Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Head Strong covers the basic idea that mitochondria, the power generators of your cells, are the reason you experience symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, and an overall lack of energy. A cause of the mitochondria dysfunction is the presence of mycotoxins, which prevent the mitochondria from functioning to their capabilities. The book covers many 'hacks' to ensure mitochondria are performing to their peak levels. Like many, I do experience brain fog quite a bit, and do feel tired longer than I used to. My hopes for the book was to change either my lifestyle or eating habits enough to get this energy back. The good: Many of the hacks in the book have proven merits. Avoid blue light when going to sleep, ensure you're eating enough good fats. Use MCT oil instead of regular coconut oil. Eat grass-fed beef, instead of grain-fed or hormones. Somewhat common knowledge, but still good info. The bad: The near excessive push of 'upgraded' products. While the author clearly admits this book promotes his own ingredients, it is nearly impossible to follow the prescribed plan without at least purchasing some of these rather expensive products. The ugly: Is there any evidence that any of these 'upgraded' products, sold at a premium, are that much better than anything else? Let's look at Bulletproof Coffee, a key topic of the book, and one that is mentioned 29 different times in various areas of the book. Bulletproof Coffee claims to absent of certain mold, which creates mycotoxins. This mold is apparently responsible for not just the bitter properties of coffee, but seriously damaging your mitochondria causing significant depletion of energy levels. The coffee industry has solved the mold problem decades ago through the process of wet processing coffee. Throughout the book, the author attempts to discredit the process, indicating it's not enough and still leaves traces of mould. However, studies comparing BulletProof coffee to a random selection of 3 other bags indicated no significant toxic mold amount was present. Digging a bit further, I ran into Joe Rogan's follow up questions after his original interview with the author, which still remain unanswered: - Why is Bulletproof Coffee's process a secret, when the coffee industry publishes a well known technique to prevent mold? - Why is there no 'packaged on date' on the coffee? This is a big red flag when it comes to food, especially coffee - Since coffee is given an industry rating out of 100 for quality that factors in mytotoxin levels, why does up to 70% of coffee claimed to be full of mytotoxins, end up get a high grade? Don't take my word for it, I'm not a toxicologist and I don't even drink coffee every day. I'd encourage you to look up pubmed and published articles by researchers with doctorates who do this daily for a living and have debunked this myth of mould levels in coffee causing a drop in energy levels. There is quite a good thorough debunking of the concepts in Gizmodo (yes, the tech magazine), that does a good job of summarizing the studies in one location. These far outweigh the claims of one entrepreneur of ideas who have no medical or scientific background to validate this significant claim. Since the questions were unanswered, I took the liberty to research the author a bit more to find out if he had any response, and found some interesting facts. What is not revealed in this particular book (but in his blog) is Asprey's secret source for the amazing energy he gets - Adrafinil and/or Modafinil (wakefulness drug and schedule IV controlled substance), and Testosterone injections (essentially a beginner dose of steroids). I'd guess these two methods could temporarily override anything draining you of energy, possibly even drinking coffee with beans with visible mold growing on them. While Asprey may indeed have superhuman energy levels, this should be disclosed in this book as well. The author claims that the diet claimed in the book is so effective that it replaced the need for a Modafinil, a drug I can tell you from experience is quite potent, and certainly cannot be replicated by diet alone. In summary, this particular book boils down to selling products at a very high markup, sprinkled with established truths to make the entire regime more believable. Despite several valid ideas, the proposed lifestyle is not only extremely hard to follow and expensive, but can be outright detrimental. Bulletproof coffee itself has 460 calories. That's not bad for breakfast, but if you're hungry at lunch, you're meant to eat as much healthy fats as you need to feel full. This is a fasttrack route to obesity, as your body cannot possibly expend all of that energy at that rate, and will store it as fat. Other ideas such as ensuring you carry a bottle of activated charcoal tablets handy any time you think you're eating mitochondria-toxic food is not only unpractical, it leaves the question if this is yet another common product to be sold at a premium price with the Bulletproof label.