The Ins and Outs of Biohacking
FEATURE
PERFORMANCE
Jeffrey Tucker
DC, DACRB
What is Biohacking? It’s personal optimization. It focuses on things such as mind, body, sleep, diet, stress, hormones, environment, aesthetics, and longevity. Biohacking gives you a better, stronger ladder to climb as you get older. Life is about making choices. Biohacking is using cutting-edge information, ancestral living, technology, and assessments about yourself to make choices and consider the best approach to improve your overall health and well-being.
I hear from friends, family, and patients about how long they think they will live and how long they want to live. Let’s say you pick 100 years old. I suspect that when you get to be 99.99 years old you will probably want more. No one wants to die! I hear people say they’ll live to be 120, 140, and even 160 years old. Not only do we want to live, but also we really want to be alive. We want “energy,” and we want to be “happy” and “healthy.” What does the long-term path look like for you? Are you susceptible to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or Alzheimer’s disease? Biohacking is the new proposal of self-care for longevity; it’s preemptive and using science to do the healthy aging work better. Longevity and the avoidance of illness or disease is the ultimate incentive plan.
The foundation of additional years of life and the possibility of healthy aging is created by making sure you don’t smoke, stay into “movement” throughout life, have a good community of friends and family, and eat healthy foods (including legumes). Biohacking gets so much more specific than this.
Where to start?
Better living through science starts with gathering personal data. You could start by getting a personal genomics test or a telomere length test. Telomere tests measure your biological age, not your chronological age.
Next, notice your personal trends. For example, monitor glucose levels first thing in the morning and at timed intervals after meals. In addition to food and beverages, our blood glucose levels fluctuate in response to a variety of other factors. Exercise, emotional stress, the previous night’s rest, and genetics all play a role in the body’s attempt to tightly regulate the levels of glucose circulating in the blood. Did you know that you can now have a chip inserted inside your arm that monitors blood glucose? The results can be read on your smartphone to give you real-time glucose readings. You can also start by asking yourself, “What can I improve in my environment? Sleep? Air quality? Activities?” The data from our blood, imaging, and microbiome is all coming together to individualize care. I predict biohacking is going to have tremendous worldwide growth and will be preventive medicine within the next five to 10 years.
Imagine taking a genetic test that you ordered online, as well as other off-the-shelf tests that measure biomarkers, coupled with other lab tests, such as brainwave mapping and heart mapping, and then have a skilled practitioner help you figure out what to do next. Finding a practitioner with the ability to advise you on how to increase your IQ points, have less stress response and body fat, and help you write a plan to alter the course of a potential future cancer, cardiovascular disease, or cognitive disease is not far off. That is where biohacking is heading.
Start your biohacking journey by focusing your attention to assess what you want to optimize (sleep, diet, stress, etc.) and then gather personal data. There are some high-level trackers by Fitbit (fitbit.com) and other companies to help patients gather data and achieve goals faster.
Here’s a sample of popular hacks.
Body Optimization
Cryotherapy is a treatment where the body is exposed to sub-zero temperatures—up to -250°F—in order to stimulate benefits such as beauty (cryo device makers claim it rejuvenates skin) and anti-aging, weight loss (fat loss), muscle recovery after hard workouts, health, and wellness. Some use it for reducing targeted joint or whole-body inflammation. Cold therapy is like fitness for the blood vessels.
Mind Optimization
The biohack is to leverage brain science to improve creativity, focus, and productivity. In today’s fastpaced, distracted, and often chaotic world, it is common for people to experience sleep problems, stress, anxiety, difficulty with focus and concentration, memory challenges, or episodes of moodiness or depression. What if it were possible for you to be calmer and more focused, think more clearly and quickly in any situation, be more creative, sleep better, feel more energized, and have a sharper memory? Neuroscience has revealed that every day your brain has the ability to change, grow, and get stronger—at any age. Brain fitness incorporates recent discoveries of how your brain works and what you can do to strengthen your brain today to have a better, stronger brain for life. You see how this blends in with aging cognitive health. The hack is using “smart drugs” or nootropics and considers mitochondrial optimization function here as well.
Sleep Optimization
Start with knowing exactly how many hours and minutes of sleep you get per night. Remember we spend almost one-third of our life asleep. The hack is not just so you don’t feel tired; it’s to restore, repair, and more. Every morning, write down what time you went to sleep and wake up. Rate your energy level during the day on a 1 to 10 scale at the end of the day. Create an “energy scale.” I’ll give you an example. A 1 means doing absolutely nothing but eating and drinking. A 10 means doing one hour of exercise in the morning, eight hours of focused work, two hours of recharge time, such as focused breathing, meditation, writing, reading, having a great connection to family and friends, sex, and eating good, healthy food with good hydration, etc. A 10 would be a day that doesn’t happen often but it should. Connect how you feel to the amount of sleep, quality of sleep, and the daily energy scale. Get an average and shoot for a higher average number each month.
Better sleep will impact work and life in more ways than we know. The hack for better sleep will require checking social media less, watching less TV, browsing the web less, and getting the mattress and pillow right.
The good hack is mindfully winding down at the end of the day, reading before bed, and hanging out with your partner and talking. Some people like to use sleep apps (Sleep Cycle) and some don’t care. Another recommendation is to reduce blue light an hour or two before bed. Eliminate cell phones and computers at night. I recommend “blue light” blocking glasses. I use a pair called TrueDark. This technology goes beyond the old blue blocking concept when it was thought that the blue spectrum was all that mattered. Recent discoveries show the combination of violet, green, and blue light combines to wreak havoc with your body’s internal clock. Wearing these color glasses may be a game-changer for some. The rule “no screens before bedtime and no electronics in the bedroom” may really be a command. Try blackout curtains in the bedroom and decrease noise and air pollution in your bedroom too.
Other important biohack messages for better sleep are to refrain from taking sleeping pills and eat earlier at night. Sleep in cooler environments (socks are okay). Make sure to expose yourself to blue light in the morning and get sunlight early in the morning.
If your melatonin, valerian root, chamomile tea, etc. aren’t working for sleep anymore, try CBD oils or reishi teas. I use Phyto-Zol serum and rub it on my forehead before bedtime for enhanced sleep. Cannabis indica may be relaxing, relieve stress, and help you go to sleep. On the other hand, some suggest that Cannabis disturbs sleep cycles by interrupting REM sleep, but serious nightmares may be abolished, such as for PTSD patients who use Cannabis. CBD may help with sleep apnea too. Biohackers are willing to experiment, implement, find that edge, and see what works or doesn’t work.
Born in Los Angeles, CA, where he currently practices, Jeffrey Tucker, DC, DACRB is an expert in the field of posture, muscle & joint therapy, pain management, and nutrition, earning him the position of president of the ACA Rehab Council (CCPTR.org).
Both a world-renowned speaker and author, he's written more than 80 articles on the subjects of posture, functional movement assessments, Chiropractic care, exercise as medicine therapy and alternative medicine. To learn more go to: www.DrJeffreyTucker.com
