By: Gregory Brown, MD/PhD Candidate
What is biohacking? Biohacking sounds like putting a flash drive into our body and enabling us to manipulate our genetic code to control our biological network. Simply, biohacking involves techniques for people to live their healthiest lives. This encompasses a range of practices that maximize physical and mental wellness to improve our overall health. Food choices, exercise, nutritional supplements, and sleep all contribute to biohacking.
Biohacking involves techniques to live our healthiest lives
Everyone can implement biohacking strategies. These techniques are not reserved for super fit wellness freaks who never touch a processed food and exercise to the extremes (although, these wellness warriors certainly do biohack).
Biohacking involves sleep and dietary modifications
The most common biohacking techniques are probably the least harmful, such as melatonin to help you sleep. Or even using technology, such as a red-light filter on your mobile devices. Or old-school techniques such as an eye-mask. All of these are considered biohacking techniques for sleep. These can be important since of sleeps vital role in health.
Another commonly used biohacking strategy is intermittent fasting. This technique of restricting caloric intake to a few hours a day mimics our ancestral dietary patterns. Thousands of years ago, people would only eat at one point after the daily hunt. Intermittent fasting can improve glucose metabolism and improve immune function.
Health technology poses privacy concerns
Currently, technology provides tools for us to monitor our health and implement techniques to optimize performance. Many people wear smartwatch and fitness trackers to monitor heart-rate, number of daily steps, and sleep patterns. Using this data to implement health strategies is a part of biohacking. One potential caveat is the privacy of all this health data. We our in a data-driven era, where more data equates to better performance. Many happily sacrifice privacy for convenience, but data-privacy, particularly in the biohacking space, could be a real concern.
For example, technology which uses artificial intelligence to enable voice assistants, such as Amazon Alexa, to cognitive behavioral therapy (what people classically call talking to a therapist) may provide multi-billion-dollar companies with information about your biggest struggles and anxious moments. Digital health technology is rapidly trying to move into the mental health space.
Biohacking also refers to the use of genetic information to provide personalized treatments. Many of us are excited about the possibility to fully understand our genetic code and tailor our healthcare to our personal needs. However, this rich amount personal health data can detect genetic illnesses we may not have wanted know about. Or tell us we are at risk for diseases we will never get.
Health improvement is great, when done right.
Biohacking can have negative effects. The processed sugar that we turn to for short boosts of energy, have inflammatory effects and metabolic effects. That social lubricant we enjoy so often, alcohol, contributes to liver damage and cancer.
Biohacking is a buzzword that means making modifications to our lifestyle to improve health. For the most part this can be great, and we should all try and improve our health. But we must be cognizant of unintended consequences and the detrimental effects of biohacking.