The old saying is true: Sleep fixes most things. Yet in a world where there are more things to do than time to do them, it is becoming increasingly easy to sleep less than our bodies need for healthy functioning. Scientists may continue to debate and discover what sleep or the lack of it does for as long as our planet exists, but one thing they all agree on, is the damaging effect of too little sleep on the brain’s ability to function. We know the drill: eat right, sleep right, play right, love right = a happy healthy life! However, many of us continue to float through life neither fully awake or asleep. You see, it’s not just enough to sleep. Because of the overcharged, fast-paced, intensely stimulated environment of our modern society, it can be surprising to learn that even when we do lie in bed for 8 hours, many of us are not getting the recovery our bodies need for a variety of complex reasons. Most of us don’t think twice before spending the hours and minutes before we go to bed finishing work emails or texting those far and dear, reading ebooks or browsing Facebook. Yet these …
Anthony DiClementi On Strategies To Improve Energy, Mood, and Health
“Start with your foundation. Get your health in order. Start fueling your body. When you have more energy, when you have more clarity and your body is in better shape, that carries over and you get more creativity and you’re able to put in more productive hours. It affects your relationships. You’re a happier person; you’re able to better connect. Work hard. Build your foundation. It is the basis of everything that you do and all the success that you want, deserve and can have.” Anthony DiClementi (CNS, NCSF-CPT) is an author, trainer and biohacker and the founder of The Health Blueprint. Besides being one of the leading executive wellness coaches specializing in nutritional science and functional medicine that helps CEOs, professional athletes and Hollywood celebrities, he aims to transform lives of men and women from all around the world who are willing to take their physical and mental performance to the next level. Anthony has developed uncommon methods to rapidly upgrade their energy, transform their bodies and enhance mental clarity based on the knowledge he gained over a decade of studying the human body and extensive self-experimentation. Biohacker Summit curator Teemu Arina had a call with Anthony DiClementi for the …
Comprehensive analysis and hacks for male testosterone optimization
“I have to first treat myself and understand the physiology and the mind, and put it all together. For me it was the culmination point when I worked over 100 hours per week at an intensive care job for 5 years. I realized it is not going to take me anywhere. I can’t treat people if I just do the prescription and 5 minutes of consultation.” -MD Olli Sovijärvi Olli Sovijärvi is a Licensed General Practitioner at Helsinki Antioxidant Clinic and co-author of the Biohacker’s Handbook. He is one of the pioneers in holistic medicine in Finland and the only Finnish medical doctor with a psychologic-philosophical Integral Theory degree from John F. Kennedy University. Sovijärvi graduated 2006 as a licensed physician from University of Helsinki. He has pioneered health podcasts in Finland with Helsinki Paleo Podcast and Biohacker’s Podcast. Sovijärvi has also consulted many natural health brands and organizations. As Ben Greenfield put it, first, he is a beast of a powerlifter. Second, he is a medical doctor. That’s right: he works at his clinic with patients day in and day out, and on his free time he is deep into applying research and practice to himself. He’s not some kid with …
Jesse Lawler on Nootropics and Smart Drugs
“Get inspired by what really smart people can talk like, and think about… When I hear one of these guys, their brain is just, flowing out of the screen, it makes me want to push my own brain as far as it can go.” Jesse Lawler is an entrepreneur, media producer, long-distance cyclist, and personal-optimization fiend. He founded the mobile app company Evil Genius Technologies, hosts the Smart Drug Smarts podcast and is the co-founder of the smart drug company Axon Labs. In his own words, he has dabbled in software engineering, the biological sciences, Hollywood filmmaking, travel fotography, and more. A plethora of diets, sleep hacks, and exercise regimens have led his less-experimental peers to describe him as a “high-functioning guinea pig.” “The effect I got was really, really strong. It kind of felt like I was trying to run too much power through my voltage cables.” “Stop drinking alcohol. It’s a cheap and easy hack… I know everybody likes alcohol, but dude… it is not worth the trouble!” “I think building up a skill for napping is just an amazing hack.” Jesse’s aim these days is to seek out the best information to educate himself and others so …
Maximilian Gotzler and Getting Into the Flow State
“Biochemical state of flow is the state when prefrontal cortex shuts off, time dilates, performance skyrockets and you feel as present as you can ever be.” Maximilian Gotzler, the founder and CEO of Biotrakr and Flowgrade, is one of the leading influencers in the German Quantified Self and Biohacking scene. Being a former professional athlete, he started tracking different biomarkers and connecting them to his diet, fitness level, sleep and other parameters. “… I was really fascinated by this tracking aspect. And I noticed that just the fact that I tracked something already helped me improve because it made me aware, it motivated me to keep going, it showed me progress. And that’s how I got into the quantified-self scene.” Now, he is pursuing his vision to use the power of cutting-edge diagnostics to enhance human performance and to offer tools and actionable guidelines to everyone who wants to upgrade his or her physical and mental capacities. He explains that flow state is the ultimate state of being human. According to him, “flow is a measurable state of mind, in which one is so focused that everything around falls away, action and awareness merge, time dilutes, ego vanishes and performance skyrockets.” His …
Jaakko Halmetoja and Plants as Natural Chemists
“Lets say the baseline has moved more towards stronger plants, stronger, bitter compounds, bitter plants and if you do that you do not need to eat so much.” Jaakko Halmetoja is well known in Finland and considered to be the man who popularised Chaga mushroom to the public after writing a best selling book on the topic Pakurikääpä – opas lääkinnällisten sienten maailmaan. Extending seminars around Finland about radiant health, superfoods, adaptogens, medicinal mushrooms, biohacking, sports nutrition, wild foods and food trends he is a nutrition specialist and a wellness entrepreneur and a co-author of the Biohacker’s Handbook. One of his focuses has been popularising health benefits and unique uses of mushrooms, chocolate, wild foods, various berries and medicinal herbs, even going to the extent of having old texts translated from Russian about medicinal uses. Being part of the first flush of paleo-dieters he has had the privilege of testing many ideas in length and illuminating from his many years of experimenting. The man is all about mushroom, the medical kind, how to improve your mental and physical performance and a highly interesting individual who hacks himself everyday. “Trees are the best natural chemists.” “When everything is at least organic or wild it is really good at purifying your body and …
Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the Health Benefits of Cold Exposure and Sauna
“Our bodies are beautifully designed to handle all types of stress; but our genes have to be working; they have to have the right nutrients.” –Dr. Rhonda Patrick Dr. Rhonda Patrick with a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences is an expert in nutrition, metabolism and aging. She has done considerable research in all of these fields, including research on cancer and the effects of mineral and vitamin supplementation on metabolism, inflammation and aging. She did her graduate research at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, where she focused on cancer, mitochondrial metabolism and apoptosis. Currently a post-doctoral fellow at UCSF-Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, she is known primarily for her studies of the mechanistic link between vitamin D and serotonin production, research that may have important implications for the understanding of autism and other disorders. “We’re actually on the verge of serious antibiotic resistance cropping up, and that is scary. It’s absolutely terrifying.” “There’s a very complex interaction between genes and diet. … Nutrigenomics is a complex interaction between the nutrients, micro-nutrients, macro-nutrients (fat) and certain genes that we have.” In this video Dr. Patrick explains the how vitamin D affects the way humans age: At the Biohacker Summit, Dr. Rhonda Patrick will talk …
Dr. Beth Healey on Surviving in Antarctica
“The lowest temperature was -81 °C. If you add in wind chill, it can drop below -100 °C. It’s pretty chilly. It was a shock to the system when I arrived.” – Dr. Beth Healey looks back at her one year journey to Antarctica. Dr. Beth Healey is a research doctor in the European Space Agency (ESA). She spent a year at ESA’s Concordia base in Antarctica with 12 other people. The crew at Concordia lived for one year in extreme isolation, without any sunlight for 100 days in a row, and with a temperature that could drop below -100 °C. Beth studied the physiological and psychological effects these extreme conditions have on humans. “I had worked in lots of polar regions up north before, and was used to the cold environment, so I flew out to Concordia feeling a bit smug. But our circadian rhythms are synced to sunlight, and without it I really struggled. For the first few days I just didn’t sleep at all.” “You don’t get any smells there because it’s very clean and there are no mud or plants, so it just doesn’t really smell of anything. When you come back everything smells so strongly, and just walking down the street …
Dr. Julia Shaw On The Illusion of Memory
“Our memories are deeply flawed and we would be happier if we accepted it.” – Dr. Julia Shaw Meet Dr. Julia Shaw, criminal psychologist and author of The Memory Illusion. Julia appeared on Vice with a controversial memory hacking experiment. It asked could false memories be deliberately placed in people’s minds? What’s more, Julia now states that anything you remember before you were about two-and-a-half years old is a false memory. “You could call my work memory hacking — I break into people’s memories and get them to recall in great detail events that have never actually happened.” “Every memory you have ever had is chock-full of errors. I would even go as far as saying that memory is largely an illusion.” “It’s such a terrifying but beautiful notion that every day you wake up with a slightly different personal past.” Dr. Shaw introduces her new book The Memory Illusion: Dr. Shaw is a psychological scientist and an icon what the future looks like today – smart, healthy, beautiful, compassionate and collected. Interestingly her work now involves criminology and understanding the science of memory. She discusses topics like: It´s not just about how much information we can cram into our memories, it´s also about how much …