The Biohacker's Biohacker | Teemu Arina

Teemu Arina is a technology entrepreneur, author and a leader in the field of biohacking. The Biohacker's Handbook is one of my favourite resources over the last few years and I've been looking forward to sitting down with Teemu - one of the Co-Authors for a long time. Today we delve deep into the world of biohacking with one of the best minds in the industry. Expect learn why bilberries are badass hardcore blueberries, which morning drink blend Teemu recommends, why hot and cold therapy might be the easiest way to live longer and what the 5 fundamental systems are which you should be focussing on as a biohacker. Extra Stuff: Buy The Biohacker's Handbook - https://biohackingbook.com Follow Teemu on Twitter - https://twitter.com/tar1na Inside Tracker Blood Tests - https://www.insidetracker.com Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Howdy friends. My trip to America is coming to a close and we will be back to two episodes a week as of next Monday. But I'm finishing off my trip with an incredibly interesting guest. Teemu Arena is the author of The Biohacker's Handbook and is about as close to a cross between Tony Stark, Ben Greenfield and kind of like a crazy Dr. Frankenstein type guy from Finland that you're ever going to find. He is an unbelievable repository for knowledge about how the human system works, how we

• 0:38Chris Williamson?

  can manipulate it using technology, food, diet, sleeping cycles, absolutely everything. I was totally unprepared for his depth and breadth of knowledge. This is one of those episodes that I will be going back to, to listen to a number of times myself because I missed it as it was happening. So that tells you what you're in for.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:17Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a middle without parent.

• 1:32Speaker 04

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• 1:55Speaker 05

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• 2:25Chris Williamson?

  Please welcome, Teemu Arena.

• 2:44Speaker 06

  The way how you pronounce it in correct Finnish is Teemu.

• 2:48Chris Williamson?

  I'm not going to be able to recreate that.

• 2:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, but you can do the English version, which is Teemu.

• 2:53Chris Williamson?

  Teemu Arena.

• 2:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's good. It's all good.

• 2:56Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 2:57Speaker 06

  Sounds great.

• 2:58Chris Williamson?

  I'm basically finished now.

• 3:00Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 3:03Speaker 06

  You're working on your way.

• 3:05Chris Williamson?

  I'm adopted. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Teemu Arena, author of The Biohacker's Handbook, an all-round fascinating guy. Welcome to the show.

• 3:16Speaker 06

  Wonderful to be here.

• 3:18Chris Williamson?

  I am getting big podcast studio envy of the lovely setup that you have in front of you.

• 3:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I do a lot of things nowadays online. And it was only like a couple of weeks ago, I was presenting to a huge Russian IT technology conference. And I don't like travel nowadays that much because I've been doing 100 talks a year for the last five, six years. So I just like to hang around in my studio. And I figured out that, you know, this is the best way to do it. So I can do live streams anyway, and in great audio, great video. So I love it doing this way. And it also helps me to keep my daily routines, which is, I mean, as a biohacker, you want to maximize your... Productivity and recovery and all that.

• 4:09Speaker 06

  If you fly into a conference for what? Giving a 30 minute or one hour talk? And you spend time in airplanes and in public transport and eating all kinds of crappy whatever, you know, airport or conference food. I think it's more efficient to just stay here. I might not, you know, make those face to face connections, but if I met the people before, that's the way I prefer to do it.

• 4:36Chris Williamson?

  I totally get it, man. Yeah, there's a, there's an interesting sort of two camps of people. As far as I can see, there's people who understand that trying to focus on efficiency and marginal gains in the way that you've alluded to that is something which is kind of what everything else emerges from. And if you look after those small things, that everything else comes along as a byproduct. And then there are the, there are the people who see that as a byproduct, as a normal part of life. It's like, no, no, well, I've got, I've got to get on the plane because I got to go to the thing. And that's the way it's got to be done.

• 5:11Speaker 06

  You got it, you got it. It's basically one of the principles of biohacking is the daily decrease. How do you decrease the amount of useless things that you shouldn't be doing? And basically looking for what is the 20% that will give you the 80% of results and output? That was Italian mathematician, Mr. Pareto, who actually first devised and outlined the fact that in many things in economy, nature, workplace is everywhere is based on the 2080 principle. So for example, 20% of people produce 80% of results. If you take any kind of ant nest, actually, we think

• 5:52Speaker 06

  that ants are extremely hardworking, you know, guys and girls, all of them. But actually, most of them are slacking. They did some-

• 6:01Chris Williamson?

  Is that true?

• 6:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, they did some studies on ant nest and they realized that 80% of them are actually slacking around and not really doing much. So there is a small number who is always doing the work. So what I'm saying is that, you know, it's up to you. If you want to be- Focusing your time on the eighty percent that will result in only twenty percent of the results, or if you want to seek for the twenty percent that will result in eighty percent of improvement. So with that, I mean, you can't optimize everything, you can't really predict everything. I leave a lot also in my life to serendipity. Serendipity in science has been key for many discoveries.

• 6:44Speaker 06

  So people who are seeking for something completely different stumbled upon a totally different invention. So for example, Post-it notes, the guys were trying to work on the most efficient glue, and they actually made the worst possible glue. And it required a little bit of inventiveness to be able to realize that, hey, this can be used for something else. And that also applies to relationships, and that applies to many things in nature. If you want to discover things, there is probably a lot of things that you will discover by just exposing yourself to different environments.

• 7:24Speaker 06

  So that's another part of biohacking is that it's not really about optimizing yourself. It is about optimizing your relationship to your environment. And the more I look at it, and the more I look at the different trends in biohacking, which we can also dive into, because I'm also the curator of Biohacker Summit, I've been doing that for the last five years. We've done eight events in different countries, and what I've noticed is a shift more and more towards optimizing your environment, your light environment, your water, your, you know, it could be even your own microbiome, which is actually outside of you, you're

• 8:07Speaker 06

  kind of like a hollow tube, and there's all these bacteria that live in your digestive tract and on your skin everywhere, and you live in a symbiotic relationship with all those guys, and you can't be separate from them if you want to have good health. And that also applies to so many other things, like our connection to nature, that our food chain, and all of that. So when I look at my home or my office, I'm always, always kind of thinking about the ways how I can Prime my environment so that it gives me the best possible conditions for optimal performance and health and wellbeing. And, um, and not always it's about Calvinistic,

• 8:54Speaker 06

  utility-driven needs. I think that that's a misconception in a lot of kind of, um, high performance and self-development talk is the need to somehow be in grip of what you're doing. And if you look at quantified self-measuring yourself, tracking yourself with an Oura ring, like trying to get, you know, perfect night's sleep. That's the utility value. But part of it is also self-realization and self-expression. So the data itself enables you to express yourself. And it also helps you to reflect back on you, who you are, in what place here in the universe and what you're up to. And it brings up important questions like if you start tracking your sleep,

• 9:39Speaker 06

  you start to ask questions like, why do you sleep? How do you sleep? How long do you sleep? And the act of measuring itself already changes the equation. So when you start tracking your steps or your sleep, you're already changing your sleep and your mobility and movement. So to me, it is also about understanding that what you pay attention to, what you focus on is in terms of your own behaviors, you're already part of that equation. So you're already taking the first steps by using some maybe external ways or keys or cues to tap into your own, uh, behavior.

• 10:20Speaker 06

  So if you do journaling, for example, that's a big thing also in biohacking is like doing, you know, maybe daily affirmations or having some kind of gratitude, gratitude journal. Damn. Good one. It's late. So, so, uh, all of those are priming you for the day and helping you to pay attention to the signals that are key in your environment. It can be two, two different people, exactly the same conditions and environments. The other one is freaking out and the other one is enjoying him or herself. There is a saying that when it rains, some people get wet and some people feel the rain on their skin.

• 11:03Speaker 06

  So it's a matter of perspective and what these things are really helping you is to gain a perspective to yourself. And that to me, that is what biohacking is to me. It is a modern approach to enlightenment in a way. It is using modern tools combined with ancient wisdom and natural living principles, systems from, I mean, there are so many biohacking systems that have existed for thousands of years. You take yoga, meditation, you know, different schools of martial art, different nutritional schools from, you know, from Mediterranean diets to,

• 11:48Speaker 06

  to, let's say, very much of wild herb, plant-based stuff that we do here in the north in Finland. It is, you know, we are standing on the shoulders of giants. There are so many people who have mapped the territory and they've mapped really like what is key to understanding your place in this universe and this human being and also to kind of push your boundaries. So if you think of like a martial artist, like you take any of these eastern schools. I practiced myself some Aikido, for example, and the Japanese, the Chinese arts, also some, some Kung Fu, Tai Chi, I've done also.

• 12:34Speaker 06

  And what I've learned from those is that as much as you focus on the ability to produce extreme force with the least amount of effort, you also practice the counter of that, which is meditation and breathing techniques and all that. So.

• 12:52Speaker 06

  That's also what biohacking should be. It's not about better, faster, stronger. It is also wiser. It is also about more being reflective on how you do things. And not always try to, you know, sleep four hours a night and, you know, have waterproof coffee and smart drugs.

• 13:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think certainly a lot of people that are listening may think that when you hear the word biohacking, for most people who are maybe uneducated about it, I think a lot of terms come to mind about people being quite utilitarian, quite transactional with these marginal gains and things like that. I recently had a discussion with Stephen Wolfram. Now, he, as the listeners will know, if you've been tuning in and if you haven't, you need to go back and check it out because it's an awesome episode.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  Yes, awesome.

• 13:43Chris Williamson?

  The, he's tracked, I think, three million emails that he's sent over the last 30 years and about 30 million keystrokes.

• 13:53Speaker 06

  He's the true pioneer of self-tracking?

• 13:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's, to a degree of fidelity that, at least with regards to work, that I've never, I've never really seen before. But what he actually had as his justification for it was quite philosophical and pretty beautiful. That he said, "I like to work. I like my job and I like what I do at work. Why would I not facilitate me doing as much of what I like to do as efficiently and as effectively as I can?" And I think that transcends for me what before, you know, so we've got Biohacker's Handbook here in front of me. It's a beastly, a beastly thing.

• 14:35Speaker 06

  Right, you're also.

• 14:36Chris Williamson?

  Is that as a reference, just in case you forget some of the things that we need to go back to?

• 14:43Chris Williamson?

  You know, before you have a look through that, and I guess with one reading, you could potentially see each of them as discrete individual hacks or techniques or whatever it is. But the emergent end result of this is that you're able to do more of the things you want to do. You can spend more time in good health. I recently spoke to Professor David Sinclair from Harvard Medical School, and he was talking about just making people live longer, and he talks about the health span, not just the lifespan. It's like feeling better for longer, having more energy to do the things that you care about, et cetera, et cetera. So I think you've given us a pretty robust introduction to biohacking there so far.

• 15:25Chris Williamson?

  Where would you say are the key areas that biohackers tend to focus on?

• 15:31Speaker 06

  So what you actually described already, like what kind of people are drawn to biohacking, the kind of utilitarian people, those people are often struggling already with our modern society, like they try to push themselves for results. So those might be startup entrepreneurs, they might be, I don't know, some high street investors or real estate brokers or you name it, like people who are really, you know, working insane hours and not really taking any vacation.

• 16:09Speaker 06

  So they struggle with hormonal imbalances, they struggle with all kinds of blood sugar regulation issues, they might suffer from gut dysbiosis. There is so many things that they seek an answer for in biohacking, and they might try things like ketogenic diet and see that the lights go on suddenly.

• 16:40Speaker 06

  And they might start tracking their sleep and trying to figure out like how to get more deep sleep with the amount of sleep that they're getting. And to me, that's kind of the first step. And many, many of those people who I see are joining the biohacking movement are really like neurotic about performance in many ways.

• 17:05Chris Williamson?

  Do you see that as a good thing or as a bad thing?

• 17:07Speaker 06

  I see many of them being quite unhealthy with it. And what it enables them to do is the same, but in an accelerated manner. So suddenly they start popping nootropics. It's a big, big thing, you know, that you can have increased mental performance, even physical performance. Maybe some athletes also look for, I mean, but they've been doing supplements for 20, 30 years already, pretty consistently. So that's nothing new. But when it comes to working in front of your computer, suddenly there's more than coffee that you can take to stay awake and focused at your work.

• 17:50Speaker 06

  So to me, they are seeking a solution to their problem. And once they get some advantage from this, they push the envelope even further. And I don't think that's very healthy. So I see a lot of biohackers like not really pushing away their old lifestyle. So they might be still sleeping quite little, but they're doing all these nootropics and diets that keeps the inflammation lower so they can get more out of the system. So they're basically juicing themselves faster. And once they take all the nootropics that you take something like modafinil or you take,

• 18:29Speaker 06

  you know, Adderall or, or you take some, you know, stack of supplements, often there is side effects that are related to increased heart rate. So once you increase blood flow, once you expand capillaries, yeah, you improve nutrient flow. But once you get like five, 10 beats higher heart rate because of doing all of that.

• 18:55Speaker 06

  I wouldn't be surprised if down the road you age faster for so many different reasons. And if you think of the heart as a muscle, it's a mechanical muscle that is doing work. When the heart rate goes up, the time speeds up. When the heart rate goes down, the time slows down. So that's why it's so super important to do things to counter that kind of behavior, which is meditation, breathing techniques, just going for a nature walk, whatever. And if you're only doing all the nootropics and you're doing all the, you know,

• 19:35Speaker 06

  you can do many of these things in excess, even things like red light therapy for mitochondrial function or things like antioxidants. There is a dose-response curve to many things, also nootropics. So basically, dose-response curve describes the fact that there is a sweet spot for dosage. If you get too much, you get side effects. You get potentially dangerous imbalances also. If you do too little, that's also, I mean, that's often what people are correcting, but then they go to the extreme. They might be using blue light blocking glasses all day long.

• 20:17Speaker 06

  So that's the thing. They might be drinking bulletproof coffee all day long. There is a balance to things, and I think there is a need for homeostasis in biohacking. So homeostasis in medical terms is the balance that your body strives for. And if you're artificially tilting it to a certain direction...

• 20:48Speaker 06

  Like constantly pumping up your heart rate and blood flow, I don't think that's healthy. So, I mean, I come from Europe, so we are slightly different than Americans, for example. I feel that the American culture of biohacking is much more like performance driven. While the Europeans like, I mean, in the north, in Finland, which is by the way, one of the biohacking capitals of Europe. If you go to any of these health food shops, we have, we have, we have great products and companies and huge aisles and you can get in every supermarket, there is superfood sections, you can buy MCT all from all the large supermarkets, like it's,

• 21:33Speaker 06

  and it's all high quality also, you get really high quality coffee.

• 21:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 06

  So it's all available, but people are driven more by things that come from wild nature, like extracts from medicinal mushrooms like chaga. They might be getting bilberry extracts, which is basically the more pronounced exponentially, more powerful, the original form of a blueberry. The blueberry that is sold as a superfood is actually the one that grows in a bush, is quite high on sugar and it's not, I mean, it's a wusi compared to a bilberry, which is basically growing on the ground.

• 22:17Chris Williamson?

  Is bilberry, bilberry is a hardcore blueberry?

• 22:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, if you, if you cut a blueberry, you can see that the things that give blueberries the color, the antiosionins, which are also the medicinal properties of blueberries that are being thrown around, which are also great for eye health and.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  All that extremely strong antioxidants. Often, these very dark pigments are like that. You take coffee, chocolate, chaga mushrooms. You take blueberries. The dark pigments are usually very strong antioxidants. Now, in blueberries, you have only these pigments in the skin section. A little bit, maybe one or two millimeters below the skin. But if you take a bilberry, that's the original badass motherfucker version of the blueberry. The blueberry is selectively bred kind of thing that, you know, is bigger and has more sugar content.

• 23:22Speaker 06

  But if you take a bilberry, you cut it, it's all throughout these dark pigments. And it has so much more flavor. The same goes for raspberries. The local raspberries we have here, those are much smaller, but they pack all the bitter compounds, all the nutrient-dense stuff in there. So, anyway, so in Finland, it's not really that much about supplements. It's really about the real foods.

• 23:52Chris Williamson?

  I get you.

• 23:53Speaker 06

  And that's the thing. I don't know if it's part of the culture that we have every man's rights, that you can actually go to nature on private land and you can pick anything you want and you're not being chased down. It's okay. It's part of the Nordic culture here in Sweden and Finland and Estonia. You can go to the nature. You can take berries, mushrooms, herbs from someone's backyard, and it's okay.

• 24:23Chris Williamson?

  I think you'd probably be chased out of someone's backyard in the UK if you tried to do that here.

• 24:27Speaker 06

  Exactly. So, the same in the US. So, people are not really accustomed to the fact that nature is theirs. But here, it's, I mean, we have 100,000 lakes, sauna. The Finnish sauna is part of our culture. It has always been. It was the method through which we heated our homes.

• 24:47Chris Williamson?

  Did I read a thing where sometimes people leave their saunas on or out overnight and sometimes neighbors just go and use other people's saunas?

• 24:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, public sauna culture is big. But you're probably referring to the smoke sauna. Smoke sauna is something which you heat with smoke.

• 25:08Speaker 06

  In the end, you don't have smoke in there, but you basically use that to really bring the temperature up and then you, the all the heat is is is in a huge pile of stones and it keeps hot for forty eight hours. It also takes at least six hours, often twelve hours, to heat a proper Finnish smoke sauna. And a, and a great, you know, a proper smoke sauna also burns at least once in ten years to the ground and you build it again.

• 25:40Chris Williamson?

  Oh, God.

• 25:41Speaker 06

  You, you can't have those in apartment buildings. So what we have nowadays in apartment buildings are these, um, I, I guess they are like electric grills, uh, so an electric sauna, it's not.

• 25:52Chris Williamson?

  Are you grilling yourself, Timo?

• 25:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:55Chris Williamson?

  You're probably not be grilling.

• 25:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, but, um, the problem with these electric stoves is that they reduce the humidity in the air.

• 26:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 06

  And often because they are in apartment buildings, you don't have direct connection to air. And the greatest qualities of a proper sauna experience are actually invisible. They're not physical. So it's, it is the combination of the basic elements of water, uh, fire, uh, air. And then you have earth, which is basically the stones. And you throw water on the stones and the water evaporates and that is called leud, which is the spirit of the sauna. And in some countries here in the Baltics, for example, in Latvia and, and Slovakia, they, they hang these different herbs in the ceiling.

• 26:46Speaker 06

  And once the water evaporates, it takes the volatile oils with them and carries them in the air to your lungs. So that's the essential oils thing.

• 26:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 06

  Now, we don't need a diffuser for it. You just go for a sauna. And then, uh, you also make this. Um, I don't know how you call them, but you basically put a bunch of branches together, usually birch. Um, some other countries here in Baltics, they also use other trees like maybe oak leaves or maple, whatever, you know, you can just make a one of these from just about anything, tie it up and heat yourself with it. And it really brings the blood flow on the surface. And you also basically literally beat the volatile oils into your skin.

• 27:36Speaker 06

  Now, now that's good. Actually, in Finland, they also used stinging nettle.

• 27:44Chris Williamson?

  That is hardcore.

• 27:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, you basically get a bunch of stinging nettle together and you beat someone, you know, with that.

• 27:53Chris Williamson?

  Is it a friend? You beat a friend or you beat an enemy?

• 27:55Speaker 06

  You beat, you beat a friend who has kidney problems in the back. And it increases blood flow greatly. I mean, you probably got stung by a stinging nettle at some point and

• 28:06Chris Williamson?

  It's agony.

• 28:07Speaker 06

  And it's, it really increased blood flow. That's medicine, man. Might hurt for a while, but it's good for you.

• 28:14Chris Williamson?

  Definitely hurt for a while. So

• 28:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, you can eat it also. I mean, it's high in, it's one of the highest sources of micronutrients that you can get from your backyard.

• 28:25Chris Williamson?

  Wow. Well, I mean, if anyone who is listening at home, I implore you not to blame it on us if you eat a stinging nettle and it hurts. I'm going to advise you that it almost, almost definitely will hurt. Um, but yeah, so you've touched on a number of, of areas there that I think a lot of people will consider. They'll think about the fact that they need to focus on their sleep. I need to track my sleep. I need to understand that it's not just getting eight hours, it's getting varieties of REM sleep, et cetera, et cetera. You've touched on sauna therapy as well and a few different

• 29:00Speaker 06

  Heat integration. Yeah, we combine that with also ice swimming. So we basically combine that. I can get into the details of the health effects if you're interested, but

• 29:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that'd be good. Let's, let's throw, throw it on us about

• 29:12Speaker 06

  But anyway, so in this book, we, we go through Five pillars of your life: sleep, exercise, nutrition, mind and work. And how you can see all of those systems and how you can track them and how you can optimize them based on latest science. So, uh, heat alteration is something that you can use to improve your recovery from things like exercise, or it can be a form of exercise. Actually, if you go, if you don't exercise at all, but you go for a sauna once a week, it, it is already a really good training for your cardiovascular system and you reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease by that already. And you also improve your immunity.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  Um, it increases white blood cell count and certain immune system cells. Also, something called heat shock proteins, uh, proliferate when you expose yourself to hot and cold, by the way, also. Actually, heat shock proteins on a cellular level were discovered when they studied cells and they, uh, they, um, realized that, uh, certain proteins increase in number once you expose the cells to heat. That's why they call them heat shock proteins. But then they realized later on that it also is something that increases in number when you expose the cell to cold or radiation, or a bunch of different environmental stressors.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  And it seems that it's key for its recovery, um, or self-repair mechanism. So it will clean out, uh, intracellular waste and it will also activate certain pathways that are related to longevity, like F O X O three. Um, so, so there are many benefits of that. What has not been studied very well is the combination of sauna and ice swimming combined. Those have been studied in isolation, so cold exposure and heat exposure. Um, if, if someone is interested in like, okay, if I go for a traditional Finnish sauna or a dry sauna, how do I get the health benefits now?

• 31:24Speaker 06

  What is the protocol? What you should aim for is that you wait until your heart rate goes up. That's when you are generating those heat shock proteins and you're getting many of the benefits to your cardiovascular system. And when you go for ice swimming, a good duration is once, once you get in there and you start hyperventilating, you stay there until your breathing gets even. You just try to kind of breathe through it. And that's, once you get past a certain point, you are already, you have already, you know, got the shock to your nervous system that is beneficial in this context and also the cardiovascular benefits. So,

• 32:10Speaker 06

  another thing that for ladies out there is key is also skin. Now, your skin is your largest organ and most of the time we spend our time in pretty much heated environments, in a tropical environment almost, like heated indoors, cars, we have all kinds of air conditioning and heating systems in buildings. Now, we don't really expose ourselves nowadays that much to heat alteration. Now, if you do that on a regular basis, it will also improve your skin quality for many, many, many reasons.

• 32:49Speaker 06

  Part of it is related to the expansion and contraction of capillaries in microvanes. And there's many benefits to that. So, yeah, I think some of the best bio hacks are actually pretty simple and natural.

• 33:04Chris Williamson?

  Very straightforward stuff, right? So, I mean, how often are you suggesting or what appears to be optimal? Twice a week, three times a week?

• 33:13Speaker 06

  I would recommend doing it two or three times a week, but if you even do it once a week, you reduce your risk for seasonal flu by 66%.

• 33:23Chris Williamson?

  That's an insane statistic.

• 33:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it don't need much.

• 33:31Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so we've got sauna, heat and cold therapy is one of the top lists. So, okay, if we were to take that, if you were to, I'm aware that with biohacking, biomarkers are a key element of what we're talking about here, that it's not simply a one size fits all solution and that people need to make adjustments to their own home or to reach homeostasis and to then improve on that based on where their imbalances lie. And yours will not be the same as mine, will not be the same as the listeners at home.

• 34:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:04Chris Williamson?

  If I was to ask you for your, as the experience that you've seen and with the broad cross-section of the public which you've been exposed to, what would you say are the rough hewn, what's the AD/20 of the AD/20 for people to look at doing? If it was to be a top five things that most people could benefit from, or your favorite things that most people could benefit from that you think have emerged from the biohacking community recently?

• 34:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, if you look at biomarkers, what you should pay attention to, so I'm not a big fan of any kind of reductionist logic that you break down a human being to a single number, like your blood sugar value or something like this, but in the end, those are pretty good indicators, many of them, but a combination of them is perhaps even more beneficial. So what I would look for is certainly the classical ones. I would look at your fasting blood glucose, but not just your glucose tolerance test, but your long-term hemoglobin A1C is, I think, one of the key markers to follow on so that you understand your long-term exposure to blood sugar fluctuations.

• 35:17Speaker 06

  The other one that I would look for is definitely lipid biomarkers that is related to cholesterol, but I wouldn't look at total cholesterol, I would look at triglycerides and their relationship to HDL, LDL cholesterol.

• 35:36Speaker 06

  And that is already giving pretty good indicators of where you are in terms of particle size versus cholesterol levels. And cholesterol is a carrier, so when inflammation goes up, cholesterol levels tend to also rise. When you exercise a lot, your cholesterol tends to rise. So it doesn't only rise when you eat food that is high in cholesterol. It rises in response to your day-to-day activities. And now, what is kind of key to understand there is definitely inflammation. So high cholesterol is not that dangerous if you have low inflammation.

• 36:19Speaker 06

  If you have high inflammation, then there is a risk that you damage your arterial walls, and that creates problems then with high cholesterol. So now, what you would track for is things like homocysteine and highly sensitive C-reactive protein. They often check for CRP, but that tells you more about things like bacterial infection or massive systemic infection or inflammation going on. But if you track your highly sensitive C-reactive protein, you get a better idea of low-level inflammation, which kills you over time and kind of exposes you to all these degenerative

• 37:01Speaker 06

  diseases that come with age, even things like Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease that lurks in slowly or inability to deal with glucose or insulin resistance. Now, what I would look for definitely in terms of sleep quality is the amount of deep sleep. I wouldn't look at sleep duration. I would look at the amount of deep sleep, because deep sleep is the key phase when you're at sleep, in the first stages of sleep, when you get most of your deep sleep usually. That's when your brain shrinks a little bit, and there are these...

• 37:42Speaker 06

  the lymphatic system expands to the brain, and it's mediated by glial cells in the brain, and it pumps out any of the metabolic byproducts that accumulate throughout the day. So basically, being awake... Is a catabolic state, it breaks your body down. Now, when you sleep, that's an anabolic state. When you build up things and you clean out things and you defrag yourself. And that's where things like amyloid blake or amyloid beta, which accumulates in Alzheimer's disease, tend to be cleaned out. Now, if you don't get proper deep sleep, which comes in the first four or five hours of the night, you're not cleaning the system properly.

• 38:25Speaker 06

  And one easy way to reduce the amount of deep sleep is actually to drink more than two glasses of alcohol. So obviously, I mean, many of these things that we already know, um, the like excess consumption of alcohol or smoking cigarettes is definitely linked to um many of these conditions.

• 38:46Chris Williamson?

  One of, one of my friends recently, I was having a discussion with him and I was, uh, we are big advocates of going sober on this show. I've currently just testing myself to see if I can do eighteen months sober. Um, I run club nights, which means that it's the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing. But it's a good, it's a good challenge and I am enjoying it at the moment.

• 39:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, I actually, I actually made a DJ friend today, uh, who's into electronic music. And he also said, like, I mean, he's into biohacking nowadays, but he spent most of his youth, basically, like, you know, what?

• 39:19Chris Williamson?

  Party-ing hard.

• 39:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, and watching when other people like, um, get wasted. And it, it, I mean, I was just like a couple of nights ago, I was, or, or yesterday? Hmm, maybe two, two, yeah, yesterday I was in the evening, I was in a just a summer, you know, first outdoor event here. And I just realized that how many, how many people are smoking cigarettes still? I don't get this passive smoking thing, uh, at all nowadays. But when I go to a place like that, I realized that, hmm, okay, some people are still doing this.

• 39:54Chris Williamson?

  It blows my mind, man, like it's, there's been the anti-smoking or the, I guess, the smoking health. Advertisements, surtout au Royaume-Uni, ont fait un très bon travail. Je suis terrorisé de se rapprocher d'une cigarette maintenant, et j'ai toujours été. Le fait que les gens le considèrent comme une chose viable à faire, à mon avis, me dérange. Mais oui, j'étais en train de parler à mon ami et il m'a parlé de la façon dont il a dit : "L'alcool aide à dormir mieux à la nuit." Et j'ai dit : "Tu ne te fais pas du sommeil, tu te fais seder." Et il y a une grande différence entre les deux. Et aller à la maison sedé est rien à voir avec la sommeil. C'est juste le fait que tu te lèves avec deux gourmands de vin rouge à 10 heures.

• 40:37Speaker 06

  Oui, boire du vin le soir, ça augmente les neurotransmetteurs neurotenditifs dans le cerveau, qui sont des neurotransmetteurs inhibiteurs, donc ils ralentissent le signalage. Donc, certainement, ça te relaxe et tu te sens plus facilement de dormir. Mais ça peut aussi inhiber tes étapes de sommeil profond. Et selon votre makeup génétique. Donc, une chose importante à regarder si vous faites des tests génétiques, c'est de regarder votre système cytochrome B450 dans votre foie, comment il se mete en place les choses comme l'alcool ou le caféine. Donc, si vous êtes lentement ou rapidement metabolisés,

• 41:20Speaker 06

  si votre foie est capable de produire de grandes quantités de luthéion, qui se dégrade l'alcool, oui, tu es sur le côté plus sûr. Si vous obtenez une réaction rouge de l'alcool, vous devriez arrêter immédiatement.

• 41:32Chris Williamson?

  Oui, mon partenaire d'affaires, Dave, est d'heritage asiatique et il reçoit toujours des floues de bière asiatique, dont il doit prendre ses petites tablettes. Pour tous ceux qui ne savent pas ce que c'est, vous pouvez avoir un ami asiatique. Je pense que c'est disproportionnellement orienté vers l'est en termes de population. Quand mon partenaire d'affaires, Dave, est à deux bières profond, s'il a oublié de prendre une de ses pilules spéciales, il semble qu'il ait été dans le soleil trop longtemps. Et il obtient instantanément une floue, une face floue, ce qui est super drôle au milieu d'une nuit.

• 42:06Speaker 06

  The interesting thing about alcohol here is that here in the northern part of the globe, you know, Finland, Russia, people drink a lot, you know, and we are actually quite tolerant to alcohol. So we don't get the red flash reaction that easily genetically. And that might sound like a good thing, that you can deal with alcohol more. But the problem here is addiction. So if you're not getting the beating of getting a red flushing reaction, you risk yourself, you know, getting addicted more easily.

• 42:46Chris Williamson?

  But there's no early warning system, right?

• 42:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:48Chris Williamson?

  You're just gonna keep going.

• 42:49Speaker 06

  There is no punishment, but there is all the reward. So you get basically the release of dopamine, and it makes you feel good and enjoy yourself. And in terms of any addiction, what is key is repetition, and the sequence, and the time or the duration between the moments when you release a certain pathway, or connect certain neurons in your brain. So becoming an alcoholic is not really about the amount, how much you drink, it is about the frequency. So if you enjoy alcohol, because you're not getting this red flash reaction, you start drinking wine at every dinner, suddenly you drink bottles of wine.

• 43:32Speaker 06

  That's the problem. The frequency of use is the issue here. And over time, that's also what makes you an alcoholic. And you start to enjoy it, it wires your brain for that activity. Now, if you get the punishment every time you drink, you're more likely to steer away from drinking. And if you do, you're super careful. And I think it's a blessing to get that reaction.

• 43:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 06

  Now, you can hack that. So in biohacking circles, you can use things like liposomal glutathione, you can use things like N-acetylcysteine, which is a building block for glutathione that breaks down acetaldehyde, which is one of the metabolize of alcohol. Now, it sounds great.

• 44:17Chris Williamson?

  Is this a pre or post?

• 44:20Speaker 06

  That's effective when you do it pre or while drinking. So it doesn't help that much once the damage is done. But that's part of the reason why you can drink more if you eat simultaneously. Because from food you get from amino acids, you get cysteine, get some building blocks, some amino acids that build up more glutathione. So you can break down alcohol. It also slows down the absorption, obviously. Now, the problem here is that if you start supplementing on alcohol use, which is kind of a biohack. So you're really at risk of getting hangover. You know what?

• 44:58Chris Williamson?

  You can drink more.

• 44:59Speaker 06

  You can drink more. You're more likely to get addicted also. I spoke to a researcher on this and he said that you increase your risk for becoming alcoholic threefold by doing these biohacks.

• 45:12Chris Williamson?

  So. That's terrifying, man. Like, it's what you said before about the nootropics and the use of smart drugs. You're layering on top of an ineffective system more speed. And for people who listened to the episode we did about mental models, you'll remember speed over direction. And a lot of the time, you can make yourself go much faster in the wrong direction. And this is exactly what we're talking about. A lot of people ask, like, I recently did a story about, I mentioned nootropics and had my inbox got flooded with, oh, so what do you recommend? What do you use? And I'm like, so many people say that they have a time management problem when what they have is an attention management problem. If you don't understand how to do deep work

• 45:57Chris Williamson?

  or you don't have the beginning of the understanding of a Pomodoro technique or whatever your particular focused work strategy of choice is. But if you don't have any, like, hammering shitloads of nootropics and caffeine into yourself, you're layering. Extra speed on top of an incredibly ineffective system.

• 46:17Speaker 06

  You got it. I mean, as a philosopher, you might say that, you know, there is time, you know, infinite amount, you know, it comes and goes. What you have a limited amount is your attention. So if you, if you do a bunch of nootropics and all that, like, and you think you have a time management problem, you really have an attention management problem, that's for sure. And sometimes taking these substances that might make you hyperactive, might make you a little bit too stimulated, a little bit too much dopamine, they might make you more easily distractible, actually. So it's a sweet spot. I know this for myself, actually, ethane is not necessarily the best thing to do if I want to write. It's good if I want to go for a run

• 47:01Speaker 06

  or, you know, talk to you. That's where it works for me, because it helps me to rapidly fire and, you know, make connections. But if I want to do deep work or creative work, I need to slow down the system, really. Like, for me, things like, things like thienin work pretty well. Things like lemon balm might be good. Maybe a cup of tea. So less stimulatory things are good in that state for me. Or just like, yeah.

• 47:32Chris Williamson?

  I'd agree. For me, for me as well, when I'm doing creative work, when I'm podcasting, you know, getting a little bit more kind of speedy kind of helps, like, so caffeine or whatever would be good. But for me, when I'm doing creative work, if I have too much, I'm overshooting by

• 47:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, anxious, anxious.

• 47:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I can't, I can't allow everything to slow down and to really focus on what matters. So L-theanine is one of the things you've touched on there. So yeah, going, going back to one of the things I mentioned before, if you were to take a broad cross-section of people and say, I mean, would you recommend to most people a sauna? I'm going to guess so. Based on everything that I've seen, it suggests that heat and cold therapy is robustly pretty good. Are there any other techniques that you think that are fairly robust and that most people should consider adding into a routine? If they're, they're new to biohacking, they haven't yet got the book, and they don't know where they're, where to start, are there some things that you think will just give them some good benefits to begin with?

• 48:34Speaker 06

  I mean, I'm beating the horse to death here, but light is obviously a big thing. So there's a lot of research that has come out in the last couple of years on chronobiology. So basically, the biology of your biological clocks and light is a big influencer on that. Diet is another one, by the way. So when you drink coffee, that actually pushes your biological clock forward by four hours easily.

• 49:02Chris Williamson?

  That's really, that's really worrying.

• 49:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, if you're traveling and you try to adjust to a time zone, that might be good. Things like fasting will be good because biologically we are wired to move the clock forward until we get food. So I would always like think about morning as one of the resets for the day. So starting a day with coffee, but not the first thing when you wake up, because that's when you have high cortisol, when you, your adrenal glands are just waking up. Pushing more caffeine into the system to activate your adrenal glands is, is, is like putting more gas on the pedal. That's already pushed way down. So I would wait for the cortisol to drop.

• 49:47Chris Williamson?

  How long is that typically?

• 49:49Speaker 06

  So that, that's probably around a couple of hours from wake up. So I would make the coffee, yes, I would put it in a thermo, I would take it to the, to work and I would drink it slowly and.

• 50:00Chris Williamson?

  You're a, you're, you're an advocate of the lemon and salt water on a morning, right?

• 50:05Speaker 06

  Uh, when it comes to hydration, I would go for electrolytes for sure. I mean, you lose a lot, a lot of water when you sleep. So hydration is key and you need electrolytes for absorbing the water. So the more fluids you have in your body, the better your system also works. Your joints, your discs, a lot of back pains can actually be a result of hydration. So there's not just, you know, enough fluids in your system to moisten up, you know,

• 50:38Speaker 06

  things like the, the discs in your back.

• 50:42Chris Williamson?

  Dehydrated discs is what, is what it's referred to, right? It's one of the technical terms for it.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  That's right. So hydration is key, but when it comes to like. Um hacking your morning water. What I like to do is if I if I now had everything in my disposal, what kind of morning water would I do? I would actually use not filtered water or something fancy like that. I would use either spring water or birch sap. Birch sap directly from a tree. That's awesome. It's already full of all the electrolytes in a natural form. I would um ferment it. So I would have fermented birch sap. So I get also the probiotics. If I don't have those, I would mix some probiotics in there perhaps.

• 51:27Speaker 06

  What I would also throw in, in terms of a lot of people put things like lemon for some vitamin C. Uh I might use things like spruce sprout powder or amla extract. Uh amla extract and spruce sprouts are one of the greatest sources of vitamin C. Or I might also use C. Bactorn, Jewish, just so you know, uh dose a little bit of that in there. I might throw some things to help with uh anti uh basically anti-inflammatory compounds. I might throw something like an extract of ginger or or turmeric in there also. Also a pinch of salt is is a pretty good idea.

• 52:10Speaker 06

  So there you have it, you know, you have already a more like an optimized version. So your question, like what would most people benefit from? I give you a uh I don't I I'm gonna give you uh a way of looking at things. So when you look at your day, look at the things that you do repeatedly. Uh you sit in a chair, you sleep in a bed, you drink a cup of coffee or tea or whatever you do. You know, look at the things that you do repeatedly over and over again. And those are the areas, if you optimize those, you get cumulatively the highest benefits from. So there is not a single thing, but I would look at your patterns of behavior.

• 52:55Speaker 06

  I would map them out and uh think about like, how can I do this better? And don't compromise on things like your the quality of coffee or tea or your chair or bed, because those are the things you spend most time with. A lot of people, they buy things that they think they need, like a fancy car or I don't know, a new shirt, and they don't invest in small things like much better like ergonomics. So.

• 53:21Speaker 06

  That's what I would go for.

• 53:24Speaker 06

  And if you do a lot of seating work, getting some way to get more mobility in your day, maybe a standing desk. The point is not to stand all day long, but it's really to alter your physical position. That's kind of the key for activating your lymphatic system. So I would pay attention to stimulating your lymphatic flow because the lymphatic system doesn't have a pump like the heart does for the cardiovascular system. It requires movement and gravity for the fluids to move in and out from your cells.

• 54:00Chris Williamson?

  So speaking as speaking as someone who considers himself active, I train between one and two hours a day, seven days a week. But the periods when I'm not active are incredibly sedentary. And this, this is a misstep, a bias that I've not been conscious of until fairly recently. I thought, right, well, I'm cracking out in an hour and a half, I'm cracking out a thousand or a 1,500 calorie workout. Like, I don't need to worry myself with staying mobile through the rest of the day. Whereas recently, the guys from Fully, they make the Capisco chair and they make the Jarvis desk. That is what I'm sat on now.

• 54:44Chris Williamson?

  So this stool, which is just behind me, and this particular desk, which allows me to stand, like, this is, this is now, I'm working with an adjustable desk. And for the listeners at home, they'll know that I have L5 and S1 for me, are two bulging discs. I have that, I have what's referred to as a Schmoll's node. And you think, well, I have fairly strong extensors, I have all of the rest of the things, but it's not, it seems it's not sufficient to just look after your health or your fitness during fitness time, staying moving throughout the day. An episode I did with Dr. Ewan Lawson, who is the author of The Healthy Writer, came up with something called the 202020 rule, which I thought was great. And it ties in with pomodoro's.

• 55:29Chris Williamson?

  He said, every 20 minutes for 20 seconds. Stand up, walk around and look at something which is more than twenty feet away. And he talks about resetting the ocular muscles in the eye to try and it's there's been some moderately strong research to show that it will stop with tension headaches and the straining of the eyes being at a screen which is a particular distance away. Um. So that's that's something to take there. Um. So we're looking at the areas of our life that we're doing a lot of. If you're a driver, look at your seating position in a car. If you're an office worker, look at your desk position, look at where your keyboard is. If you're, well, everyone's gonna say if you sleep, everyone sleeps.

• 56:10Chris Williamson?

  Um. When you sleep, consider your sleeping position, your pillow, the surface that you're sleeping on. What are some of the other areas that people may have overlooked?

• 56:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I I started just reflecting on what you said. And to me, it seems like, you know, if you take exercise even, um, people have recovery days and, you know, that's when they don't do anything. And there is a bunch of research that actually shows that an active recovery day is probably actually better to have a little bit of movement in the day, maybe go for a walk. So one of the key things for a long life, definitely, once you get older, once you're now that you're young, you're gonna do, you know, all kinds of heavy exercise and stuff like this. But the older you get, it's it's more and more important to get your proprioceptors right and uh is proprioceptics.

• 57:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, proprio proprioceptics, I think, yes.

• 57:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, that's kind of key. So move in an uneven terrain, uh, you know, go, don't just go for a run on a treadmill or around a field, but go just go to the, you know, down away from a beaten path and and run in nature and get some natural movement. I think that's key really for your brain function and for learning and it.

• 57:33Chris Williamson?

  I'll show you a I'll show you what I've literally what I've literally just bought. Wait there.

• 57:38Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 57:42Speaker 06

  That's a great chair you have there.

• 57:44Chris Williamson?

  This is a slackline, which I just purchased as my

• 57:50Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 57:51Chris Williamson?

  Summer, uh, physical, physical challenge. Yeah, exactly. So that's going to be my, that's going to be my thing. Hopefully I'll get, get that set up nearby. I work from home a fair bit, get that set up at home and then yeah. Bare feet, bare feet on grass. I know grounding and earthing and stuff is a little bit of research behind it, et cetera, et cetera.

• 58:11Speaker 06

  I, I, I started my first company when I was 16. I'm 37 now. And when I was younger, you know, 18 or something like this, my friends would go for a smoke and for a cigarette. And I didn't smoke, so I had to come up with something to do. And one thing that I came up with was juggling. So I started juggling. I started doing all these juggling acts and that was what my way of getting a little bit of movement in my day. And there's a bunch of research that also shows that if you, if you train yourself in anything that requires coordination of micro-moments, like, you know, what you just showed me, the zip line,

• 58:53Speaker 06

  or maybe even playing something like a violin, juggling, all those things, dance, are key for increasing the connections in corpus callosum, which is the part of the brain that connects the left and the right hemispheres. There is this idea that you are either left or right brained, like the geological or creative. But this is bollocks. It's not based on any real science. It's some hippies came up with that distinction in the seventies and it, it stuck. I mean, it came from brain imaging that they noticed. And, and research on the brain, definitely other areas of the brain that are, you know, more related to certain activities. But when you do creative work, you're actually using, you know,

• 59:36Speaker 06

  both left and right hemisphere. When you're doing logical, mathematical. Equations, you're using both left and right hemisphere. And if you're going to be Einstein or not, it's actually the increase, the number of connections you have in your corpus callosum between the left and the right hemisphere. So the better the coordination between both sides of the brain, the better you are on both of those activities, both creative work and logical thinking. So, and the best way to train that is physical movement, especially anything that requires concentration and coordination.

• 1:00:12Chris Williamson?

  Quite fine, high fidelity, uh, technical sort of things like playing violin or slacklining. Have you still got the skills, have you still got the juggling skills if someone throws a set of balls at you, have you still got it?

• 1:00:24Speaker 06

  Absolutely, yeah. And I also, I also got into contact juggling and I also do some sticks and I really love like, you know, to play with some martial arts equipment if I get the opportunities. So I think it's a fun part to play, you know, also.

• 1:00:45Chris Williamson?

  I think that's, that's, that's a really cool point that a lot of people forget that these things that we're talking about aren't just necessarily tools for a more productive, longer, better life, that you can find, I, I suck at slackline, like I suck so bad. But I'm, I actually, I do enjoy the process of it. I like being out, I'm attached to two trees, bare feet, on grass, fresh air, half an hour. And, you know, it's, it's fun, like that's, it is, the process of doing it isn't just, like we said at the very beginning, it's not that utilitarian tool for tool's sake. It, it can actually be something that you enjoy.

• 1:01:25Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Grazing the groove is one of the kind of key terms that have been thrown around in exercise circles. The basic idea is that you play all day long, you just don't go for a gym workout. You do pushups occasionally, you do pullups, maybe you do, you know. You do some parkour once you are outside in a city. So you're trying to find some ways to use your body at its fullest form. I have to testify that, you know, I don't do that all the time. I'm still learning, you know. I try to get more and more playful and more exercise to my day. And I'm getting there, you know. I just got myself an X3 bar and I do my.

• 1:02:05Chris Williamson?

  What's that?

• 1:02:06Speaker 06

  It's a resistance training system developed by a doctor. I try to remember his name now. But anyway, so he.

• 1:02:15Chris Williamson?

  X3.

• 1:02:16Speaker 06

  X3 bar, yeah. So basically, what happens is when you do something like a deadlift.

• 1:02:22Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:02:23Speaker 06

  The highest resistance is when you're just lifting it off the ground. And the lowest resistance is in the uppermost position. Now, the resistance bands are reversing that. So you have the highest resistance on the upper position and the lowest when you're down. And it actually pushes your training beyond what is possible with just lifting heavy stuff. And I really like the device and it's easy to carry around and it's unforgiving. I mean, I call it a businessman's workout because you can do it, you know, with your suit on.

• 1:03:07Chris Williamson?

  Hotel room.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, hotel room, 15 minutes and you're completely wasted, out of breath. And you don't even get too sweaty doing it. So you can go for a meeting right after a red faced.

• 1:03:19Chris Williamson?

  That's really interesting. So before we go, some of the things we've touched on today that I know the listeners might be interested in. You mentioned about biomarkers for lipids and glucose and stuff like that. I was flown out to Boston, as the listeners will know, by the guys from InsideTracker. Who do some biomarkers. They do a service in the UK and in Europe, although I'm aware that it is a slightly reduced version of their main one, which is all 40 biomarkers. And you also mentioned about genetic testing. Have you got any companies that you recommend for the biomarkers for dietary stuff and for genetics?

• 1:04:02Speaker 06

  InsideTracker is great if you want to check biomarkers against your diet. They have a do it yourself service also where you go to your local lab.

• 1:04:11Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  You get the numbers and you then manually enter them on InsideTracker and you get your analysis. Another great company in US side is called Wellness FX. I think they were sold to Thorn FX, a supplement company, I think. But anyway, so they did pretty extensive panels. And on Europe side,

• 1:04:35Speaker 06

  I mean, there is genetic companies. I mean, you can do like 23andMe test and then upload the data to companies like DNA Fit and from Ethius. And there is also Live Wello and a bunch of other services. There is Dr. Ronda Patrick's genetic analysis for nutrition and nutrigenomics. That's great. Or you can go for a full genome test with companies like Chronomics, which also provides an epigenetic test, or Dante Labs is another one that comes to mind.

• 1:05:08Chris Williamson?

  What's the sort of cost of that?

• 1:05:10Speaker 06

  I mean, these are

• 1:05:13Speaker 06

  probably cheapest you get them is like 150 bucks and up to 1,000.

• 1:05:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for the real, every full MOT.

• 1:05:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I wouldn't definitely go for a genetic test as the first thing. I would get my basic biomarkers in place.

• 1:05:30Speaker 06

  I actually solved my own problem here, trying to get, you know, these lab tests in Finland. We founded a company, I helped to found a company called Health DX that does biomarker analysis. So

• 1:05:43Chris Williamson?

  Amazing.

• 1:05:43Speaker 06

  We do very extensive full blood tests. So like over 100 biomarkers. And we have another package that's for the basic metabolics. But we have another package which is nutrition, where we look at micronutrients, vitamins, minerals. And we also look that from full blood. And so you get a long term. Understanding of many, many things and we are working with the only mineral laboratory in Finland to do that. And we are not just providing you the numbers, but we also provide you the deeper analysis and feedback on those. So actually, our biomarker analysis comes with an online course that helps you to dive

• 1:06:28Speaker 06

  in a customized manner to your own blood work. And the amount of material that you can learn from there about your biomarker results is about the same size as the Biohacker's Handbook. So we're actually putting that as a book later also. So the Biohacker's Handbook is out now. You can find more information about it from biohackingbook.com. So biohackingbook.com, you can already order the Biohacker's Handbook. It's not on Amazon yet. We're working on it. It's a big book.

• 1:06:59Chris Williamson?

  It's a big book to ship by Amazon.

• 1:07:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a big one. It's also big for us to get it there, especially on the US side. We're working on it. And there is some, there is some books that are coming out later. So we are working on one book that is more focused on your nervous system and building resilience. So that will be a follow-up to this book.

• 1:07:19Chris Williamson?

  Would that be kind of like on top of the immunity side?

• 1:07:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, that will combine basically everything that goes into stress management and building a better resilience version, resilient version of yourself. So that will go in more, in a more detailed manner into breathing techniques and cold heat exposure and, but also supplementation for your adrenal and HPA axis that controls your stress reactions also.

• 1:07:50Chris Williamson?

  I mean, if the listeners at home, I'm sure are making a lot of notes and then trying to catch up with a lot of what we've gone through today.

• 1:08:03Chris Williamson?

  Taking notes from reading the Biohackers Handbook is moving very slowly. Embarrassingly, I'm reading the book very slowly because I'm then having to distill down what it is that I'm looking at. But I have to say, if you thought that there was a wealth of information in today's episodes, that is about as close to an encyclopedia as you're going to get. I think you've done a fantastic job with it. You get like a PDF that's kind of like a partner of it as well. And then is there, there's a link to stuff on the website, which is all the recommended products and resources and stuff like that. I haven't even started on that yet. Like, that's still for me to get stuck into.

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, so in this book, you don't have any product or device or service recommendations.

• 1:08:47Chris Williamson?

  Strategies.

• 1:08:48Speaker 06

  Those will be basically outdated in a year. So we, we took all of those out from that book. So that book is mainly research strategies based on science. So we're 1,500 references, mainly meta studies published in the last couple of years. So this material will last a long time. And once we get into the different practical techniques and tools, that's where we have our extra materials pages, which are like online databases for everything from for sleep optimization, exercise, nutrition, all that. And we keep on updating those lists as we go forward, as new, new stuff comes out. When we started writing this book five years ago, so I work with a medical doctor called

• 1:09:32Speaker 06

  Olic Oviarvi and a nutrition specialist called Jakal Halmetoja. When we started, people didn't do things like photobiomodulation that much. Blue light blocking was not yet there, like glasses. Some of those things were kind of already emerging a little bit. Ketogenic diets were not really big. People were talking about more about. Anti-inflammatory diets and all that. So things have changed a lot while we were writing this and we've been updating the book while we wrote it for five years. And but I mean,

• 1:10:09Speaker 06

  it's a huge book. A lot of research went into it. And for no reason, I mean, it's not a surprise that when you put your heart and mind into something like that, you know, people, people really give good feedback. So we have already a second hundred, you know, five star reviews, raving reviews about the content. It's a coffee table book, really. I mean, you can't just read it and digest it in one go. It's like something you want to go back to as often as you have questions.

• 1:10:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think certainly, certainly one of the things you touched on was your the potential for a morning water, right? And that recipe for a morning water is probably more lengthy than most people's lunches. And I think that the overwhelm that comes with that, you are right, you need to pick apart the elements that you need. But, you know, to have a heuristic for prioritizing, you've given it. It's what are the things that you do the most? What are the things that you know, like as the whoever it is that's listening, what are the things that that person does the most? These are the areas in which any small increases will compound most effectively over time.

• 1:11:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we researched like, what is the 20% out of all the material out there that has any likelihood of doing something? And we handed over to the readers. Now, if you did everything that we have, for example, in the sleep optimization chapter, you would be preparing for sleep all day long.

• 1:11:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you would. You'd be preparing to sleep since you woke up.

• 1:11:49Speaker 06

  So it's your task then to figure out like, out of that material, what resonates with you, what works for you, what is the 20% of the recommendations that, you know, you could fit into your daily schedule. And we guarantee that most of those are research that they will Statistically, perhaps improve your sleep, but you can't know really until you try yourself. So that's the value of patient zero, you know, being N is one, being the one who is being the guinea pig for all these self experiments. So when you read stuff online or you hear experts, you know, do your own research. Try those things on yourself.

• 1:12:32Speaker 06

  Be well informed, be guided by the best experts. But in the end, you don't know until you try yourself.

• 1:12:41Chris Williamson?

  I totally get it, man. Teemu, it's been fantastic to speak to you. Biohackingbook.com. And where can everyone find you if they need to get you online?

• 1:12:50Speaker 06

  So, I mean, you can, you should definitely come to Biohacker Summit. So Biohacker Summit takes place first and second of November in Helsinki, Finland. It's our five year anniversary. And there is a lot of people more intelligent than me in biohacking who are coming along. Like, over half of the people coming along are from other countries than the Nordic countries. And we get often over 30 different nationalities. But if you want to follow me online, I mean, just look for Biohackingbook on Instagram. I also have a personal account, T A R one N A, like Tarena, my first name, Teemu, Tarena, Tarena. Um, Tarena actually means story.

• 1:13:35Speaker 06

  So I'm a storyteller.

• 1:13:36Chris Williamson?

  Thanks. You are a storyteller indeed. You're a storyteller of making people's lives a little bit less shit than they are already. And making it, making everyone a little bit healthier. Man, Teemu, it's been, it's been awesome today. Thank you so much for your time.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  My pleasure, my pleasure. Have a healthy, you know, rest of the day and rest of your life.