Well Well Well is Seattle Met’s regular health and wellness column, covering the sometimes surprising ways we can support our physical, emotional, social, and environmental well-being.

Dave Asprey plans to live to be 180—a goal he calls “conservative.” The biohacking expert has a range of strategies to help him do just that, and I tried some of them out for myself (and so can you) at the newly opened Upgrade Labs in Bellevue.

The franchised wellness facility founded by Asprey is owned by locals Debra and Kevin DeLashmutt and filled with all kinds of high-tech goodies: frequency-specific red-light beds, a cryotherapy chamber, AI adaptive bikes, vibrating plates, lymphatic massage, and more. 

The couple met Asprey a few years ago, and while they didn’t identify with the term “biohacking,” they realized they’d been practicing it for years. Biohacking, by the way, is experimenting with changing factors in one’s own body and environment—like trying intermittent fasting, doing regular cold plunges, or taking a magnesium supplement—and then evaluating the results. “This is the kind of science that’s around getting shit done like engineers do instead of the way academics do,” Asprey says. 

As a young Silicon Valley professional, Asprey weighed about 300 pounds, was suffering from brain fog, and felt so bad that he bought disability insurance. No amount of hitting the gym, downing water, or eating a low-fat diet in a caloric deficit was making much of a difference. “I thought, ‘OK, if I can hack a system, and I don’t know what’s in there, but I can still change its behavior, why can’t I do it to myself?” Asprey remembers. That’s when the experimentation began. He blogged about it thinking hardly anyone would read his work, but soon gained a following.

Biohacking was added to Merriam-Webster in 2018 (“my name is in there,” Asprey tells me, and to be fair, I was the right audience for that tidbit as a former copy editor who long paid for a subscription to the online version of the dictionary and had the print version on my desk). And it’s only getting more popular. 

The greater Seattle area was a logical location for Upgrade Labs, given the influence of the tech industry. There are plenty of people here starved for time and comfortable with AI, two core traits that might attract one to this kind of wellness center. 

I am neither of those things, but I do love both fitness and data, so I was excited to check it out—especially on a day when Asprey was in town.

He started me off with a Cell Health Analysis, which is a pretty fancy way of saying you stand on an InBody machine, which scans things like body fat percentage and muscle mass, as I’ve done probably a dozen times before at various gyms in the city. Asprey interpreted my results for me, though, which was new. On the plus side, I’m not dehydrated and I’m firmly in the healthy range for where my body fat is stored (that is, mostly subcutaneously and not viscerally around my organs, which is the dangerous kind of fat). On the minus side, I’m “substantially inflamed,” although only in my torso and legs. My arms are apparently more cooperative.

Given that my previous InBody readings from December were ideal for inflammation levels, I couldn’t help but wonder how inflamed I was from getting two and a half hours less sleep than I normally do because I had to wake up early to get to Bellevue. Just an occupational hazard, I suppose.

Next, I did a mobility assessment that told me my shoulder abduction, squat depth, and flexibility were right where they should be. Hip flexion was just fair. Darn that other occupational hazard of a job that involves sitting 95 percent of the time.

Should I be proud that I’m more mobile than the “father of biohacking,” who admittedly works out just 20 minutes a week and is a decade older than me? Probably not. But his biological age is apparently 30, so surely that puts me in my 20s, no?

Next, we headed to the PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field) beds to optimize our cell function. The sensation was unique as my muscles pulsed, as the name promised. I tried the mobility assessment again (I did not improve post-PEMF) and then dressed down to step into the cryo chamber. Co-owner Debra touted this as her favorite piece of equipment, due to the sense of euphoria you get when emerging from the cold. Did I feel euphoric or just glad to have made it out? Hard to tell. But it wasn’t so bad.

Then the work began. Even though Upgrade Labs is predicated on putting in the minimum amount of effort for the maximum results, that can include some short but intense bouts of exercise—depending on your goals, of course. Asprey thought I’d likely benefit most from the recovery tools, but I had to see what the weights and cardio were all about. 

The AI Cheat Machine uses computer software to find how much resistance you can take on a particular strength-training exercise, and then delivers that. You’re working in both the concentric and eccentric phases—so, for example, the machine gives you load when pushing in a chest press, as well as when returning to the start position. Although I only did two sets of 10 reps on three exercises, plus the testing to find my maxes, my muscles felt thoroughly fatigued.

Next up was the AI Adaptive Bike, which ambitiously promises the benefits of a 40-minute jog in 40 seconds. I spent less than 10 minutes on the bike, with two short sprints. Overall, it was pretty painless. The other piece of equipment aimed at improving your V02 max—or how much oxygen your body can use during intense exercise—is the Metabolic Trainer. It involves breathing into a mask that transitions between delivering oxygen-rich and oxygen-reduced air, improving your metabolic efficiency, and is even easier than riding a bike.

I closed it out with the Red Charger, a medical-grade red-light bed with stated benefits that include eliminating toxins, stimulating collagen production, reducing swelling and redness, and helping your circadian rhythm. While I cannot attest to any of those, I can tell you when the timer went off and the lights stopped glowing, I had become so warm and cozy in a state suspended between wakefulness and sleep that I did not want to get out of that bed. 

Monthly memberships start at $299 and go up to $799—more than the typical gym cost, but substantially less than the $2 million or so Asprey has invested into his own personal biohacking journey so far. For those who sign up for a membership, Upgrade Labs will help identify your goals in order of importance (using AI, of course) and then create a customized plan. Most members are looking for more energy, to live longer than is to be expected, and to have a better-functioning brain, according to Asprey.

This isn’t his first venture into Seattle. He’s the founder of Bulletproof Coffee, the craze that took the health world by storm in the mid-2010s, with its promise of brain-boosting caffeinated drinks packed with healthy fats. There was a café in South Lake Union that closed in 2020, but Bulletproof is still headquartered in Seattle. (Asprey is no longer involved with the company.)

What about those who aren’t so sure standing on a vibrating plate is going to extend their life span? “I love people who are skeptical,” Asprey says. “Cynical people, I like to send them off to do a spin class so they can blow up their adrenals, that’s fine, but if you’re skeptical, that means that you just have a healthy questioning of reality. Come in and get your numbers; do it for a month and look at your numbers. You’ll hit a new personal best every week, and you’ll see the shifts. If your numbers don’t change, then don’t come back.”

If not all of this works, Asprey still sees it as a win. “Your worst case is that you’ll be very healthy until the average age,” he says. “The odds are much higher, though, that you’re going to have 10, 20, 30 more years of highly active, functional living.” He believes he’d be dead or disabled if he hadn’t gone down the biohacking path.

I left Upgrade Labs and then spent too many hours wandering around Bellevue Square because, well, I like to pack all of my east-of-Lake-Washington activities together. By the time I made it home for my regularly planned workout, I was dragging. My gym session did not go well. After a good night of sleep, I woke up refreshed and managed to eke out four pull-ups, up from my previous personal best of two and a half. Was it the -150°F temps I stood in for two minutes? Or the infrared LEDs that shone down on me? Or just the predictable result of the five-day-a-week training plan I’ve been consistently following?

The world may never know. But if I have a chance to lounge in a red-light bed again, I’m taking it. It could add years to my life—or just envelop me in a pleasant state of warmth for a few blissful minutes.