Life upgrades are always welcome. It doesn’t matter what form they take — anything that makes you feel better about yourself is worth celebrating. In recent years, the newest trend in self-improvement involves biohacking. What is biohacking, exactly? In the very simplest terms, it’s a method of self-experimentation using biological and scientific means to improve your health and lifestyle.
How Biohacking Stands Out
At the heart of biohacking is a commitment to making changes that are truly reflective of what you specifically need. There’s no one-size-fits-all treatment or regimen that works best, and what applies to you may not apply at all to another person. Biohacking can even include using time-honored practices and tailoring them to your health and lifestyle needs. These needs can include anything from stress management to weight loss.
Simple Ways to Biohack
Biohacking can be as simple or as complex as you want. Some mainstream techniques fall under the category of “isn’t everyone doing that?” — and then there are those newfangled approaches that seem so far out of the left-field that you can’t even imagine doing them. That’s the real beauty of biohacking. It allows you to mix and match different tactics to arrive at a personalized program that’s right for you. So what works best? Here are some ideas.
Optimize Your Sleeping Habits
If you’re all too familiar with the overnight hours, you need to regulate your sleep cycle. Biohack your way to a better night’s sleep by minimizing your blue light exposure before bedtime — it’s thought to reduce the body’s natural melatonin levels, which are responsible for maintaining your circadian rhythm and helping you snooze soundly. Another key tactic is to reduce your body’s cortisol levels. Your body naturally produces cortisol when you work out, and those levels can remain sustained for hours. Work out in the morning to prevent the hormone from hindering your sleep cycle.
Boost Your Brain Function
Boosting your cognitive abilities with nootropic supplements can be addictive. Many of these are natural chemicals that provide significant benefit to the brain. To work, they must improve your memory, assist with brain function under less than optimal conditions, improve neuronal activity, protect the brain from rebellious elements, such as harmful drugs, and produce no side effects. Caffeine is by far the most popular of the nootropics, but others, like creatine and L-theanine, have picked up steam for their ability to enhance focus and reduce anxiety.
Wear a Fitness Tracker
Odds are you wear one of these or have thought about it — so you’ve pretty much inadvertently either biohacked or given thought to it at some point or another. How does wearing a fitness tracker come into play? Any type of wearable, such as an Apple Watch or a FitBit, can help you reframe your mindset and refresh your lifestyle by monitoring how your body functions. These little devices do it all, from tracking heart rate to calculating calories burned. Using this modification to your lifestyle can be a stepping stone to making the right changes you need to improve your health.
Take a Freezing Shower
Yep, freezing — ice cold. Dunking under a stream of cold water may not sound like your idea of a good time, but the benefits far outweigh the discomfort. Think of it as an introduction to cold thermogenesis, or the practice of maintaining consistent exposure to cold temperatures. It’s thought that doing this could help stimulate metabolism, which in turn helps the body burn fat and calories more efficiently. To do it, simply stand under the cold water for anywhere from five to 10 minutes. That’s it. You’ll feel a shock at first, no doubt, but you’ll also feel alert.
Experiment With Your Diet
You probably hear a lot about intermittent fasting (IF), and it’s a fairly common biohacking method. It’s said to reduce insulin levels, help stimulate cellular repair, boost metabolism, and even improve cognitive function. To be successful, you only eat for a set period of time, then fast for an extended period, and continue on the same schedule. Of course, you can guzzle all of the water you want — and for some people, performing IF every now and then can help improve that area of their life. Some people can do this safely, but if you have any type of health concern, it’s important to check with your medical provider beforehand.
Where to Be Aware
For many, biohacking is simply a way of life. Many methods are fairly simple to implement — even meditation as a hack can help alter your mind and improve your performance. Some, however, are far more extreme. Remember the whole “self-experimentation” reference? While all of these experiments are designed to help you improve, they aren’t always 100 percent legal or ethical. Usually, those types of methods go well beyond the scope of what the average human can achieve on his own — the most unusual involve injectables and other additions that quite literally “hack” the body in an effort to achieve something different. It’s safest to stick within the realms of possibility — areas where you can easily affect change without putting yourself at risk — and avoid those that are unfamiliar.
Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. Readers should consult a physician or certified medical practitioner in matters relating to health (including but not limited to medical issues, nutrition, allergies and/or fitness), and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.
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