**Biohacking: A Summary of Popular Methods, Claims, and Scientific Support**

**Overview:**
Biohacking refers to a set of practices and lifestyle modifications aimed at “self-optimization”—improving health, well-being, mental performance, and even longevity.

The movement emerged from Silicon Valley and now includes a wide spectrum of approaches, from simple dietary tweaks to cutting-edge genetic technology.

Proponents seek to reprogram body and mind to “live better,” often using technology, extreme self-experimentation, and frequent self-tracking.

---

**Popular Biohacking Methods:**

*Nutrition & Diets:*
- **Intermittent Fasting:** Restricts eating to certain hours; claims to boost metabolism, brain power, and longevity.

- **Ketogenic Diet:** Extremely low-carb, high-fat; aims to promote fat-burning.

- **Gluten-Free/Dairy-Free Diets:** Often adopted to “reduce inflammation” and promote “gut health,” even in the absence of allergies or intolerances.

- **Bulletproof Diet:** Focus on “healthy fats” (e.g., butter coffee), organic foods, and low toxins.

- **Supplementation:** High use of vitamins, minerals, probiotics, nootropics (“smart drugs”), adaptogens, etc., to “optimize” health.

*Physical Activity & Recovery:*
- **Extreme Exercise Regimens:** High-intensity training, long workouts, or unconventional routines claimed to yield maximum benefit.

- **Cold Therapies/Ice Baths:** Promoted for recovery, inflammation reduction, and mood regulation.

*Technology & Medical Interventions:*
- **Medical Screenings & Health Trackers:** Use of wearables (heart rate monitors, sleep trackers) for constant self-monitoring.

- **Genetic Techniques:** Advanced enthusiasts may explore gene editing (e.g., CRISPR), commercial DNA tests, and tracking biological age.

*Mental Health & Mind-Body Practices:*
- **Meditation, Yoga, Breathwork:** Techniques intended to optimize mental health, stress response, and cognitive performance.

- **Sleep Optimization:** Tracking and manipulating sleep patterns to enhance rest and brain function.

---

**Scientific Evidence:**

**What’s Supported:**
- *Intermittent fasting* and *regular exercise* have moderate evidence for some benefits (weight loss, improved markers of metabolic health).

- *Cold exposure* may improve mood and have minor anti-inflammatory effects, but evidence is preliminary.

- *Yoga, meditation,* and *breathwork* are well supported for stress reduction and mental health.

**What’s Less Supported or Unclear:**
- *Extreme diets* (e.g., keto, bulletproof, “clean eating”) and strict avoidance of non-allergen foods can risk nutrient deficiencies; benefits beyond standard healthy eating are not firmly supported.

- *Mega-dosing supplements* offers little benefit to most and can sometimes cause harm.

- *CRISPR/gene editing* holds promise for treating some diseases but is experimental and not widely accessible (mostly animal studies/early clinical trials).

- Claims about “reducing inflammation” and “gut optimization” via restrictive diets or large numbers of supplements often outpace evidence.

---

**Risks and Concerns:**
- **Physical Risks:** Nutritional deficiencies, over-exercise, potential supplement toxicity.

- **Mental Health:** Obsessive self-tracking and extreme regimens can increase anxiety, body image issues, or even lead to eating disorders.

- **Lack of Medical Oversight:** Many self-experiments lack safety monitoring; some interventions (especially gene editing or off-label drugs) pose unknown risks.

---

**Conclusion:**
Many biohacking methods contain kernels of well-founded health advice (exercise, mindful eating, sleep).

However, the movement also harbors extreme or poorly supported practices that may do more harm than good.

Reliable clinical research often lags behind biohacker trends.

A balanced, evidence-based approach with medical supervision is essential for safety and real benefit.

**Summary of Extracts – Insights into Biohacking, Self-Optimization, and Biomedical Research**

1.

**Emerging Diagnostic Tools:**
Innovative technologies—like Raman spectroscopy and gas analyzers, aided by machine learning—are being developed to detect various diseases (e.g., cancer, diabetes) from blood drops or breath samples.

Early tumor growth frequently involves inflammation, which such devices aim to detect by picking up relevant biomarkers, sometimes even before clinical symptoms appear.

**Genetic and Personalized Medicine:**
Advances in genomic research, such as gene sequencing, DNA editing (CRISPR), and identification of disease-related proteins and genes, play a pivotal role in diagnosing rare diseases, cancers, and disorders like autism and depression.

Personalized medicine (tailoring treatments based on an individual’s genetic profile) is a key promise of this research, with therapies focusing on reprogramming cells to a more youthful state or editing faulty genes.

**Cell Reprogramming and Age Reversal:**
Recent experiments (e.g., at the Babraham Institute) have shown the possibility of making human skin cells “30 years younger,” indicating potential for anti-aging therapies, a cornerstone goal among biohacking communities interested in longevity.

**Role of Inflammation and Gut Health:**
Inflammation is highlighted as both a disease trigger and a diagnostic target, aligning with biohackers’ interest in anti-inflammatory diets (e.g., gluten-free, dairy-free, keto) and gut optimization measures.

However, the scientific basis for many specific dietary exclusions practiced within biohacking remains under investigation, with mixed levels of supporting evidence.

**Supplements and Biomarker Tracking:**
Efforts to "optimize" physical and mental health also include use of supplements, often aimed at reducing inflammation, supporting brain health, or manipulating metabolism.

Despite widespread use in biohacking, clinical evidence for many supplements is limited or mixed, and over-reliance can present risks.

**Extreme Exercise, Cold Exposure:**
Physical resilience practices (ice baths, extreme exercise) are popular among biohackers.

While some benefits exist (cognitive boost, muscle adaptation), extreme approaches can lead to injury or stress, and outcomes vary widely.

**Holistic and Preventive Approaches:**
Early and frequent medical screening, along with therapies such as physiotherapy and speech therapy for rare disorders, can improve quality of life but seldom provide a cure; ongoing science is crucial.

**Caveats and Scientific Support:**
- Some areas, like genetic editing or new cancer treatments, show remarkable promise but are still in experimental stages.

- The scientific foundation for biohacking varies: While personalized and precision medicine enjoys growing support, many self-administered biohacks (strict exclusion diets, extreme fasting, and supplement mega-dosing) outpace clear clinical evidence.

- Social support, psychological well-being, and exercise in moderation are scientifically supported, but extremism may carry health risks.

**In summary:** Many biohacking practices are inspired by cutting-edge science (genomics, early diagnostics, targeted therapies), but the level of scientific support is highly variable.

There are successes (like advanced cancer cures or gene editing), but also many "optimization" methods that lack robust evidence or present potential downsides—caution and medical supervision are advised.

**Biohacking: Methods, Practices, and Scientific Evidence – Nugget Summary**

**Cognitive Enhancement Drugs (“Nootropics”)**
- Drugs originally intended for medical use (e.g., for Alzheimer’s, speech disorders) are sometimes used by healthy individuals to boost focus, memory, or productivity.

- Side effects are common, ranging from mild (headache) to severe (emotional changes, addiction, or dependency), especially as users increase doses to maintain effects.

- Psychological toll: some users report irritability, social withdrawal, and worsening mental health when dependent on or withdrawing from these substances.

- “Smart drugs” are now valued for productivity (e.g., in students or Silicon Valley workers) rather than for recreation, reflecting societal pressures to compete and excel.

**Genetic and Medical Biohacking**
- Experimental gene editing (like CRISPR/Cas systems) is a frontier in “biohacking,” with the goal of treating intractable genetic diseases or optimizing traits.

- Such techniques remain experimental, with only limited and preliminary human studies.

Ethical and medical risks are still significant.

**Medical Screenings for Optimization**
- There is increased use of genetic screening for disease risk or personalized treatments (exome/genome sequencing).

- Early studies show potential in identifying predispositions to various diseases (e.g., liver disease’s impact on heart health), but clinical benefits and harms in healthy individuals are not fully established.

**Dietary Practices**
- Common “biohacker” diets include intermittent fasting, keto, gluten-free, and dairy-free regimens, often combined (e.g., Bulletproof Diet).

- These diets often promise reduced “inflammation” and “gut optimization,” but many restrictive or extreme diets lack robust, long-term evidence for healthy individuals and may carry risks (nutrient deficiencies, metabolic consequences).

**Supplementation**
- Widespread, daily use of a variety of supplements, often in high doses, is common, with aims of optimizing micronutrients, “detoxifying,” or enhancing performance.

- While some basic supplementation (e.g., correcting deficiencies) is supported by evidence, most combinations and high doses are untested and can be harmful or interact negatively.

**Physical Extremes and Recovery**
- Practices like intense exercise regimens and ice baths are often used for perceived benefits (performance, mental clarity, resilience).

- Evidence for ice baths indicates only modest, short-term benefits for muscle soreness; extreme regimens may increase risk of injury or health problems if not done safely.

**Biohacking: A Summary of Popular Methods, Claims, and Scientific Support**

**Overview:**
Biohacking refers to a set of practices and lifestyle modifications aimed at “self-optimization”—improving health, well-being, mental performance, and even longevity.

Title:

Content: Home » biohacking, reprogramming mind and body to live better

biohacking, reprogramming mind and body to live better

by admin

It’s called “biohacking” and it comes from Silicon Valley. Listen: The long life diet: the longevity formula is calorie restriction …

Access the Premium article and all the contents of the site
with the dedicated app, newsletters, podcasts and live updates.

SPECIAL OFFER

BEST OFFER

ANNUAL

79,99€

19€
For 1 year

CHOOSE NOW

MONTHLY

6,99€

€1 PER MONTH
For 6 months

CHOOSE NOW

SPECIAL OFFER

BEST OFFER

ANNUAL

79,99€

11,99€
For 1 year

CHOOSE NOW

MONTHLY

6,99€

€2 PER MONTH
For 12 months

CHOOSE NOW

– or –

Subscribe by paying with Google

SPECIAL OFFER

Read the article and the entire website ilmessaggero.it

1 Year for €9.99 89,99€

or
€1 per month for 6 months

Automatic Renewal. Turn off whenever you want.

  • Unlimited access to articles on site and app
  • The 7:30 Good Morning newsletter
  • The Ore18 newsletter for updates of the day
  • The podcasts of our signatures
  • Insights and live updates

It’s called “biohacking” and comes from Silicon Valley.

A relatively new word that comes from the union of “biology” and “hacker” and indicates the attempt to positively influence the functioning of the organism, by hacking, ie trying to “force”, one’s genetic heritage. A strategy to live better and longer launched years ago by Californian top managers and which then spread throughout the world. How to upgrade the “operating system” of the human body? No manipulation, here we are talking about “reprogramming” and new lifestyles. “Our genetic heritage has enormous unexpressed potential that can be activated,” he explains Fabio Piccinidoctor and psychoanalyst, researcher of Food Sciences of theMarche Polytechnic University, author of the book “Biohacking Techniques: how to optimize metabolism to increase health and longevity”. “Biohacking aims to activate epigenetic modifications by awakening dormant genes to enhance the body’s resources.” While genetics studies the structure of DNA, epigenetics the way genes express themselves, i.e. how much they are turned on or off. “We’re talking about a set of strategies that aim to strengthen the body from a physical and mental point of view, first of all through nutrition, sleep quality, physical activity, cognitive stimulation”. One of the pillars of biohacking and the intermittent fasting, Piccini adds, which plans to concentrate the diet in a precise time span of the day (to be followed always under medical supervision). «But it is equally important to take care of sleep, we know very well that sleep debt accelerates aging and that 30-40 percent of people sleep too little. Just as it is essential to check thehydration. Physical training must also be intermittent, with recovery periods in place to allow the muscle layers to rebuild. And then, you have to keep learning something at any age, another pillar of biohacking: studying music or a new language, for example, to counteract cognitive degeneration”.

See also  The dashboard of Xbox Series X will have a higher resolution-

THE QUALITY OF LIFE

Sandra Milo is one of the supporters of this well-being and longevity strategy. «I’m lucky, at 90 I’m in full health and I still have a great desire to enjoy life. I don’t know if it’s a matter of genetics, nor do I think there is a “magic formula” of longevity, but I have certainly always been careful to lead a healthy life. There is nothing more beautiful than reaching old age with a smile and in full autonomy », says the actress who baptized the first Biohacking Suite in Rome. “Our mission is not so much to lengthen life but to improve its quality by lowering the rate of morbidity,” explains Dr. Claudio Urbani, specialist in regenerative medicine, neuroscience and stress therapy, head of the longevity center Umb. «Biohacking aims to modify dormant functional responses from non-use, from muscular or cardiovascular function to flexibility. It is about regaining possession of the body and the mind-body axis, starting with stress management». Diagnosing your own state of “aging” involves a series of tests. «The measurement of oxidative stress which measures the quantity of free radicals and indicates any inflammatory states, plethysmography to evaluate the functionality of the microcirculation of the legs, impedancemetry to study body composition, fat and lean mass, nutritional status and hydration level. And only after the check is a tailor-made program created for each person. Among the suggested therapies, there is also that of the cold which stimulates the metabolism and reduces inflammation ».

© breaking latest news

Read the full article
on The Messenger

See also  first portrait of genetic diversity, more effective treatments from cancer to infertility

You may also like

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy

The movement emerged from Silicon Valley and now includes a wide spectrum of approaches, from simple dietary tweaks to cutting-edge genetic technology.

Proponents seek to reprogram body and mind to “live better,” often using technology, extreme self-experimentation, and frequent self-tracking.

---

**Popular Biohacking Methods:**

*Nutrition & Diets:*
- **Intermittent Fasting:** Restricts eating to certain hours; claims to boost metabolism, brain power, and longevity.

- **Ketogenic Diet:** Extremely low-carb, high-fat; aims to promote fat-burning.

Title:

Content: Advertisement

The baffling case of metabolically healthy obese people: Are they protected from chronic diseases?

Article content

THE CONVERSATION

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.

——

Authors: Stan Kubow, Associate Professor, School of Human Nutrition, McGill University, McGill University and Michele Iskandar, Research Associate and Lecturer, School of Human Nutrition, McGill University

There is a growing global body positivity movement to combat the stigma and prejudice that overweight and obese individuals face. Some of this stigma arises from the perception that obese individuals are unhealthy.

Advertisement

Story continues below

Article content

However, weight is only one of the metrics that medical professionals use to assess overall health. In fact, some studies have demonstrated that a significant number of obese people are metabolically healthy, leading to the contention that one could be healthy at any size. This phenomenon is referred to as metabolically healthy obesity (MHO). Research is now starting to explore what this means.

A person who is MHO has healthy blood pressure, normal levels of blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and normal blood sugar. Having high values of one or more of these measures significantly increases one’s risk for cardiovascular disease.

It has been proposed that metabolically healthy obese individuals might be protected against obesity-related diseases. The extent of this protection has been controversial within the scientific community, and this is partly because we still don’t have a standardized definition of MHO.

Advertisement

Story continues below

Article content

So, over the past few years, researchers have gone to work to find out who can be defined as MHO, and to what extent people with MHO are protected from chronic disease.

Emerging consensus

Several large population studies have been initiated towards this end. So far, results show that, indeed, more rigorous definitions of MHO are needed. This can be achieved by including other measures of health such as insulin resistance and blood markers of inflammation. Insulin resistance is when the body does not respond well to the insulin hormone that helps to take up sugar from the bloodstream for use as a fuel for energy. This leads to elevated blood sugar and the consequent health complications.

An emerging consensus has been that although MHO individuals show some protection from chronic disease, they still seem to be significantly less protected than those who are metabolically healthy and lean.

Advertisement

Story continues below

Article content

The fact that people with MHO still have a relatively higher disease risk led some researchers to suggest that the term “metabolically healthy obesity” could be a misnomer. Moreover, a majority of the MHO population tends to progress towards “metabolically unhealthy obesity” or MUO over a number of years, leading to enhanced risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other disorders linked with obesity.

This leads to another question: is MHO truly protective over an entire lifetime, or is it just a question of time before MUO sets in, making MHO a transient state?

Protective factors

One factor to consider that might differentiate metabolically healthy versus unhealthy obesity is how fat is distributed in the body. A genetic predisposition for depositing fat under the skin, called subcutaneous fat, seems to play a protective role.

Advertisement

Story continues below

Article content

People with this predisposition are mostly premenopausal women who accumulate subcutaneous body fat in the hips rather than the waist (pear-shaped). They are better protected against diabetes and cardiovascular disease compared to people whose body fat is located more in the abdomen (apple-shaped).

In contrast, obese individuals with a high waist circumference show excessive fat deposition in the abdomen and a pro-inflammatory state that leads to insulin resistance, which can be a precursor to Type 2 diabetes.

Researchers have also looked at the lifestyle habits that differentiate MHO from MUO individuals to see if development of metabolically unhealthy obesity can be prevented.

One factor is exercise. People with MHO are involved in regular physical activity to a greater extent than MUO individuals. The other is diet. Although dietary studies show mixed results, it seems that MHO people consume healthier diets such as the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fish, fruits, vegetables, whole-grain products, legumes, extra virgin olive oil and nuts.

Advertisement

Story continues below

Article content

Healthy diets provide anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits that help achieve a healthy metabolic profile. Indeed, of the MHO population, those who follow the Mediterranean diet seem to have lower mortality rates. Adopting these healthy lifestyle habits could help prevent the trajectory of metabolically healthy obesity moving towards metabolically unhealthy obesity over the course of a lifetime.

Is metabolically healthy obesity real?

So is MHO real and does it protect against disease? There isn’t a yes or no answer yet. The more we learn about it, the more nuance is injected into the concept that one can be perfectly healthy at any size. Based on the information we have so far, only a narrow segment of obese individuals are without risk of developing obesity-related chronic diseases.

Advertisement

Story continues below

Article content

We also know a lot more about their characteristics. They have less abdominal fat and more subcutaneous fat. They have less insulin resistance, less inflammation and a metabolically healthy cardiovascular profile. They also have healthy lifestyle habits such as regular exercise and a healthy diet. It seems that genetics play a role as well.

We can expect more insight from major international population studies and clinical trials that are currently underway. But in the meantime, the age-old advice holds truer than ever: regular physical activity and a healthy diet are crucial to maintain health and longevity.

——

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

——

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article: https://theconversation.com/the-baffling-case-of-metabolically-healt https://theconversation.com/the-baffling-case-of-metabolically-

Advertisement

Story continues below

Shopping essentials

  1. Advertisement

    Story continues below

This Week in Flyers

- **Gluten-Free/Dairy-Free Diets:** Often adopted to “reduce inflammation” and promote “gut health,” even in the absence of allergies or intolerances.

- **Bulletproof Diet:** Focus on “healthy fats” (e.g., butter coffee), organic foods, and low toxins.

- **Supplementation:** High use of vitamins, minerals, probiotics, nootropics (“smart drugs”), adaptogens, etc., to “optimize” health.

*Physical Activity & Recovery:*
- **Extreme Exercise Regimens:** High-intensity training, long workouts, or unconventional routines claimed to yield maximum benefit.

- **Cold Therapies/Ice Baths:** Promoted for recovery, inflammation reduction, and mood regulation.

What are the health benefits of the practice of bathing in cold water?

*Technology & Medical Interventions:*
- **Medical Screenings & Health Trackers:** Use of wearables (heart rate monitors, sleep trackers) for constant self-monitoring.

- **Genetic Techniques:** Advanced enthusiasts may explore gene editing (e.g., CRISPR), commercial DNA tests, and tracking biological age.

Title:

Content: CRISPR, 10 years on: Learning to rewrite the code of life

In just a decade, CRISPR has become one of the most celebrated inventions in modern biology, swiftly changing how medical researchers study diseases: Cancer biologists are using the method to discover hidden vulnerabilities of tumor cells; doctors are using it to edit genes that cause hereditary diseases. But CRISPR's influence extends far beyond medicine

By Carl Zimmer
Published: Jun 28, 2022

Jennifer Doudna, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize for chemistry for her work on CRISPR, at the University of California in Berkeley, Jan. 15, 2019. The gene-editing technology has led to innovations in medicine, evolution and agriculture — and raised profound ethical questions about altering human DNA. (Anastasiia Sapon/The New York Times)

Ten years ago this week, Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues published the results of a test-tube experiment on bacterial genes. When the study came out in the journal Science on June 28, 2012, it did not make headline news. In fact, over the next few weeks, it did not make any news at all.

Looking back, Doudna wondered if the oversight had something to do with the wonky title she and her colleagues had chosen for the study: “A Programmable Dual RNA-Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity.”

“I suppose if I were writing the paper today, I would have chosen a different title,” Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview.

Far from an esoteric finding, the discovery pointed to a new method for editing DNA, one that might even make it possible to change human genes.

“I remember thinking very clearly, when we publish this paper, it’s like firing the starting gun at a race,” she said.

In just a decade, CRISPR has become one of the most celebrated inventions in modern biology. It is swiftly changing how medical researchers study diseases: Cancer biologists are using the method to discover hidden vulnerabilities of tumor cells. Doctors are using CRISPR to edit genes that cause hereditary diseases.

“The era of human gene editing isn’t coming,” said David Liu, a biologist at Harvard University. “It’s here.”

But CRISPR’s influence extends far beyond medicine. Evolutionary biologists are using the technology to study Neanderthal brains and to investigate how our ape ancestors lost their tails. Plant biologists have edited seeds to produce crops with new vitamins or with the ability to withstand diseases. Some of them may reach supermarket shelves in the next few years.

Also read: Inside the world of DNA decoding in India

CRISPR has had such a quick impact that Doudna and her collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, won the 2020 Nobel Prize for chemistry. The award committee hailed their 2012 study as “an epoch-making experiment.”

Doudna recognized early on that CRISPR would pose a number of thorny ethical questions, and after a decade of its development, those questions are more urgent than ever.

Will the coming wave of CRISPR-altered crops feed the world and help poor farmers, or only enrich agribusiness giants that invest in the technology? Will CRISPR-based medicine improve health for vulnerable people across the world, or come with a million-dollar price tag?

The most profound ethical question about CRISPR is how future generations might use the technology to alter human embryos. This notion was simply a thought experiment until 2018, when He Jiankui, a biophysicist in China, edited a gene in human embryos to confer resistance to HIV. Three of the modified embryos were implanted in women in the Chinese city of Shenzen.

In 2019, a court sentenced He to prison for “illegal medical practices.” MIT Technology Review reported in April that he had recently been released. Little is known about the health of the three children, who are now toddlers.

Scientists don’t know of anyone else who has followed He’s example — yet. But as CRISPR continues to improve, editing human embryos may eventually become a safe and effective treatment for a variety of diseases.

Will it then become acceptable, or even routine, to repair disease-causing genes in an embryo in the lab? What if parents wanted to insert traits that they found more desirable — such as those related to height, eye color or intelligence?

Françoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, worries that the public is still not ready to grapple with such questions.

“I’m skeptical about the depth of understanding about what’s at issue there,” she said. “There’s a difference between making people better and making better people.”

Also read: Pfizer offers to sell medicines at cost to poorest countries

Making the cut

Doudna and Charpentier did not invent their gene-editing method from scratch. They borrowed their molecular tools from bacteria.

In the 1980s, microbiologists discovered puzzling stretches of DNA in bacteria, later called Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, or CRISPR. Further research revealed that bacteria used these CRISPR sequences as weapons against invading viruses.

The bacteria turned these sequences into genetic material, called RNA, that could stick precisely to a short stretch of an invading virus’s genes. These RNA molecules carry proteins with them that act like molecular scissors, slicing the viral genes and halting the infection.

As Doudna and Charpentier investigated CRISPR, they realized that the system might allow them to cut a sequence of DNA of their own choosing. All they needed to do was make a matching piece of RNA.

To test this revolutionary idea, they created a batch of identical pieces of DNA. They then crafted another batch of RNA molecules, programming all of them to home in on the same spot on the DNA. Finally, they mixed the DNA, the RNA and molecular scissors together in test tubes. They discovered that many of the DNA molecules had been cut at precisely the right spot.

For months, Doudna oversaw a series of round-the-clock experiments to see if CRISPR might work not only in a test tube but in living cells. She pushed her team hard, suspecting that many other scientists were also on the chase. That hunch soon proved correct.

In January 2013, five teams of scientists published studies in which they successfully used CRISPR in living animal or human cells. Doudna did not win that race; the first two published papers came from two labs in Cambridge, Massachusetts — one at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, and the other at Harvard.

Also read: Can these startups fix rural healthcare in India?

‘Did you CRISPR that?’

Lukas Dow, a cancer biologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, vividly remembers learning about CRISPR’s potential. “Reading the papers, it looked amazing,” he recalled.

Dow and his colleagues soon found that the method reliably snipped out pieces of DNA in human cancer cells.

“It became a verb to drop,” Dow said. “A lot of people would say, ‘Did you CRISPR that?’”

Cancer biologists began systematically altering every gene in cancer cells to see which ones mattered to the disease. Researchers at KSQ Therapeutics, also in Cambridge, used CRISPR to discover a gene that is essential for the growth of certain tumors, for example, and last year, they began a clinical trial of a drug that blocks the gene.

Caribou Biosciences, co-founded by Doudna, and CRISPR Therapeutics, co-founded by Charpentier, are both running clinical trials for CRISPR treatments that fight cancer in another way: by editing immune cells to more aggressively attack tumors.

Those companies and several others are also using CRISPR to try to reverse hereditary diseases.

Other companies are injecting CRISPR molecules directly into the body. Intellia Therapeutics, based in Cambridge and also co-founded by Doudna, has teamed up with Regeneron, based in Westchester County, New York, to begin a clinical trial to treat transthyretin amyloidosis, a rare disease in which a damaged liver protein becomes lethal as it builds up in the blood.

Doctors injected CRISPR molecules into the volunteers’ livers to shut down the defective gene. Speaking at a scientific conference last Friday, Intellia researchers reported that a single dose of the treatment produced a significant drop in the protein level in volunteers’ blood for as long as a year thus far.

The same technology that allows medical researchers to tinker with human cells is letting agricultural scientists alter crop genes. When the first wave of CRISPR studies came out, Catherine Feuillet, an expert on wheat, who was then at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, immediately saw its potential for her own work.

“I said, ‘Oh, my God, we have a tool,’” she said. “We can put breeding on steroids.”

A photo provided by Rice University shows Gang Bao, a biochemical engineer who is working on a treatment for sickle cell disease using CRISPR. Ten years after CRISPR’s introduction to the world, the gene editing technique continues to create new avenues for exploration, reinvigorate old studies and spur complicated ethical discussions. (Rice University via The New York Times)

Prime CRISPR

The original CRISPR system, known as CRISPR-Cas9, leaves plenty of room for improvement. The molecules are good at snipping out DNA, but they’re not as good at inserting new pieces in their place. Sometimes CRISPR-Cas9 misses its target, cutting DNA in the wrong place. And even when the molecules do their jobs correctly, cells can make mistakes as they repair the loose ends of DNA left behind.

A number of scientists have invented new versions of CRISPR that overcome some of these shortcomings. At Harvard, for example, Liu and his colleagues have used CRISPR to make a nick in one of DNA’s two strands, rather than breaking them entirely. This process, known as base editing, lets them precisely change a single genetic letter of DNA with much less risk of genetic damage.

Liu has co-founded a company called Beam Therapeutics to create base-editing drugs. Later this year, the company will test its first drug on people with sickle cell anemia.

Liu and his colleagues have also attached CRISPR molecules to a protein that viruses use to insert their genes into their host’s DNA. This new method, called prime editing, could enable CRISPR to alter longer stretches of genetic material.

“Prime editors are kind of like DNA word processors,” Liu said. “They actually perform a search and replace function on DNA.”

Rodolphe Barrangou, a CRISPR expert at North Carolina State University and a founder of Intellia Therapeutics, predicted that prime editing would eventually become a part of the standard CRISPR toolbox. But for now, he said, the technique was still too complex to become widely used. “It’s not quite ready for prime time, pun intended,” he said.

Check out our anniversary discounts on subscriptions, upto 50% off the website price, free digital access with print. Use coupon code : ANN2022P for print and ANN2022D for digital. Click here for details.

©2019 New York Times News Service

Show More
Post Your Comment
Required
Required, will not be published
All comments are moderated

*Mental Health & Mind-Body Practices:*
- **Meditation, Yoga, Breathwork:** Techniques intended to optimize mental health, stress response, and cognitive performance.

- **Sleep Optimization:** Tracking and manipulating sleep patterns to enhance rest and brain function.

---

**Scientific Evidence:**

**What’s Supported:**
- *Intermittent fasting* and *regular exercise* have moderate evidence for some benefits (weight loss, improved markers of metabolic health).

- *Cold exposure* may improve mood and have minor anti-inflammatory effects, but evidence is preliminary.

Title:

Content: I’m 58 but have a biological age of 21 – this is how I did it

After eight rounds of failed fertility treatments and a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, Leslie Kenny changed her lifestyle with the aim of reducing inflammation – the results, she says, were dramatic

Leslie Kenny was 39 and had endured eight rounds of failed fertility treatments, including IVF using a donor egg, when her doctor delivered even more bad news: the pain she’d been feeling in her wrists and fingers was rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and her blood tests showed signs of the disabling autoimmune condition lupus.

“The doctor prescribed me immunosuppressants and said, ‘You have five good years left’,” Kenny says. “I don’t know what that meant but I took it as ‘that’s all you’ve got’ – that this was the end. I was crushed.”

Lupus is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues and causes inflammation that can cause permanent damage to the skin, joints, heart, lungs, kidneys and even the brain. There is no known cure, although it may relapse and remit. RA, another autoimmune condition, affects the joints leading to inflammation and thickening in the joints, which causes pain and reduced mobility. Again, there are treatments available, but it cannot be cured.

That bombshell diagnosis came in 2004. Today, Kenny is 58 and a slim, healthy woman with boundless energy. Her arthritis and lupus – a diagnosis she now questions – have gone into remission. But more than that, she appears to have beat the ageing process: recent blood tests show her biological age is just 21.

She took the “GlycanAge” blood test while attending a conference on longevity in the US. It is offered by a London-based bioinformatics company and measures levels of inflammation in your body. The results are based on determining the process of ageing as an accumulation of damage to your body over time by over-activation of the immune system, leading to inflammation of the tissues and cells. The result generates an estimated “biological age” depending on the average level of inflammation observed in the body at various points during a normal lifespan.

“Inflammation is the thing that I have been paying attention to for the last 19 years, so I suppose it’s not a surprise,” Kenny says.

Kenny is likely one of only a handful of people who could achieve such results. She is one of a breed of ‘biohacking’ devotees who swear by putting cutting-edge research into cell rejuvenation into practice in their own lives to keep their bodies and minds young, and to fight off the common causes of ageing, including inflammation, high blood sugar and cardiovascular degeneration.

The most well known of these biohackers is Bryan Johnson, the American multi-millionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist. At 46, he spends $2m (£1.5m) a year on treatments and techniques – including restricting calories, taking large amounts of daily supplements, a strict sleep schedule that involves early nights and very early mornings, and blood transfusions – in an attempt to stop the ageing process.

He claims to have reversed his heart age by five years and has the lung capacity of an 18-year-old. Of his particular quest, Kenny reflects: “That very British saying ‘horses for courses’ comes to mind… but he is biohacking for immortality, whereas I prefer to think of myself as ‘bioharmonising’ for a healthy lifespan.”

Kenny is the co-founder of a not-for-profit group, the Oxford Longevity Project, whose aim is to get the latest groundbreaking ideas and research findings on anti-ageing and longevity to the widest possible audience – and she’s testing them out on her own body.

She set up the organisation with Oxford biologist Professor Denis Noble; Dr Paul Ch’en, a GP with a special interest in the ageing process; and academic and multiple marathon runner Sir Christopher Ball. Kenny brings lived experience as a patient who has seen her own health transformed by putting the latest academic findings into practice.

It was the shock of such a devastating diagnosis at such a young age that prompted Kenny to start doing her own research into autoimmune conditions and inflammation. It encouraged her to turn away from the pharmaceutical answers given by her doctors and find a new approach.

“I did try immunosuppressants and I really hated them. You had to jab yourself in the tummy. There are lots of bruises and it hurts. I just felt I shouldn’t be doing this,” she explains. “I have more of an Asian philosophical orientation, of the idea of bringing the body into balance rather than ‘let’s squash this symptom’. What I wanted to do was bring the body back into harmony.”

Back in 2004 the internet was still in its relative infancy, but patient groups had already started forming to share information on common health conditions. Kenny searched for anything she could find about the link between autoimmune disorders and inflammation in the body. She found there were common causes of inflammation including poor diet, lack of sleep, stress and undiagnosed allergies.

Kenny quit her job (she was, at the time, running a matchmaking agency) to reduce stress and improve sleep, and then overhauled her diet. Allergy testing found she was reacting to wheat and dairy, so she cut both out, and also reduced her sugar intake.

“At the time the idea that sugar was bad for you was kind of a new thing, but I removed sugar from my diet as much as I could and then took lots of foods that were anti-inflammatory,” she says. This involved a largely plant-based diet, also including oily fish such as salmon, lots of extra virgin olive oil and plant milks. She followed guidance from Dr Barry Sears, whose bestselling book The Zone Anti-Inflammatory Diet, had been recently released.

Then, after much discussion with autoimmune sufferers in the US, Kenny took a very radical – and expensive – step: online patient networks in the US were recommending intravenous immunoglobulin, a treatment that resets the immune system by replacing antibodies in your blood but was not recommended on the NHS. Kenny underwent two eight-hour blood transfusions at a hospital in Denver, Colorado in the United States, costing £24,000 and funded by health insurance provided by her then-husband’s employer. It is offered as a treatment for some conditions on the NHS, but not for lupus or RA.

Six months later her blood results had been reversed. The three readings her doctor was monitoring – C Reactive Protein, cytokines and TNFalpha, all of which measure inflammation and the function of the immune system – had reduced rapidly. Her doctor reported that her lupus appeared to be in full remission and she was free of disease and in control of her arthritis symptoms.

Kenny’s rapid success at improving her health kicked off a passion for self-management of illness and ageing that has defined her last two decades. “I really feel that patients need to have a chance of a fair fight,” she says, adding that not everyone can afford expensive blood infusions, but there are many things we can all do cheaply to improve our health.

Living in Oxford and surrounded by academics, Kenny began discussing her results with local friends and neighbours, including Lachlan MacKinnon, who was working on commercialising biotechnology for the Oxford Science Enterprise. He introduced her to Prof Katja Simon and Dr Ghada Alsaleh, who were both working at the Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology at Oxford University at the time, who had discovered something quite surprising – spermidine. “He [Lachlan] said, ‘It’s a terrible name, but it’s really interesting because it seems to be helping with the immune system’.”

In mice, spermidine – a polyamine found in high levels in plants such as mushrooms and fermented foods – was able to boost antibody levels in elderly subjects, keeping the immune system strong, and activate the process of autophagy: a natural cell rejuvenation process that usually happens during periods of fasting.

You may have heard the word recently due to Rishi Sunak’s commitment to a 48-hour fast every week. Consuming spermidine is believed to make the same cellular process happen, but without the inconvenience of starvation. Studies are ongoing but the first published papers also show the same effect in humans as mice.

Kenny has been taking a spermidine supplement ever since, and now promotes these findings alongside other new research through the Oxford Longevity Project.

Kenny also follows a ketogenic diet, very low in carbohydrate and higher in protein, which some academic research shows can help to preventing and treat diabetes, controlling blood sugar spikes and reducing inflammation.

Kenny’s daily routine also includes supplements of collagen, antioxidant-rich raw cacao, and glutathione, which helps repair tissues. She takes HRT to manage her body’s transition through the menopause and says the progesterone helps with restful sleep.

Two days a week she fasts for 16 hours, but she admits “I’m not slavish about it”. More important is the foods you do eat. “The Japanese drink and smoke like chimneys but they only lose four years of life to this, but in the UK we lose 10. It’s because they’re microdosing every day with green tea, they’re eating natto, which is full of spermidine; they’re eating fish full of Omega 3, and lots of fermented foods.”

Kenny walks her dog for at least 30 minutes a day and has an active life. She uses katsu bands, a product from Japan similar to a blood pressure cuff, which pulls the blood into one limb for 30 seconds then when it releases “the blood hits the pituitary gland and says ‘I’ve been lifting heavy weights’, and sends hormones to repair the body,” she explains.

She also uses an inversion chair – a small stool that makes doing a headstand easy for anyone, whatever their age – that trains the core and stimulates the vagus nerve, responsible for the regulation of organ functions such as digestion, heart rate and respiratory rate.

The efforts of figures like Kenny are being watched by experts. Vasa Curcin, professor of health informatics at King’s College London, says the “exciting work” going on among the global community of biohackers is “a huge opportunity to raise awareness and identify challenges for novel therapies and lifestyle tech interventions”.

But he adds: “We need to start considering pragmatic methods that would allow for these efforts to stop being just anecdotal evidence and start contributing to larger knowledge bases to support scientifically rigorous validation studies.”

So what is Kenny’s advice to the rest of us? “The most important thing is to get started and just do one thing. Whether that’s diet or putting a weight by the kettle and doing a bicep curl while you boil it. Just ask yourself to do it once a week, and the next week do it twice a week. Do it slowly and then it becomes a habit.”

Most Read By Subscribers

What are the health benefits of the practice of bathing in cold water?

- *Yoga, meditation,* and *breathwork* are well supported for stress reduction and mental health.

**What’s Less Supported or Unclear:**
- *Extreme diets* (e.g., keto, bulletproof, “clean eating”) and strict avoidance of non-allergen foods can risk nutrient deficiencies; benefits beyond standard healthy eating are not firmly supported.

What are the risks and dangers of diets?

- *Mega-dosing supplements* offers little benefit to most and can sometimes cause harm.

Title:

Content: She's fighting to stop the brain disease that killed her mother before it gets her.

  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts ‒ Sonia Vallabh watched helplessly as her 51-year-old mother rapidly descended into dementia and died. It didn't take long for Vallabh to realize she was destined for the same rare genetic fate.

Vallabh and her husband did what anyone would want to do in their situation: They decided to fight.

Armed with little more than incredible intellect and determination they set out to conquer her destiny.

A dozen years later, they've taken a major step in that direction, finding a way to shut off enough genetic signals to hold off the disease.

And in the process of trying to rescue Vallabh, they may save many, many others as well.

In a paper published Thursday in the prestigious journal Science, Vallabh and her husband, Eric Minikel, and their co-authors offer a way to disrupt brain diseases like the one that killed her mother.

The same approach should also work against diseases such as Huntington's, Parkinson's, ALS and even Alzheimer's, which result from the accumulation of toxic proteins. If it works as well as they think, it could also be useful against a vast array of other diseases that can be treated by shutting off genes.

"It doesn't have to be the brain. It could be the muscles. It could be the kidneys. It could be really anywhere in the body where we have not easily been able to do these things before," said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a cardiologist and geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, who wasn't involved in the research but wrote a perspective accompanying the paper.

So far, they've proven it only in mice.

"The data are good as far as they go," Vallabh said this week from her office at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, where she has worked since getting a PhD at Harvard. She had already gotten a law degree from the university, but she and Minikel, then a transportation planner, both pursued biology degrees after her mother's death. Now, they work together at the Broad.

"We're far from this being a drug," Vallabh said. "There's always, always reason for caution. Sadly, everything is always more likely to fail than succeed.

"But there is justifiable reason for optimism."

A terrible disease

The disease that killed Vallabh's mother was one of a group of conditions called prion diseases. These include mad cow disease, which affects mostly cattle, scrapie, which affects sheep, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which kills about 350 Americans a year ‒ most within months of their first symptom.

These diseases are triggered when the prion protein found in all normal brains starts misfolding for some reason, as yet unknown.

"Prion disease can strike anybody," Vallabh said, noting the 1 in 6,000 risk to the general population.

Though prion diseases are, in some cases, contagious, a federal study earlier this year concluded that chronic wasting disease, found in deer, elk and moose, is very unlikely to pass to people who eat the meat of sick animals.

In Vallabh's case, the cause is genetic. Vallabh discovered after her mother's death that she carries the same variant of the same gene that caused her mother's disease, meaning she will certainly develop it.

The only question is when.

"The age of onset is extremely unpredictable," Vallabh said. "Your parent's age of onset doesn't actually predict anything."

How the gene-editing tool works

Vallabh, Minikel and their colleagues developed a gene-editing approach they call CHARM (for Coupled Histone tail Autoinhibition Release of Methyltransferase).

While previous gene-editing tools have been described as scissors or erasers, Musunuru described CHARM as a volume control, allowing scientists to tune a gene up or down. It has three advantages over previous strategies, he said.

The device is tiny, so it fits easily inside the virus needed to deliver it. Other gene-editing tools, like CRISPR, are bigger, which means they need to be broken into pieces and much more of the virus is needed to deliver those pieces to the brain, risking a dangerous immune reaction.

CHARM, Musunuru said, is "easier to deliver to hard-to-deliver spaces like the brain."

At least in the mouse, it also seems to have reached throughout the brain, making the desired genetic change without other, unwanted ones, Musunuru said.

And finally, the research team figured out a way to turn the gene editor off after its work was done. "If it's sticking around, there's the potential for genetic mischief," Musunuru said.

One shot on goal

While researchers, including Vallabh, continue to work to perfect an approach, the clock for Vallabh and others is ticking.

Right now there's no viable treatment and if it takes too long to develop one, Vallabh will miss her window. Once the disease process starts, like a runaway train, it'll be much harder to stop than it would be to just shut the gene off in the first place.

The more of the prion protein in the brain, the more likely it is to misfold. And the more likely it is for the disease to spread, a process that co-opts the natural form of the protein and converts it to the toxic form.

That's why getting rid of as much of it as possible makes sense, said Jonathan Weissman, the senior author on the study, who leads a lab at the Whitehead Institute, a biomedical research institute next to the Broad.

"The biology is really clear. The need (for a cure) is so compelling," Weissman said.

Every cell in the brain has the gene for making the prion protein. By silencing even 50% of those genes, Weissman figures he can prevent the disease. In mice, CHARM silenced up to 80% to 90%.

"We've figured out what to deliver. Now we have to figure out how to deliver it," he said.

Another of the paper's co-authors, the Broad's Ben Deverman, published a study late last year showing he could deliver a gene-therapy-carrying virus throughout the brain. Others are developing other viral delivery systems.

And Vallabh and Minikel have hedged their bets, helping to develop a so-called antisense oligonucleotide, or ASO, which uses another path for stopping the gene from making the prion protein.

The ASO, which is in early trials in people by a company called Ionis Pharmaceuticals, requires regular treatment rather than the one-and-done of a gene therapy. Recruitment for that trial had to be paused in April because the number of would-be volunteers outstripped the available slots.

Personalized therapy: This lifesaving treatment was designed for one. Could it be the future of medical care?

Vallabh isn't ready yet to start any treatment yet herself.

"She has one shot on goal," Musunuru said. "At some point, she'll have to decide what's the best strategy."

In the meantime, the clock Vallabh can't see continues to tick toward onset.

She and Minikel stay exceedingly busy with their research along with their daughter, almost 7, and 4-year-old son ‒ both born via IVF and preimplantation genetic testing to ensure they wouldn't inherit her genetic curse. (They were super lucky, Vallabh notes, to be living in Massachusetts where IVF is at least "approachable" financially.)

"There is a mountain ahead of us," Vallabh said of the path to a cure. "There's still a lot of hurdles, there's still a lot to figure out."

Karen Weintraub can be reached at kweintraub@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: After dementia killed her mother a medical researcher looks for a cure

- *CRISPR/gene editing* holds promise for treating some diseases but is experimental and not widely accessible (mostly animal studies/early clinical trials).

- Claims about “reducing inflammation” and “gut optimization” via restrictive diets or large numbers of supplements often outpace evidence.

---

**Risks and Concerns:**
- **Physical Risks:** Nutritional deficiencies, over-exercise, potential supplement toxicity.

What are the risks and dangers of diets?

- **Mental Health:** Obsessive self-tracking and extreme regimens can increase anxiety, body image issues, or even lead to eating disorders.

- **Lack of Medical Oversight:** Many self-experiments lack safety monitoring; some interventions (especially gene editing or off-label drugs) pose unknown risks.

---

**Conclusion:**
Many biohacking methods contain kernels of well-founded health advice (exercise, mindful eating, sleep).

However, the movement also harbors extreme or poorly supported practices that may do more harm than good.

Reliable clinical research often lags behind biohacker trends.

Title:

Content: Advertisement
This ad is displayed using third party content and we do not control its accessibility features.
Close Banner
Advertisement
This ad is displayed using third party content and we do not control its accessibility features.

Biohacking & Toxic Masculinity: How Women Dismantled The Boys Club

Author: Medical reviewer:
Beauty & Health Editor
By Jamie Schneider
Beauty & Health Editor
Jamie Schneider is the Beauty Editor at mindbodygreen. She has a B.A. in Organizational Studies and English from the University of Michigan, and her work has appeared in Coveteur, The Chill Times, and Wyld Skincare.
Medical review by
Bindiya Gandhi, M.D.
Physician
Dr. Bindiya Gandhi is an American Board Family Medicine–certified physician who completed her family medicine training at Georgia Regents University/Medical College of Georgia.
Image by Sonja Lekovic / Stocksy
We carefully vet all products and services featured on mindbodygreen using our commerce guidelines. Our selections are never influenced by the commissions earned from our links.

Take a quick search for “biohacker” on TikTok (a tag with over 137 million views), and you’ll discover a slew of men discussing their muscle gains, testosterone levels, and cold plunge routines. You’ll see some women on the page, but the space is undoubtedly dominated by male energy. And think of the outspoken biohackers you may listen to on podcasts—chances are most of them are men, too.

This gendered approach to biohacking, while pervasive, is simply misguided. But now, women are asserting their authority in health optimization, and we expect their emphasis to soar in the year ahead.

Meet the experts

Molly Maloof. M.D.

Molly Maloof. M.D. provides health optimization and personalized medicine to high-achieving entrepreneurs, investors, and technology executives. Since 2012, she has worked as an advisor or consultant to more than 50 companies in the digital health, consumer health, and biotechnology industries. Her company, Adamo Bioscience, is working on sexual health optimization.

Gabrielle Lyon, D.O.

Gabrielle Lyon, D.O. is a board-certified family physician leading a disruption in modern medicine that focuses on the largest organ in the body: skeletal muscle. With a background that includes a combined research and clinical fellowship in geriatrics and nutritional sciences at Washington University and undergraduate training in nutritional sciences at the University of Illinois, she is a subject-matter expert on protein for health, performance, aging, and disease prevention.

Stacy Salvi

Stacy Salvi is the vice president of product and strategy at the medical device company Movano Health—the creator of the Evie Ring, the first medical-grade health wearable designed for women.

Mona Vand, PharmD

Mona Vand, PharmD studied pharmacy at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences before developing her platform that shares holistic wellness advice.

Why biohacking isn’t just for “bros”

“Women are the original biohackers,” declares family physician, Molly Maloof, M.D. “Our hormones change throughout our lives, and this requires us to adapt accordingly.” Our biology means that women often need to constantly edit their health routines and experiment with lifestyle habits as time goes on. Isn’t that the very definition of biohacking?

Let's back up: Here at mindbodygreen, we think of “biohacking” as the practice of making lifestyle tweaks to optimize health and promote longevity. Not shortcuts—contrary to popular belief—but low-lift, everyday habits that complement and enhance an existing well-being routine. Think: optimizing your exercise regimen using tools and techniques (the “biohacks”) to enhance muscle growth. It’s essentially all about advancing health with “do it yourself” biology—a topic that can pique anyone’s interest, regardless of gender.

“[Women] have a most complex physiological lifecycle that requires us to track and manage fertility, pregnancy, breastfeeding, sexuality, perimenopause, and menopause. So we should be looking at biohacking as a path to even greater health and owning the opportunity to improve our lives,” says Maloof.

Yet many women feel intimidated to enter the biohacking scene as it exists today, turned off by the male-dominated energy in the room.

Women are the original biohackers

Molly Maloof, M.D

“Biohacking has always grabbed my attention, and I want to learn, but it sometimes makes me really stressed out, because I go into this state of perfectionism where I have to do all the things,” says doctor of pharmacy and wellness practitioner Mona Vand, PharmD. “The few biohackers that I followed were all males… it just doesn't really resonate with my energy.”

This male energy is not only frustrating but can potentially harm women’s health in the long run. After all, building muscle, prioritizing protein, and keeping an eye on various health metrics are crucial for longevity—in some cases, these proactive measures can save lives. When women don’t get involved, it can totally impact their well-being.

“Physical strength is nonnegotiable,” says functional medicine doctor Gabrielle Lyon, D.O. “I've been a physician since 2006, and I've never heard someone say, ‘I regret being physically strong.’” And the muscle-building space impacts more than just physiological changes, she says. “You optimize fertility, you make healthier babies, you help the epigenetics of your child,” Lyon adds. “You age better, your skin is better, you're less likely to fall and break a hip… There's nothing that doesn't get better the stronger you are.”

So let’s be clear: Dismantling the biohacking boy’s club is not just about helping women feel included; there are real health implications at stake here.

Why the biohacker space actually really needs a dose of feminine energy

I’d be remiss not to mention how biohacking culture can easily become synonymous with hustle culture (some experts don’t even like to use the term, as it implies you can achieve optimal health with quick fixes). But as more women enter the biohacking space, we expect it to become more intuitive and less about hitting every single benchmark. From there, we predict women will focus more on sustainable changes long-term instead of a gazillion quick hacks.

“I used to think it was a flex to do a million things at the same time and habit stack,” Vand recounts. “I now carve out time for doing things that have no efficiency to them, that are strictly for joy or rest and relaxation, versus benefiting my longevity or health. It can be a little bit obsessive when you get into this thought pattern, and I just don't resonate with it.”

This doesn’t mean biohacking will become “softer” as it embraces feminine energy. But there’s an opportunity here for women to introduce some much-needed flexibility into a space that has long felt needlessly rigid.

How the biohacker game is changing — and where it’s headed next

Thanks to a growing awareness that healthcare protocols should not be gendered, more women are now starting to pay attention to markers of performance like lean muscle, hormetic stressors, VO2 max, HRV, zone 2 training, etc. “Cold plunging, saunas, and harder, more physical activities are not just for the boys anymore,” adds Lyon—and we expect an even bigger shift to come in 2024.

“I think it’s super exciting to see biohacking become more mainstream and more women joining the conversation,” adds Maloof. She praises apps like Wild.AI, for women who aim to make lifestyle adjustments based on their menstrual cycle, and Zero, for women who want to dabble in time-restricted eating, both of which have helped to herald the shift.

Other existing health optimization companies are now inviting women into the conversation by introducing specific features informed by their unique physiology. WHOOP, for example, is currently working on upgrades to their popular health-tracking band: “We did a study recently where we learned a lot about how a woman's body changes during pregnancy and how her heart rate variability (HRV) will evolve. It'll decrease, and then about seven weeks before she gives birth, it will increase sharply,” explains Will Ahmed, WHOOP founder and CEO, on the mindbodygreen podcast

If a woman didn’t know that this was supposed to happen, she might look at this stark increase with a critical (or anxious) eye. “We've been able to take population-level data on pregnant women and now have a feature in the app, where a woman can see how her body is evolving alongside what other pregnant women are experiencing,” he adds.

Similarly, creatine supplements—from the ingredients to the packaging—are no longer marketed toward dudes looking to bulk up, and we are certainly here for it. After all, muscle mass is a predictor of longevity and healthspan, so supplements that promote it can help all of us “hack” our health in a big way.

And as Lyon notes, women have lower endogenous creatine stores compared to men (meaning, they have less available). And the amino acid has been associated with significantly increased muscle mass1 in both men and women, without increasing the risk of adverse outcomes2, like weight gain. “Most of the women in my practice will go on creatine, and they find anecdotally that it really improves both anaerobic and aerobic exercise performance,” Lyon shares.

Not to mention the supplement’s brain health perks: Taking creatine has been shown to benefit both working memory and processing speed3 as well as cognitive longevity4. “It is above and beyond simply sport performance,” adds Lyon, who has certainly seen an uptick in women curious about creatine.

As women feel intimidated (or even restricted) by biohacking spaces, some experts have taken it upon themselves to create new ones that center the feminine. For example, neuropsychophysiologist Kayla Osterhoff, MPH, offers a Women's Biohacking Mini Course, consisting of lifestyle routines and tips aligned with female physiology.

Osterhoff also recently presented at the 2023 Dragonfly Live Conference—among other female biohackers—to discuss the latest advancements in women's well-being and the “health revolution” that’s sweeping the mainstream. This conference aims to gather the “who's-who” in the health space to discuss cutting-edge strategies and innovations that optimize well-being—by having women biohackers at the forefront of the conversation, we can expect them to hit the main stage in a broader sense.

Or take the brand new Evie Ring, the first medical-grade health wearable designed for women, created by medical device company Movano Health. The technology ties hormonal information to a woman’s sleep, activity, and heart health data (among other metrics).

For instance, “If we notice a more restless night of sleep in the luteal phase, we'll point it out and also give some strategies for how somebody may attack their day, despite having not gotten as good of a night of sleep,” says Stacy Salvi, vice president of product and strategy at Movano Health. Similarly, “We know that there are cardiovascular implications when your estrogen drops, so they would want to keep a better look on the function of their heart,” she adds. “This would be something that they would be able to do from our app.”

Even the design itself was made with women in mind: The ring features an open band meant to accommodate how women’s fingers change in size throughout the day, so it can stay comfortable.

To avoid needless stress, Evie also limits the amount of goals you can set on the app. “You can only set three at a time, because we do not want to overwhelm [users] with a bunch of different things,” says Salvi. “I mean, I'm an overachiever. I probably would set every single goal and then fail at them.” And heaven knows we don’t need yet another way for busy, overwhelmed women to feel like they’re failing in a society with unsurmountable standards.

Forecasting the future

A woman walks up to the weight rack in 2024. She sees the usual suspects—bros pounding protein shakes and grunting through their bicep curls—but now she also sees a fair amount of women on the scene. They’ve got creatine supplements! Fitness trackers! Kettlebells! (And no, they aren’t pink.)

Granted, we still have a ways to go before women feel totally embraced by the biohacking space (we’d first have to close the centuries-long gender gap in science and medicine), but it’s clear that the arena is becoming way less of a boy’s club. “And the world is ready, my friend,” says Lyon. “The world is absolutely ready for this.”

Watch Next

Enjoy some of our favorite clips from classes

Watch Next

Enjoy some of our favorite clips from classes

What Is Meditation?

Mindfulness/Spirituality | Light Watkins

Box Breathing

Mindfulness/Spirituality | Gwen Dittmar

What Breathwork Can Address

Mindfulness/Spirituality | Gwen Dittmar

The 8 Limbs of Yoga - What is Asana?

Yoga | Caley Alyssa

Two Standing Postures to Open Up Tight Hips

Yoga | Caley Alyssa

How Plants Can Optimize Athletic Performance

Nutrition | Rich Roll

What to Eat Before a Workout

Nutrition | Rich Roll

How Ayurveda Helps Us Navigate Modern Life

Nutrition | Sahara Rose

Messages About Love & Relationships

Love & Relationships | Esther Perel

Love Languages

Love & Relationships | Esther Perel

Related Videos (10)

What Is Meditation?

Box Breathing

What Breathwork Can Address

The 8 Limbs of Yoga - What is Asana?

Two Standing Postures to Open Up Tight Hips

How Plants Can Optimize Athletic Performance

What to Eat Before a Workout

How Ayurveda Helps Us Navigate Modern Life

Messages About Love & Relationships

Love Languages

Advertisement
This ad is displayed using third party content and we do not control its accessibility features.

More On This Topic

more Health
Advertisement
This ad is displayed using third party content and we do not control its accessibility features.
Advertisement
This ad is displayed using third party content and we do not control its accessibility features.

Is there clinical evidence for benefits of short intermittent fasting methods?

Clinical evidence for fasting as long as seven days is not yet available.

A balanced, evidence-based approach with medical supervision is essential for safety and real benefit.

**Summary of Extracts – Insights into Biohacking, Self-Optimization, and Biomedical Research**

1.

Title:

Content: .
Interspecific "genes of depression"
Interspecific "genes of depression"
Scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Almazov National Medical Research Center, Sirius University, the Institute of Translational Biomedicine of St. Petersburg State University, Granov Russian Research Center for Radiology and Surgical Technologies, the Institute of Neurology and Medicine (Novosibirsk) and the Ural Federal University conducted an interspecific analysis of brain gene expression in zebrafish, rats and humans to identify new common molecular targets. and for the treatment of central nervous system disorders caused by chronic stress.
The study identified several key brain proteins that may play an important role in the pathogenesis of affective disorders.
The work is reported by the press service of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Affective disorders, also known as emotional disorders, are a set of mental disorders with a change in emotional state.
These are various forms of depression and mania, psychosis, increased anxiety.
They are widespread, as they are formed not only as an independent mental pathology, but also as complications in neurological and other somatic diseases.
This fact causes difficulties in diagnosis: low mood, anxiety and irritability people refer to temporary, situational manifestations.
According to statistics, emotional disorders of varying severity occur in 20% of people, but only a quarter of them receive qualified help.
Despite the high prevalence of such diseases, many pathological mechanisms are still not clear.
Animal models such as rats and zebrafish are often used to investigate affective disorders.
However, not all the data obtained in animal models can then be applied to humans.
This leads scientists to look for new techniques that would help identify evolutionarily stable molecular mechanisms for the development of affective disorders.
The team, led by Alan Kaluev, chief scientist at the MIPT Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Neurobiological Problems and Bioscreening, conducted the study, which used both traditional methods, such as comparing “healthy ” humans and animals with those who have symptoms of the disease, and more complex approaches: cross-species analysis by comparing orthologists —“ similar ” genes of different organisms that perform a similar function and are descended from a single DNA sequence.
The analysis used sequencing data of RNA — ribonucleic acid, which is an intermediate biomolecule for the transfer of information from the “source ”, DNA, to proteins that perform a certain function.
Genome-wide DNA sequencing gives an overall picture of the diversity of genes in the body, but it cannot answer the question of which are active in different cells and tissues at a certain point in time.
For this reason, RNA sequencing is used to analyze gene expression, through which a direct link can be established between gene activity and certain physiological conditions.
Scientists have managed to fix some common mechanisms of response to stress, including changes in the activity of genes responsible for calcium signaling, cell adhesion molecules and oxidative phosphorylation.
Elena Petersen, Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Biological and Neurobiological Problems and Bioscreening at MIPT, says: “We were able to identify several key brain proteins (GRIA1, DLG1, CDH1, THRB, PLCG2, NGEF, IKZF1 and FEZF2) as promising targets for drug exposure, as well as offer a new set of genes that can be used for further study of affective pathogenesis."
Scientists have identified common genes that are involved in pathogenesis in all three species and, therefore, are evolutionarily stable biomarkers of affective pathology.
The data were re-checked using several different techniques.
In the future, the results of the study can be used in the diagnosis and therapy of affective disorders.
The work was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Source: polit.ru

**Emerging Diagnostic Tools:**
Innovative technologies—like Raman spectroscopy and gas analyzers, aided by machine learning—are being developed to detect various diseases (e.g., cancer, diabetes) from blood drops or breath samples.

Title:

Content: Breathing and a drop of blood.
New method determines cancer in minutes - RIA Novosti, 04.10.2023
Registration was successful!
Please follow the link from the letter sent to
Science
Breathing and a drop of blood.
New method detects cancer in minutes
Russian scientists have developed a new method of rapid diagnosis of cancer
© iStock.com / urbazonGirl undergoing lung function testing in a medical clinic
Read ria.ru in
MOSCOW, 4 Oct — RIA Novosti, Vladislav Strekopytov.
Scientists from Tomsk State University (TSU) have developed a painless rapid diagnosis of health status by a drop of blood or exhaled air.
In just a few minutes, you can identify markers of dangerous diseases, including nascent cancer.
Human Molecular Profile
Doctors say that proper and timely diagnosis is the key to successful treatment.
It is especially important to quickly and accurately diagnose such critical conditions as a heart attack or stroke, when the bill literally goes on for minutes.
And in the case of oncology, the main task is not to miss the disease at an early stage.
The idea that the composition of blood, urine and saliva reflects the state of human health has existed since ancient times.
However, only the technological progress of recent decades has made it possible to quantify the metabolic products contained in biological fluids - metabolites.
There was a separate scientific direction - metabolomics, in which scientists study the molecular signs of various processes in the body, including pathological ones.
Based on mathematical modeling, scientists from the Laboratory of Laser Molecular Imaging and Machine Learning at TSU calculated multicomponent molecular profiles characteristic of certain diseases.
Then, mixtures of marker molecules were produced from known compounds in a certain concentration for each of the profiles, the neural network was trained on their example and the results were tested on real samples of biological fluids and tissues taken from patients.
“Our diagnostic method is based on the component analysis of tissues, biological fluids or exhaled air on biomarker molecules, ” says Denis Vrazhnov, a project participant in the laboratory.“ For this, we use modern devices — a Raman microscope, a terahertz spectrometer, gas analyzers. ”
© RIA Novosti / Vladislav StrekopytoJunior Researcher, Laboratory of Laser Molecular Imaging and Machine Learning, TSU Denis Vrazhnov
Denis Vrazhnov, Junior Researcher, Laboratory of Laser Molecular Imaging and Machine Learning, TSU
Diagnosis by molecular profiles is much more accurate than by individual marker molecules, and the use of artificial intelligence in interpreting data minimizes the risk of errors.
In the future, the entire procedure of analyzes can be performed completely automatically, according to the authors of the new method.
How it works, journalists were shown during an excursion to the laboratory, organized within the framework of the initiative "Popular Science Tourism" of the Decade of Science and Technology, which provides for visits to the objects of the national project "Science and Universities".
Find cancer by blood drop
Directly tracking metabolic changes in the human body is very difficult.
Some – for example, the breakdown of hormones – occur very quickly, others are realized at the intracellular level and are not available for direct observation.
Therefore, most methods of functional diagnostics are based on indirect data.
So, in ultrasound studies (ultrasound), the doctor analyzes the picture created by sound waves when passing through tissues and organs.
A radiograph is a projection of X-rays reflecting the internal anatomical structure.
By the spectral characteristics of light, one can judge the molecular composition of tissues or liquids.
© RIA Novosti / Vladislav StrekopytovEmployees of the Laboratory of Laser Molecular Imaging and Machine Learning at TSU work on a Raman microscope
Employees of the Laboratory of Laser Molecular Imaging and Machine Learning at TSU are working on a Raman microscope
“Looking at the spectral profile, we can say what reactions occur in the body, how it reacts to external stimuli, viruses, bacteria, ” explains the scientist.
In experiments conducted on one of the most sensitive devices, the confocal Raman spectrometer, the researchers found that the shape of the profile can be tracked, and at a very early stage, the development of cancer: skin cancer (melanoma) and glioma - one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.
The results were confirmed by another instrument, the terahertz spectrometer.
CC BY 4.0 / Michael B. Fenn {et al.}, 2011 / Schematic diagram of the Raman spectrometer
Glioma is most often detected in the later stages, when the patient develops symptoms such as severe headaches and nausea.
The diagnosis is confirmed by an MRI of the head.
Now the disease can be detected by a drop of blood.
The proposed method has passed the stage of pilot testing on animals, and now experts are moving to research on human biomaterials.
"We studied how the molecular composition of brain tissue changes in mice that were planted with cancer cells, as a result of which they developed glioma, - says Vrazhnov. - It turned out that a healthy brain has one profile, and a patient has a completely different one.
What's more, we found that it's different for tumor and inflammation. "
This solves another diagnostic problem.
It is known that the development of a tumor is often, but not always, preceded by inflammation.
Analysis of molecular profiles makes it possible to isolate metabolites of pre-oncological inflammation in a blood serum sample with high reliability and to notice the beginning of brain tumor development much earlier than it is done now.
The authors are confident that it will be possible to detect not only glioma, but also other types of tumors.
All data on blood changes in various oncological diseases are now included in the electronic database, which will be accessed by artificial intelligence in the process of analysis.
Diagnosis of Breathing
Researchers from TSU have learned to obtain a molecular profile not only by blood, but also by the composition of the air exhaled by a person.
To do this, they improved with the help of machine learning methods of chemical analysis on another device - a gas analyzer.
“Changes in metabolism are reflected in the composition of the blood that washes the lungs, – explains the scientist. – Due to gas exchange, marker molecules that accompany some pathological process enter the exhaled air, and we catch them with the help of a gas analyzer. ”
© RIA Novosti / Vladislav StrekopytovDobrovolets takes a sample of air for diagnosis
The volunteer takes a sample of air for diagnosis
At the same time, the diagnostic is important not so much the set of analyzed compounds (as a rule, it is standard: nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia and some other volatile hydrocarbons), as the ratio of their concentrations.
For example, increased ammonia content is a good marker of diabetes.
With the help of molecular profiles, covid, tuberculosis, heart disease can be recognized.
"All these diseases change the composition of the exhaled air, - the researcher notes. - Our device works in a very wide range and can" catch "a large number of marker molecules."
© RIA Novosti / Vladislav StrekopytovOn the profile of a healthy person should be four peaks, if less - this is an alarming sign
There should be four peaks on the profile of a healthy person, if less is an alarming sign
The method has already been tested in clinical conditions on patients with tuberculosis.
Good results were also shown in trials in groups of volunteers with primary myocardial infarction.
Molecular psychosomatics
Recently, laboratory scientists have tried to diagnose mental illness with the help of a gas analyzer.
To do this, we collected exhaled air samples from patients with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, compared the results with a control group and identified chemical features characteristic of each of the diagnoses.
“When we conducted the studies, we were asked to check whether the markers of depression in the exhaled air were preserved in those who have already undergone treatment, ” says Vrazhnov.
But in some patients in the group that was already preparing for discharge, the spectral characteristics did not change.
This suggests that the treatment was insufficient and the disease may return quickly. "
© RIA Novosti / Vladislav StrekopytoGas analyzer in the laboratory of laser molecular imaging and machine learning TSU
Gas analyzer in the laboratory of laser molecular imaging and machine learning TSU
The proposed method, according to its authors, can become the first objective tool for monitoring the effectiveness of treatment in psychiatry, where traditionally used to rely only on the subjective opinion of the observing physician.
The most unusual experiment the laboratory staff conducted in one of the cinemas of the city.
Assuming that the set of chemicals produced by the body depends, among other things, on the general psychological state of the person, they collected air samples in the cinema hall during the demonstration of the action film, analyzed them and obtained a profile of "collective stress", which became more pronounced as the plot developed and tensions increased.
The researchers hope that the rapid diagnosis of molecular profiles will receive wide practical application.
In addition to medicine, it will be able to be used in forensics, inspection and control systems, as well as in other areas.
News feed
0
New firstOld firstFirst
loader
On-line
Title of the material to be opened
To participate in the discussion,
log in or register
loader
Discussions
Title of the material to be opened

Early tumor growth frequently involves inflammation, which such devices aim to detect by picking up relevant biomarkers, sometimes even before clinical symptoms appear.

**Genetic and Personalized Medicine:**
Advances in genomic research, such as gene sequencing, DNA editing (CRISPR), and identification of disease-related proteins and genes, play a pivotal role in diagnosing rare diseases, cancers, and disorders like autism and depression.

Personalized medicine (tailoring treatments based on an individual’s genetic profile) is a key promise of this research, with therapies focusing on reprogramming cells to a more youthful state or editing faulty genes.

Title:

Content: Pangenom: Scientists are synthesizing genes from 350 people.
The clues of life are getting closer
4: 51
Two decades ago, the Human Genome Project successfully fulfilled its mission of sequencing the entire human genome, which allowed us to gain a deep understanding of how the human body works.
This groundbreaking project is widely recognized as one of the most significant milestones in biology.
However, despite its monumental nature, there were limitations.
The original human genome was based on the genetic code of one person, which yielded only a limited amount of information.
In addition, there were gaps in the original genome that remained unfilled until recently.
In response to these limitations, the researchers sought to expand the foundations of human genomics.
Today, a group of scientists has taken a significant step forward in this direction.
In a series of published papers, they successfully synthesized nearly complete genomes of 47 people representing different racial and ethnic groups.
This comprehensive collection, known as the "pangenom", captures an unprecedented level of human genetic diversity.
Erich Jarvis, one of the main researchers involved in the project, highlighted the significance of this achievement, saying in a press release:
"This complex genomic collection represents a significantly more accurate human genetic diversity than has ever been recorded before.
With broader and deeper genetic data at their disposal, as well as improved genome assembly, researchers can deepen their understanding of the relationship between genes and disease signs, thereby speeding up clinical research. "
A comprehensive understanding of the human genome, encompassing a variety of information, is vital to a holistic understanding of humanity.
Certain genes and conditions are unique to certain racial and ethnic groups, making their inclusion in the genome crucial for study and research.
In addition, the pangenome takes into account genetic differences between men and women — a factor overlooked in the original genome sequence.
However, it is important to note that some categories of the genome are currently missing.
Some cultures, especially Native Americans and Aborigines, are hesitant to provide their genetic material due to historical cases of obtaining medical information without consent.
Therefore, the team working on the pangenome project is working with these communities to establish ethical guidelines for the use of their genetic information.
However, it may take time before the representation of these communities is secured, if at all.
Statistics
Statistically speaking, the pangenome represents a huge leap forward.
The new sequence detects more than 120 million pairs of genetic bases that were previously unknown, including about 90 million base pairs that represent significant genetic differences known as structural variants.
Jarvis emphasized the impact of these structural variants, which can significantly affect the signs, diseases, and functions of genes.
With the identification of numerous new options, countless revolutionary discoveries are possible.
However, access to and comprehension of these discoveries will undoubtedly require time and effort.
Expanding the dataset by 47 times brings tremendous benefits, but at the same time increases complexity.
Pangenom resembles a map rather than a direct GPS route, with numerous combinations of features that need to be guided to reach a diagnostic destination.
Ensuring that scientists can effectively interpret and use this biological miracle presents a new, complex and challenging challenge.
As long as we are in possession of the map, developing the means to unleash its full potential is the next important task.
Once this key is developed, a new wave of genetic research will emerge.
As the project continues to expand — with plans to synthesize the genomes of at least 350 people by next year — a huge amount of data will descend on the researchers.
Hoping to study more genetic traits and diseases than ever before, this wealth of information promises new discoveries.
Add Pravda to your Yandex.News or News.Google sources
We will also welcome you in our communities in Zen, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki...
Vaccination, Pangenom and Archetypal Horror.
Sergey Pereslegin
Author Oleg Loginov
Oleg Loginov — HSE student, Pravda.Ru freelance correspondent
Topics Science

**Cell Reprogramming and Age Reversal:**
Recent experiments (e.g., at the Babraham Institute) have shown the possibility of making human skin cells “30 years younger,” indicating potential for anti-aging therapies, a cornerstone goal among biohacking communities interested in longevity.

Title:

Content: Researchers at the British Babraham Institute managed to reprogram human skin cells and make them 30 years younger.
A new technique for rejuvenating skin cells allowed researchers to rewind their biological clock, making a “leap in time ”, while the cells did not lose their functions, according to Bloomberg.
In the study, scientists describe the possibility of partially restoring the function of old cells, as well as updating their biological age.
In experiments modeling the skin wound, the partially renewed cells showed signs of behavior more similar to the behavior of young cells.
Experts suggest that the results of the study may change regenerative medicine, especially if this process can be replicated in other types of cells.
Professor Wolf Reik, head of the epigenetics research program, said the work has very exciting implications.
"We will be able to identify genes that rejuvenate without reprogramming, and specifically target cells to reduce the effects of aging," he explained.
Dr. Diljit Gill, a research fellow at Professor Rake's lab at the Bebraham Institute, said:
"Our results are a big step forward in understanding cell reprogramming.
We have shown that cells can be rejuvenated without losing their function. "
It is noted that as a person ages, the ability of cells to function normally decreases, and the genome - the DNA circuit - accumulates signs of aging.
Regenerative biology aims to repair or replace cells, including old ones.
One of its most important tools is the ability to create “induced ” stem cells.
However, this process erases the functions of cells and gives them the ability to become cells of any type.
The new method, based on a technique that was a Nobel laureate and which scientists use to create stem cells, overcomes the problem of completely erasing the identity of the cell, stopping the reprogramming of part of the process.
This allowed the researchers to find the exact balance between reprogramming cells, making them biologically younger, but in doing so they could regain their specialized cellular function.
Scientists noted that the potential application of this technique depends on the fact that the cells not only look younger, but also function as young cells.
Experts suggest that in the future, the study may open up other therapeutic options.
They noticed that their method also affected other genes associated with age-related diseases and symptoms, such as the APBA2 gene associated with Alzheimer's disease and the MAF gene, which contributes to the development of cataracts.
You may also be interested in news:

**Role of Inflammation and Gut Health:**
Inflammation is highlighted as both a disease trigger and a diagnostic target, aligning with biohackers’ interest in anti-inflammatory diets (e.g., gluten-free, dairy-free, keto) and gut optimization measures.

However, the scientific basis for many specific dietary exclusions practiced within biohacking remains under investigation, with mixed levels of supporting evidence.

Title:

Content: The butterfly effect in DNA: how mutations in non-coding regions activate autism genes
‘ Butterfly Effect ’ May Explain Some Genetic Causes of Autism
The butterfly effect may explain the activation of genes associated with autism in DNA.
According to the latest study, the complex ripple effect of mutations in genes unrelated to autism may ultimately affect the activity of genes associated with the disorder.
The mechanism of work is that DNA contains genetic material known as promoters, which regulate the activation and deactivation of genes.
Because DNA has a three-dimensional structure, promoters can control genes that are at a great distance from them in the DNA sequence.
These promoters and the corresponding genes form a topologically associated domain (TAD).
Because of this complex mechanism, a person who does not have mutations in genes associated with autism may still develop the disorder due to mutations in promoters elsewhere in the genome.
This new study, published in the journal Cell Genomics, explores this idea.
Autism is often inherited, and it is estimated that 40% to 80% of cases are related to hereditary genes.
However, spontaneous mutations in the DNA that cause autism are also possible.
These mutations are found in "non-coding" sections of DNA that make up most of the genome.
Prior to this study, there was little data on how mutations in non-coding DNA affect the likelihood of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The new findings, obtained after analyzing the genomes of more than 5,000 people with autism, point to a direct link between autism and gene regulation mechanisms, especially with TADs containing genes associated with autism.
Even small changes in the DNA sequence in non-coding regions can significantly affect gene expression, which increases the risk of ASD.
This is compared to the butterfly effect, where a small change in the initial state of a complex system has far-reaching consequences.
In additional experiments using CRISPR gene editing technology on human stem cells, the researchers confirmed the effect of mutations in TAD promoters on genes associated with autism.
Further research is planned to identify other types of non-coding mutations that may affect the likelihood of developing autism.
Author Makar Gorshenin
Makar Vadimovich Gorshenin is a student of the Moscow University of Finance and Law, a freelance correspondent of Pravda.Ru.
Latest materials

**Supplements and Biomarker Tracking:**
Efforts to "optimize" physical and mental health also include use of supplements, often aimed at reducing inflammation, supporting brain health, or manipulating metabolism.

Despite widespread use in biohacking, clinical evidence for many supplements is limited or mixed, and over-reliance can present risks.

Title:

Content: The butterfly effect in DNA: how mutations in non-coding regions activate autism genes
‘ Butterfly Effect ’ May Explain Some Genetic Causes of Autism
The butterfly effect may explain the activation of genes associated with autism in DNA.
According to the latest study, the complex ripple effect of mutations in genes unrelated to autism may ultimately affect the activity of genes associated with the disorder.
The mechanism of work is that DNA contains genetic material known as promoters, which regulate the activation and deactivation of genes.
Because DNA has a three-dimensional structure, promoters can control genes that are at a great distance from them in the DNA sequence.
These promoters and the corresponding genes form a topologically associated domain (TAD).
Because of this complex mechanism, a person who does not have mutations in genes associated with autism may still develop the disorder due to mutations in promoters elsewhere in the genome.
This new study, published in the journal Cell Genomics, explores this idea.
Autism is often inherited, and it is estimated that 40% to 80% of cases are related to hereditary genes.
However, spontaneous mutations in the DNA that cause autism are also possible.
These mutations are found in "non-coding" sections of DNA that make up most of the genome.
Prior to this study, there was little data on how mutations in non-coding DNA affect the likelihood of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The new findings, obtained after analyzing the genomes of more than 5,000 people with autism, point to a direct link between autism and gene regulation mechanisms, especially with TADs containing genes associated with autism.
Even small changes in the DNA sequence in non-coding regions can significantly affect gene expression, which increases the risk of ASD.
This is compared to the butterfly effect, where a small change in the initial state of a complex system has far-reaching consequences.
In additional experiments using CRISPR gene editing technology on human stem cells, the researchers confirmed the effect of mutations in TAD promoters on genes associated with autism.
Further research is planned to identify other types of non-coding mutations that may affect the likelihood of developing autism.
Author Makar Gorshenin
Makar Vadimovich Gorshenin is a student of the Moscow University of Finance and Law, a freelance correspondent of Pravda.Ru.
Latest materials

**Extreme Exercise, Cold Exposure:**
Physical resilience practices (ice baths, extreme exercise) are popular among biohackers.

While some benefits exist (cognitive boost, muscle adaptation), extreme approaches can lead to injury or stress, and outcomes vary widely.

Title:

Content: The EU will improve the treatment of rare diseases, supporting pharmaceutical companies and scientists
In collaboration with the European Commission
Copyright euronews
Euronews
The EU will lend a helping hand to millions of patients with rare and poorly understood diagnoses.
Brussels promises to support pharmaceutical manufacturers who work in the interests of this group of patients.
Help is waiting for little Victor, the hero of our report.
Three years of diagnosis
Victor lives near Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
Shortly after his birth eight years ago, his parents realized that his son ’ s development was in jeopardy.
His mother, Juliana, recalls: “We went to a neurologist every month.
And then every two months to genetics.
It was obvious to us that something was wrong with the development. ”
It took the family 3 years and tests in 6 countries to make a diagnosis.
Victor suffers from Coffin-Lowry syndrome, it is caused by a small mutation in one of the genes.
"The mutation causes a great delay in psychomotor development, - says Juliana. - He is 8 years old, but mentally and physically he is developed by 2-3 years.
The delay will continue throughout life. ”
The woman became a co-founder of the association of patients with Coffin-Lowry syndrome.
Swimming, physiotherapy, working with a speech therapist help improve the quality of life of her boy.
But how to cure it, science does not yet know.
After consulting with doctors from different countries, Iuliana realized that “the child needs a drug that will help the neurons to better interact with each other. ”
She summarizes: "There has been no research in this regard."
Fold the puzzle of disease
Victor's case is not unique.
The European Union has approved treatment for about 300 of the more than 6,000 rare diseases identified, or just 5%.
One of the addresses where Victor's family received help is the Center for Medical Genetics in Craiova.
Each year, the local specialists treat about a thousand people suffering from rare diseases.
Diagnosis and selection of therapy is fraught with difficulties.
Iona Streta, a geneticist, explains: “Sometimes rare diseases are like a puzzle consisting of 20 pieces.
Then you go to a neurologist, then a pediatrician, a cardiologist and a lab, do a general blood test, a genetic test, to get the big picture.
But some diseases are puzzles of more than 2 thousand pieces, very small.
It takes a lot of time to assemble them.
But people need quick answers to their needs and questions. ”
Aware of the need for new, more advanced and at the same time cheaper drugs, the European Commission seeks to stimulate developers by giving them the right to increased scientific and administrative support.
The Commission also proposed granting companies additional periods of market exclusivity, during which their products are protected from competition.
Eurordis is a non-profit alliance working for the benefit of 30 million Europeans suffering from rare diseases.
Its director, Jan Le Cam, talks about the specifics of helping such patients: "Treatment means eliminating only some of the symptoms, sometimes delaying the onset of the disease, slowing its progression or even stopping the development of the disease.
This is usually a long-term therapy that rarely leads to a full recovery.
So the needs in this area are huge, and the most important thing here is science.
Now we are experiencing an exceptional moment, we are witnessing the emergence of new therapies, including gene and cell therapy, but not only this: pharmacology is developing, including through the reuse of old molecules.
It ’ s just a fountain of opportunity. ”
Joint work of countries and doctors
According to experts, the European Union has every opportunity to maximize this potential.
Dr. Streta relies on information exchange and joint research.
“Imagine that I have three such patients here, perhaps three more will be found in France, the same number in Finland.
Let ’ s look at these people ’ s genetic profiles, their analyses, to see if we can find some biomarkers, potential therapeutic targets, and then maybe run trials and find the right treatment. ”
The family of Victor also has hopes for science.
“In the last two years, treatments based on gene editing have appeared, ” the boy ’ s mother says.“ We are also betting on neurological treatment to improve the connections between neurons.
So the son will learn faster, his speech will improve.
I think the more we talk about rare diseases, the more research is funded, the closer we are to giving patients a better life. "
Also on the subject

What are the health benefits of the practice of bathing in cold water?

**Holistic and Preventive Approaches:**
Early and frequent medical screening, along with therapies such as physiotherapy and speech therapy for rare disorders, can improve quality of life but seldom provide a cure; ongoing science is crucial.

**Caveats and Scientific Support:**
- Some areas, like genetic editing or new cancer treatments, show remarkable promise but are still in experimental stages.

- The scientific foundation for biohacking varies: While personalized and precision medicine enjoys growing support, many self-administered biohacks (strict exclusion diets, extreme fasting, and supplement mega-dosing) outpace clear clinical evidence.

- Social support, psychological well-being, and exercise in moderation are scientifically supported, but extremism may carry health risks.

**In summary:** Many biohacking practices are inspired by cutting-edge science (genomics, early diagnostics, targeted therapies), but the level of scientific support is highly variable.

There are successes (like advanced cancer cures or gene editing), but also many "optimization" methods that lack robust evidence or present potential downsides—caution and medical supervision are advised.

**Biohacking: Methods, Practices, and Scientific Evidence – Nugget Summary**

**Cognitive Enhancement Drugs (“Nootropics”)**
- Drugs originally intended for medical use (e.g., for Alzheimer’s, speech disorders) are sometimes used by healthy individuals to boost focus, memory, or productivity.

Title:

Content: New superhuman brains.
About drugs that make you smarter and more miserable!
Entrepreneur and programmer Dave Asbury ’ s mornings may not seem different at first glance than anyone else ’ s.
Dave wakes up and takes his young children to school, then comes home and makes himself a breakfast of coffee and butter.
Then, he walks into his office, reaches out to a corner, pulls several capsules out of boxes that look like medicine, and then starts working.
[1] Here it is.
Everything is normal, until we discover that the capsules he takes are not really drugs, but drugs.
Dave ’ s use of these drugs cannot be considered strange: throughout human history, before civilizations even existed, drugs accompanied humans.
For the damage that may lead the individual to death, some found in them an escape from the worries and burdens of life, although the price they will pay for this is high.
What is really strange is that what Dave, and many others, want from taking a certain type of drug is the complete opposite of all this; he doesn ’ t want to get away with it every morning; he wants to indulge more in it and manipulate it to his advantage; he wants to become smarter, more productive, richer.
Dave ’ s drugs are neither weed nor opioid, nor are they similar to any other familiar drug, Dave taking nootropics, or “smart ” drugs.
The chemist C.C. didn't have a clue.
Giragia Yuma said that the word he invented as the name for the drug Pristam, which he installed in his laboratory one day in 1964, would become so popular 60 years later.
The name of this compound came from the combination of the Greek words "nos", which means brain, and "tropin", which means "me," and created in his laboratory the first drug that he hopes will succeed in bending the brain of those who use it.
[2] Like any medicine.
Another, Gergea designed the prestam as a treatment, and he hoped it would help patients with brain and cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer ’ s in the elderly and speech disorders in children.
But most Nutrobix users now are often completely healthy individuals with no brain abnormality, and do not aim to cure themselves of a disease.
[3]
Smart drug users are also different from any other type of drug users: they are not marginalized groups or young Magna people who dose drugs in dark dens or raucous parties; nootropics are some of the world ’ s finest college students and some of the brightest tech minds in Silicon Valley, the tech heartland of San Francisco.
By taking drugs that are mostly made for people with cognitive disorders as a result of mental illness, these brilliant students and programmers want to enhance their ability to learn, focus and think creatively to become smarter, which seems to be happening under the influence of these drugs.
Phoebe, a history student at a prestigious university in England, describes the impact of nootropics on her in an interview with The Guardian: “These drugs help you work, so you can study longer without distractions.
You feel like going to the library on your own, and you don ’ t even want to take a lunch break.
You look at the clock and it ’ s 7: 00 p.m., but you can still keep going. ”
Johnny, a student at the same university, describes his first experience with drugs: "I had a strange feeling, I remember sitting in the exam and thinking, 'This is terrible!
Oh, my God!
I feel as if I ’ m going to lose consciousness, ” but at the same time I could remember everything, whole paragraphs remembered word for word.
That was great. "[4]
It all sounds really cool, taking a few pills in the morning gives you an incredible ability to work and think.
But, as anyone who has ever taken a drug knows, every drug has side effects that range in severity, from mild things like a headache to symptoms as severe as the disease for which you took it, and additional drugs have to be taken to treat it.
So what are the side effects of entropy?
There aren ’ t enough studies to answer this question, but many people ’ s long-term experience with Nutrobox has never been promising.
Writer and journalist Kate Miller tells her story with those drugs that she started taking after a student in her final year of university, continuing with her after entering her career.
At first, everything seemed great, she found that she could concentrate for long hours and work tirelessly until late at night, and with all this, she was able to maintain a good social life.
But not long after, the ugly face of Nootropics revealed itself to her: Kate became an addict.
In her New York Times article, Kate recounts what she went through: “I was fooling myself when I thought I could stay balanced while taking these drugs, when I thought the benefits outweighed the harm.
I started to increase the doses I was taking, and then, I found myself spending long nights flipping over in bed and falling asleep, my mind racing and my heart beating violently.
When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I did was reach out to take the pills again.
My body started getting used to these drugs, and then I lost their effect, so I started to increase the dose.
I would take it if I found myself yawning after I turned off the alarm.
I turned into a wreck, always angry and lost my ability to connect with the world. ”
Kate reached the point where she found her life was falling apart on all levels, and here came her decision to stop taking those drugs once and for all.
But what no one has told her is that stopping itself will be difficult, as nitrobix, like other drugs, leaves its users at the beginning of quitting defenseless in front of a barrage of painful withdrawal symptoms.
“I found myself sleeping during meetings and I couldn ’ t finish my work before the deadline.
I also began to feel very hungry and began to eat heavily.
This disorder left me with a very fragile and sensitive brain chemistry, and my weight gain and late work only made matters worse.
It was hard for me to understand at the time that what I was going through was withdrawal symptoms; no one had warned me about the side effects of these drugs. ”
Phoebe and Jonny, students who had been helped by Nootropics during the exam period, soon noticed the bad effect on them; Phoebe began to feel severe pain in her stomach, and Jimmy felt that he was becoming too dependent on her for everything, and he ate it every morning without really needing it.
Fortunately, before they went through Kate ’ s bad experience, the Taliban gave up Nutropics altogether.
Even Dave Asbury, an entrepreneur who takes huge amounts of nootropics every morning and founded a company that makes coffee mixed with the drugs, has developed a severe allergy to certain foods that he has been eating normally throughout his life.
In a paper in the journal Clinical Neuroscience, researchers Farid Taleh and Jane Aglotti found that many Nutrobix drugs cause side effects ranging in severity from diarrhea, headaches, dizziness and insomnia, to memory loss, identity disorders and motor system deficiencies.
The research also included a case study of four individuals between the ages of 17 and 28 who were taken to the hospital emergency room after a nervous breakdown. [6] Here, we find ourselves faced with a more important question: Why would people with high levels of intelligence resort to drugs that may add to their intelligence even deeper, but they may also have side effects that no one knows are serious?
[7]
Tim Farris, an entrepreneur and renowned author of human development books, has no real qualms about the long-term side effects of nootropics.
Speaking to CNN, after he started talking about the amount of pressure entrepreneurs are under today, he concluded: “Just like an Olympian who is willing to do anything, even if he reduces his age to five years, to win a gold medal, you ’ ll think about any drugs you take to become smarter. ”
[8]
Jeff Wu, a software engineer who set up a company that specializes in manufacturing nootropics, goes on to say, “Creativity and high mental performance are the only ways you can succeed in Silicon Valley.
I liken tech and finance to professional athletes, so the only way for your team, product or project to be successful is to have a comparative advantage over competitors. ”
It ’ s not just the tech industry, Wu adds: “To become smarter and more productive is to meet modern day standards of success. ”
If some people seem willing to swallow poorly researched drugs without suffering from a real disease just to increase their ability to produce something strange, you ’ ve never heard of the term and the practices that these drugs and many other strange practices include: body hacking, or “biohacking. ”
As a programmer or engineer might look at a computer looking for ways to develop it, biohackers are trying through methods that vary in extremes, from intermittent fasting to injecting themselves with stem cells, to make their bodies and brains better, stronger, healthier.
At first glance, this may not seem like a bad thing, so who wouldn ’ t want to be the best possible version of themselves?
But what ’ s interesting about this is that their desire to develop their bodies and brains stops at the point where these bodies and brains are more productive, and does not go beyond them to other areas of life, where none of the body hackers, for example, thought about creating a drug that by taking it more willing to help others in their distress.
Faced with the large number of people who are willing to take Nutropics to increase their production capacity, neuroscientist Anders Sandberg found in a study that only 9% of people are willing to take a drug that makes them more empathetic or kinder.
This increased use of nootropics and the willingness to manipulate the very composition of the body in order to increase production is itself a symptom of a civilizational disease that envelops our world today: the obsession with success at any cost.
The Guardian ’ s Carol Gadwallar says of this: “In the 1960s, sedatives were known as the little helper of mothers.
Today, however, Futropics is a small aid to capitalism.
“It ’ s just another symptom of a world dominated by competition where everyone is looking for a comparative advantage that puts them above others. ”
[10] Neuroscientist Anjan Chatterjee says: "Today, from the moment of their birth until their death, people only know about running in a rat race.
We are overwhelmed by the feeling that there are a limited number of prizes on the horizon and that everyone is competing for them.
It ’ s hard and you ’ re willing to do anything to win. ”
[11]
In this world governed by machines and numbers, we are also expected to become machines: machines that wake up in the morning and work tirelessly until evening falls, and everything is ultimately governed by numbers.
How successful you are depends on how much you produce each day, which at the end of the month will translate into how much you make.
Your salary or wealth is no longer just a means to provide you with a decent life, but has become a kind of obsession, everyone wants to be successful in a modern culture that values only material values, and defies those who fail the test of making money.
In such a culture, it is not surprising to find people willing to swallow drugs with unknown side effects in order to be better.
Isn ’ t that, in one way or another, what modern culture imposes on us all today, working to burn and losing some of life ’ s simplest pleasures just to live properly and escape the stigma of failure?
The question remains: Is there then a relentless pursuit of success, what kind of happiness?
Or is the summit nothing more than a glittering image of something really empty and cold and lonely?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Sources:
1.
I ’ m The Guy Who Created Bulletproof Coffee – This Is My Morning Routine
2.
Nootropic
3.
Under pressure, Silicon Valley workers turn to LSD microdosing
4.
Students used to take drugs to get high.
Now they take them to get higher grades
5.
The Last All-Nighter
6.
Probable Nootropicinduced Psychiatric Adverse Effects: A Series of Four Cases
7.
My smart drugs nightmare
8. smart drugs: what silicon valley is on
9.
Under Pressure: Silicon Valley workers turn to lsd
10.
Students used to take drugs to get high.
Now they take them to get higher grades
11.
Under Pressure: Silicon Valley workers turn to lsd
Source: The Island
About this story
“Narcissism ” is a widespread term, often misused to describe anyone who abuses us.
But in fact, a little bit of narcissism will do you good -- this report looks at the evolution of the concept of narcissism over the past decades.
6 / 10 / 2017
More Article
Most Read

- Side effects are common, ranging from mild (headache) to severe (emotional changes, addiction, or dependency), especially as users increase doses to maintain effects.

- Psychological toll: some users report irritability, social withdrawal, and worsening mental health when dependent on or withdrawing from these substances.

What are the risks and dangers of combining the keto diet and intermittent fasting?

- “Smart drugs” are now valued for productivity (e.g., in students or Silicon Valley workers) rather than for recreation, reflecting societal pressures to compete and excel.

**Genetic and Medical Biohacking**
- Experimental gene editing (like CRISPR/Cas systems) is a frontier in “biohacking,” with the goal of treating intractable genetic diseases or optimizing traits.

Title:

Content: A Gene Editing Technique Called the Swiss Army Knife Could Treat Intractable Genetic Diseases
Science and Technology
Expressive Image
Copy Link https: / / en.rt.com / r84p
People with incurable genetic diseases such as Parkinson's disease, sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis can get a lifeline using a new technique.
The new technique, dubbed the Swiss Army Knife, is an evolution in the technology known as the CRISPR gene editing procedure, first developed in 2012 and described as one of the most powerful medical tools in history.
The technique works by cutting out specific sections of DNA.
Experts agree that there is huge potential in CRISPR as an effective treatment, and the CRISPR gene editing system is usually associated with Cas9 (an enzyme derived from bacteria that cuts and replaces defective genes), but there is a problem that its efficiency is somewhat constrained by its relatively large size, making it difficult for the mechanism to squeeze cells and start working.
Scientists at Stamford University have now developed a CRISPR tool called CasMINI, using a protein close to Cas9, but much smaller than it, that should be able to enter human cells more easily.
The team created a tiny enzyme called Cas14, which is half the size of Cas9.
But Cas14 doesn ’ t work in mammals, so Stamford ’ s team genetically manipulated the enzyme to fix this problem and named it CasMINI.
Dr Lee (Stanley) Key, from the research team at Stamford who worked on the project, said: “There have been previous efforts to improve CRISPR ’ s performance.
This is a crucial step forward for CRISPR genome engineering applications.
The work presents the smallest CRISPR to date, according to our knowledge, as a genome-editing technique. ”
“If people sometimes think of Cas9 as molecular scissors, here we made a Swiss knife that has multiple functions.
It ’ s not big, but it ’ s miniature portable for ease of use. ”
In their experiments, the researchers noted that CasMINI can delete, activate, and modify genetic code just like its larger counterparts.
Its smaller size means it should be easier to deliver to human cells and the human body, making it a potential tool for treating various diseases, including eye diseases, organ degeneration, cancer treatment and genetic diseases in general.
CRISPR is known to be a serious game-changer in the medical field.
That ’ s why Professors Emmanuel Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who were involved in the discovery of Cas9, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for their work in the field.
But until now, CRISPR ’ s use in humans has been very limited by a small set of studies.
Some people are concerned about the potential long-term effects of this type of technology, with safety and ethical implications being a particular concern.
There have been some examples of illegal use of CRISPR, such as the infamous scientist He Jiankui, who used CRISPR on twin embryos of girls in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV.
But scientists are still unable to use this technology to fight some of the world ’ s most problematic diseases.
The study was published in the journal Molecular Cell.
Source: Express
Agree.
This website uses cookies. You can read the terms of use to activate this feature by clicking here

- Such techniques remain experimental, with only limited and preliminary human studies.

Title:

Content: A Gene Editing Technique Called the Swiss Army Knife Could Treat Intractable Genetic Diseases
Science and Technology
Expressive Image
Copy Link https: / / en.rt.com / r84p
People with incurable genetic diseases such as Parkinson's disease, sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis can get a lifeline using a new technique.
The new technique, dubbed the Swiss Army Knife, is an evolution in the technology known as the CRISPR gene editing procedure, first developed in 2012 and described as one of the most powerful medical tools in history.
The technique works by cutting out specific sections of DNA.
Experts agree that there is huge potential in CRISPR as an effective treatment, and the CRISPR gene editing system is usually associated with Cas9 (an enzyme derived from bacteria that cuts and replaces defective genes), but there is a problem that its efficiency is somewhat constrained by its relatively large size, making it difficult for the mechanism to squeeze cells and start working.
Scientists at Stamford University have now developed a CRISPR tool called CasMINI, using a protein close to Cas9, but much smaller than it, that should be able to enter human cells more easily.
The team created a tiny enzyme called Cas14, which is half the size of Cas9.
But Cas14 doesn ’ t work in mammals, so Stamford ’ s team genetically manipulated the enzyme to fix this problem and named it CasMINI.
Dr Lee (Stanley) Key, from the research team at Stamford who worked on the project, said: “There have been previous efforts to improve CRISPR ’ s performance.
This is a crucial step forward for CRISPR genome engineering applications.
The work presents the smallest CRISPR to date, according to our knowledge, as a genome-editing technique. ”
“If people sometimes think of Cas9 as molecular scissors, here we made a Swiss knife that has multiple functions.
It ’ s not big, but it ’ s miniature portable for ease of use. ”
In their experiments, the researchers noted that CasMINI can delete, activate, and modify genetic code just like its larger counterparts.
Its smaller size means it should be easier to deliver to human cells and the human body, making it a potential tool for treating various diseases, including eye diseases, organ degeneration, cancer treatment and genetic diseases in general.
CRISPR is known to be a serious game-changer in the medical field.
That ’ s why Professors Emmanuel Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who were involved in the discovery of Cas9, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for their work in the field.
But until now, CRISPR ’ s use in humans has been very limited by a small set of studies.
Some people are concerned about the potential long-term effects of this type of technology, with safety and ethical implications being a particular concern.
There have been some examples of illegal use of CRISPR, such as the infamous scientist He Jiankui, who used CRISPR on twin embryos of girls in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV.
But scientists are still unable to use this technology to fight some of the world ’ s most problematic diseases.
The study was published in the journal Molecular Cell.
Source: Express
Agree.
This website uses cookies. You can read the terms of use to activate this feature by clicking here

Is there clinical evidence for benefits of short intermittent fasting methods?

Clinical evidence for fasting as long as seven days is not yet available.

Ethical and medical risks are still significant.

What are the risks and dangers of adhering to the keto diet for a long period of time?

negative impact on heart and kidney function

**Medical Screenings for Optimization**
- There is increased use of genetic screening for disease risk or personalized treatments (exome/genome sequencing).

Title:

Content: Gene Therapy
by David N. Finegold, MD, University of Pittsburgh
Reviewed by 1444.
Although gene therapy is defined as any treatment that alters the function of a gene, it is often thought of as inserting natural genes into the cells of a person who lacks these natural genes due to a specific genetic disorder.
In gene stitch therapy, natural genes can be synthesized, using PCR, from natural deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) donated by another person.Currently, this gene stitch therapy is most likely to be effective in preventing or treating single gene defects, such as cystic fibrosis (see also Genes and Pigment). Yat.
The transfer of natural deoxyribonucleic acid to someone ’ s cells can take place in a number of ways.
Infection with viral transfection
One method of gene injection therapy is to use a virus, because some viruses have the ability to insert genetic material into human DNA.
Natural DNA is introduced, via a chemical reaction, into a virus that then infects (transfects) a person ’ s cells, leading to the transfer of deoxyribonucleic acid to the nucleus of these cells.
Another concern is that new natural deoxyribonucleic acid may be “lost ” or fail to integrate into new cells after a period of time, leading to the re-emergence of genetic disorder. A virus, too, which causes a reaction similar to rejection of the transplanted organ.
They are liposomes.
Another way of inserting or inserting genes is by using liposomes, which are microscopic vesicles or sacs with a layer of lipids. Liposomes can be customized to contain DNA that can be absorbed by a person ’ s cells, thus giving their DNA to the cell ’ s nucleus. Because the lipid particles are not absorbed into a person ’ s cells, this new gene does not work properly, or the new gene is eventually lost.
Anti-Expression Technique
There is a different method of gene therapy, which uses so-called anti-expression technology.In anti-expression technology, it does not stitch natural genes. It simply disables abnormal genes. Using anti-expression technology, modified RNA molecules can bind to specific parts of DNA, preventing the affected genes from working. It is also being tried to treat cancer and some neurological disorders, but it is still in the early experimental stages.
Chemical modification and chemical modification
Another method of gene therapy is to increase or decrease the activities of certain genes with chemicals to modify the chemical reactions in the cell that control gene expression. [1] For example, modifying a chemical reaction called methylation can alter the function of a gene, causing an increase or decrease in the production of certain proteins, or the production of different types of protein. These methods are currently being used experimentally to treat some types of cancer.
Transplant treatment with transplantation
Gene therapy is also being studied experimentally in transplant surgery; by altering the genes of transplanted organs to make them more compatible with the recipient's genes, the recipient of the organ is less inclined to reject the transplanted organ.
Thus, the recipient may not need to use drugs that suppress the immune system, which can have serious side effects, but this type of treatment, so far, is usually unsuccessful.
CRISPR-Cas9
CRISPR-CAS9 refers to the initials of the words clustered regularly spaced short palindromic repeats – CRISPR-associated protein 9, and means "CRISPR-associated protein 9 short symmetrical cluster repeats".
CRISPR-Cas9 is a gene-editing tool that makes a precise cut in the DNA strand, thus, the natural DNA repair process takes responsibility for incorporating the newly introduced gene into the DNA. [1] The technique is still in experimental stages, but has been applied to several human embryos in an attempt to fix a genetic defect.
Test your KnowledgeTake a Quiz!

- Early studies show potential in identifying predispositions to various diseases (e.g., liver disease’s impact on heart health), but clinical benefits and harms in healthy individuals are not fully established.

Title:

Content: Gulf News
Study Shows Early Forms of Liver Disease Affect Heart Health
Thank you for reading and your interest in a study showing that early forms of liver disease affect heart health.
ADEN (Reuters) - Researchers from the Smedt Heart Institute in Cedar Sinai have found that even early forms of liver disease directly affect heart health.
Study Shows Early Forms of Liver Disease Affect Heart Health
The findings, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, help further clarify the link between liver disease and heart disease beyond their common risk factors.
In the study, researchers compared patients ’ FIB-4 scores — a marker for cirrhosis that could indicate the risk of acute liver disease — with heart abnormalities visible through heart MRI scans.
They found that high FIB-4 scores were associated with impaired heart function and vascular dimensions.
Alan Cowan, a cardiologist and cardiac imaging researcher at the Smidt Heart Institute as well as the lead author of the study, said it was known that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease was linked to cardiovascular death, but the relationship was not well understood and may be obscured by risk factors common to the two, such as diabetes.
Previous similar studies have been limited in scope, looking only at how cirrhosis and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease affect the heart.
Earlier this year, the American Heart Association (AHA) released a statement that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease — an increasingly common liver condition — is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease associated with atherosclerosis.
Surprisingly, heart disease — not the progression of liver disease — is the leading cause of death in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, according to the American Heart Association.
“If 25% of the population has this potential risk factor for heart disease, we know we need to fully understand it.
Therefore, our overall goal from this study was to examine the links between the heart and liver – a new area of study, but it makes sense to explore further.
The liver treats cholesterol and produces factors that contribute to blood clotting and inflammation.
And all of that can affect the heart — so we wanted to take a closer look at these correlations. ”
For the study, the researchers reviewed electronic medical records from the past 11 years of 1,668 patients with low, medium or high scores of FIB-4 within one year of performing an MRI of the heart, adjusting for standard cardiovascular risk factors.
They found that nearly 86% of patients had at least one heart abnormality.
Cardiac MRI provides a unique view of the heart, using detailed imaging that can identify subtle changes in heart structure and function, blood vessel size and structure, heart muscle composition, and more.
"The abnormalities we saw were changes in blood vessels - enlarged blood vessels coming out of the heart - as well as an increase in the amount of blood moving and usually, when doctors check the heart, we don't think about the liver, and vice versa.
We tend to be very specialized in our member categories.
"But the results of this study suggest that we can and should examine liver disease when looking at heart disease, and we cannot consider the heart and liver as completely separate organs."
Cowan added that the next step in the research is to explore the impact that liver disease can have on heart health.
"Other questions arise, such as: When treating people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, can medications that treat this also help the heart?
Or when you see a cardiologist or primary care physician and risk factors such as high cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, and family history, should non-alcoholic fatty liver disease be a standard risk factor to consider?
A new study suggests that leprosy, one of the oldest and most persistent diseases in the world, may have a surprising ability to stimulate liver growth and regeneration.
Scientists discovered that parasites associated with the disease can reprogram cells to increase the size of the liver in adult animals without causing damage, scarring or tumors.
The results suggest that it is possible to adapt this natural process to rejuvenate the aging liver and increase the period of health - the length of time you live free of diseases - in humans.
Experts say it can also help restore the growth of a damaged liver, reducing the need for transplantation.
Currently, transplantation is the only option for people with end-stage liver scarring.
Professor Anora Rambukana, lead author of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said: “If we can determine how bacteria grow in the liver as a functional organ without causing harmful effects on living animals, we may be able to translate this knowledge to develop safer therapeutic interventions aimed at regenerating aging liver and regenerating damaged tissue. ”
Previous studies have promoted liver regrowth in mice by generating cells through an invasive technique that has often led to scarring and tumor growth.
To overcome these harmful side effects, the Edinburgh researchers built on their earlier discovery about the ability of partial cellular reprogramming of leprosy causing bacteria, Mycobacterium leprosy.
Working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the team infected 57 animals, the natural host of the leprosy bacteria, with Mycobacterium leprosy, and compared the livers of these animals with their uninfected counterparts and those found to be resistant to infection.
They found that the infected animals developed an enlarged liver — but intact and uninfected — with the same vital components, such as blood vessels and bile ducts, such as an uninfected, infection-resistant armadillo.
The researchers believe that the bacteria hijacked the liver ’ s inherent regenerative capacity to increase the size of the organ and, therefore, to provide it with more cells that can grow within it.
They also discovered several indications that the main types of liver cells — known as liver cells — had reached a regenerative state in infected animals.
The researchers hope the discovery, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, could help develop interventions for aging and liver damage in humans.
Dr Zania Stamataki, an assistant professor at the University of Birmingham ’ s Centre for Liver and Digestive Research, said: “This is exciting and unusual research in that it shows liver growth in the absence of liver injury.
"This research is an innovative example where we can use microbes as tools to understand biology."
Dr Darius Weidera, associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the University of Reading, said: “Overall, the findings could pave the way for new therapeutic approaches to treating liver diseases, such as cirrhosis.
However, given that the research was done using armadillo as a model animal, it is unclear whether and how these promising results could translate into human liver biology.
Furthermore, since the bacteria used in this study are pathogenic, a fundamental improvement of the methods is required before clinical translation. ”
You may also read.

**Dietary Practices**
- Common “biohacker” diets include intermittent fasting, keto, gluten-free, and dairy-free regimens, often combined (e.g., Bulletproof Diet).

Title:

Content: A Gene Editing Technique Called the Swiss Army Knife Could Treat Intractable Genetic Diseases
Science and Technology
Expressive Image
Copy Link https: / / en.rt.com / r84p
People with incurable genetic diseases such as Parkinson's disease, sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis can get a lifeline using a new technique.
The new technique, dubbed the Swiss Army Knife, is an evolution in the technology known as the CRISPR gene editing procedure, first developed in 2012 and described as one of the most powerful medical tools in history.
The technique works by cutting out specific sections of DNA.
Experts agree that there is huge potential in CRISPR as an effective treatment, and the CRISPR gene editing system is usually associated with Cas9 (an enzyme derived from bacteria that cuts and replaces defective genes), but there is a problem that its efficiency is somewhat constrained by its relatively large size, making it difficult for the mechanism to squeeze cells and start working.
Scientists at Stamford University have now developed a CRISPR tool called CasMINI, using a protein close to Cas9, but much smaller than it, that should be able to enter human cells more easily.
The team created a tiny enzyme called Cas14, which is half the size of Cas9.
But Cas14 doesn ’ t work in mammals, so Stamford ’ s team genetically manipulated the enzyme to fix this problem and named it CasMINI.
Dr Lee (Stanley) Key, from the research team at Stamford who worked on the project, said: “There have been previous efforts to improve CRISPR ’ s performance.
This is a crucial step forward for CRISPR genome engineering applications.
The work presents the smallest CRISPR to date, according to our knowledge, as a genome-editing technique. ”
“If people sometimes think of Cas9 as molecular scissors, here we made a Swiss knife that has multiple functions.
It ’ s not big, but it ’ s miniature portable for ease of use. ”
In their experiments, the researchers noted that CasMINI can delete, activate, and modify genetic code just like its larger counterparts.
Its smaller size means it should be easier to deliver to human cells and the human body, making it a potential tool for treating various diseases, including eye diseases, organ degeneration, cancer treatment and genetic diseases in general.
CRISPR is known to be a serious game-changer in the medical field.
That ’ s why Professors Emmanuel Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who were involved in the discovery of Cas9, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for their work in the field.
But until now, CRISPR ’ s use in humans has been very limited by a small set of studies.
Some people are concerned about the potential long-term effects of this type of technology, with safety and ethical implications being a particular concern.
There have been some examples of illegal use of CRISPR, such as the infamous scientist He Jiankui, who used CRISPR on twin embryos of girls in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV.
But scientists are still unable to use this technology to fight some of the world ’ s most problematic diseases.
The study was published in the journal Molecular Cell.
Source: Express
Agree.
This website uses cookies. You can read the terms of use to activate this feature by clicking here

- These diets often promise reduced “inflammation” and “gut optimization,” but many restrictive or extreme diets lack robust, long-term evidence for healthy individuals and may carry risks (nutrient deficiencies, metabolic consequences).

What are the risks and dangers of diets?

**Supplementation**
- Widespread, daily use of a variety of supplements, often in high doses, is common, with aims of optimizing micronutrients, “detoxifying,” or enhancing performance.

- While some basic supplementation (e.g., correcting deficiencies) is supported by evidence, most combinations and high doses are untested and can be harmful or interact negatively.

**Physical Extremes and Recovery**
- Practices like intense exercise regimens and ice baths are often used for perceived benefits (performance, mental clarity, resilience).

What are the health benefits of the practice of bathing in cold water?

- Evidence for ice baths indicates only modest, short-term benefits for muscle soreness; extreme regimens may increase risk of injury or health problems if not done safely.

Title:

Content: A Gene Editing Technique Called the Swiss Army Knife Could Treat Intractable Genetic Diseases
Science and Technology
Expressive Image
Copy Link https: / / en.rt.com / r84p
People with incurable genetic diseases such as Parkinson's disease, sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis can get a lifeline using a new technique.
The new technique, dubbed the Swiss Army Knife, is an evolution in the technology known as the CRISPR gene editing procedure, first developed in 2012 and described as one of the most powerful medical tools in history.
The technique works by cutting out specific sections of DNA.
Experts agree that there is huge potential in CRISPR as an effective treatment, and the CRISPR gene editing system is usually associated with Cas9 (an enzyme derived from bacteria that cuts and replaces defective genes), but there is a problem that its efficiency is somewhat constrained by its relatively large size, making it difficult for the mechanism to squeeze cells and start working.
Scientists at Stamford University have now developed a CRISPR tool called CasMINI, using a protein close to Cas9, but much smaller than it, that should be able to enter human cells more easily.
The team created a tiny enzyme called Cas14, which is half the size of Cas9.
But Cas14 doesn ’ t work in mammals, so Stamford ’ s team genetically manipulated the enzyme to fix this problem and named it CasMINI.
Dr Lee (Stanley) Key, from the research team at Stamford who worked on the project, said: “There have been previous efforts to improve CRISPR ’ s performance.
This is a crucial step forward for CRISPR genome engineering applications.
The work presents the smallest CRISPR to date, according to our knowledge, as a genome-editing technique. ”
“If people sometimes think of Cas9 as molecular scissors, here we made a Swiss knife that has multiple functions.
It ’ s not big, but it ’ s miniature portable for ease of use. ”
In their experiments, the researchers noted that CasMINI can delete, activate, and modify genetic code just like its larger counterparts.
Its smaller size means it should be easier to deliver to human cells and the human body, making it a potential tool for treating various diseases, including eye diseases, organ degeneration, cancer treatment and genetic diseases in general.
CRISPR is known to be a serious game-changer in the medical field.
That ’ s why Professors Emmanuel Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, who were involved in the discovery of Cas9, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for their work in the field.
But until now, CRISPR ’ s use in humans has been very limited by a small set of studies.
Some people are concerned about the potential long-term effects of this type of technology, with safety and ethical implications being a particular concern.
There have been some examples of illegal use of CRISPR, such as the infamous scientist He Jiankui, who used CRISPR on twin embryos of girls in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV.
But scientists are still unable to use this technology to fight some of the world ’ s most problematic diseases.
The study was published in the journal Molecular Cell.
Source: Express
Agree.
This website uses cookies. You can read the terms of use to activate this feature by clicking here

Title:

Content: The family ’ s preference for a male child causes her “uterine problems ”!
Unconscious implants "do not want to be a woman" setting
Women ’ s diseases are also linked to the “native family Trojan horse program. ”
(Illustration, not related to the subject of this article / Mennonite Hospital provided)
Written by Lee Hsin Pong
Excerpt from / Fang Zhi Publishing 《 Native Family Trojan Horse Quick Sieve 》
I have found a native family Trojan horse for a case with gynecological problems, and now I have the following tracks:
[Advertisement] Please continue reading...
mastitis
Among the female students who come to me, if they have chest problems, such as mastitis, breast nodules, breast cancer, etc., they usually have a condition of suppressing their emotions, especially if they have been dissatisfied with their partner, but they have not expressed their anger.
Therefore, if you have a grudge against your predecessor, current position or unbalanced resentment, you can both physically and mentally, massage more to clear the meridian, and in the heart to resolve the past resentment with love, so that it will no longer become a new cause of their future.
Uterine or pelvic problems
For example, menstrual pain, pelvic inflammation, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, uterine ovarian cancer and so on.
I have three female entrepreneurial students who have come to me to investigate the killing of Trojans.
They come from different places, different backgrounds, but have similar native family modules: they are raised in patriarchal families, and their mothers have said to them from childhood: "Men are unreliable, they have to rely on themselves, to save themselves, stand on their own, and strengthen themselves."
One more thing in common is that they are strong in their work.
The problem is that they are subconsciously set to "women are weak", so to live like men, as a result, all three of them have gynecological problems, either uterine fibroids, uterine tumors, or ovarian cancer, and the uterus and ovaries are cut off, in line with their subconscious or unconscious "do not want to be a woman" setting - denying the femininity / frequency of female organs, Start to intrude on your own gynecological site, resulting in the fact that "get sick to remove".
Therefore, I strongly recommend that if your native family also has this situation, please be sure to remove the subconscious settings, change to: as a woman can also live life force, can also have independent power.
Even if parents love their brother or brother, but our most precious is ourselves, this is the "overlooked" role of the gift is: although from a small life in an unfair environment, but we can learn early to see their value, believe in themselves, respect themselves, love themselves, do not have to fight, do not compare, but will grow more than brothers.
If the younger student has menstrual problems, and she has brothers and sisters, I will ask the above standard questions; if she feels that the elders in the family (father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, grandmother, etc.) value men and women, I will help her clean up the mark, and I will ask her to watch the documentary “Sister ”, and through this film of the Dragon Phoenix family, I will practice thinking: If you are the sister in the film, how can you not be" strongly branded "negative imprint?
The more extreme case of “male preference ” is a female who is about 35 years old and has terminal uterine and ovarian cancer. When she came to me, her uterus and ovaries had been removed, but the cancer cells had metastasized to the pelvis.
When I met her, she was already skinny. Later, after an in-depth interview with her, she found that her native family had a negative impression of "son preference" - she heard relatives say that when she was still in her mother's stomach, her mother often quarreled with her father, and her mother wanted to remove her, so she was planted in the womb "fear of not living a wooden horse", causing her subconscious feeling that she was not worth. Live and have had anorexia since childhood.
It is easy to understand that her disease occurred in gynecological areas such as the uterus and ovaries, because this was the source of her earliest fear of being imprinted, and even after the uterus and ovaries were removed, the negative imprint was still working and continued to cause cancer in her pelvic cavity.
She said that she may be because she is a girl, so her parents want to take her, perhaps her body is thus beginning to create "take away female organs" disease frequency, so that you can become a boy, parents will love her again.
Since her illness, she has often been angry with the people around her who take care of her.
I asked her, "Do you really want to survive?" She said, "Yes!" I said, "It is very important that you do not retaliate against your parents with your health, and do not yell at people who care about you with anger."
If you have decided to live a new version of life, you can use the imagination to remove the old version of yourself, and replace a new version of yourself … You can find the godfather and mother again, I am also very willing to be your sister, so that you temporarily and the original family parents of the old mark off, re-establish a second life.
If possible, I would like to give you two specific exercises:
First, go to nature every day, lie on a yoga mat or grass, and imagine that your navel has a new umbilical cord, connected to the center of the womb of Mother Earth in the earth.
At the same time, let the sun shine on the back, let the sun enter each spine, reactivate the vital energy, restore the will power to survive, and imagine yourself evaporating this poisoned old computer, directly creating a new computer - through the sky as a father, the earth as a mother.
Second, start a new life with the frequency of a "new computer", and then if you run out of any ideas, first check whether it is a new computer or an old computer.
If it is an old computer, it will be destroyed directly and replaced with a new computer frequency with unconditional love, safety, trust, health, self-confidence, strength, and happiness.
When eating, if you do not want to eat, ask yourself: Is this the frequency of the new computer or the old computer?
She listened very happy, but the next second suddenly sat next to me from the opposite side and said: Sister, you see, I have a knife here, I have a pain there..., I immediately told her: "You don't need to complain to me or people around you, tell, create your own pain here or there, to let us care about you. There are many successful examples), but this is not the truth, but the source frequency transmitter that constantly creates disease.
The module of "winning love with illness" will continue to create unbearable pain for you, so it is very important to clear the negative mark of the original family.
No matter what your condition, we will always love you unconditionally, but I want you to focus on your recovery rather than your illness, to speak in a way that determines “recovery / health ”, to live in a“ living ” way, and not to live in a “dead ” way, okay? ” she said.
I also encountered a "son preference" counterexample, that is, the parents overlove her caused by the gynecological problem: this woman about 45 years old has had her uterus, ovaries removed due to cancer, the cancer cells also spread to the large intestine, liver, pancreas, part of the large intestine has also been removed.
I asked her what she thought of her parents as a child that hurt her.
She said: "When I was a child because my parents hurt me more, my brother was very jealous, often hit me when my parents were not home, and once threw me into the door plate, causing my nose and mouth to hurt and bleed, and the door was knocked out of a big hole."
But as soon as my mother entered the house, the first time she was concerned: 'Can the door be repaired like this?' This made me very hurt and felt that I was not as valuable as a door, and from then on I could no longer feel the love of my family, and I did not have the meaning of living... 」
She did not know that the self-destruct program of her series of gynecological diseases was closely related to this door-to-door trauma.
When I wrote the equations related to these two things to her, she was surprised, and mentioned that she now has two daughters, the younger daughter is more beautiful, more favored by her, once she saw the 6-year-old daughter beating the 3-year-old daughter, she angrily beat the older daughter, but if it is the younger daughter beating the older daughter, she will scolded the older daughter why not let the younger sister.
I said to her: "Do not let the previous generation's" eccentric "module continue to brand and hurt the next generation, so that the eldest daughter will inherit the negative mark of your self-destruction of the gynecological part."
Then I asked her to tell her mother and brother how much the incident had hurt her at that time, and then she could choose to forgive them and release herself, otherwise the hatred in her heart would continue to rage against her physical health; in addition, I asked her to go home and make sure to find time to apologize to her eldest daughter, so that the tragedy would end and no longer be inherited from generation.
I ’ ve also seen several cases of uterine fibroids and pelvic inflammation, all of which share unpleasant experiences in intimate relationships that lead to feelings of guilt, fear, and rejection of “sex. ”
If there is a condition in their intimate relationship, their partner will sometimes have problems with the prostate.
The above is how I searched his / her native family for signs of Trojan horses through the clues of the case ’ s illness.
This does not mean that all of these conditions belong to the same native family Trojan, but by studying diseases or accidents, we can dig up the source of Trojan projections hidden in our subconscious or unconscious layers.
★ This article is excerpted from Fang Zhi Publishing's "Native Family Trojan Horse Quick Screening: Three Steps to Unlock and Discard the Negative Imprint of the Inheritance Family", by Li Xinbong.
The vast majority of life problems are closely related to the native family, if not cracked, cleared, all your efforts will be in vain! If you are not aware of the Trojan horse, you will only be trapped in the native family fate module to keep repeating, only quickly sift, clean and transform the Trojan horse, then life can truly belong to itself.
Share with friends:
※ This article is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission. [ETtoday Copyright Notice]
Hot News
The best video
And more.
Hot News
Back to the top.

Title:

Content: Is the supply of calcium and iron plummeting and the lack of raw materials for cancer drugs related to coral reefs?
Health Care Network
Coral reefs, the “most important building in the ocean, ” are being hit by both global warming and man-made destruction.
Professor Chen Hsiu-hsi of the Institute of Public Health led the team to explore the marine ecological crisis in the live program of "Healthy and Smart Life Circle". Due to climate change and the destruction of the coral bottom ecosystem, the fishery production has decreased, and nutrients such as calcium, iron, and protein have decreased rapidly, and even affected several anti-cancer drug raw materials.
This is an advertisement, please continue reading.
Marine Ecology and Healthy Coral Reefs
Corals can provide a sound marine ecosystem, including habitats, food and nutrient sources, tourism and educational resources, and maintain the marine food chain and ecological, species and genetic diversity. Corals have an annual production value of about US $11 trillion.
The rich coral colonies in the world ’ s oceans make a huge contribution to marine ecology, especially in East Asia, which accounts for 30.1% of the world ’ s coral reefs.
For example, corals can protect land from typhoons and waves, which are better than human-made jetties.
Many of the new drugs are also sourced from the ocean, such as postagladin (PG), which has anti-cancer effects, from the sea fan extract, and moschicidin, which has viral suppression and anti-cancer effects, from the coral root.
▲ Coral related annual output is about US $11 trillion (equivalent to about NT $346.8 trillion), and the economic activities of the world 's 10 arts population depend on coral. (courtesy of TDG)
Warming, overfishing impacts fishing
However, due to human activities and global warming sea temperature anomalies, coral reef coverage in various ocean regions around the world has decreased since 2011, and algae cover has increased, affecting marine biodiversity, which in turn affects fisheries, food supply and tourism in coastal areas.
For example, in Kenting and Penghu in Taiwan, the disruption of urban development and tourism activities has also led to changes in coral reef species.
The documentary “Chasing Coral Reef ” presents the bleaching phenomenon of undersea coral reefs, exposing the ecological crisis under global warming, and trying to awaken people ’ s awareness of protecting the environment and protecting the marine ecology.
About 25% of fish depend on coral for their entire lives, but at least 500 million people around the world rely on “reef fish ” as a staple food. Without these proteins, these 500 million people would be starved of nutrients.
The series "Ocean Conspiracy" mentions that most of the current offshore fishing industry uses trawling nets to catch fish, especially giant trawls can net the entire church, 13 Boeing 747 aircraft, resulting in serious catches of sharks, whales and dolphins, and the use of bottom trawls to cause overfishing and destroy the coral and bottom marine ecological foundation.
Since 1950, the Endangered Species Index (Endangered Species Index) of the upper marine life chain (e.g. tuna, swordfish) has deteriorated by about 27%, while the shark Endangered Species Index (Endangered Species Index) has continued to deteriorate.
Calcium, Iron, Protein Supply Slide
Dr. Xu said that marine aquatic food provides a wealth of important nutrients, and seafood intake is conducive to nerve development and function, prevent coronary heart disease, and reduce the risk of diabetes.
In addition, fish provides more than 20% of the animal protein for 3 billion people worldwide, and small fisheries in developing countries such as Bangladesh, Ghana and Indonesia supply more than 50% of animal protein.
A study conducted a 10-year assessment of marine nutrition in temperate and tropical regions. It is estimated that a 4 ° C increase in global warming by 2100 will cause a 30% decrease in the nutrient supply of developing countries. If the increase is controlled at 1.5 to 2 ° C, the nutrient supply will also decrease by about 10%. For every 1 degree Celsius rise, the supply of marine nutrients will be reduced by 3 – 7%, while that of developing countries will be reduced by 2 – 3 times the global supply, with calcium supplies most severely affected.
Planet Sustainable Health Live Streaming - Sustainable Fisheries Smart Management (V) Coral Competition Survival Choice
Global Warming Is Like Chronic Disease Marine Ecology Conservation Focuses on Three Major Aspects
Professor Chen Xiuxi explained that the three major aspects of marine ecological conservation include biodiversity, marine food supply, and ocean carbon sequestration.
It was assessed that maintaining 45% of marine protected areas would increase biodiversity by 71%, carbon sequestration by 29%, and food supply by 92%.
Coral reefs and benthic flora are important elements that provide carbon sequestration and reduce ocean acidification, but under the influence of industrialization, the ocean ecology changes.
Global warming, like chronic diseases, reduces the number of fish and plants and algae when certain organisms begin to degenerate and increase, and reduces overall biodiversity, thus affecting the human environment and the more extreme climate.
In the face of climate change and climate warming, as well as human activities, the impact of overexploitation on the entire environment and ecological diversity has attracted global attention.
Sustainable biodiversity and social development pursue three main goals.
Reduce carbon emissions
Mitigate climate change and maintain global warming trends in order to maintain a livable ecological environment.
Rehabilitation and care
Maintaining sustainable ecological habitats and biodiversity.
Maintaining natural ecosystems
Support the symbiosis of human society.
Land, freshwater ecology and marine settlement biodiversity are interconnected.
Humans are part of these three ecosystems on Earth, and the impact of human activities on the environment can be divided into three levels, including extensive pristine natural habitats, support for biodiversity, and nature-social symbiosis.
Australia is committed to biodiversity conservation through a combination of native colonies and modern scientific capabilities to achieve coral conservation; the EU is also focused on restoring biodiversity and has set many goals to be achieved by 2030, such as reaching 30% of land and marine protected areas, reducing pesticide use by 50%, and restoring the free flow of 25,000 km of EU rivers.
In addition, “digital twin ” has become an important technology for international ecological sustainability. Compared to traditional methods, digital twin can consider more factors and respond to various potential situations in real time, and can also help people understand the overall ecological and evolutionary trends to achieve sustainable biodiversity.
Planet Sustainable Health Live Streaming - Marine Protected Areas (MPA) and Smart Environmental Ecology
Source: Healthnews.com https: / / www.healthnews.com.tw / readnews.php? id = 60012
Please like this article and share it with your friends! More health information: https: / / www.healthnews.com.tw
This is an advertisement, please continue reading.

Title:

Content: What do you rely on, Dad?
Learn about social genetics from the synergistic effects of genetic power and golden spoon
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
What we want you to know is
As an ordinary person, I believe that talent has a great impact on whether people can succeed or not, and as a sociologist, I can say that research also shows that innate ability has an impact on worldly success, that is, the rich generation may rely not only on the father's wealth, but also on the good inheritance of parents' intelligence.
Text: Lin Meng-yong (Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University)
When we see the beautiful appearance of the second generation of stars and think of the beauty of their parents, we call it the result of “genetic power. ”
When we see the sons and daughters of famous sportsmen on the sand, we also say that they have inherited good "sports cells".
And when we talk about the rich second generation, we say that they were born with golden spoons, saying that they are “dependent on their parents. ”
Admittedly, all people in this society to succeed requires effort and luck, but if you accidentally win the lottery before birth, then these people in the society can get more benefits than others?
In general, academic literature generally shows that people with higher education and higher incomes tend to grow up in families with higher education or higher incomes.
For example, a study has shown that parents of tenured professors in the United States are 25 times more likely to be professors than the average person.
Traditional social studies say that this is the result of class replication, intergenerational cultural capital transfer, children are submerged in their interactions with their parents, and learn how to do the right thing at the right time.
But from the small exam to growing up, we usually have "freaks" around us, which means very smart talent, and it is easy to read books, and the test is always top of the list.
If these people only learn the secrets of success through their own efforts, the right way to study, and interaction with their parents and teachers, this makes us deeply suspicious of those who have been studying hard all day and all night.
As an ordinary person, I believe that talent has a great impact on whether people can succeed, and as a sociologist, I can say that research also shows that innate ability has its impact on worldly success, that is, the rich generation may not only rely on the father has money, but also may be a good inheritance of parents' intelligence.
Human beings as social animals and biological animals, we can not ignore the social and biological aspects of human beings. As we grow older, youth is no longer, we can not deny that changes in the body affect the life; as the world deepens and the experience becomes wider, our understanding of this society also allows us to deny that people are unpredictable and unpredictable.
If you don ’ t mix the two, you probably won ’ t be human.
The people who think they are doing research related to biosociology and sociogenomics are those who try to separate and interweave the biological and social aspects of people.
And I am one of them too.
If you read this, or don ’ t believe what I say, I ’ ll try to start with some examples of health, reach further into the traditional field of sociology, and finally discuss the limitations and challenges facing this field.
To see the fate of the world through your mouth.
To talk about this research, mention Francis Galton in the 19th century, who proposed eugenics, arguing that gifts are passed down through the family.
There is a notorious history of eugenics, so there is no mention of it here.
In the early 20th century, scientists began to treat twins as subjects of study, comparing the differences between identical twins and fraternal twins in various characteristics, and calculating heritability.
If a trait can be inherited, then when the environment is the same, identical twins should be more similar than identical twins, after all, identical twins are genetically identical, and identical twins are only brothers or sisters born at the same time (Note: studies usually only include identical twins of the same sex, otherwise different genders may affect the distribution of genes and how others treat them).
After James Watson and Francis Crick (and Rosalind Franklin) discovered the structure of genes, coupled with the development of molecular biology, candidate gene research became a new method for everyone to use.
These studies are usually based on genes identified by biological experiments.
For example: experimental rats with a specific MAOA gene variant and a 5-HTT gene variant are more likely to have aggressive behavior; those with a FTO gene variant are more likely to gain weight; the comparison of APOE variants will get Alzheimer ’ s and so on.
Some behavioral scientists look at these genetic variants to see if people will have the same characteristics, and if so, whether they will have different effects in different environments.
Around 2005, a new cross-generational approach to genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) was born.
Geneticists began using this method to find base pairs associated with specific traits.
Since then, social scientists have tried to study social-related traits using whole genes.
However, because there are too many base pairs considering tens of thousands at a time, there is a lot of noise, so later developed a method called polygenic fractions.
The polygenic score is the score generated by adding up the number of bases that each person is at risk. Since everyone has different bases at each base location, if someone carries an A at this location, someone carries two A's, and some people have no A's, then if A is a risk base related to obesity, then the one with 1 is here, and the two are 2, there is no. 0.
Adding up all the bases, the sum is a person ’ s genetic risk (of course, it ’ s not that simple, I ’ m just simplifying it).
How do I get everyone ’ s base pairs? The easiest way is to drop the saliva (Figure 1).
Researchers usually ask respondents to spit a few milliliters of saliva in a small box or small jar. After spitting, the lid is covered with a lid, and the liquid that stabilizes the DNA in the lid will flow into the jar, so that the DNA will not be broken down so quickly during transportation.
The genetic sequencing is then left to the laboratory personnel, and behavioral researchers only need to receive the base pairs of data before the next data analysis.
Of course, before asking people to spit, the researchers will definitely get the consent of the respondents to receive and store genetic data.
Because saliva can be stored for a longer period of time if it is frozen, researchers usually want to freeze the rest of the saliva a little longer so that it is not wasted.
In addition, in addition to collecting saliva, researchers will also interview people about other demographic or social factors, so that they can do social science analysis.
There are genes, so what?