A new way to change your life or a tribute to fashion? The expert dispels the myths that have emerged around the new life control system.
Anti-aging medicine is no longer as fashionable as it was 15 years ago; biohacking, which has already been tried by all the millionaires of the world, is breaking records of popularity. What is it, who needs it, and most importantly – why, Natalia Edel, a general practitioner, chief physician of the Austrian health center Verba Mayr, helped us to figure it out.
The principle of biohagging is that you should take care of your health not when something hurts, but until that moment. Thus, the techniques will help tune the body to maximum efficiency, reduce the risks of developing diseases and prolong life. This setting will focus on all vital bodily functions, and will also include nutrition, sleep, and exercise.
The main thing is to immediately understand that biohacking is not a single moment of “hacking”, but a way of life. It is logical that you should not quit playing sports, break your diet or sleep for two hours a day, and then get enough sleep for a week.
The main thing in biohacking is diagnostics and a huge number of examinations that a patient will need to undergo. At this moment, it is determined which indicators need to be corrected in order to achieve the most favorable values. On this basis, the means of achieving the set goals are determined.
For example, if during the examination the doctor notices that the patient has high cholesterol, then it can be reduced to normal levels in a month. This is accomplished by taking certain medications and eliminating certain foods from the diet.
Or a person sleeps for 5-6 hours. Find out why. Perhaps the person wakes up at night, has a backache, or has nightmares. A person needs 7-8 hours of healthy sleep a day. This means that it is necessary to eliminate all negative reasons: exclude coffee and tea, normalize sleep hygiene, get checked by an osteopath, buy an orthopedic pillow, and so on, in order to reach 8 hours in a month.
Then, after a certain period of time, the diagnostics for the selected control points must be repeated and the strategy must be adjusted if necessary. This is a critical point, since it is impossible to understand if there are changes and at what level they are taking place if there is no information for comparison. A subjective assessment of well-being is a bad indicator, since too much in a person depends on the psychological mood. This is the so-called placebo effect – if you think you are being treated, you will pay attention to positive changes and ignore negative symptoms.
To “hack” your body and set new settings, you need to take care of several directions.
1. Understand your genetic background – find out what hereditary risks a person has.
2. Adjust the power supply. Eating well is not just a trendy concept. This is the foundation of health.
3. Establish an optimal physical activity system for yourself.
4. Regulate hormones – the life cycle, whether on a day-to-day or lifetime scale, revolves around the activity of various hormones, and this applies to both women and men.
5. Experts recommend detoxifying the body.
6. It is necessary to normalize sleep. Just one night of lack of sleep disrupts the metabolism so much that it will take weeks to recover.
7. It is important to pay attention to the maintenance of cognitive functions, including thinking, attention and memory.
8. Reducing stress and normalizing psychological status. Stress increases inflammation and negatively affects the cardiovascular system and cognitive function.
9. Skin condition plays a huge role in psychological well-being, so skin care is not a trifle.
Biohacking cannot be called a cheap pleasure, but in Russia it is quite accessible to the average person. The most expensive stage is the first diagnostics and initial investments in gadgets, medicines, sports, dietary changes, and so on. In principle, you can keep within 150 thousand rubles. Then control diagnostics will cost much less, since only the selected indicators remain, and there is no need to repeat costly genetic tests.