Summary
I went down to Peru and I found a shaman and I said I want to do ayahuasca. He looked at me and he said, Dave, inside your brain is total chaos. I don't know how you're standing here in front of me. 90% of people who've come through 40 years is in. These are high-performing executives. They probably bump their head when they were a kid or an adult. You're not stuck with the brain you have.
Key Points
- The goal in this episode is to just offer you the most effective tools of everything I've found to give you control of your brain.
- There's a study in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience showing that just meditating influences your brain's neuroplasticity because it increases BDNF.
- And there's a study in the journal Cell Metabolism where they found that NAD plus levels do decline with age and that it does impact mitochondrial function.
- But these are two things that I manufacture, and I make these for you because they're cost-effective, they're actually very cost-effective, and they're critically important.
- Magnesium and zinc are particularly important for cognitive function and they're included in minerals 101, but I would love to see you take even 800 milligrams of additional magnesium as long as it doesn't cause disaster pants.
- Members of Upgrade Labs, my biohacking franchise that has 32 locations in the process of opening across North America, these are the two most commonly recommended supplements just because they work and they're very cost-effective.
Key Moments
Dave Asprey's 25-year journey with neurofeedback for cognitive enhancement
Asprey describes buying his first clinical-grade neurofeedback machine and spending 25 years in the field, eventually building custom hardware and software for brain enhancement because he wanted a Formula One mechanic for his brain.
"So I bought my first neurofeedback machine. And if you're new to the idea of neurofeedback, it's jus"
Being dumb is harder to hack than being fat
Asprey shares the turning point where he realized his cognitive struggles were not from lack of effort but from underlying biological dysfunction, comparing how humans hide cognitive weakness the way sheep hide physical weakness from predators.
"being dumb is harder to hack. And I was starting to wonder if I was dumb. What you'll As a regenerative farmer, there's sort of two kinds of animals. Animals like sheep, they will not sh"
The difference between enhanced cognition and normal feels invisible
Asprey explains a key insight about nootropics: enhanced cognitive states feel natural and go unnoticed, while the absence of a nootropic is much easier to detect because the decline in function feels foreign and frustrating.
"When I'm on them, my brain works like it's supposed to, so it just feels natural."
