Biohacking 101: A Novice’s Guide to Molding Your Mind and Boosting Your Body

The fountain of youth (and performance) has never felt closer. Just check out these seven stepping stones.

By Hayley Helms

Updated: Jan 15, 2022

This article is a repost which originally appeared on GEAR PATROL

Edited for content

We’re in the infancy of 2022, and the air is thick with resolutions. People are eating healthier, growing their savings accounts and shrinking their waistlines.

You’ve probably got your fitness routine mapped out for the first month of the year, and maybe it includes lifting more weights, running more miles or squatting more squats. But does your carefully planned regimen include biohacking?

First off, what is biohacking? To the uninitiated, it sounds like some sort of sci-fi cyborg concept, and for the fringes of the biohacking community that are getting microchips implanted in their brains, bionic eyes and the like, that’s exactly what it is.

But for the average, about-to-be-above-average person, biohacking covers any clever DIY shortcut that provides an unexpected edge: heat and cold therapy, infrared saunas, intermittent fasting, adding adaptogens and supplements to your routine, and so on. Heck, you may even be biohacking right now, and not even know it.

The cleanest definition comes from self-help guru Tony Robbins and co.: “Biohacking your body means changing your chemistry and your physiology through science and self-experimentation to increase energy and vitality.”

Biohacking is rich with opportunities to maximize your workouts, heal your body and enhance your overall performance. It can be as basic as switching to organic foods and beverages — or as complex as cryotherapy to reboot your cellular system.

Need guidance where to start? I suggest keeping it simple. As noted in our recent Library of Pursuits course, one of the most helpful methods in developing a plan is to identify your goals, then tailor biohacking methods to help you reach them. Try hacks that fit into your existing lifestyle. They’ll be easier to implement and stick to — and give you the confidence to branch out from there.

Here are seven realistic jumping-off points — complete with products to optimize your experience, of course. Happy hacking.

1. Get More Out of Your Morning Joe

The jury is still out on whether coffee, or more specifically, caffeine, is beneficial for health, but if you’ve determined it works for you, try upgrading it. Biohacking works best when it can be integrated into already firmly set habits; as any ca-fiend knows, it’s an integral part of the morning routine.

Four Sigmatic’s coffee is infused with mushrooms and adaptogens, giving you a jolt of energy with caffeine, but also balance, brain power or restoration, depending what you need. The Ground Mushroom Coffee With Lion’s Mane is the “Think” brew, thanks to 250mg of lionsmane and chaga mushrooms, each. Lionsmane has been shown to increase focus and brain function, while chaga has been used for centuries to support immune function. Swapping out your standard brew for this tasty upgrade is an easy and hassle-free hack.

2. Eat Drink Your Greens

You’ve been told to eat your greens since childhood, but I’m willing to bet there are a fair amount of you out there, reading these words, avoiding those leafy greens like the plague.

Avoid health no longer, and enjoy the perks of produce with Athletic Greens, a powder supplement that can be added to water or smoothies and contains a hard-to-believe amount of goodness inside every single scoop serving.

Athletic Greens checks all the modern dietary marks: It’s gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free, and contains no added sugar. What isn’t it free from? I’m glad you asked. The powerful powder contains the equivalent of 12 servings of fruits and veggies per scoop, as well as probiotics, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and immune-supporting mushrooms.

3. Take the Plunge

One of the more popular biohacking methods, plunging yourself into icy cold water, may sound like a recipe for disaster (or catching a cold), but studies as well as anecdotal evidence are showing that immersing yourself in cold water daily has a wealth of health benefits, including immune system support, increased blood flow, boosted metabolism and sleep, increased energy and lowered inflammation, to name a few.

Cold water plunges are a form of whole body cryotherapy, a method of biohacking that exposes you to extremely cold temperatures, which initially constricts blood flow. Upon leaving the plunge tank, there’s a rush of blood back to the tissues. Consistent practice brings benefits including reduced inflammation, faster muscle recovery, reduced risk of dementia and more.

The Plunge uses cooling, filtration and sanitation to deliver clean and cold water — think, 39 degrees Fahrenheit cold — whenever you want it. You can use it inside or outside, depending where you live.

4. Score Some Magic Mushrooms

No, not those magic mushrooms. We’re talking about the non-psychoactive, but still powerful kind — reishi, lion’s mane, chaga, cordyceps and turkey tail. Collectively, these five fungi are loaded with antioxidants, plus the potential to improve mood and immunity, boost energy, fight inflammation and maybe even fight cancer. You can add them to curries, salads, risottos or other dishes, or if you’re looking for a quicker option, you can take them in powder form.

Alchemi makes a mushroom powder that’s tasty on its own thanks to ingredients like cinnamon, cacao and coconut milk, but you can also add it to teas and chai lattes for a flavor — and brain — boost.

5. Pour a Cleaner Glass of Vino

You may not partake in Dry January, and that’s cool. To each their own. If you’re going to keep indulging into the new year, there are a couple ways to still incorporate a bit of body-friendly biohacking. The first option? Simply cut back your consumption. The second option: Upgrade your drink of choice to something cleaner, with fewer chemicals and less sugar than traditional alcohol.

Have your lips ever gotten stained from a glass of red wine? Yeah, that’s not just because of your favorite cab’s hue — that’s dye, added to make reds appear redder and more appealing. Grossed out? Switch to natural wines, which are farmed organically, have no additives or processing and are produced with natural fermentation.

One standout is Dry Farms Wine, which creates non-processed wines that go above and beyond the industry standards, resulting in a drink that’s free of sugar and additives, lower alcohol and produced with organic farming methods. The wines are keto and paleo friendly, vegan and biodynamic.

Sign up for its membership program, and pick your wine color, box size and how often you’d like to enjoy it. Dry Farms curates a box unique to your choices, alongside a 100% Happiness Promise, offering to either replace the bottle or refund you in full if you’re not satisfied.

6. Roll It Out

Foam rolling, a biohack? Why not?

Although it may feel like a commonplace technique, foam rolling is a recovery biohack, offering benefits including relieved muscle tightness and tension, increased range of motion, improved relaxation and sleep, and relief from back pain.

There are a multitude of foam rollers on the market, but I recommend the Trigger Point Grid 1.0 Foam Roller. The multi-density foam on the surface works out sore muscles, and also channels blood and oxygen to all the right places for enhanced muscle recovery. At under $40, it’s affordable, portable and easy to use.

7. Meditate On It

You’ve no doubt heard about the benefits of meditation. Although it’s a practice rooted deeply in history, over the last few years everyone and their brother seems to be touting its benefits, from CEOs to celebrities.

There’s a reason why: Studies show that a consistent meditation practice can yield reduced stress, better sleep, increased focus and improved relationships. But how do you fit it into a busy schedule? And how do you even meditate, anyway?

Meditation apps like Headspace answer your burning questions and provide guidance as you embark on your mindfulness mission. Based in research, Headspace offers a 10-day beginner’s course as part of its free trial, and once you subscribe, hundreds of exercises for mindfulness, sleep, focus and more. You can listen on your phone, tablet or computer, or even download sessions to check out when you are, say, seeking a little solace while masked up the middle row on a cross-country flight.

Drinking Coffee: Study Finds Both Beneficial and Harmful Short-Term Health Effects

This article is a repost which originally appeared on SciTechDaily
AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION - JANUARY 19, 2022
Edited for content and readability - Images sourced from Pexels
Source: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT03671759

Key Points:

  • A randomized trial to study caffeinated coffee consumption among 100 volunteers for two weeks found both potentially beneficial and harmful short-term health consequences of drinking coffee.
  • When participants were randomly assigned to drink coffee, they were more physically active, yet they also had an increased number of abnormal heartbeats and slept less compared to when they were randomly assigned to avoid all caffeine.

Drinking caffeinated coffee appears to have both beneficial and harmful short-term health effects: increased abnormal heartbeats, increased physical activity, and reduced sleep duration, according to research that was presented at American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2021.

“Coffee is the most commonly consumed beverage in the world, yet its health effects remain uncertain,” said study author Gregory Marcus, M.D., M.A.S., associate chief of cardiology for research and endowed professor of atrial fibrillation research at the University of California, San Francisco. “While the majority of long-term observational studies have suggested multiple potential benefits of drinking coffee, this is the first randomized trial to investigate the real-time, physiologic consequences of coffee consumption.”

Marcus and colleagues enrolled 100 adult volunteers, and they were assigned to wear continuously recording ECG devices (to track heart rhythm), wrist-worn devices to track physical activity and sleep; and continuous glucose monitors to track blood sugar levels for two weeks. The participants were an average age of 38 years, 51% were women and 48% were white. Researchers also obtained DNA saliva samples from the participants to assess genetic variants that may affect caffeine metabolism.

Participants were then randomly assigned to either avoid or consume coffee for no more than two consecutive days each for 14 consecutive days. Coffee and espresso consumption were recorded in real time via a “time stamp button” on the ECG monitor, and researchers tracked trips to coffee shops with geotracking. In addition, participants completed daily questionnaires to detail how much coffee they had consumed every morning.

The analysis found that coffee consumption was associated with a 54% increase in premature ventricular contractions, a type of abnormal heartbeat originating in the lower heart chambers reported to feel like a skipped heartbeat. In contrast, drinking more coffee was associated with fewer episodes of supraventricular tachycardia, an abnormally rapid heart rhythm arising from the upper heart chambers.

Consuming coffee was consistently associated with more physical activity as well as less sleep. Specifically:

  • Participants who consumed coffee logged more than 1,000 additional steps per day compared to days when they did not drink coffee.
  • On the days participants drank coffee, they had 36 fewer minutes of sleep per night according to their Fitbit devices.
  • Drinking more than one coffee drink more than doubled the number of irregular heartbeats arising from the heart’s lower chambers.
  • Each additional cup of coffee consumed was associated with nearly 600 more steps per day and 18 fewer minutes of sleep per night.
  • There were no differences in continuously recorded glucose measured when the study participants consumed versus avoided coffee.

These findings were corroborated by analyses of adherence to their randomization assignment and amplified when more versus less coffee was consumed.

“More physical activity, which appears to be prompted by coffee consumption, has numerous health benefits, such as reduced risks of Type 2 diabetes and several cancers, and is associated with greater longevity,” Marcus said. “On the other hand, reduced sleep is associated with a variety of adverse psychiatric, neurologic and cardiovascular outcomes. More frequent abnormal heartbeats from the upper heart chambers influence risk of atrial fibrillation, and more frequent abnormal beats from the lower chambers, or ventricles, increase the risk of heart failure. These results highlight the complex relationship between coffee and health.”

The study participants with genetic variants associated with faster caffeine metabolism exhibited more abnormal heart beats originating in the ventricles, or PVCs, when more caffeinated coffee was consumed. The slower an individual metabolized caffeine based on their genetics, the more sleep they lost when they drank caffeinated coffee.

The investigators also sought to determine if changes in exercise or sleep influenced coffee’s effects on abnormal heart rhythms, and no such association was identified.

Marcus noted that because coffee was randomly assigned to the study participants, cause-and-effect can be inferred. These observations were made during repeated assessments of days when coffee was consumed versus when it was not for each study participant, eliminating concerns regarding differences in individual-level characteristics as an explanation for these results.

8 Penis-Friendly Foods to Boost T-Levels, Sperm Count, and More

The best way to boost penis health? Food.

Medically reviewed by Katherine Marengo, LDN, RD — Written by Tiffany LaForge — Updated on October 23, 2018

This article is a repost which originally appeared on HealthLine

Edited for content

We often eat with our hearts and stomachs in mind, but how often do we consider how foods affect extremely specific body parts?

First things first though: no matter what we eat, the benefits are holistic — it goes where our bodies need it.

But, let’s say, if you know, that apples and carrots are good for your prostate and penis health, wouldn’t you be inclined to eat these foods more often?

That’s the goal of our below-the-belt food list.

Instead of eating as if your penis needs special attention, fill your day with foods that optimize your whole body, and in turn, help your blood bring the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals your penis needs to function. (Erectile dysfunction in younger men is rising and about 1 in 9 men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime.)

On the plus side, enhancing your diet just might help with other concerns, such as heart disease, hormonal imbalances, fat burn, and more.

From prostate cancer, low T-levels, ED, and possibly infertility, these foods are here to help.

1. Spinach to boost testosterone levels

Spinach worked for Popeye, and it’ll help you, too.

Spinach is a super source of folate, a known blood flow-booster. Folic acid plays a critical role in male sexual function and a deficiency in folic acid has been linked to erectile dysfunction.

Cooked spinach contains 66 percent of your daily folic acid requirement per cup, making it one of the most folate-rich foods around. Additionally, spinach contains a fair amount of magnesium, which also helps improve and stimulate blood flow and has been shown to boost testosterone levels.

Spinach for penile health

  • A good source of folic acid which may help prevent erectile dysfunction.
  • Contains magnesium which has been shown to boost testosterone.
  • Pro-tip: Try our favorite spinach recipes for your next date night.

2. A daily cup of coffee for better sex

Your morning cup of java can be a below-the-belt pick-me-up, too!

Studies have found that drinking two to three cups of coffee a day may prevent erectile dysfunction. This is thanks to coffee’s most beloved ingredient: caffeine.

Caffeine is shown to improve blood flow by relaxing penile arteries and muscles, leading to stronger erections. Cheers!

Caffeine for penile health

  • Caffeine has been shown to prevent erectile dysfunction.
  • Improves blood flow by relaxing penile arteries and muscles.
  • Pro-tip: Not a fan of coffee? You can get your daily caffeine fix from Yerba Mate or matcha instead.

3. Apple peels to prevent prostate cancer

Apples have some great all-around health benefits, but one of their lesser known advantages pertains to penis health.

Apple peels, in particular, contain the active compound ursolic acid. This compound has been shown in cell studies to stop the growth of prostate cancer cells by “starving” the cells. Still, you should always follow a medical professional’s treatment plan when faced with prostate cancer.

Eat more fruits and veggies Grapes, berries, and turmeric also have similar effects. Studies suggest that men who consume more fruits and vegetables in general have better odds at beating prostate cancer.

Apples for penile health

  • Contain an active compound that may starve prostate cancer cells.
  • Men who consume more fruits and vegetables have a better prostate cancer survival rate.
  • Pro-tip: The cancer-fighting compound is contained in the peel so be sure to eat your apples with the skin on. You can also make dried apple chips or apple peel tea.

4. Supercharge your libido with avocados

The Aztecs were on to something when they named the avocado tree the “testicle tree.”

An excellent source of healthy fats, potassium, and vitamins, avocados are great for getting you in the mood.

This toast-topper favorite has vitamin E and zinc, both of which have positive effects on male sex drive and fertility. Zinc has been suggested to increase levels of free testosterone in the body, while vitamin E may improve sperm quality.

Avocados for penile health

  • Contain zinc which increases testosterone levels.
  • Are a good source of vitamin E which improves sperm quality.
  • Pro-tip: Out of ideas beyond guacamole and toast? Find inspiration with our 23 delicious ways to eat an avocado.

5. Chili peppers to spice up the bedroom

Can you handle the heat? Studies have found that men who consume spicy foods have higher-than-average testosterone levels.

While this doesn’t mean spicy food gives you testosterone, the chemical capsaicin has been shown to have bedroom advantages.

Found in hot sauce and chili peppers, capsaicin triggers the release of endorphins — the “feel good” hormone — and can rev up the libido.

Chili peppers for penile health

  • Men who eat spicy foods have higher-than-average T-levels.
  • Capsaicin found in chili peppers triggers the release of endorphins.
  • Pro-tip: There’s more health benefits to spicy foods than a healthy libido. Read about our top five here.

6. Carrots keep your sperm healthy

Looking to improve your sperm count? Science says to eat more carrots.

This fertility superfood may improve both sperm count and motility (the movement and swimming of sperm).

Research suggests this is due to the chemical carotenoids found in carrots, which is also responsible for giving the vegetable its orange color.

Carrots for penile health

  • Research finds that carrots can improve male fertility.
  • Carotenoids found in carrots may improve sperm quality and motility.
  • Pro-tip: Another vegetable high in carotenoids is sweet potatoes, which makes our list of the 14 healthiest vegetables on earth alongside carrots.

7. Oats for a bigger O

Oatmeal might not come to mind when you think of the world’s sexiest foods — but maybe it should!

Oats can be beneficial for reaching orgasm and Avena Sativa (wild oats) is considered an aphrodisiac. The amino acid L-arginine found in oats has also been shown to treat erectile dysfunction.

Like Viagra, L-arginine helps penile blood vessels relax, which is essential to maintaining an erection and reaching orgasm.

Oats for penile health

  • Wild oats are a known aphrodisiac.
  • Amino acids found in oats relax blood vessels and can help with erectile dysfunction.
  • Pro-tip: New to oats? Try our quick and easy 10-minute overnight oats, made three ways.

8. Tomatoes are a penile health trifecta

Want all the benefits in one punch? Start with tomatoes.

Tomatoes include several of the benefits listed above and can be eaten in a variety of ways.

Research shows lycopene-rich foods, like tomatoes, may help prevent prostate cancer.

Tomatoes might also be beneficial to male fertility and sperm quality — as tomatoes seem to significantly improve sperm concentration, motility, and morphology.

Tomatoes for penile health

  • Help prevent prostate cancer.
  • Are beneficial to male fertility and improve sperm concentration, motility, and morphology.
  • Pro-tip: Too busy to make your own marinara? You don’t just have to cook with tomatoes. Try drinking tomato juice for a quick and healthy way to get your daily lycopene.

Looking for more ways to ensure below-the-belt health? Check out our best tips to prevent prostate cancer and non-penile advice on improving your sex life.

After all, your health is more than one body part.

The Mental Aspect of Sex & Coffee and Erections: Ask the Experts

Big Al, of MaleEnhancementCoach.com, answers a question about the mental aspect of sex & coffee and erections, in this Ask the Experts article.

If you have questions you’d like answered in an Ask the Experts article, please PM Kimberly at forum name – KMWylie – and she’ll have the experts here on PEGym get your questions answered.

Q.  I’ve read up on a lot of your stuff over the years and your mind-related posts…

…are the ones which interest me the most!  I feel like I’m weak minded when it comes to sex.  I can get it up but it’s hard for me to enjoy it fully because I’m always worried about my performance.  When I get a chance to have sex with a really attractive woman is when it’s worst for me!  I wish I could go back to the days where sex was done like on instinct the way animals do it.  That way us men wouldn’t have to deal with all of this pressure!

Big Al:  The human mind has a very large range.  On the low end of the emotional spectrum we can wallow in fear and self-loathing.  As we rise through the emotional spectrum we ascend through the emotions of courage, reason, and peace/proficiency.  The path to the higher emotional states comes through utilizing your mind and by mastering yourself.  You alluded to performing at the level of animality.  As a man, you can develop yourself to go far above what you’ve be able to do without proper training and conditioning.  If you automatically see yourself as weak and leave yourself to the mercy of your lower mind, it’ll be difficult for you to improve your situation.  Focus on developing your courage and make the attempt at being objective about your performance and you’ll be able to condition yourself through training and by confidently undertaking real life experiences.

Q. What effect does coffee have on erections?…

…  I find when I drink a large coffee I get jittery and tend to turtle pretty hard.

Big Al:  Your reaction would depend on your tolerance to caffeine.

Small doses of caffeine may actually have a beneficial effect on erections. When excess is consumed and side effects like jitteriness is observed, vasoconstriction is induced.  This can have a negative effect on erections.

The following article (with references) may be of interest to you: “Drinking Coffee Could Help Prevent Erectile Dysfunction” http://thebiohacker.com/articles/drinking-coffee-prevent-erectile-dysfunction