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Biohacking or DIY Biology is an extensive approach to managing your own health. Optimize your health with these simple yet effective biohacking techniques.
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Is Biohacking an Extreme Pursuit?
Biohacking may have just gained attention in recent years; however, this practice has been known since the 1980s.
Biohacking’s citizen science approach is a broad idea. This may comprise simple lifestyle changes to extreme methods such as DNA alteration and cybernetics device implantations. However, unsupervised experiments may lead to unsafe practices.
Tracking Every Moment
Fortunately, you don’t have to track every nanosecond of your day or spend a small fortune to benefit from biohacking best practices.
Biohacking your health can be as easy as applying the latest scientific discoveries to your own life and adjusting as you go. That’s always a good approach to our well-being.
Optimizing What You Put Into Your Body
One of the central tenets of biohacking is that the things you put into your body (what you eat, the air you breathe, the sounds you are exposed to) shape your body’s output (your energy, productivity, and moods).
Your mitochondria are at the heart of this process.
Mitochondria are the batteries that give energy to every cell in your body. These tiny powerhouses are easily influenced by their environment in other words, and they are impacted by everything your body is exposed to. When you improve their environment, you can improve the energy produced by mitochondria. The results? Far-reaching improvements on your overall health and energy levels.
Everyday Biohacking
What does this process look like in everyday life? Well, because we’re all different, what works for one person might not work for someone else. As you make changes to your lifestyle, you should carefully monitor your progress as you go. Biohackers draw on the data they create to come up with solutions that make them feel their best. They avoid one size fits all formulas.
That means paying close attention to how you feel, but the results are worth it. By improving cellular function, biohacking your basic daily activities can have noticeable benefits. And it can be fun. After all, who doesn’t want to use science to feel better every day? Check out some easy ways to hack your health. The results might surprise you!
How To Biohack Your Health
Monitor Your Diet
Adjusting your nutritional intake is an easy way to start biohacking.
It’s a simple concept: Any change to your diet that results in noticeable improvements in how you feel is a biohack.
In general, focus on the fact that what you eat influences your gut bacteria and, in turn, every aspect of your health. By choosing natural, high-fiber foods, you can reduce inflammation. Too much inflammation affects mitochondria, leading to mitochondrial dysfunction, which can impact your entire body.
In general, biohackers focus on the nutritional quality of foods, not the calorie count. Many biohackers follow a gluten-free diet with plenty of healthy fats. Some have good results with intermittent fasting. But ultimately, the key is to pay attention to how your diet makes you feel and make adjustments based on that.
Focus on Natural Products
Even if we’re careful about what we eat, exposure to harmful elements is inevitable. The water we drink, the substances we clean with, and the beauty and grooming products we use can all hold harmful toxins. These toxins impact our cellular health in ways we may not even realize.
Consciously seeking natural beauty products and non-toxic cleaning solutions can help you assess the impact of toxic ingredients on your body.
Improve Your Sleep
Biohackers look beyond the standard advice on improving sleep to consider what we surround ourselves with at bedtime carefully. The following are some small adjustments that could help improve the quality of your sleep:
- Reduce the amount of blue light exposure at night. Nighttime blue light exposure commonly comes from electronic devices. What can be a helpful practice is staying off your devices for 3 hours before bed or switching your devices to night mode.
- Reduce the temperature in your room.
- Create a dark environment. Remember that our mitochondria want to sleep when it’s dark and awaken when it’s light. Make it easier for them by creating a sleep environment that’s as dark as possible.
- Avoid caffeine at least eight hours before you go to sleep.
By making small adjustments to your night routines, you can improve the quality of your sleep.
RELATED: Sleep Loss Exacerbates Inflammatory Markers in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients
Adapt to Stress
Some biohackers use complex biofeedback systems to monitor the effect of stress on their bodies, but controlling stress can be as simple as paying attention to your breathing.
One biohack technique is block breathing, which means exhaling while counting to five, then repeating the inhale count.
Classic stress reduction techniques such as yoga, meditation, and forest bathing (walking in the wilderness) can all contribute to lower stress levels.
It may seem like a bit of a paradox, but some biohackers recommend high-intensity interval training (HIIT) for improving the body’s ability to handle stress. HIIT emphasizes taxing a body to its maximum capacity, then allowing it to recover. As a result, we teach our bodies to be more resilient.
Hormones Control It All
Hormones are your body’s chemical messengers. The endocrine system releases them to your bloodstream to tissues or organs.
The hormonal balance in your system plays a considerable role in pretty much everything. Having a balanced hormonal state is key to maintaining good health and allows for all of the tips mentioned above to work for you. When our hormones are out of alignment, it affects so many of our daily activities. Trying to even get through the day can be a challenge, let alone trying to take your health to another level.
Biohacking could be as simple as taking charge of your own health. Biohacking doesn’t have to be complicated. Ultimately, you’re the best scientist when it comes to your well-being. Making a few simple changes, such as those mentioned above, may help improve your health and well-being. Consult a medical practitioner to check on your well-being and provide advice for safe biohacking.
If you’d like to look deeper into your current health status, find out if your hormones are causing issues in your body, or learn how you can take your health to the next level, come into the office and let’s talk. Contact us today to see how we can help you with healthy aging! We have offices located in Ocala, Florida, as well as Fruitland Park and Daytona.
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