A Better Alternative to Biohacking
As a former biochemist with a dual degree in biochemistry and biology, I feel I have some important thoughts to share in regards to biohacking, DIY biology, and, more generally, any reductionist approach to our body.
The problem is mainly one of overconfidence and complexity. Every single cell in your body has an incredible number of moving parts, all refined over billions of years. It’s easy to look at the biochemistry and think you have something figured out, but to really be correct in our guess is actually incredibly hard, and to be able to take practical action on that guess (drug discovery) can be magnitudes harder.
I do, actually, support biohacking as an idea. I think if it became widespread in people who truly understood the risks vs rewards, science would be able to progress much faster than it currently does. On a large scale, I do believe it would push humanity forward faster, if done in certain intelligent and measured ways.
However, most people aren’t looking to ‘hack their biology’ to advance scientific paradigms. They simply want to live better, happier, longer lives. This is where I have a problem, because biohacking is a pretty terrible way to do that.
Rather than trying to hack a system that has been refined relentlessly for nearly 4 billion years, why not work with the system? For any given function that we are trying to improve or optimize, there are a number of things that are ‘evolutionarily old’ stimuli, to which our body responds with positive adaptations. Since these stimuli have been around for eons, our bodies have evolved to and around them, and we don’t have to worry about them in the same way we would have to worry about say- intramuscular injections of a new synthetic testosterone analog I produced to target the XYZ androgen receptor.
There are a number of incredibly powerful tools that we know work well for our health and performance. Instead of looking for new hacks, I argue that first we should learn to optimally leverage the (many) tools we have, that we know are effective.
Learn more or contact us for training opportunities at www.themovementcult.com.
source
