By comparison to the ambition of Bulletproof Coffee founder Dave Asprey, Howard Schultz’s idea of running for president seems reasonable — after all, a whole string of humans have indeed been elected to the presidency. But none have lived to the age to which self-described “biohacker” Asprey aspires.
Perhaps you’ve had enough for one week of wealthy Pacific Northwest coffee entrepreneurs with big ideas and bigger ambitions.
If not, take a gulp of Bulletproof Coffee founder Dave Asprey’s plan.
By comparison, Howard Schultz’s idea of running for president seems reasonable — after all, a whole string of humans have indeed been elected president of these United States.
But no known human has accomplished what Asprey proclaims as his goal: living to the age of 180.
Buffed and bare-chested, the 45-year-old Asprey appears in the latest issue of Men’s Health under a large headline that declares, “The Bulletproof Coffee Founder Has Spent $1 Million in His Quest to Live to 180.”
Maybe there’s something about running a Northwest coffee chain that makes a man think he can conquer anything, including age or the other Washington. Remember the not-so-long-ago publicity run of former Tully’s Coffee owner, Stormy Daniels lawyer, cable TV omnipresence and onetime presidential candidate wannabe Michael Avenatti?
Bulletproof 360, as the company is known, is based in downtown Seattle and has a handful of cafes in trendsetter locales, from South Lake Union to Santa Monica and Los Angeles, selling beverages, nutrition bars, supplements and capsules, among them “convenient travel packs of Brain Octane oil.” All promise to enhance the buyer’s energy, mental abilities and more. Also available are Asprey’s books on subjects from nutrition to fertility.
The Whole Foods and Sprouts grocery chains began carrying Bulletproof products last year ($19.99 per pound for “the Mentalist” coffee at Whole Foods), and the company raised more than $25 million in its latest venture financing, according to a regulatory filing. Not everyone is a fan, however.
Asprey, who lives in Victoria, B.C., describes himself as a biohacker who has learned through experimentation. According to a publicist, his home is packed with “state-of-the-art biohacking equipment to supercharge your body and upgrade your brain.”
He told Men’s Health that a few days before the interview, he’d been to a surgeon in Park City, Utah, who “harvested half a liter of bone marrow from his hips, filtered out the stem cells, and injected them into every joint in his body. He then threaded a cannula along Asprey’s spinal column and injected stem cells inside his spinal cord and into his cerebral fluid.”
To live a century longer than most people, he plans to “get his own stem cells injected into him every six months, take 100 supplements a day, follow a strict diet, bathe in infrared light, hang out in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and wear goofy yellow-lensed glasses every time he gets on an airplane.”
There have also been self-experiments with treatments such as exposure to extreme cold or infrared lights.
Beyond the buttered coffee that is its core product — and Asprey’s books, which are everywhere in the company’s Westlake Avenue cafe — Bulletproof 360 markets items such as a $1,495 vibrating platform (The Bulletproof Vibe Whole Body Vibration Plate). According to Men’s Health, Asprey also pitches “five-day, $15,000 brain-training retreats that promise to raise your IQ and put your mind in the same state as that of a Zen monk who’s been meditating for 40 years.”
With roots in Silicon Valley and its readiness to overturn conventional wisdom, Asprey’s biohacking credo may be striking a chord. As Men’s Health concludes, “It’s not always easy to parse which of the many biohacks Asprey touts are scammy or overstated, which are plain old common sense, and which are poised to become the hot new thing.”
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