The Ultimate Biohack?

What is Biohacking?

Biohacking was a term first coined by the father of biohacking – Dave Asprey. It is the use of biotechnology, lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, supplements, gadgets and whatever else biohackers can find that helps enhance their body, mind and spirit and maintain themselves in the best possible health. It is different from Bodyhacking that would include implants such as microchips, neural implants etc

Although biohacking started very much as an underground movement, it has moved significantly towards the mainstream as people have become much more image and health conscious. The escalating cost of medical care in countries where there is no state health service has driven the interest in maintaining health as well as possible, for as long as possible, on the basis that looking after your health saves many $000s, especially in old age.  The NHS in the UK has arguably reduced people's drive to take responsibility for themselves because there's a mistaken belief that healthcare is free. It isn't. It’s paid for via taxes, regardless of whether you hardly ever use the NHS unless you really have to, or whether you go to A&E for a stubbed toe!  Call me a wimp, but I hate being ill/injured and I want to stay as healthy as I can, mostly because I don't want to be in pain later in life! 

Biohacking is very much more science-driven these days, and it is big business, whether you're a manufacturer selling products, or an individual who is recognised as an industry advocate that gathers a huge following on Social Media inspiring others to follow your healthy lead.  In recent years, biohacking has become very good at optimising ourselves as we are - as we age. It is probably reaching the stage of rapidly diminishing returns once the key areas are sorted out. It seems to me that biohacking is moving more towards Gerontology – the more conventional discipline of the study of aging. If we understand what causes aging and what changes happen in the process, in theory we will have a better chance of stopping it, and then go on to reverse it. Hands up who wants to live 200+ years, or maybe even 1000?!!!

Soon after we are born, or sooner in the case of mothers who are not careful what they put in their body during pregnancy, we start to age.  The one certainty of life is that we die. How we manage our health deterioration on the way determines whether that journey from birth to death is mostly healthy. Our DNA deteriorates as we get older too and may be graphically depicted as being something like this...

My aim in life is to die healthy at a ripe old age, but having had a good deal of fun on the way!! We shouldn’t be so obsessed about what we eat or do that the generated stress does more harm than what we’re trying to avoid. On the basis of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “everything in moderation” we should be able to get a happy balance that keeps us healthy overall. What use is a healthy body without a healthy mind?

What are Biohackers doing these days to slow the aging process?

There are some basic practices that have multiple aspects to them all. The first would be not to put unhealthy things into our body – that includes foods and chemicals primarily, but limiting our exposure to a toxic external environment would come into that too.  I’m all for the legitimate reduction of genuine pollutants whether that’s in the air we breathe (such as particulates release by burning fuels and industrially generated chemicals), contaminants in our water, or the massive increase in ever more harmful EMFs we are set to experience with the increased roll-out of 5G/6G and whatever G we get up to before the Telecoms industry has completely turned our planet into the biggest industrial microwave oven ever created! 

So we’ve cut out as many of the harmful products going into our bodies as we can, but we still have the issue that ultimately we are not 100% efficient, and deterioration is inevitable. The best we can hope to do is slow it down.  This is what led to the birth of Gerontology.  The arrogance of course, is the assumption we will ever fully understand the aging process sufficiently to be able to successfully manipulate it.  The key word here is "successfully".   We are light years away from fully understanding the living processes too, however much scientists like to think they can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  This is ultimately why Pharma still has to test their drugs, and for sufficient time with proper ongoing monitoring - because they don't fully understand all the ramifications of everything that goes into our body!!   

When we consider our interaction with our microbiome, the subtleties of cell signalling and the fact that we’re denying and moving away from understanding the meridians, bioactive points and chakras etc, I would suggest our understanding of biology as a whole is reducing rather than increasing, and thus the ongoing attempts at anti-aging are like expecting to hold back the tide with a colander!!  Once again, the reductionist approach may understand more of some of the minutest details, but in doing so loses ever more sight and understanding of the bigger picture. Some things are certainly beyond our current control when there is evidence to suggest that our health may rely to some degree on things our ancestors did in their past, especially by our maternal ancestors. However good we are now, we aren’t ever going to fix those epigenetic factors using current mainstream techniques!!

As an example of current studies, telomeres are DNA–protein structures found at both ends of each chromosome that protect the genome from nucleotide degradation, unnecessary recombination, faulty repair, and inter-chromosomal fusion.  As we age, they get shorter, and our DNA deteriorates.

There may well be products that help to slow the degradation of telomeres, but when the basic understanding of DNA itself is so fundamentally flawed I can’t help but wonder if God is laughing at how we’ve fallen for the distraction?!!  Controlling telomeres are not the key to life any more than antioxidants turned out to be.  After they were first discovered, antioxidants were hailed as the holy grail of eternal youth on the basis that stopping inflammation would stop degeneration and aging. It should be no surprise that wasn’t that simple.  It turned out that supplementing with too many antioxidants interfered with cell signalling and compromised health rather than improved it. 

"More of something good isn’t necessarily better!" 

It is a delicate balance of the whole that is key. That doesn’t mean to say that there are no benefits to antioxidant supplements in certain situations, but they aren’t in themselves the solution to eternal youth either.

The same goes for “smart” drugs (not linked to 5G!!) such as nootropics and mood-improving adaptogens etc. Ultimately, we are holistic beings with everything that we are being interlinked and interdependent. That includes our place in the universe and our relationship with it and those around us too.

Optimising our health is important

I am not denying the importance of our diet, exercise, our mental health, spiritual well-being and relationships etc.  However, I also recognise that there are many other factors that we really don’t have any hope of controlling and co-ordinating.  Don’t get me wrong, I don't have a defeatist attitude, just a recognition that whilst we try our best to improve ourselves in all these different areas, we cannot avoid the inevitable. That’s OK though – it’s how it’s meant to be.  If you think you can cheat death, prepare for disappointment!!  That’s our spiritual journey, and as long as we acknowledge that then we also know there’s no point getting too hooked up on all the different biohacks going around or the FOMO on them either. There are now so many of them that it is impossible to do everything from a time perspective, let alone financially, as many supplements and pieces of kit can be very expensive, and there’s no point starting a practise if you aren’t going to keep it going.

Having said that dying is inevitable, that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in trying to put it off and maintaining my health as well as possible for as long as possible! I’ve had an interest in anti-aging for the past 20 odd years in recognition that our body is constantly repairing and placing itself for maintenance, not just from injury.  Healing from injury and illness is better when we’re younger.  Therefore, some anti-aging supplements have increased healing applications in an injury situation, which is relevant to my clinical work.

I have taken various supplements myself for years, not because I expected to feel the difference when I first started taking them before my aging picks up speed, but because I know I will reap the benefits when I’m >80 years old. I will still be fit and healthy well past 100!

Fundamental Biohacking Problem

There is a fundamental problem with biohacking in its current form that Wave Genetics absolutely addresses. It is that biohackers are working with their current DNA status and trying improve their health at the same time that their DNA continues to deteriorate, albeit they hope at a reduced speed.

There are some other problems too…

1.  Many of the supplements are firefighting health issues already in existence whilst others are trying to slow down the clock.
2.  Many are directed at a single organ or body system in isolation, that fails to recognise that we’re only as good as our weakest link. All body systems are linked, so addressing one organ or metabolic pathway may not be as successful as we hope, and is likely to throw something else out of kilter over time. The danger of this is that by the time we recognise the new symptoms we may not the associate them with the original change that caused them.
3. The other problem is that nobody fully knows what the interactions of the various different supplements, or their metabolites in the body might be over time. These aren’t necessarily adverse chemical interactions, although that’s possible too, but if you're trying to alter a pathway in isolation, you're likely to change a feedback or cell signalling that disrupts how the body controls and balances its overall metabolism.

No way am I claiming to have all the answers for the above! There is no doubt that doing something positive towards your health is way better than doing nothing. Many of the biggest biohacking techniques are lifestyle orientated such as diet and fasting etc, but bear in mind we are individuals, and what suits one person won’t necessarily suit everybody.

Wave Genetics is foundational

I believe that the personal Individualised Wave Genetics sound files are foundational to whatever else you choose to practise as a Biohacker. Your baby photograph is entangled with the health information held on the quantum level of your DNA at the time the photo was taken. Using a technique developed in Russia by Prof Peter Gariaev that earned him a Nobel Prize nomination, your baby photo can be used to create a sound file that can influence your current DNA quantum health information and gradually reintroduce the past health that your baby DNA held, and bring it into the present.

The sooner you start the better 

Every journey starts with a single step, and this could be the most important health step you take. Wave Genetics isn’t a magic wand that will restore your baby health overnight. It takes commitment to the process, but Biohackers are generally used to doing that and are good at it already. The rest of your Individualised Sound Matrix is constructed from the sound files of natural products that help restore and support whichever body systems need help.

Once you have your Individual Sound Matrix it will last you the rest of your life, so if you consider the cost over an extended passage of time, it may well be one of the cheapest per session/treatment investments you ever make as a Biohacker...