Transcription
Some of my research was in a declassified CIA document. We're here to talk about how to literally grow a new brain, and this is something that you've done, and you've written your book about how to grow a new brain.
I had a dead liver, heart full of holes, and dead parasites in my brain. I knew I could get a new liver, maybe even a new heart, but it's hard to find a good brain these days. Today's guest was one of the youngest neuroscience professors in the country until the limits of the microscope hit, and he traveled to the Amazon to study how indigenous shamans grew their brain without modern medicine. He later founded the Four Wind Society, now the leading school for energy medicine, and has written over 25 best-selling books blending neuroscience and ancient recipes to regenerate a new brain.
"You live in the Amazon, you've got to be a biologist. Damas were the first biologists. So I reverted back to what I learned in the Amazon. We looked at the sacred plants. The sacred plants all turn out to be switch on more than 1,000 genes that create health and silence about 600 genes within 24 hours that create disease."
"Are the plants actually hacking us?"
"You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. We're here to talk about how to literally grow a new brain. And this is something that you've done, I know, because because we're friends. And you've written your book about, you know, how to grow a new brain. So, what does that mean?"
"Well, you know, it's you don't need to understand how to grow a new brain because it's happening all the time. You grow a new brain every 22 days. It's it's like somebody saying to, you know, you cannot have the new BMW, uh, but you got to stay with the 2002 one, but we're going to replace every component in it, the tires and the carburetor and everything in the fenders and those, but you because you cannot grow any new neurons except in the hippocampus with their stem cells, but the rest the neurons you're born with, you die with, but you exchange every component part, the mitochondria, all the organelles every 22 days. So you got to you cannot do that on potato chips, you know. You you got to get the neuronutrients. You got to have the understand what goes through the blood bearing barrier, what doesn't. Um, and and that's what the what I learned in the Amazon um is what they what they understood intuitively. They couldn't explain it. They couldn't talk about NRF2 activation and detox processes and how you're missing lithium orate that that everybody should be taking now. Uh, but they knew the plants that had it. They knew the um and I wanted to know how they knew that curar, you know, which is what they used to paralyze monkeys that are 100 ft up in a tree with a blow gun and and then they put it in the palm of your hand. And I asked him, 'What's this chewing gum you put in my hand?' And he said, 'No, that's curari.' And I dropped it. He says, 'It only works if you if it touches your bloodstream and it has seven herbs in it.' Go, 'How did you learn this?' And he said, 'The plants taught us. When you open your heart to yourself to begin with, accept yourself. Accept your mortality. Then you're shown your infinity.' The plant medicine does that. It shows you that you continue way beyond this this biological. This is like a rental car. you know, you got to return it someday, but you're going to keep going. And that heals the fear. When that heals the fear, that's what I was looking for in the lab. Then you create psychosomatic health because you're not producing the stress molecules. You know, you're not triggering the the uh cortisol and adrenaline and the hippocampus, the learning center is full of cortisol receptors, so you're not damaging. You can have a new experience. You could fall in love with life and with yourself again."
"And that comes from growing a new brain in part. Anyway, you you mentioned the hippocampus and I know that one of your earlier books you actually co-wrote it with uh David Pearlmutter who's been on the show multiple times who's a dear friend and a a brain expert. And what what I've learned over this time is you can grow hypocampal neurons and we have plenty of evidence of that. So all the stuff like lion's mane and even some of the psychedelics, that's what they do. But there are a few cases where you might be able to change um other parts of the brain and you might be able to grow neurons throughout the brain. Um, and we're just learning how to do that. In your case though, you had a little bit of a brain problem. Tell me about what happened to your brain because it was not just your hippocampus."
"You mean like graduate school, like getting a PhD? Is that besides just graduate school? I'm talking about more like zombie mode things eating your brain."
"Well, you know, I'm an anthropologist. I'm a I'm a fellow at the New York Explorers Club and uh and all the anthropologists there that have been that spend time overseas, viruses are the big problem. And the uh and in any jungle setting in Asia or in Africa or where I all these places where I've done some work in and I came back with, you know, there are five kinds of hepatitis. I had all five of them. And the uh I had uh I had parasites in my brain. I have my heart had holes in it and my liver was shot. They told me to get in a liver transplant list. And I and um I knew I could get a new liver, but you know, maybe even a new heart, but it's hard to find a good brain these days. So I I called David Pearl Mutter, my friend David and Mark Heyman, my other friend, and and I said, 'Hey guys, what am I going to do?' You know, but you know, they're mutual friends."
"Oh, Mark's a neighbor. So."
"I know. So uh so I decided to go in the body and the liver repairs rapidly. But I I did I did the western medicine. I killed the parasites with the drugs. But then I had a dead liver, heart full of holes and dead parasites in my brain that didn't want to go out of the blood brain barrier. So how do we So I reverted back to what I learned in the Amazon, which was how when David Perod and I were in the Amazon, we looked at the sacred plants, not the teacher plants, those are the psychedelics. The sacred plants all turn out to be NRF2 activators. And NRF2 is deepbody's premier detox pathway. And it's also what will switch you know broccoli five day old broccoli sprout sulforaphane but will switch on more than 1,000 genes that create health and silence about 600 genes within 24 hours that create disease. All of those plants were natural NRF2 activators which are like the Navy Seals. you know that NRF2 protein sits on the cell membrane and the minute you get sulforaphane for example even turmeric curcumin which is much less bioavailable then they leave the cell membrane go into the nucleus of the cell and they start you know silencing and switching on the good genes that we want to so we epigenetically we're beginning to modify it their expression so that was so impressive Ive how did they know that these plants were you know the the epigenetic paroxalons plants and when you ask the herbalists they said they told us it's like it's like gayaska you got to combine two plants one of them is an MAO inhibitor so that you don't destroy the dimethylryptoamine the psychedelic part it's not destroyed in your gut it allows absorption of the DMT that comes from the chakruna the other plan how do they know that you know it's like I would scratch my head and you know ask Chad GPT but how the hell did they know this and and then one time I was leaving the jungle and um and I was doing kind of a residency a medical residency there a shamanic internship and um I had a brand new PhD I remember and I was telling this group of elders about um the butterfly effect that you know the butterfly the flattest wings in Beijing that caused the stmer in the Caribbean. And they said, 'Oh, very good. Show us.' I go, 'What do we mean show you? This is quantum physics.' He said, 'No, no, no. You fl I had a brand new PhD. You flap flap your little doctor wings and heal somebody in India.' And I said, 'I can't do that.' They said, 'I can.' They they knew how to work they knew how to how to work remotely. You know, there's a lot of science and good articles on remote healing and even the CIA and NAS was doing remote viewing and disabling electronics remotely of the old Soviet Union and um so they so we're we're hip to that at kind of government levels but not at the local practical level which is where I'm really interested in. It's funny as someone who's been on the show, and I'm not going to say who it is because I don't know if she wants me to. She was outed in a thousand page book about remote viewing and the history of it with the CIA. And she doesn't practice it anymore, but she was the most effective remote viewer. She's like, I'm not working for these guys. And she quit many, many years ago. But I mean, we're friends. We've talked about this. This is real. And and shamans have been doing it forever, right?"
"Totally real. In fact, I just I just did a literature search a couple of days ago and um and found that some of my research was in a declassified CIA document that they that they had ended up funding some of my work through a foundation of course uh because they were they were fascinated by psychedelics long before we were and by these by these capabilities of the high of the higher brain or neoortex of the rewiring of the higher brain to have extraordinary human capabilities. But to do that, you need you need certain neurutrients that were not in our food anymore. You need the tryptophan. You need the serotonin."
"Well, you say they're not in our food anymore. I mean, turkey has tryptophan. Steak has not."
"You know, it's interesting. I cuz I spent a lot of time in the southwest and in the uh and the pueblo people in the southwest were turkey farmers. And they were the peaceful people. If you raised turkeys and you got tryptophan, you didn't want to invade your neighbor. You wanted to go hug them, have a good time with them."
"Oh wow. So So you're saying we could like load all the fake vegan food with tryptophan so they would just chill out and stop trying to kill anyone who eats meat?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally."
"You didn't say that. I did. But can I use that can? I love it because that's the key. You know, a sweet pea today is bred for sweetness and not for tryptophan content. A year 100 years ago, I had three times the amount. And the blood brain barrier, let me get a little bit go a little technical here because our gene, we have a hunter gatherer genome evolved 3 million years ago, a million years ago. And we were really bad hunters. This kind of great white hunter story is was invented by guys. You know, we would occasionally find some roadkill and bring it back home and say to the women, 'Look girls, look what I brought back and we have sex now.' But we were horrible hunters. So the bra blood brain barrier prioritizes for transport. The transport system prioritizes the BCAAs the leucine veene and iso and isovalene the branch chain amino acids and it gives less priority to tryptophan which is abundant in the plant products that are not as abundant today because of farming's tendency to breed for sweetness. So, we're getting a lot of the protein we need for protein synthesis in the brain, but we're not getting the tryptophan to be able to that turns into serotonin that we need to repair the hippocampus and that we need to turn into melatonin and that we need to turn into DMT by the pineal gland once we quiet the production of the stress molecules. I know that's quite a trip I took us on, but it's all because of the the turkey farmers. I I like that though. It comes down to aminos and who would know that you know your traditional ancestral foods may really affect societal structure. So are the are the plants actually hacking us?"
"We're being hacked. No, it's not the plants. It's the viruses."
"So viruses. So how does that tie in with turkey and tryptophan?"
"Well, because the viruses, you know, we consider them our enemies, but 90% of our DNA is fossil record of viruses that we our ancestors live through. You know, small pox and black plague and things like that. But they were the drivers of evolution. You know, we want to vaccinate so that we can there too many viruses to create vaccines for we can't. And vaccines are important. You know, I got to work with Jonas Sulk for a little bit when I was a graduate student. Yeah. And um and he did the Sulk developed the Sulk vaccine, a polio vaccine, and he gave it away for free. And so there's some amazing things that vaccines have done."
"What a clown. He gave it away for free. Did he not know that you could have a trillion dollar industry where you force people to buy whatever you want with no liability? Slok doesn't sound that visionary, Alberto, what's going on here?"
"That's what I asked the guy. You know, I asked him when I knew him. I was a young graduate student. He was an old man. And uh and I I asked him, 'Don't you miss being a trillionaire.' And he said, 'No, I really wanted to discover the double helix.'"
"He's like, 'Darn it.' I Watson and Crick beat me bastards."
"Yeah, the bastards. So, this is the uh uh and it's going back to the vir viruses have been driving evolution and the uh but they're not living or dead, you know. We don't know really what they are, but we know that they're evolutionary drivers and uh they they either inject themselves to a host of they're parasitic, but they're injecting their DNA. So, they're allowing for experimentation, evolutionary experimentation. That wouldn't happen. But today, you know, I was listening to Bobby Kennedy a few days ago. He was saying that when his uncle was president, 3% of Americans had chronic diseases. Today 76% of Americans do. And a lot of the problem we're having is immune. This immune related. So if we don't have strong immunity, the viruses are going to accelerate evolution in a way that's not going to be pleasant for us."
"This is one of the reasons, you know, the ocean's full of viruses. You go swimming, they're hacking your DNA. And so anytime you look at anything as good or bad, you're probably being childish. So viruses could be good or bad depending on even vaccines could be good or bad depending on which one and your own risk and all that. And um some people get really mad when I say that. And if you can show me real unaltered truthful evidence that there's a vaccine against cardiovascular disease, I'm pretty sure that I'm interested, but I'm not going to believe it unless I know that it's done with clean science. So they'd have to do a lot of convincing, but I'm open to the idea even if I'm cautious. And and so I would just encourage anyone don't you don't believe your own BS. How do you avoid believing your own BS? Alberto."
"You mean chocolate doesn't work for that cardiovascular stuff?"
"I mean it might help a little bit, but I don't think that a chocolate bar a day is going to keep the heart surgery."
"No, I do the chocolate chip. I got to do the chocolate chip. I can't I can't do the bars. But chocolate actually is a it's an as it's a Mayan word chocolatal. And uh they used to drink it with spice and anything that has the the word atal associated with it. Choco lattal is one of the sacred plants. So they're NRF2 activators, brain food, you know, the the the fats are amazing brain food. But I think that today we have to become our own chief scientist because you can't tell what's anymore. There you got to become your own chief scientist, your own medical doctor, your own uh you know, for example, peptides. We have amazing peptides available to us in America, but they can now be patented. Pharma can't take them over. So, they're they're there's so much misinformation about them and they're the most extraordinary tools that that we if we learn how to work with them and work with somebody that can coach us there, they can do wonders. I mean, insulin is a peptide, you know, GLP GLP1 agonist. This is ompic. It turns out to protect you from Alzheimer's and and protects your kidneys and you lower your risk of dying from cardiovascular events by 57%. So we got to we got to really immerse ourselves in in the tools that become empowered and not just follow the latest you know hip uh supplement but understand the systems you know what are the systems that how do they work and um and not just the molecules and the pathways which is western medicine because the plants have multiple pathways and and hundreds of molecules and the um but they're synergistic. So, we have the wisdom already and we have the tools for accessing it today. You know, I can I can ask Chad to give me the five botanicals that have the best GLP1 agonist impact and I get them in a minute without having to take a a semiglutide or GLP-1 um peptide. So, that's the the information is available today. The misinformation of fortunately is fear driven and uh we have plant you know we grew up with plants we evolved with the plants and they're here including the psych it turns out that the best extender of average lifespan in mice is psilocybin you read that you read that research."
"No, not about life extension in mice. I I saw a life extension one. I didn't realize it was in mice, but that's interesting because there's no placebo there. It's just good for him."
"Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And they didn't put they put it no rock and roll music when they gave it to him."
"Oh man. Are you a fan of using psilocybin to grow a new brain? I mean, you wrote a book about that, but it's not really about psilocybin."
"I wrote a book about growing a new brain. And uh psilocybin is also a serotonin analog. So you find that they all have this indol nucleus and their their binding sites both aywaska psilocybin masculine they they they work on psilocybin receptors on on serotonin receptors so there's something here and now that the longevity studies are and the aging studies on mice and psilocybin are showing that it it extends lifespan It reduces mortality like the average mortality may be at 50% but the psilocybin mice live 30% longer and it's available. Take a look at the science and it's so why did why did the great spirit create psychedelics that are in every plant and animal in the planet and we have receptors for and they're serotonin receptors. How can we do that? By producing manufacturing our own ayakascat the brain the pineal gland that's his only job is to prod the pituitary gland produces a 100 different hormones. The pineal in the higher brain produces only melatonin and and methylates serotonin into dimethylryptoine. So wow this is very cool. We didn't know that, you know, 20 years ago."
"I remember I think it was Candace Per who's the discover discover of the opiate receptor in humans and wrote this interesting."
"The neuropeptides. Yeah. The neuropeptides. Yeah."
"Yeah. And she was talking about going down and visiting shamans in South America. And so she's this really hardcore skeptical western scientific person as as you had to be as a woman in science in the 70s and 80s when she was coming up."
"She didn't get the Nobel Prize. she should have been included in. You know."
"I never got to interview her because she passed before I became aware of her work. But when you read her book, she says, 'We went down, we talked to all these shamans and I was trying to explain to them about the opiate receptor in the brain and they all just started laughing and laughing and laughing.' And she's like, 'What's so funny?' And they said, 'You think those things actually exist?'"
"Here's the question though, Alberto. You're a shaman. Do they exist? So you're talking about the nature of reality now what what is real what is not real and and it's uh I think that we co-create with spirit and that um this this material reality tangible reality is real but it's only real because you consider itself. If you were to change your ground of beliefs your presuppositions about the world the world would mirror that back to you. you become more synchronistic and more you would enter it a little bit more into the what we would call the magical world and not only the world of causality of cause and effect."
"Is that what you had to do to grow a new brain? I mean, was it about taking NRF2 or was this about a mindset or a world set shift in you?"
"They go together. Shamas were biologists to begin with and they also knew the invisible world. You got to they got to go together. So you got to have the right biology. Got to have the right molecules. And then you have to understand what your maps of reality are because the universe is so generous that it'll mirror back to you whatever presuppositions you have, deep presuppositions about the nature of reality. See, when I had I don't see private clients anymore, but when I did, I would have people coming into my office with a big stack of of diagnosis and labs and cancer results and and um I needed to see a golden Buddha walking into my office because if I saw, you know, a liver cancer, that's what I was going to find. That's what Heisenberg told us about, you know, the uh the electron. Wherever you look for it, that's where you're going to find it. And if if I could convince them that they were a living miracle and not a diagnosis, then miracles would begin to happen, amazing stuff will begin going on to go on and but you got to find those core beliefs that have been instilled upon us and and then dismantle them."
"What percentage of your healing came from food and taking the right supplements or the right plants versus your worldview and your mindset?"
"See, the problem with that question is you're assuming that 100% is the maximum. You know, if we're working with like a 500% gauge, I say that it's about 200 and 200. The mindset, there's no amount of supplements that are going to override a bad mindset and no amount of mindset that are going to override a really crappy diet."
"Wow. So, that is maybe the best answer I've ever heard to a question like that, which is an impossible question to answer. And you got to do both. And it probably depends on the person. If you have a toxic belief system and a good diet, it's going to be 8020 in one way versus five. So I I 100% agree."
"And a month or two later, it could shift. That percentage could shift around. You know, maybe you get into a relationship because we end up marrying the people we need to learn from and grow with in many ways. And you would say, well, I got to learn these things about who I believe my own self-esteem and who I am and what I deserve. Then you got to do that work. And but you got to clean up your diet, too."
"Yeah, I so resonate with that. And and I look at different times in my life, certainly mindset's been a thing. And other times where, you know, if you're swallowing a little bit of cyanide every day, wishing that away, you need to be, you know, Jesus level to do that. And uh I don't I'm not there."
"No, no, no. You can't you cannot play with mercury, you know, no matter how little the amount is. But the uh you know, the Buddha taught us that thoughts become things. you know, you become what you think. And the um and what the shamas who were masters of, they knew how to work with the mechanism of the placebo, which we think is tricking people into that this is a sugar pill. In effect, the placebo works even when the person knows they're getting a placebo or the noibo like the studies done in New York on voodoo death. If somebody thinks that they've been cursed, within two weeks they get a pick up a major illness. So the mind is all important but to really create psychosomatic health which is what my new book is about you need to access the higher brain and because that's the brain of quantum physics of music of creativity and not the Neanderthal limbic brain which lives in fear and scarcity no matter how much you have and then it gets then the game gets really interesting. It gets interesting. It also gets confusing. Uh, and in your book, you're talking about spirit with a capital S. What are we really talking about?"
"We're talking about you and I. You know, spirit, the word spirit comes from breath. And there's a great meditation this that I learned with the shamans that when you inhale, you go to silently. I am. And when you exhale, you go my breath. I am my breath. So when you take that last last breath, that last exhalation, you could go off into the quantum field into infinity and have only the I am will be with you. So how do you leave this life um consciously? How do you get out of this life? that's reveals itself I think in that higher brain with those neuronet networks that we can that meditation will take you there but it's so damn long."
"Yeah, that's the thing that's why my most recent book exists like there's a lot of ways that are faster than just meditating by itself but there's value in meditating and some meditations are more valuable than others for certain states and it's kind of complex. It's like learning how to cook like you want to cook a steak or did you want to cook some broccoli because they're kind of different skill sets, right? You know, speaking of steak and broccoli, what do you eat?"
"Steak and broccoli together is a really great combination."
"I knew you going to say that. I wasn't planning it that way, but once I said it, I'm like, duh."
"You know. Yeah."
"Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's great. We've been friends for many years, and I guess it's very playful when we hang out together. And uh basically the um I think you you've got to find what your system wants and needs. Now like you know I'm in an age where I need more protein in my body and the problem we gravitate a lot to the meat protein is many of us don't have meat is absorbed immediately as soon as it leaves the stomach whereas vegetable protein has to go through your GI tract and your gut flora your biome has to work and and if it's not working properly you're not going to get that protein absorbed you're better off eating the the animal proteins. But if you restore your gut flora and there, you know, there are peptides that will help you do that. The B BPC57, amazing to help restore the gut. The uh and you and then you don't just take probiotics, but you open your probiotic capsule, you rehydrate it in a glass of water before you drink it, so it doesn't rehydrate in your stomach and blow up because it's full of acid. So, a lot of my diet is plant-based, very very uh good carbs, very no processed carbs. Um, except I just had some uh some tor some blue tortilla chips this morning. I couldn't help myself. But primarily that and then the your animal products should be uh you know should be really know where they come from cuz so much marketing right now grass-fed means they're just putting a lot of grass truck into a feed lot and uh so know where your your where your meat your eggs and um and fish. I think that we grew up by the sea. Our body really resonates to fish. And then at the same time, you got to find out how to keep your mTor, which is your aging clock, your biological clock. But keep that down because if you're eating bacon and burgers and a steak at night, you're just going to drive mTor up. You're going to age faster. I've definitely, in fact, even in my longevity book, I talked about an excess of amino acids from animal protein, possibly increasing mTor. And for listeners, mTor causes tissues to grow, which is good for regeneration, but if it's always turned on, it increases cancer risk. And cancer is one of the things that's high on the list of what might take you out um if you're not controlling for it."
"Not only that, but excessive excessive amino acids will turn into fat. You got to be in the right proportions, right balances, which is where you you were going next, I think."
"Well, that can happen, but I looked at what raises mtor and you know what raises mtor way more than animal protein?"
"Sugar."
"Or carbs. You eat starch, it turns into sugar, right? So rice or sugar or fruit is going to raise mTor more than beef. So how can you be plant-based to control mTor when plants are made out of carbs? I don't understand it. Like it not challenging. I'm just like I used to believe that but it doesn't seem to be me mechanistically how it works."
"You know I think that that David Sinclair really upset a lot of people a couple years ago when he came out that he was vegan."
"Well, it doesn't work. People go vegan including me. They get sick."
"Yeah. And Yeah. I I think you got to find out what your body needs, but you got to really be able to do two things. One is that a lot of the protein we're eating is just going right through us because we're not going into autophagy. Every cell has a recycling bin. You know, you mitochondria dies, it puts it in the recycling bin. It's the body is designed to recycle. And if you can go into ketosis and go into autophagy, the recycling of these amazing proteins that have already differentiated into liver protein into liver cells and heart cells, etc. And you can absorb your plant protein. You can you don't have to eat as much meat, but your body will tell you. Your body will guide you. You need to find out what's best for you at this stage in your life and what uh what do you want to feed your gut so that they can because that's where your immune system resides."
"It's interesting where I ended up both based on like the energetic intuition felt sense and also a lot of science. I'm not full carnivore because I have done that before we called it carnivore and I gave myself leaky gut and an egg allergy because I didn't have a lining for my gut after a long time. So I don't think that's the way to do it. Um, but I eat limited plants and ones that digest cleanly and create a lot of of plant toxins and and that seems to be there. But I'm also militant about 200 grams of animal protein a day cuz I weigh 200 lb. And when I do that and I can digest it, I'm 6% body fat and I I can eat or not eat. I just like I am I am so well, dare I say bulletproof? uh when I do that and so many people I know have tried it and they do lose weight and they put on muscle and and it changes. So it's it's kind of confusing because there's a lot of information out there where well, it should work and you make you you make some new research on things like mTor and I think demonizing animal protein is tough because you know you eat animal protein and you eat some plants. I eat animal protein in various degrees based on our genetics, whatever else. And I think that's where we end up, but not all plants are good and not all animal protein is good."
"No, I I think that you turn it into dogma. It's it becomes dogma. So, you got to find out what works for you. Read the science. And you know, it's not only about building muscle, but by using muscle. Like I every year I still lead an expedition. I go to Peru for a month every year to work with the shamans. And every year I lead an expedition where we camp at 12,000 feet and hike up to 14,000 and um and I'm and I'm still doing it. I'm walking up the mountain and I'm you know you're you get breathless, you do hypoxic training I like to call it."
"Yep. We do it at Upgrade Labs now. So that's the uh the resilience we need to build not only strength we need to build resilience, immune resilience, spiritual resilience, emotional resilience, physical at all of these levels. We neglect one of the levels. We neglect the emotional in favor of the physical only. I have friends of mine that are just in the gym because they don't want to deal with their dysfunctional marriages."
"That's a really powerful statement, Alberto. There are people who self-medicate, especially with cardio, but it can also be with weights where like it's just easier to deal with the body than the heart and the mind."
"Yeah."
"With your own growing of a new brain, did you have to take your brain to the gym? Did you have to do weird things to grow it back to stimulate it?"
"Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think that you got to take your gym, your brain to the gym. And uh and not just to the gym, you got to find some endurance sport like uh whether it be jogging or bicycling or swimming. for me is swimming. Something that is just going to allow your your mind to go into this the space of of everywhere nowhere. And uh and then you got to challenge yourself. Pick pick up a new language, learn to play an instrument, play Scrabble, you know, I so my wife and I play Scrabble together and u and she's amazing because English is a second language for her, but she beats me all the time. But I decided to work with the Scrabble board upside down because I wanted to see new relationships and things. So I play upside down now. So I'm exercising my brain. I'm um you know, we've outsourced a lot of our brain to our digital devices. And when we were kids, we knew everybody's phone number. I don't even know my own phone number now. So you got to you got to take your brain out to a workout. and and you remember that there are four kinds of different four different brains and each one of them works out differently. There's a reptilian brain, brain stem, you know, uh and breathing practice is the best thing to exercise that brain. For us, breathing is an autonomic function. For dolphins, it isn't. That's why half of their brain sleeps. And uh and a dolphin can commit suicide by holding their breath. We cannot. But we can retrain that brain to not go into panic mode. when we do exercises that build up the CO2 in our system, for example, without it triggering panic."
"You mean you could just breathe in a paper bag for a little while the way they used to 50 years ago for anxiety?"
"Well, yeah. You know, the breathing works on the basis of CO2 concentration, not oxygen. When CO where CO2 levels in the blood get to a certain threshold, you you begin to hyperventilate and you go into panic and the um that's why that breathing meditation is one of many that you find around the world. But if you can teach your body to if you can hold your breath, learn to you know, hold your breath underwater for example when I was a big one. I used to hold my breath for 2 minutes u when I was 20 and I was a swimmer and a scuba diver. Now I'm 50 years older and I can hold my breath for three minutes underwater. But you got to go through that point where you think you're going to die. And that's why befriending death and going through that point that triggers all the survival that's a that's a learning edge. That's amazing. Yeah. You know what I do what I do today is I train people in energy medicine. I tend to becoming modern shamans, neuro shamans. And um so I tell them to in the middle of winter to go and take a nice hot shower in the morning and then turn the faucet all the way to cold. But what you do is be just put your hand on the faucet and don't turn it. Just notice what your body begins to go through. It's already beginning to experience the suffering. That's suffering. And then after a few seconds, turn it all the way to cold. And when you turn it all the way to cold, that's pain. And then you learn the difference between suffering and pain. Suffering happens before and after. Pain is what's going on when you got that shot of cold water. And then don't muscle your way through it. Don't willpower your way through it. Feel it. Experience it. Breathe into it. Feel that you're getting blessed by these are the waters that run deep beneath the earth that are coming through a waterfall just to cascade upon you as nature washing. You know, create a really positive story around it. Then you're rewiring the brain, creating new neural networks around what we perceived as as pain."
"So I'm I'm doing all right. I get the cold plunge and I just I was been meditating on the blood of my enemies. And you're saying that's not how to do it. Kidding. I don't meditate on anyone's blood. But."
"Yeah, it's it's welcoming the sensation rather than than fighting it. And then it doesn't hurt anymore. And that's when your dopamine receptor is like, 'Oh yeah, okay.' like I don't have to resist discomfort. But it it's different. You see some people 45 minutes a day every day. You got to, you know, rock while you're walking on groundup glass. And I it doesn't take that much time. And it's about intensity. Uh, and it's about your state during the intensity versus grit, which is also valuable. Grit is important, but grit depletes willpower. And I'm talking about giving you more willpower so you could have more grit later if you need it."
"Yeah. and and grit frequently will override systems instead of enhancing the systems that you want to enhance. Being able to sit with the uh with the uncomfortable even at the emotional level, you know, we're talking about the physical level, but at the emotional, we call that jaguar medicine. At the level of jaguar, you're going to sit with uncomfortable feelings. Your partner's saying something that you want to hide from. You know, we guys talk about our feelings for about 3 minutes and not 3 hours. So."
"Three minutes of pain I was talking about. I'm with you."
"Yeah. Yeah. So, you're sitting with the uncomfortable and breathing into it and not trying to hide from it and not trying to uh deflect it and just simply being with it. And it's amazing how how quickly uh this energy dissipates of of anger or fear, resentment towards someone towards some usually somebody you love dearly. And then you got to do it in in at a higher level which is the um which is the kind of the spiritual level. What's what is your mission? What are you coming here to do? Are you are you coming to what's what's driving you? What do you wake up in the morning to? So what and there you got to ask the three questions that every spiritual tradition process which are who am I, where do I come from and where am I going? So fascinating, Alberto, thanks for your new Grow a New Brain book and for just sharing this very unique but meaningful and scientific perspective. It's this cool blend of your mindset and things like NRF2 and Cert and these other longevity compounds that we talk about on the show. So you've blended them in a new and unique way that I think only you could do given that you know you're the western guy who went to the jungle and stayed for a long time when you couldn't find the drugs you wanted. you have this amazing story of your life and and this is a masterful work and thanks for coming back on the show and I cannot wait to hang out with you in Santa Fe again."
"Thank you Dave. Looking forward to seeing you as well. Thank you. Thank you everyone."
"Guys, go buy Grow a New Brain by Alberto Voto. If you'd like to get that perspective on well science and spirit, they can both coexist. In fact, I dare you to do one without the other and see how well it works. See you on the next episode. See you next time on the Human Upgrade podcast."