Dave Asprey literally invented the term “biohacking” — his name’s even in the dictionary for it.
He’s spent over $2 million in the last two decades testing every protocol imaginable.
But here’s the twist: The most expensive biohacks aren’t always most effective.
In a recent video, Asprey revealed that his most powerful, measurable life changes came from cheap, simple interventions — ones he still uses daily and that anyone can access for under $200.
Jump to:
- Your Bedroom Is a Biological Battleground
- Red Light Resets Your Circadian Rhythm
- Blackout Curtains Block Midnight Sabotage
- Junk Light-Blocking Glasses Complete Your Arsenal
- Creatine Powers Your Brain, Not Just Muscles
- MCT Oil Switches Your Fuel Source
- Spermidine Turns On Cellular Cleanup
- Magnesium Unlocks Deep Sleep Repair
- The Complete $200 Biohacking Stack
- Biohacking Isn’t Reserved for Millionaires
Your Bedroom Is a Biological Battleground
Most people rush toward pills when they start biohacking. Asprey understands that impulse — supplements can be foundational.
But dramatic biological shifts don’t always come from what you swallow. They come from where you sleep.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
You spend about a third of your entire life completely unconscious in one specific room.
During sleep, your body performs critical repair: clearing dead cells, rebuilding muscle, washing toxins from your brain. If your environment sends wrong signals, repair work stalls.
That accumulated damage makes you weak, tired, anxious, and old.
Tracking Sleep Revealed Everything
Years ago, Asprey rigorously tracked his sleep data. Despite doing “everything right” with diet, supplements, and exercise, he woke up stressed and exhausted with brutal brain fog.
So he changed his light environment before and during sleep. Results were massive.
I went from sleeping about 7 or 8 hours a night and getting 5 minutes of deep sleep to going to bed easily in under 3 minutes and getting 90 minutes of deep sleep and 90 minutes of REM sleep in 6 and 1/2 hours.
He transformed from worst sleeper to best sleeper — and felt like an entirely different human being.
Red Light Resets Your Circadian Rhythm
For billions of years, bright light after sunset meant moonlight, fire, maybe twinkling stars. That’s it.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Your biology was never designed to handle anything brighter than campfire after dark.
When you flip on bright white bathroom lights at 10 p.m., you send massive, confusing signals straight into mitochondria and brain.
Your body literally thinks the sun just came up.
Cortisol spikes. Stress hormones activate. Your nervous system prepares for morning.
Body won’t shut down because it thinks you have an entire day of survival ahead.
Swap Bulbs for $8
Cheap red LED bulbs operate on completely different wavelengths than white or blue light. When eyes see dim red bulbs at night, your brain thinks sun has set.
Mitochondria don’t process red light but do use blue and white light for cellular communication.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Red light gives your body permission to shut down. Cortisol drops, nervous system calms, body naturally winds down.
Blackout Curtains Block Midnight Sabotage
Fixing bulbs handles pre-bed time. But ambient street lighting sneaking into your bedroom during sleep creates different problems.
Even tiny amounts of light hitting eyelids and skin trigger wake-up signals.
It’s the biological equivalent of someone slamming the big emergency button at a factory and shutting down the entire assembly line.
Cellular repair stops mid-process.
Blackout curtains cost under $30 and completely eliminate ambient light interference. Combined with red bulbs, you’ve spent $40-50 and eliminated two biggest sleep destroyers.
Junk Light-Blocking Glasses Complete Your Arsenal
Asprey never leaves home without his TrueDark glasses — ones he invented specifically to block harmful light frequencies.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Ever wake up middle of night, quickly check your phone for time, then lie awake staring at ceiling for an hour?
Maybe it’s because of the bright white blue light from your screen that literally told your brain it’s morning.
Even looking at phones for seconds changes melanopsin sensors in eyes, which communicate with brain’s SCN, signaling “daytime.”
Checking clock on bright phone screen can push back deep sleep cycle by an hour.
Not All Blue Blockers Work
Entry-level blue light-blocking glasses run about $20. Problem? They don’t work well enough.
Blocking blue during day is too much. Blocking only blue at night isn’t enough.
You got to block everything.
Asprey’s TrueDark glasses use layered filters blocking specific narrow spectrums simultaneously — targeting exact wavelengths that communicate with mitochondria affecting sleep.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Creatine Powers Your Brain, Not Just Muscles
Once sleep is dialed in, next step involves what you put in your body during waking hours.
Asprey has tested nearly every supplement available over 30 years and formulated top-selling ones himself. His verdict? Most don’t deliver on promises.
But specific, incredibly cheap supplements have massive, immediate impact. He starts every day with creatine — not for bodybuilding, but for brain power.
Cellular Energy Explained
Every cell is powered by mitochondria. When cells use up all energy and mitochondria can’t keep producing it, you crash.
Creatine acts like rapid charging station for cellular batteries. It allows cells to make more ATP — fuel of life itself — beyond what even cleanest diet provides.
It is an energy enhancer, and it’s real energy, the energy of life.
You’re making cells physically better at producing and recycling natural energy.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Brain Burns 20% of Total Energy
Your brain comprises only 2% of body weight but burns up to 20% of total daily energy. Only your heart comes close.
Unlike many supplements, creatine crosses blood-brain barrier. Brain mitochondria can actually use it.
When brain energy reserves fill up, you think clearly all day. When empty? Brain fog, brutal afternoon fatigue, inability to concentrate, emotional reactivity.
It takes energy to not be emotionally reactive.
Over 1,000 published studies spanning 40+ years prove creatine’s safety and effectiveness.
Dosing and Stacking
One scoop in morning provides noticeably better quality of life. Two scoops? Even better for brain penetration.
Asprey puts creatine directly in high-quality coffee (his Danger Coffee), which raises plasma levels so it enters brain more effectively.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Add L-theanine (about $15 for month’s supply) at 100-200mg with coffee, and magic happens: sharp caffeine energy becomes smooth, calm, focused — less jittery.
MCT Oil Switches Your Fuel Source
Even with creatine charging batteries and clean coffee with L-theanine, one major problem remains: You’re likely burning only glucose for fuel all morning.
High-carb breakfasts create fast energy spikes followed by massive drops. By late morning, you’re dragging through work, craving more sugar just to survive.
MCT oil changes everything.
Asprey Created Billion-Dollar MCT Industry
While running Bulletproof (which he no longer operates), Asprey made MCT oil into billion-dollar category. Before that, nobody knew about it.
Your body converts MCT oil into ketones incredibly fast. Ketones are awesome brain fuel.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Traditional keto diet requires 3-4 days without carbs and limited protein to generate ketones. Or you could just add MCT oil to whatever you’re eating.
- MCT oil won’t spike blood sugar
- Can’t be stored as fat
- Doesn’t cause glucose crash
- Provides steady, clean energy stream all day
Even when blood sugar fluctuates, ketones serve as backup fuel.
Put one to two tablespoons MCT oil in coffee and blend it (don’t let it float). Asprey does this almost every morning. Difference in fullness and brain energy is very noticeable.
Spermidine Turns On Cellular Cleanup
Inside every cell lives automatic cleanup system called autophagy — literally meaning “self-eating.”
Think of autophagy like microscopic recycling plant. When running, cells scan your entire body finding weak cells, worn-out energy batteries, cellular junk sitting around like zombies.
They break down junk into raw materials, then reuse those same materials building brand new, stronger, healthier cells.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Cells literally rebuild themselves from inside out.
Modern Life Shut Down Your Recycling Plant
For most people, autophagy is completely shut down due to modern diets, constant stress, and around-the-clock eating.
Damaged material sits in cells creating free radicals (inflammation), dragging healthy cells down with weak ones.
That accumulation of cellular garbage is aging at biological level.
Nobel Prize-Winning Discovery
In 2016, Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi won Nobel Prize for discovering exactly how autophagy works and how to turn it back on.
He discovered specific mechanism acting like parking brake on your recycling plant. As long as brake stays pulled, autophagy can’t run.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Naturally occurring compound called spermidine releases that brake. Month’s supply of high-quality spermidine runs about $30.
When you take it, biological roadblock moves aside. Cleanup system fires back up. Body finally clears accumulated damage and rebuilds cells from scratch.
Magnesium Unlocks Deep Sleep Repair
Here’s critical catch most people miss: Massive cellular cleanup primarily runs during deep sleep.
Without actually reaching deep restorative sleep, doesn’t matter how much spermidine you take. Recycling plant never gets chance to fully activate.
Main reason you’re struggling to reach deep sleep? Chronic magnesium deficiency.
300+ Processes Depend on Magnesium
Magnesium is involved in over 300 different bodily processes, including sleep. Modern farming and food processing stripped natural magnesium from food you eat.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
For nervous system to calm down and shift into deep sleep state — or for mitochondria to make maximum energy — you must supplement magnesium.
Specifically, highly absorbable form called magnesium bisglycinate. This is only form Asprey recommends.
Why Chelated Matters
It’s chelated — bound to glycine, an amino acid supporting calm on its own. Double benefit.
This form absorbs better than any other. Many brands sell expensive magnesium blends with multiple types, but glycinate covers entire base.
Standard magnesium supplements cause cramping or digestive disasters because they’re cheap, poorly absorbed forms. If body can’t absorb it, it exits unpleasantly.
Properly chelated magnesium bisglycinate avoids all that. Asprey makes one called Magnesium 101 that’s exceptionally clean, gentle on stomach, actually gets into cells where needed.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
Month’s supply runs about $20.
Spermidine turns on the cleanup system. Magnesium glycinate makes sure you actually get into deep sleep where the cleanup happens.
The Complete $200 Biohacking Stack
Here’s what entire foundational stack looks like:
External Environment
- Red LED bulbs: $10-15
- Blackout curtains: $20-30
- TrueDark glasses: Varies (entry-level blue blockers ~$20)
Buy once, protect sleep every single night.
Internal Fuel
- Creatine: ~$20/month
- L-theanine: ~$15/month
- MCT oil: ~$20/month
- Danger Coffee: ~$24/month (includes $22 worth of trace minerals you’d otherwise buy separately)
Keeps brain energy steady and sharp all day.
Deep Cellular Repair
- Spermidine: ~$30/month
- Magnesium bisglycinate (Magnesium 101): ~$20/month
Total: Approximately $200 initial investment. Every month after drops to around $140 on subscription.
Biohacking Isn’t Reserved for Millionaires
Asprey emphasizes you don’t need elite wealth or knowledge to start biohacking.
If you want something simple that actually works, this is one of the most effective tools I’ve used to build strength, conditioning, and endurance without needing a full gym setup.
- Full-body training with one weight using swings, squats, and presses
- Solid cast iron build that feels stable and lasts for years
- Comfortable grip that makes high-rep workouts easier to handle
It’s just about changing the environment around you so that it works better for your body and so your body works better.
Since his first post on biohacking in 2011, 60% of practitioners have been women. It’s for all humans at all ages because everyone wants control over their state.
Everyone wants more energy, more peace, feeling good in their bodies.
These aren’t advanced protocols requiring stem cells or gene therapy. They’re cheap, simple tools that work fast and first — low-hanging fruit that remain core parts of Asprey’s daily routine even after spending $2.5 million upgrading his biology.
Your biology requires certain basic things to function the way it was meant to and you just learned exactly what those things are and how little they can cost.
