An introduction to biohacking: 10 simple biohacks you can use every day to optimise your health and well-being

Biohacking. What are the benefits of biohacking? Is it safe? Does it work?

Today, I'm going to be talking about biohacking.  Biohacking is something that we're hearing about more and more and something I've become super interested in over the last 18 months or so.  So I thought I would share with you what biohacking is all about. 

You don't have to be a silicone valley billionaire to be interested in biohacking. It's available to anyone, whatever your age and stage in life and is about optimising your own health and well-being by making simple changes which "hack" your biology. 

During the course of the episode I'll be exploring what is biohacking? What are the benefits of biohacking? Is it safe? Does it work? And then I'm going to give you 10 quick biohacks that you can use in your every day life to promote your health and wellbeing. 

Below is my Stripe & Stare discount code, the podcast episode with the founder of Stripe & Stare (referred to in the episode) and the biohacking articles that I referred to in the episode, just in case you'd like to find out more:

• 20% discount code for Stripe & Stare: BGOOD20
• Listen to the interview with Katie Lopes the co-founder of Stripe & Stare HERE
• Read the ultimate biohacking guide, 23 ways to hack your biological age HERE. 
• Read Sauna bio hacking:  an introduction by own your family HERE. 
• If you'd be so kind as to leave me a review, you can do so by opening the apple podcast app on your phone. Search for "A Friend In Your Ear".  Scroll down to the end of the first page where you will see the heading "Ratings & Reviews". Beneath that you will see some starts and underneath them, the words "write a review". Just tap on the words and a screen will open up where you can leave a review. Thank you! 

Transcript

1:23

Hi. Um, thanks so much for joining me today. Today, we are going to be talking about biohacking, which is a buzzword at the moment, it's something that we're hearing about more and more and something I've become super interested in over the last 18 months or so. So I thought I would share with you what biohacking is all about. Now I'm going to be referring to a couple of articles that I've come across. I'll link to them in the show notes. But the first one is the ultimate biohacking guide, 23 ways to hack your biological age. And the second one is about sauna bio hacking. And this is an introduction by a blog called your own family. So like I say, I'll link to those in the show notes, but what I'm going to be looking at during the course of the episode is what is biohacking. What are the benefits of biohacking? Is it safe? Does it work? And then I'm going to give you 10 examples that you can use in your everyday life. Now, like lots of areas of life biohacking is fairly heavily male dominated, I would say. And so I'm giving you the perspective of biohacking through the lens of a 53 year old female. Which I hope you will find helpful. Maybe there's parts of that you can identify with. The thing I really love about biohacking is that it's something that you can do as part of your everyday life, just by making a few tweaks and changes. So if you're someone who doesn't have a lot of time, maybe you're looking after young children, maybe you're looking after elderly relatives, maybe you work really long hours, so you don't have time for a full sort of exercise routine, and lots of time to invest in yourself. These are tweaks that you can make to your everyday life to bring about optimal. All results. For your health and for your wellbeing. So it's a great way of being able to make fantastic changes to your life without spending a lot of time and effort in doing so. And from them, you can reap the rewards really, really quickly. Right before we dive into the episode, I am just going to take a minute to share with you my favorite nicher brand. Now, if any of you know me, you know, that I absolutely love Stripe and stair and I have a code so that you can get a 20% discount off their products, which is be good, 20. That's B, G O O D 20. Now, the reason I love striping stair fundamentally is because the knickers don't go up your bum. And I was really struggling with knickers that were going up my bump, particularly in the summer months, because your knickers. Anchored by anything in the summer months, like trousers or tights. They've got a bit more free rein to move around, perhaps where you don't want them to. So when I came across Striping stare. And tried them out for running and in everyday life, I was just absolutely over the moon. And I don't wear anything else. They've got several different styles of knickers. Now they've got the original, the high rise, the Brazilian, the hipster and the thumbs. They come in size, extra small, which is a sort of six to eight to a four X, which is a 20 to 22. They've got a fabulous website. You can meet all about the factories. They use the fabric, they use the packaging they use because they are a sustainable underwear brand. And they've got some fab collabs at the moment, particular favorite of mine. Is the one with Emma Bridgewater. So if you love Emma Bridgewater cake tins with the spots on and the pennies and the tea towels, you can also now have those. On your knickers. I've also done an interview with Katie Lopez, the founder of Stripe and stair that's episode 12. If you want to go and take a listen to that. And as well as their knickers, I love their PJ's. That bralettes are where those embed their vests. They're all in one body is keeping you super toasty, warm during the winter. So, like I say, there's a 20% discount with the code, bigger 20 go and have a little look and maybe treat yourself to something lovely. Right. Coming back to biohacking and our very first question. What is biohacking. So simply put. Biohacking is the conscious control of your external environment to enrich your physical and mental health. It involves monitoring what you eat here. See touch and smell to guide the external stimuli. Around you toward a better, healthier version of yourself. In terms of the benefits, biohacking optimizes various biological processes in the body. And you can be very meticulous about it by targeting specific biomarkers, such as heart rate, variability, blood glucose levels, and sleep quality. So that's when you taking things. A little bit more seriously. Light, lots of things in life. There's a very gentle, easy entry point. And then we can get more serious about these things, but for now, I'm just going to keep it very lightweight, very accessible things that you can easily incorporate into your life. So a few of the benefits of biohacking involve having a better mood. I mean, who doesn't want to benefit from having a better mood? There's a direct relationship between sleep quality and mood. And by optimizing your sleep quality, you can improve your mood, cognitive function and physical performance. You can have improved metabolic health. So by personalizing your nutrition, you can improve your metabolic health, lower your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. And reach your ideal weight. Now, I should say at this juncture that this is not about weight at all. This is about optimizing your own health. Weight might be part of that, but it is not solely about anything to do with health. So you can get an increased lifespan, intermittent fasting. For example, can positively impact cellular aging, preventing chronic disease and extend your lifespan. It's a way of DIY in your biology, and by doing so you can hugely improve your health and your performance. Is biohacking safe. I think this is a great question because the phrase biohacking to me. Just sounds like something a little bit barbaric. Maybe it was because it's to do with the word hacking and I don't like the word hacking at all. And it feels like it might involve things that, which are a little bit sinister, might involve some drugs, things that haven't been tested. And I completely can understand if you would feel the same way too. So I think it's great. If we look at the question of is biohacking safe. So biohacking methods in general are safe. So for example, making dietary adjustments and improving your sleep are safe practices as well as the other. Ideas that I'm going to share with you. Intermittent fasting, for example has been well-researched and isn't dangerous when done properly, but. Some biohackers experiment with unregulated unapproved and untested. Experimental drugs. And that probably isn't a place that I'm going to suggest that you should be going right now. So yes, in principle, biohacking is safe. It just depends how far down the route you're going. Like anything. Does it work? That's the next question? So that depends on the biohack and also on the person. Some bio hacking techniques do have strong scientific foundation. Whilst others are still being fairly researched. Now I'm going to come on to some examples of biohacking. Which are really easy for you to adopt and to incorporate into your everyday life. Number one, don't worry. Right. It's sleep. We all know that sleep is the best medicine. I think the older we get, the more we realize that as well. It's the best medicine as nothing can compare to its restorative power. When you get enough rest at night, you boost your immunity, strengthen your heart and end up feeling better and less stressed. It even makes you smarter and slimmer. Allegedly, I'm not going to comment as to whether it makes you smarter or slimmer. I don't actually know, but I do know. And I think most of us know that if we have an early night, we feel so much better the next day. And if we have several early nights, we really feel the benefit of it. So that's why biohackers have grown to love wearable technology, like the aura ring, Fitbit, apple watch. On different apps so that you can provide input on how to improve your sleep quality. The devices can measure sleep data, including duration and REM sleep. So you can optimize your sleep. Now I have worn a Fitbit for years and years and years, mainly for running purposes. And just to see how many steps I'm doing each day. And I'm not really, in fact, I don't ever track my sleep. I think that's because I'm normally asleep and don't struggle with sleep. Fortunately, I know it can be a huge issue for some people. So I don't really monitor how my sleep is going, but maybe that's something that you want to start digging into. If you feel that your sleep quality isn't great, or you're aware that you're awake a lot in the night, you're coming in and out of sleep and you feel the optimizing, your sleep could really, really help you to feel better as you go about your day. So maybe one of those trackers is something that you could investigate and it could have huge, huge benefit fits for you. The second idea I'm going to come on to is intermittent fasting. Now this is a really, really popular. Biohacking method and it's proven to do wonders for your overall health and performance. According to many, many studies, it improves oxidative stress and inflammation, markers, blood pressure, hunger, body, weight, and cholesterol levels. And it can fit so easily into many different lifestyles. Now, the theory behind it is that you eat only for eight hours of the day and that for the other 16 hours of the day, you're fasting. So it's just a question of figuring out what works well for you. Some people need to eat first thing in the morning. So might eat between seven o'clock and then eight hours after that, and then not eat until seven o'clock the next morning. Other people I've got friends who can push the time when they first have something to eat till about 11 o'clock in the day, they then eat for seven hours after that, but then nothing after that time until the same time, the next day. And then other people might want to eat from midday until eight in the evening and have nothing for the next 16 hours. So it's really dependent on what works well for you. If you're someone who wakes up and feels like you're going to fall over, if you don't eat quite quickly, Then you're probably better eating the first part of the day and not the latter part of the day. But if you function really well until mid-morning without having had anything to eat, That can be a great way for you to do it. If you are somebody who wakes up and feels the need to eat quite quickly. Which is something that I feel like I've actually found that I can just push it on a little bit each day, rather than saying, okay, I normally at seven, I'm now not going to eat until 10, which is probably a bit of a shock to the body. Then just increasing it by quarter of an hour every day, so that you move a little bit further on. I think I did this inadvertently when I was recovering from my art. I just wasn't hungry in the morning, not having my breakfast till later, probably wasn't demanding much of my body in terms of way of exercise. So it wasn't really a big deal being low in energy sources, but have a feeling to that and just see how it feels for you. But intermittent fasting is quite easily accessible. There's plenty out there that you can read about it. It's well-documented well-proven. Isn't anything scary in the least. Cold therapy. Now that is another really exciting one. So this bio hack entails exposing your body to cold conditions, whether through ice baths. Cold showers or cryotherapy. Studies show that exposure to the cold strengthens the immune system. And what was interesting, is it cold therapy makes you more receptive to dopamine. So the idea is to get cold for three to five minutes a day. As this will make you feel happier and more energized. Now I was talking to a lady on Instagram the other day, and she has a 10 bath in her garden. Looks like a big old fashioned bathroom to put in front of the fire. And she lays in that every morning, she puts an egg timer on for five minutes and her husband does the same. Apparently her husband has made. A lovely cover to go over the top and they've got a pillow. To make it comfortable. So she lies in this bath every morning. And in the winter they hack the ice off the top. Now you've probably seen people doing this. You might have seen people with beer barrels in their gardens that they submerge themselves into you. Might've seen people who have cold water plunge pools, and they just. Drop down and disappear into them. Oh, it makes me cold thinking about it all the easier one. Is to have a cold shower every morning, but cold water therapy has taken on. Really real popularity, huge popularity in the past few years with Wim half. And the breathing techniques that are associated with it. So if you're just wanting, excuse the pen to dip your toe into cold water therapy. Then maybe start with the showers personally. I find it a lot easier just to go into the sea. I'm not so good standing in the shower and feeling that cold water kind of just, I don't know, tap my skin and better just being in control of walking in guessing under having a swim and coming out. But everyone's different. You can switch between cold water and then put your shower to warm water. So you just get that switched between the two. But again, it's just something to think about what suits you. Feel into it, maybe it's something that you might like to start. Anytime soon. I did say to the lady on Instagram, maybe I'll start this in the new year or maybe I'll start it in the summer. And then. You know, get used to the water, getting progressively cold through the autumn and the winter, and I'll be fine in the winter. She said, no, just get on with it. I'm thinking. Okay. I'll have a little think about that. Going to an easier. One number four is meditation. You will hear all top performers talk about how they meditate. And science has shown that this ancient practice would use his blood pressure helps manage daily stress and anxiety and makes you laser focused. The best part is that you can meditate just as you are without any prior training or experience. There's some great apps to help with this. So I use insight timer. There's lots of meditations on there, guided meditation, or just music that you consider meditate to. If it's not something that you're used to doing, or you think you might struggle with the idea of just sitting still and not having a brain full of. I need to be doing this. I need to make this list. Have I dropped this off? Who do I need to collect then? Actually the guided meditations can be really, really good because they provide a focus and they keep you on track. The next one supplements. The one that I actually have referred to before is MCT oil. This stands for medium chain triglycerides and is a type of fat found in oils, such as coconut and Palm oil. It helps boost energy and metabolism as well as balanced blood sugar. And I take that straight off the spoon. It doesn't have any taste. I follow a ketogenic diet, which I've also mentioned before, and it helps to get into a state of ketosis. There's also something called krill oil, which comes from krills they're tiny shrimp, like Marine animals. And that's rich in inflammation fighting omega three there's lots of different options out there. If you're thinking. Oh, yes. Maybe a supplement would help me. Then maybe this will just gently get you started on investigating your options. Number six is hit. Short for high intensity interval training made super popular by Joe wicks. The poor guy. My friend, I met him at a book signing in Birmingham, asked him lots of questions. I don't think he knew what had hit him. He looked totally confused by these slightly over-enthusiastic middle-aged women. Asking him, all the ins and outs of hit training, how it worked, how it raised your metabolism, how your metabolism stayed raised after the event. And I think he was very, very happy to side step us. Anyway. Hit involves completing repeated bouts of intense activity, followed by low intensity exercise or periods of rest within varying recovery durations. It can enhance cardiovascular health boost, endurance, and possibly aid in weight loss, according to multiple studies. So I would head to Joe wicks. Have a look on YouTube for some of his training sessions. That's where I started with him. Caroline Gervin. She does wait. She also has hit sessions as well. Typically you'll do 30 seconds on 30 seconds off. Sometimes it's 40 seconds on 20 seconds off for a period of about 20 minutes, two or three times a week. What I found with hitch training. Is that the first and second rounds are always the hardest. If you can get past those and they're say four or five rounds. The later ones tend to become much, much easier. So don't think that just because it's hard to start off with is going to get progressively harder. If anything, it gets progressively easier. I think because your body warms up as your heart rate increases. As you just get used to the movements, you just settle into it, you stop fighting it. So, like I say, if you haven't done it before and you find the first couple of rounds really hard, don't give up, it will get. Easier. I promise. The next one to look at is breath work. Now, when I was recuperating from my op I did a couple of breath work courses because I couldn't get out and exercise, but I thought I'm still interested in wellbeing and biohacking. So let me see what I can do whilst not being able to move very much. And there was a really, really good breathwork course on insight time at which my husband and I used to listen to. This was the very, very early days post-op in the first week. The problem was with it. I think we used to listen to about 10 minutes and fall asleep. So we'd wake up the next morning and go. They were talking about last night and we look at one another and go, no, I fell asleep. So. Learning about breathwork is great, but it can also make you quite CP. But breathwork combined with an exercise routine can help you reduce stress, shed extra pounds and improve your wellbeing. There's a couple of different exercises. One of them is called box breathing, which is a breathing technique that calms your nervous system. And what you basically do is you imagine a square and you start for example, at the top left-hand corner. So you breathe in for four seconds. That takes you along the top of the. Square then you hold your breath for four seconds, which takes you down the side of the square. Breathe out for four seconds. Takes you along the bottom of the square. Hold your breath for four seconds takes you back to where you started and you just repeat the cycle. So experimenting with breath work again, something you can do so easily sitting in traffic, sitting at your desk. Whilst cooking the dinner. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. Not something that anyone is going to be aware that you're doing, but actually can really, really help just to calm you down to slow everything, to be a good antidote to stress. The next one that I'm going to look at is two. Detox your self and your home. So you can detox your way out of stress. This is number eight, so there's just two more to do after this. What it is is your natural ability to transform and excrete certain toxins. Here are ways you can remove them from your body and from your environment for optimal health. You can remove toxins from the environment. So you investigate your environment and get rid of all plastic and BPA containing items. Mold unscented products are really, really big ones. You can get an air purifier. That's an excellent way to keep your air clean. Whether the cleaning products that you use around the home comes into this particular category, removing toxins from the environment possibly. So it's just being aware of the chemicals that you're using in your home and also in your clothes. There's so many toxins in clothes. So for example, the non iron school uniform is one that's full of toxins. The tell receipts are full of toxins as well. So people who work in shops are exposed to high levels of toxins. They're in all sorts of things that we wouldn't necessarily think about. So it's definitely worth taking a look at or Googling about how to remove toxins from your environment. You can remove toxins from your body. Dry body brushing is a simple, easy, quick way of doing this. Something that I've been doing for many, many years. Can't remember when it first came in Vogue probably about 15 or 20 years ago is stimulates your lymphatic system. You can also exercise more to sweat toxins out and you can drink filtered water with electrolytes and minerals. Then removing toxins from your food. So this is where I first came across Patrick Holford again, probably 20 years ago. The one thing that I really remember. About his book was talking about storing everything in glass and not using. Clingfilm or storing things in plastics. Removing toxins from your food means avoiding processed and pre-packaged foods, caffeine, soy products, roasted meat, seafood, and vegetable oils, or which have chases of the most common endocrine disruptors in them. Microwaveable food with the film lids is better to decanted out of those containers and put it into glass. I'm sure you know, all of this already, but again, really quick, really easy things to do. And there's a lot more reading that we can do around all of these things. Now another simple one is to practice gratitude. I think this is a great thing to do. First thing in the morning, especially if you're somebody who wakes up and is automatically. Set to a default setting of I'm a little bit anxious. I'm a little bit nervous, just practicing gratitude, thinking about other people, thinking about what you're grateful for. I know we're not meant to pick up our phones first thing in the morning, but sending three messages to people that you love and just checking in with them is not only a really good distractor, but it just kind of resets your system. So a practice of gratitude can. And like different things to different people. It can be a gratitude journal. It can be, I'm going to send five messages to people that I love today. It can be looking to someone in your family. Who's physically next to you. And expressing gratitude towards them, but it's good and beneficial for optimizing the health of your spirit. As well as your overall biological wellbeing and longevity and the really interesting thing about gratitude is that. Gratitude cannot exist alongside stress or negativity. It's impossible for the two to be in your brain at the same time. So that's why it's almost like a reset, I know Davina McCall. When I did a couple of events with her, she said every morning she woke up and she was just grateful for the fact that she wasn't waking up in sodden wet bed clothes, which is what she would wake up in when she was detoxing. So something as simple as that, waking up. Now, I'm so grateful to be awake today and I'm in this lovely warm bed and I've got whoever next to me or in the next room or at the end of the phone and the weather's doing this. Just anything that you feel grateful for you wake up is a good thing to tune into just to reset your day. And then the last one, number 10 is all about saunas, which are holding a particular interest for me. At the moment sort of biohacking is growing in popularity. There are infrared saunas, and then there's the more traditional saunas. And there are also sauna blankets. So if you love saunas, but having access to a sauna or being able to have one installed at home is just not an option for you. Sauna blankets are now available and I will just whiz through some of the benefits of sauna biohacking. They include detoxification, heat, shock protein amplification. The key to achieving efficient detox and heat shock protein amplification is making sure that the sauna is hot enough. Uh, most of the research says that the temperature range from 160 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit is the optimum and where we wanted to be. The duration of each session and the frequency of use are also important. So the sweet spot appears to be about 20 minutes, four to seven times a week. And then other benefits of sauna include improved cardiovascular fitness. Lower blood pressure, improved mental health strengthened immune function. Improved athletic endurance clearly relevant for all of us right now reduced inflammation, which is a big one that I'm really, really interested in. And improved insulin sensitivity and a reduction in stress hormones. So those two are things that really interest me, the reduced inflammation and the improved insulin sensitivity. And they might be something that we dive into a little bit more. At a later date. So those are the 10 quick and easy bio-hacks that you can introduce into your life at optimum. Health and wellness. During the course of the episode we looked at, what is biohacking? What are the benefits of it? Is it safe? Does it work? And 10 examples. As I mentioned at the start of the episode, I will link to the two articles that I looked at before doing this episode, because you might want to go and read a little bit more about them. If you want to go back and listen to the podcast episode where I talked to the founder of Stripe and stair Katie Lopez, she's one of the two founders that's episode 12. The code to get 20% of striping style products is be good, 20. And I just wish. You a really, really amazing rest of your day. favor before I go. If you felt able to leave a review on the podcast, I would so appreciate it. It really helps for the podcast to be seen by more people and to be listened to by more people. I, my aim here. Is to share things that might be of interest and value to you to make your everyday life easier. All right. You take care of lots of love and bye for now.