I do not define myself as a biohacker. To be honest, I don’t like the term. I have been and always will be a person who’s eager to peel back the layers, investigate, and do the hard work to find solutions and get results. Sometimes certain “tools” can help the process from health tests to HRV monitoring to blue blockers. No need to label me as something special (“biohacker”). I just call it smart living.
That said, I’m not hating on the biohacking crowd! Quite the opposite. I think many biohackers and Bulletproof-minded folks are a breath of fresh air in a modern society that’s often negative, unhealthy and regressing. So I went into the 2016 Bulletproof Conference open-minded and hoping to learn, but secretly I was initially a bit of a skeptic and praying it wouldn’t just be a Dave Asprey lovefest. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised. I’ll go as far and say that the Bulletproof Conference blew my mind. I was beyond impressed and pleased with the experience. Ok, so there were certainly some over-the-top biohacking toys in the expo room (which I avoided) and probably too many low-carb bulletproof products being sold (I only had the free samples, ha), but if you made your way past all that there was a wealth of quality information to absorb and great people too.
The bottom line: This group is about progress and wellness—in a different way than what I’m used to seeing in the endurance sports scene—and the combined intelligence level is off the charts. These are the people who are willing to challenge conventional norms and think about things differently—especially the featured speakers Dave invited. That gets me excited, fully engaged, and eager to spread the knowledge to the LPC crew.
Oh, and click here if you’d like to see an interview that my friend Dr. Tamsin Lewis and I did with Dave. To give some context—it was actually Tamsin’s interview that she scheduled with Mr. BP Exec, and she kindly let Endurance Planet (aka me) join the fun. If you’re like me, you may not agree with everything Dave preaches, does or recommends (including things he says in this interview—wow), but no matter what the guy is interesting and being in his presence was an experience in itself (he’s truly very zen).
So here are my favorite BP lessons:
1. Often, biohacking is about simple common sense.
- This was an underlying theme I personally noticed among the speakers, and then Kelly Starrett brilliantly pointed out the same in his presentation: Are we over-complicating the biohacking stuff? Let’s get back to simple, sustainable, healthy routines and BALANCE! Have ice cream with your kids once in a while, it won’t kill you (but the stress over it just may).
- It’s not as complicated as we make it out to be! Sometimes it’s about doing the simplest little acts. Sometimes it’s about the things that cost nothing yet have the biggest impact. Several big themes are:
- Quality sleep
- Decrease stress
- Nourish adrenals
- Create and foster quality relationships (side note: some of my favorite moments at the conference included the social interactions, chats and dinner with friends – not just sitting quietly and anonymously in an audience)
2. Hugs matter.
- Especially hugs longer than 3 seconds. We need more hugging. Go hug someone and make it a good one.
3. Ladies, low in estrogen? A soft touch may help.
- When another human, especially a partner or spouse, rubs a woman’s arm this can increase and maintain her good hormones like estrogen. No supplement needed.
4. The key to fixing your hormones? It starts with the liver!
- Key to re-boosting hormones is by processing, activating and removing excess hormones (estrogen dominance) via the liver!
- Put down the glass of wine and clean up the toxins in your environment if you have hormonal problems.
- More on safe liver detoxing in an upcoming LPC article!
5a. A man’s testosterone (T) is lower when he’s lacking confidence; his T is higher when he’s calm, cool and collected.
- In relationships, the woman cannot shatter a man’s confidence or make him feel like he’s losing. Ladies, take note!
- Guys, feed yourself the confidence you deserve and see your hormones soar.
5b. Men, laying outside NAKED in the sunlight can increase T as well.
- Why? exposing your testes to the UV rays helps stimulate T production.
- Again, no supplement needed. Just make sure you don’t get arrested lol.
- This particular nugget of info came directly from Dave’s mouth to Tamsin and I during our interview with him 😉
6. Every couple needs to read Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
- If you plan to be in a relationship in the future read it as well.
- John Gray is brilliant. He gets it. End of story.
7. Our body type alone (our natural “shape”) will often dictate our health stats.
- Know where you fall (and you may be a combo like me! I’m an ectomorph + mesomorph):
- Ectomorph – methylation, reparation
- Mesomorph – inflammation, oxidation
- Endomorph – glycation, toxicity
8. Start every single morning with a big glass of salted lemon water.
- Use only quality salt (Himalayan, Celtic or a “clean” sea salt), filtered water (not tap), and organic lemons
- Up to 24-32 oz water, and if you’re like me you can eyeball the salt and add enough for it to be palatable
- Room temperature water (not cold, not hot)
- Helps adrenals, helps stimulate a healthy bowel movement, provides a mini detox flush, maintains proper hydration, helps skin to glow (and diminish fine lines), so on.
- I’ve been doing this ever since and holy awesome! I concur on all points that it’s effective!
9. There’s a truth on atherosclerosis that Western medicine doesn’t tell you or your loved ones…
- Bear with me, a bit random but seriously worth knowing. Dr. Cate Shanahan explains that it’s not a blockage issue, it is about a weakening of the arterial wall. In other words the problem is not a buildup of plaque inside the artery (nothing technically is getting blocked) and the diameter of the artery stays the same. Instead, what happens is the plaque builds along the wall and bulges after time—that’s the problem—because eventually the wall can rupture.
- Stents makes things worse by weakening an already-weakening arterial wall.
- You can fix it, plaque can go away! Not doomed.
- Underlying theme? Western conventional medicine gets it wrong again! Another convo for another day…
10. Brain activity goes through the roof after just 20 minutes of walking.
- Meanwhile while sedentary? Not much is going on upstairs. (See slide – on the L that’s sedentary, and to the right you can see all the activity with 20min of walking.)
- I’m seeing this thinking, “No wonder I love to get outside whether training or not… and if it’s this good with just ‘walking’ I can only imagine how much our brain is firing while backpacking in nature!”
- Take-home: take mini walking breaks if you want to be more productive, creative and energized throughout the day! And you know what? I hate sitting in all-day conferences so during this 3-day ordeal each day we made an effort to take breaks and walk, a lot. One day we accumulated 13 miles of walking between events!
- Jim Kwik added in his presentation, “As your body moves your brain grooves.”
Speaking of Jim Kwik, how about a couple bonuses in addition to my top 10:
- How to learn faster with the ‘FAST’ technique:
- F – forget, forget about what you know; let go of past issues and what you think and be open-minded. If you think that you’re forgetful forget that.
- A – active, such as teaching, practicing, notes, doing and being consistent. Learning is not passive. Schedule time for personal growth.
- S – state, the snapshot of all learning is state dependent. If you feel zero passion, zero times zero is zero. Have passion.
- T – teach! One of the best ways of being active is teaching someone else. Learn to be able to teach.
- How to remember names better with MOM:
- M – motivation, incentive. This is the key to learning!
- O – observation, pay attention, Bill Clinton is a good example. It’s not that we’re forgetting, it’s that we’re not listening, hearing or paying attention in the first place.
- M – mechanics. This means we need to learn how to give a speech without notes or how to remember numbers and passwords. You need to know the mechanics.
Have questions?
Need me to elaborate on anything described above or want to learn more? Simply ask in the comments and I’ll reply!