Greetings, SuperFriends, and welcome to today’s show!

As you guys know, my connection to the “superhuman” world is the work I do in accelerated learning, speed reading, and memory techniques. And I would imagine that you all, like yours truly, are very interested in keeping your brains happy and healthy, as much if not more than the rest of your bodies. Well, today, we’re going to talk about exactly that – keeping your brain healthy – now and well into your old age.

We are joined by Steven William Fowkes, the biohacker, author, and health expert behind Project Wellbeing, who’s spent the last 14 years promoting an insight into Alzheimer’s prevention. Now, you might not yet be the age where you need to worry about Alzheimer’s, but in fact, Steven’s words of wisdom apply to all age groups. That’s because he has authored or co-authored 6 books, and is a true renaissance man with interests and work spanning from nanotechnology to nutrition to material’s science.

In this episode, we talk about all things related to the brain and improving it’s performance. We talk about Alzheimer’s prevention, nootropics, a brain-boosting diet, all sorts of biohacks, and more. For those of you who really love the technical, geeky stuff, you’re going to love this episode, because we go way down the rabbit hole and geek way out. Either way, I think you’re going to learn a ton from this episode, and if so, drop me a tweet and let me know what you thought!

This episode is brought to you by SuperLearner Academy – home of my exclusive masterclasses. Check out a free trial using the link above today!

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Steven Fowkes became interested in Alzheimer's
• A brief explanation of what Alzheimer's is, how it works, and why it's so scary
• What percentage of our energy is consumed by the brain?
• The Alzheimer's prevention regimen that Steven has developed, and how it works
• What is glutathione and why is it so important?
• What are the 3 items that can effectively reverse the effects of Alzheimer's?
• How can you prevent Alzheimer's?
• A discussion on mitochondrial function and how to improve it
• Nootropics aka “smart drugs”: Which ones work, which ones don't?
• What interesting (and positive) side effects does Steven Fowkes get from Piracetam?
• Steven and I share our experiences with various nootropics
• How can you find safe and reliable sources for nootropics?
• The importance of fats for brain health
• The difference between various types of fats
• What are Steven Fowkes' top biohacks?
• The merits of intermittent fasting and interval training for brain (and overall) health
• What is collagen therapy, and why is it so beneficial?
• A discussion of Vitamin C and how your body can use it much more effectively
• Waking up with red light vs. blue light – what's the deal?
• Why do we have difficulty waking up in the morning?
• What, if any, supplements does Steven Fowkes take, and with what frequency?
• Is Steven big on blood testing? Does he suggest getting blood tested?
• A discussion on “self care testing” and how it can be more cost effective

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Smart Drugs 2, a book Steven co-authored
• CERI.com
• MITOGEN mitochondrial supplement by Axon Labs
• Noopept
• TruBrain nootropic
• Powdered MCT Oil by Quest Nutrition
• Bulletproof Brain Octane
• Philips Hue Smart Light Bulbs
• Bulletproof Coffee
• Natokinasse supplements
• Choline supplements
• Multivitamin (here's the one I take)
• ProjectWellbeing.com

Favorite Quotes from Steven Fowkes:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast, where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Greeting SuperFriends, and welcome to today's show. As you guys know, if you've listened to more than zero episodes. My connection to the superhuman world is the work that I do in accelerated learning speed reading and memory techniques. And I would imagine that you all like myself are very interested in keeping your brains happy and healthy as much, if not more than the rest of your body.

Well, today, we're going to talk about exactly that keeping your brain healthy and safe now and well. Old age we're joined by Stephen William Fowkes, the biohacker author and health expert behind project wellbeing. Stephen has spent the last 14 years promoting an insight into Alzheimer's prevention.

And while I know you might not be the age where you need to worry about Alzheimer's. In fact, Stephen's words of wisdom apply to all age groups. That's because he has authored and co-authored six books. And as a true Renaissance man with interests and work spending from nanotechnology to nutrition, to material science.

So. In this episode, we talk about all things related to the brain and improving its performance. That includes Alzheimer's prevention, neuro tropics, a brain boosting diet, and much, much more. And for those of you guys who really love when we get technical and get into the weeds, you're really going to love this episode because.

Stephen and I completely geek out and go all the way down the rabbit hole either way. I think you're going to learn a ton from this episode. I certainly did.  And if you like it, please take a moment to drop me a tweet and let me know what you thought by the way. If you enjoy this episode and are interested in getting the most out of your brain, then I want to let you know about.

This episode's sponsor, which is the become a super learner masterclass. This is my premium online training, where I teach the absolute best material, the most advanced techniques that I use, and that are used by so many of our guests to learn faster, remember more, read faster, and basically learn anything at about three times.

The speed your average person does. And you can try out a free trial of that course with no credit card, no commitment whatsoever by going to  jle.vi/learn. All right, guys, without any further ado, let me present to you. Mr. Stephen Fowkes.

Mr. Stephen Fowkes. Welcome to the show, my friend, how are you doing today? 

Stephen Fowkes: I'm doing great. I'm looking forward to chatting with you 

Jonathan Levi: myself as well, myself as well. So Stephen, talk to us a little bit about your background and education and how it is that you became interested in Alzheimer's of all things. 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, it was a family issue.

My paternal grandfather was a role model and mentor to me. And when he passed, I was motivated to study Alzheimer's disease. He lived in the LA basin and had emphysema. And then, you know, basically lost his mind in the process of, uh, having some degree of hypoxia. And it hit me hard because he was the first person who died in my family.

Who followed the death of a very young brother when I was a little kid and was very traumatized by it. So I dropped my academic load down to part-time and I studied Alzheimer's disease for most of the year. There was little understanding of Alzheimer's disease at the time, you know, just what you can learn from end-stage Alzheimer's disease at autopsy.

So I just continue to monitor the emerging literature. Until let's say 1990. Well, I actually continued, but in 1993, I co-authored the book smart drugs too, with ward Dean and John Morgentaler and we wrote a chapter. On Alzheimer's therapy, but you know, at that time it was, uh, everything, but the kitchen sink kind of approach with lots of disparate data, and there was no kind of unifying theme to it in 2001, there was a Seminole research study that was conducted by dental scientists of all people at the University of Kentucky and the University of Calgary.

That I read that paper published paper in 2002. And this study gave me the central piece of the Alzheimer's jigsaw puzzle that fitted all of the middle pieces together that I had already been collecting over the decades. And all of a sudden I had a picture. And then a few months later, I wrote an article that, uh, hell the pieces fit together.

And that article is online at CERI.com. And since then I've been putting out YouTube videos and giving public talks to try to publicize. This understanding of Alzheimer's disease makes it not only preventable but actually reversible. 

Jonathan Levi: So I really want to get into that, Stephen first though, I want to ask for those who maybe aren't familiar, with how exactly does Alzheimer's works and why is it so scary for those of us like you and I, who really love our brains?

Stephen Fowkes: Uh, yes. Well, actually, I think it's pretty much universal that everybody loves their brain, because I think that the fundamental reason that Alzheimer's is so scary is that you die as a person before you die as a body. So you lose your mind. You lose your personality, you lose your identity. And even though in advanced Alzheimer's disease, you might not even be aware of that because you live in the moment, you can't form memories.

It's not true of your family members. They see you there in body. Wow. But you're not there in spirit. 

Jonathan Levi: And what's happening in the brain. Is it just a collapse of neural networks or neurons not firing or? 

Stephen Fowkes: Yes. There's a collapse of a variety of infrastructure elements that are necessary to support our, you know, humungous brains.

Our brains consume 20% of our total energy and most animals it's 10% or 5% or 2%. Right. And that means that our brains are burned hot, much hotter than other brains, and any disturbance in our energy and the mechanics of the brain. Cause these kind of a collapse of what we consider normal consciousness.

Jonathan Levi: Well,  so when someone has Alzheimer's you said they're not able to form memories, does that basically mean that they stop building synaptic connections? I mean, if we were going to geek out a little bit. Yes. Wow. That's terrifying. 

Stephen Fowkes: It's possible that they could form connections and not have them do anything.

But my understanding of brain structuring and proning is that it is the reinforcement of functional connections that result in. Brain pruning in infancy and childhood and brain reconstruction. Sure. At, let's say puberty or in older age as we're learning. And you know, there's a class of enzymes that become inhibited in Alzheimer's disease and the Alzheimer's researchers haven't figured out that there's a chemical structural.

Feature that is found in all the inhibiting enzymes. That's not found in the non-inhibited enzymes. And that's a self-hydro group, which is a sulfur atom and a hydrogen atom, which is the same group that's found in glutathione. So glutathione is our primary antioxidant. And when. The self-hydro group and glutathione get compromised.

The detoxification that it performs in the brain fails, and that's transferred to the self-hydro enzymes that become inhibited in Alzheimer's disease. And these involve the brain's energy backup systems. So that goes down. There's an infrastructure element in the brain super highway system that moves.

You know, material from the nucleus of the cell down these incredibly long axons and dendrites to the periphery parts of the cell, where the synopsis are, that system fails. And there's also a cytoskeleton in the brain that goes through a 92nd cycle between over-phosphorylation and under-phosphorylation and that fails.

Wow. So the brain's sophistication is based on those kinds of capabilities. So the brain kind of. Falls back to this basic survival mode where you can't think, and you can't form memories and you can't plan, and have no strategy, but you can move. You can breathe all those kinds of, you know, non-high-level function, aspects of brain functions, still work. To a very large degree. 

Jonathan Levi: That's terrible. So I guess the immediate, next question is, tell us about this prevention regimen that you've been promoting and how it's recently actually been supported in the literature. 

Stephen Fowkes: Yes. Um, I've worked on half a dozen cases over the last 10 years. One of which was a phenomenal response.

It was the first person that I dealt with. One of my subscribers. You know, called up and said, you know, his mother who was 93 years old at the time had, you know, just deteriorated drastically. And she had three different Alzheimer's diagnoses. She didn't recognize her family members. She couldn't go to the bathroom and assisted couldn't dress herself.

You know, it was in one year, she had gone from being functional to being, you know, completely out of it. And when her son put her on, um, three items that I suggested she reversed in 30 days. Wow. So at the end of 30 days, she's conversing with her son. She's dressing herself, she's going to the bathroom and assisted and she's intercepting her mail and paying her bills.

Jonathan Levi: You're kidding me. So, okay. What were the three items now? I have to 

Stephen Fowkes: know. One was a moderate potency multivitamin with roughly 10 times the RDA of the B complex vitamins. Another one was the steroid precursor pregnenolone, which is both neuroprotective and a precursor for progesterone and testosterone and estrogen, and pretty much everything, all the steroids.

And the third thing was, wow, I'm having a brain moment. That's totally fine. But they were relatively simple things that were present in that environment. And my agreement with, you know, her son was that, you know, if this provided some benefit, he would have to go off and find a physician in the middle of rural Florida, who would do the medical supervision.

And that physician found that she also had lead poisoning. Wow. So she was on a local, well that had lead in the water. So she was also lead poisoned. But interestingly enough, she recovered before the lead poisoning was resolved. 

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. I mean, this is really super surprising because I know for most people Alzheimer's is a death sentence.

So I guess my next question would be. I mean, what is the preventative regimen look like? Because I'm assuming that I can't get this steroidal pre steroid thing. We can all take vitamin B. We all should have vitamin B in our diet, but what about the rest? 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, the strategy for. Prevention and reversal are basically identical.

You know, restoring glutathione is basically, it's not about taking glutathione as a supplement. It's about recycling your glutathione efficiently, and that depends on your energy production when your body is burning fuel, you know, with oxygen and extracting CO2 as a waste product. The rate of that energy production gives you not only the ATP, which is driving your enzymes, but it's giving you a reducing agent called NADH, which can couple to NAD pH, which is a reserve of reducing power.

And that couples to glutathione, which is your primary antioxidant pool, which couples to vitamin C, which is a kind of backup pool. And this flow of reducing power into glutathione. Depends upon that energy production pathway, which in modern society, in our, you know, civilized or industrialized society, we have massive problems with our energy systems.

Right? All kinds of diseases are facilitated by. You know, inadequate energy auto-immune diseases, autism, you know, senility, syndromes, susceptibility to viruses and bacteria, uh, chemical sensitivity. And so restoring the energy is the fundamental thing that needs to be done. Okay. 

Jonathan Levi: Just to be clear, when you talk about energy, you're talking about mitochondrial function or you're talking about yes?

Okay. Got it. It's funny you say that because I'm actually on. Currently taking a friend of mine who was on the show makes a Mito chondrial supplement called a mitogen and I've been taking it for the last month. And I have to say, I feel really good. And one of the major ingredients in it is a B12 complex.

It also has a ton of vitamin C and a bunch of other things that I honestly can't pronounce. But yeah, I have to say, I feel really, really good on this supplement and I've been napping less and feeling better. 

Stephen Fowkes: Yeah. That's one of the things that happens when people, their energy Browns out is that they'll start sleeping less efficiently.

They'll start taking naps in either the early part of the afternoon. If they're a Lark. You know, early morning type or late in the afternoon, if they're a night owl type and the, you know, digestive issues are compromised, which leads to more inflammation, not only are you losing glutathione as an antioxidant for protecting you, but your gut can become leaky.

You can have more inflammation and that inflammation further undermines your energy production. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. So what is the prescription? I mean, an average person, let's say like myself, you know, a 20-something, almost 30, something comes to you and says, Hey, I want to keep my brain protected and safe. What do I do?

What's my regimen? What do you recommend? 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, the first thing I would say is don't fear Alzheimer's disease. You know, the worst thing you can do is to spend your psychic energy in fear, anxiety, nervousness, edginess, all that stuff is very counterproductive. And so, you know, the whole idea of, you know, Alzheimer's disease being irreversible, you know, fatal, you know, uncurable condition is itself.

 One of the biggest problems, you know, that people would looking at, it would fear, you know, it runs in your family. Okay. I've got the APOE gene for Alzheimer's risk. Okay. Oh my God. You know, I can't do anything about my genes, but it's really not true.

The role that genes play in Alzheimer's disease is fairly trivial. It's fairly easy to block just by keeping your energy up. So it's all very rudimentary technology, things like exercise, good nutrition, detoxification, even in terms of biohacking or self care or quantified self-technologies, trying to get a handle on what's going on with your metabolism.

Do you have any signs of hypothyroidism? Are your hands on your feet cold a lot of the time. So you have borderline depression is your healing slow. If you have these kinds of warning signs and early symptoms of low metabolism, then you can go and address it. You can address it medically by doing thyroid testing and adrenal testing.

You can address it through exercise and good nutrition, eating better quality foods. Eating less than the way of foods eating less carbohydrates and other refined food products and packaged food products. You know, it's not really rocket science. I would say the best advice that I could give people would be to say, you know, trust mother nature, you know, how did we evolve as a people on this planet and go to as much of a natural kind of an environment as you can.

Natural foods, natural environment, natural lighting, natural water, um, natural air. Just go back to the basics to restore your health and your natural birthright to healing.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. You know, that's something that comes up time and time again on the show and we've had. Practically every diet and nutrition expert you can think of.

And there's one thing, you know, whether they're pro carbs, anti carbs, eat lots of meat, don't eat lots of meat. There's one thing everyone agrees on, which is eat as much natural fruits and veg as you can, and drink as much clean, natural, no BS water as you possibly can. And it sounds like, I mean, not only will you feel better and look better, but also your brain will be much happier for it.

Stephen Fowkes: Yeah, I think that one of the evolutionary benefits that has allowed the evolution of our brain is the, the process of cooking. By being able to cook our food, we take the amount of energy that would be involved in digesting it, and we cut it down by half. So that means that more of the energy and the food can be devoted to supporting an energetically demanding brain that's in terms of growth as a child.

And it's in terms of operation as an adult. 

Jonathan Levi: So let's get into a little bit more because I understand that you're also. As am I interested in all areas of performance and improvement and optimization. So I guess let's break it down and start really with the brain since we've been talking about it so much.

And also since you wrote an entire book called smart drugs, talk to me a little bit about nootropics and smart drugs. Which ones do you like? Which ones do you use? Which ones do you think are pure hype? 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, I don't know that any of them are pure hype, but I would say that all of them are hyped. Yeah. You know, it's just a fundamental aspect of marketing and salesmanship that people promote their products.

And there's a secondary factor too, that most human beings get very. Excited about and attached to those things that work for them. Totally. So, you know, if it worked for you, you think it's going to work for your sister, for your friend, for your neighbor, for your coworker? 

Jonathan Levi: Totally. Totally. So, which ones do you like, which ones have you used and which ones do you recommend?

And I guess let's maybe narrow down to the classic kind of, because as you said, Well, I was going to say the classic definition of a neurotropic, which means no side effects. So that cuts out Ritalin that cuts out Adderall that even cuts out caffeine. I don't know if I would even include Modafinil and stuff like that as a nootropic, it's a pretty potent stimulant, but I don't know.

What are your thoughts? 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, that can be incredibly valuable to have side effects where, you know, the, you know, the effect of caffeine being conspicuous isn't necessarily make something unsustainable. If you're not a fast oxidizer or you're not over alkaline from the effect of the coffee bean extract itself.

But, you know, I use Presa Tam on a regular basis. It's the one that's most well-studied. Um, it has a couple of unique effects in me that are in my opinion for based on my values, very valuable, but I tend to be a night owl, for example. And if I take a big dose of pressed him in the morning, it normalizes my.

Circadian rhythm the following day. And that to me is incredibly valuable because I recognize that this is a natural tendency of me to drift in time and go to sleep later and later and later, and the downside of waking up badly in the morning, of course, you know, that I really have been there and I don't want to live there.

Jonathan Levi: So Parasso Tam does not give you, sleeplessness is what you're saying. 

Stephen Fowkes: That's right. It does not interesting. I can sleep on press at Tam, but even when I use it in that big dose, in the morning thing, by the time the evening comes around and I want to sleep, it's worn off. So even people who can't sleep on press the Tam can use a big dose with it.

But you know, I'm a little bit awkward about, you know, promoting this thing. I mean, I'd like to share it just because. It's fascinating to me, but this isn't a documented effect. I mean, you can't go into the literature and find research on press at Tam and how it modifies, um, circadian rhythms. 

Jonathan Levi: Sure. That is interesting.

And why per Assa, Tam instead of NRS the Tamar Oxford Rasta Tam, or one of the more quote-unquote potent ones?

Stephen Fowkes: Well, I think that it's toxicity at the time when I was experimenting initially was way better. Understood. There's a problem with the drug development industry that they often do not report negative effects.

Right? And so any time you have a drug in the marketplace and a me-too drug comes along, you're going to hear the upside of it and you're going to tend to miss the downside of it. And so that's always been one of my, you know, focuses for, you know, making choices is, you know, what do I know. And what do I not know?

And what do I know about what I not know? And what do I don't know about what I not know all of those kinds of [00:23:00] considerations. And so for, at the time, when I first started experimenting with the Rasta, Tam families precedent was the best choice, but I did go out and get some ox, Rasta, Tam, and swap it in and out.

And I did do some anorexic Tam, and I did do. One other which I'm blanking on right now. And more recently, no, a pep. And didn't find that they were as functional for me, or at least at the kinds of doses that I played with. Interesting. So I've dabbled in the alternatives and you know, I've been to all the chat rooms as well, where people talk about this.

And the thing that I've noted is that, you know, Many people out there have their favorite Rasad Tam and none of them agree. Yeah. 

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. I think it ultimately really, really comes down to your unique brain chemistry. So for example, I having been on Ritalin for so, so many years as a young adult Parasso Tam does almost nothing for [00:24:00] me.

I mean, just zilch, whereas Modafinil, which obviously is in a class all its own. But yeah. You know, I won't sleep for a week if I take Modafinil and I'm just a machine. Can I ask by the way, where are you finding a safe, healthy, reliable source for at towns? Because if anyone in the audience is listening, those drugs are completely legal and they're unregulated as supplements, unlike Modafinil, which is gray area or a Ritalin or Adderall, which is a scheduled substance.

So yeah. I mean, I know guys like true brain offer, you know, a combo nootropic, which has ox arrested him and pressed him. But where are you finding a safe and reliable source to get RAs attempts?

Stephen Fowkes: Well, that's a good question to ask in general about pretty much anything that you take in any food that you buy, even if you're doing something like buying kale in your supermarket, you really would like to know, is this kale grown in a thallium, rich soil or not bingo because you know, Kale's allium concentrator.

And so if you, if it's grown in the wrong soil, it's toxic. And if it's grown in the right soil, it's. Potentially quite healthy, but you know, the whole idea of where you get your Rasad Tams, you can buy them in the United States, from Europe. As pharmaceuticals where this is produced by, you know, UCB or Glaxo or whoever where it's distributed as a pharmaceutical.

And some of the pharmaceuticals would be colored, you know, yellow, or, you know, red where you wouldn't want them because of the dye and the food coloring that's added to it. But several of them are uncoded or. Uncolored. And so you're just dealing with a standard pharmaceutical that's approved by the FDA equivalent in those countries where it's sold in the United States.

The Prasad Tam that sold over the counter is in this gray area where it's sold kind of as a dietary supplement, even though. Technically, it doesn't meet the definition of it, but because it's, so non-toxic the people that are selling it. Aren't really afraid to sell it as a dietary supplement. And you really don't know where it comes from.

And I don't know where it comes from. Sure. But there's several varieties of. Techniques that you can do to mitigate that kind of toxicity. So for example, if it was made in China and you had a concern that there was some lead or mercury in it, you could take a capsule of an oral chelating agent like EDTA or DMSA at the same time you take the Prasad Tam.So that, that dose of heavy metal is mitigated. 

Jonathan Levi: And is this something you just order on Amazon or you go to your local Walgreens? 

Stephen Fowkes: I'd never seen it on the store shelf, but I bought it through Amazon. I bought it through eBay and I bought it directly through, you know, internet websites.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. Because I recently found a safe, reliable source, like I said, for Modafinil.

And I've been kind of experimenting with that in a limited way. So it all comes down to like, Again, can you find somewhere safe and reliable because I'm still not sold on the new OPEP? I haven't tried it just as an example.

Stephen Fowkes: I have, and it wasn't as notable to me as nattokinase or B complex vitamins or pressing him.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. Stephen, talk to me about brain boosting foods. I know we talked a little bit earlier about kind of having a natural diet. What are some foods that you find. Protect the brain and also improve its performance. 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, the biggest thing that I would say we're involved in the brains would be fats.

The brain is a huge reservoir of fat and there's a lot of highly polyunsaturated fats. And so the role of things like fish oil or flax oil in brain function can be. Exaggerated and mean it can be intense. It can be significant. Yeah. The brain is able to [00:28:00] make its own polyunsaturated Petit acids. If there isn't enough toxicity interfere with that kind of process.

But for other people who may have. Low energy conditions and Alzheimer's autoimmune disease, chemical sensitivity, syndromes, fatty acids are one way to raise metabolic rate and especially polyunsaturated fatty acids. Of course. And yeah. Unfortunately, there is a downside to polyunsaturated fatty acids regarding peroxidation and rancidity.

And so the idea that more is better is very dysfunctional in that particular kind of supplement. And many people will consume in a day. The oil equivalent of an entire salmon, and don't even think twice about it, which is kind of a deviation from that idea of trusting mother nature. 

Jonathan Levi: Right. I think that's a really important point that you bring out is, I mean, we need to really, as a society, reevaluate how we look at fats in general, but more specifically, we need to be more discriminating about what kinds of fats, you know, right.

Stephen Fowkes: You've got the long-chain fats, which would be structural and the polyunsaturated fats, which will be structural. And then you have the medium-chain fats and saturated fats that would be energetic to support the metabolism of the brain. And that's the thing that I'm most interested in from a sustainability perspective, you can overdo fish oils, but it's hard to overdo.

MCT oils other than gastrointestinally. So some people can load up too much and overwhelm their gut microbiome and get diarrhea, but that's, uh, you know, it's a feedback limited process and nobody misses the fact that they have diarrhea and if they just slow down and increase their fat content slowly over time, they will usually.

Jonathan Levi: Sure. Have you tried the, uh, quest powdered MCT oil? It's one of my favorite products on the market right now. 

Stephen Fowkes: I have not, but one of the biohacking conferences, uh, Dave Asprey's groups, I did try the MCT beverage that they had with the kitten capsulated MCT oil. Yeah. 

Jonathan Levi: It's good stuff as well. I had a cup of Bulletproof coffee with Dave at the burning man of all places with the brain octane that they serve up.

By the way on the note of biohacking, you mentioned when we emailed back and forth, that we should make some time to talk about some other types of kind of nonbrain biohacks. So maybe tell me about three or four of your favorite nonbrain ones. 

Stephen Fowkes: Yeah. You know, I've been dealing with, you know, diet issues and health issues and, you know, trying to find a wise path to survival in our industrialized modern society.

And so a few of the things that I've come up with that I think are keepers are, let's say number one, intermittent fasting. Yeah. The idea that. Overeating and undereating can be imbalanced with each other, and that there is a huge value to under eating as a. Lifestyle strategy and that this is sustainable.

And there are people in the world who practice this as a culture and do very well with it. But a slight twist on that would be partial fasting. The idea that you can benefit from, let's say caloric restriction by merely cutting back carbs or merely cutting back protein. You know, even in terms of, let's say fitness issues.

Interval training is an amazingly efficient way to become fit and stay fit. Humans, for example, have a real problem with vitamin C. So I would put collagen therapy in that category of something that is a fairly. Widely needed and universal and also sustainable. So I haven't heard about that one. 

Jonathan Levi: Tell me more.

Stephen Fowkes: Well, it starts with vitamin C. Humans don't make vitamin C yet. Vitamin C is not only a core antioxidant. It is a collagen maturation factor. And when, you know, normal animals don't have collagen problems because they make, you know, for a human equivalent, 10 to 20 grams of vitamin C a day. And yet we get by on less than a hundred milligrams, according to government recommendations and maybe, you know, two to four grams based on some kind of minimal interventionist approach that might be similar to what we'd get in a jungle that would have year-round fruit supplies and things like this. 

So, you know, humans have this tendency when we move out of the tropics to have serious collagen problems as a result of a lack of vitamin C and light gludethyon per Alzheimer's disease, it's not so much about.

The intake of vitamin C is critical. It's about the recycling of vitamin C. So if you're a good recycler, vitamin C, [00:33:00] you can use a vitamin C molecule, a thousand or 10,000 times before it dies. And same thing with glutathione, you could use it, you know, hundreds and thousands of times before it is recycled.

But if you have bad energy, you might only be able to use it 10 or a hundred times. And so even tiny doses of vitamin C. Can promote healthy collagen when you're in ketosis when your energy systems are tuned up, when your production of NADH and NAD pH is high, even tiny amounts of vitamin C that might be found in, let's say, um, seal blubber is enough prevents scurvy.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. Yeah, I learned long ago that really, it matters so much. So for example, you mentioned ketosis. Well, when you go on a low carbohydrate diet, as I've been told, basically the body or the glucose competes with vitamin C for pathways. So by lowering down your carbohydrate intake significantly, you actually need much less.

I mean, that's one of the reasons people on a low-carb diet get sick less. It's not just that they're getting so many more vitamins, but they. Use vitamins so much more effectively as I understand it. 

Stephen Fowkes: That's true. Amazing. I also put, you know, sleep hygiene on my list of bio-hacks and universal biohacks because and what I've observed is that sleeping abnormalities and difficulties occur is one of the earliest symptoms and pretty much any disease process. So if you focus on your sleep, you're going to see not only benefits from your investment of your time and your attention, but you're going to be paying attention to something that is.

Um, early marker of most of the serious degenerative diseases. 

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned that because I wanted to touch on it. I saw on your blog that you actually recommend waking up with red light. Now I've been waking up with like a blueish white light for years because I thought, you know what?

They always say blue light suppresses melatonin production, and, uh, makes you not fall asleep. Explain to me why I might want to wake up with red instead. 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, I think you don't want to wake up with blue light, but it's not a problem to wake up with blue and red light. That the red light is necessary or upregulates your mitochondria and removing dark adaptation stress as a adrenal stimulant, that would be necessitating a sustained cortisol in the morning.

Many people have problems waking up. And some of that can be due to the fact that their mitochondria in going from a kind of hibernation state during sleep into the fully metabolically active part of the day, that that process isn't graceful and red light facilitates that. But blue light doesn't interfere with it in the slightest.

So I wouldn't suggest just blue light. I would suggest, you know, red, rich, white light as the way to wake up in the morning. Yeah, because the blue light doesn't impose a penalty and does have its own melatonin, suppression effects and affective effects on your mood. Um, you know, seasonal affective disorder, um, benefits from white light and the blue spectrum of that.

And you know, it's not necessary to have it. You know, noon-ish, which is the normal time you'd be exposed to the maximum amount of blue light, but you can actually start it early. If you wake up badly and have night owl syndrome, you want to move your circadian cues to earlier times. To kind of compensate for the fact that you're drifting in the opposite direction.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. So you said a white, rich red light, so that's kind of, it 

Stephen Fowkes: should be red, rich white lights. So that would mean, for example, a flood lamp, which would be incandescent would work just fine, but you wouldn't want to use fluorescent lighting, uh, mercury fluorescent light to wake up in the morning because it has almost no red in it at all.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. So if I were to take my Phillips, you led bulbs. Would you recommend getting them to kind of a pinkish? Is that essentially what you're saying? Interesting. Okay. I'm going to play with that because I have to admit the blue doesn't really get me out of bed. And that's why one of the things I'm doing right now is working on getting automated electric blinds. So I can just get real deal sunlight at six 30 in. 

Stephen Fowkes: So there's a kind of overlap between red light therapy when you're waking up. And using Bulletproof coffee, right? So Bulletproof coffee, it contains caffeine and other, you know, the theobromine and other metals and things that cause your mitochondria to leak.

So you're in a sense. You know you are, upregulating your energy to compensate for the amount of leakage and that warms you up. It causes your energy systems to upregulate into the energy of the day, which is what happens at Dawn. When the sun comes up and you see the red sun rising. And the distance your body is being bathed in that red light, which is turning on your mitochondria and turning off your cortisol.

Interesting. Does that same kind of thing to jumpstart you in the morning? 

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. Okay, cool. I'm going to definitely experiment with that. I know we're running a little bit low on time here, Stephen. So I want to ask you a few more questions around supplementation. What, if any supplements do you take besides the paroxetine that you already mentioned?

Stephen Fowkes: My supplement lists, you know, is not just, there are certain things that I take that are kind of all the time kinds of things. And, um, more and more of what I do is now moving towards an intermittent kind of thing, where I rotate my vitamins and I. Definitely rotate my phenolics and bioflavonoids, but I don't tend to rotate things like my multivitamin.

I think that that's something that is useful for having, you know, a kind of constant background level of things. One of the other aspects of things is one of my strategies for coping with inflammation is nattokinase. And that's another thing that I tend to take all the time. And I had an incident in my, you know, life 25 years ago, where I had two simultaneous fungal infections that were inflammatory and they cause my blood to hyper coagulate.

And I became in essence, senile, I couldn't remember what happened five minutes ago. Although if I read a scientific paper, I could understand its development of it. So it was a kind of bizarre interference in memory consolidation. And when I took nattokinase, it went away within 48 hours. It was completely back to normal.

So I know I have this tendency to react to inflammation with coagulation. And so I actively inhibit that process by taking that OIC kinase for somebody who doesn't have that kind of inherent constitution, they might not benefit from nattokinase at all. But, you know, I, for example, am a culinary, surgically dominant and dopaminergic li dominant person by my constitution.

And so when I take Prasad, Tam, I don't need to take Coleen with it or beef with it. It actually levels me out in terms of my culinary chick tone. And, so I benefit from that anti-ice mild anti-cholinergic effect, but average people, I would say, need to take Coleen with their progressive Tam to keep their culinary logic systems up to at least a minimal level.

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. Okay. I'm learning a lot. I mean, a lot of these I've actually never even heard of, which is pretty surprising to me. 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, I'm glad to elaborate on any of this stuff. If you want to bring it up in a different podcast or, you know, after the fact, um, I am typical, you know, a geek in that, you know, the kind of child who would take apart a clock and put it back together just to know how it works and share that with you, that, that the human body and nutrition and metabolite.

Jonathan Levi: I totally share that with you. I totally share that with you. By the way with all of this and all this testing that you've done and tweaking. Are you big on blood testing? And if so, what tests do you advocate getting? 

Stephen Fowkes: Well, blood testing is valuable. It's quite useful, but the way it's all organized in our modern day and age, it's expensive.

And so the relative expense to you. Or your listeners, you know, is dependent upon their financial circumstances. And so if somebody is very, very affluent spending money on medical tests is a great idea. And if somebody is very poor, I would suggest self-care testing is a much better return on your investment.

Jonathan Levi: Oh, interesting. What does that entail? 

Stephen Fowkes: For example, instead of trying to measure your food allergies with a blood test, you do food restriction and food re-introduction challenges. It almost costs you nothing except your attention to do the food re-introduction studies, the equipment that you need to do, it would be.

A thermometer, maybe a blood pressure cuff, a stopwatch, you can measure your pulse rate a metronome, so you can judge time and you can download that to your phone app in this day and age. Right. And of course, a piece of food, which is, you know, if you're doing the minimalist approach, it might be a kernel of corn to test a corn allergy.

That's basically, you know, no cost at all. Interesting. And that's the really advantage of self care testing is that you can study yourself interactively in the context of your own life. And that gives you an in my opinion, the best quality information you can get. So if you're measuring blood pressure at the doctor's office, you're going to have the white coat syndrome getting in the way of it.

And if you're edgy or nervous or you were driving there and traffic and somebody cuts you off your blood pressure reading is going to be abnormal, right? Whereas if you measure it at home, you can measure it. When you wake up in the morning, you can measure it after you've eaten, you can measure it, you know, before and after, you know, having sex and an orgasm, you can study it before and after magnesium loading, for example, to find out.

Is my high blood pressure, magnesium-dependent or not, or maybe my blood pressure is high because I've got a, paradoxical, sodium response? And the fact that my doctor recommended that I cut back on sodium is causing a problem with aldosterone and that's causing my high blood pressure. 

Jonathan Levi: Interesting. So if people want to try and diagnose something like blood pressure at home, is there a specific product that you would recommend adjust a home blood pressure cuff?

Stephen Fowkes: Like one of the ones you buy at the drug store.

Jonathan Levi: Wow.

Stephen Fowkes: Online, a drug store they're less than a hundred bucks and maybe you want to spend 200 bucks and get one with all kinds of deluxe features with memory, you know, you push a button and it inflates and deflates automatically. I mean, all of those kinds of features now are very, very inexpensive and that's, that's our technology.

That is part of, of being civilized and industrialized that on one level is degrading our natural environment, but on another level is enabling massive investment in our own knowledge about how our biology works.

Jonathan Levi: I love  it. I love it. What Stephen we've run out of time today. I want to thank you so much for taking the time and sharing all of your wisdom with us.

If people want to learn more and get in touch with you, where should we go ahead and send them? 

Stephen Fowkes: The best place to go is projectwellbeing.com. Okay, perfect. I have a hub page there where there's some free downloads information about email and phone numbers and stuff like that's there. They can get ahold of me through that site for consulting if they want it.

And it's also linked to the Siri site and YouTube, and I mean, you can always just type my name into a search engine and get a thousand hits. So perfect. A lot of stuff out there. 

Jonathan Levi: Perfect.  And we'll go ahead and link everyone up in the podcast episode so they can go ahead and get to project wellbeing. I want to close on one question for you, Stephen, which is if people remember one thing from this episode, for the rest of their lives, what would you hope for that to be.

Stephen Fowkes: Oh that, you know, I think the biggest thing is you no longer have to fear Alzheimer's disease. You know that this is a big phobia. That's not only, you know, causing people in natural stress. It's actually discouraging people from getting tested and knowing their genetic risk factors for it. So if Alzheimer's becomes reversible, then there's no fear to knowing whether you have the APOE four gene or the AOE two gene.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Well, that's a fantastic note to end on is just don't fear. All right, Stephen. Thanks so much again. 

Stephen Fowkes: And I do hope we can.

Jonathan Levi: All right Superfriends, that's it for this week's episode, we hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are. Always looking for great guest posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast. So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email our email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much. 

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.