Andrew Steele is an Olympic athlete, running the 400m and 4x400m for Great Britain. Having competed internationally for over 12 years Andrew is one of the most experienced athletes on Team GB, having been part of national teams at European, Commonwealth, World and Olympic level. Alongside his training for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Andrew is also one of the founding members and Head of Product for personal genetics company DNAFit, specialising in DNA testing for fitness and nutrition, to create genetically-guided training and dietary interventions. [powerpress] Here is an example infographic from a DNAFit test: Below are some highlights from the podcast. Andrew speaks about his path towards the gold medal and shares some tips on how to train like an Olympic athlete. “Genetics is not for talent identification. It is not going to tell you whether you can or can be good at anything, neither will it suggest you what sports you should do. What you can do with your genetic data is to adjust your training methods to reach your fitness and nutrition goals in more efficient way.“ “Developments in sports science has pushed forward both coaching and training in the last decades. The reason why Olympic records from the past 2–3 years are so different from …
Heart Rate Variability and long life – what’s the connection?
This is a guest article by Simon Wegerif, a speaker of the upcoming Biohacker Summit UK and founder of HRV Fit (ithlete). Contrary to what you might expect, the human heart does not beat with a metronome-like regularity at rest, but in fact continually varies to optimize the functioning of your body. These small beat to beat variations are known as heart rate variability (or HRV for short), and can tell a lot about how stressed or relaxed you are. In particular, HRV can tell us about the activity in the vagus nerve, which is the autonomic nerve associated with rest, digestion, recovery, inflammation and immune system regulation. Although HRV has been known about for centuries, and employed in critical medical monitoring, space exploration and elite athletics systems for many years, it was only with easy-to-use mobile apps and devices became practical for athletes, sportspeople and biohackers to gain easy access to this revealing biomarker. Some of these worth mentioning are the OmegaWave, SweetBeat Life, HRV4Training and ithlete (company of the author of this article), which debuted already in 2010. Prof Stephen Porges description of HRV as an ‘index of stress, and vulnerability to stress’ (1) has at least two important …
London Calling: Interview With the Biohacker Summit UK Organizers
Biohacker Summit London is an international event that covers the latest tools and methods for upgrading performance, wellbeing and health. We interviewed Jamie & Jake from Pando HQ – the company that brings Biohacker Summit to the UK. Pando team is currently working hard putting together the event, gathering the best biohacking startups, upgraded speakers, health experts and media to London on May 21, 2016. 1) Why did you want to organize the Biohacker Summit in the UK? Before attending the original Biohacker Summit in Helsinki, we had talked about creating the first and best biohacking event in the UK. We wanted the most cutting edge topics, the best speakers and something that felt like more than a run of the mill conference. Some guys in Helsinki seemed to have already had that thought and it made perfect sense to work together to bring this to the UK. Pando is the UK portal for all things biohacking from a blog, podcast and store we are spreading the word. We are creating an ecosystem in the UK for all biohackers to meet, learn and have access to the best information to help them improve and experiment. This starts with giving everyone in the UK access to the …
Avoiding Sickness: Biohackers Handbook on Hacking the Immune System
Biohacker’s Handbook project started in 2014 by 3 Finns – technology specialist Teemu Arina, nutrition specialist Jaakko Halmetoja and MD Olli Sovijärvi. Three friends with combined knowledge of health, nutrition and technology came together to explore what needs to be done to optimize the human condition. Biohackers Handbook answers the question of what are the 20 % of the causes that determine in 80 % of results in health and wellbeing. It started as a search for fixing health issues for good, which later became the most sold electronic knowledge book in Finland. The book consists of 5 chapters: Sleep, Exercise, Nutrition, Work and Mind. Each part dives deep into the systems that are relevant for each, the interventions and finally self quantification to figure out what works best for each individual. Immunity chapter came along as an extra chapter since good quality of life boils down to health, and good health can only be achieved by maintaining a strong immune system. “Living life as a serial entrepreneur and speaker can be extremely stressful. I eventually found myself in a trap of my own body working 25 hours a day 8 days a week. I was trying to fix my own health and ended up at Olli’s office in the process” tells Teemu Arina. “Teemu was not my average patient. He came …
Supercharge Your Health with Body, Mind and Tech — Biohacker Summit in London
What are the hottest trends in the wellbeing sector? How can new technologies help us achieve better results in work and play? How can latest understanding of genetics, nutrition and exercise be used to optimize human performance? What can we anticipate from the future of digital health, wearables, activity trackers, Internet of Things, implants and synthetic biology? We welcome you to explore the answers to these questions — and more — at the Biohacker Summit event on Saturday May 21st in London (BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly). Biohacking is the art and science of optimizing your performance and biological potential with technological tools. “Optimizing human behavior has never been as easy as it is today. The latest science on how the human body works is changing our understanding. Data gathered from wearables and smart sensors provide us a view of our health and activities like never experienced before. By perceiving your life as a system and seeing it through a lens of data you will be able to recognize the changes that lead to improved productivity and wellbeing” tells technology expert Teemu Arina, the curator of the event. The Biohacker Summit is the number one event to connect with wellbeing technology …