As A Scientist, I’m Anti-Biohacking
Understanding your own energy depletion and restoration is how to truly optimize
The word hack is centuries old and has been used to mean a lot of things, none of them good. In the 1800s, a hack was a meager horse used to get stuff from here to there, not an animal that instilled pride in the ride.
A more modern usage describes a violent chop with a cleaver, such as by a butcher or an ax murderer. Then came the computer programming boom of the 1980s, which distinguished between code that was elegant and beautiful, versus the quick and dirty “hack.” Both got you to the same goal, but the latter made any programmer worth her salt cringe and mutter something about needing to change that code eventually. From this emerged the hacker trope, the friendless, anti-villain, inhabiting a murky hovel lit by the 24/7 blue glow of the computer monitor, living on junk food and the thrill of breaking into databases just to highlight security system failures or to steal some hotdog money.
And now we come to the present day, in which a hoard of start-a-billion-dollar-business-from-your-garage types have shifted their sights from app development to DIY biology, coining the now-ubiquitous portmanteau “bio-hack”. This has become a required keyword and meta tag for every podcast, book, conference, app, or device promoting fitness, nutrition, supplements, wellness, sleep, or self-improvement.
The basic idea of bio-hacking is to figure out a quick and dirty way to bypass the security systems of your body and mind to reach a goal. Many prominent biohackers’ initial goals were pretty reasonable, such as moving from an unhealthy to healthy range in blood pressure and weight. Then, encouraged by their own progress, self-determination, and seemingly exquisite control of their own biology, they expanded their entrepreneurial horizons, aiming to outsmart aging and death to live anywhere from 180 to 1000 years (summarized well in this vox.com article).
With this grandiose north star, so began the hunt for — and capitalizing upon — novel supplements and genetic engineering approaches.
The companies peddling try-these-at-home biological manipulations often cite laboratory studies in mice as evidence of their safety and success in reversing age-related disease or promoting longevity in humans (the goal changes depending on whether a company is talking to the federal government or private donors).
Science is slow, they say, and the FDA is even slower. Why not jump the line and alter your biochemisty by purchasing pills online, or editing your own DNA with a personal CRISPR kit, or dousing yourself in near-infrared light in a sauna that you can get delivered to your very own living room? How about getting a microchip implanted or zapping your skull with an electrical stimulator?
What could go wrong?
Now I’m not the neo-police, making citizen’s arrests every time someone introduces a new gadget for fixing a plumbing problem or extrapolates from animal research on resveratrol or catechins that we should be drinking more red wine and eating more chocolate, respectively. But as a scientist who has spent my entire career investigating this question of “Can we get better?” I have come to view the whole mentality of bio-hacking as wrong-headed, marketed and motivated by profit, and actually working against the very goals its followers are setting for themselves.
We are creatures of nature. And despite all the new gadgets and bio-hacks, we are still using plumbing technology that dates back to Roman times and the best way to keep your body fit, your mind sharp, and your emotions in their happy place is still by following a recipe passed down since the beginning of time on Earth. Bacteria, plants — in fact all natural beings — are rhythmic, meaning that we are guided by Upstates and Downstates that specify alternating periods of high activity and dormancy, whether you measure these cycles in seconds, hours, days, or through the seasons. This is because nature repeats itself when it finds a pattern that works.
During the Upstate, every cell in your body is naturally primed and pumped full of glycogen and ATP (your cells’ energy currencies), as well as elevations in the stress hormone cortisol that supports your muscles, heart, metabolism, cognitive prowess, emotional regulation, and just general “git ‘er dun” attitude. This big release of energy depletes your batteries and requires its companion state, the Downstate, during which your subsystems plug back into the metaphorical outlet and charge back up at the cellular level.
Downstates are when you give your heart a break from pushing all that nutrient rich blood through your body; or when you give your metabolism a break from all the inflammation, oxidative stress, and sympathetic arousal caused by eating fast food — or just eating too fast; or when you give your mind a chance to wander, think bigger thoughts, and come up with new creative solutions…which can’t happen when you’re responding to notifications, answering emails, and putting out other peoples’ fires.
But Downstates aren’t just for recharging your battery to the same baseline, every time. By prioritizing and spending considerable time in the Downstate, your body and brain get topped up with extra energy and nutrients, allowing you to reach beyond your baseline and grow smarter, faster, stronger, and more self-regulated than you were before. This state supports you whether you are training for a half marathon, studying for an exam, or learning how to mediate. And my research finds that as we age, spending more time in the Downstate is the key to mental and physical health, well-being, and longevity.
When you understand how to prioritize your energy-demanding activities to occur during Upstate periods in your day, and energy-replenishing activities during Downstate periods, all your subsystems, including cardiovascular, metabolism, muscular, cognitive, and emotional, hum along at their optimal settings. Even greater functioning comes when you bring these individual rhythms into alignment with each other, such that their Upstates and Downstates synchronize and both grow stronger. For example, a hard workout causes a huge autonomic stress response that will naturally spark a Downstate recovery process.
But by choosing the right timing and type of exercise during the day, you can ensure an even deeper recovery and greater readiness for the next workout because you worked with your natural rhythms, aligned your autonomic and sleep Downstates, and caused them to both get stronger.
Studies show that intensive cardio workouts in the morning increases deep sleep, compared with the same exercise in the late afternoon. Similarly, the timing and type of meals you choose during the day determine what time your sleep hormone melatonin gets released, ushering in that coveted Downstate Xanadu, sleep.
Working with your natural rhythms is not a hack. It’s not a way to cheat the system or get one over on the boss. Your boss is Nature and it’s honed its wisdom about optimization over trillions of days and nights. Stop spending so much time, energy, and money looking for the quick fix. You are one whole system made up of a lot of smaller subsystems that need to work together so that you can function at your peak. There isn’t one pill that is going to make it all come together, or one subsystem that is the key to the whole package. Understanding how your rhythms work and making them work in harmony is free, easy, and the only one who profits from it is: you.
Dr. Sara C. Mednick is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine and author of The Power of the Downstate: Recharge Your Life Using Your Body’s Own Restorative Systems (HachetteGO)
