Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey has invested years - and millions of dollars - in biohacking. So, is it a frenzied messiah? Or are you after something?
According to the portal "Must", by the conventional view, Dave Asprey is decidedly a middle-aged man. He is 48 years old, married, the father of two school-age children, and the proud possessor of some gray hair. He likes gadgets, trinkets, good coffee and fitness trends. And he has a podcast. However, conventional vision is one of Asprey's two worst nightmares. The other is aging. And so he doesn't consider himself a middle-aged man at all. No. At 48, Asprey is convinced that he is the oldest young adult in the world. "Yes, that's how I see myself," he says, smiling at the camera for our conversation via Zoom. "I'm in the 28% of my life span." He plans to live to be 180. Is that what the madness of youth is all about?
Dave Asprey is a biohacker. Or, as he explains, he is "the father of biohacking". An investor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, he has been pioneering the practice of applying a hacker's approach to his own mind and body for almost two decades. Using technological innovations, lots of self-experimentation, and necessarily unlimited doses of optimism, biohackers believe they can achieve levels of efficiency and longevity never before seen in humans.
No one takes this more seriously than Asprey, an American who says he has spent more than two million dollars 'controlling his own biology', optimizing his existence by reducing his biological age - and apparently managing to add another 20 points to his IQ along the way.
Seventeen years ago Asprey was trekking in Tibet when he was stricken with altitude sickness [hypobaropathy; also known as mountain sickness, altitude sickness, or soroche]. The local people gave him a traditional tea with butter made from yak milk. After drinking a cup of that tea, Asprey felt his first - but definitely not his last - boost from the Messiah Complex: he was a man reborn. Five years after that trek, he posted a recipe online and later launched Bulletproof coffee, a morning beverage consisting of a blend of brewed coffee, butter obtained from the milk of pasture-fed animals, and MCT-based oil (a derivative of coconut oil with easily digestible fats). He stated that this would make us feel more energetic, more focused, and satiated to the point that we would not be snacking afterwards. A new food fad was born.
In just a few years, the 'usual suspects' have all converted to Bulletproof - Silicon Valley individuals, wealthy influencers from the fitness world, a physical coffee retailer, and acolytes like David Beckham, Ed Sheeran, and even Tom Watson, the former UK Labour MP who has become a symbol of weight loss. Even the grand dame of pseudoscience for famous people, Gwyneth Paltrow, gave her approval by serving this coffee at her first Goop Wellness Summit [Goop is Paltrow's lifestyle brand].
Today, Asprey estimates that well over 150 million cups of her creamy, oily elixir have been consumed. His Instagram followers number over 300,000, and he has written books on a variety of topics, from aging to 'how to win at life,' as well as one just out, Fast This Way. He claims that his podcast, Bulletproof Radio, has been downloaded 175 million times. And, according to the Internet, his net worth amounts to $27.5 million. "You shouldn't believe what you read online. I don't know where the hell that stuff comes from," he says.
Well, but surely you have money? "Oh, of course I do. I'm financially well off, yes."