97: Are You Biohacking or Just Bullsh-tting?

MK: Are we solving symptoms with shiny gadgets instead of root causes? And is biohacking becoming a digital version of big Pharma? Well, let's unpick this shift and what it means for the future of wellness. Welcome to the Primer Shift Podcast. You know, from a historical perspective, biohacking meant ancestral health and cutting edge tools and bringing them together.

In the sense of, you know, offering yourself empowerment through lifestyle optimization, sleep, food, movement, light. But I've realized that it has become biohacking, has, has been, has become very commercialized and gadget ized. And I realized this already over the course of the past few months, but I just recently attended Dave Asbury's bio Hacking conference in Austin, Texas.

I've noticed a huge focus on devices and consumer technology. You know, nearly every booth was pushing a quote unquote solution that cost a lot of money, but demands no real habit change. And so I couldn't help but draw the parallels between biohacking and big farmer. With traditional pharma, you know, it's like, hey, take a pill to feel better without changing behavior.

Modern biohacking, I feel like has become like a, you know, a wear this gadget or take a hack with the same outcome, and I think it's a slippery slope. You know, if we start using tools as bandaids, I. Instead of using them as catalysts to implement meaningful and sustainable lifestyle choices. And just to give you a couple of examples, you know, blue light blocking glasses, they're a great tool if you cannot avoid exposing yourself to blue light, especially in the evening before bedtime.

But if you wear blue light blocking glasses while scrolling on TikTok in bed, on your phone. Kind of defeats the purpose. I mean, just, you know, get rid of your phone, stop scrolling on TikTok, and you don't need blue light blocking glasses or change to different light bulbs. Just turn off the lights, you know, instead of wearing blue light blocking glasses, or there is a device I ran into a couple of years ago.

It's called Hep B. It's a wearable that you wear around your neck and it's supposed to stimulate emotional balance. So you run around and you feel like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm drinking, or I'm social right now. And first of all, I don't think it works. I tried it. I felt nothing. But even if it did, you know, rather than addressing your stress, your relationships, your habits, you know, your hang, something around your neck to impact how you feel and your, your emotional balance.

You know, or gadgets that promise deep sleep while you are pounding caffeine at 4:00 PM and ignoring circadian rhythms. I mean, all of, there are a lot of tools that that do have a purpose that can help you in certain cases, but they should mostly help you to adopt better lifestyle choices and implement lifestyle changes rather than continuing with making poor choices and just trying to mitigate the consequences using.

Biohacking tools, and obviously, you know, if you've been following me for a while, you know that, you know, a lot of people think I'm a biohacker, I'm an influencer. You know, I talk about, I promote products and gadgets, many of which I, I've used, I still use, but it's very easy to forget that, you know, I review those things.

I use certain things, maybe, you know, to address a certain use case to help me get over a hump. To help me implement something and then I'm done using that tool. There are certain tools that I use a lot like saunas and coal plunges, you know. Now if, if I were to live somewhere where I had a natural body of water nearby that freezes in winter and I could just car plunge in a lake that's nearby, I would do that instead of having a coal plunge at home.

But I don't, so I use a cold plunge, you know, I use a sauna.

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 And now back to the episode.

You know, I, there are certain things that I do use frequently, um, because I have no other choice or the choice would be. You know, moving somewhere, which is not possible right now, you know, or it would, you know, defeat some of the things that we have here, like raising livestock.

I don't wanna move to a cold climate if it makes it easier for me here to raise food that, to keep me help healthy in order to keep the family healthy. And so there are certain things where, yeah, it makes sense to use them, but there should be supportive tools, you know? And the problem is that a lot of people think that.

Or that a lot of influencers, you know, market devices as solutions rather than support tools. And I'm sure I've done this in the past as well, but I just wanna reiterate, you know, whenever I talk about something, you know, carefully think about, okay, how can I use this as a tool to help me make better lifestyle choices to, to improve my health without using them as crutches?

You cannot buy health. You know, you can only implement health. You can do things that make you healthier. You can use tools to support that, but you need foundational behaviors, sleep hygiene, real food, movement, sunlight. You know, without those, no biohack, no gadget, no tool is gonna make you healthy or keep you healthy.

And there are even certain cases where, you know, the overuse of wearables and I'm mean, for example, if you're watching this, you know, on on YouTube you can see that I wear the latest, the WHOOP mg. You know, that's another example that I've noticed firsthand in the past with my wife in particular, where, you know, waking up in the morning and seeing a red recovery would stress her out.

That defeats the purpose. You know, using tools like WHOOP oring or you know, CTMS or other things is meant to help you to give you information so you can make better lifestyle choices. But if they induce anxiety or trigger anxiety, then they're questionable, they're of questionable use and you might be better of not using them at all.

So I challenge, you know, you to really think about. Or other influences as well. You know, are we enabling passive health? I don't think we should. You know, that's very, that's a very slippery slope. And I'm not anti-tech, you know, but I think technology has to augment and not replace, and there are certain areas, I've alluded to it in the before, or biohacking tech really shines, if you want to call it tech, like a car plunge, you know, consider it a habit builder.

Consider it something that challenges you, that makes you more resilient, that makes you. That helps you implement habits, even if they're difficult in the beginning. They're not supposed to be a dopamine fix, like scrolling on Instagram. You know, if that's the reason why you core plunge to get that quick fix of, you know, chemicals rushing through your bloodstream, then you might wanna reconsider either you know, why you use them and how you use them, or if you should be using them at all.

Continuous Glucose Monitor is another great example that can help you learn about your food habits, but. They should not enable you to micromanage every single meal forever where you feel bad if you see a spike in glucose. So you really have to be careful and and differentiate. What do you get out of using a specific tool and does it help you?

Light therapy is another great example that can help people with disrupted circadian, you know, exposure, but. Ideally it should be part of a broader fix. And my rule of thumb is if a hack makes you more mindful and engaged, great. If it lets you keep doing dumb stuff with less guilt, not so great. Overall, I think that biohacking needs a reset.

You know, we need less dependency and more agency and I want, you know, ask yourself this question. Am I using this to support a better lifestyle or to avoid changing? And I'll challenge you, you know, identify one gadget or hack you, use as a crutch and then replace it even if it's only temporarily with a lifestyle based alternative.

And then if you're on social media, you know, share the results. You know, tech in a primer shift. If you're on Instagram or shoot me an email, you know, I'd really like to hear from you. What have you identified that you are using as a crutch that where you instead should be making a better lifestyle choice or where, where you started using a crutch or a, a gadget to implement change, but the change just never, you never followed through, you just kept using it as, as a crutch.

You know, biohacking isn't about escaping biology, it's about working with it. And so I hope this episode. Helped you to be more mindful, to think about what biohacking means, what it means to you, how you can leverage certain tools, and when it's maybe time to. Cuts the cord and to go back to the basics, you know, am I really benefiting from wearing those blue light blocking glasses every single night while scrolling on my phone?

Or might I be better off just to put the phone away after 5:00 PM And there's so many other cases we could talk about forever, you know, giving specific examples. But if you are really mindful, if you're present, really think about what do you do every single day. What do you, what biohacks do you use?

What gadgets do you use? What crutches do you use? And then think or ask yourself, are those really helping to implement change or am I just using them as a crutch and whether we're gonna wrap it up. I hope you like this episode. If you did share it with someone who could use it until next time.