Super Human

by Dave Asprey

  CHLORELLA

  In animal studies, a type of algae called chlorella binds very well to mercury in the gut,28 and a great many physicians recommend consuming it for this reason. I have noticed a measured difference in my fine motor control and neurological function when I eat chlorella along with fish, a common source of mercury. A best practice is to take twenty-five or more chlorella tablets with meals containing fish. This way, you can get the precious omega-3 DHA from fish without taking a hit from the mercury.

  MODIFIED CITRUS PECTIN AND OTHER FIBERS

  Mother Nature’s original method of detoxing harmful substances from your gut is to use simple digestive fiber. There are two kinds of fiber: the insoluble kind that you can’t digest and the soluble kind that feeds good bacteria in your gut. It’s important to feed them because simply having healthy gut bacteria can help you detox.29 You’ll read more about this later.

  In addition to feeding your gut bacteria, it turns out there is a form of citrus fiber called modified citrus pectin (MCP) that has almost magical anti-aging powers. It’s good at removing lead, cadmium, arsenic, and thallium. In one study, about 15 grams of modified citrus pectin powder per day for five days caused the study subjects to pass significantly higher levels of metals through their urine. Specifically, the amount of arsenic leaving the body increased by 130 percent, cadmium levels increased by 150 percent, and lead levels increased by 560 percent.30

  That alone is good for aging, but there’s more. MCP reduces cancer’s ability to spread in the body.31 Given that cancer is one of the Four Killers, taking a substance that makes it harder for cancer to kill you so you have more time to kill it only makes sense.

  MCP also reduces levels of a molecule in your body called galectin-3. This helps protect you from harmful bacteria that cause local inflammation and immune activation. As you age, your levels of galectin-3 go up, which creates chronic inflammation.32 You’ve already learned that chronic inflammation leads to an increased risk of all Four Killers and is tied to the formation of AGEs, one of the Seven Pillars of Aging. Galectin-3 is also associated with heart failure, kidney disease, and cancer.33

  However, galectin-3 is essential for young people (under forty) to grow healthy tissues, so unless high levels of metals are present, they shouldn’t take modified citrus pectin every day. I give my kids, who are nine and twelve, about 5 grams once a week. A low dose for adults is 5 grams per day for several months, and a high dose is 15 grams per day for a year. My pragmatic strategy is to take 15 grams every other day for a year, and then 5 grams every couple days as a maintenance dose. It has a mild taste, so when I take it, I add it to my Bulletproof Coffee or just stir it into a glass of water in the morning. Given the benefits for continuous metal detox and the reduction of heart disease, cancer, and kidney risk, this one is worth your time.

  EDTA CHELATION THERAPY

  The big gun of chelation therapy is ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) chelation, which was first used in 1950 to treat lead poisoning. EDTA is a synthetic amino acid that binds to metals and diminishes their reactivity. This helps you remove metals and reduce the damage they can cause, and it is used to reduce calcification of your arteries as you age. EDTA is also an anticoagulant for blood. Can you picture the small amount of a yellowish substance at the bottom of the vial that keeps your blood from clotting when you have it drawn? That’s usually EDTA.

  After my first glutathione IV in 1999, I then took the next step to detox from heavy metals: EDTA chelation therapy, also via IV. I moved to the big guns quickly because lab tests showed my blood was so sticky that I was at a high risk of heart attack or stroke. I wasn’t yet thirty years old. When I got home from receiving the EDTA chelation, my significant other at the time looked at me and said, “Wow, your skin is so pink!” I had never even noticed that for years my skin had been an unhealthy gray color. The EDTA therapy helped my blood flow better, finally bringing some color to my cheeks. Since then, I’ve also tried suppositories of EDTA chelation and found that they worked just as well, if not better, for continued detoxification. You may not like the idea of suppositories, but when you compare going to a doctor’s office and sitting for an hour to get EDTA via IV with the fifteen seconds it takes to insert a suppository, it’s pretty obvious which one requires less of an investment of time and money.

  EDTA is a potent chelating agent for calcium as well as heavy metals. As we age, we typically build up calcium in our tissues, and this calcification leads to all sorts of symptoms of aging, from heart disease to even balding (more on this later). This calcium buildup is usually the result of an imbalance between calcium and other vitamins such as vitamin D and vitamin K2. Your body needs vitamin D to properly absorb calcium, and almost everyone today is deficient because of our strict avoidance of UV light.

  We need vitamin K2, on the other hand, to keep calcium in its place—namely, our bones and teeth. Too often, calcium leaches out of the bones and teeth as we age, leaving behind little holes, and then the calcium builds up where it doesn’t belong: in soft tissues. When this happens, EDTA chelation is extremely effective at pulling the calcium out of your tissues. If your body isn’t yet calcified, supplementing with vitamins D and K2 should help you avoid tissue calcification and protect your teeth and bones from aging. Lead is also tied to calcification, so EDTA can be doubly powerful when it removes calcium and lead!34

  When my father had calcification issues a few years ago, I recommended EDTA chelation, and it worked incredibly well. Mainstream cardiologists have been claiming for years that EDTA chelation doesn’t work, but that doesn’t change the fact that many functional medicine doctors successfully use EDTA chelation to improve arterial function. If you are over forty, I recommend getting a calcium score to measure your calcification levels. If your levels are elevated, EDTA chelation either via IV or suppository can assist in lowering them while helping you detox from heavy metals, which you undoubtedly have, too. If you are under forty or unable to get a calcium score, you can try one of the milder chelation therapies above preventatively.

  As with all other medical chelating agents, I recommend getting tested for heavy metal buildup before using EDTA chelation. Even if you don’t choose to do a full urinary metal lab test, talk to a functional medicine doctor before trying EDTA chelation. You really want to go to a medical professional for this one, as you can become seriously ill if your liver and kidneys aren’t able to process the metals once they’ve been released from fat cells. When done correctly, however, chelation therapy can rapidly decelerate and even reverse aging. It’s worth the investment of time and money to work with a professional.

  SWEAT IT OUT

  Your body does have its own way of detoxing that doesn’t require any IVs or supplements: sweat. Sweating does more than cool you off. It also helps you get rid of heavy metals and xenobiotics, foreign compounds such as plastics and petrochemicals, in small but significant amounts. A 2012 systematic review of fifty studies found that sweating helps remove lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury, especially in people with high heavy metal toxicity.35

  I recommend stacking your benefits by getting your sweat on in an infrared sauna. Whenever I feel that I’ve been exposed to something toxic, such as when I eat in a restaurant and can tell the food was high in contaminants, I do a one-hour infrared sauna session to detox. Keep in mind that sweating pulls electrolytes and trace minerals from your body, so it’s important to drink a lot of fluids and get plenty of salt (preferably Himalayan pink salt or another mineral-rich natural salt) if you’re going to use a sauna to detox.

  Of course, you can also get a sweat going the old-fashioned way: by exercising, which increases lipolysis (the breakdown of fat tissue). This releases heavy metals stored in your fat tissue. I recommend doing high-intensity interval training (HIIT) once or twice a week to boost lipolysis. Exercise has plenty of other anti-aging benefits as well. Research shows that adults who regularly engage in intense exercise have significantly longer telomeres, those protectiv
e caps on the ends of chromosomes that you read about earlier. As a result, people who exercise regularly are a full decade younger than their peers on a cellular level.36

  Remember that mobilizing toxins is a good thing only if your body is able to actually get rid of them. You want to be sure you’re expelling toxins, not just moving them to a different part of your body! Working out improves circulation, providing more oxygen to your liver and kidneys so they can better filter out toxins once they’ve been released from fat cells. But lipolysis is even more effective when you combine it with supplements that support the liver and kidneys. This includes calcium-D-glucarate, which converts to glucaric acid in your body and supports the crucial detoxification pathway in your liver. Like activated charcoal, glucaric acid scavenges your body for toxins and then binds to and eliminates them so they can’t age you prematurely. It’s also a good idea to take activated charcoal before you work out or hit the sauna to suck up the toxins released from fat cells.

  Another way to benefit from lipolysis, this time without breaking a sweat, is by getting into a state of nutritional ketosis. Ketosis is a very effective way to induce lipolysis, particularly when fasting. When you’re in a fasted state of ketosis, your body breaks down your fat stores so it can produce ketones for fuel. Since heavy metals are stored in fat cells, this means you can supercharge your detox (and fat loss) by dropping into nutritional ketosis. As you’ve read, that comes from either fasting for two days or eating mostly fat, moderate protein, and almost no carbs. If you try this, boost your detoxification efforts by mopping up with activated charcoal, calcium-D-glucarate, or both.

  I occasionally do longer fasts to reap the detoxification and anti-aging benefits. It may sound difficult at first, but once you become fat adapted (meaning your body is accustomed to breaking down fat for fuel), it’s really pretty painless. Plus, I love saving time by not having to do dishes for a few days. The ability to fast without feeling like you’re going to die is a Super Human power that you can grow.

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  Bottom Line

  Want to age backward? Do these things right now:

  •Up your antioxidant levels with supplements that will help you detox and counter the negative effects of metals in the body. Focus on glutathione, alpha-lipoic acid, zinc orotate, and good old vitamin C.

  •Regularly bind the metals you are exposed to by taking activated charcoal, 500 mg to 5 grams per day, and/or modified citrus pectin, 5 to 15 mg per day, both away from food or pharmaceuticals. Take some chlorella tablets when you eat fish.

  •If you feel you are aging faster than you’d like or have a reason to believe you’ve been exposed to high levels of heavy metals, see a functional medicine doctor to get your urine levels tested. If they are indeed high, consider IV chelation therapy or suppository EDTA chelation therapy under a doctor’s supervision.

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  8

  POLLUTING YOUR BODY WITH OZONE

  In 2004, I went to an unlikely place to reverse all the things that had gone wrong with my biology: a dentist’s office. Through my anti-aging nonprofit work, I met an eighty-eight-year-old dentist named Dr. Gallagher who was based in Sunnyvale, California. Dr. Gallagher had found that many people unknowingly had low-grade infections in their teeth, setting off horribly aging widespread inflammation. And when dentists placed caps on top of those infections, they festered, slowly causing aging inflammation.

  In his practice, Dr. Gallagher used ozone therapy to sterilize teeth before placing caps on them. Ozone therapy isn’t just for teeth, however. Dr. Gallagher had learned about ozone therapy from Frank Shallenberger, who pioneered the field of ozone therapy more than forty years ago. But ozone therapy has been around even longer than that. It evolved as a treatment for infection before we had antibiotics. German doctors first used it to successfully treat wound infections during World War I.

  Why is it, then, that you probably don’t know much about it? When most people hear the word ozone, they think of the ozone layer, a region of the Earth’s stratosphere that absorbs the majority of the sun’s UV rays and contains high concentrations of ozone. In the 1970s, scientists became concerned that pollution from chemicals in the atmosphere was depleting the ozone layer, leading to dangerous increases in UV radiation. They responded by banning certain chemicals, and the ozone layer is recovering. Ozone is also the name for an air pollutant that causes health problems on smoggy days. Between these two associations, the idea of “ozone therapy” sounds … crazy.

  That didn’t stop me from visiting Dr. Gallagher—not for help with my teeth or an active infection, but to see how he might help reverse my many symptoms of aging, especially those stemming from my obesity and toxic mold exposure. Dr. Gallagher took me under his wing. This kind, wise old man was full of energy and more than willing to share his enthusiasm for a forgotten technology that works against almost every infectious agent and even restores energy to broken mitochondria. He set a prime example of what the wisdom of old age has to offer to the world. And after one treatment of ozone in my ear canals, which gets oxygen into the brain, I felt so good that I was sold on the benefits of ozone therapy as an anti-aging technology. I’ve been using it regularly ever since and have been honored to invite the man behind modern ozone therapy, Dr. Frank Shallenberger, onto Bulletproof Radio and onstage at my annual biohacking conference.

  OXYGEN AND OZONE: THE BIG OS

  Right now you’re breathing. Well, at least I hope you are. By simply inhaling, your body is taking in oxygen, which in its molecular form contains two oxygen atoms (hence the name O2). Ozone, on the other hand, has three oxygen atoms. You can think of it as O3. Because ozone has an extra molecule, the atom itself is very unstable, or reactive.

  Based on everything you’ve read so far, this sounds like a bad thing, right? Oxidative stress caused by excess reactive oxygen species (free radicals) is a major cause of aging. And indeed, ozone can be damaging when used incorrectly. Ozone is a colorless, very strong-smelling gas. If you breathe it in low quantities, you’ll cough and wheeze. At higher quantities, you’ll experience uncontrolled vomiting, and above that, you can die from lung damage.

  So why the heck would anyone in his or her right mind pursue ozone therapy? Well, ozone can be safely administered intravenously, rectally, vaginally, or transdermally (through the skin). You can also drink ozonated water. This is a type of hormetic stress. It sends a signal to your body that weak and dysfunctional cells should die and the rest of them should get stronger. Weak cells that are vulnerable to invasion from bacteria or viruses are more susceptible to oxidation. Ozone therapy kills off these weak and damaged cells.

  At the same time, ozone destroys harmful bacteria, yeast, viruses, fungi, and protozoa. Ozone does this by oxidizing lipids in the body, creating lipoperoxides. These peroxide bodies inactivate pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast, and protozoa in different ways. With fungi, the peroxide bodies inhibit growth. With viruses, they disrupt virus-to-cell contact, preventing the virus from reproducing. And to kill bacteria, these peroxide bodies oxidize the bacterial cell wall, destroying the bacteria almost immediately. Ozone therapy kills 99 percent of bacteria within seconds and is a hundred times more effective at killing bacteria than bleach! Ozone therapy is also more effective than antibiotics and is highly preferable because it kills bacteria without wiping out your beneficial gut bacteria or taxing your immune system.

  In fact, ozone therapy strengthens the immune system. The signal that peroxide bodies are on the loose triggers your body to naturally produce more of its two most powerful antioxidants, whose names should be familiar by now: glutathione and superoxide dismutase. Ozone therapy also leads to a significant increase in the production of interferon, a protein that inhibits virus reproduction, and two signaling molecules of the immune system: tumor necrosis factor and interleukin-2.1 An increase in these signaling molecules leads to a cascade of subsequent immunological reactions, powerfully boosting the entire immune system.

  R
esearch shows that ozone therapy can literally be lifesaving. When researchers preconditioned rats with ozone and then injected them with lethal fecal material, the rats’ survival rate went from zero to 62.5 percent.2 Ozone is also effective in treating antibiotic-resistant bacteria,3 something I expect to see a lot more of in the future thanks to our widespread overuse of antibiotics.

  When I first met Dr. Gallagher, he took me to the back of his practice and within half an hour taught me how to use ozone safely at home. Then he said, “Here’s the medical gear I have. It costs fifteen hundred dollars.” I was crestfallen. That was more money than I could reasonably afford to spend at the time. “But this,” he continued, “is the Chinese gear that costs less than two hundred. The only problem is it’s not metered, so you don’t know how much ozone you’re getting.” He offered to have a friend of his mark it up for me, and I was all set.

  I just had to find medical-grade oxygen, which was harder than it sounds. It turns out there’s an incredible medical mafia around this stuff. So I did what any good biohacker would do, which is to go on Craigslist and buy a used welding oxygen tank, which holds exactly the same thing as medical-grade oxygen. I ordered a medical regulator that allowed me to control the flow rate of oxygen coming out, and I began my at-home ozone treatments for less than $500.

  At home, I had two choices for treatment: rectal and vaginal. I’m only technically equipped for one of the two, so it really wasn’t much of a choice at all. I put a small amount of ozone into a special little bag with a hose, squeezed it into my rectum, and went about my day. Being a professional biohacker isn’t always glamorous.