This Invisible Molecule Is Like Mitochondrial Rocket Fuel

Added: 2026-05-03

[00:00:00]It's one of the choke points in producing more energy. So, at the foundation, when you deliver enough you can produce enough energy. But, as we age, our cells are become less efficient, our mitochondria become less efficient, delivery of becomes less efficient. When you look at all chronic health conditions, you find that one of the most vulnerable components in the body is the mitochondria. And so, they're the first things damaged in so much chronic illness.

[00:00:26]>> [music] >> So, we want to take advantage of while we've got that elevated circulation and floating around in your system, we want to start to stimulate those mitochondria.

[00:00:35]You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave [music] Asprey.

[00:00:43]I'm going to tell you a little story about what it's like to have really bad brain fog and chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and stuff in my 20s.

[00:00:52]I was absolutely desperate and I was willing to try anything. So, in the course of losing 100 lb, I went to the gym 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week without fail for 18 months. And during that time, I was like, "Nothing else matters. I will lose this weight."

[00:01:08]Didn't work, by the way. But, one of the things that did help my brain was I read a very early book from one of the experts in the longevity group that I was running, even though all my members were three times my age. I just felt old. So, they talked about this technique called EWOT, which is exercise with oxygen therapy. And I went out on Craigslist because you can't buy medical oxygen. It's like locked up more than they lock up fentanyl, as far as I can tell. That's why everyone just uses welding oxygen. Just don't tell the welding shop you're going to breathe it and you're all good.

[00:01:41]Um, you know, your mileage may vary, etc., etc. So, I show up to I would say I think it was 24-hour Nautilus back then, but the gym I was a member of. And I'm like this fat, 300-lb kid toting an oxygen tank and an oxygen mask, and I go get on the treadmill and I put this mask on. I'm like, "Rar, rar."

[00:01:58]And I feel like I had emphysema. Like I was totally crazy and then people are just looking at me and I'm just looking back like, "What What's your problem, punk?" But, I had like the Bane mask on.

[00:02:06]It was kind of cool. Anyway, I did this till I ran out of oxygen and I couldn't get more and gave up on it. But, I I did notice a difference.

[00:02:13]And I learned about that from one of the the fathers of the field who had come and spoken at the nonprofit group. And it just stands out as something that kind of old people would do, but it's not about emphysema, it's not about lung function, it's about something else. So, that's what we're going to talk about in this episode. We're going to talk with an expert in the field because he knows what it feels like to be really seriously ill and to just be desperate because he had autoimmune arthritis. Oh, hey, I had that when I was 14 in my knees. Yeah. He had melanoma. I think I didn't do that. Lyme disease, thought I had it, probably had it, caused by mold.

[00:02:51]Anyway, our guest today has spent the last 10 years rebuilding his health using oxygen therapy and red light therapy. Like sound familiar? If you've been listening to the show for the last decade, these are constant topics in the world of biohacking because they work, but there's a lot of nuance here. So, today I'm bringing to you Brad Pilon, who is the founder of 1000 Roads, which is a company that helps people use EWOT and red light therapy. And like me, he thinks that having cells that work to make enough energy is kind of important for whatever you want, whether it's to be happy and peaceful and satisfied and kind and powerful um or to win a race or to start a company or to just be less of a jerk or to live a very long time.

[00:03:37]Whatever your biohacking goal, like these are foundational. So, Brad, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Dave. I appreciate it. All right. What is EWOT?

[00:03:46]EWOT is exercise with oxygen therapy.

[00:03:49]Um, and it's really what it sounds like.

[00:03:52]At its simplest form, you're just breathing oxygen, near pure oxygen, while you're exercising. So, we don't use the welding oxygen. Um, we use a device that actually purifies the oxygen out of the room you're in to up to from 21% what it is at like sea level up to 93% and then we fill a large reservoir of it, about 1,000 L, which is about the same amount of oxygen you could take in in a day. And then we breathe that through a mask and you can take that whole um reservoir in as little as 15 minutes. So, this is a neat hack. That device is called an oxygen concentrator. And it's something we we use a device like that at Upgrade Labs that that concentrates oxygen but for a different purpose. And I have a couple of them floating around the house. So, problem is, if you're going to exercise and breathe oxygen, you got to breathe a lot of it and no concentrator on the market can make enough of it for you like huff and puff it. So, what you're doing is basically filling a giant balloon with pure oxygen so you can breathe it all real fast. That's right.

[00:04:53]Okay. And then, what are the biological effects of doing it?

[00:04:57]Yeah. Um, so, oxygen as you've pointed out many times, oxygen is super important to our bodies. It's foundational, it's one of the choke points in producing more energy. So, um at the foundation, when you deliver enough oxygen, you can produce enough energy. But, as we age, our cells are become less efficient, our mitochondria become less efficient, delivery of oxygen becomes less efficient. So, um when you use exercise with oxygen therapy, it has a a lot of different benefits. One of them is oxygen is incredibly anti-inflammatory.

[00:05:32]Uh two, obviously, it helps with mitochondria and energy production. So, that can improve energy, it can improve sleep, it can improve um all of your basically your system functions because whether you're thinking about, you know, brain health, whether you're thinking about muscle health, whether you're thinking about skin health, at at the foundational level, it's all about proper energy. And it also helps with uh detoxification, it helps with anti-cancer. It also helps fight a lot of anaerobic bacteria, harmful bacteria in our bodies. So, Lyme disease um obviously is one of those anaerobic um bacteria. And it's great for immune health as well. Great explanation.

[00:06:12]Now, people go to the hospital and you know, their blood oxygen levels drop, so then they have them breathe a ton of oxygen. What's the difference between that and exercising when you're breathing this pure oxygen? It's a great question. So, when you go to the hospital, what they'll do is they'll put a little device on your finger called a pulse oximeter and it measures how saturated your red blood cells are. What percentage of them is actually carrying oxygen. And so, they'll use the oxygen supplementation to get you back up to say 98% where most folks operate, roughly.

[00:06:47]Um, when we do exercise with oxygen therapy, we're taking advantage of all of the uh physiological changes that happen in our body when we exercise. So, if you think about it, when you're exercising, your your body immediately goes into an energy deficit. It's like, "Oh, we don't have enough energy to keep up this activity." And so, it adapts by causing all these changes. It's why you start breathing more deeply and more rapidly, your heart starts beating faster, your blood vessels dilate, um even your blood pressure goes up during exercise, which causes this um oxygen pressure gradient, which drives oxygen deeper into tissues. And so, we're taking advantage of all those physiological differences to bring more oxygen into the circulatory system and drive it deeper into the tissues. That is such a good explanation. And what are the longevity benefits of EWOT? Yeah.

[00:07:37]So, you know, one of my uh bones I like to pick is we have this this new term floating around for the last 15, 20 years called inflammaging.

[00:07:47]So, the idea is all of us are just supposed to get more and more inflamed as we age. And for most of us in western world, that is happening, but it's not necessary. So, when we have this inflammation floating around, one of the places it occurs is in our microcirculation.

[00:08:05]Um so, if you think about the circulatory system, you know, this is the system that's responsible for bringing all oxygen and all nutrients to all of our cells. At the very end of it are these capillaries. They're thinner than a human hair. They're actually smaller than a red blood cell, right?

[00:08:21]So, in order for a red blood cell to get into our microcirculation, the cell is larger, it actually folds like a taco to get in. And so, when we have this inflammaging, it can cause the lining of the blood vessels, these things called endothelial cells, to swell. And they actually swell to the point where red blood cells can't get through. And in addition, that inflammation also causes our red blood cells to become less flexible. And so, now they can't bend into that taco shape and get in there.

[00:08:50]So, now you have tissues that are oxygen starved. You're looking at your blood um you're looking at your blood uh oxygen saturation on a pulse ox, it looks great, but your tissues downstream aren't getting the oxygen they need.

[00:09:02]This is one of those things that I wish everyone knew about, this idea of pseudo hypoxia.

[00:09:08]Right? You're a lot of the sleep trackers now will give you blood oxygen levels. Not a great reading, but good enough. And then you think, "Okay, I'm fine because it's in the body." But, it's the same idea as diabetes. Like, "Oh, I have a lot of blood sugar, therefore I have a lot of energy." No, you have a lot of blood sugar because your body's not using the glucose. So, having high blood oxygen is only relevant if the oxygen can get from the blood into the muscles. Excuse me. And one of the things that I learned from having had fibromyalgia from the toxic mold, the autoimmunity, and all this stuff, basically the same thing that long COVID um is doing, long long COVID, fibromyalgia, all those things are pretty much mast cell activation when you get all down to it, underneath that, mitochondrial dysfunction.

[00:09:52]So, I would get this incredibly painful knot between my shoulder blades. And it felt kind of like a candle burning all the time. And there was just nothing I could do about it. And you just kind of grit your teeth and just used to it hurting. Like it's just always going to hurt. And you just go about your day, but it's like sapping your energy.

[00:10:10]And the first time I experienced a change in that, I actually got whiplash, which made it worse. Uh a lot of people get that from whiplash cuz the muscles tighten up.

[00:10:19]They tighten up. They squeeze those little capillaries and all of a sudden there's no more oxygen. They stay tightened up because there's no oxygen.

[00:10:25]Right.

[00:10:26]>> used the first red and infrared laser on the market. It wasn't available for humans. It was for racehorses. Uh but I used it anyway. And I remember when it restored blood flow.

[00:10:38]Because like the muscle let go and I felt like this electricity go up my spine and then my hands got warm cuz they'd just been cold after that because of the restricted blood flow.

[00:10:47]And then I was sold. That was why I started uh the first like consumer grade red light therapy company more than 10 years ago. I've since um exited that. I've called it TrueLight. Uh but still a friend of the company. And I'm just like this stuff matters. But it was 10 grand back at the time. Uh like we got to make this more available.

[00:11:06]So um that was to me my lesson in pseudo hypoxia. Just that feeling of like, oh my god, that painful knot that no massage therapist could ever get into.

[00:11:16]It just it just melted. But why doesn't massage work for pseudo hypoxia when EWOT does? Yeah, it's a great question.

[00:11:23]So when your body's in this state of hypoxia, and basically what happens is inside the cells, they have their they're basically starving for oxygen.

[00:11:34]They're starving for energy. So they go to their backup their backup generators.

[00:11:38]And that's what's called anaerobic respiration. So instead of your glucose molecule combining with oxygen and producing say 36 units of ATP, it's now just producing directly from that glucose molecule, but it can only produce two molecules of ATP. So it's like 5% as energy. In addition to that, when you're doing that, you're you're throwing off a lot of metabolic waste.

[00:12:02]And so all this metabolic waste builds up inside the cell because it doesn't have energy. It doesn't have energy to clear waste. It doesn't have energy for essential functions. It's effectively doing the bare minimum it can to survive. And so at that point it's kind of stuck where it is because what your body needed at that point was the energy to rest and repair. And it just didn't have it. So it was stuck. And you really you really know what's going on in this and there's a difference between talking with a university researcher. And there's been so many epic researchers. I like I learned so much. So this isn't a dig at all.

[00:12:35]But if someone's studying a condition and they haven't had it, it's different than someone who's like, I decided to study this because you know, it affected a family member or because I had it and and I I had a kind of a desperate need. And people say, dude, what do you know all this stuff?

[00:12:51]I'm like, because I've had all these things wrong with my biology. I had to fix them because otherwise I'd probably be disabled or dead.

[00:12:57]And now I'm like stupidly healthy, which is like wow.

[00:13:02]So um you're one of the the latter where you like you had to do it because you didn't have a choice. Yeah. And um and I I just I respect that very much. So when I asked you the question, it's like you know because I don't think you had a choice but to know cuz otherwise you wouldn't have been able to achieve this.

[00:13:20]The The good news is when you're incredibly sick and you don't have any energy to get out of bed, you have time to ruminate and try to like chase down rabbit holes a little bit cuz that's sometimes all you can really do. You're just trying to find a way out of this maze.

[00:13:33]Yeah. Well, congrats on finding a way out and on starting a company to help people with this.

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[00:16:07]There's something that you've come across in your in your work that I think a lot of people don't know about. At this point I think biohacking has helped red light therapy become pretty well known. Like you can go to the drugstore and there's a red light therapy device, maybe not a very good one, but it's on the shelf. Like this is now consumer grade. You got Amazon, there's thousands of knockoffs, some some of very different qualities and efficacy.

[00:16:31]But like we kind of know that it's real.

[00:16:33]And the people who are skeptical, they just sound like they're old.

[00:16:36]Right? Oh, like you haven't been following any of the research for the last 15 years and you're still stuck in the 1970s. Like enjoy your your Grape-Nuts or something. But you know, whatever. So there you guys see what I just did there? That was a psyop. Now I made people don't like light therapy into like old Luddites. But it was actually real that I did that. So it was really not gaslighting. It was actually truth lighting. It's a word I just made up, but I'm going to stick with it.

[00:17:00]I like it.

[00:17:02]And the Grape-Nuts. The Grape-Nuts joke was good, too. I I've I actually did that. All right, I'm going to tell some stories cuz I don't know some ones I don't. Back when I was like in ninth grade, so I would have been like 11 or something cuz I skipped a grade.

[00:17:16]I started college when I was 16 or 15 or something. Anyway.

[00:17:20]Um so I'm I'm in ninth grade and it's summer and I'm fat. I got like extra pounds. And like, okay, I'm going to work out. Also I went to PE class, like a summer PE thing for like 4 hours a day. I'm like, I'm going to get healthy.

[00:17:31]And we had a race like to see who could run the fastest around the soccer field or whatever. So I was like, I'm going to be healthy and I ate this like two bowls of Grape-Nuts with skim milk, which I thought was healthy. And I remember I got to the man, I feel like garbage. And I'm just like farting all the time. And and I'm I'm like trying to run and I totally didn't do anywhere near my best.

[00:17:48]And I'm like, you know what? I'm pretty sure Grape-Nuts actually isn't good for you. Like I felt weak. And I just had that like planted a seed of doubt. Like they lied to me all this time. No, Grape-Nuts are human kibble and I don't even feed them to the chickens on my chicken farm. Like it's just not food.

[00:18:04]Right. It's good mulch, though.

[00:18:06]Oh man, it'll sit in your stomach, too.

[00:18:08]I imagine running on two bowls of Grape-Nuts couldn't have felt too good.

[00:18:11]The rock the rocket propulsion didn't make up for the mitochondrial inactivation. We'll put it that way.

[00:18:17]So anyway, back to um the question or the the idea here.

[00:18:22]Um it's that with this whole oxygen and we've had so many episodes on hyperbaric uh intermittent hypoxia, which is the the tech that we use at Upgrade Labs. And just like going uh back and forth. So there's the world of oxygen and associated with that is the world of hydrogen and the world of nitric oxide and all these like signaling gases and CO2 manipulation and these are all either in books or on shows and like it's part of biohacking. And then we have the world of light. There's red and amber and green and flashing and infrared and all these kinds of things.

[00:18:52]And they're kind of in separate silos.

[00:18:54]But you say in your work that there's a unified theory behind both of them. And I think I know what it is, but I want you to tell me. Yeah, so so when we talk about exercise with oxygen or oxygen therapy, we're driving a massive supply of oxygen, right? So you're you can breathe in like a day of oxygen in 15 minutes. So your body's absolutely flooded with it. Yeah.

[00:19:16]And then red light works a little bit different. Red light works through a couple different mechanisms. It works through nitric oxide signaling, but the primary reason it works is because it actually drives increased oxygen demand.

[00:19:29]So the challenge is you want to actually number one drive oxygen to the mitochondria, but then you want to drive uptake of that oxygen through the mitochondria efficiency. And so when you pair the two in a specific sequence, you can really benefit from it. Because a lot of times, and we've seen this a lot, we've had folks who've been using red light for a and then when they start pairing it with oxygen therapy, they're shocked at how much better the results are. And it's because you can imagine if you've got hypoxic tissue, it's getting oxygen, maybe not enough oxygen, and then you you're trying to rev the engine without fuel. All of a sudden, you're trying to put red light on it. You will still get some benefit usually, but if the engine has all the fuel it needs, if it's if it's saturated with oxygen around it, then it's going to drive more uptake and more energy production and more benefits. If you're going to put a a turbocharger on your car, it literally puts more oxygen into the engine, you can't just do that. You also have to give it more fuel, right? Otherwise, it's going to get stuck. So, I look at red light in studies um going back, I think to my longevity book, uh which is called Superhuman, I read about this. About 10% more electrons can actually into your cells directly from the red light. So, it's literally adding extra fuel, and now I've got the oxygen and these extra electrons, so the Krebs cycle, which makes ATP and makes all your energy, it can actually do its job.

[00:20:56]And so, it's that that crossing over of having the fuel and the signal from the light. And so, light is a nutrient because it's a signaling thing that's as important as a polyphenol from oregano or something.

[00:21:09]So right. What's the role of ketosis or uh protein or any other nutritional thing when people are doing EWOT? Well, obviously nutrition's important. Um I now what I'd say is depending on what level of ketosis you're in. So, if you're doing a fast, you know, you've got to be moderate about what sort of level of exercise you're doing. Um cuz we do have folks who will do it um while they're fasting and in ketosis. Now, there's non-fasting ketosis as well. So, obviously having the right fuel and the right substrates critically important, right? We need our mitochondria to function well, and as you pointed out when you're talking about diabetes, when we have dysfunctional mitochondria and they can't um process fuel, it does no good. But, you know, really when it comes down to it, um we all know ATP is the energy currency of the body. It's Anything you do, every muscle you move, every thought you have, every you know, every heartbeat, every time your liver's detoxing, that's all all requires ATP and energy.

[00:22:11]However, what is less talked about often is that oxygen is really the currency of energy production, right? Like, that is how that is the limiting factor. Um and the the easiest way to bring that into focus for folks is VO2 max. So, if you look at elite athletes, elite athletes, what they especially endurance athletes, they want to figure out how how well in shape they are. It's greatly predicted by one factor, VO2 max, which literally stands for the volume the maximum volume of oxygen you can consume. So, we can get you to consume more oxygen, you can produce more energy. It ends up being the gating factor. And so, obviously, when we're driving oxygen delivery, oxygen supply, and oxygen demand through oxygen therapy and red light, we're we're supercharging all of that. Sounds like a perfect explanation.

[00:23:04]So, someone's listening to the show. They've got a red light device. They probably don't have any oxygen. Like, what's the practical way to go about doing this or stacking these? The most frequent protocol for most folks is you want to do an EWOT session, you do your 15 minutes, and then immediately afterwards, like immediately, don't go take a shower, go get underneath that red light. Now, the reason we do this is because immediately when you're done exercising, your heart rate is still elevated, you still have excess oxygen floating through your system, and it'll start to decay. It'll start to come down. So, we want to take advantage of while we've got that elevated circulation and oxygen floating around in your system, we want to start to stimulate those mitochondria. Um it's not practical to do these two at the same time because when you're exercising, you're moving, you're further away from the light, you're closer to the light, um so on and so forth. Although, for sometimes for like um performance enhancement, we'll see folks do that. Okay.

[00:24:02]Yeah, you could do them at the same time.

[00:24:04]Now, not a lot of places have a giant bag of oxygen floating around in that. So, how do people get around that? To your point, the reason we need this is these these devices are awesome oxygen concentrators because they can produce 5 or 10 L of oxygen every minute, but when you're exercising, you can easily use 50 or 60 L. So, that's why you need a large reservoir. Um so, that is what modern EWOT is about. Early days, they used to do kind of like you were doing, where you do a you were using an oxygen bottle, so or an oxygen tank, so you could upregulate how much oxygen was flowing >> doing 20 20 L a minute. Yeah. There you go. To some degree, but it becomes a little bit impractical, as you saw, trying to run out and grab a tank and trying to get through, you know, trying to get through security, so to speak, to get one of those.

[00:24:51]Um Now, so what we but what's great about this is it's a device, you plug it in, and it's like basically endless supply, but you do need to fill a reservoir. So, we sell an at-home kit for folks, so you can buy the whole system together. It's it's the concentrator, it's the reservoir, it's the mask that's designed for exercise, and all of the components. What does it run like approximately?

[00:25:13]About $2,500.

[00:25:15]Okay. Guys, you can go to 1000roads.com/dave.

[00:25:19]Uh and I'll tell you this is incredibly affordable. Um I've looked at these tech uh these kinds of tech. I've trialed some of the the vendors in the space um at an early version of Upgrade Labs.

[00:25:31]And they're exceedingly expensive for no reason. So, this is very reasonable. In fact, you're basically charging them the cost of a bag and the cost of an oxygen concentrator. Like, there's not a lot of margin in there for you. So, that's a a fair a fair kind of price.

[00:25:44]And I would just say as a someone who's aware that our national infrastructure is uh well, very weak, there's a really good use case to have your own oxygen concentrator.

[00:25:57]And now, this weird thing happened intentionally between, you know, 2020 and about 2024, where for some reason having an oxygen concentrator could save your life. But if you wanted to go go one at the hospital, they wouldn't give it to you. I don't know. It's almost like someone was trying to kill you or something. But, I actually had three oxygen concentrators, and because I'm not crazy, I bought all the welding oxygen in my neighborhood, so that I could have ozone therapy available, which is a whole different topic. We have podcasts about that as well. But if you have an oxygen concentrator, you can produce ozone, which will kill almost any microbial that you might get. So, if you're a prepper, or you just like being able to take care of yourself without needing permission, you might want an oxygen concentrator anyway. That's right. Yeah, you know, and it used to be that they were under lock and key for a long time, but then Congress passed a supplemental act in the 1990s and started looking at supplemental oxygen. That's why you can get canned oxygen in your CVS or your pharmacy or whatever it is, um it is because of that act, which is the same reason why we can sell these to the public. And who the hell ever gave the government the right to say that I that I couldn't buy this in the first place. Like, screw that. Like, if you're listening and you're in the government, uh number one, thank you for listening.

[00:27:07]I know that there were a few people, including even at uh the FDA, which is actually now, surprisingly, um working towards making things better instead of worse.

[00:27:16]Um so, thank you. But, if you're listening, man, you don't have the right. Just cuz some wrote a law before you were born that took the right. No, you didn't actually take the right. The right is inherent in humans to take care of our own biology. And any law, legislation, or thing you do, it's an act of violence towards people who want to live a long time. So, don't do violence on us, and then we won't have to like resist, because that just creates an ugly world. So, freedom, you know, it's like this American thing.

[00:27:42]Sorry. All right, that was my PSA for the day. The government doesn't have a right to restrict your access to pharmaceuticals, either. Oh, you have to get a permission slip. No. Like, my health daddy is me. It's not the government. That's how it works. It's not my insurance company. It's not my employers. Nobody. Like, everyone listening, you can get your own EWOT machine, and you can do EWOT if you want to, right? And you can also like eat garden snails if you want to. It would be a stupid idea unless you cook them at least. But it it just doesn't matter.

[00:28:05]Like, whatever you want to do, you get to do it, and you might have the consequences for it. But if someone else says that they're responsible for your consequences, it doesn't work. So, thank goodness they backed off of oxygen. And to this day, I still don't know why buying medical oxygen is hard, but at least you get a concentrator, and that gives you access to EWOT if you buy the kit.

[00:28:24]Gives you access to ozone therapy. Gives you access to just breathing oxygen if you need it at night, because I don't know, maybe you have pneumonia or something. Like, it's it's a thing. You can even put it in your butt, the third lung, but we're not going to go there.

[00:28:36]Wait, we just did. Damn.

[00:28:39]They do that during surgery in hospitals. They put oxygen directly in your butt because it'll absorb that way, and that's how ozone therapy is administered at home, so you don't have to do injections. Have you ever combined ozone therapy with EWOT?

[00:28:50]I have, yeah. I've done it quite a bit.

[00:28:52]I love ozone. Yeah, it's powerful stuff.

[00:28:54]I know that's not the main focus for 1000 Roads, but it's another oxygen therapy that was actually one of the center pillars of uh yeah, of Superhuman, my longevity book. A lot of uh the research done with ozone therapy shows how mitochondria work. That's right.

[00:29:09]>> Let's go back to red light.

[00:29:11]There's a ton of red light stuff on the market right now. How would you know if it's actually doing anything? Yeah, um I think a lot of folks actually you couple things. One, a lot of folks can actually feel it. So, if you're under like a well-powered device, I know for myself, I I feel like what I'll call like mild like almost like quaking.

[00:29:32]Like, you can just kind of feel like energy. You just feel like >> Yes. revving you up, which is a really kind of cool. At first, you're kind of like, am I is this pseudo? Am I really feeling it? And then you do it session over session, and you notice it. But also, you'll notice results. To your point, there are tens of thousands of research papers out there. It's beyond it's beyond pale the pale of trying to ask whether or not it works. It certainly does. It works for a lot of things. You obviously with red light, you need to be smart about the dose. You need to be smart about how close you are to the light. So there's some there's some technical components to how close are you? How long are you doing it for?

[00:30:11]Which wavelengths are you using?

[00:30:13]If you want to get the the best breath.

[00:30:16]We kind of because we built our company around helping people with a lot of chronic health conditions. That was my goal when I started it. I've tried to make everything that we sell simple for folks because most folks don't want to get Dave Asprey level education just to figure out how to get their health back. Or me. That you know, some of us go deep and some of us are like just give me the cheat sheet. I just I don't have the energy and barely making it through the day.

[00:30:43]And so we we've done with our red lights is we try to have a broad spectrum. We have four different red um red wavelengths and then we have four infrared wavelengths spanning the gamut from the 800s up to 1050, which has shown some interesting research in brain health fat metabolism etc. Um but you will notice it. You'll notice it in feeling but you'll also notice it in results. It can be everything from energy to pain relief to you'll notice how your skin looks better.

[00:31:15]Um you know, wrinkles going away, better collagen and elasticity. It's it's really kind of amazing. And I don't know about you Dave but the thing I find most amazing is the reason why we need it, right? Is the fact that we've all moved indoors and out of the sunlight and we've started using LED lights which intentionally strike out all the reds and near infrareds because they're not energy efficient. And so you you start cutting out these non-energy efficient wavelengths which cause heat. And guess what? Now we're all living in this world with a lot of blues and some yellows but we're not getting a lot of the red frequencies that we need.

[00:31:55]You know, wouldn't it be weird if someone took something like fruit and then they stripped out all of the good stuff and just left like a fructose syrup and then said why do we need fruit anyways? Just make it out of corn. You have high fructose corn syrup. Well, LED lighting are the corn syrup of lighting.

[00:32:13]They literally stripped out all the stuff you need. Lights and nutrient, it's a signal to the body.

[00:32:18]If you don't get red and you don't get infrared along with blue, it causes melanoma more than sun exposure. It is directly toxic to your cells and you'll feel it first in your brain. And at the end of the day, you feel like complete garbage and your blood sugar is dysregulated and you're exhausted and you're cranking and you yell at your kids.

[00:32:36]And then the next day, I don't know, you put on some TrueDark glasses that block only the bad part of the blue.

[00:32:42]And yeah, I'm the founder and inventor of these.

[00:32:45]Magically, who would have thought that this completely changes things because at least you're not taking in the excess of blue. But if you really want to change things, you get a source of infrared and a source of red. So if you look around in my house, there's red light bulbs, red LED light bulbs to balance out the crappy ones. And actually, there's no LED lights in the ceiling either. They're all incandescent. But if you go to hotel room, I travel with a red light bulb.

[00:33:10]There's a reason for it. So guys, I may sound crazy. I may even look crazy with my cool rockstar glasses but I'm just telling you what Brad said 100% true. So I I eat so well. I spend all this money on all this food and you're getting junk light. You got to you don't have to be perfect but it should be dark at night and during the day, if you're not feeling some warmth, just a little bit, your mitochondria don't wake up. So I'm happy that you said this and you said different types of red, different types of infrared.

[00:33:38]It's the same. There's different types of protein, different types of carbs.

[00:33:42]It's it's not different. So I appreciate that you you're going deep on the research as well on that stuff. Yeah.

[00:33:48]That's right. Trying to add back a full spectrum to folks so that Like look, we're it's it's the way our body was designed is to develop and um to absorb the full spectrum of the sun and so that's what you need. Is butt hole sunning real?

[00:34:02]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, it is. People are definitely doing it. Is it effective, I mean? That's a good question.

[00:34:10]Um I haven't gone deep on that one. No pun intended. Um I don't know about yourself. Uh well, there might have been an article in the New York Post titled biohacker bro burns bum.

[00:34:22]Um and it was actually a humor post I did kind of making fun of butt hole sunning. And I got quoted because I said just don't get a sunburn. It's like eating too much spicy food. So um I will I will simply You only make that mistake once, I imagine. Exactly. And and all of it was just made up but um I haven't seen any scientific studies that say it's good for you. It's probably good for you, I would imagine. Uh and certainly getting it on the testes increases nitric oxide which increases vasodilation which gets oxygen into cells. It might even relax some of the pseudo hypoxia. So and it will definitely affect dopamine levels. We have studies on that and it'll affect even erection strength. We have studies on that. So you probably want some sunlight for a variety of reasons but right on the butt hole, who the heck knows? Well, to me I just kind of wonder what was the natural state where humans were getting butt hole sun in you know, in the our ancestral times. So You know I actually call that the bio lane pose.

[00:35:18]Um which is a b i o l a y n e if you guys want to look it up and that's like when you just lay on your back with your legs just cranked apart and just anything you want can enter just right there. So I I think that's what it is.

[00:35:30]Got it. Yeah, you probably heard of that kind of technology, right?

[00:35:34]>> [laughter] >> Yep. Uh and I just got to say I learned about it from his mom.

[00:35:37]So uh on that note, uh I'm sorry. Making fun of bullies is like my love language. So this is really just an act of love. I wanted to talk with you about something that's been one of my side fetishes for a while.

[00:35:51]And that is the endothelium. Yeah.

[00:35:53]>> Now, if you guys are going to endo what?

[00:35:55]That sounds wrong. No, that's not what I'm talking about. So I've been pretty pretty open when I came out of the closet as a mitochondrial fetishist.

[00:36:05]Uh and it was like like I really am obsessed with mitochondria but not in that way. It just because it it turns out like everything that went wrong in my biology even when I was young, it always comes back to mitochondria. And there's all kinds of things that are inputs but like I kind of have a even my aging model with unlimited.life Um we have these high income clients.

[00:36:23]It's always like mitochondria. 90% of them have mitochondrial dysfunction.

[00:36:27]Right? And you're like okay, that leads to this, leads to this and you can you can just see it if you're good at at systems. One of the things that is kind of a side pillar to that is the lining of the arteries. And in my case, um the reason that I care about it is starting when I was about oh 14, I started getting these like weird purple spidery veins in my ankles dude at 14. And I understand now it's because I had a bacterial infection um that likes the lining of the veins and arteries called Bartonella. And because I'm special, I got it from a vampire bat that landed and was feeding on me in the middle of the night on my neck. This actually happened and we caught the bat, took it to the hospital in Colorado. Like this is a wild story. And I but they don't live in the US. I'm like yeah, well this one did. And it and it you know, here it is.

[00:37:17]It was like what? So we didn't understand Bartonella back then but I had I got really sick, all this stuff.

[00:37:23]And this is a symptom of that. So I've had leaky arteries and now I understand the genetics because I've run all the panels we run on our clients in the life extension um practice that we're running. So I understand I was already at risk.

[00:37:39]And I got you blood pressure issues, mast cell activation issues and I had this bacteria that was probably behind a lot of that stuff. And that's been cleared for many years but it kind of trashed things. I'm like all right, I know that I have this I like I got nosebleeds 10 times a day for half my life, too. That's also a problem, right?

[00:37:54]So again, like guys, I was trashed. Far more than you know, every like if I can be this healthy, it's going to be 100 times easier for you. Anyway, um not to make the story too long.

[00:38:03]Um because of this, I got like why am I constantly leaking?

[00:38:08]And it comes down to the endothelium, the lining of your blood vessels in your arteries.

[00:38:15]And even from there, the glycocalyx.

[00:38:17]I've had two episodes just on the glycocalyx which is this tiny little lining of like one cell thick lining that's very fragile on the inside.

[00:38:27]And what's interesting about your work with EWOT is you actually talk about endothelial cell aging. So what is the connection between red light, EWOT and the endothelium now that people know what it is? Yes, it really I think you you really nailed it. It's pretty much when you look at all chronic health conditions, you find that one of the most vulnerable components in the body is the mitochondria. And so they're the first things damaged in so much chronic illness. One of the other most commonly damaged is endothelial cells.

[00:38:59]Endothelial cells, I describe them as bouncers or gatekeepers. They decide one thing gets in and the other doesn't and they line all sorts of things. They line our stomachs. If you ever hear leaky gut syndrome, that just means your endothelial cells inside your gut lining are no longer tight junctions and they're allowing things that shouldn't get through to get through. Yep. And it's the same thing in our circulatory system. So these are the gatekeepers.

[00:39:21]They keep our blood plasma and our red and white blood cells inside the circulatory system while allowing nutrients and oxygen to pass through into our tissues. And so that's their their primary job. It also makes them it as you mentioned, I had Bartonella as well. So we're Bartonella brothers there.

[00:39:38]>> good. Um Yeah. That was actually my hardest And so you start studying because Bartonella attacks endothelial cells.

[00:39:45]>> Yes. Intentionally because what it does is when it weakens them, it gives them access to more tissue in the body. So it's in the circulatory system, it's living in the red blood cells, it attacks your endothelial cells, they start having looser junctions, and it allows them to get into other tissues and infect deeper and deeper. So they're experts at it.

[00:40:03]>> the IRS pretty much.

[00:40:05]Yes, exactly. So the endothelial cells, they're really they're really important because they're gatekeepers. And what happens in aging is all of this inflammaging we are talking about, it's circulating inside your circulatory system, and it causes endothelial swelling. And what's the problem with that is is it leads directly to some of this mitochondrial dysfunction we're talking about. So if as we were talking at the beginning, if you imagine you have these capillaries that are responsible for delivering all the oxygen to your tissues, they're the end runs. They're like where the rubber meets the road as far as oxygen and nutrient transfer. And all of a sudden, they're thinner than a human hair, they're thinner than a red blood cell, any amount of inflammation and swelling all of the sudden throws off the balance. And the only thing saving you from total hypoxia or lack of oxygen is because you do have some natural variation in red blood cells. So while some are, you know, it occluded from coming in, others are small enough they can still fit through, but still it's at a reduced rate. As you can imagine, some of the bigger ones are piling up outside there, and now you have dysfunctional microcirculation.

[00:41:16]And as you know, once you start having dysfunctional microcirculation, that immediately leads to downstream it changes your mitochondria from ox um from aerobic respiration to anaerobic respiration. Now they're on this life support where they're producing 5% of the energy. And when they're there, they're also producing a lot of reactive oxidative species, they're causing a lot of lactic acid metabolic waste problems.

[00:41:42]So now it becomes this circular thing.

[00:41:44]They're producing inflammatory cytokines, which are now getting back in your circulatory system, and it becomes one of these things where it just feeds on itself. It's kind of like a doom loop. Yeah, very well said. A doom loop it is.

[00:41:57]All right. Arterial stiffness is something that is is a real problem with longevity and with aging. And we see this in some of the people in unlimited.life, but not all of them. And this is a a concierge like VIP a year-long like let's extend your life program with with medical doctors and trips and all that stuff.

[00:42:16]Um so we have like a really good data set where 40 50,000 dollars worth of labs on every person. So we know. And one of the unknown markers of longevity um is called pulse wave velocity.

[00:42:30]And pulse wave velocity is interesting cuz we've all seen blood pressure, right? And there's a few cool new devices out there that give you like central blood pressure versus peripheral blood pressure. But what pulse wave velocity does is says, "Okay, when your heart beats, how long does it take for that pressure wave to go through all the the arteries um to get to your wrist?"

[00:42:51]Right? And you imagine if you make a wave in like a really squishy hose, it's going to be like kind of sloshy and slow. And if it's like a cement pipe, you press that wave, it goes through really quickly.

[00:43:02]So the speed of the wave tells you are your arteries like rigid and old and crusty, or are they young and flexible?

[00:43:08]And so it's actually a marker of aging.

[00:43:09]And by that marker I'm 27 No, last one was 24 years old. It varies day to day by about 3 years. So if you ever want to do the aging Olympics or whatever, there's like 600 markers we look at, and they're all different. So I'm excessively young from an arterial perspective cuz I've been taking care of this for 25 years. But everyone can measure that, and it's not even that expensive to get pulse wave velocity. I think most doctors should be doing this instead of or in addition to blood pressure.

[00:43:34]Um and that is a direct measure of like arterial stiffness. But what I want to know, given that measure or another, what is Ewat and red light and maybe infrared light? What does it do for stiffness of your arteries? Yeah. So well, one of the things you need for to help release that stiffness is you need a nitric oxide, right? So nitric oxide, what it does is it helps cause vasodilation. It causes our blood vessels to grow. So when they have to grow and shrink, as you can imagine, anything that's that's helping kind of cohere them, it actually helps release some of that. Now, one of the best ways to do that, we know this is more research than red light, is actually exercise, right? So one of the few things out there that has more research than red light. So number one is when you're exercising, your body's natural compensatory changes is you have vasodilation.

[00:44:25]Um but of course, red light itself also releases nitric oxide, which helps with this dilation and helps with arterial flexibility, which is why it's so interesting that these modalities kind of they both team up at some of the key breakpoints in this whole chain of both aging and chronic illness, which is mitochondrial health and also microcirculation health. Okay.

[00:44:51]And what's the easiest marker to know whether you've got microcirculation and nitric oxide working? Uh for men, it's probably an erection.

[00:45:01]So yeah, the morning kickstand, right?

[00:45:03]>> Yeah. Now, for women, there's also something called morning bean, and you're supposed to get that, too.

[00:45:10]Right? And if you're not with a little bit more vasodilation in the recreational zones, just like your guy, it's a sign that maybe a little bit more nitric oxide or red light or infrared light would be beneficial for you.

[00:45:23]Now, if you don't believe me, get a red and infrared light therapy device and put it over your pelvic area and run it for 15 minutes or so. And notice the warm tingly glow and the vasodilation.

[00:45:38]And it isn't quite as obvious as it is with a guy, but an increase in blood flow, it feels good and you notice it.

[00:45:44]Uh and it's normal and healthy for men and women to wake up with extra blood flow in those regions if your nitric oxide is working well. And yes, it varies with hormones and where you are in your cycle as well. But if you're not experiencing that, at least at the times when you would normally have more blood flow, like say when you're ovulating, um then maybe something's off in your nitric oxide, not in your hormones.

[00:46:06]Sound accurate? Yeah, sounds right.

[00:46:09]Cool. You ever heard of morning bean before? I hadn't. That's a new one by me. It's the funniest thing I've ever heard of, and a friend told me that about 6 months ago, and I started laughing. I'm like, "What a great name."

[00:46:20]But yeah, like they there should be more blood flow there, but we just didn't have a word for it. And the kickstand works for guys, but our morning wood, of course. We can reverse arterial stiffness, increase nitric oxide using Is it more Ewat or more red and infrared that does that?

[00:46:33]Well, they both do it through different kind of mechanisms, really. Yeah. Let's talk about detoxing and lungs. Most people think of the liver, may maybe the kidneys, maybe sweating in the skin.

[00:46:46]What do lungs do for detox? Wow.

[00:46:48]Actually, lungs are the biggest detox organ in the body. You detox about 70% of all toxins through your lungs. And the way to kind of figure this out and realize it for yourself is think about that night after your friend had a bender and you can just smell the alcohol wafting off of them. Or they ate a big bowl of Chinese food the night before and you can smell all of that garlic coming off them, right? So that's your body actually eliminating toxins through your lungs. So what's interesting about detoxification, to your point, not only does it come through the lungs, but what people don't recognize is how critical oxygen itself is in the detoxification process. I'm really happy you talked about that cuz lungs are maybe under appreciated, and it seems like they were attacked the most with the COVID bioweapon thing that happened.

[00:47:38]Um and I don't know. Sometimes I just feel like a conspiracy theorist when I say that, but I also like to be reality based. So the preponderance of evidence is that bad people did it to us, and it really trashed a lot of people's lungs.

[00:47:50]And there's systemic mitochondrial and immune system damage that comes from having high amounts of the spike protein and you whether you got it via infection or and even worse injection. But when that stuff gets to the lungs, it really causes damage to lungs.

[00:48:07]And I've seen a lot of people benefit just by doing red and infrared light over the lungs.

[00:48:12]Um but what does Ewat do when people have long COVID or lung damage? Yeah. Um well, so it's a few things as we we kind of talked about. So when your mitochondria are damaged and they're in this low energy state, one of the first things they stop doing is they stop taking out the trash. They produce more metabolic waste, it builds up inside the cell walls, and they can't take it out. And once you reestablish normal oxygenation of the cells and normal energetic status, of course, they start taking out the trash, so to speak.

[00:48:44]But also, you need that oxygen to as part of a reaction to break down these chemicals. So our elimination organs, our liver, our kidneys, our our bowels, they can only eliminate certain things.

[00:48:56]And to pass them through our lymphatic system or circulatory system, they and into our kidneys and so forth, they need to be broken down. And so they often go through an oxidative reactions to help break them down into something simpler.

[00:49:08]And so it's the same thing. Um but also, when your lungs are damaged, damage requires energy for repair at the very base of it.

[00:49:17]>> Yes.

[00:49:18]And so when you're reestablishing normal oxygenation, and so if you can imagine lung tissue that's damaged, it's not able to absorb as much oxygen as it's supposed to. And so when you're enriching the air so it doesn't have to be as efficient to get more oxygen into the cells, you're reestablishing the mitochondria and the energy balance, and now they have that excess energy, if you will, for repair. Yep. Nothing will heal if the mitochondria can't make enough energy. It comes down to that. If the mitochondria feel like the combination of your emotional stress, your physiological stress, whether it's from an infection, an injury, or just from exercise, or whatever, they have to go, "Oh, I have excess energy above those two things so that I can feel safe." And if I feel safe, I will then allocate energy to recovery. If I feel stressed, I will allocate it towards defense. Right. And it it's so logical, and it's so dumb, and this is why meditation makes you heal faster. That's why mitochondria enhancement makes you heal faster.

[00:50:16]And one of the things I find most important is recovery. And that's why people come into an Upgrade Labs. 80% of what I'm going to tell you to do is mitochondrial efficiency and recovery.

[00:50:24]It's not lift heavy, but we have a AI machine so you don't have to lift very heavy very much to grow muscle. And it's not do more cardio. Like 15 minutes a week is all you need, and do some EWOT if you want to. We don't do EWOT there, but, you know, it it's something I definitely support. Um they can come to 1000 Roads to do that. You 1000roads.com/dave.

[00:50:43]And um whatever it is, if you're thinking about more exercise better, it's not how healing works. Not even a little bit. It's less stress, less toxins, more mitochondria function, more recovery, and a signal to heal. And I think that signal is in large part red and infrared light, in addition to just having enough oxygen. Sounds accurate? Sounds right to me.

[00:51:05]Well, um sounds like we're Sounds like we're both epic biohackers, and I appreciate coming on the show and uh talking about this. EWOT's a a little-known corner of the biohacking universe. Uh you might see, you know, Tour de France athletes doing it, or, you know, a few professional athletes here and there, but I think it's under respected, and the work you're doing to make it incredibly affordable, and to use a bag, and also you don't have to have a really expensive and annoying tank of oxygen, um so it's sustainable and affordable. A good move um all the way around, and you're 100% right. Stacking with red light totally works in my experience, so thanks thanks for publicizing it, and just doing the work to make it so people can get it now without breaking the bank.

[00:51:49]You bet. Thank you. Guys, 1000roads.com/dave.

[00:51:53]Uh check it out.

[00:51:54]See you [music] next time on the Human Upgrade podcast.