're saying and it
may just be that I'm misunderstanding is
that you're giving it a peek that it
knows it's fine it can handle that but
if it knows it can handle that why
change
what the AI system is doing at upgrade
Labs is we're driving you to the edge of
it so the body is concerned that it's
going to die but it didn't and if you
take the body to the point where it's
concerned it's going to die and it stays
there there's a name for that it's
basically Terror but it's cellular
Terror the cell danger response all
these things happen
right and the body takes a long time to
adapt and then you spend a lot of your
electricity on a stress response not on
an Adaptive response what we're doing is
we're turning on a very specific signal
that tells the body adapt without all
the stress got it so to put it in my
language I'm giving it a very acute
adapter die
uh impulse but I don't sustain that so
that it becomes a stress response which
somehow mitigates or slows down the
adaptation exactly every bit of
electricity and and building blocks and
minerals and calories and everything
else that you put into a stress response
that wasn't an Adaptive response or your
body getting stronger it's actually
wasted so what I believe is that the
vast majority of people listening to the
show wants to want to exercise but they
don't actually want to exercise because
we live in lazy meat suits right so
what do we do about that well one thing
is you could say I'm just going to teach
you how to just grit your teeth and
build a habit and force yourself to do
it and read some books about grit and
and fetishize waking up at four in the
morning sweating on yourself
you can do that and it works it's just
very expensive what I'm arguing is that
for everyone who's not going to do that
and kind of replaces that by looking at
Instagram videos of people doing that
who probably aren't actually doing it
but they recorded it all one morning and
now they're eating french fries
well maybe
if you just use the techniques in here
and did something for 10 or 15 minutes a
day that saved you 45 minutes a day and
you were motivated by Saving 45 minutes
you'll probably be a lot more likely to
do it and I know that in if you give me
an hour at an upgrade Labs even once a
week I can fix your cardiovascular I can
give you enough muscle mass that you
won't deal with the problems of not
having enough muscle as you age enough
to have a working metabolism we can work
on your brain and make it work better
with neurofeedback and we can work on
your cellular metabolism so you become
better at turning food into electricity
instead of fat and we can also train
your stress response so that your body
doesn't go into that cell danger
response into that Terror mode into the
anxiety thing that we're like I don't
know what's wrong something's wrong I
don't know what it is it's probably my
spouse it's probably this all that
anxiety that we have that's also
trainable you can do all of that in an
hour or you could go to a spin class and
have someone yell at you will use sweat
into spandex I just think our time is
more valuable than that
all right proprioception oh yeah is that
the word for what you were just
describing about the
the meat suit saying I either am or am
not in danger no proprioception is a
sense of your body knowing where it is
in the world and your mind's knowing
where your body is so it's
proprioception allows you to catch a
ball and someone throws it at you and if
you didn't know your hand was in the
world and really if your hands didn't
know where it was in the world it has
its own distributed intelligence then
you'd miss the ball or smack you in the
face it's what allows us to know our
bodies upright and things like that it's
also something though that measures the
amount of stress on a joint and decides
how much your muscles are allowed to do
to keep you from being injured one of
the hacks in smarter harder actually
about four or five of them involves
hacking your proprioceptors so
your proprioceptors are measuring what's
happening I'm just going to do the
example of a curl here right so if I'm
holding a dumbbell
actually I need something to hold here
danger coffee
all right so now I'm going to do a curl
and there's a lot of minerals in here so
it's heavy but
what I'm doing with this weight in my
hand is the weight is accelerating at
gravity speed which is 9.8 meters per
second squared which means that when I
throw it up when I catch it it actually
physically weighs more and when I wobble
like this it weighs more from the wobble
my smart wrist my hand my elbow my
shoulder they all know
that I'm wobbling and they know that
this weight May weigh more than it
actually weighs so they know hold back
because if you wobble then it's going to
weigh more so you can't possibly do all
of the force necessary here because you
get injured If instead you have an
artificial intelligence driven machine
that's putting weight on the arm that
has no gravity at all all of a sudden
then I can actually use all of the
muscles in my bicep to do the exercise
and I'm going to fight really really
hard and it's going to feel insane but
I'm going to be able to put more foot
pounds of pressure because my
proprioceptors didn't worry about
gravity so I talk about how to remove
Gravity from resistance systems either
with tech or just with you know
resistance bands even so this is also
the slope of the curve biology how do I
show the muscle that it's capable of
doing something that it thinks is
dangerous and once you do that it's like
oh I guess I could do that and then it
adapts really rapidly and what we use at
upgrade Labs is well we have a big
machine that's driven by AI that does it
but at home there are some things that
work better than others so for very
basic weightlifting stuff you don't even
buy elastic bands just knowing that
lowering a weight slowly is important
versus flopping weights up and down you
get more return on investment from a
slow eccentric movement
it's just how it works so I talk about
the things that are they just work
better than lifting rocks and running
away from tigers in the book yeah so
it's the idea of the body
being willing to not even necessarily
what I was going to say is being willing
to adapt because it's getting the
impulse but it's really the difference
between the what we talked about earlier
if you give it a sustained impulse that
stresses it out you have to deal with
all of that if you give it a from a
weightlifting perspective an additional
variable of gravity where it has to hold
something back you're not able to give
it the the peak this is easier because
I've seen the graphs in the book yeah
where you talk about how by removing the
um the read on gravity or the body's
need to account for the potential
increase in weight based on wobbling or
momentum or whatever that you can
actually push that Spike higher but
bring it down a lot faster
it's very interesting so is this only
possible with AI and finely tuned
equipment or are there things that we
can do at home that are going to allow
people that same rapid onset of
adaptation everything in the book has an
at-home version that you can do what
we're doing is we're using AI to
discover new principles like that narrow
band of exercise that causes you to burn
fats and you can't go above or below or
the idea that you can have a certain
slope of resistance curve that's driven
by AI you have to go to an upgrade labs
for that and own and upgradelabs.com I'm
seriously rolling these out across the
country people have signed up for dozens
of them but in the meantime every one of
the chapters the part on the brain the
part on like spirituality and meditation
the part on cardiovascular the part on
muscle part on stress resilience for
each of those
I talk about techniques that work better
than what we've always done and many of
them are free and some of them are low
cost and then some of them are the
examples of the highest level Tech that
demonstrate that it's possible the fact
that you can get six times more
Improvement in VO2 max in six weeks is
unheard of it's it's just it's shocking
and there's several university studies
backing that up so given that it's
possible maybe you can do better at home
even if you don't have all the equipment
just because we know it can be done and
I I'm still resentful of my 702 hours of
eating lettuce and going to the gym all
the time and not losing weight because I
didn't know all this stuff What in in
everything that went into writing
smarter not harder what was the what was
the biggest game changer for you in real
life where you're like whoa this one has
just a disproportionate effect on your
life or Cuts back the time whether it's
sleep diet exercise it was actually the
laziness principle
right so I I just finally identified
that I'm lazy and you and I have both
built 100 billion dollar companies I
have eight companies right now and
everybody a New York Times bestseller
every couple years but I'm profoundly
lazy right and I used to kind of feel
guilty about that and when I just
realized it's in it's in my meat it's a
part of human progress and you could
even argue that I did all those things
because I was looking to avoid doing
something else but did that just let you
let yourself off the hook and not beat
yourself up for being lazy or did it
actually inform I actually love being
lazy I I freely met no I don't want to
do it I don't want to do more work than
it's necessary to get that done I want
someone else to do that and it makes me
a more effective person and it makes all
of us more effective to identify the
stuff that takes our energy stuff we
don't like to do and to remove it from
our lives however we can and I'll be
straightforward I like going for hikes
but I don't really like going to the gym
compared to playing with my kids right I
will do it if it's necessary I just
don't want to and instead of feeling
like I'm a bad person for that
recognizing that okay I don't want to so
how do I get the results and just being
at peace with that and then motivating
myself with savings and being excited
about not about the money I saved or the
time I saved instead of the time I spent
it makes it a lot easier to stick with
things
so just say I'm going to do something
hard because I'm a good person I'm going
to grip my teeth and do all that yeah
clearly I I've done that right I just
don't have to anymore in the book you go
into spiritual hacks yeah talk to me
about that the you also you're careful
to delineate different kinds of
spirituality so it isn't just the
meditation monks uh Himalayas all of
that so what is spirituality for you
how do we hack it and why does it matter
we'll say the definition of spirituality
is kind of like the Supreme Court
definition of pornography I can't Define
it but I know what it is when I see it
right and
can you say that a specific state of
bliss that someone experiences is a
spiritual experience or a blissful
experience the answer is I'm going to
ask them they'll tell you right and and
that's okay because the way we perceive
reality
is actually valid and we also know that
different people have different lenses
on reality we have different filters
that we either teach ourselves or that
Society teaches us and at a minimum with
spirituality there's a sense of inner
peace a sense of Happiness a sense of
equanimity which I talk a lot about in
the book in Buddhism there's three
levels that that we talk about there's
the lowest level of spiritual growth
which is having empathy for other people
some people just have no empathy right
and you start waking up right so I can
feel other people's pain but there isn't
that particular enlightened because
having to feel other people's pain
even when there's nothing you can do
about it you don't really want to isn't
always a good thing so you go from there
to compassion which is wishing well for
others
even if you don't take on the pain of
having empathy with them you can have
empathy but you don't have to when you
have a state of compassion so you can
you just it's a feeling it's an actual
thing and you can measure compassion
with neuroscience and that's what one of
my companies does but this the state
above that is
called Equanimity and this is where you
can choose your state and maintain your
state no matter what is happening in the
world around you so even if you have
empathy and you have compassion if you
have Equanimity you can be the monk who
meditates in the middle of a hurricane
and nothing can take you from your
chosen State and that is a pretty
powerful side of spirituality and it's
actually profoundly dangerous that's why
it's named danger coffees like who knows
what you might do when you are
unprogrammable when you will always do
the right thing and no one can sway you
from your chosen State you are an
enormously powerful person who's capable
of great Deeds of kindness and peace
what does it take to get there I believe
that the fastest path for that is
starting at your cellular biology and
working your way up it's very hard to
teach yourself to have that state when
your body can't make enough energy when
you're getting this signal from your
meat operating system that's like
something is wrong something's
profoundly wrong I don't know what it is
and what it is is you're swimming in
toxins that are inhibiting your body's
ability to do it so when the body he
feels like it's nourished and safe it's
just easier to do the hard work and then
you start looking at things that are
mostly I'm going to call it in our
emotional body so you work on your
emotional stuff trauma resolution and
things like that and once why do you
call it an emotional body it's a word
from transpersonal psychology I don't
know what that is that's a field that
was started in 1956 by a guy named Stan
Groff Stan was a Freudian licensed
psychologist in Czechoslovakia which is
what it was called back then not the
Czech Republic
and he used LSD which he purchased from
Sandoz Pharmaceuticals with a license to
treat 3 000 patients and had profound
effects things like this Freudian stuff
doesn't work very well but this other
stuff does and I had the great honor of
interviewing Stan on my show and hosting
an event with him when he was 94 years
old well he's the inventor of holotropy
breathing which you may have talked
about on the show before so Stan ended
up creating the field of transpersonal
psychology which is where a lot of the
trauma resolution stuff that you hear
about you'll hear Gabby Bernstein who's
become a friend to talk about ifs
internal family systems therapy you'll
see a lot of the trauma resolution stuff
came out of Stan Groff's observations of
what happens to people just early on in
their life but does this intersect with
a meat suit are you saying that it's
almost stored in the body okay stored
Define that please well you can ask most
women
um what happens if they get a really
deep hip massage and the vast majority
like 80 percent of women
they don't know why they just start
crying like like strong emotions come
out because women store emotions in
their hips
uh women store emotions how so tell me
what a an emotion is at a biological
level so you were just saying you can
measure compassion so I imagine you okay
it's brain waves like there's a signal
that we can pick up on from the body so
what is the signal of an emotion you
push on that part of the body yeah and a
strong feeling happens a really strong
feeling because there's serotonin stored
in the gut is there a neurochemical
stored in the hips it's so now you're
making an assumption that we're chemical
based systems when we're not oh
we're about to go off the rails I love
it take me there but this sounds crazy
so what if we were not chemical based
we're not exclusively chemical based
okay that's very different okay so we
are simultaneously chemical and
electrical and I could go get my
electrical stimulation thing
yeah okay I'm with that so our chemical
we're electrical we're also provably
with hard science Quantum okay I knew
that you'd love this one so this is is
there more yeah so we have a chemical
electrical Quantum we also have magnetic
and light signaling inside the body okay
all of these we can prove the existence
of with physics measurements is that it
uh the chemical electrical Quantum
magnetic and then light yep that's all
that I know of okay fair there may be
some vibrational like physical
vibrational thing in there as well but
hell I don't know okay so we'll and the
possible unknown very wise like sound
vibration probably does something so
let's zoom in on Quantum when you were
saying that we're not just chemical is
that the one that you were aimed at yep
okay well actually no I was named it
electrical because I mean if I touch the
hip and I get an electrical signal it's
a lot faster than a neurochemical system
yep I'm stored is the word that I'm
going to be zooming in on that's the
part where I don't know I don't know
yeah
hey I love expanding my mind and
realizing new things the thing I'm
always optimizing for is my brain is a
prediction engine I want to make its
predictions better and better
um but storing emotion in the body I
cannot yet meet with anecdotal evidence
okay of my own give me your gut instinct
maybe this isn't the area you feel when
you say stored it is that there's uh
information sensing proprioceptive
pattern here and when something bad
happens information sensing information
field so yeah information sensing
everything in the environment's
information okay the proprioceptors
information Fields something I should
have you define because I don't know
what that is yeah so probably the most
accurate reflection of how the universe
works is information field Theory okay
which is that everyone is actually just
a field of information everything is a
field of information that all intersect
it's extremely quantum physics but it's
like hard math quantum physics stuff so
information field Theory I'm just going
to say even if we get out of the hard
physics side of that we just say that
that there are parts of your body that
have their own ability to sense being
injured right so the elbow got injured
so now it hurts whenever you try to do
something that's going to cause the
injury again you can treat that with the
electrical stimulation and I write the
stories in the book of like what I did
with Stephen collar so you put
electrodes on to force the body to do it
anyway because there's electricity
making the body do what it thinks it
can't do and as soon as the body does it
and it doesn't get injured it's like oh
and then it doesn't hurt anymore and the
pain just goes away well there was
actually a little decision made in your
elbow about that where it thought it
couldn't so it sent you pain to make
sure you didn't
well what other parts of your meat
operating system are making sure you
don't it turns out there's a lot of them
in there and one of the things that
happens is when would that be in the hip
though you know why it's in the hips and
ways why isn't it in the brain like the
heart you you still think that you're
your brain and I would just argue like
what would happen if your entire body
was a prediction machine not just your
brain because there is clearly a
distributed intelligence throughout your
body yes so sure so let's dive into that
so Phineas Gage I'm sure you know the
story yeah working on the railroad for
those that don't know a a like five foot
three inch diameter tamping Rod shoots
up through his under his chin out
through the top of his head I don't
think it was three inch diameter this
thing was [ __ ] it was Big Radius
radius
uh and no it would be diamond yeah it's
a diameter not radius yeah that's big no
no it is Big it comes around it goes
yeah it's not small big when I said
because they I mean he went on tour with
this [ __ ] thing it's big however big
most people are thinking it is bigger
than that it is crazy never loses
Consciousness but he loses a teacups
worth of brain which I just I just can't
even fathom anyway changes his life
forever and he's never the same people
say it fundamentally changed his
personality or just a total [ __ ] show so
if you damage somebody's brain what we
think of as them while maybe only
ultimately a small part of what the
universe thinks of is them because
there's all the intelligence in their
fingertip and all that I totally
acquiesced to that I have no problem
with that whatsoever but the when when I
think of me I think of the way that I
process data I think of the voice in my
head all of that I think of my ability
to control emotions all of it if you
damage my brain that is gonna radically
alter now to your point if you wildly
disrupt my microbiome it could wildly
affect my moods and so I would feel like
a different version of myself so I I am
totally in that camp but when you damage
the physical structures of the brain
certainly there is a profound change in
you which I'm putting in air quotes Okay
any disagreement so far there's a
profound change of your behavior
and if you identify yourself as your
behavior then what you say is true
depends on how far you're going to push
Behavior so if if the way that I think
through a problem is behavior sure if my
ability to process what I call
processing data like I can't do math in
my head but some people can and they
don't even understand someone like me
for whom numbers just don't appear like
I don't I don't understand people that
are like oh the answer is just a bit
what do you mean that is so surreal to
me so anyway I could go from either not
being able to do it or something happens
and now I can because so much of our
talent is something that was being
tamped down stops being tamped down
right
um so again here's another example that
what I call it Behavior I don't know
that I would but maybe it falls in
Behavior Uh the brain two hemispheres
connected by something called the corpus
callosum I know you know but for people
at home that don't if you sever that the
person will now have two distinct
personalities one of them can be a
devout atheist and the other is a
Believer and they'll they'll sit there
and argue and if you cover one eye
you'll get obviously it's cross so if
you cover the right eye you're talking
to the left hemisphere if you cover the
left eye you're talking the right
hemisphere you will get different
answers from different sides of the
brain you can hide things from one half
of the brain it's bananas my mom's
purpose Blossom was covered really what
what happened it was for epilepsy it's a
treatment it's a barbaric old treatment
for Appalachian indeed it is yeah so you
know this first hand would you call that
behavior certainly it affects Behavior
it does 100 brain injuries I'm let's the
easy one is traumatic brain injuries I
mean I took a titanium needed ahead at
Burning Man a while ago and I mean I I
uh sometimes knee to the Head yeah
Thunderdome you know the like Mad Max
Thunderdome they have one of those at
Burning Man okay so I was with a friend
and we were trying to hit each other
with uh big Q-tips and uh her titanium
knee clocked me right in the head when
we were like flying through the air and
I was oh like seriously adult for
probably a couple months to the point I
remember I I got really mad at Tim
Ferriss for something he didn't do
instead of an angry email and I
apologize later I was like sorry too
hilarious but it I mean I was swearing
all the time I couldn't play go fish
with my kids right
so my perception of myself change but
did I really change I don't know I did
some I would say yes 100 that you know
in certain terms interesting as a result
of the physical structures of your brain
just getting rocked yeah but then why
did I change back when I did Hyperbaric
and I did all the other neurofeedback
stuff I mean the oversimplify it because
you healed and so the way that your
brain was processed why didn't you
change into something else completely
well I I've been editing myself my
entire life with as much Consciousness
as I know how that's what the whole
upgrading yourself part of biohacking is
I'm consciously changing do you feel
that you're limited by the physicality
of your brain not yet not at all this is
so interesting okay wow oh uh I have a
whole company that does brain upgrades
on people like like software upgrades
for the brand neither of us disagree
with that but so like you can totally
change I'm saying that you're what
you're changing is the physical
structure of the brain you're saying
maybe it's not that you can change
software without changing physical
structure agreed
so okay we're miscommunicating because I
agree with that but I believe that the
behaviors are born of the physicality
and that if you were to talk to uh a
worm it would be perceiving and
processing the world in a way that would
be so uh Alien to a human that we just
you're like a phrenologist
that is
an interesting way to interpret this
okay not just for people listening oh
yeah there are people who believe that
you could tell what someone's brain was
doing by where the bumps on their head
were because like this part of the head
would do this but you have this so
mapped out physically but all the data
that I have from brain scans I have the
largest database of high performance
high resolution scans in the world right
now for 40 years of Zen yeah and it's
actually Network Behavior within the
brain it's not at all the physical
structure and the network behavior of
the brain is not correlated to the
physicality of the brain If parts of the
brain aren't there it's not going to
work but a part of the brain can be
there don't rush past that if that's
true it feels like we're in agreement so
okay uh this table right I would pause
it because I'm a physicalist I don't
even know what they call it uh
I don't believe I don't believe that
this table could ever possibly
contemplate the universe in the way that
you and I do I think that there would be
a lot of similarities between you and I
know there are differences I don't think
the table's thinking because of the
structure of our brains that the table
won't have because it doesn't have that
same structure
do we agree on that I believe well I I
don't know that it's because the table
doesn't have the same structure
interesting
it may be entirely possible I don't know
but it may be entirely possible that if
we took a group of monks and it's going
to piss her off that's kind of why I'm
saying no I love it I just want to take
a group of monks and uh and divine
goddesses and we sit around the table
and we love the table for six months
straight and just Infuse it with the
best possible energy yep will the table
become conscious I kind of don't think
so but I'm not gonna claim to be an
expert in that and that's interesting
okay so do you have a thought around
what it's anchored to so for me I and I
get this is a very high level it's a
very important to what our Consciousness
uh it probably will ultimately boil down
to that so let's just start there I
think your Consciousness is anchored to
all of your body not just your brain we
agree on that okay so that's why if you
are one of those people thinks that you
can bring yourself Back to Life by
freezing your body don't freeze just
your head freeze your whole body you're
gonna need that that's a really
important Point well so here's an
interesting thing I think if you did
that you could bring back a lot of what
you think of as you but all of a sudden
it wouldn't feel right there'd be
problems but that the 90 of who you
think of as you would still be there is
my gut instinct the irony that I would
say gut instinct while saying that is is
not lost on me I'm glad you caught that
but yeah I have a feeling that the vast
majority of of who we think of as
ourselves is that but I I agree with you
so violently like on your list here we
haven't talked about Quantum biology yet
we haven't I still have it this is why I
don't freeze my body and I have some
friends who I have no and respect to
which is like Joe polish is a good
friend who's yeah I'm all in might as
well it's a backup plan Ray Kurzweil
same thing we know now because of a very
recent study we only just figured out
how to look at proton spin in living
systems and what they found is that all
of the protons in your brain
change their spin exactly in conjunction
with your heartbeat and if proton spin
is changing in a coherent manner
throughout your system based on your
heartbeat your Quantum system if the
protons were not changing their spin all
in unison they would not be Quantum
coherent with each other so this is
something that that I think I hit it up
on my Instagram page but it's something
that most people just it's like an
advanced physics paper but literally if
your heartbeat is controlling proton
spin throughout your entire system your
Quantum and that's how it works
so there are quantum effects that we
actually just don't know much about that
allow a lot of the realm of the truly
Advanced spiritual practice that's been
written about all over the planet for
thousands of years all this weird stuff
that I kind of don't like seems to be
happening repeatedly can you give me an
example
um oh the ability to read someone else's
mind
like why do we keep talking about that
if it isn't possible and why do I know
people who can do scarily good stuff at
that stuff well probably it's some kind
of quantum thing I don't know the
mechanism of action this is where I
think you and I start to disagree so
when I don't understand I just stop it I
don't understand Yeah but I
get uneasy when people are like
that I don't understand is a fill-in for
all the magical claims that people make
are probably really real and we just
don't understand them yet you and I
talked about this last time otherwise
I'd go into it the whole
um spoon bending banacheck it thinks
it's interesting but let's stick with
Quantum for a second okay so
um that I I think you have some I think
you have your finger on something that
either I'm just so ignorant
that I think it's self-evidently is just
obvious
or I'm bang on so here's how I look at
that okay if if it is true that the
world is the universe is quantum which I
don't know enough to challenge that so
I've just always assumed uh at Quantum
we don't understand how it functions yet
but or or at least how the macro and the
quantum connect but we know that the
quantum mechanics is there and it helps
us uh do things like GPS So Okay cool so
I certainly believe that we live in a
Quantum world so if that is true then it
seems self-evident to me that of course
every system whether it's a planet or
biology is a Quantum system and this
table is a Quantum system too 100 which
is why I'm not sure if it can think but
I don't think it can so but that and I
think that's where I our frames of
reference are so different I don't that
felt like a non-sequitur so to me
quantum systems and Consciousness are
in no way shape or form related like
they're just you know there's two I I in
in as much as if I say that
um my Consciousness isn't tied to blood
flow of course without the blood flow I
cannot have Consciousness so without the
quantum everything I'm sure just falls
apart or whatever right uh thing that I
can't understand or predict but
it isn't the same as oh well if this all
exists at the quantum State then the
physicality doesn't matter so I I'm
going to start making predictions okay
you tell me if these predictions are
active I'm going to predict your your
belief system okay this is interesting
if this starts to break down then I'll
at least understand why that felt like a
non-sequitur to me
okay so quantum entanglement seems to be
the part that non-physical lists I'm
making that word up uh grab onto and say
okay information Theory
quantum
says that you can have yeah well no no
this is my understanding of why people
are interested in information Theory and
how it relates to Quantum Mechanics is
the following that you can have two um
particles I forget which ones separated
by the the entire universe and if they
are quantum entangled they will
instantaneously communicate to each
other and and communicate they won't
um now there's some people that say even
information cannot travel faster than
the speed of light they're not actually
communicating they're simultaneously
changing
which is a form of communication but
there isn't a signal going between them
that we know about uh yes I'm rounding
that to communicate I don't know what
word you would slide in there they're
just always in the same state without
communication I'm going to push back on
that we're I just want to acknowledge
for everybody in the comments to
understand us but I find this really
interesting so I'm going to keep going
um so the the tests that they've done
show that that until one so you they're
quantumly entangled you shoot them in
opposite directions they are now the
universe with the cross when you look at
the first one you create its state so it
was in in a Quantum superposition until
it was measured therefore it's not like
oh I just have like let's say it's red
it's I forget up and down sure I think
or left and right whatever up and down
let's say so I look at this one it isn't
just that you're now recognizing that it
is up and that the other one is down you
can actually do something that makes
this one up and thusly then instantly my
word communicates yeah that that one is
down across the entire universe okay we
are now at the edge of even what I can
yeah sounds like quantum entanglement to
me cool they're making a physics major
who tells us that we missed some
important point but I don't think so
we're close
so my prediction is because of that is
why you're saying that the way our
brains work
or the way that we view ourselves
Consciousness can't be physical or at
least can't be purely physical is that
an accurate
assumption
it's not because of that
okay so what is what leads you to the
statement that we're not
the physicality of our brains or at
least not just well there's the
physicality of your brain but there's
also the signal in your brain if you're
the physicality of your brain then if
you don't breathe for three minutes why
do you stop being you why do I stop
being yeah in other words if your brain
physical structures are there but
there's no electricity flowing in them
you're not there
so the model that I find works best is
that parts of your Consciousness are not
local
and that you have amazing antenna
systems throughout your body they're
called DNA and they're called
mitochondria and they actually do act
and so they've been structured to look
like antennas and so I I think that
there's a part of you that is non-local
and there are computer scientists who
would absolutely non-local
meaning I could blast the mitochondria
off into space and I would maintain my
current
I would be exactly the same
what we get into here becomes the realm
of philosophical and spiritual stuff but
the definition of what is you right then
you have to start talking about
how do some of these people talk about
all of the spiritual things the yogic
cities that we talked about last time
um how is some of that stuff cities
s-i-d-h-i these are defined superpowers
that have been documented in rare humans
throughout recorded history like being
able to read somebody's mind sure right
I'm gonna need to see that documentation
so you sure just just Google it yeah
it's a good book it's like a good
translation of yogic studies he's a
shaman um who's uh who's a good friend
if you even wrote a book with uh Dr
Perlmutter who's a brain scientist who's
also a good friend
but what level of mind reading do you
think is capable depending on the person
um who has the skills I've met some
people with profoundly strong abilities
and we know the military has been
working on this stuff since at least the
60s doesn't mean that it's going to work
no but yeah but I will say and I don't
know if this if this proves what you're
saying or contradicts it but I have a
feeling that once we're able to get a
fine enough level of detail from the
brain whether that is uh neuralink or
whatever that we will be able to they
can already do rudimentary thoughts to
pictures
or brain waves to pictures kernels we
had Brian's company k-e-r-n-e-m was a
guy who was a founder of Braintree yeah
I had him on the show oh you had him on
the show cool I haven't had one on my
show though he's a smart guy but he's
put 80 million dollars of his own money
into a really good brain scanner he's I
think way further ahead than what's he
trying to do he's trying to get a sense
of every single signal happening in the
brains simultaneously and so is it that
you think there are some people that can
pick up on those signals that there is
some sort of because I can get how in
some way our brain our our ecos the
human ecosystem not to over localize it
to the brain I can get how some of that
is using quantum entanglement to
communicate between cells maybe I don't
know
um but I don't get how or why two
different people would be momentarily
quantumly entangled
maybe because your power of observation
looked at their Quantum bits I'm totally
making this [ __ ] up but it's just a
supposition look at their Quantum bits
and then maybe you can just entangle
with another quantum thing it will like
we this what's happening with the whole
Realm of the quantum biology stuff and
this is like hardcore Quantum like we
can make quantum computers this isn't
like the quantum Wu field there's an
entire system that's controlling some of
our biology it's controlling some of
life and some of the world around us
that we know almost nothing about what's
doing it the quantum the quantum the
realm of the quantum Quantum biology
Quantum effects are controlling reality
in a way that we barely understand so if
you're looking to do biohacking and
you're saying well we know we have this
this black box I know that if I do these
things I get this response way more than
statistics would predict and we don't
know why it's happening yet that's where
science is The Cutting Edge of science
always is wow that shouldn't happen
based on what I believed I'm going to
have to go dig deeper on that and the
realm with the most
fertile territory for exploration around
Consciousness right now around
spirituality is actually Quantum science
and the earlier Realm of the realm I'm
spending most of my time on that is
actually looking at the electrical and
magnetic into a certain sense blood flow
of what's happening on the brain so that
we can tune the brain so that it works
better but we don't tune it by adjusting
physical structures
we tune it by adjusting connectivity
between physical structures so that
we're saying this part of the brain the
brodman's area or something needs to
talk to this part of the brain but this
brain isn't speaking the right language
or the volume isn't loud enough at this
certain frequency so let's show the
brain what it's like to do that and the
Brain goes oh and it adjusts its
electrical Behavior without adjusting
its physical Behavior and the second
profound effects on how you feel how you
treat other people and why don't you
think that's physical why do you use why
is electrical flow non-physical
well
this show is going out to people over a
combination of fiber optics and probably
some copper signaling and some Wireless
now we don't have to change the copper
to change what we say right so the
different sounds same physical
infrastructure
wouldn't your brain do the same thing
um yeah I just uh it I suppose is a
definitional adjustment I have to make
to make sure that I'm tracking what
you're saying okay so the physical
Hardware of the brain can carry
different thoughts without changing its
Hardware each time you have a new
thought so why don't we teach the
electrical stuff to send signals in a
different order that change your
emotional state or your spiritual State
and whoa okay I was with you until you
said spiritual state so Define you have
an aversion to spiritual stage no no I
want to understand it all right so I
understand uh obviously thoughts but
when you say a spiritual State what does
that mean or earlier you called
spirituality a feeling yeah there are
feelings
right so right now is it the same to say
emotional state and spiritual State
usually not because some emotions are
spiritual emotions and some of them are
not interesting tell me which is a
feeling of Oneness and connectedness and
the pure love of God which if you've
never experienced that would probably
sound like a bunch of [ __ ] but
people have experienced her like I don't
know what that was but that was
something different and it was new and
they're they're trying to it's like if
you were colorblind and someone's trying
to say no that's blue
and you're like it's not blue it's the
same color as that and you could argue
to the ends of the Earth because they
have it so it's an emotion that's
transcendental uh it's probably depth
transcendental is a good name it these
are things that people can train their
brains to pick up and this goes down to
the idea that we all have filters on
reality and when you start undertaking
spiritual training you start realizing
that there's more that your body can
pick up and your mind can pick up in the
world around you including some amazing
spiritual States so do you think it's
that we're so is a spiritual State a
tuning into a broadcast yes it's tuning
into a field
interesting and one of the lower level
but beautiful spiritual States is love
and you say well love doesn't exist how
do you prove love exists and then we
could talk about Quantum entanglements
of hearts or something well so now let
me ask then so love feels very localized
to me but if what you're saying is
accurate and spiritual feelings or
Trends and dental feelings and it's
tuning into a broadcast are you saying
that love is being broadcast I am
broadcasting love right now from right
here and I'm doing it because I've
trained myself how to do that what's
unrequited love that's a very
interesting and odd question so this is
when you let me tell you why I'm asking
that yeah it's it's yeah I love some
context because one required loves just
love where you send love and you don't
get love back
the reason that I'm asking that is as
you were saying that I thought okay my
wife and I love each other it's a really
awesome feeling it's sustained over time
it's a back and forth
and then I thought okay if if she's
picking up what I'm broadcasting and I'm
picking up what she's broadcasting and
that is love
then are you
the there is a really strong and
horrible feeling when you like something
that doesn't like you back it doesn't
have to be that's just trauma
interesting so well first before we go
off on another tangent on that so if if
spiritual states are receiving the
broadcast is there just messiness it's
both receiving it and the way that you
feel about what you're receiving or lack
thereof yeah okay so every time you
experience a physical or an emotional
trauma you your body your meat operating
system automatically puts a filter in
place so you don't do that again you
don't feel that again you're not
vulnerable to that again you won't
surrender to that again you won't
experience it again so over time you get
more and more and more High bound and
crusty and angry and bitter and mean and
unkind
because you're no longer receiving the
broadcast you no longer receiving the
broadcast you're no longer feeling it
and then when you start doing trauma
work you start doing emotional work you
start losing wow a lot of these emotions
don't make sense because if I love
something
why do I have to feel pain if it doesn't
let me back why why is my body doing
that to me and then you do the inquiry
work and you do the emotional work on
that stuff and eventually you're like
wow I can turn on this love thing and I
can do it at will and I can do it are
you turning on the love thing are you
receiving the broadcast you can do both
you can broadcast and receive and
I want to better understand if I'm
broadcasting
this is interesting I'm going to ask a
question that a spiritual person like
yourself is probably going to hate but
you won't offend me is no no not like
that just so you'll think I'm
approaching it from the wrong direction
so broadcasting love and receiving love
I as I try to adopt your framework don't
feel like they will be experienced in
the same way their separate skills
actually you can broadcast love without
being able to receive love and vice
versa interesting and so from a
well-being standpoint
um let's say that I'm really good at
broadcasting but I'm not really good at
receiving or vice versa which of those
two curses would be the better
so my own path I I wasn't good at either
one
um then I learned how to broadcast love
um be a combination of spiritual
practice neurofeedback all the different
experiences but then I had to do
additional work on being able to receive
love
because a lot of people learn that it's
not safe to receive love early in life
where you're you're actually desperate
for love when you're a small baby or
when you're really little and then
something bad happens something maybe
that wasn't even anyone's an on-purpose
thing and then some party realized as
well I wanted I felt like I was going to
die if I didn't get it I didn't get it
therefore I'm going to close myself off
to it so yeah receiving love receiving
gratitude those are different skills
than feeling them and their trainable
skills and their trainable skills with
electrodes and that's why I wrote you
know a quarter of smart and harder is
about
the things that let you access spiritual
States more quickly than sitting in a
cave and meditating which is how we used
to do it so what does let you receive it
well one of the easier things to do is
breath work in conjunction with
meditation it just works faster to put
you in certain States and those certain
States yes you can measure those states
with electrodes
um so they're they're real States
one of the easiest ways to start working
on that is heart rate variability
training you ever tried that I have only
ever tried to adjust my HRV through
exercise okay so you can do exercise and
sleep and diet to to do your whole night
HRV
in 2008 I joined the Advisory Board of a
company called heart math and they were
the first company to realize you could
train this as a feedback signal so you
put a little clip on your ear and you
had a little now it's an app on your
phone
and then you breathe in
and you make the light turn green
but to make the light turn green it
doesn't just turn green when you breathe
in you start doing something and there's
no word for it and what you're doing is
you're changing the spacing between your
heartbeats to make it more complex but
also more rhythmic so instead of having
an even heartbeat
your heart beats
so it doesn't match between each one so
I don't know how to tell you to do that
except well breathe and just make the
light turn green and as you learn to do
this
stuff starts to change and the way you
feel the way you connect to the world
changes and what you're actually doing
is you're editing the amount of
parasympathetic rest and reset versus
Paris parasympathetic versus sympathetic
or fight or flight so this is a
something that I talk about that it's
probably not harder it's one of the many
different technologies that allows you
to have more control of your nervous
system so you can better sense reality
and so you can better choose your state
because if you don't do that you're not
going to feel that sense of heart
opening which is probably in fact not
just probably but is mathematically
related to what the Buddhists are called
loving kindness so okay I can change the
spacing between my heartbeats at will
and if I find my body going into
sympathetic fight or flight I can say
stop it and then I can turn it back and
I took uh let's see this is one of my
one of my favorite stories
I was working with the Silicon Valley
hardware software engineer hardcore
rationalists probably a little bit
Asperger's like I used to be and I got
him to do this training and he
after about eight weeks he said Dave I I
got it to the hardest setting I learned
how to do it and I I did it for an hour
I know you told me just to do 20 minutes
so I did an hour and so I I think I
experienced Bliss and I started laughing
because in my entire career in Silicon
Valley I've never heard an engineer use
the word bliss before like that that's
not what Engineers do and he did that
just by altering his heart rate
variability yeah but he was consciously
altering it not just trying to like eat
a food that made his body more resilient
because total heart rate variability is
a measure of resilience but your ability
to go from my heart is not highly
variable
and then do that thing the thing that I
can't tell you the words for but turn
the light green and I'm doing it right
now and it changes the variability part
right you can also change the amplitude
the strength of your heart rate some
people are stronger broadcasters than
others and when I go on stage and Tony
Robbins or somewhere there's an audience
of 10 000 people do I before I go on
stage intentionally adjust my heart rate
variability so that it is high and turn
up my amplitude as much as I'm capable
of so that I can feel the audience and
they can feel me yeah is there math that
says this is real actually yes there is
there's a magnetic field around your
heart it's tipped at eight degrees to
the left is shaped like a big donut a
Taurus and we know which direction the
fields on it move because we can measure
it with sensitive physics detectors we
also know that magnetic fields
continue infinitely into the universe
and we know that systems will pick up
each other's magnetic fields no Quantum
required when you have high heart rate
variability and you walk into a stall
with a horse the horse will match its
heart rate variability to you and if
you're tweaking and you walk into the
stall the horse will let you ride it
because it picks up your heart this is
why they use horses as therapy animals
because their biofeedback machines for
heart rate variability so is what I'm
doing here some sort of weird
manipulative Tech Wizardry no you can do
heart rate variability just by learning
basic meditation I just found a faster
way because I'm a nerd I think it was in
the book and then you've said it here
today you used to have Asperger's yeah
used to how did you stop
well first you address cellular toxins
and things that are causing neuro
inflammation so your nervous system is
uninflamed then you retrain the nervous
system to do what it never learned to do
when you were young in my case it
involved learning social skills it
involved retraining my auditory
processing systems it involved
retraining my vision systems and I'd say
I'm 70 of the way that I'm training my
proprioceptors because when you have
Asperger's Syndrome you're getting so
much environmental input that is not
filtered properly by your nervous system
that it's very hard to pick up on what's
important and what's not important so
you become stupidly good at pattern
matching and recognizing systems because
you're dealing with an enormous volume
of data and most of it's just static in
your system so when you remove the
things that are causing the static and
then you do the work of becoming aware
of all the signals you never learned to
do before
um then at some point say well this
person no longer meets the criteria for
asperger's syndrome I used to live
everything was from the neck up like I'm
a rational being on the meat robot and I
just realized that's actually not how
the system seems to work
I am simultaneously rational as in I
have a green information systems and Ai
and an MBA and I you know I do truth
tables and irrational and that I have
feelings and I can simultaneously hold
both States we're all like that we just
it's actually scary to consider the fact
that you have an irrational being in the
same meat suit as your rational side I
just got comfortable with that and
decided to tame it um
is there a a process that people can I
can only imagine how many people
especially now as the rates of people
being on the Spectrum are skyrocketing
that would love to know if there's a
system that they can use to do that
the most that I've written about that is
in my book called headstrong and this is
a book about how to fix your brain and
how to make your brain work better than
it did before if you were to do the
recommendations in that book and you
were to do some additional neural
training that I probably touched on in
there you could
um you could get a lot of results there
the stuff I just mentioned here I'll
just tell you the resources for it
Vision training is something you can do
with a variety of things but look for a
developmental ophthalmologist and these
are people who study how the eyes and
the Brain work together with
proprioceptors in the body I spent six
months doing really difficult Vision
training exercises learning how to move
my body again you can look for somatic
therapy to learn how to get the systems
in the body wired into the brain I still
do that today
and then you could look at auditory
integration training or AIT therapy for
every one of those there's probably a
Wikipedia page which is the new Snopes
that says that they don't work
Wikipedia you suck there Wikipedia is
the new Snopes yes it's entirely run a
big Pharma companies have a big big
influence on there and there's there's
about 200 trolls who run Wikipedia and
they fight with each other to see who's
the biggest troll it's fantastically
beautiful and it's anger
that's hilarious I used to have a
Wikipedia page and then for some reason
they removed it I still do but it's
super uncomplimentary right now but
there's like Wars it'll be because
you're calling them trolls uh it could
be Dave where can people follow you go
to Dave asprey.com you can find all my
books all the cool stuff podcasts 40
years is in and own and upgrade Labs
it's all there so Dave asprey.com is the
single hub for all the Davis I love it
guys if you haven't already be sure to
subscribe and until next time my friends
be legendary take care peace if you want
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