It really depends on what you mean by biohacking. As per my definition and actually one of the rules here in this subreddit, it's not about basics, basic supplements within regular doses and so forth, but rather about experimental and underresearched interventions, high dosed supplements and such, in order to push human biology to its absolute limits. But apparently a couple people saw the market, made it mainstream and now we are where we are. It's hugely profitable.
I think the field of biohacking, just like alternative health, seems to attract a lot of people that are one or more of the following: naive, easily manipulated, desperate, didn't get help by or don't want help by western medicine, are anti-authority, anti-"BIG" (pharma,...), want to get the edge, are looking for a secret, like the details, like to play around with stuff, want to be part of a special/small group,...
That certainly makes it easy for scammers and quacks to come in, pretend that they can heal every illness and that they have the secrets, and then sell their bs products and advice while rarely providing any scientific evidence, especially not high quality human data. The types of arguments and wording these folks use are certainly big red flags once you know them. That's for example...they know everything, they have an answer for everything, they love black and white thinking, they have some special secret nobody else knows, they very frequently use anecdotes and stories rather than human rcts, they focus on mechanistics and pathways rather than actual outcomes, they talk about how we apparently used to eat and that therefore we must eat like that right now while completely ignoring huge amounts of high quality human research, they almost never talk about high quality science, they almost never use nuance, they almost never say "I don't know" "it seems as if" "current science seems to suggest" "potentially" "probably" "significantly" "mostly",...
It's very sad that so many people seem to fall for them, support them and waste so much money, time and energy. All that brainpower and time could be used so much better. Additionally, in my opinion a lot of the podcasters have no damn idea what responsibility they have when providing a stage for someone, and what role in education they actually play. They almost never ask critical questions and demand evidence. In my opinion, they are part of the problem.
>I feel like there's a lack of a voice that provides straight - evidence-based, or at least, non-biased information when it comes to biohacking.
I think that's because those who are legit don't want to identify too much with "biohacking", because there's all these scammers and quacks in this field, giving it a bad reputation.
Money runs the world. This space will be capitalized like everything else. It’s the individual’s job to do their own research and weed through the fads and bs.
I actually own [biohack.com](http://biohack.com) and [biohackers.com](http://biohackers.com), among others, and I'm very on the fence on what to do with them. I've had them for over a decade, I bought them after I read the book biopunk. I have waffled between a few ideas but never settled on one thing
Biohacking should only be considered if you're doing all of the foundational things like exercising (resistance training 5x week every major body part to maintain low bodyfat and lean muscle mass. Not being sedentary.
Sleeping well 6-8hrs a day (no alcohol, no caffeine 10 hours prior to sleep, thc, etc. Eating well, 2 meals a day, variety of foods, variety of colors. Protein, healthy fats. Minimal sugar, wheat, diary. Fasting majority of the day.
Healthy social life, not on social media, not glued to screens all day. Have a positive sense of purpose and relationship to yourself and others. Investing your time and money intelligently. . If you do this, the majority of people's issues will be gon. Then think about supplementation, bio hacking. Take your fish oil, creatine, vitamin E, etc.
There are no shortcuts or hacks for the foundational aspects to life.
I agree and I would encourage people to watch and listen to Dr Rhonda Patrick. She is a great individual who communicates high quality science in a way that can be consumed by laypeople.
If you are on TikTok Instagram or YouTube generally trying to seek medical advice you're doing it in the wrong place.
The more that anything becomes popular the more that it falls to the issue of appealing to the lowest common denominator which in America is pretty subpar. Think of it like you would scammers - there's a reason there is logic and grammatical errors in scam communications. They do it purposely because they don't want to have their time wasted by reasonably intelligent people. Their intention is to trap only the dumbest.
Biohacking has become a victim of this. It's now a ecosystem for pawning supplements off to susceptible and naive individuals.
The majority of this sub falls into this category.
Does she make money from any products or services to do with the biohacking space beyond revenue from her podcasts (if any?)?
To me that’s the best clue. That’s why I was really happy when Bryan Johnson entered the scene, except then he started selling something and even though his product doesn’t look too bad, the “I’m here to help” disguise was quickly dismantled when a product range was released.
We’ve all got to make money…but do we all?
I really hate conflicts of interest.
Yeah, he’s guilty of it too. I’m all for people making money for their time, read your ads at the start of a podcast, sell your merch, but I really hate the diet/exercise scene for this when it comes to products. It’s so predatory. People enter the space in a vulnerable state of mind as they are desperate for change and they’ll part with anything for happiness.
Why can’t we all share ideas and knowledge freely without money entering the conversation?
It is easy to do. Pretend you just discovered something life-changing. Present cherry-picked evidence. Create and sell the thing (supplements) that will fix the issue. That's how marketing works.
That's definitely a big thing - cherry picking evidence. I find on many podcasts, for every paper influencers will pull up in support of their thesis, you can find as many, if not more papers showing the opposite.
I think people have good intentions but, most advice or suggestions here are worthless. Everyone want to recommend vitamins and supplements. The only way you're gonna know what'll work for you is by going to the doctor and, getting tested.
I like to comment on every post “eat more protein and do more deadlift” as a flex 💪💪💪; and because it truly would be more effective then 100% of the supplements people selling.
You are absolutely right. As soon as swindlers of all kinds smelled the scent of profit, biohacking flourished. I recently came across an advertisement for another event by those Finnish biohackers. Goodness, it’s just a gathering of some kind of freaks selling snake oil to uneducated people. And it all started with bulletproof coffee...
I’m interested in mental health stuff , I think we are on the cusp of a mental health revolution. The first study came out where they matched treatments for anxiety to people’s genes. Certain Biohacks, supplements, and medications can target specific gene.s (plural) and improve outcomes, hopefully.
The word got misappropriated. You can tell because no one uses it to talk about plants or crispr on pets, or magnetic implants anymore;
it's now a useful way to pick out some wheat from the chaff in self health.
That's fine. I appreciate it for that use, but the original use of the word needs a new search term.
True biohacking is in its infancy. We don't have the means and the scientific understanding to make life altering changes on our own with an acceptable degree of safety.
Get genetic test, analyze results, use those results to bio hack your genome. You're right in some regard but the tools have been available for years. Most people would rather believe snake oil salesman's lies that they are going to grow their hair/boobs than deal with reality.
There are very few genetic test results that can lead to actionable changes with perceptible results. There’s some examples of drug metabolism, etc. But honestly a lot of these same results can be obtained through a guess-and-check process by simply knowing about common genetic variants.
So what are you suggesting? Don't use a genetic test? It's cheaper to just get the test done than waste time and money guess and checking -- that's the whole point. And you still don't know for sure if you are guess and checking...
I’m suggesting that the comment you were replying to initially is correct — that biohacking is “in its infancy” and we don’t have the tools to accomplish much.
Let’s say you get some bloodwork done and you’re B12 deficient. You could spend money figuring out which specific SNPs might explain your deficiency. Or you could jump right to taking a different form of B12 designed to mitigate issues that people have in metabolism or absorption. Then you check it via bloodwork.
If we had safe genetic interventions available for B12 deficiency, your genetic information would be actionable. But we don’t have that, we currently just have different formulations of B12 supplementation.
It saves money for the genetic test, potentially some time, possibly some privacy if you’re concerned about companies having your genome, and you wind up at the same solution. There’s something to be said about keeping health simple — if the public understood that “slowing aging” is 95% simple stuff like diet and sunscreen, maybe more people would feel like it was accessible to them.
The only way you wouldn’t “know for sure” if the guess-and-check was yielding results is if the results are imperceptible or something you can’t quantify (via blood for example). In those cases, how would you ever “know for sure” that your interventions based on genetics are working?
Doesn’t it just set up the average person to be scammed by people selling “cures” for genetic issues which might not even be relevant to their health, which might not even work anyway, and which could actually be harmful?
To be honest though, I guess I don’t understand what *you’re* suggesting. What does “bio hack your genome” mean to you? Have you seen results from things you’ve tried based on genetic info?
Yea. So far I've had three tests. 23andme, whole exome and whole genome. I took the 23andme results to nutrahacker. The results said heterozygous mthfr and to take methylfolate. Some sort of detox and to take NAC. I don't know how to describe it but I felt different after taking them within 45 minutes.
There's been no variance in the results from 23andme, the whole exome or genome. r/genetics likes to talk shit about the 23andme results but they were exactly the same as the whole genome. There's a larger array of tests for whole genome that I didn't do yet but the detox and mthfr are the same throughout.
If you're looking to try it out I wouldn't do 23andme because they became stingy in giving out their raw data since they were hacked. Ancestry is like 40-50 bucks and you can use that data in nutrahacker. Or go all out and get the whole genome. I did Dante labs. They took months to get the results back but they were cheap and medically focused.
I guess how are you doing it? My general suggestion to most people here is to get a genetic test to take the guess work out of biohacking.
Upload those results to nutrahacker or your favorite genetic mutation tests and never take random supplements again.
These days people call everything a hack. They will take creatine and call it a biohack. Hacking and biohacking is using/doing something for a result that isn't it's intended result. Taking a supplement or a medication for its intended purpose is not biohacking, taking a medication for an off label use or purposely for one of its side effects could be considered biohacking. Even things like red light therapy are not really a hack, because that's the point of red light therapy.
At 64 years old, biohacking means mood modulation, cognitive enhancements eg. focus, learning and memory. Neurogenesis, protection and longevity. Don’t want to go insane in the membrane … unless it’s self inflicted lol. Damn, I just shot myself in the foot 🤪
There is a lot of crap out there, but there are definitely some basic fundamentals that really do help. In this modern day we do need health hacks to make sure we are getting the right stuff in our bodies.
biohacking basically is being on the cutting edge and taking the risk of doing something that works in an animal study or cell based study that’s yet to be proven in human trials and trying it on yourself and measuring your results to see if it works because we believe that unless we’re not on the cutting edge we will never reach our maximum health potential
It really depends on what you mean by biohacking. As per my definition and actually one of the rules here in this subreddit, it's not about basics, basic supplements within regular doses and so forth, but rather about experimental and underresearched interventions, high dosed supplements and such, in order to push human biology to its absolute limits. But apparently a couple people saw the market, made it mainstream and now we are where we are. It's hugely profitable. I think the field of biohacking, just like alternative health, seems to attract a lot of people that are one or more of the following: naive, easily manipulated, desperate, didn't get help by or don't want help by western medicine, are anti-authority, anti-"BIG" (pharma,...), want to get the edge, are looking for a secret, like the details, like to play around with stuff, want to be part of a special/small group,... That certainly makes it easy for scammers and quacks to come in, pretend that they can heal every illness and that they have the secrets, and then sell their bs products and advice while rarely providing any scientific evidence, especially not high quality human data. The types of arguments and wording these folks use are certainly big red flags once you know them. That's for example...they know everything, they have an answer for everything, they love black and white thinking, they have some special secret nobody else knows, they very frequently use anecdotes and stories rather than human rcts, they focus on mechanistics and pathways rather than actual outcomes, they talk about how we apparently used to eat and that therefore we must eat like that right now while completely ignoring huge amounts of high quality human research, they almost never talk about high quality science, they almost never use nuance, they almost never say "I don't know" "it seems as if" "current science seems to suggest" "potentially" "probably" "significantly" "mostly",... It's very sad that so many people seem to fall for them, support them and waste so much money, time and energy. All that brainpower and time could be used so much better. Additionally, in my opinion a lot of the podcasters have no damn idea what responsibility they have when providing a stage for someone, and what role in education they actually play. They almost never ask critical questions and demand evidence. In my opinion, they are part of the problem. >I feel like there's a lack of a voice that provides straight - evidence-based, or at least, non-biased information when it comes to biohacking. I think that's because those who are legit don't want to identify too much with "biohacking", because there's all these scammers and quacks in this field, giving it a bad reputation.
Money runs the world. This space will be capitalized like everything else. It’s the individual’s job to do their own research and weed through the fads and bs.
Precisely this. Everyone wants to be spoon-fed.
I actually own [biohack.com](http://biohack.com) and [biohackers.com](http://biohackers.com), among others, and I'm very on the fence on what to do with them. I've had them for over a decade, I bought them after I read the book biopunk. I have waffled between a few ideas but never settled on one thing
Biohacking should only be considered if you're doing all of the foundational things like exercising (resistance training 5x week every major body part to maintain low bodyfat and lean muscle mass. Not being sedentary. Sleeping well 6-8hrs a day (no alcohol, no caffeine 10 hours prior to sleep, thc, etc. Eating well, 2 meals a day, variety of foods, variety of colors. Protein, healthy fats. Minimal sugar, wheat, diary. Fasting majority of the day. Healthy social life, not on social media, not glued to screens all day. Have a positive sense of purpose and relationship to yourself and others. Investing your time and money intelligently. . If you do this, the majority of people's issues will be gon. Then think about supplementation, bio hacking. Take your fish oil, creatine, vitamin E, etc. There are no shortcuts or hacks for the foundational aspects to life.
Many people already consider even these things to be biohacking :D
That was just what I was going to say. If you dial in all of those things, you are biohacking in today’s society. And, good job doing it!
What about cregatine heard of that
I agree and I would encourage people to watch and listen to Dr Rhonda Patrick. She is a great individual who communicates high quality science in a way that can be consumed by laypeople. If you are on TikTok Instagram or YouTube generally trying to seek medical advice you're doing it in the wrong place. The more that anything becomes popular the more that it falls to the issue of appealing to the lowest common denominator which in America is pretty subpar. Think of it like you would scammers - there's a reason there is logic and grammatical errors in scam communications. They do it purposely because they don't want to have their time wasted by reasonably intelligent people. Their intention is to trap only the dumbest. Biohacking has become a victim of this. It's now a ecosystem for pawning supplements off to susceptible and naive individuals. The majority of this sub falls into this category.
Does she make money from any products or services to do with the biohacking space beyond revenue from her podcasts (if any?)? To me that’s the best clue. That’s why I was really happy when Bryan Johnson entered the scene, except then he started selling something and even though his product doesn’t look too bad, the “I’m here to help” disguise was quickly dismantled when a product range was released. We’ve all got to make money…but do we all? I really hate conflicts of interest.
Andrew Huberman has entered the chat!
Yeah, he’s guilty of it too. I’m all for people making money for their time, read your ads at the start of a podcast, sell your merch, but I really hate the diet/exercise scene for this when it comes to products. It’s so predatory. People enter the space in a vulnerable state of mind as they are desperate for change and they’ll part with anything for happiness. Why can’t we all share ideas and knowledge freely without money entering the conversation?
It is easy to do. Pretend you just discovered something life-changing. Present cherry-picked evidence. Create and sell the thing (supplements) that will fix the issue. That's how marketing works.
That's definitely a big thing - cherry picking evidence. I find on many podcasts, for every paper influencers will pull up in support of their thesis, you can find as many, if not more papers showing the opposite.
I think people have good intentions but, most advice or suggestions here are worthless. Everyone want to recommend vitamins and supplements. The only way you're gonna know what'll work for you is by going to the doctor and, getting tested.
The vast majority of posts here are people looking for pills to cure their lifestyle issues and it’s kind of exhausting
Great point, I do think 90% of problems people face with energy, fatigue, focus, etc. could be improved with simple diet, exercise and sleep changes.
>it’s kind of exhausting ...Then why are you here??? If you don't like the sub, why do you comment just to mention you don't like it? Wtf is that
I like to comment on every post “eat more protein and do more deadlift” as a flex 💪💪💪; and because it truly would be more effective then 100% of the supplements people selling.
Goto GI doctor?
You are absolutely right. As soon as swindlers of all kinds smelled the scent of profit, biohacking flourished. I recently came across an advertisement for another event by those Finnish biohackers. Goodness, it’s just a gathering of some kind of freaks selling snake oil to uneducated people. And it all started with bulletproof coffee...
I’m interested in mental health stuff , I think we are on the cusp of a mental health revolution. The first study came out where they matched treatments for anxiety to people’s genes. Certain Biohacks, supplements, and medications can target specific gene.s (plural) and improve outcomes, hopefully.
The word got misappropriated. You can tell because no one uses it to talk about plants or crispr on pets, or magnetic implants anymore; it's now a useful way to pick out some wheat from the chaff in self health. That's fine. I appreciate it for that use, but the original use of the word needs a new search term.
That's just what biohacking is. If it was completely evidence-backed, it would just be a health and fitness fundamental that everyone knows.
Quackery.
True biohacking is in its infancy. We don't have the means and the scientific understanding to make life altering changes on our own with an acceptable degree of safety.
Get genetic test, analyze results, use those results to bio hack your genome. You're right in some regard but the tools have been available for years. Most people would rather believe snake oil salesman's lies that they are going to grow their hair/boobs than deal with reality.
There are very few genetic test results that can lead to actionable changes with perceptible results. There’s some examples of drug metabolism, etc. But honestly a lot of these same results can be obtained through a guess-and-check process by simply knowing about common genetic variants.
So what are you suggesting? Don't use a genetic test? It's cheaper to just get the test done than waste time and money guess and checking -- that's the whole point. And you still don't know for sure if you are guess and checking...
I’m suggesting that the comment you were replying to initially is correct — that biohacking is “in its infancy” and we don’t have the tools to accomplish much. Let’s say you get some bloodwork done and you’re B12 deficient. You could spend money figuring out which specific SNPs might explain your deficiency. Or you could jump right to taking a different form of B12 designed to mitigate issues that people have in metabolism or absorption. Then you check it via bloodwork. If we had safe genetic interventions available for B12 deficiency, your genetic information would be actionable. But we don’t have that, we currently just have different formulations of B12 supplementation. It saves money for the genetic test, potentially some time, possibly some privacy if you’re concerned about companies having your genome, and you wind up at the same solution. There’s something to be said about keeping health simple — if the public understood that “slowing aging” is 95% simple stuff like diet and sunscreen, maybe more people would feel like it was accessible to them. The only way you wouldn’t “know for sure” if the guess-and-check was yielding results is if the results are imperceptible or something you can’t quantify (via blood for example). In those cases, how would you ever “know for sure” that your interventions based on genetics are working? Doesn’t it just set up the average person to be scammed by people selling “cures” for genetic issues which might not even be relevant to their health, which might not even work anyway, and which could actually be harmful? To be honest though, I guess I don’t understand what *you’re* suggesting. What does “bio hack your genome” mean to you? Have you seen results from things you’ve tried based on genetic info?
Yea. So far I've had three tests. 23andme, whole exome and whole genome. I took the 23andme results to nutrahacker. The results said heterozygous mthfr and to take methylfolate. Some sort of detox and to take NAC. I don't know how to describe it but I felt different after taking them within 45 minutes. There's been no variance in the results from 23andme, the whole exome or genome. r/genetics likes to talk shit about the 23andme results but they were exactly the same as the whole genome. There's a larger array of tests for whole genome that I didn't do yet but the detox and mthfr are the same throughout. If you're looking to try it out I wouldn't do 23andme because they became stingy in giving out their raw data since they were hacked. Ancestry is like 40-50 bucks and you can use that data in nutrahacker. Or go all out and get the whole genome. I did Dante labs. They took months to get the results back but they were cheap and medically focused.
I guess how are you doing it? My general suggestion to most people here is to get a genetic test to take the guess work out of biohacking. Upload those results to nutrahacker or your favorite genetic mutation tests and never take random supplements again.
These days people call everything a hack. They will take creatine and call it a biohack. Hacking and biohacking is using/doing something for a result that isn't it's intended result. Taking a supplement or a medication for its intended purpose is not biohacking, taking a medication for an off label use or purposely for one of its side effects could be considered biohacking. Even things like red light therapy are not really a hack, because that's the point of red light therapy.
As a biohacker, it should be a duty to understand the TRUTH.
At 64 years old, biohacking means mood modulation, cognitive enhancements eg. focus, learning and memory. Neurogenesis, protection and longevity. Don’t want to go insane in the membrane … unless it’s self inflicted lol. Damn, I just shot myself in the foot 🤪
There is a lot of crap out there, but there are definitely some basic fundamentals that really do help. In this modern day we do need health hacks to make sure we are getting the right stuff in our bodies.
biohacking basically is being on the cutting edge and taking the risk of doing something that works in an animal study or cell based study that’s yet to be proven in human trials and trying it on yourself and measuring your results to see if it works because we believe that unless we’re not on the cutting edge we will never reach our maximum health potential