Introduction Of Podcast
Biohacking is a loosely thrown around term in the fitness chatter. But what exactly is it and how does a biohacker approaches the concept? Listen from the horse’s mouth as Shiva & Mohit, two biohackers, discuss their views on biohacking and talk about their own experiences, and where can you start today.
Timestamps
- (00:00 – 02:47) – Introduction
- (02:48- 09:47) – What Is Biohacking?
- (12:11 – 31:33) – Shiva’s 5 Favourite Biohacks
Key Takeaways – Transcripts
Intro (Mohit): We talk about a fun topic called biohacking. It’s a great buzzword because, it does throw memories or images around people injecting, you can say, new types of chips in their own body or basically any sort of, let’s say CRISPR stuff. But I think we are going to talk about something that is way more practical. It’s interesting, because it’s easy to find the most controversial stuff, but hard to find something that is basic and impactful. Given that it’s a buzzword we’ll also try to declutter. How can you apply this in your own life. Not to just talk about pills and different types of therapies, but also talk about things that everybody and anybody can do in this space. So, let’s talk a little bit about it, right? Right, I think when we think about biohacking, what it really means is the ability of an individual or a set of tools that actually help you get to your health outcomes faster. Because you’re hacking those health outcomes, you’re not going on the linear path. And if you really think about the stack here, we would see that the world of fitness and the world of health has embraced biohacking as a magic pill. But if you really think about things that really help you accelerate health outcomes, it often boils down to the simple basic stuff that you can do again and again. So why does repetition, or you can say in some ways the simplicity matters. One of the reasons why simplicity matters is because it’s really about compounding. So when you really look at a behavioral change or something that affects your body, like even, let’s say basically your physical activity, if you exercise three times a week, and let’s say these are 3 hours per week and you basically improve that by 10%, measure that gain versus basically if you look at your general activity and improve that by 10%, or let’s say if you previously by 10%, the way it would compound and create impact for you could be significantly larger because of the amount of compounding you can do with this small change. So that’s the mathematical answer to why simple things actually work better. But let’s also get to the fun stuff, right? The fun stuff that all of us want to talk about.
Question (Mohit): So, Shiva, biohackers, I’m not talking about the ones who actually trying to hack their DNA, but let’s say lifestyle biohackers in this case we’re actually trying to actually get into new forms of therapies or new forms of lifestyle changes. That’s really interesting if you consider all these things that we discussed from a biohacker’s perspective because this is what these folks actually talk about. Given that there’s an entire spectrum of biohacking starting from lifestyle changes. First of all, what do you think really is biohacking? And second, how would you define the ideal way to like your perspective around how should one look at biohacking themselves?
Answer (Shiva): From the perspective actually biohacking, I think it’s quite simple really. It’s like hacking into your own biology. So, I suppose the first question anybody has to ask is, what would you like to change? And that’s the simplest thing. And then the next point is, how would you want to change it? So now, once you address these two questions the possibilities become endless. You could end up in one of the best clinics in Germany, in the Alps, or you could do it at home. And the essential nature of both those things is exactly the same. You may end up in an ayurvedic clinic, as, you know, different generations, different people, different strokes for different folks, but essentially it’s all the same thing. You could have a herbal strategy. If you were a little cooler, you could have something called a neutraceutical strategy. If you had an MD on board, it would be a pharmacological strategy. And essentially, it would all be sort of the same. Let me give you a great concept of this. Metformin comes from French lilac. Now, they already used it for the sugar issue many years ago, and it’s now upgraded into a pharmacological device as Metformin. It’s the same tool used in different periods of time. One is more a herbal orientation, one is more of pharmacology orientation. One has clinical data, but they derived it from here. A lot of our own stuff like today is still being used. So, the question is, is Ashwagandha a neutracuetical or is it a herb? It’s both.
I know that organic molecules basically leveraged pharmacological form factor, essentially anything, right? And that’s great for optimization, as an adaptogen for adrenaline. There are other things from Russia, Rhodiola Rosea and stuff like that. And it’s the same thing. It’s all adaptogens, right? And they helped in their own countries. We used it.
Question (Mohit): That’s really interesting. Does also means that in nature you have these natural organic molecules that are very local and specific to your own, basically, physiology that enhance longevity. So, it might also be true that the same molecule might not be relevant for everybody else?
Answer (Shiva): Absolutely. I think because you grew up in that environment for thousands of years, maybe there are some things that are more applicable to a certain society. Like, I know from longevity perspective, carnosine was something that the Russians had, but it’s a derivative, as you can see, carnosine is a meat derivative. Maybe for us, it wouldn’t have been that. It would have been living in India, it would have been something different, right? And I’m just saying it could be shilajit. There are so many different things, right? Cordyceps another one for us. Now, what makes it really interesting is that the story that we’ve created around this has become bigger than the thing itself. The marketing around it has become bigger than itself as an equatorial country. If I wanted infrared and I wanted UV light or whatever it is that I required, I would just have to pop out and as long as it’s not crappy weather, you’re more or less going to get, like, the full spectrum of the sun with its entirety. Now, if I had no access to that and I was living in the Himalayas and maybe I had no access to green skies in a flight, maybe then I want to get, like, a nice Too for one of those other cool infrared devices. But that’s photobiomodulation, essentially photobiomodulation is also the sun. Now, I think what we’re doing is maybe it’s an aspect of globalization more than anything else that we can experience. It’s also cool. Yeah. And it’s a great story. When you engage with your health today, maybe it’s more difficult to actually do the hard steps, and sometimes it’s easier to look for the magic pill. Come on. And who doesn’t want the magic pill? Right? You want the elixir of life and longevity, and this is how it works. It need not be the truth. But I think the interesting element is the search for itself is a dopamine thing, right, in the pursuit of what motivates the dopamine molecule. So, biohacking, in a great sense, I actually hacking your dopamine so that you’re motivated and you’re constantly on the lookout. You’re trying new things, right? And it’s a motivational thing. So, does it matter whether it works or not? No, because it’s an experience, and I think that experience of that health will give you learnings, and you can take it forward. And this is what all biohackers do. I mean, they go and do the most crazy things, and they see what their body can do with their limitations and see whether they can push those limitations. Everybody knows about ice baths, but you can hack in so many ways, right? You can hack your physiology. Let’s think Wim Hof. Just hacking physiology with breathing and the cold. That’s just nature biohacking, right? And then on the other end of the spectrum, you can have the aspirates, and you got the MCT oils. You have other things coming in. It doesn’t really matter. Of course, the MCT oils. I mean, if you’ve ever had them, you know it works. It does have something that actually works there. But over here, we have coconut oil. MCT is a particular molecule that’s derived from that, right? Really interesting. It’s multi chain triglyceride. Yeah. Medium chain. But I think that there’s a specific carbon molecule that has been extracted that doesn’t have to be processed in your gut and can be directly used by your brain. Like a ketone. I think that’s where that whole biochemistry goes into. But you can put that in coffee, and then it gives you something else. But like everything else, right, there is no one stop solution for anything. And when you engage with this stuff and look, I love this stuff because everybody is trying different things, and if you really look at it, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a clinical study, which is the humans experience of something that they document for future time, or an experience of an individual which is more like the quantified self. All they’re telling you is like, look, this is what I experienced, and I enjoyed it and I didn’t, or it worked and it didn’t. And sometimes there’s objective data, sometimes there’s not. Even when you look at whether we have the Oura ring, the Garmin watch, the Lumen, by the way, I have all of that because I enjoy the drive of actually exploring data and looking at it. But does it mean I biohack? Yeah, absolutely. But so does a yogi, he’s just hacking in a different way. We are all hacking into our biology to get what we want.
(Mohit): Yes. I think what I love about this place is the fact that the industry, no matter how much of it, is a lot of great selling. I think the industry is sexifying health in a big way. I think it’s a new wave because for a long, long time we have definitely added more glamor to travel, things like owning more assets. But I think health is sort of like a new wave. And if you look at the hierarchy of needs, this is the next phenomena that we will see that people would aspire to not just be devoid of diseases, but also to go above and beyond to actually be a performing individual. And just the fact that I think what you mentioned is really interesting is that the fact is that the pursuit is actually way more interesting and actually arriving at a destination.
(Shiva): Also, if everything in our lives, I mean, health, the pursuit of health is a very boring thing compared to everything else. It’s really cool that people are making it interesting because now you can play with it. Like the Cyborg, for example. We can play with a real construct. You’re gamifying your existence, you’re able to engage and validate your experience. In the old days, you’d be able to do this yourself by I suppose, as you know, we were discussing this earlier about reading the Nadis in Ayurveda. They would actually read the Nadi in the pulse, right? It’s a way that different communities had different ways of doing this that is also introception. You may call it HRV today, but it remains to be a skill and an experience where you’re able to observe change. But today we’ve been able to take that and say, how do you get people healthy? Well, make it into a pursuit of something cool and sexy and create standards for it and allow our community to participate and suddenly it changes it. So, look, I’m really open to biohacking personally in the sense that I think it’s a great conduit to have an open mind to see what the world is doing with information and all the different biohackers. But I’m happy to follow Huberman to Ben Greenfield, to anyone, just try to see what their explorations are. And out of all of those guys, you’re going to get like little pearls of wisdom, something that they’ve experienced, and then it gives you a chance to also explore the same thing, right?
Question (Mohit): Right. Okay, on that, what are your top five? If you were to list down your favorite biohacks?
Answer (Shiva): I think light would be my top biohack movement of the eyes. The one thing that I think we forget today is that the eyes are the closest. It’s like having the only aspect of the brain is your retina is almost outside the brain and that’s still a part of the brain
So, the number of things that you can actually do with the eyes is just phenomenal. And in recent times, it’s been a great exploration for me because it’s got to do with balance, it’s got to do with mood, it’s got to do with anti-stress. You can access like a 1000 things through the eyes. And I think it’s really underrated. But there’s a huge neurobiological movement and I think you call it a visual brain. Yeah, it’s just mind-blowing stuff and I think it’s really underrated. So, it’s something that I’ve been playing with a lot because there are so many. I think we have 23 skills of seeing and we hardly use any of it. And it’s actually shocking. Like you can just reduce your heart rate by just using a peripheral vision. I mean, here’s a good one for you. So, if you keep your eyes loose and you try to expand and you look around and have a heart rate monitor on, you’ll see your heart rate dropping, dropping, dropping. Just by doing something like peripheral vision, what do you mean by looking around? But you keep your eyes like sort of loosely focused in front, but try and see while you’re in front, can you perceive the walls on either side of you? And then try and expand that and expand that and expand that, right? And just using your eyes, you’ll watch your heart rate just plummet because peripheral vision activates is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. Just to give you like a really quick on why. Because go try it. And once you begin to see something like that, you’re like, wow, that’s underrated, right? And it’s something you’re carrying around all day, every day. And that’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about. So, you’re asking about favorite biohacks. And that’s why I talk about light. Because eyes & light, let’s put that together because it’s more about how our eyes receive light and the information that comes in when we start. That’s the start of every day for me. So, I just find it amazing that the days I actually and I try every day to get a little bit of light in the sun, 30 minutes stretching, doing whatever with that. And my days different. And I can honestly tell you if I’m moving in the sun in the morning, my glucose level drops by maybe 15 or 20 points, even if I’ve had a bad night’s sleep. Well, and that’s just startling. But I think you do a walk in the morning as well. Yeah, but if you notice that those days that the glucose, it’s got to do less with physical activity and more with the light patterns. We have a chromophore all our whole body is designed to imbibe light, right? I mean, look at the pigmentation on the skin, the melanopsin in the eye. There’s quantum physics happening in the eye because you have the two oldest vitamins, vitamin D and vitamin A recycling in the eye and all of that. The brain is so close to it, right? And this is your occipital rope just at the back. And if you really think about it, movement of the eye, and it works on your cerebellum, it works on your brain stem, you have an immediate access to some of the oldest parts of your equipment in terms of evolutionary biology, right? And 35% of all your sensory load comes in from visual. And it’s so amazing how much we neglect, like, all the capacity of the eye. It just occurred to me that we’re quite myopic. Really weird word. But even when we’re reading today or we’re on a computer, if you notice, our whole life is in this box, this room, with, like, a lot of close visual convergence on targets. We’re not diverging. And if peripheral vision is the divergent vision, because you’re looking at 30, 40 meters away, and it’s able to bring your heart rate down, just think about that. If we spend our whole day inside and we’re converged, they’re saying that there are more cases of mayopia today than there’s ever been before because we were more outdoors. I’m sure there’s enough of papers on that. I mean, it’s easy to see it’s myopia and indoors. So, I would say it’s one of the top ones that I’m recently exploring because it never ends, right? I mean, the eyes are something that they keep coming up with it. There is neuroanatomy and everything else, something as minor as a peripheral vision. Yeah. And your heart rate will drop.
Question (Mohit): That has definitely changed for everyone, right? I mean, you’re right that we have started living in a box, and that’s actually picking up from your Ben Greenfield podcast that this actually blew my socks off. The fact that when you look at almost philosophical, that you have a wider spectrum of vision, you’re more relaxed, that’s really interesting. I was very curious about the aspect of how blue light and other spectrum actually have to affect us, but how eye plays a role in terms of interpreting the light around us and also peripheral vision, that’s really interesting. Okay, that’s number one. What’s number two?
Answer (Shiva): I suppose actually, I found that neutraceuticals, especially the one that we already discussed on the mitochondrial level and on the energy level, I think it’s great to get your biochemistry sorted out because you’re going to be way more energetic. Imagine just cleaning the oil and the machine and improving the lubrication. Everything runs better.
Question (Mohit): I know it’s not one shoe fit for everyone, but what would be your top three?
Answer (Shiva): I think that almost everyone that we see today have some levels of the vitamin B off. Often, it’s minerals like zinc and magnesium, just purely because of the wear and tear of life stress. Then we can get to the cooler molecules. You got to understand that neutraceuticals is for me, are the same as pharmacology.
Question (Mohit): Which are the cooler ones?
Answer (Shiva): No, instead of cooler, let’s look at the ones that have the greatest applicability, right? The omega threes, especially the HEPA. I think that’s great for recovery. Again, if you don’t have an issue. But this is the difficult part, Mohit. It’s so difficult to say one size fits all because some people have cholesterol issues, and they may not do well with omega three. But as a broad spectrum, it’s a great one for information and stuff like that. There’s alpha lipoic acid in terms of any of the insulin issues, which I know has some phenomenal feedback. There are so many things. I mean, look, I think there’s more good stuff out there, but you just need to go with the good companies, if you understand what I’m saying, because today there are many companies. It’s just that you got to pay a little attention to the research, pay the extra dollar if you must, make sure that they’re validated. Generally, our practitioners know exactly which one’s work. The pharmacological stuff is great, but it’s not used in the same way as a nutraceutical.
(Mohit): Also track the impact maybe
(Shiva): But now we have the capacity to do that, right? And as you know, one of the things that we do is we always see the before and the after, making sure that all of that is taken care of. So that’s a huge one.
(Mohit): That’s number two. Yeah.
(Shiva): For me it’s all the same. I wouldn’t say it’s number one or number two, its scenario based. Say that you’re stressed. Obviously, it’s easier to use your eyes very quickly to get a response. Your neurology responds within 60 milliseconds. So, if you want to change your parasympathetic system, I would do eyes. And then the other big one for me would be the vestibular system as well. I mean, you’re talking about the connection between the eyes and the ears and your balance.
(Mohit): That would be like the third one, basically. Yeah.
(Shiva): I mean, I think it’s not in related look because the vestibular nerve is connected to the eyes and the ears. It’s so difficult to talk about one thing without talking about the other. Yeah, just for people to remember. Basically, it’s called the vestibular ocular nerve. It’s our cranial nerve. It’s the 8th nerve in our cranium and it’s unbelievable because it’s got to do with all the balance. And you know what’s really funny? What’s within it without it’s. Like you said, if you have a narrow focus narrow focus is actually when you ferviate on a target, your heart rate goes up because it’s focus, right? And actually, we’re so tuned with our physiology, when you zone out and you’re able to get your peripheral vision to float, your heart rate goes down. Same thing with balance. Often, we have neck pains and all these other things happening today. Traps, number of people that have back neck pain. It’s a postural issue. Do you know that our extense tones? So, all the muscles on the back, our glutes, the ones around the spine are all governed by what’s happening with our balance and our eyes. So, if you want to like, relax and you want to roll your shoulders back because a lot of our slouch forward by everyday life, it’s actually a vestibular thing. As you improve your balance, your posture changes, your neck comes up. I mean, these are everyday biohacks.
(Mohit): It makes sense because your need for balance drives these muscles and the muscle would drive eventually the need, I mean, they would act as stabilizers. So, it’s both ways essentially. That’s really interesting because it either could become like a downward spiral where one leads to deficit another and then essentially its tissues. So, or you could actually compound it positively by actually fixing one part of the puzzle. Then everything else falls in line.
(Shiva): Exactly. I think that’s it. And one of the biggest ones for me personally is just movement.
(Mohit): I just love, let’s say that’s fourth one.
(Shiva): Yeah, again, the way I look at it is like it’s not connected just to remember; I just remember. But the fourth one would be movement for sure Because when I say movement, I’m again talking about the full scale of our expression. I’m just thinking, how many times do we rotate our head enough to its maximum range of movement? Up, down, right, left, keeping your eyes still, you’re moving your eyes up and down thing. It works everything right. Our whole range of motion, we have this limitless ability to express our body. But we use so little in our everyday life. Say, even if you walk into the gym, everything is if it’s attached, then you only have that range of motion. If you’re lifting kettlebells, you have a bigger range of motion. But the weight itself sets certain restrictions on it. If you’re outside running, does the paths define the way you move? If you’re running in a forest, it’s a completely different experience. I think I’m a slave to that experience of just physicality as you know, because of my martial arts and something that I love to do. It’s amazing how much the body does but how little I use it. And I’m constantly found wanting in different ways. It’s amazing, right? An endurance athlete and then you try to do weights and then look at the CrossFit guys. They’re able to do so many things, but does that mean more injuries? You have to manage yourself so much better. I find it amazing. And it’s movement itself. It’s like a whole brain and everything about us. It looks like it’s designed for movement. And that’s something that you can also see in a lot of the, I suppose the Cyborg. Because if you notice that after long periods of time, you can slowly see your glucose levels going up. But I think it’s good because we designed to move. Now, let’s think about this. You have a bad email coming, you have to respond to it. It creates an undue amount of stress on you. You ramp up. But the way the body knows to ramp up is to move, right? So, you’ve done this internally and your brain’s got all this extra fuel, but you’ve got all this glucose running on your body and then it’s not going anywhere. Your insulin is going up, it’s trying to find where to put it because you haven’t really moved all day. You’re just sitting in one place. Your muscle glycogen is full, there’s no way to put it in. The only place to put it in is your adipose tissue and your fat, right? And our whole design was to move when we had a problem, and now we have problems, but we don’t compensate with movement. I just find them just the idea of whatever movement that you want. And that’s why I say movement, right? I’m agnostic with movement. It doesn’t need to be a walk or run. It could be any movement. You can dance, man, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just about expression, physical expression, right? Anything. I mean, I don’t think we need to think of the notion of exercise is a very new thing. If you really look at it, it’s because we’re trying to truncate a whole day of experience into 45 minutes because that’s all we have. If you think about it, moving right through the day, ten to 15 minutes would be more. I mean, if you really think about what movement was, the amount of time that you actually spent moving to even walk down to get your food and everything else. So that would have taken enough and more than 10-15 thousand steps a day. You didn’t even have to think about it. You had to move so much just to survive. But right now, if you look at it, maybe we’re not moving so much. And that’s also you have this reservoir of nutrition all sitting in your body with no purpose. So, I say movement just because of and you know what, movement agnostic is good. Just move Whether you’re dancing, whatever, all of that is just fabulous. If you really think about it, anything is okay.
(Mohit): I think we’re prisoners when it comes to movement, because you’re not expressing ourselves like expression of our own movement is really interesting because, the fact that we could actually do so much like when you sit in front of the screen and just look at that one screen for hours and hours and don’t move your neck left or right. There’s got to be some downstream effect in terms of your body will learn that you don’t need those movements. And those movements could potentially lead to different optimizations for improvements in your body or different adaptations, right? I mean something specific to something like specific adaptation to impose demand. This is also imposed demand on the body that oh, just keep moving forward, don’t look left and right. The body will change. I remember you mentioning once that there is a clear link to receptors while you squat to bone density because you’re creating a demand for your bone density to increase. So potentially these factors that we ignore, and this is probably one of the most ignored factors out there because it’s not very natural. Everything that we do today is built for not peripheral vision. Just like you can call it tunnel vision or this one thing in front of you and then basically not having enough movement either expressing your body in a great way or basically just walking around. That could itself be a huge environmental factor in terms of what’s shaping your life and your health and your mood and your thought process as well. It’s interesting that in most cases when you look at the night sky, it’s very relaxing and soothing. And why does that happen?
(Shiva): Yeah, you’re using your peripheral vision. Also really interesting, you’re looking up. Looking up has got a vestibular change as well. It activates your cerebellum. I think the way your eye movement, if you look up changes where your brain stem is actually activated because you got these muscles in your eyes and they’re all as they move, there are different nerves move or there will be two different things. One would be the vestibular ocular reflex that I told you about and the other one will be just the eyes. And there are two different like the nerves. That’s what I meant. But here’s what’s interesting. Your eyes will also move up if you look down. I mean, don’t look down. Keep your eyes in the same place. But tuck your chin to chest. No, but keep looking at me. Just do the chin to chest. You, see? So, your eyes are still going up, aren’t they? That’s the balance between the vestibular ocular system. You can either look up, which means just the eye muscles going up or your eye muscles are still holding up while you look down. And that’s like your GPS system, isn’t it? Like a triangulation. And this is where all balance and everything else is. The amazing thing about the body Mohit is like it’s limitless. You can take any organ and it’s limitless. That’s why we have I think this is the age of information. It’s just phenomenal. It’s too much, but it’s phenomenal because you could go into a single rod or cone in the Latina and there is a plethora of information just there. Or you could take like a balanced system and then you could just like, it’s a universe by itself, which is why we have all these specialists. What makes it exciting for me, or I suppose any biohacker, I’m not a biohacker. I just refuse to use labels. It’s just better to be enjoying the experience of health and being in the industry of health and just creating and co creating, right? I mean, I think it’s better to have a wide vision on this one. But like I was saying, it’s just intriguing. The last one I would bring up, since you asked me for five, is introception. How we feel and our internal sensations, how we are able to map it. So, here’s why I think it’s an important thing. If you feel good, more efficient, you feel like you’re optimized. If you have an objective outside thing also telling you the same thing, you’re able to cure your body into learning what created that introcption for you. I’m a fan of, like, using the body itself as your measure. It is the greatest wearable you have, after all, right? Actually, the technical elements that you added just ratify the way you feel. I think we’ve stopped thinking of how we feel. Our whole nervous system, our brain, what we consume is only sensorial. It’s all sensations, isn’t it? And it’s really funny because internal sensations are also coming in for us. Like how my heart is, the rate of my breathing, all of those things. A yogi will specialize in introception. A guy who’s biohacking is using the same interception from an extroceptive, like maybe technology, using machines to basically create validation as well. Maybe introception for you. But introception or technology for this exteroception is all exactly the same thing. If you really look at it, once you’re able to combine all of these elements together, it’s essentially the same thing. They look opposite, but it’s exactly the same. I think we’re in this amazing place where we neither here nor there. We can access both. So, I would suggest always write the way you feel first and then check, don’t check, and then decide how you feel. Because there’s a bias that comes from technology, right? So, I think we’re in this age of such a powerful change because we can tweak this into this realm of bringing technology to help us with interoception. And if you’re validated, you’re more motivated to move in that direction. So, sort of gives you a plus plus plus. So, I mean, I’m just thinking that would be a good thing. The greatest biohack is to be able to observe yourself and know how your heart is, how your eyes are functioning, how your systems and analysis are spot on, and you don’t need anything much to do that it may be a grip stand, for example. It may be breath holds or long exhalations. I think there’s something called the carbon dioxide discard technique to see how good your heart rate variability is and how good your vagal tone is, for example, right? I mean, those are all things to do with the breathing. So, there are such simple checks for the nervous system. You could just get up and if you tried something, you could check your range of motion, which is check a range of motion to its extremity and say that you did something good for your body and it senses less threat. It will increase your range of motion immediately. Your response is like less than 20 seconds.
(Mohit): So, as you can see, biohacking is really simple and complex at the same time, and I hope that this will help you make a start. Tell us about your experience with biohacking by tagging us on our social handle, @UltrahumanHQ on Twitter and Instagram. Thank you so much and we’ll see you soon.
