Breaking down Biohacking
You’ve probably heard the term biohacking before, but aren’t quite sure what it means. We’re here to help break it down for you.
Biohacking, also known as DIY biology, is a broad term that covers a wide range of alternative lifestyle activities intended to optimise your health. From individualised nutrition and intermittent fasting to cold showers to help boost your mood, biohacking encompasses a range of pursuits.
Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a different definition. We’re looking at biohacking from the perspective of optimising the function of your physical and cognitive performance to improve wellbeing outside of traditional medicine.
I first heard about biohacking in 2008 when Dave Asprey, biohacker and founder of Bulletproof supplement company said that for him, biohacking is, “The art and science of changing the environment around you and inside you so that you have full control over your own biology.” Although this idea may seen foreign to most, the reality is that most of us are already partaking in some form of biohacking in our daily lives without even realising it.
We all want to feel better and biohacking gives us the opportunity to take our health into our own hands by trying out alternative wellness techniques. In one way biohacking is a connection to ancestral living, the idea of utilising things people have been doing for centuries, like Vipassana meditation, intermittent fasting and nose to tail carnivore diet.
Some simple ways to explore biohacking include taking natural supplements related to wellness goals you’re trying to achieve, trying intermittent fasting, or walking outside barefoot and increasing this while out on nature walks. Each small step is a way to regain “control” over how your body heals and develops, with the ultimate goal of optimising how our mind and body function.
Most biohackers use wearable devices to measure their every move. If you have a Fitbit or Apple Watch you’re interested in tracking your health so why not take it to the next level and pair it with another practice.The more data you have on your body’s mechanical functions, the more you can optimize the machine that is you - or so the saying goes.
To put it simply biohacking is self-improvement through thinking about the individual systems in our own biology. It allows us to energise and enhance the body by changing our chemistry, using science and trying out new alternative techniques to see how our body responds.
Is bio-hacking for everyone? In my opinion yes. We’re at a pivotal time where health and wellbeing, and the chance for increased vitality is at our fingertips. We can all take small steps now to invest in our health and reap the rewards for years to come. The choice is, as it should be, in our hands.