Depending on who you are, biohacking is either brilliant or nonsense. Either way, it is big business as biohacker authors and influencers take social media by storm with their (sometimes extreme) tips and techniques. What does biohacking mean? It is basically a vague and fancy term for the act of going to extremes to make your body work as well as possible, to help you live longer, and healthier. But as a recent Forbes piece put it: “Almost any tactic could be considered biohacking if an individual employs it with the goal of enhancing their biology in some way.”
The man who invented the term, Dave Asprey, likened the practice to the way that computer hackers “gain control of the system by changing the way they get in”. The medical world does not condemn biohacking, however the jury is out on many of its promises. It is therefore left up to me to try out some of the techniques for a week and report my findings to the scientific community (or at least, the Evening Standard).
Wednesday
I weigh myself at 58.4kg. First up is the thing I’m most dreading. Intermittent fasting is the practice of not eating during specific periods of time, with proven benefits including weight loss, heart health and cellular repair. I choose the 16:8 option: I’m only forbidden from eating from 9pm to 1pm the following day, meaning most of my non-eating time occurs when I’m asleep. Yet waking up and not having breakfast feels like the punishment for a terrible crime. It’s only Day One. I work out after lunch. A crucial addition today is hanging upside down from a bar — which, according to Asprey, “trains your brain capillaries, making them stronger and more capable of bringing oxygen to your brain”. Have you ever tried to hang upside down for any length of time? I manage only 20 seconds, and it’s not an enjoyable 20 seconds. When I scrabble to get myself the right way up again, my head feels lighter but no brighter.
Before bed I take two pills containing lemon balm, L-theanine and more B vitamins, supposedly to help me sleep better. Then I install an app called Pzizz, which basically soothes me to sleep with calming music and words, some of which sound as though they’ve been generated by AI: “Your body knows exactly what to do; has been doing it; and will continue doing it, only more relaxed, more and more.” One problem here is that I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old. Asking a dad of young kids to test out sleep techniques is a bit like asking someone if an umbrella is waterproof while they’re scuba diving. Although my first brush with Pzizz is odd, I can feel myself warming to the narrator’s hypnotic nonsense.
Thursday
This morning I’m 58kg — I’ve lost 400g overnight but I have to break my intermittent fast with a bowl of cornflakes. Why? Because I’m going to be sealed in a high-pressure chamber and have oxygen pumped into my face. I’m going to NUMA in Marylebone to have hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and medical director Dr Nur Ozyilmaz recommends I eat beforehand. She explains that the chamber’s pressure forces oxygen to dissolve into your blood’s plasma, helping your capillaries transport more oxygen to your brain.
Concerning, when I get in and the pressure mounts to 1.5 bars — equivalent to being 10 metres underwater — there’s a good deal of pain in my right ear. Try as I might to pop it, this pain remains until the pressure in the tank has to be lowered then slowly raised again. After this, I just lie back and watch Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar on a tablet that the clinic conveniently provides.
Having just one 45-minute session in the chamber is a bit like taking one Japanese class and expecting to be able to speak the language. So while I feel absolutely no benefit — other than a renewed appreciation for the oeuvre of Anderson — I appreciate that it’s only over a longer course that the treatment would do any good.
Friday
Mysteriously I’ve put on more than two kilos overnight, coming in at 60.2kg, but I can’t work out why. Today I’m having an ice bath at Revival PT Studio in Hammersmith. There is no scientific consensus on whether ice baths really confer any advantages. Many people swear by them but I swear during mine, as the seven degree water slowly meets my waist. I stay in for several minutes, gradually getting used to it. While normally I would have to have been forced into the water at gunpoint, I can testify to the adrenaline rush that comes with dunking your head underwater. Guy Kennedy, who co-founded the studio, repeats the claim that the dopamine rush from an ice bath is greater than from of a line of cocaine. I wouldn’t know.
Saturday
59.2kg. Today, back at Revival, I’m having an infrared sauna, which purports to relieve joint pain and improve circulation. I have already read that to biohack the sauna, I should do weights in there to raise my energy levels and lower my blood pressure. And, though I feel like a bit of a chump because the space is too small for me to raise the weights above my head, I do see the appeal. This is the kind of masochism I can get on board with, with sweat pouring off me and a disproportionate sense of achievement setting in. Sign me up, I’m a sauna bro.
Sunday
I’ve lost just under 2kg today, which makes sense — I probably left them in the sauna. During my workout I manage to stay upside down for more than a minute and notice that A) my heart rate goes from 59 to 104 beats per minute and B) I feel much worse afterwards. I don’t think there’s much evidence that it is helpful in any way, so it just feels like an odd way to spend your time.
With one meal every day I’ve been taking supplements — an energy-boosting nootropic formula containing green tea extract and lots of B vitamins. Nootropics are a broad church of chemicals intended to boost brain power and treat illnesses like Alzheimer’s. For healthy people, however, the medical community think they’re basically placebos.
I’m getting on well with Pzizz. One benefit is that when our daughter is babbling away at 5am and I have to get back to sleep, I can listen to “allow each in-breath to be easier and easier, with you getting out of the way” and she’s drowned out entirely.
Monday
I stay roughly where I am at 57.6kg today. Kennedy, who biohacks using techniques such as red light therapy and collagen, says: “Intermittent fasting isn’t a massive fat-loss benefit, it’s more just giving your gut a rest, which we don’t really do in this modern day and age. When you actually flip the switch, you don’t really get hungry at those times.” It won’t be working brilliantly on me because during the 1-9pm hours I am desperate to cram as much food into my mouth as possible, like a bear preparing its body for hibernation. When I hang upside down this time my heart copes with it better, rising only from 83 to 88. What’s nice is that I am becoming more aware of my body and how it’s reacting in different scenarios. Becoming more in tune with your body feels like a good thing.
Tuesday
On my final day I weigh 59kg. Not only has intermittent fasting not made me lose weight, it’s caused me to put on 600g. This may have been because I cheated yesterday and ate dinner at 9pm, then obviously had to have some tea, almonds, blueberries and sweets as well.
Though I am now fond of Pzizz, I don’t know how anyone uses it without being infuriated at how much time they have to spend charging their phone. I hang upside-down one last time for old times’ sake. While I won’t be this way up again any time soon, in general I do feel better than I did at the start of the week.
There are elements of the biohacking routine — Pzizz, ice bath, and sauna workouts in particular — that I am on board with, largely because they involve getting out of my comfort zone. But have I joined the church of the biohackers? No. For now I remain a sceptic.
