Dave Asprey

Your 20s Can Heal Pandemic Damage Through New Inputs

If you're in your 20s and you want to feel unstoppable, this is for you... Let's be honest. Your generation got screwed. More anxiety, more depression, less fertility, lower IQ than any generation before you. And most of it traces back to biology. Real, measurable damage to your developing brain and body during years when you had no say in any of it. You were forced to wear masks during the exact years when learning to read faces is how your brain wires itself. You were kept home during developmental windows that don't come back. You were repeatedly subjected to a medical experiment that we now know causes brain inflammation, chronic fatigue, allergies, and in some cases a lot worse. Doctors and psychologists tried to warn people and lost their careers for it. They were right. And you're living with the fallout right now whether you realize it or not. The good news is that biology responds to inputs. You can change the inputs. I know this because my health was in shambles when I was your age. I hit 300 pounds at age 23. I had chronic fatigue syndrome. And I used to have autism. Yeah, I used to. And anxiety. And rage. And an inflamed brain. All the stuff you’re supposed to get when you’re 80, I got when I was 25. It sucked. So I literally invented the biohacking industry. Those red light panels, the cool glasses, all the supplements, the intermittent fasting, some of what you now call looksmaxxing. 9 major books on fixing your brain and body. Four New York Times best sellers. 550 million downloads of my Webby award-winning podcast. Seriously, I started studying this because my life depended on it when I was 26. In freakin 1998. I never wrote about it until 2011 when I started the movement. When you were something like four years old. So what I’m sharing here is time tested by me in my early 20s and it’s helped millions of people get their brains back, stop being anxious, and look good as a side effect. It works. Biohacking isn’t just for nerds or millionaires. It just means that you change the environment around you and inside of you so you have control over your state: like how you feel or how you look. No more guess work. Science. And what works for the bro next to you may not work for you because genetics. Here’s what I would do. If you have any kind of lingering symptoms from Covid at all, I would take 10,000 IU of nattokinase. It’s an extract of fermented soy that breaks up micro blood clots that everyone with symptoms seems to have. It will lower your risk of almost everything. I’ve been taking it or something similar since I was 25. Every night. Empty stomach. Not expensive. Take one Claritin and one Pepcid AC in the morning and at night for a week. If your brain fog clears up and you feel less anxious and your body hurts less, congratulations, you have mast cell activation syndrome which was triggered by the vaccine or in rare cases by the virus itself. This is what is behind chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and long Covid. Different trigger, same mechanism. Learn to cook. Seriously, the amount of omega six oil in restaurant food is embarrassing. Seed oils and ultra-processed foods inflame your body and your brain. A more inflamed brain is depressed and anxious. It’s mechanistic. Start with soup. It’s not very hard. No, not from a can. Boil some water in a pot. Add some salt and herbs and toss in some chunks of meat or ground meat and some frozen vegetables and stir around for a little while until the meat looks mostly cooked. Use real dried herbs, not soup mix or spice mix that always has MSG that gives you headaches and cravings. You’ll save a ton of money and be healthier. Your new favorite fats are grass fed butter and extra virgin olive oil. Don’t use vegetable/seed oils (like canola, sunflower, soybean) ever. Get a red light bulb and a dimmer switch. Staring at LED lights after the sun goes down disrupts your circadian rhythm and causes depression and anxiety. Darkness at night is as important as being able to see during the day. At least your mitochondria think so. If you’re in a dorm, get some TrueDark glasses. Yes, I started that company 10 years ago so that I wouldn’t stay up all night. Published results in a medical journal. About 100 bucks. It won’t change my life if you buy them, but it will change yours. And finally, vitamin DAKE and a multimineral supplement. Yes, these are the least sexy and most affordable supplements that carry the biggest bang for your buck. All of the fancy cognitive enhancers and trendy supplements won’t work if your body doesn’t have enough zinc or manganese or vitamin D. Just having adequate vitamin D alone made you more resilient to the pandemic that was the source of all this biological chaos you’re dealing with. There’s tons more you can learn, just search for my name and whatever you want to know about and health and there’s probably something on YouTube already. And it may seem like the whole world is stacked against you. The lack of connection, endless phones, AI, the job market. It’s absolutely not fair. But the world never was fair. The great generation that went off and fought World War I was your age. I’d rather be in your shoes than theirs. Every generation has a bunch of crap they have to deal with. But there’s something you’ll learn. Every single person older than you has been your age and dealt with basically the same stuff you’re dealing with. The uncertainty, the learning, the stress, the expectations, finding your tribe, making your mark in the world, all of it. And we just want you to win. We just don’t want you to make all the mistakes we did. So ask anyone older than you what they would do and they will tell you for free. I’m saying this because in my 20s I started hanging out with a bunch of 80-year-olds actively reversing their age. They taught me everything that is now in the world of biohacking. So we’re here for you and the vast majority of adults know what fuckery you’ve experienced because we lived through it also, but we had fully formed brains. You didn’t. So it’s time to take really good care of your brain. Who knows what you might do?