When you hear the word hacking you might think of someone hacking a computer, smartphone, social media account, or an email. The word hacking mostly has a negative connotation to it simply because people immediately relate it to security hacking, which is the process of gaining unauthorized access into a computer system or private network. Except, there is a different type of hacking. Have you ever heard about hacking your own body? This concept is called biohacking. It may seem like a surreal and futuristic concept, however it mostly deals with incorporating methods of self-improvement for your mind and body into your daily routine.
What is Biohacking your body?
“Biohacking is the process of using science, biology, and self-experimentation to take control of and upgrade your body, mind, and life,” explains Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof, a high-performance food, drink, and supplement company. Dave Asprey says that “biohacking is the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside you so you have more control over your own biology.” Just by eating healthy, counting your calories, and exercising doesn’t mean that you’re biohacking your own body because there is way much more to it. It does implement some sort of diet and healthy lifestyle, but not all diets and exercises work the same for all people.
Biohacking has to do with experimenting with what best works for your body in order to feel energized and healthy. Biohacking implements lifestyle and dietary changes aimed to improve the functioning of your body, as well as tracking your progress with technology to help you monitor your physiological data. The effects of biohacking are often life-changing, and might drastically improve your mind and body’s state. Essentially, biohacking pertains to altering your own biology to realize what works best for you.
The 3 Top Biohacking Products on the Market
Below are the top biohacking brands with the top products on the marketing. Whether through ingestion or technology, if you’re looking to Biohack Your Body start here.
1. BULLETPROOF Brain Octane Oil
Bulletproof Brain Octane Oil is a high-performance food, drink, and supplement company that uses science-based approach to enhance the body and mind. All of their products are backed by the latest research, plenty of Bulletproof coffee, and great commitment to high quality. Also, their high-quality products have high-quality standards, that is why all their products have no gluten, soy, or artificial fillers.
One of their most popular products is the Bulletproof Brain Octane Oil. Many people compare it to MCT oil, but it’s more than that. This Brain Octane Oil is basically designed to crave less and do more. It’s a brain-boosting, fat-burning, high-energy oil that is also Ketogenic. There are several benefits to taking this product. It improves cognitive performance to give you a rapid, long-lasting brain boost and power. It increases your energy since it metabolizes quickly and efficiently into ketone energy, which fuels your body without a crash. Brain Octane Oil also makes your cravings decrease and jumpstarts your metabolic rate to increase fat burning.
Bulletproof’s Brain Octane Oil is also easy to pour on coffee, smoothies, shakes, or even meals. Since it’s completely flavorless it goes together with anything. The oil is composed of 100% caprylic acid triglycerides from coconut oil. Caprylic acid is a medium-chain triglyceride (MCT), which is an energizing, easy-to-digest quality fat. This product has pure caprylic acid harvested from the most ketogenic part of the coconut.
With Bulletproof Brain Octane Oil, customers have gained mental focus and speed helping them stay productive throughout their day in a healthy way.
2. Oura Ring
The Oura Ring is essentially wearable technology that accurately tracks your sleep and daily activity by monitoring your body’s pulse, movement, and temperature to deliver a holistic picture of your health. Oura summarizes your health data into three relevant scores that help you harness your body’s potential every day. Your health is interpreted through a dashboard showing the three different scores.
The three scores are: Sleep, Readiness, and Activity. The ‘Sleep’ score helps you understand your sleep quality from insights about your deep, REM, and light sleep. It also lets you know how quickly you fell asleep and how your heart rate behaved during the night. The ‘Readiness’ score helps you understand exactly what your body is ready for each day by learning how you’ve been balancing sleep, activity, and recovery. With the ‘Activity’ score, you understand what an active today looks like for you by focusing on the big picture, pulling short and long-term trends from a variety of inputs including third parties like Google Fit and Apple Health.
The way the Oura ring monitors all this meaningful data is by advanced sensors composed of infrared LEDs, NTC temperature sensors, an accelerometer, and a gyroscope. All these advanced sensors are conveniently wrapped around your finger — the most precise and convenient place to capture body measurements like heart rate, HRV, temperature, steps, and more. The Oura ring is also lightweight and durable since it’s made of titanium, weighing less than .25 oz. Oura also has an extended battery life lasting around 7 days and only taking 1 hour to fully charge wirelessly. Not to mention, Oura is water resistant.
Another cool thing about Oura is that it has a feature called Moment, where you can check-in with your body at any time of the day. Here you can choose guided or unguided rest, meditation, or a mindful breathing session, set the time of your session, and be still. All during this private session, Oura monitors both your resting heart rate and heart rate variability to understand how effective different mindfulness practices are. Moment allows you to enhance your productivity and boost your recovery.
3. Joovv Light Therapy Devices
Joovv Light Therapy Devices products are all red light therapy devices that use medical-grade LEDs to shine natural red and near infrared light on your body. For those wondering what red light therapy is, it’s a non-invasive treatment that delivers concentrated natural light to your skin and cells. You simply have to stand or sit near the light for about 5 to 15 minutes every day and let the light do its work. Red light therapy works by boosting your energy production at a cellular level by taking in the concentrated wavelengths of red and near infrared light. This routine gives the mitochondria in your cells the natural light they need to make the energy that powers your body.
Many benefits arise from using red light therapy ranging from inflammation and pain relief, fitness gains, muscle recovery, improved sleep, and much more. Not to mention, red light therapy has been backed up by many clinical research which have proved to produce positive results. People suffering from tissue and bone injuries or joint pain use red light therapy for speed recovery and pain relief.
Professional athletes use red light therapy to improve strength, endurance, speed, and muscle growth. It also prevents muscles soreness and fatigue. Today, red light therapy has become a quite popular anti-aging and skin-care technique used by some of the best estheticians and dermatologists in the world. It improves the skin’s health and complexion by producing more natural collagen, less inflammatory effects, fewer wrinkles and lines, and reduces the appearance of scars and burns.
Red light therapy also produces brain and cognitive health benefits by absorbing the wavelengths of near infrared light. This produces brain benefits such as increased cerebral blood flow, more oxygen availability & consumption, and a boost of ATP energy production through enhanced mitochondrial activity. Also, clinical research is showing that red light therapy can improve sleep quality and duration, and help people produce more of their own melatonin.
All of these wide range of health benefits are the reason Joovv light therapy devices have become quite popular in the biohacking world. Compared to other red light therapy devices in the market, Joovv light therapy devices are the most powerful in the market today.
Their devices have a sleek and adaptable design and come in 7 sizes to fit any space. Joovv’s full-body systems are the largest in-home red light therapy devices available, with the broadest coverage area. Joovv light devices are also trusted by health experts and pros around the world. All devices are with the FDA as Class II medical devices, so they are safe and reliable.
Biohacking Examples
Biohacking is a broad process that can include different actions or lifestyle changes with the purpose of changing our biology physically or psychologically, so that we ultimately learn to optimize our body and live life to the fullest. (by the way, we recommend getting life coach to help you jumpstart the process) It’s simply a do-it-yourself biology where you can take full control of your body. Since it is a broad term, there are many different examples of biohacking.
Biohacking your body examples below include:
- Biohacking your health
- Biohacking your bones
- Biohacking your brain
- Biohacking your mindset
- Biohacking your body’s function
One common example of biohacking is to biohack your health using red light therapy. Like mentioned before, red light therapy is a non-invasive treatment that delivers natural red and near infrared light to your skin and cells. Red light therapy works by boosting your energy production at a cellular level by taking in the concentrated wavelengths of red and near infrared light.
If you’ve ever felt like you have spent too much time indoors and something starts to feel off, it is because your body and brain need light to function properly. Red light waves are absorbed by the skin and activate a number of nervous system and metabolic processes. This process has been proven to relieve pain, reduce inflammation and restore function. It’s a common form of biohacking your body.
Another example of biohacking your body can be to biohack your bones with OsteoStrong. Many people are aware of common diseases related to cardiovascular or skin health. However, not many people know about the risks of how bone density changes over time. As people grow older, they begin to lose bone density and are more at risk to experience osteoporosis. A solution to declining bone loss and a popular biohacking technique created is called OsteoStrong, which is a non-pharmaceutical way of improving bone density, strength and balance.
OsteoStrong customers use a device called The Spectrum System consisting of 4 different devices that allow you to achieve forces in excess of 5 to 12 times your own body weight. It’s a supplement to exercise that is meant to improve your overall health by providing extra support to your skeletal system.
Another example of biohacking might be to biohack your brain using functional music. We all know music has an effect on the brain. Since brain activity can be measured in a wave-like pattern, one reliable way to change your brainwaves is through a consistent sound wave. Different music can change your mood and mindset as you listen. Audio entrainment uses binaural beats and tones to synchronize with your brain waves and induce a meditative, relaxed state. This is a way of biohacking your brain using music!
Biohacking your mindset is another example. How you treat others has a huge effect on your levels of fulfillment and how you view life greatly affects your overall mood. If you practice having an abundance mindset, you learn to be more grateful for everything that comes your way and are constantly focused on the positive. To learn to maintaining this type of mindset you can try some biohacking techniques like keeping a gratitude journal, taking a gratitude walk, or beginning your day with meditation.
Another great way of setting your mindset intentionally is by practicing a movement meditation. Initially it will just feel like any other awkward movement, especially as you’re learning the stances or asanas, but as you grow in your practice you’ll be able to drop into the flow state and it will become much more natural.
Finally another example of biohacking is to biohack your body’s function by taking supplements or sleeping better. Incorporating supplements to your diet that improve focus, increase energy and help your body benefit from the most bioavailable forms of nutrients available allows you to live better. High-quality supplements give you the vitamins and minerals needed to achieve daily energy, boost performance, and detoxify your systems.
Sleep is essential in order for your body to fully function. Sleep can extend your life and decrease disease. It’s one of the most important and best biohacks since you enter a deep meditative state where you can clear out toxins. A good way to biohack you sleep is to leave the last hour of the day for non-work-related things that let your brain relax.
To do this right, you should avoid phones in bed, caffeine or alcohol that might alter your sleep cycle, and maintain an appropriate sleeping environment with a dark and quiet room. Another good example of biohacking is to start a biohacking diet such as intermittent fasting. This will be explained more in detail further in this article.
3 Famous Bioahackers
Below is a list of some of the most prominent biohackers in the field.
1. Dave Asprey
Dave Asprey, also known as the “Father of Biohacking,” is a Silicon Valley investor and technology entrepreneur who spent twenty years and more than a million dollars to hack his own biology. Dave Asprey was overweight, overworked, and unhealthy in his early years as a Silicon Valley investor. He chose to make a decision to get a healthy mind, body, and spirit than to live a much shorter life span.
Dave lost 100 pounds without counting calories or excessive exercise, used techniques to upgrade his brain and lift his IQ by 20 points, and lowered his biological age while learning to sleep more efficiently in less time. Dave believes that with his methods, he will be able to live until he is 180 years old. His devotion to taking control of his own biology has transformed him into a better entrepreneur, husband, and father.
Not only did he decide to reinvent himself, but he decided he wanted to share his experience and knowledge with the world. Dave has searched the entire planet to discover and engineer ways to fully realize the human potential.
Dave is the creator of the widely popular Bulletproof Coffee, host of the #1 health podcast, Bulletproof Radio, and author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Bulletproof Diet. Through his work and platforms, Dave constantly shares information, techniques and keys to taking control of and improving your biochemistry, your body and your mind so they work together, helping you execute at levels far beyond what you’d expect, without burning out, getting sick, or allowing stress to control your decisions.
2. Ben Greenfield
Another famous biohacker is Ben Greenfield. He is a human body and brain performance coach, ex-bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, professional Spartan athlete, and anti-aging consultant. He is also very well-known as the speaker and author of the New York Times Bestseller “Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life”
Ben Greenfield’s book, “Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life” shows you how to overcome common health-related training issues while optimizing your workouts so you can look, feel, and perform like a champion. This book teaches readers how to stay healthy both inside and out with specific training, nutrition, and lifestyle tips for them to try. From “The 25 most important blood and saliva biomarkers and how to test them” to “The 2 best ways to build endurance fast without destroying your body”, Ben includes a variety of biohacking topics and tips needed to master your endurance, health, and life.
To this day, Ben Greenfield continues to share his vast knowledge of science and research, his unique experience, and cutting-edge brain and body biohacking techniques with the rest of the world. Through his Ben Greenfield Fitness website, he provides a 2x/week podcast, in-depth articles and a daily newsletter to help you achieve the best performance possible.
3. Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss is an American entrepreneur and author of a well-known New York Times bestselling book called “The 4-Hour Work Week”. In this book, he teaches readers how to live more and work less. Ferriss specifically asks readers to avoid what he calls “the deferred life plan,” which means your life is filled with work until you reach the point of retirement. He includes a step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design with topics ranging from how Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week to how to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”.
Besides being a popular author, Tim Ferriss has his own award-winning podcast called “The Tim Ferriss Show” which has exceeded 300,000,000 downloads. Tim is a biohacker and self-experimenting guinea pig. In his podcast and blog articles, he shares numerous information about his never-ending quest for self-improvement and tips on how others can transform themselves.
What is a Biohacking diet?
A biohacking diet is essentially a small and incremental diet that makes an improvement on your health and well-being. Biokacing diets usually promise anything from quick weight loss to improved brain function. These diet biohacks can be different from person to person, depending on what works best for them.
One way to biohack your diet is to try intermittent fasting. It might also consist of carb-light meals, eating the right kinds of fats, abstaining from sugar, and eating more superfoods (check out this article for Superfood Smoothie Recipes). Intermittent fasting helps you improve your body’s nutrition intake. This helps you lose fat while gaining muscle and energy. Intermittent fasting does not mean you don’t eat for two to three days, but it’s a more lenient eating pattern.
There are several benefits when your body enters a fasted state. You increase your levels of growth hormones as much as five times their normal rate, which boosts your metabolic rate. Fasting might also reduce your insulin resistance, which lowers your blood sugar and makes stored body fat more prone to burn. In some cases, intermittent fasting can LDL cholesterol which is a risk factor for heart disease and might protect you from cancer. Also, fasting reduces inflammation and improves cognitive function.
What is Biohacking and Transhumanism?
Like stated before, Biohacking is essentially the practice of changing our chemistry and our physiology through science and self-experimentation to energize and enhance the body. It’s a broad term that can cover a huge range of activities to alter your own biology. There are many different types of biohacking your body and mind, from normal routine changes to more complex and extreme alterations.
The type of extreme biohackers that experiment outside of traditional lab spaces and institutions, on their own bodies with the hope of boosting their physical and cognitive performance are known as transhumanists. Transhumanism is a movement that holds that human beings can and should use technology to augment and evolve our species. It is the belief that it is possible and desirable to fundamentally alter the human body in order to achieve a superior post-human being. Transhumanists believe that with science and technology, humanity can augment or enhance human capabilities that surpass the average human’s limitations.
The 3 latest trends in Biohacking Technology to help dieting
23andMe
23andMe is the first and only genetic service available directly to you that includes reports that meet FDA standards.This biotechnology company helps you access your family tree and gives you health insights. One latest service 23andMe has begun offering aims to help customers eat and exercise healthier according to their genetics.
Habit
Habit is a new nutrition service that offers personalized nutrition and food delivery. It promises to study your personal biomarkers to tailor a nutrition plan just for you. It’s one of the top latest trends in biohacking technology to help people dieting.
iFasting
iFasting is a simple intermittent fasting tracker app for any of those who have decided to start fasting. Since intermittent fasting is a common way people try to biohack their diet, this app is among the latest trends in biohacking technology to help dieting.
Now that you know what biohacking is and what it consists of, you can decide if it’s the right path for you. It can be a good way to change your body, your health and your brain so that you can reach your goals and achieve a peak state of mind. Whether you use supplements, technology, diets, or change your mindset, biohacking is meant to help you make lasting, positive change.
