Ep. 503 Biohack Your Mind & Hormones – The Best Mental Reset for Perimenopause with Dave Asprey
- Team Cynthia
- Sep 23
- 35 min read
Updated: Oct 12
Today, I am thrilled to reconnect with my friend and colleague, Dave Asprey, for our third podcast together.
Dave is the founder of Bulletproof Coffee, the Bulletproof Diet, and the biohacking movement. He is a four-time New York Times best-selling author, and his latest book, Heavily Meditated, is a USA Today best-seller. As a leader in the longevity movement, Dave collaborates with medical professionals, researchers, and innovators to develop groundbreaking techniques and products that enhance mental and physical performance.
In our discussion today, we explore what it means to be triggered, covering the five Fs, the role of ego and altered states, and the impact of social media, credentialism, and health bullying. We also discuss the importance of intuition, especially for women in perimenopause and menopause, highlighting that the ovaries contain the greatest concentration of mitochondria in the female body, the value of forgiveness, and the importance of finding peace in our lives. Dave also shares his breathwork “buckets bicep” practice and explains its effects on the dopamine receptors.
I thoroughly enjoyed this inspiring conversation with Dave, and every woman navigating midlife transitions will benefit from the insights he shares in this episode.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
What it means to be triggered
Dave explains the biological and neurological aspects of triggers
The difference between managing triggers and turning them off at the source
How fear, food, and reproduction drive automatic behavior
The benefits of meditation
How criticism often triggers a deep-seated fear response
How credentialism and health bullying prevent people from trusting their intuition and personal experiences
The power of forgiveness to free energy and reduce emotional triggers.
The value of intentional discomfort practices during perimenopause for recalibrating dopamine receptors
The potential link between mitochondrial activity and the intuitive ability of women
Bio:
Dave Asprey is the founder of Bulletproof Coffee, The Bulletproof Diet, and the biohacking movement. He is a four-time NYT bestselling author, the author of the recent USA Today Best-Seller, Heavily Meditated: The Fast Path to Remove Your Triggers, Dissolve Stress, and Activate Inner Peace, the CEO of Upgrade Labs, and hosts "The Human Upgrade" podcast. Dave pioneered online sales in the 1990s, co-founded an early data center company, and later transformed his own health by losing over 100 pounds and improving his cognitive function. This journey led him to create The Bulletproof Diet and coin "biohacking." Dave runs the 40 Years of Zen neurofeedback program, the Biohacking Conference, and a regenerative agriculture farm while investing in biohacking startups. As a leader in the longevity movement, Dave collaborates with medical professionals, researchers, and innovators to develop groundbreaking techniques and products that enhance mental and physical performance. Using science-backed methods, his mission is to help people upgrade their minds to a happier, more conscious state and optimize their bodies one cell at a time.
“The first thing your cells will respond to, long before your brain gets to know, is fear.”
– Dave Asprey
Connect with Cynthia Thurlow
Follow on X, Instagram & LinkedIn
Check out Cynthia’s website
Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Dave Asprey
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives. [00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of reconnecting with friend and colleague, Dave Asprey. This is our third podcast together and easily my favorite. He is the founder of Bulletproof Coffee, The Bulletproof Diet and The Biohacking Movement. He's also a four times New York Times best selling author and author of the recent USA Today bestseller, Heavily Meditated. As a leader in the longevity movement, he collaborates with medical professionals, researchers and innovators to develop groundbreaking techniques and products that enhance mental and physical performance.
[00:00:58] Today, we spoke about what being triggered represents, the five Fs as well as the ego and altered states, the impact of social media, credentialism, and health bullying, the role of intuition and how our ovaries have the greatest amount of mitochondria in our bodies as women, the value of intuition in particular in perimenopause, his breathwork buckets, BICEP, which impacts dopamine receptors. I so thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Dave. I have to tell you, I always have a great time interviewing him and I feel like so much of what we discussed today is so important from a foundational level, especially as we are navigating perimenopause into menopause, the value of forgiveness, finding peace in your life, all tenets that I think every woman should be working towards. I hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:54] Well, Dave, this is our third conversation on the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you back, welcome.
Dave Asprey: [00:01:59] Oh, thanks for having me back, Cynthia. You're doing a lot of good work in the world.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:02:03] Thank you, thank you. I'd love to start our conversation today talking about being triggered. I feel like we are in a time and space where this is hugely problematic. It is not unique to the younger generation. I feel like there are a lot of angry middle-aged people, people who get triggered with the slightest of things. And I know you talk about this in the new book. Let's talk about getting triggered, being triggered, what this truly represents, because it is much deeper than someone just getting worked up over a post on social media by someone they don't even know.
Dave Asprey: [00:02:39] If you can be triggered, it means you are a loaded gun or at least you're carrying one and [Cynthia laughs] someone else has their finger on the trigger. And it's not their fault that their finger is on the trigger, it's your fault that you haven't unloaded the gun. And what functioning adults learn to do is we learn to feel triggered and still behave ourselves. And all of school is about that. All of the behavioral modification from church and coaching and all that is, whatever, feel, a feeling or don't feel it, we don't care, just behave. Problem is, that's a really expensive way to solve problems, right?
[00:03:21] And if instead of being triggered and behaving yourself, you could actually turn off the source of the trigger, it would free an enormous amount of energy in your life and you'd be more in charge of how you treat other people and even yourself. And that's what's behind the knowledge of Heavily Meditated. And this is a really hard book to write because it took 10 years of measuring brainwaves from high-performing executive types who spend five days with my team of facilitators and neuroscientists in Seattle at 40 years of Zen. And measuring what meditation and altered states techniques let you go in and turn off the triggers instead of just managing them better. And I like to think of it like if you had your mobile phone and you went into the doctor and you're saying, “Doc, man, my phone, these alerts just keep going off all the time. These notifications just popping up, popping up.” And doc goes, “Argh, I have the solution. Here's a piece of tape. We're just going to put it across where they come up.” And you're like, “Well, kind of can't use that part of my phone. But, yeah, well, we stopped.” [00:04:24] Okay, so then, you fire the doctor, you go to the meditation teacher, they go, “Argh. Take a deep breath. Every time a notification pops up, gently swipe it to the left and continue focusing, gently return your focus.” And like, “Seriously? That's what you're going to tell me to do? And then you go to the biohacker and it's like, “Oh, here's how you go to the system settings, go to the notification tab and go off, off, off, off on your phone. There, now you can use your phone again.” Your body has an operating system, it has notifications and those notifications are not set very well. [00:05:01] And I'll argue that this is a major source of health problems. It's a major source of relationship issues and just suffering in the world. It isn't even us, it's our hardware. And throughout the course of the biohacking movement, I've figured out, what is the operating system? How does life make decisions? And this isn't at all your brain. Getting into the neuroscience side over the last couple decades, when something happens in the world around you, you don't get a signal in your brain for about a third of a second. So I can clap my hands and then anyone listening, it's like, “Okay, it took a while for the sound to get to me, and then I heard it.” Except once the sound got to your body, you didn't get to hear it for a third of a second because your body held onto the signal and decided if it was worth showing it to you and how you were going to feel about it. Like, “What? So everything is on a third of a second delay?” “Yeah, it is.” [00:05:57] And if you don't believe me, you ever lean against a hot stove accidentally and then you look down and go, “Yep, that's pretty hot. I smell a little burning. I guess I should move my hand.” Nobody does that. Your hand jerks itself away. And then you say, “Good thing I move so fast.” But you didn't move. Your hand moved via some other mechanism that's not you. That mechanism is the thing that keeps you safe, as if your brain wasn't in there, and it makes you do all the things you regret. And that means it's not your subconscious. It is actually your body that's getting in the way. And there's a lot of ways to access this, but ultimately, meditation and all the other altered states practices from the book, they're about, how do you get into these altered states of healing or altered states of high performance, where you can do things that you really can't do when you're running the normal program of life. And what I've learned is everything, it doesn't matter if you're a mitochondria, which is just an old bacteria or you're a blade of grass or a chipmunk or a slime mold or a politician, I put those next to each other for a reason- [Cynthia laughs]
Dave Asprey: [00:07:16] -or a human. The first thing that your cells are going to respond to long before your brain gets to know is fear. These are all F words. If something is scary and it doesn't matter if it's really actually dangerous, it's just scary, then you need to run away from kill or hide. That's just how it works. And you do this before you can think. You go, “Okay, so that wasn't scary. I still haven't had a chance to think about it though.” But your body is going, “All right, what's next on the order of importance for life?” “The next effort is food.” “Well, well, isn't scary. Can I eat it?” Because you might run out of energy at any time. And then the third F word, all life has to do it to stay around for multiple generations. You can imagine what that one is, right? What is it?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:00] Begins with an F and ends with a K.
Dave Asprey: [00:08:05] Now fertility doesn't have a K in it.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:07] [laughs] Well, I was thinking of short and like along the lines of F, yes.
Dave Asprey: [00:08:12] Oh, fire truck. You're thinking fire truck.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:13] Exactly, fire truck, very important.
[laughter]
Dave Asprey: [00:08:17] Yeah, that F word. So those are the things that keep life alive. And Cynthia, every single thing that you've ever done that you're ashamed of is one of those three things. It wasn't you. It was your body trying to stay alive as if your brain wasn't in there.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:35] Yeah, yeah.
Dave Asprey: [00:08:37] That's kind of mind blowing.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:39] I mean, you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like the very basic, everyone needs these, that's the only way we function as human beings, and how many people listening. When we reduce it to just those three things, it really genuinely makes a great deal of sense. And whether or not we're in a westernized culture or we're in an indigenous culture, it all remains the same. But we have gotten so distracted.
Dave Asprey: [00:09:05] We have gotten so distracted. And the good news is there is hope because that describes the seven deadly sins. It describes the hindrances in Buddhism. Like all the negative aspects of ego are there. And it's funny because Heavily Meditated is, it's a how to book. It's like, this is what people spend $20,000 to learn how to turn off these alerts, like, I'll teach you how to do it in the book, and it's not going to take $20,000 in five days in Seattle. But it became the number one bestselling philosophy book in the country. In addition, the best-selling meditation book. And Buddhist scholars are looking at this going, “You just finally described the why behind all of this ego stuff that we've been talking about forever.”
[00:09:49] And Victor Chan, the Dalai Lama's co-author and best friend of 50 years, heard about these F words that we're talking about, And he looked at me and he said on stage, all this stuff the Dalai Lama's been saying for 50 years makes a lot more sense now because it's not about just believing, it's rational that all life would do this. It actually makes sense, It's science. So we have fear with food and then fertility. The next F word, though, is friend. All life supports its own species and the ecosystem around it automatically, And that's our community. And the final F word in humans is forgiveness, because forgiveness is how we evolve. That means turning off a notification around fear or around hunger or around loneliness. And when you do that, it frees up a ton of energy and you become more conscious, more grounded. [00:10:41] And you and I both know a lot about hunger and fasting and leptin and ghrelin and all that. And in my research, about a third of the average person's thoughts, if they don't follow you anyway, is going to be about tacos or about some kind of food. One third of your thoughts, but you can transform cravings, like I used to have when I was 300 pounds, like you used to have, you can turn that into nourishment where, like, I don't have cravings anymore and hunger isn't an emergency. So all of a sudden, you have a nourished body. What would you transform fear into? What's the opposite of fear?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:11:21] I think of just peace. I mean, personally-- [crosstalk]
Dave Asprey: [00:11:24] Nice. Very few people will say peace, but it is peace.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:11:27] Yeah.
Dave Asprey: [00:11:28] And so if you have peace, you can have joy, you can have agency, you can have love, and you can even have courage. Some people say that's opposite of fear. Courage is actually fear is present, you do it anyway, which is a really good thing. It's better though if there's just no fear in the first place. And then you do it because it's less work and you have more power. So if we can turn fear into peace and forgiveness is the easiest way to do that, and we turn hunger into nourishment, then in Heavily Meditated, there is a chapter, because ultimately this is a book about altered states. And you use altered states to heal and to create and to be intuitive and to connect with others. So there's a chapter in it on the third F word. We'll call it fertility for polite company, because--Cynthia Thurlow: [00:12:18] [laughs] Fire trucks. Dave Asprey: [00:12:19] Exactly. And 20% of people report meeting God during orgasm at least once in their life. And it's not like your partner's going to know because you're just laying there, twitching the way you always do. And it's pretty likely you're already saying, “Oh, God,” anyway. So, it's not known, but when in surveys, when people study this, they're like, “Wow.” One of the ways of accessing these deep altered states of connection and healing is intimacy. And so why don't we talk about that? Why are we all in with psychedelics and things like that? There's a chapter on psychedelics in the book as well. Here's what they do, here's why you would use them, so it's what are all the tools to go into these states that will allow you to be less craving and more nourished, less fearful, more peaceful, less in the bedroom anyway, less lustful and more connected. So that becomes a source of nourishment.
[00:13:17] And then in our community, how do we make our community into something that nourishes us as well? You take care of your community, it takes care of you, and that's the goal. But you know a secret that a lot of people don't? About how mitochondria actually work. So if you believe what I'm saying about the system where you, like, you have some amount of energy and you pour it into fear, and whatever you don't waste on fear, goes into hunger. Whatever you don't waste on hunger, goes into intimacy, and whatever you don't waste on lust and OnlyFans goes into community. And then whatever's left after that goes into you becoming more connected to yourself. [00:13:58] So it just makes sense. But if you understand mitochondria, you could have more energy to pour in at the beginning of the day. So a lot of fasting, a lot of biohacking, sleep optimization, all the stuff that's been in my other books, stuff that's in your books, we're teaching you to have more power. When you have more energy, more power, you can overcome the triggers and the fear and still have emotional regulation. And then you get to food, and anyone who's been listening to your show for a while understands you can just not have cravings. You just have some hunger and it's not a big deal. So you've already got that handled. But then, “Oh my gosh, let's not talk about relationships.” And then community, there's just no time or energy for that. There's an epidemic of loneliness. [00:14:44] The former Surgeon General was on my show. The only book he's ever written-- was this Vivek Murthy was on. Yeah, it's the only book he's ever written. And it was about the epidemic of disconnection. So if as long as you know how to fast and you know how to eat, you have more power to put into these other F words. But the hardest one to deal with is fear. And in Heavily Meditated, I teach how to do it. And it's a step by step, eight step process, where you go in, you figure out a trigger, you go as close to the root as you can find, and you run these steps and then you're done.
[00:15:18] And the reason it matters is just that, everyone you interact with for the rest of your life, if you're more in charge of yourself, you'll probably like it and they'll like it. And if you're reactive because you're hungry or because you're fearful, you have trauma and triggers, then they won't like it and you won't like it. It comes down to that, like, how do you want to live your life? That's why this is, I think, my most important book and why it's worth reading. Just because it's not supposed to take 30 or 40 years. You don't have to wait till you're old to have some wisdom because you can learn from what other people have done. It just took a long time to get the practice. But with technology now, you can read your brainwaves a thousand times a second and see what works. Instead of, we'll just do it for 10 years and we'll see if that approach worked. And that's how we've always done it. [00:16:05] So we're at this amazing time in the world of neuroscience and personal development where we can say, “For this person with that problem, this meditation technique, this psychedelic, this breathwork, or maybe just doing some deep breaths and getting some in a mindful way might be exactly the prescription you need.” Whatever it is, like, let's just be truthful about it.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:16:26] Well, and I think the personalization piece is huge because what might work for five other people may not work for these three people. And I think giving people tools is very helpful. I used to call it self-evolved people, meaning the people that were doing the work to address their childhood triggers, traumas, etc., that were allowing them to live much more peaceful lives. And now I understand it's much deeper than that. And I think about, you brought up the power of orgasm. And on a very simple level, like, we know that orgasms lower-- they release oxytocin, which helps release cortisol. And so it becomes this kind of circuitous situation where people are finding ways to address stress and trauma. But it's an evolved state.
[00:17:15] I mean, to me, it's not like we do one little piece of work and then that fixes everything else. It's a constant practice. It's something that I think of as for each one of us, we find the things we need to do to allow us to evolved at another state in many instances. When I was reading your book and thinking about our conversation, I was like, what are the things that we can discuss? So if there's someone listening who's maybe like, “I'm just starting on this path. I'm a middle-aged woman, I'm overwhelmed. I'm in perimenopause or menopause. What are some simple things I can do now? Maybe I'm not at the point yet where I'm ready to consider psychedelic therapy or going on a retreat, but what are some simple things I can do now that will help improve my operating system, allow me to be less triggered?” [00:18:06] Because let's be honest, we see it every day on social media and I always am humored by the grace with which you address some of the people that make comments. And I'm like, “Dave is in such a Zen state. He's just like, ‘Listen, you haters.’”[laughter]
Dave Asprey: [00:18:21] No one's described it as grace before. What I normally do now is I realized every troll is operating out of basically seventh grade bullying trauma. [Cynthia laughs] They just grew up and they're so like, “Oh, we're playing seventh grade.” So I usually just say, “That's not what your mom said.” That that's my most common response to trolls. And they lose their mind and they go, “That's not very nice.” And I go, “Hold on, I thought we were playing seventh grade games. It's your turn. I'm rubber, you're glue. Okay, like what are you going to say next?” And then everybody's laughing and then it's just calling it what it is.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:18:55] But I think it's lighthearted. I think that's why I say you're like, “I'm not taking you very seriously and I'm just going to kind of deflect some of the nonsense that I'm seeing.” And it's like a kid kicking the can, back in the-- when were all growing up and we kicked cans like how smart that was, and occasionally someone got injured. But nowadays it's the keyboard warriors, it's the 50-year-old guy living in his mom's basement who's trolling around trying to make mischief everywhere they go.
Dave Asprey: [00:19:25] Oh, yeah. And you can have compassion for them too because I mean, these are people who never went beyond like 12 years old, and it's like, wow--Cynthia Thurlow: [00:19:34] Emotionally.Dae Asprey: [00:19:35] Poor guys. And so the problem is, for most of us, when someone criticizes you or even isn't criticizing you, but just asks a question, it can still feel like criticism, and that is triggering the first F word, fear. And, like, “What do you mean? That's not fear. I didn't like it. They were being disrespectful.” But your mitochondria know through two billion years that if someone is disrespectful to you that you could lose status and you might not be able to have a baby, and you might even get kicked out of the tribe, and then a tiger will eat you. So therefore, you cannot tolerate that it feels like death.
[00:20:14] In fact, it feels exactly the same way as when 11:45 runs along and you can't regulate your blood sugar and you get hangry, and you're like, “I'm going to die if I don't have a sandwich.” Dude, no, you're not. [chuckles] [Cynthia laughs] But it's the same thing. It's the automated system that slipped in there and told you how to feel about the situation so you can make up a story that would match the feelings. The feelings were not rational, but the story was. So the input to the system was ancient bacteria trying to figure stuff out. They're not very smart, but they're really fast, and they're between us and the world. So I do my best to-- whenever someone's criticizing, whatever your diet is or whatever you're doing, or they're criticizing something about you, I just know because of all this work. It's not about me. It's just about them. [00:21:11] And maybe one of my favorites are the credentialists. [Cynthia laughs] Credentialism is actually a new disease that's affected people. And credentialism, it's when you're unable to hear anything unless someone with a sheet of paper from a certain institution tells you that it's true. It's been weaponized by certain industries, like Big Pharma. You can't hear that because it didn't come from someone who has a sticker. That's totally weird but, like, there's one guy out there, “I am a PhD nutritionist, and all calories are the same. And if I yell loud enough, everyone will believe me.” And you see this kind of like, health bullying. And everyone who believes calories are all the same, they're universally angry because they're malnourished and they can't regulate their emotions. You’ve got to feel compassion for these guys. [00:22:08] There's this one of them, his name is Biolayne. He's always saying stuff about me. So you know what's awesome? You can use code Biolayne on my website for TrueDark for the glasses to get a discount if you'd like. It's B-I-O-L-A-Y-N-E. [Cynthia laughs] And also I did a really interesting short video about urine therapy, but it doesn't have a brand, so now I call it Biolayne Therapy.
[laughter]
[00:22:33] I’m like, “What can you do?” Like, you got someone who types in all capital letters and says, you're a bad man because you disagree. That is seventh grade. So I couldn't handle that. And in Heavily Meditated, Joe Rogan came after me for 18 months after I was on his show three times. And, man, I had to really face, like, the darkness around that. And it wasn't just Joe, he’d sent 10,000 other trolls to my social media pages, really abrupt, actually, in Heavily Meditated. I'm like, “Well, here's what that did emotionally to me. Here's how you unpack it. Here's how I use the tools in this book.” To realize that it wasn't the end of the world because every time Joe Rogan says, “Dave Asprey is a bad man,” I just sell more coffee. It doesn't matter what he said. He figured out after 18 months and he stopped talking about me. And in fact, then he deleted the episodes with me when he went to Spotify. And I don't care, it doesn't matter. But to get to the place where it's not the bitter I don't care, it's truly like, stuff happens. This wasn't about me. It never was. And is there a lesson in there? What could I have done differently? Yeah, I could have been more aware of what was going on earlier, but how's what I've learned?
[00:23:42] So these things, you can use forgiveness, which is what the Reset Process is, to just forgive anyone who's wronged you. And the thing about forgiveness is, it isn't telling someone you forgive them. It isn't saying that whatever they did was okay. It's just turning off the stupid little notification on your phone that keeps popping up every time something similar happens. That's all it is. So I've been with people who have been actually tortured, and they're doing 40 years of sin, and they go through and they run the Reset Process, and when they start out, they're like, “I was tortured, whatever country in,” and when they're done, they go, “Yeah, I was tortured,” but there's no emotion left. It's not positive, it's not negative. It's just like, “I'm done.”
[00:24:25] That kind of freedom frees up so much energy that then it's easy to not have the junk food. And then, wow, since you didn't have the junk food and you didn't feel fear, that was useless, the next time you're feeling lonely or it's time to go work on your relationship, which always pushes fear buttons for people, you have enough energy to handle that. And then you do some forgiveness work there too. And what do you know? Your relationship either improves or you end it. And then whichever one, you go, that's okay. And then like, “Look at me, I have all this energy. What am I going to do?” And here's the thing that has, I think, also been missing from a lot of our health discussions. It's intuition. And if I was to say that women have more intuition than men, would you believe me?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:17] I would believe you as a female, absolutely.
Dave Asprey: [00:25:20] Wow. So you're like judging men in such a harsh way.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:24] No, no, I've birthed two and I'm married to one. And I don't think in many ways-- No, in all honesty, I think men are deconditioned from listening to themselves. [Dave laughing] I think that's societally-- [crosstalk]
Dave Asprey: [00:25:38] It's okay. One of my love languages is putting words in other people's mouths to see what they do. [Cynthia laughs] So it's all good. You did not say that to be clear. But there is a biological basis for intuition and it's in Heavily Meditated because all those decision points we just talked about around fear, food, fertility, friends and forgiveness, they're all mitochondrial behaviors. And the mitochondria, they guide the antennas of reality. They're the first in line. They actually aren't the antennas. The antennas are little microtubules, but they cluster around microtubules and aim these little antennas, they're quantum antennas. And yes, some people say, “That's not scientific.” Well, dude, then make sure you read my book or talk about it. But yes, actually it is scientific, you just don't know it. [00:26:24] So the thing is, if these are mitochondrial behaviors, where do we have the most mitochondria? Interesting. 15,000 per neuron and per cardiac cell in men and women, and maybe a few hundred to a couple thousand in the rest of the cells in your body, except in your ovaries where you can have 100,000 or even up to 600,000 mitochondria for cell. If mitochondria are the power plants and the aimers of the little antennas of intuition and reality, wouldn't it make sense that women have a biological basis for female intuition? It is the thing. And men have our intuition too. And it's a different intuition and it isn't as high resolution as it is for women, for most men. And there are always outliers. There are women have no intuition whatsoever and there are men who are probably highly intuitive, but it's not the same, it's different. [00:27:17] So you're just not going to hear your intuition whether you're a man or a woman because intuition is very fast. It's the first thing that you feel. It's a small feeling, it's quiet and it's fast. And then right after that, in order based on how you have your settings, fear, hunger, loneliness, disconnection, a hundred times louder. And then after that comes thinking, “Well, I will justify the fear by saying the other person's a bad person. And I'll justify the hunger by saying I was going to die if I and have the taco. And just not pay attention to all that lusty stuff because my OnlyFans account,” and like you tell these stories and they're like there, I patched all up, everything's all good. And you totally miss the intuition. [00:28:01] The process I'm talking about in Heavily Meditated is finding whatever means necessary and all the means are in there. Then you won't do everything in the book, by the way, you'll read it, your intuition is going to raise the hairs on the back of your neck or you'll see a sparkle in your eye and go, “Oh, my God, that's the one.” Well, go do that one and ignore the rest of the book. That's the one you need. But if you don't know it's possible or that it exists, you won't find it. So do that and it's going to lower the amount of energy consumed by survival impulses. And when it lowers that energy, it lowers the volume, which means that you have a greater chance of picking up intuition. [00:28:40] And as an example of how precise intuition can be, I had an experience, actually yesterday, one of my friends is a leader in women's personal development, a well-respected author and one of my favorite people. I'm just not going to name her because some personal stuff. So we're texting and I'm on an airplane, this is the realm of intuition. And I'm like, “Let me see if I can tune in on this just using pure intuition.” And I picked up a very precise and unusual form of Japanese art used to repair things by replacing damaged parts with gold. And I texted her, just pure intuition. I texted her, I said, “Ah, you used ikigai on that emotional thing.” And as I sent that, [laughs] she was sending, I used ikigai? How did someone sitting on an airplane in the middle of nowhere know that there is no way that could have happened other than intuition? And so I couldn't talk about this stuff at the beginning of the biohacking movement, when I started this whole thing, I'm like, “All right, I'm going to be weird. Lasers on your head, earthing and putting butter in coffee. That's enough.” And I mentioned a little ayahuasca here, a little breathwork with Stan Grof from Holotropic over there. But they're like the little decorations because if I'd have said all the weird shamanic training, all the stuff I had also done in addition to the hard western science, no one would have believed it, especially the people who needed it the most. [00:30:14] And now, like, show me a CEO or an engineer who doesn't do biohacking. And that means the pillars of biohacking, which are around the body, make the body strong enough and energetic enough to do the work. And then the mind-- make your brain work well enough. But then there's spirit, and between those, there's emotion as well, which is a combination of mind and touching on spirit. So if you can get body, mind and spirit, I invented those, those are like ancient Greek and Egyptian things, those have been around forever. But how do we approach them? What if we just had a little bit of data. And you and I, I think, independently realized fasting, it might be the easiest thing to do because you can get rid of so much hunger and it actually strengthens the body. And then you lose your fear of being hungry. So it even reduces fear. And you're, “Oh, great, I got a really good return on investment.” [00:31:09] And specifically for women in perimenopause, when you apply the tools in Heavily Meditated, you're going to sit back and go, “Okay, my intuition works because I know how to eat now.” And anyone who's followed your work, I've been working on it for a while, especially women. Women are better biohackers than men. If there's three different plates in front of you, if you use your mind, you're gonna choose one that you think is good for you. If you use your emotions, you're gonna pick the one that tastes best. And if you use your intuition, you're gonna pick the one that makes you feel the most nourished. And they are not the same. The stories you believe affect the one you think about, [laughs] saying I only want to eat things that taste good that leads to ultra processed junk food.
[00:32:01] And so all that's left is I'm going to use my intuition to pick this food. And I'm not a fan of saying intuitive eating. No. Know the food that's compatible with your biology. But just because you know grassfed ribeye is compatible with your biology, if you reach for it and your intuition says not now, maybe you should listen to your intuition. And if your intuition tells you to eat kale, your intuition is wrong. Okay, I just want to make sure.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:24] [laughs] I was about to ask you about kale. You literally like as I was getting ready to say, and what's your thoughts on kale?
Dave Asprey: [00:32:30] I’m reading your mind. Once I did all the different Reset Processes, I-- [laughs]
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:36] Isn't intuition at its core trusting yourself? Dave Asprey: [00:32:39] No.Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:41] No?
Dave Asprey: [00:32:41] Do you know which part of yourself you're trusting and what is yourself?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:46] I mean, I guess that's esoteric. I think from my perspective when I think about intuition, it's that little, like the spidey sense that you feel that draws you to certain people or things like that to me is-- if I'm not being drowned out by all the other things in my life, if I'm just intrinsically allowing myself, there are decisions I've made in my professional life in the last nine years that made no sense to me at the time. But then after the fact, I'm like, oh, spirit, the universe, God, whoever is calling me to look at something in particular, which leads to a lot of other things that had me farther down the path of life.
Dave Asprey: [00:33:26] Cynthia, you're not alone there. That that's actually how the world works. But people feel silly talking about it. And I love it that you're mentioning that. Every year now in October, I run an event called the Business of Biohacking Conference. And I teach people how to build biohacking businesses like the way I did with Bulletproof and I'm doing now with the other Danger Coffee, the other ones in my portfolio. And I bring in lots of teachers and just all the people who help me. And I always give a talk about intuition. And what venture capitalists will tell you is you guys are writing big checks to invest in companies that a startup will come in and pitch and then they'll sit down. And if the spreadsheet, the numbers say that they should invest, if they invest, they have no idea if they're going to make money or not. So they don't invest based on that. If their intuition says yes and the spreadsheet says yes and they invest, they'll probably make money. If the intuition says yes and the spreadsheet says no, they make the most money. But if the spreadsheet says yes and the intuition says no, you'll lose money every time. So it turns out it wasn't about thinking about the numbers. The intuition must be present regardless of the numbers.
[00:34:33] And one of the things that happens especially around perimenopause with women is the energy that's present is so variable on a daily and weekly basis that it can be really hard to tune into that intuition because today you have 50% the energy you did yesterday or the day before. So the thing that's going to help you the most is understanding how to stabilize your energy, which comes down in part to eating. And the other thing I would like to see more women, this is maybe less Heavily Meditated content, more my longevity book. But if women would learn that at 35, your body starts to stop producing DHEA and pregnenolone. And these are the things that counteract the stress hormones of cortisol and adrenaline, which are life giving, energy producing, beneficial hormones. You just need to have both.
[00:35:27] So now you have these stress hormones that help you handle stress but you have nothing to balance them. And that's 10 years before you go into perimenopause. So what would happen if you started supplementing DHEA and pregnenolone at 35? You wouldn't have a very meaningful perimenopause experience. It wouldn't be painful. And when you did move over into menopause, it's like a one-year gentle thing. And now you're wise and your hormones are more stable versus I had five years of hell and all this kind of stuff. And yes, progesterone's a thing there too. But none of these are terribly expensive or even hard to measure now. You can measure these at home. And knowing that, okay, if you get those mostly dialed in, you'll be able to hear the intuitive voice. And you know what it's going to tell you when you shouldn't [laughs] take one of those hormones that day because you don't want to, your body knows not to do that. [00:36:18] So many of the people I talk to, they're like, “Well, I'm afraid. I’m afraid I might do the wrong thing.” I'm like, “Oh, that's the first F word. Fear.” Perfectionism. So how many people you've talked with in your community who are dealing with perfectionism around food or about how they look? It happens in women, happens in men. So how would you use the Reset Process from the book to do that? Well, it's pretty straightforward. You go back, what's the first time that you ever felt that feeling of needed to be perfect? And something's going to pop into your head and it's something that isn't the current situation. It's probably sometime when you were a little kid, it's almost always that. And you may go, “Oh, it was three years ago.” Like, no, it wasn't. Just keep going back to the first one you-- [crosstalk]
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:03] Childhood.
Dave Asprey: [00:37:04] It's always childhood. And sometimes it's something you forgot all about. Like for me, the reason Joe Rogan got under my skin when he, for commercial reasons, was trying to come after my reputation, he owned a company or a portion of a company that was trying to copy my products. Not a big deal. But it's because of first-grade trauma that I'd experienced. I just tell the story of the book because it's ridiculous. I tattled on a kid who did something he shouldn't have done and then he tells the teacher that I did it. So I got punished for what he did. That's injustice. And injustice is a major trauma for adults, especially for entrepreneurs. And if you sit with injustice and get bitter because you did the right thing, got punished for it, man, that doesn't end well.
[00:37:42] So with perfectionism, it's not that, but it's something from first grade or even before or after, it doesn't matter, something like that. You're going to go through and you're going to run all the steps of the Reset Process and when you're done, you don't have any energy behind perfectionism anymore. It just doesn't matter. And I love perfectionism because it's so fun. Like I'll go to a restaurant, like, “Oh, I'd like a steak. Is it grassfed?” “Oh, yeah, it's grassfed.” “Oh, is it grass finished?” [Cynthia laughs] “Yes.” “Is it organic?” “Uh-Huh.” “Was it raised by monks?” “Yes.” “Were they left-handed monks?” “Yes.” “Were they one armed left hand--?” Like you can never be perfect. That's the definition of perfection. There's always another step. And I have yet to find left-handed one-armed monk-raised grassfed, grass-finished organic beef. But I'll try it if I can find it, and I don't care if I ever find it or not, as long as I get most of that stuff most of the time. This is peace. That's the opposite of peace. [00:38:39] Okay, did my best. Or even-- this is my favorite. I didn't do my best. I just did good enough because I had other stuff to do. That is a place of power. That's a place of peace. And especially if you're a parent, we were talking about our kids a little bit before we started recording, and man, you just do what you think is right. It doesn't even have to be your best. And if your standard is I do my best at everything I do, you're so wasting your life. “I'm sure I could have like wiped the counters in my kitchen even better than I did the last time I did it. I didn't do my best. Oh my gosh, I'm a bad person.” No. So this is around self-forgiveness, that final F word, forgiveness. [00:39:23] The hardest part, and I teach you how to do this in Heavily Meditated, is forgiving yourself. And for a lot of people going into these dates, that Reset Process works for everything. But to feel this sense of awe and gratitude and beauty that is the antidote to fear. It can be really helpful to have a psychedelic journey. It can be helpful to do a breath workshop. And there's three different kinds of breathwork, three buckets that I talk about in Heavily Meditated. There's the grounding, calming breathwork. There's breathwork just to energize you and get you some focus. And breathwork to trip balls. Like the kind that's designed to replace LSD. So when people say, “You should do some breathwork.” “Did you know which kind?” And then people say, “Well, you should meditate.” There's thousands of kinds of meditation. [00:40:14] And one thing that drives me crazy, 98% of people have been involved in agriculture for the last few thousand years. But what about the other 2%? They're hunters and warriors. Now if you have that kind of energy, and here's a meditation, if a hunter does farmer meditation, they will hate their life and fall asleep. And if a farmer does a hunter meditation, they'll just freak out and hate their life. So, “Oh my gosh, you mean you have to match your meditation to your desired results and to your energy?” Yes, you do. And that's why I go through those types in the book. But most meditation works better with breathwork, and it works better with somatic experience. Like, what does it feel like in the body? And when you do those things, and maybe you do the other practices in the book. [00:41:04] There's one that you might like that's brand new in the world of biohacking. And the chapter is called Go Spank Yourself. [chuckles] And the technique is called BICEP. It's not the bicep on your arm. It's brief, intentional, conscious exposure to pain. Like, what? Well, I remember hearing in seventh grade about how monks would whip themselves. They would flog themselves. And I asked my teacher, “Why?” “Because they're such sinners.” I’m like, “That's dark.” And the yogis lay on beds of nails. Like, “Why?” “To show they're good yogis. Because yogis are competing with each other. Yeah, that's why.” Well, maybe there's a reason. And why do you Texans eat jalapenos? And why do biohackers get in really cold water or take a cold shower? It's all the same thing. [00:41:58] If you do something that is painful but not damaging for one to three minutes a day, it resets the sensitivity of your dopamine receptors. So they're about 250% more receptive to dopamine. And what dopamine does is it motivates you to work towards something that matters. It doesn't give you any reward for getting it. It just rewards you to work for it. So the reason the monk was flogging himself, it took less mitochondrial energy and less willpower to be a good monk. And the same for the yogi, the same for the biohacker. So what I'm suggesting is that if you're in perimenopause, you should get a spank. I mean, you should-- [Cynthia laughs] You should do something, whatever you're into, no judging that is briefly uncomfortable because it actually makes everything else in your day better. And it's probably going to be a cold shower, unless you have a thyroid problem or something like that. And I don't have any dog in the fight about what it is. But there's a reason that people actually do get spankings. And there's a reason that addicts are covered in tattoos, because the pain of that tattoo helps them not relapse. There's healthier ways, tattoos are not good for you.
[00:43:12] This is why we have these counterintuitive things like that and really, if you think about that through the lens of the F words from Heavily Meditated, the body's afraid of anything that hurts. Pain is from fear. All you're doing is showing your mitochondrial network, “Hey, you little bitches, stop whining. This isn't deadly. Chill the F out.” And then they do, and it really changes your whole day.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:43:45] Yeah. It's so interesting because I think we are conditioned as a society to avoid pain in every facet of our lives. And yet what you're encouraging people to do is to consider that discomfort actually leads to not only healthier mitochondria but resetting those dopamine receptors which are just inundated. As an example, I'm trying to grow my following on TikTok. And so what does that app do? It rewards you for integrating with it. I will put a timer on, so I'm only 10, 15 minutes, but I can see where people get addicted to the dopamine release that they're getting as they are interacting with social media.
[00:44:29] And so I would invite listeners to consider that these are ways that we can upgrade our health in ways that are sustainable. We're not saying you have to go out and self-flagellate, but there are small ways that we can introduce a little bit of discomfort that is actually going to make us stronger and more resilient.
Dave Asprey: [00:44:49] Yeah, like taking a bite of kale. You can spit it out, [Cynthia laughs] but it's tasting the kale, “Oh, man.”
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:44:56] I was never as happy as I was. I've never been a fan of kale. And I was eating it because I was being told it was good for me. And when I stopped making myself eat kale, I was much happier.
Dave Asprey: [00:45:07] It's really funny. No one intuitively eats kale. And then now I see people who are like, “But I like kale.” And I'm like, “No, you don't.”
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:45:16] My mother does.
Dave Asprey: [00:45:17] You like fried stuff with maple syrup and nuts and bacon on it is what you like. So just eat the nuts and bacon and ditch the kale and you'll be happier. And then their gut stops hurting. So it's one of those things where I always use it as a joke, but the intuition really matters. And then my practice, for whatever reason, starting in my 20s, if I was afraid of something that wasn't dangerous, I made myself go do it, whatever it was. Like, the more aversion I had, I'm like, I have to try it because I don't know if I'll like it. So, like, sure, I'll eat the Chinese 500-year egg or something. “Oh my God, that's going to be terrible.” But I'm going to try it. And I don't know why I'm wired that way, but I used to be afraid of heights and I used to be afraid of public speaking and now I'm pretty good at it. [00:46:02] The first time you do something like that, you're probably going to feel like you're losing your mind. But you do it anyway. And it's the doing it anyway that causes that mitochondrial network of fear to weaken and to go, “Oh, I guess what I thought was going to kill me won't kill me.” And when you do this Reset Process that's in Heavily Meditated, after you reexperience some kind of discomfort as part of the process, there's a state that cancels it out, which is a state of gratitude and awe.
[00:46:31] And you can learn anytime you have any kind of fearful or negative experience to turn on that thing that cancels it out so that it doesn't stick. And that's a massive thing. And of course it helps if your energy's there. I always recommend that people have some ketosis occasionally because ketones give you more willpower. A huge fan of Danger Coffee, my new coffee brand because it has a therapeutic dose of trace minerals in it. It's actually about $22 worth of trace minerals if you were just to buy them. And the coffee is 25 bucks, it's a good deal. But they're in there because trace minerals and electrolytes like that increase mitochondrial energy output and you can measure it in things like cell phase angle and all.[00:47:14] So I'm like, okay, I just want to have enough energy to handle anything that life brings my way. And I want to be so well regulated that even if life brings me something big, well, I have a ton of energy and I don't freak out. So I can still handle it. And that's where resilience comes from.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:30] So important. Dave, I've so enjoyed this conversation. Please let listeners know how to connect with you outside of the podcast. how to get access to your new book Heavily Meditated or listen to your podcast.
Dave Asprey: [00:47:42] Oh, thank you. My podcast is called The Human Upgrade, website daveasprey.com. If you go to dangercoffee.com, I don't know, I'm easy to find online. Just Dave Asprey and Heavily Meditated is the book. I would ask if you read the book and it makes a difference, leave a review on Amazon. It's really helpful. I mean, hit the USA Today bestseller list and was number one in all the categories. But this is the most important book I've written and it's based on 10 years of deep neuroscience work, many millions of dollars, and it's the biggest learning that I know of. So, learn how to fast, do everything that Cynthia is telling you to do and then learn how to turn off the notifications in your operating system for you. And like, the world's very different than you thought it was.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:48:25] Absolutely, life changing.
[00:48:28] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. Subscribe and tell a friend.
Comments