(slow, bouncy music)
- I said you know, this probably isn't a good idea if I want
to live to 180 so, I--
- [John] 180?
- That's my goal.
- Okay, some say that's not scientifically possible
for humans, but I guess we're gonna find out, huh?
- I'm totally willing to die trying.
- Yeah I mean you know I guess we all will, right?
- [Dave] Are you nervous?
- Uh, I trust you.
- [Dave] This is just all about honoring your time.
(slow, bouncy music)
- [John] Dave Asprey is considered by many to be the father
of modern-day biohacking.
While working under immense pressure in Silicon Valley,
and at one point weighing over 300 pounds,
Asprey knew he needed to make major lifestyle changes,
so he literally began to hack his body,
both through his diet and with the use
of advanced, sci-fi like machines.
I met Asprey at his home lab on Vancouver Island in Canada
to take part in a day long crash course on what he calls,
the Bulletproof Lifestyle.
It's a way of living designed to improve
your body's overall performance and your well-being.
He put together a regiment of machine-powered rejuvenation
based off my body's biometric information,
collected by special equipment,
and I was curious to see whether I could handle it,
how it would make me feel, and what was in store
over the course of the day.
- A lot of people after travel would say,
"I gotta go lift heavy.
"I'm gonna go work out to recover."
It turns out your body doesn't need that.
So we're gonna start you out with some cryotherapy.
- Here we go.
How does this compare to the standard ice bath
that you might see an NFL player
or another professional athlete jump into after a game?
- An ice bath takes a lot longer,
you're talking about 20 minutes,
and that's activating your internal cold receptors
and we're looking to get the ones just on your skin.
So they're both good,
this is just a higher ROI for your time.
- (laughs) It's cold.
My legs were sorta wobbling a bit,
not shaky but there was movement there,
probably just trying to stay warm.
I mean it's refreshing.
- While you're nice and cold I want to get you right
into the red charger.
You can really get the benefits most when you're cold.
- What I'm feeling right now is like a little bit
of a tingling sensation basically over my entire body.
Is that typical?
- That's typical, and what's going on here
is your cells have more electrons because of the effect
of the light on your cells, than they're used to having.
So you're literally absorbing energy through your skin,
the way we like to think Superman does
because we have a yellow sun.
(energetic, bouncy music)
When you stack these technologies in the right order,
you get more benefits than doing them one at a time,
and the idea of bringing all this together into a place
where we can actually have machine learning algorithms
show you what to do in the right order, is pretty epic.
- After going from freezing cold to warm,
I was feeling tingles from head to toe.
Body shocked, it was time to give my brain a workout.
- Time for the virtual float tank.
It's that same sensation that you get when you're
in a float tank and when you combine that
with the control of your brainwaves,
the rate of the blinking of the lights and where they blink
on each eye activates different parts of the brain,
so what we're doing is helping you go
into the relaxation deeper than you're normally gonna get
in meditation unless you're really good at meditation.
- The flashing lights seemed like it'd be stressful
at first, but then I sort of settled into it.
It wasn't jarring.
It wasn't like a "Clockwork Orange" horror situation.
- It's meant to be gentle,
not to put you into the beta fight or flight
but to bring you into the almost asleep but not quite,
that twilight stage.
- Right, yeah, definitely, definitely felt that.
Yeah it was neat.
- I think there's time for one more thing.
Let's put you in the atmospheric cell trainer.
What this is going to do, is it's going to change
the atmospheric pressure on your cells.
You could go almost as high as Mount Everest
but we're just gonna take you up to about 3,000 feet
and back towards sea level, so your cells will do this.
Every cell in your body including bone marrow
and brain, everything.
It's like a form of cellular exercise
that you can't get through normal exercise.
All set?
Just talk to me if you need anything.
- Ready for takeoff.
- All right.
- You're at about 2,500 feet right now.
(walkie talkie beeps)
- Yeah I can definitely feel the pressure.
- Clinically this thing is shown to trigger healing,
to cause stem cells to grow more naturally in the body
and to raise nitric oxide
to increase circulation in the body.
You're not gonna feel those things right away.
What you normally feel when you come out
is pretty darn good.
- Now I'm not trying to pop my jaw here, but rather my ears
because just like on an airplane
I could really feel the pressure.
The entire regimen Dave put me through had me feeling alert,
and even relaxed thanks to a bit of pure oxygen,
and the bulletproof promise of that at a cellular level,
my body was getting everything it needed.
And that was all good, but perhaps what I was most excited
about was trying a cup of Dave's claim to fame,
coffee based with grass-fed butter and grain octane oil,
made by the cult hero himself.
- [Dave] If you have a layer of oil on top you did it wrong.
And the reason is that tiny droplets of oil,
when they're suspended in water,
change the way your body accepts the water
and if you just try to eat the stick of butter
and drink some oil and drink some coffee,
you will not like how you feel.
It is not the same thing.
(blender whirs)
- So this helps your body break down the fat,
the good fat in the butter so you can process it quicker
and more efficiently?
- It helps with digestion.
It also helps with skipping a step of energy creation
because when you have tiny droplets of this butter suspended
in the coffee, it's similar to what happens in your cells,
which are actually made of little tiny droplets of fat,
so we're mimicking a biological process in the blender
so when you drink the coffee you're like wow,
I feel different.
Cheers.
- Thanks.
It's pretty good.
- [Dave] It tastes like coffee, right?
- Yeah.
- And it doesn't taste like butter or anything weird?
- Yeah I mean there's a little bit of butter-like essence
but I like it.
- For the last 20 years I've been using technology
to increase my performance, change how I feel,
and to first lose my hundred pounds and recover faster
and then realize that there's a whole new level
of performance that I hadn't tapped into, and it's not fair
that only celebrities and special forces of people
and other rare humans get access to this.
This is technology that should be and can be
and now will be available for everyone.
- So Santa Monica 2017 you opened
the first Bulletproof Labs.
How did you decide what that space looked like?
What mood were you trying to convey and how did you decide
which machines actually would be in that first opening?
- So the lens I use to look at the technology is
how much benefit does the technology provide,
for what percentage of people, in what amount of time?
So if we had something that took 10 hours to do,
it probably wouldn't make the bar because no one wants
to spend 10 hours improving themselves unless they're
at a focus facility,
a personal development event or something.
I don't want people doing this stuff on faith.
I want people doing this stuff because wow,
I like how I feel today, oh and look at my data's changing,
like look at what my data's doing as it changes over time.
It's that perspective.
I can feel it and I can see it and it honored my time,
that was what I used to pick the tech that's down there.
- Yeah and is everything tested here on Vancouver Island
before it makes it down to Santa Monica?
- I would say 95% of things are tested here
and every now and then I fly somewhere to test it.
I test everything myself and of course we have
a medical director and we have biohacker techs in the labs,
and it's not that I test it then we roll it out,
but I test it, then we start beta testing it more,
but yeah I do all of this myself
because I've probably tried more of this than almost anyone
on Earth at this point and it's been built into what I do
for so long that I have a pretty good eye for,
you know that's really expensive and it wastes people's time
but they do get some benefit.
I just don't want to do that.
I want to save people money.
I want to save people time.
And I'm gonna give them massive results so that they think,
I have an hour and I could go do all these different things
and this is the most impactful hour I could spend,
and that's the bar that we set and it's really high
but it works.
- I'm now wondering, is Bulletproof for everyone?
- The Bulletproof Lifestyle is absolutely for everyone
because you use data, because you stop doing the things
that make you weak, you do more of the things
that make you strong and you use other things
to get a signal into your body so it'll do what you want.
Yes, that's for everyone.
Does that mean everyone needs
to drink Bulletproof Coffee right now?
Absolutely not.
Does it work for the great majority of people?
It looks like it does.
And if you try it and it doesn't work,
or you don't feel good, then do something else,
and if you're feeling crappy (laughs),
if you don't have the energy you want,
if your body hurts, if you can't focus, it's your fault.
You don't know why but it's something you're doing
or it's the environment you're putting your body in
that's doing it to you and knowing that,
that's the essence of being bulletproof.
The environment around you controls your biology more
than your thoughts do and your thoughts matter greatly.
Just knowing that means you can make changes,
and if you don't like where you are, you start taking steps,
that's the essence of the Bulletproof Lifestyle,
that is for everyone.
- The Bulletproof Biohacking Lifestyle is more
about experimentation, self-actualization,
and even the pursuit of happiness,
and for that reason it has millions of followers
around the world because some form
of Asprey's script has worked for them.
Is Bulletproof Coffee snake oil
or the secret serum to longevity?
The jury is still out and science doesn't always back
Asprey's lofty lifespan goals or wellness claims,
but as with any new diet or wellness regimen
we just never know definitively whether it works.
Personally I felt pretty good and strong after my day
at Bulletproof Alpha Labs.
I do honestly enjoy the coffee
and I would totally be up for more cryotherapy,
but as a guy who's never paid for a gym membership,
I'm not really sold on this next gen wellness routine.
I'd rather kick around a ball on a beach or a field,
or go on a long run.
That said, biohacking isn't just about physical gains.
It's also about mental clarity, feeling energized,
and even making peace with the world around us.
That is something we can all benefit from.
(slow, bouncy music)