Why It’s Smart To Be Wary of Biohacking

Hey, if biohacking is your thing and it’s fun and it keeps you interested, motivated, and aligned with healthful lifestyle goals—that’s great! Whatever it takes…

But in today’s feverish escalation of technology applied to humans, let’s not forget about the simplicity of living a healthy, active, energetic lifestyle. There is a cost that comes with obsessive self qualification, and I’m not just talking about the big dollar products and services—I’m talking about the emotional cost as well.

When it comes to tracking and optimizing, it’s hard to think of anything better than physical fitness performance standards and your intuitive state of motivation to perform, readiness to train, and recovery. That’s why I like to look mainly at today’s elite athletes for guidance and inspiration.

I acknowledge that Bryan Johnson, the 2 million dollar man biohacker, and other movement leaders are doing a good service promoting health and putting up impressive biohacking numbers, but I’m even more impressed by the Olympic gold medalists we watched in Paris, and my fellow masters track & field athletes who are performing at seemingly superhuman standards.

Witness B.rad Podcast guests Sue McDonald (@SueMcDonaldFitness)(She broke 16 Masters world records in 15 months!) and Cynthia Monteleone (@fastover40), world champion 400m runner who went faster at age 45 then she did in college (and coaches many other masters and elites to greatness) or national champion 400m man Lee Bridges who runs :52 at age 57, having slowed only seven seconds from his performance as an Olympic trials athlete back in ‘88.

How long are their freaking telomeres? I don’t know, but I know they are performing at a standard never seen before in the history of humanity. Sprinting is the quintessential human activity and anti-aging essence. Tell a mirror! (get it?)

Mark Sisson recently said, “biohacking is today’s anorexia.” Yes, it’s possible to overdo even good things, like a scrutinized diet and devotion to a serious exercise program. According to an article in TIME, rates of orthorexia—an eating disorder defined as an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy food—have been estimated at between 1% and 7% of the population, though some estimates are much higher. And one study from 2017 about dieticians’ eating habits found that an estimated half of the 630 dietitians interviewed were at risk for orthorexic behavior. Clearly, you can think about your health, your diet, and yourself too much—to a point where it becomes actively harmful and distracting from your true goal, which is wellness. 

Wellness includes both physical and mental health, so it is important for fitness and wellness enthusiasts to refrain from constant rumination over our lifestyle choices and instead look to find joy and a sense of accomplishment—not anxiety—in the daily choices we make to live a healthy life. But, here’s the thing: if you are reading this, you are probably already doing enough for your health. You do not need to constantly be in search of the next thing you can do to improve yourself. Don’t let yourself get caught up in overcomplicating things when it’s likely that you already know more than enough about what a healthy lifestyle truly means—this is especially important considering how much stress negatively affects the body. Cortisol’s catabolic nature (it breaks down tissues) means that chronic stress literally pokes holes in your gut. This is why it’s so crucial that you do not overthink your health and diet to the point that it’s all you think about and becomes a source of stress.

If your focus is on getting enough sleep, eating whole foods and avoiding processed junk, incorporating scientifically-proven ingredients to supplement the aging process (like creatine and whey protein), and walking and moving around in general every day—you’re good. Throw in a solid sprint effort once every 7-10 days, some time exposing your body to a red light, and a cold plunge if that appeals to you, and you’re even better. But, unfortunately, a lot of us grew up in and around a quite single-minded (and unbalanced) fitness culture where the overarching idea seemed to be that more was always better. 

However, we do know better now, so we don’t need to stress out over not doing enough when our idea of “not doing enough” is so skewed in the first place. Instead of trying to do more and monitor every single thing you consume and every rep you perform, these days I am simplifying things and focusing more on recovering and walking. It can be easy to forget about seemingly basic, human activities that we have done forever, or even seeing the merit in them, when you’re so focused on peak performance and reaching goals you set for yourself. But walking is the quintessential human form of locomotion and the foundation of a healthful, active lifestyle. Quoting my book, Born to Walk, “Walking helps boost digestion and the assimilation of nutrients; it is directly associated with improved sleep quality; it helps trigger parasympathetic nervous system activity and thus improves stress management; it improves glucose regulation; it helps boost the production of anabolic hormones such as testosterone, human growth hormone, sex hormone–binding globulin, insulin-like growth factor 1, and DHEA; and it generally promotes homeostasis. Walking makes you feel alert and energized instead of fatigued, hungry, and depleted. It helps regulate mood, appetite, and alertness all day long—no crash-and-burn effects, as there are in the hours after strenuous workouts. Walking hones metabolic flexibility, so you can lose excess body fat the right way and keep it off forever.”

And what about chronic cardio? It often does the opposite—it promotes carbohydrate dependency and flips on genetic switches for muscle loss, bone loss, and fat storage. It also makes you creaky, achy, stiff, and sore, while walking makes you more supple, mobile, and flexible.

To learn more about the vast benefits of walking and the cost of chronic cardio, click here to get your copy of Born to Walk, available for order now!

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