An unpopular or unsexy truth is that biohacking creates mental fragility.
Hear me out, pretty much all optimizations end up becoming a dependency. Our fridges, our cars, our phones...
All the things that were amazing upgrades and optimizations for humans at one point have now become something we rely on.
Things that we've grown dependent on and can ruin our day if they break down, right?
Now the actual upside that cars, phones, fridges, etc provide in our lives makes it valid to say, "I'm okay being dependent on these things because they provide such an upgrade to my life."
But as most of the real fitness experts know, biohacking has very little upside and actually comes with a lot of emotional volatility...Not the best of recipes.
From what I've seen, biohackers usually end up becoming victims to their optimization checklists. What starts as a net positive optimization turns into a dependency that carries a negative placebo effect and is an overall net negative to their performance.
It’s the opposite of what they wanted.
Everyone I've seen go down the biohacking rabbit hole ends up being a victim to some kind of psychosomatic injury.
It’s like how medical students get sick when they start learning about various diseases.
It’s a negative placebo effect.
From, "Getting sunlight in the morning is a way to boost my alertness" to, "I didn't get my morning sunlight so my productivity levels are suboptimal so I should postpone the impactful tasks until I can reach an optimal state of productivity. I’ll just respond to some emails today instead…"
From, "I'm a bit sore today, an ice bath will be nice but I can just foam roll before tomorrow's workout as well" to, "If I don't optimize my growth hormones by going into the sauna x times a week I won't be able to properly workout this week."
From, "Hmm interesting, my oura ring says my sleep isn't as good when I drink alcohol" to, "I didn't get a great sleep score today. No way I can do my impactful deep work today... better push it to a different day and do some zone 2 cardio instead."
The last one sounds like I'm poking fun but I've seen people say and do just that.
It creates mental fragility.
It’s not to say that they’re 100% mentally fragile, just that this creates a net negative for their mental fortitude.
In a vacuum where psychological dependencies don't exist, yes, biohacking is probably a nice cherry on top, but in reality, people confuse it for the whole sundae…
It actually hurts people's outputs (the opposite of why they initially got into it).
And that's the real issue that we need to be cautious of…
So if someone is looking at biohacking as a tool to get more done in life or have more general energy, I'd reconsider it.
Simply doing less of the things we know we shouldn't be doing (drugs, alcohol, unhealthy foods) and just doing more of the things we know we should be doing (healthy eating, sleeping well and working out) will get us the performance benefits we want…
And yes, I get that the belief that some hack could allow us to bypass the need for discipline and get results is a tempting one, but just like get-rich-quick schemes, how often do they work out?
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