Biohacking targets many areas of life. However, Its main focus is on things like athletic ability, lifestyle habits, memory and focus, or longevity. It involves a series of techniques that aim to “hack” your own biology for optimal performance in any or all of these areas.
It can be described as making small, incremental changes to your diet and lifestyle to optimise your body to the best it can be, to improve its function and performance. Biohacking can also be known as human enhancement aimed at improving your performance, health, and wellbeing through strategic interventions.
You may already be doing some form of biohacking without even realising it. Some common everyday biohacking techniques, like meditation and intermittent fasting, have been around for a very long time.
So why would you want to hack your body? Maybe you have been feeling unwell for a time and want to go beyond traditional medicine to improve your health, or maybe you want that physical or mental edge to push your performance to the next level. Some people even do it to try and slow down the natural ageing process.
There are a lot of different techniques and ideas involved in biohacking, each with their own set of benefits.
Some common Biohacking techniques include:
🥗Nutrition affects everything in the human body so is an essential component of biohacking. There are countless ways to biohack your diet and nutrition.
Some of the more common ways include: Intermittent fasting which is intended to regulate blood sugar and maintain a healthy weight. Elimination Diet which is identifying food intolerances and sensitivities and is important when it comes to reducing inflammation. Simply cutting out sugar and adding more fibre. Include Superfoods Like Medicinal Mushrooms. All these will greatly improve your health, wellness and ability to perform.
💊Herbal and nutritional supplementation should be processed from natural products that are used to help enhance your body’s physiology and psychology. Most are taken either in solid or liquid form and a lot of them are added to food or drinks and taken together.
These supplements contain nutrients and other vital elements that can help enhance your health and boost your immune system & wellbeing.
Yes, biohacking supplements can work if you follow their instructions and take them correctly. Just a reminder you should consult your doctor before taking any supplements, especially if you have pre-existing conditions.
😴Sleep optimisation – Good quality sleep is critical to your overall health, fitness and wellness. Sleeping well can help you cope with stress, solve problems, and recover faster from an illness or injury.
Some basic ways to optimise your sleep include; Sticking to a sleep schedule, Creating a restful environment, be sure not to go to bed hungry or over stuffed, Reduce/eliminate screen time at least 2 hours before sleep, Include physical activity in your daily routine, Try to resolve your worries or concerns before bedtime. Write down what’s on your mind and then set it aside for tomorrow.
🧘Meditation helps us gain the ability to endure emotional reactions and respond to situations using logic because it allows us to take notice and observe our emotions and our thoughts.
Being aware of these emotions helps us to identify them when they appear. It gives us the ability to look past them to see the solution to our problem with more clarity.
We begin to stop making rash, unhelpful decisions and maintain a calm focus. It allows us to find ways to navigate even the toughest problems with as little collateral damage as possible.
More advanced areas within biohacking require more cutting-edge technology to perform, and can include:
🧬 Genetic profiling is a way to determine which areas you should focus on in terms of your health and wellness. You are essentially hacking your own DNA by knowing its strengths and weaknesses.
🥶 Cold therapy (Cryotherapy) can be used to assist with muscle pain, as well as some joint and muscle disorders, such as arthritis. It also helps to promote faster healing of athletic injuries.
Using cryotherapy to burn fat is another common biohacking technique. It is believed that exposing your body to cold can help burn fat faster when you are trying to lose that extra body fat.
Cold water immersion (ice baths) can also provide long-lasting changes to your body’s immune, lymphatic, circulatory and digestive systems that enhance the overall quality of your life.
🌬️ Hyperbaric Chamber (Oxygen therapy) Is a powerful healing, optimising, and recovery technology. It is one of the few non-invasive therapies that can deliver practical, evidence-based results to improve your health, optimise body and mind performance and help you age beautifully.
💉Intravenous Nutrient Therapy offers the most direct way to introduce vitamins and minerals into your bloodstream. Since the digestive tract is being avoided the absorption is much more efficient and there is no gastric stress. Most common areas of focus include: Athletic Recovery, Illness (cold, flu), Hangover (preventative and recovery) and to reduce the effects of age and stress.
So is biohacking worthwhile or a waste of time and effort?
Biohacking will most certainly help improve health markers (i.e. weight, BMI, cholesterol etc) and it can also help within other areas including mental clarity, athletic performance, energy, mood, decreased inflammation, amongst many other health improvements.
Biohacking is such a large, diverse and sometimes controversial area of health, fitness and wellness, but if your goal is to find and reach your optimum level of wellness and performance, then further research into your area of interest is well worth your time.
Remember most of us are not aware of how good our bodies were designed to feel so every small step we can take towards being the very best we can be is always worth it.
