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This has been one of the most requested topics ever. I did a podcast episode a little while back all about my own health journey, where I referenced that I have gotten very much into biohacking and am very curious about it because it’s become a part of our lives. And I got so many DMs and requests from you guys to record this episode, so I am super excited to dive into the topic of biohacking.

If you Google it, biohacking is also known as human augmentation, which sounds kind of creepy or like human enhancement. It’s kind of this do-it-yourself biology aimed at improving your performance, your health, and your well-being through strategic interventions. For many biohackers, biohacking in general consists of just making small incremental diet or lifestyle changes to make small improvements in your health and well-being, and that has been a huge piece on my own health journey.

If you missed my episode on my health journey (that got me into all of this biohacking) click here to listen and learn about my health journey. I think it is a really solid foundation for you to understand where all this biohacking is coming from. I highly encourage you to listen to that one first! 

Let’s talk biohacking, coming from someone who knew nothing about this a year ago, who is not a doctor, who will probably get things wrong, but who has experienced the benefits of biohacking in big ways. I’m walking you through 14 things that I’ve done or tried in the last year and I’ll share about if I’ve enjoyed them, if I got benefits, if I’m still doing them or if it wasn’t for me. Alright, let’s dive in.

Why biohacking?

When it comes to my health, I am not willing to eat chicken breast and asparagus for every single meal, I am not willing to go to a gym and work out for two hours a day, I don’t have the bandwidth for that. And so biohacking was super appealing to me because it’s basically like small little things that you can incorporate into your routine that help benefit your health. To me as an achiever, it felt like a really efficient way to get benefits without a big energetic requirement. 

While there is not a lot of energy required for a lot of these things, there is an investment, right? And that comes in the form of a financial investment for most of these tools. Unfortunately, a lot of these things are not cheap. I wish that all of this was way more accessible and I recognize it’s a massive privilege to be able to try these products. 

You can find the complete breakdown of all the products I’ve tried by listening to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. 

A pulsed electromagnetic field mat (PEMF) mat

There are a few non-negotiables that I use every single day when it comes to biohacking my health. The first thing is a PEMF mat, or a pulsed electromagnetic field mat. And what a PEMF mat does is it sends magnetic energy into the body, which sounds kind of crazy, right? These energy waves work with your body’s natural magnetic field to improve healing; the magnetic fields help you to increase electrolytes and it naturally influences electrical charges on a cellular level and influences cellular metabolism. 

In our house, we always have our PEMF mat on. It has infrared heat, and the one that we bought has a bunch of crystals, and when you lay on it, it’s supposed to mimic the same type of feeling as if you were meditating. 20 minutes on the mat is equivalent to like 60 minutes of meditating, which is incredible. It’s also equivalent to grounding. NASA astronauts use PEMF mats after they go on a space mission because it grounds them. I love this mat so much, it helps with muscle recovery and sleep but it’s also just really relaxing. 

Red light therapy

Another one of my non-negotiables is red light therapy. It’s thought to work by acting on the power plant in your body’s cells called mitochondria. When you have more energy, other cells can do their work more efficiently, such as repairing your skin, boosting new cell growth, and enhancing skin rejuvenation. Some experts think that red light therapy helps cells repair themselves and become healthier. 

The red light we have in our home is probably three and a half feet tall. For red light therapy you want to expose as much skin as possible, and you want to do 10 minutes on each side of your body. Before starting to use it I was struggling postpartum with acne on my back, which is something that I’ve never had before, and I noticed a big improvement in my skin once I introduced red light into my routine. 

On top of the red light that we have that goes on a stand, I also have a red light mask. I’ve shared about it on Instagram and I always get a million questions. It looks a little wacky, but I’ve definitely noticed a difference in my skin since I started wearing it and it’s another product I use every single day. 

Hyper ice core meditation device

My last everyday non-negotiable that I’ll mention here is my meditation device. Basically, this is a little ball that you hold in your hands and it has sensors on it, and the sensors track your pulse and your heart rate variability as you breathe and focus. It uses vibrational patterns to give you sensory feedback and help you monitor your breathing rate during meditation, and having that sensory feeling, especially for someone with ADHD, really helps bring me back to my body, it keeps me focused, and it gives me something to guide me in the meditation. What I especially love about it is, as an achiever, it rates you after your meditation. So it is literally looking at things like your heart rate variability and telling you how focused you were or how calm you got during a meditation.

To get the most out of my biohacking routine, I will lay on my PEMF mat, lay my red light next to me, and hold onto my meditation device and do my meditation. So can you see how I am habit stack? All of these things take under 20 minutes, and it starts my day in a totally different way. 

Other products mentioned in this episode

• Oura Ring: I wear this daily and hate taking it off to charge it! It has helped me with my sleep sooo much! The Oura Ring is a wedding-band-like sleep tracker that collects data about your body, activity, and sleep using optical heart-rate monitoring, a common technology in fitness trackers. With precise sensors, Oura packs state-of-the-art heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), temperature, activity, and sleep monitoring technology into a lightweight, non-invasive ring. Fitness, stress, sleep, and health all in a cute ring! 
• Infrared Sauna Blanket: I usually use this 1x a week and more often if I feel like I’m getting sick! We’re getting an actual sauna at our new house but this is a great option for those who don’t have access to a sauna! It’s essentially an infrared sauna — which uses infrared rays to heat the body directly — but in blanket form. So instead of having four walls and a bench for sitting, an infrared sauna blanket wraps around your body as if it’s a sleeping bag that plugs into a wall and heats up. There are numerous health benefits to an infrared sauna blanket including, weight loss, muscle tension relief, detoxification, increased metabolism, and a stronger immune system. The controlled, timed heat, will cause the body to sweat and release toxins.
• DNA Methylation: This was life-changing and I benefit a lot of my improvements to this test and then the supplements that work for my specific body! Simply put, Gene Testing (otherwise known as methylation testing) provides you with the most comprehensive snapshot of your body’s health. They do this by taking a look at what specific enzymes are affected by your genetic makeup, allowing us to assess whether or not your body is running the way it’s supposed to, and how to better optimize it—all based on your genes, no one else’s.
• Hyperice Leg Sleeves (Normatech): Compression therapy uses controlled pressure to increase blood flow in certain areas of the body and increase blood flow to the heart. It also supports your veins and decreases swelling. Common conditions or symptoms that compression therapy helps treat include lymphedema (swelling) and pain in the legs.
• Cold Plunge: We’re getting one of these at our new house and I am honestly so excited for it! My hope is that I’ll do it daily for 2 minutes a day! Being immersed in cold water stimulates leukocytes, the white blood cells that help fight off sicknesses. It also causes the lymphatic system to contract, forcing fluid through the lymph nodes. This process aids in detoxing the body and strengthening your immune system.
• IV Vitamin Drips + NAD: There are a ton of ways you can support your body with different vitamin and IV drips! Some of the benefits include: promoting faster weight loss, curing hangover symptoms, treating certain nutrient deficiencies, and cleansing your body of toxins and free radicals, among other things. In a perfect world I’d do this 1x a month but it’s been more inconsistent for me, for sure! 
• Lumen:  I used this daily for awhile and felt like it helped me learn my body and fuel needs. I haven’t used it in a bit but did like it! The world’s first portable device to measure track and analyze your metabolism. Lumen measures the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in your breath through an integrated sensor and flow meter that determines whether your body is burning carbs or fats. Low CO2 levels indicate you’re burning fats, whereas high CO2 levels mean you’re burning mostly carbs for fuel.
• Microneedling and PRP Facials: When people ask me what transformed my skin the most, I’d say it’s this treatment! I did three rounds of this and it helped improve my skin texture immensely. PRP can enhance collagen and elastin production in deeper skin levels. Microneedling with PRP effectively treats acne scars, surgical scars, wrinkles, and fine lines, hyperpigmentation, sun damage, large pores, uneven skin texture irregularities, and it helps to decrease the appearance of stretch marks.
• Nootropics: Nootropics have established a wide and cross-generational appeal as individuals seek to “biohack” their cognitive function with supplements and functional foods for different reasons. We drink different nootropic drinks (coffees) and I even tried a nootropic supplement that’s supposed to help with ADHD. I honestly forgot to keep taking the ADHD supplements (go figure) but I tried them and would try them again! 
• Chillisleep: The science is clear. We sleep deeper with increased recovery at a cooler body temperature. Our sleep systems leverage water’s thermal powers to deliver deeper, restorative sleep. Scientists have long known that cold triggers sleep. As your body’s core temperature drops, you achieve balance with your circadian rhythm and raise melatonin levels naturally, giving you better quality sleep. We love this product but it has been a bit finnicky and faulty for us! 

Final thoughts

This whole biohacking journey for me has been really cool in a season where I don’t have a ton of energy to go in and get a hard workout in, but I feel like I’m still being productive with my health and supporting my body in ways that is super fascinating to me. I hope that this invited you to learn more about your own body and your own health in a new way. Again, you can find a more in-depth breakdown of my biohacking tools in the full podcast episode. Even if you only focus on one new biohacking tool to try, the results can be pretty incredible!

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