Teemu Arina interviews Maximilian Gotzler, the founder of Flowgrade on the flow state. What is the flow state and how can we access it for higher performance? Maximilian Gotzler is the Founder and CEO of Flowgrade, a leading brand for cutting-edge Performance Nutrition. As a biohacker, former professional athlete, blogger, and organizer of the Quantified Self group in Berlin, Maximilian’s work has been covered by prominent media outlets including ZEIT ONLINE, Brand Eins, ARD, ZDF, and Bloomberg. Based in Berlin, Maximilian and his team are working to offer the highest-quality nutritional products to the European biohacking community. Maximilian holds an MSc in Economics from Sorbonne University in Paris and a BA in Psychology from Boston University. [powerpress] Transcript of the show: 0:53 – Teemu welcomed Maximilian Gotzler to the show 1:20 – Background on Flowgrade 4:45 – Biotrackr – the first platform to track blood work 7:00 – Max discussed his shop that offered products for target groups (self-optimizers and self-healers) 8:17- Max became a reseller for Bulletproof Coffee which lead to starting his own products 9:58 – Flowgrade 10:30 – Definition of flow 12:00 – In the flow state there is a sense of immediate feedback 12:50 – Max explained …
Tiina Hoffman On Measuring and Biohacking Stress
Teemu Arina interviews Exercise Physiologist Tiina Hoffman from Firstbeat about measuring stress and goes through his own data. What can we learn from the heart? [powerpress] Below are some highlights from the podcast. Normal person can suffer from overtrainning just because of chronic stress. Work can easily carry to your free time. The most common causes of sick leaves in Finland: chronic fatigue, flu and backpain. It’s important to remember, that even with proper sitting ergonomics, you can risk back pain if you don’t exercise. Stress is OK and and normal, unless it’s chronic. Untreated chronic stress can easily lead to physical problems. We often schedule exercise. Why we don’t schedule recovery the same way? Tiina Hoffman used to be the head coach of UAA (University of Alaska, Anchorage) Nordic SKi Team. There are parallels between athletes and normal people. We all need ample time for recovery, or we risk overtrainning. Firstbeat has 150 000 days of stress and recovery data from it’s customers. Some trends that have emerged: Saturdays are the most stressful days for Finns. Christmas is the most stressful time of the year. People are really charged up right after summer. Stress can be positive (sometimes called eustress). Stress is a part …
Andrew Steele on Using Genetic Data For Fitness and Nutrition
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 …
Train smart and measure your muscle activity with Mpower
Do you want to optimize your workouts? Are you serious about strength training? Forget the guesswork and let the muscle tell you what it needs. A Finnish company called Fibrux has just launched an Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund their upcoming product Mpower. Mpower measures your muscle activation levels, but that’s not all. It actually separates the activation between fast and slow-twitch muscle fibers. Fast-twitch muscle fibers produce explosive strength and speed but they tire quickly. Slow-twitch fibers are responsible for the slow, endurance based activities. It is also important to remember, that fast-twitch muscle fibers are the biggest muscle fibers in the body. This means, that no matter if you train for strength or size, you want to maximize the activation of fast-twitch muscles. Up to this point it has been very difficult to analyze muscle activation without professional-grade laboratory equipment. Maximizing gains also involves a lot of mysticism and so-called broscience. Everybody gives you contradicting advice. There’s one thing that everybody agrees though: For the best results, you need to work hard AND smart. This is where the Mpower shines. It consists of an app and up to four wearable sensors. The electrodes work dry so there’s no need …
Can Bitters Make You Healthy?
Since childhood we remember that medicine tastes … bitter. Indeed many truly active compounds have a bold bitter flavor. Yet the health benefits are definitely worth the effort. Health experts from Penn Medicine Center believe that bitter compounds in food contribute to our ability to fight off upper respiratory tract infections, while researchers from National Cancer institute admit that bitter taste may play role in cancer prevention. But is there a way to biohack bitters, so that all healthy compounds are preserved? Medicinal food & superfood chef Lari from Four Sigma Foods says there’s a way to make your medicine work in an enjoyable way. See what ingredients Lari is using in his medicinal drinks: Chaga mushroom. More than 1600 scientific research studies on chaga have proven it to be one of nature’s most powerful cancer-fighting agents. The mushroom lives on birch trees in many regions of the Northern Hemisphere and includes 215 different phytonutrients with antioxidative, immunostimulatory, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory effects. Reishi mushrooms. The number of academic works in Japan, China and the UK has documented the value of reishi in treating a wide variety of diseases, common ailments and conditions. Reishi may possess anti-tumor, immunomodulatory, and immunotherapeutic effects. Besides battling …
Ben Greenfield: How to Find Balance in Biohacking
Biohacker Summit 2015 opens with Ben Greenfield’s “Biohacking vs Nature”, Ben is an ex-bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, Spartan racer, coach, speaker and author of the New York Times Bestseller “Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life”. Ben starts his presentation with a Warrior breathing technique, which he practices every day to boost his energy. This technique involves hyperoxygenating the body with fast and deep nasal inhale followed by a quick exhale in sets of 50-40-30-20 and deep breath in and out in between. The technique apparently works as Ben receives a burst of applause. According to Ben it is essential to find a balance between living in nature and biohacking. See below his 10 ways to get most out of biohacking without losing the connection with nature: Quantified self. Ben is not convinced that constantly tracking the body with various wearable devices is healthy because the signal they emit may disrupt the blood brain barrier and cause low-level radiation. Ben poses a question whether one really needs data from various devices. Nevertheless, he agrees that these are great tools to look at how different habits affect different aspects of life. He spends only 5 minutes a day to track his heart-rate variability – the …
#5 Ben Greenfield on Going Beyond Training
In the fifth episode of Biohacker’s Podcast, Biohacker Teemu Arina and MD Olli Sovijärvi interview Ben Greenfield. He is an ex-bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, Spartan racer, coach, speaker and author of the New York Times Bestseller “Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life”. In 2008, Ben was voted as NSCA’s Personal Trainer of the year and in 2013 and 2014 was named by Greatist as one of the top 100 Most Influential People In Health And Fitness. Ben blogs and podcasts at http://www.BenGreenfieldFitness.com, and resides in Spokane, WA with his wife and twin boys. [powerpress] Watch on video: Check out some of the highlights of Ben’s podcast below but make sure to watch the whole thing to learn some amazing biohacking techniques to implement in your life right away including Bens favorite supplements, meditation techniques and foods. “For me two ways how I got into biohacking initially would be ironman triathlon and body building. Now I don’t care that much about getting jacked or even about doing ironman – I’m kind of past that phase in my life. Now more of my interests lie in happiness, longevity, anti-ageing and some of those things that you start to think about when you get to the age …