Biohacking Trends You Can’t Miss in 2024 & Beyond

Nick Urban [00:00:05]:
Hello, and welcome to the MINDBODY Peak Performance podcast with your host, Nick Urban. Today is another bite of bioharmony, and we are going to be covering what I view as the upcoming trends Mind biohacking and bioharmony for 2024 and beyond. These are from some of the same themes I’ve seen repeated throughout the end of 2023, and I imagine they will only grow into the future. You can try researching them or implementing them for yourself. And I did write an article to accompany this video with some more breadth and depth on all of the trends. A link to that and everything I mention will be in the show notes at Mind. Alright. Let’s dive in.

Nick Urban [00:00:58]:
The first trend of 2024 will be the use and reliance on AI as it pertains to health and wellness. Not just medicine and diagnosis, but your everyday folks at home AI some detailed background into the AI model, to which it then returns potential remedies and other avenues for you to explore yourself. Now I’ve been using this technology for several years originally through a tool called Body AI, and it has come a long way this year alone. It’s still not perfect, but it’s getting a lot better. How useful it is for you will depend on your ability to talk to it, also known as prompting. Unlike a human CHEK can understand what exactly you’re talking about regardless of the exact wording you use. With AI, sometimes you must be very precise, and even a mere synonym of a word can drastically alter the results you get. I’m not a very big fan of chat GPT because the information it provides is quite limited.

Nick Urban [00:02:10]:
It doesn’t have access to real time information. It has all kinds of health and wellness biases built into it. So instead, I like the custom trained GPT models. For example, I have one that code through PubMed and can help me find all of the relevant research around particular topics. But it’s not just useful for research. I’ve noticed that Many of the tools I use on a daily basis have started integrating AI capabilities into them. Sometimes it doesn’t necessarily make sense, but they’re doing it anyway. And in the near future, I foresee that many of the tools Mind apps and systems that we use on a daily basis Become Much More Intuitive and More Actionable, Taking the Information We Receive and Making It Something That WE Can Actually Act Nick.

Nick Urban [00:03:02]:
If you go to the AI website, you’ll notice a little chat icon in the bottom right hand corner of the site. And that’s actually a custom model I built to help answer your health and wellness questions through a bioharmonic lens. You can go ahead and play around that to get a taste of what I’m talking about. But suffice to say, you’ll be seeing a lot more of AI in the coming years. Some other high level meta trends around health and wellness We’ll also include something called social gamification, and that’s essentially taking your healthy habits, whether it’s fitness or sleep, and it’s adding 2 components to that. 1, it’s a social leaderboard to help you understand how you stack rank compared to others. For many folks, when you add a layer of competition to health, it becomes that much more engaging, and There’s the social accountability of knowing what your friends are gonna think and see if you get no sleep or you miss a workout, And apps like Aura and Strava and a bunch of these saves already started implementing that. That’s the social component.

Nick Urban [00:04:13]:
Then we have gamification, and that’s giving you experience points, missions, and all kinds of other components we see utilized by gaming companies and by social media platforms to keep you hooked and engaged. But instead of using it for their gain, in these cases, this can help you stick to habits and to make beneficial changes to your life. So social gamification will certainly continue growing this year and beyond. Then another much needed trend that I’m excited to see, starting to grow tremendously over the last couple years is the emergence of women’s health. Yes. This should saves happened a very long time ago, but it wasn’t until a few decades ago that women were actually included. But it wasn’t until a few decades ago that studies started to include women as participants. Previously, they were excluded because Their hormonal rhythms fluctuate more Mind thus aging them much harder to study.

Nick Urban [00:05:16]:
After all, the way most research works is that we try and control as many variables as possible. And massively fluctuating hormones throughout the month Institute a ton of uncertainty the researchers are trying to avoid. Gone are the days of women getting the same blanket health advice as men and almost treated as if they are mini men. We know from ample data and research on fasting, on exercise, on nutrition that the needs of men and women are very different, especially depending on the time of month. Luckily, a number of different prominent female biohackers have stepped up, and they’re finally giving women Another Path and Route to Take. To continue along that path, we are going to see more and more precision and AI integrative medicine. Basically, just more health and wellness approaches tailored to the individual. Instead of wondering if the latest study on caffeine or exercise applies to you, thanks to AI and the Optimization of some of the time tested proven systems.

Nick Urban [00:06:22]:
We’ll be seeing more and more people finding exactly what works for CHEK, regardless of what some of the research says. In his 1998 book, AI individuality, Roger Williams, elegantly goes through the entire body, all of the organs, the enzymes, the size, the function, and he catalogs the tremendous differences from 1 person to the next, even within the same family. Research is all about averages. If you take this supplement, what’s the average response gonna be? Neglecting the fact that you can have a 100 people, And it’s possible for not one of them to experience the exact same effects observed in the study. For the same reason of the old adage, If a billionaire walks into a bar, the net worth of everyone increases by 100 of 1,000 of dollars. Most of the clinical research won’t necessarily apply to you. And tools like genetic analysis Mind blood work and epigenetic testing. These all can help paint a picture of what health interventions are doing to us in real time so that we can adapt Mind change and get the highest return on our health investment.

Nick Urban [00:07:38]:
If you’ve read doctor Peter Tia’s popular book called Outlive, You’ll know that he talks about the difference between Medicine 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. Throughout the entire book, he cites Medicine 3.0 as being the epitome of perfectly personalized Mind what we’re striving to gain without realizing that we already have a number of different approaches to personalize our medicine. I’m a big fan of Ayurveda, but there are countless ancient systems that have survived 100, if not 1000 of years. And these prevention based systems can help you pretty easily cut through the confusion of whether something’s going to work for you or not. Alright. Here’s one that I found quite surprising as the topic bored me for most of my life, and that is something called immune Centric Medicine. A man named Joel Green popularized this in his book called The Immune Code. I read it in the middle of 2023 mind was quite surprised about the real function of the immune system.

Nick Urban [00:08:47]:
I had previously thought of it as not much more than the body’s defense system against pathogens, against viruses, bacteria, fungi, etcetera, etcetera. And after reading the book, I realized that the immune system is a whole lot more. It should really be called something like the body’s regeneration and rejuvenation system because it’s heavily involved in brain health and muscle development, fat loss, gut health, energy, stress, aging, and virtually every other part of your health. In the book, Joel argues that by optimizing your immune system, You’re Optimizing Everything Else. And by doing so, you unlock some pretty incredible and simple functions that you didn’t even know your body had. Using his instructions, I implemented what he called his 2 day core protocol. You basically seal your gut, reduce inflammation, and provide the raw materials your gut microbiome needs to let certain species in your gut flora thrive. From there, the postbiotics that the bacteria produce are able to do things such as create AI.

Nick Urban [00:10:04]:
And I was previously semi lactose intolerant, and after following the 2 day core protocol, Paul. I was able to enjoy dairy without any of the consequences I had previously. The immune system is certainly a frontier of health that is in much need of exploration. And it might take a while, but I imagine in the next 5 to 10 years, will see that field completely explode. If you followed my work for very long or looked into the habits and lifestyle of the world’s top performers, the ones that get there and stay there. You’ll know that recovery and downtime are absolutely vital. This includes the obvious of sleep and napping, but also as one of my mentors, Paul CHEK says, plenty of time with doctor Quiet. That includes introspective time Mind walking or so called forest bathing.

Nick Urban [00:11:02]:
That includes working in movements that actually help cultivate more energy as opposed to working out, which expends energy. Through the Chinese medicine perspective, working in would be the yin energy. It’s restorative, and it leaves you in a better place, more energized, better recovered than before you started versus working out, which is more yang. It’s expending energy. It’s breaking the muscle down before you rebuild it. I’ve written about my trials and tribulations, biohacking my sleep, and the different things I’ve tried, the substances, the protocols, all of it in an article called AI Sleep, which will be in the show notes. You can check that out. Pretty much no matter your goal, spending more time in recovery aging some fancy recovery modalities Mind therapies, practices, and supplements.

Nick Urban [00:11:55]:
That can become a total game changer if you’re living the high performance lifestyle. The harder we charge for, the more we push, the greater our need for recovery and downtime and quiet becomes simultaneously. The idea behind this has become popular ever since Brain was famously quoted as sleeping for around 12 hours per night. And it’s not just the high performing athletes. It’s the business people. It’s your everyday high performers as well. And we also know that recovery is key for longevity. And one of the upcoming trends in 2024 is not just around longevity and antiaging, but functional longevity.

Nick Urban [00:12:37]:
Of course, AI and The quality of those final years, aka Health span, have become popular topics in recent years. But functional longevity is a broader topic, and it accounts for us being able to do everything we want to throughout the entirety of our life, not just in our final years. Functional longevity begins in your trends. And from the data, We know that we are on a biological decline after about the age of late twenties, early thirties. So with functional longevity, no matter where you are, it’s about being able to do everything you want to at the highest possible level for as long as possible. It’s a notch above health span and 2 notches above lifespan. Functional longevity isn’t just about taking the latest and greatest supplements, but it takes a more holistic approach to your health, your fitness, and your overall well-being. Although I’m 29, I find the idea of functional longevity much more appealing because it’s a lifelong pursuit, and you can actually notice improvements and changes in the short term.

Nick Urban [00:13:50]:
You don’t need to wait decades to see whether or not the program you followed Actually Paid Off. On that same longevity front, there are a couple of common components of anyone who lives Long, and has high quality years in their final years. And one of those is they maintain their mental sharpness, their acuity, their clarity. We can think of the mind as the central governor to the quality of our life. For example, if something happens to your mind, It doesn’t matter what else you do, you’re gonna have a hard time living at your full potential. On the other hand, if something happened to one of your other organs, Sure. It would harm the quality of your life as you tend to whatever that is, but it’s not gonna detract from it the same way as an underperforming mind will. Conversely, when you work on your mind and improve your mind, all your other goals become easier.

Nick Urban [00:14:46]:
That’s led to the rise of at home brain training. Instead of having to travel and block off your calendar for multiple weeks at a AI, like neurofeedback technology used to require, Now we can enjoy many of the same benefits from the convenience of our home. Stimulating your mind can be as simple as doing puzzles, as constantly learning new things, as stepping outside your comfort zone. And, of course, I recommend each of those. But at the same time, there are a lot of new technologies that make this process much more effective and efficient. For example, you can use heart rate variability, biofeedback, or heart coherence training to learn to master your own autonomic nervous system so that you become less reactive and make better decisions under stress. You can also do neurofeedback, as I mentioned a minute ago, which trains you to enter a desirable brain state on mind, or you can use an audio brainwave entrainment software like either Nick or Brain f m. And although I’m a fan of both of those because they can help you rapidly shift Brain saves, they don’t teach you to do it naturally on your own.

Nick Urban [00:16:01]:
Personally, I’ve researched, tested, reviewed, and compared virtually all of the brain enhancing technologies that exist so far. I’ll drop a link to the article I did on that if you’re interested. And I’ve been using a device called Sensei recently. It combines many of the best brain enhancement technologies into 1 device. I also recorded a podcast with their team if you’re interested in checking that out. It does take some time to experience the full benefits. So if you’d rather feel something virtually instantly, You can check out a specialized class of ingredients that safely support brain health and performance. Those are called nootropics, And that’s actually another biohacking trend, customized nootropic stacks.

Nick Urban [00:16:51]:
A very simple nootropic would be something like Caffeine. And a stack simply means adding another ingredient to it. So you could take the amino acid L theanine, which is found in the leaves of green tea. L theanine is what smooths out the effects of the caffeine. It cuts the jitters, the potential sweatiness, the clammy hands, the nervousness that sometimes comes along with high caffeine intake. It’s sometimes added to energy drinks for that very reason. So a very simple nutrient stack would be caffeine fainting, But certain companies are actually having you fill out questionnaires. And based on your questionnaires and There are inferences about your brain state mind along with your explanation of your goals.

Nick Urban [00:17:40]:
They go to work behind the scenes customizing a blend of a bunch of different ingredients that work synergistically to improve your brain performance. AI found from testing hundreds of different products that personalized Nootropic stacks tend to work much better with fewer side effects than your generic code size fits all nootropic that is so common. I’ve written extensively about nootropics, so I will also put a link to some of my articles in the show notes for this episode. Yeah. We’ll continue on with Other Substances. So since the lockdowns began in 2020, alcohol consumption throughout the country and world dropped dramatically, And there has been a surge mind interest around these mimetic ingredients, these alternatives to substances such as alcohol or caffeine or even nicotine that still produce the same feel good effects, but without many of the downsides, without the toxicity and addiction that can coincide with them. Oftentimes, these are botanicals and Urban, but sometimes they’re also man code substances. In some instances, I’ve actually found alternatives that feel better in the moment and the next day than the actual substance.

Nick Urban [00:19:00]:
Of course, each of the alternative substances has its own profile, its own benefits, use cases, potential side effects, and drawbacks. So you’ll certainly wanna do your diligence before diving in, But nonetheless, they can be a great alternative to vices and potentially destructive substances. Oh, and then the GLP one agonists. These are not in the same category as the alternatives to vices, But nonetheless, they are a class of weight loss drugs that have become incredibly popular over the last few years. If you’re a human on earth, you probably know 1 or 5 or more people currently using them. This class of drugs was originally intended to help with the treatment of diabetes. And in certain circumstances, it can be a real lifesaver. This class of drugs is actually a manmade peptide that mimics a natural hormone in the body called GLP one, which is involved in the regulation of blood sugar levels.

Nick Urban [00:20:06]:
It works by enhancing the secretion of insulin. Levels of GLP 1 in the body naturally rise after a meal. It’s part of the whole satiety process that helps us know that we’re full, but it naturally only rises for a very short period of time. The way these drugs work is they elevate it for a very long period of time. The peptide modification makes it so they stay elevated for a very long period of AI. And that is not a state that can naturally occur in the body under any circumstances. They work very well. They make people feel full, have no Desire to Consume Addictive Foods, and they can even help make addictive vices less appealing.

Nick Urban [00:20:55]:
But they also come with significant side effects and biological consequences that are rarely mentioned. I’ve reviewed a bunch of different research papers on them, and they mostly show that after 2 years, there is significant Weight Brain, and even more so when the participants stopped using the drug. Plus, it’s incredibly costly. But my main concern is the long term effects and side effects of using these. I think we will see public outrage in the coming years by everyone that hopped on board to lose a quick few trends, ensure you can do certain things to mitigate that. There’s also the issue of where the weight loss comes from, if it’s from skeletal muscle or fat as compared to natural unassisted weight As. Using these GLP one agonists does cause a significantly greater loss of lean body tissue, of muscle and things you don’t necessarily wanna be losing. Yes.

Nick Urban [00:21:59]:
You can use strategies to offset that such as eating clean and working out. But at the same time, for your average healthy person looking to shed some quick pounds, this would not be my first Choice, and I imagine you’ll start seeing this in 2025. One more class of substances I want to mention, and those are called the bioregulators. These are a subset of peptides, and I’ve talked about them several times on the podcast previously, but They have a few key advantages over peptides. 1st, peptides have come under regulatory attack over the last couple years and especially over the last few months. Whether or not we will be able to access peptides at all in the next year or 2 is currently a big question mark. And although peptides are safer than most substances that we put into our body, there are still significant hurdles to overcome to get the most out of them, such as most peptides require injection. And if they don’t require injection, they’re often prohibitively expensive to get a therapeutic dose via other administration options.

Nick Urban [00:23:11]:
Bioregulators, on the other hand, are shorter chains of amino acids, and they do not need to be injected. And since they are not injected and they can be taken orally, they fall into the category of dietary supplements. Now the data and the research behind bioregulators isn’t as comprehensive as peptides by any stretch of the gamification, and most of it is based out of Russia. Although some researchers around the world are working hard to change that. Bioregulators are also naturally present in foods, especially in organ meats and organ supplements. But what do they actually do? Basically, bioregulators work on the epigenetic level to change the health and the function of particular Urban and tissues. What’s special about them is that they are bioregulatory, meaning that if you take an immune bioregulator And your immune system is underactive, it’ll normalize it and bring it right up. And if your immune system is overactive, It’ll bring it down into a normal range.

Nick Urban [00:24:22]:
Bioregulators don’t work as well acutely, but they show promising results for health maintenance and to target specific organs and tissues. They have been difficult to find in stock because they sell out so quickly. But if you can get your hands on them and you have some AI of nagging issue, it could be worth looking into AI regulators and if they could help. Katalyst but not least today is the topic of biohacking efficiency. I was originally thinking about this in terms of fitness, but it really applies to a whole lot more than just fitness. A lot of the best biohacks are free. You can do them with little to nothing, but they come at the cost of time. For example, a good workout might take you an hour in the gym itself for an hour brain, plus the commute time there and Nick.

Nick Urban [00:25:15]:
So it could be over an hour and a half. If you add a sauna and an ice bath into that, we’re looking at about 2 hours all in. A lot of modern technologies are making this a whole lot more accessible mind especially from a time perspective. For example, an EMS training system I bought called CHEK Katalyst. It’s a suit you put on, and it delivers electrical impulses to help you get a full body workout in 20 minutes. Sounded far fetched to me, and I was quite skeptical until I actually tried it a couple times and saw the results. But it’s not just Katalyst. Another system technology called KAATSU is a great way to transform a Body workout into the equivalent of working with free weights Mind also compressing an entire workout into about 15 to 20 minutes.

Nick Urban [00:26:12]:
There are also free alternatives such as super slow strength training or even isometric training. Outside of fitness. Things like a AI lamp or a light therapy panel Mind other technologies can help us get the same benefits or similar benefits of natural light exposure when that’s not possible or when we don’t have the ability to see sunrise. As we get blasted by more and more things all vying for our time and attention. Finding ways of making each essential healthy habit consume less of our time without losing the potency, will continue to become more and more important. None of these will erase the need to put in work to see long term progress, but they can just make Everything Flow Easier. That’s all I got for you today. What about you? What trends are you most excited about? Go ahead and drop a comment below and let me know.

Nick Urban [00:27:12]:
Until next AI, I’m Nick Urban AI out from mindbodypeak.com. Have a great Peak, and be AI AI% committed to reaching their full potential. Comment 1% below so that I know who you are. For all the resources and links, Meet me on my website at mindbodypeak.com. I appreciate you Mind look forward to connecting with you.