Our Nutritionist Brittany (aka @biohackingbritt) is all about ‘biohacking’.
This is a term that gets thrown around a lot, and a lot of you might be asking, “what the heck is biohacking?”
Today, we are answering just that.
On a basic level, biohacking is the science of altering your internal and external environments to optimize your body and mind.
This pursuit often comes out of a desire to feel our best – and to see what our bodies are capable of.
Biohacking is the science of altering your internal and external environments to optimize your body and mind.
Beyond the basics of movement, nutrition, and good sleep, biohacking is about tweaking many different areas of your internal biology and external environment to cure illness, improve & maximize your health and wellness, and extend your life span.
All good things in our opinion.
Biohacking helps you to become the healthiest version of yourself by changing specific things in your environment and lifestyle that are knowingly (or unknowingly) deteriorating your health.
Think sleep.
Think stress.
Think toxins in the air and water.
Think indoor and outdoor light.
Think radiation.
Think exercise.
And, of course, think food.
For most of us, each of these areas of ripe for changes and optimization that will help you reach a higher state of health – one that is specific to you and tailored to your genes, your lifestyle, and your unique biology.
Biohacking ranges from altering when you eat to incorporating high-tech gadgets into your workouts and daily routines.
It is a fascinating blend of ancient wisdom and modern science and we cover the main areas below.
Biohacking Includes:
Self-Care Practices
Self -care practices, such as the spa, hot bath, facials, tea with friends, date nights, etc., get wrapped into biohacking because they do a great job of supporting the nervous system and allow it to come back to a parasympathetic state.
When your nervous system is in a parasympathetic state, it is more effectively able to heal and optimize your inner biology. A must if you care to see any meaningful progress.
Natural health Practices
Natural health practices such as naturopathy, herbalism, osteopathy, chiropractor are all considered modalities of biohacking because each is specifically designed to target distinct systems of the body and help bring them back to homeostasis – the natural state of balance in your body.
When your body is in homeostasis, energy isn’t needed to try and bring it back to balance, so that excess energy can be used for repair, healing, and optimization.
Diet & Nutrition
One of the foundational areas of biohacking is diet and nutrition. Your body can only build-out of what you put in it and with that nutrition plays a big part.
Beyond the basics of eating high-quality, organic, and diverse and natural foods, biohacking looks at how to support various different biological functions in your body through micro and macronutrients.
This means looking at the food you’re eating, when you’re eating it, and what your body needs to maximize what your body does with what you put inside of it.
Think time of day, fasting, diverse food groups, and a few uncommon foods that contain ample amounts of nutrients you need.
Heat & Cold Therapy
Your body has some amazing ancient systems that are designed to heal you and many of these are most effectively accessed through extreme conditions.
As we’ve moved to a more comfortable world, we’ve had to manufacture ways to reach these extreme conditions and biohacking loves to focus on different machines, mechanisms, and environments that will mimic a natural extreme environment.
These often come in the form of hydrotherapy, saunas, cryotherapy, and ice baths.
Thing spending 45 minutes overheating in a sauna or 3-5 minutes freezing your buns off in a cold tub.
Either way, many of these mechanisms are proven to hold powerful healing mechanisms in them.
Light Management
Our bodies respond instantly to sources of light and different light sources have different effects on our body. When it comes to biohacking, different light sources, such as infrared light, are used to jump-start different reactions in the body such as creating more energy in your cells (ATP).
Biohacking focuses on which lights cause certain impacts and what time of day to use them. This includes using blue light in the morning to wake up your cells, red light to increase energy production, and limiting blue light at night where it will suppress melatonin.
Supplements
It’s a complex world inside our bodies and supplements are used throughout biohacking to amplify, support, or turn down different biochemical pathways in the body. This can be as simple as taking magnesium supplements to support the thousands of functions in the body that need magnesium or as complex as doing glutathione IVs to increase the the amount of detoxifying agents in your body.
It’s a rabbit hole and could be an entire blog in itself.
High-Tech Gadgets
Biohacking wouldn’t be complete without the mention of high-tech gadgets. This includes meditation headbands that help you train your mind more quickly, rings that track your heartbeat, and glucose monitors that tell you exactly where your blood sugar levels are at.
Many of these are more advanced but can be a great way to collect data on your body to know what’s working
Spending Time In Nature
Biohacking isn’t all fancy gadgets and supplements. Some of the most profound biohacks are getting out into nature, spending time in the sun, swimming in the ocean, and walking on grass.
When you think about it, our cells developed from way back when we were single celled organisms in the natural environment and dozens, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of processes in our body get turned on when we put ourselves back inside those environments.
That’s a big reasons we do the Outdoor Challenges inside the MVMT.
It’s a pill no doctor can match.
What Biohacking Isn't
Fad Diets
Due to its deep belief in science, biohacking is not the latest fad diet that is popping up, endorsed by celebrities and celebrated for its “quick win”.
Instead biohacking takes a more methodical, holistic, and science-based approach and focusing on measurable changes that can be sustained over time.
Quick Fixes To Health Issues
As mentioned above, biohacking isn’t looking for quick fixes or patches to health issues. Instead it often explores the root causes on a biological, environmental, or genetic level and attempts to heal or repair the issues going on so that you can free yourself from not only the symptom, but the cause.
Magic Pills
Not yet anyways.
Due to the complexity of biology and the intelligence of our bodies, there are no magic pills and the basics almost always win.
Good sleep, exercise, good nutrition, meditation, and regular relaxation.
Ultimately, biohacking is simply a means and a journey to get to a more vibrant, energetic, healthier you.
It encompasses everything that you can change to get you to where you want to be from a health perspective and blends ancient wisdom and the latest science to address your mind, your body, and your spirit in a holistic way.
And it has the potential to help you to be the healthiest you.
Interested in learning more about biohacking or have some experience with it?
Let us know in the comments below.
