No amount of red light could save Dave Asprey from this one.
While he’s now the poster boy for longevity, the founder of the biohacking movement wasn’t always the picture of health.
In his younger days, Asprey was obese and struggled with brain fog, arthritis, and prediabetes. By age 26, his condition had declined so severely that he signed up for disability insurance.
Fast forward to today: Asprey, 51, says he’s in the best shape of his life and claims he’s on track to live until at least 180. But one stubborn reminder of his former body still remains.
“I have about half of a large bath towel worth of extra skin because I was obese,” Asprey told The Post. “I don’t love having all of that.”
After years of trying cutting-edge biohacks, he admits there’s still no treatment or technology that can fully address this insecurity.
“You can tighten it but it doesn’t matter when you still have too much,” Asprey said. “So I elected to get a facial circumcision.”
The cosmetic procedure, better known as a no-cut facelift, aims to address signs of aging — such as wrinkles, sagging skin and loss of volume — without surgery.
For the operation, Asprey traveled to the Regenerative Medicine Institute in Costa Rica, where Dr. Vince Giampapa and Dr. Victor Urzola used a hollow needle to remove thousands of tiny cores of tissue from across his face.
“You can remove about 8% of skin that way, so I had several square inches of skin removed,” Asprey said.
Twenty-eight square inches, to be exact — about the size of four credit cards.
Following the skin removal, Asprey received an injection of 100 million stem cells and fat taken from his own buttocks to speed recovery and rejuvenate his face. He also used a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to promote healing and improve his skin cells.
“Some people say, ‘Oh, aging is inevitable. Just accept it.’ I think getting wisdom through suffering is inevitable, but we should keep our bodies looking and feeling as young as we want.”
Dave Asprey
He told Muscle & Fitness that the same procedure would cost about $60,000 in the US, while his recovery protocol would start at around $35,000.
While Asprey spent a few weeks red and bruised, he said the recovery was fairly mild compared to a traditional facelift, which involves surgically removing skin.
“I’m very happy with the results,” he said, noting that he has no scarring. “It was totally worth it.”
Asprey’s choice to go under the knife has raised eyebrows among some, who question why a biohacking pioneer would turn to surgery to preserve his youthful look.
But he isn’t bothered by the critics.
“If you’re going to live for hundreds of years, your skin will keep growing and adapting to gravity,” Asprey said.
“As we have an aging population, we’ll see more and more people saying, ‘You know, I don’t want this much skin right now,’ and there’s nothing wrong with using any technology available that helps you look and feel the way you want,” he continued.
Previously, Asprey underwent a similar procedure to have excess skin removed from his lower back and said he isn’t completely closed off to the idea of doing it again in the future.
“I cut my toenails, why shouldn’t I trim my skin?” he said with a laugh.
“Some people say, ‘Oh, aging is inevitable. Just accept it,’” Asprey added. “I think getting wisdom through suffering is inevitable, but we should keep our bodies looking and feeling as young as we want.”
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