was bruised from all that hiking, and I could barely walk across the street even using two trekking poles. I had exactly one week to recover before setting out on a rugged 26-mile walk at 18,000-feet elevation around Mount Kailash, which is considered to be the holiest mountain in the world. I knew that eating some extra collagen would be beneficial for my joints, but at the time collagen supplements didn’t exist and there was no bone broth to be found in Tibet. I had to get creative.
The next day, the bus I was in stopped about halfway between Kathmandu and Lhasa in a town with only one restaurant. It had mud walls and a dirt floor and was filled with locals. I asked a Chinese friend from the bus to read the menu for me and quickly ascertained that the best source of collagen in the place was … pig’s ears. Without hesitation, I ordered it, and a few minutes later I came face-to-face with a giant bowl of cold boiled pig’s ears. I looked around to see if Joe Rogan, the host of Fear Factor, was hiding to challenge me to eat them for an absurd cash prize, but he was nowhere to be seen.
I had the idea that the pig’s ears would somehow be more palatable if I could find a way to warm them up, so I ordered some watery soup and dipped the ears in one at a time before biting into their rubbery blandness. It was the second worst meal of my life. (The winner, during that same trip, was Chinese military ration sardines heated over a yak dung fire.) The pig’s ears didn’t have much taste, but the texture was wholly unappealing. However, I was shocked when I woke up the next morning and could walk without using trekking poles. Two days later, I could jog up a short hill. That is the magic of collagen. But I didn’t want to have to eat pig’s ears every time my knees hurt, so I worked hard to bring collagen to the market years later. I just couldn’t see blending pig’s ears into yak butter tea!
While I was in Tibet I met many old yet vital, energetic people and learned about their practices for pursuing a long, rich life. As I sat with meditation masters and Buddhist monks, I saw that a mind that can control its response to stress is the world’s most advanced anti-aging technology. If you’re walking around in a perfect environment eating all the right foods but your fight-or-flight response is always switched on like mine used to be, there is no doubt you’ll age more quickly.
I made it to Mount Kailash thanks in part to the collagen in those pig’s ears, but between the elevation and below-zero temperatures, I was hurting. Chilled, hypoxic, and exhausted, I staggered into a small guesthouse, where a kind Tibetan woman handed me a creamy cup of traditional yak butter tea. It was delicious, but more important, I felt like it brought me back to life. I even wrote about it in my travel journal. The air was still thin, but I was suddenly and remarkably full of energy, and I had to understand why. You’re not supposed to want to dance when you’re at 18,000 feet.
When I returned home I brewed some tea, tossed it in the blender with some butter, and was left with a greasy cup of tea that most certainly did not impart any mental clarity, unless you count the adrenaline from mild revulsion. Clearly, something different was happening back in Tibet. Figuring my problem was the tea, I spent a ridiculous $200 on a variety of high-end teas from a local Chinese merchant, but none of them had the magical effect I remembered. So I went to my local Whole Foods and another gourmet store, where I bought every single brand of butter from around the world to see if that was the variable that mattered. I tested twenty-four butters, and learned the trick was to use unsalted butter from grass-fed cows. You simply don’t get the same results using butter from cows that eat corn and soy, because those oils end up in the butter, giving you more omega-6 fats. The yaks that provided the milk for the butter I had in Tibet certainly didn’t eat any corn, because it doesn’t grow there!
From my anti-aging work, I knew about the healthy fat in coconut oil, so I began experimenting with adding coconut milk and oil along with the butter, but the coconut flavor was too strong, and it didn’t add any more energy than butter alone. So I switched from tea to coffee, my first love. The coffee stood up to the coconut oil better than tea, but the real magic happened when I switched from coconut oil to concentrated oil that is extracted from coconut oil called medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil. More than 50 percent of the fat in coconut oil comes from the different subtypes of medium-chain triglycerides. There are four types of MCT oils. All are flavorless, but the rare types convert effectively into ketones, your mitochondria’s preferred fuel source. This was the genesis of Bulletproof Coffee.
The only problem was that MCT oil caused “disaster pants” even though it helped my brain. I should have bought stock in Charmin as I worked through that problem … The solution was to remove certain types of MCT using triple distillation and then use a special filtration process, leaving only one type (eight-chain MCT), which became Brain Octane Oil. (Yes, I sell it. I use it. I give it to my kids. It works. Someone had to do it! It created a revolution in food.)
You may think that avoiding carbs or fasting for a few days are the only ways to enter ketosis (the state in which your body burns fat for fuel), but adding MCT or Brain Octane Oil to your diet hacks ketosis. Brain Octane turns into ketones when you consume it, even if carbs are present. Research that came out after I launched Brain Octane shows that it raises ketone levels four times more than coconut oil and twice as much as normal MCT oil.23 In fact, the study says, “In healthy adults, C8 [the exact triple distilled version in Brain Octane] alone had the highest net ketogenic effect over 8 hours,” and it could “help in developing ketogenic supplements designed to counteract deteriorating brain glucose uptake associated with aging.”
Normal MCT oil is a conundrum for oil chemists. There are four different lengths of fats that are called MCT. All four are technically saturated fats, but unlike other saturated fats, your body won’t use MCTs to make cell membranes. It’s as if they are meant to be burned for energy. It is more accurate and useful to start calling MCTs “energy fats” instead of saturated fats. That’s why I do not count MCT oil as a saturated fat and why you can laugh at anyone who says to avoid MCT because it’s saturated. Sadly, the most abundant and cheap MCT, lauric acid, which makes up half of coconut oil, does not have these special energy powers.
To live longer and heal faster, I recommend adding either C8, its weaker cousin MCT, or its even weaker cousin coconut oil to your coffee, your salad dressings, smoothies, and so on. My kids love it drizzled on sushi! These “energy fats” do not count in the recommended ratios of fat in your anti-aging diet, as they will convert to energy instead of being stored on your body. These are extra/unlimited sources of fat. Also, when it comes to sourcing, I recommend purchasing MCT oil made from coconut oil, not palm oil. Most MCT is derived from palm oil, and palm deforestation poses a serious threat to the environment and kills orangutans. I switched to a coconut-derived MCT oil several years ago, because I simply couldn’t imagine feeding oil to my kids that was created from practices that harm the environment they will inherit.
The discovery of using energy fats in the morning helped me benefit from autophagy because I was able to fast without getting cold or hangry (which, by the way, was added to the dictionary in 2018, the same year as biohacking). Because butter and MCT oil do not contain any appreciable quantity of protein, I was able to feel full and burn ketones while temporarily stressing my cells, which thought I was fasting and started recycling protein more rapidly. This boost in autophagy without hunger is one of the most profound benefits of Bulletproof Coffee. It is a permanent part of my quest to live to at least a hundred and eighty.
Yet, since I made my first cup in 2004, I’ve continued to discover more reasons why it works. To my surprise, one of them has to do with melanin, the pigment in your skin, which also exists in other parts of the body. When exposed to sunlight or mechanical vibration, new research indicates that melanin likely has the power to break apart water molecules, freeing up oxygen and electrons that your mitochondria can use to make energy.24 Our bodies actually create melanin by linking together polyphenols, chemicals that occur naturally in plants. Polyphenols are packed with antioxidants and thus offer us a powerful defense against aging. The best ways to stimulate melanin production are to eat plenty of leafy green plants and herbs, drink tea and coffee, get adequate sun exposure, and exercise regularly.
This new information about melanin made me think back to my time in Tibet. I noticed that locals who carried all their belongings on the backs of yaks made sure to always have blenders hooked to portable batteries just to make yak butter tea. They