Biohacking, including methods like neurofeedback therapy, is still considered experimental and lacks reliable scientific data to support its effectiveness, indicating that it is not entirely backed by clinical research.

"The document does not provide information on biohacking, and therefore does not offer any reliable scientific data on the subject."

The document discusses a blood test offered by a bioinformatics company that measures inflammation levels in the body, which is related to the field of bioinformatics and biohacking.

The document discusses biohacking techniques, including the use of nootropics, and references the creation of a compound intended to improve cognitive function, relating to biopharmaceutical production and evolutionary genomics.

The gene editing technology mentioned in the document is CRISPR/Cas9, which is used in DIY kits and classes for genetic engineering.

Biohacking is being explored for its potential to improve human health and overcome physical limits, which is in line with the brother's extreme lifestyle changes.

Neurofeedback therapy is a biohacking method used to improve mental health, with patients reporting positive results in managing conditions such as ADHD, trauma, and OCD.

A key focus of biohacking is to improve the quality of life by lowering the morbidity rate, as stated by Dr. Claudio Urbani.

"Biohacking involves various methods, including intermittent fasting, hydration, and sleep care, aimed at self-optimization and improving health and well-being."

The goal of the biohacker's approach is not only to prolong life but also to improve its quality by reducing disease incidence.

Biohacking aims to achieve a longer and healthier life through various methods, including calorie restriction and reprogramming the mind and body.

The practice of biohacking is viewed as controversial due to potential negative side effects and lack of scientific evidence supporting its methods, which can lead to addiction and other health issues.

Biohacking, including methods like neurofeedback therapy, is still considered experimental and lacks reliable scientific data to support its effectiveness, indicating that it is not entirely backed by clinical research.

Title:

Content: NewsLocal NewsSummit County

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'It saved my life,' ADHD, trauma, OCD patients turn to neurofeedback therapy

Posted at 8:18 AM, Apr 05, 2024
and last updated 2024-04-05 08:18:12-04

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — Cracking the code to wellness is now costing Americans $1.8 trillion annually.

For the average American, that breaks down to more than $5,300 per year.

Those numbers come from the Global Wellness Summit's 2024 trends report.

The report also shows that the global wellness economy, which generated $5.6 trillion in 2022, will continue to surge and reach $8.5 trillion within the next three years.

A driver of those staggering stats is ‘biohacking,’ which is the term for do-it-yourself biology.

It has generated 951 million views on TikTok and over on Google, there's been a 900% increase in searches for ‘biohacking.’

"The way that i like to describe it is using what we know about biology to help us become better versions of ourselves," said Britney Cirillo with Alternative Therapeutics.

‘Biohacking’ can be anything from using a smartwatch to track our heart rate to jumping in an ice bath and neuro-feedback therapy.

The idea behind neuro-feedback therapy is that we can essentially re-train our brain to tackle mental health issues like depression, anxiety, trauma, and OCD, which Emily Dean suffered from for about a decade.

"Was pretty afraid to even leave my house alone. At my worst, I was unable to care for my physical health," said Dean.

Dean ultimately needed to check into the hospital as her mental health declined.

After being discharged, she discovered neurofeedback therapy.

"It completely changed my life," said Dean.

Dean said the sessions at Alternative Therapeutics in Cuyahoga Falls provided relief that medications and traditional therapies could not.

"We're not your average counseling practice," said Cirillo.

Cirillo uses neurofeedback therapy to balance electrical activity in a patient's brain, regulating delta, theta, alpha, and beta levels.

"If any of those brainwaves are being overproduced or underproduced, that will correlate with symptoms that the client is experiencing," said Cirillo.

The goal is to essentially retrain the brain using operant conditioning, a learning process in which voluntary behaviors are rewarded.

"We tell the brain to do a certain thing when it does that certain thing, they're rewarded instantly by that video game that they're playing," Cirillo.

I was so interested in how it works that Cirillo gave me a taste of a typical session.

My goal was to keep the flames of a fire burning bright and the sound of the crackling strong while playing a game on a tablet.

Cirillo was checking to make sure my brain was in an ideal zone.

I only sat there with the tablet for a short time, but a typical therapy session lasts about 20 minutes.

"And so, with more and more practice, the brain starts to recognize what it's supposed to do and it reinforces that pathway, strengthens it to the point that that's their new normal," said Cirillo.

Despite gaining popularity during this ‘biohacking craze,’ neurofeedback therapy is still considered experimental.

"I think it's an interesting phenomenon," said Dr. Robert Lufkin with the USC School of Medicine.

Lufkin said regulating the brain could give people better outcomes when it comes to their mental health.

"I think in my opinion, this can have beneficial effects on an individual," said Lufkin.

Lufkin said regardless of what form of ‘biohacking’ people choose, it's shifting the balance of the doctor-patient relationship.

"It's certainly exploding in recent years, and I think it reflects the fact that all of us as, as patients are taking control of our own health," said Lufkin.

Dean is beyond grateful she gained control.

"Neurofeedback therapy and Alternative Therapeutics saved my life," said Dean.

After completing 20 sessions five years ago, Dean has been able to maintain her progress with a few booster sessions, along with some tools to help her navigate the world.

A world that, for years, Dean navigated with crippling fear.

"Before neurofeedback I was afraid to go to the grocery store alone. Last year, I went to California alone. That is something that I never thought would be possible for me," said Dean.

With insurance companies still considering neurofeedback therapy experimental it is not covered.

However, Cirillo said many of her clients have success when they submit for out of network reimbursement.

On average, people will need about 20 sessions to get the end results they're looking for.

"The document does not provide information on biohacking, and therefore does not offer any reliable scientific data on the subject."

Title:

Content: A Shortcut to Preventing Cancer

To better understand and perhaps prevent cancers brought on by multiple genetic mutations, Rice University researchers are constructing a theoretical framework.

A new theory suggests that mutations have few straightforward ways to establish themselves in cells and cause tumors

For many researchers, the road to cancer prevention is long and difficult, but a recent study by Rice University scientists suggests that there may be shortcuts.

A theoretical framework is being developed by Rice scientist Anatoly Kolomeisky, postdoctoral researcher Hamid Teimouri, and research assistant Cade Spaulding that will explain how cancers brought on by several genetic mutations might be more readily recognized and perhaps prevented.

A new paper by a Rice University lab shows how to increase the odds of identifying cancer-causing mutations before tumors take hold. Authors are, from the left, Cade Spaulding, Anatoly Kolomeisky, and Hamid Teimouri. Credit: Rice University

It does this by detecting and ignoring transition pathways that don’t significantly contribute to the fixation of mutations in a cell that later becomes a tumor.

The study, which was published on May 13th, 2022 in the Biophysical Journal, details their analysis of the effective energy landscapes of cellular transformation pathways connected to a number of cancers. The ability to narrow the number of paths to those most likely to initiate cancer could help in the development of strategies to interrupt the process before it begins.

“In some sense, cancer is a bad-luck story,” said Kolomeisky, a professor of chemistry and of chemical and biomolecular engineering. “We think we can decrease the probability of this bad luck by looking for low-probability collections of mutations that typically lead to cancer. Depending on the type of cancer, this can range between two mutations and 10.”

Calculating the effective energies that govern interactions in biomolecular systems may help anticipate how they will behave. The theory is widely used to anticipate how a protein will fold based on the sequence of its constituent atoms and how they interact.

The Rice team is applying the same idea to cancer initiation pathways that work in cells but sometimes include mutations that are undetected by the body’s protections. When two or more of these mutations are fixed in a cell, they are carried on when cells divide and tumors develop.

An algorithm developed at Rice University identifies and ignores transition pathways that don’t contribute much to the fixation of mutations in a cell that goes on to establish a tumor. Credit: Hamid Teimouri/Rice University

By their calculations, the odds favor the most dominant pathways, those that carry mutations forward while expending the least amount of energy, Kolomeisky said.

“Instead of looking at all possible chemical reactions, we identify the few that we might need to look at,” he explained. “It seems to us that most tissues involved in the initiation of cancer are trying to be as homogenous as possible. The rule is a pathway that decreases heterogeneity is always going to be the fastest on the road to tumor formation.”

The huge number of possible pathways seems to make narrowing them down an intractable problem. “But it turned out that using our chemical intuition and building an effective free-energy landscape helped by allowing us to calculate where in the process a mutation is likely to become fixated in a cell,” Kolomeisky said.

The team simplified calculations by focusing initially on pathways involving only two mutations that, when fixed, initiate a tumor. Kolomeisky said mechanisms involving more mutations will complicate calculations, but the procedure remains the same.

Much of the credit goes to Spaulding, who under Teimouri’s direction created the algorithms that greatly simplify the calculations. The visiting research assistant was 12 when he first met Kolomeisky to ask for guidance. Having graduated from a Houston high school two years early, he joined the Rice lab last year at 16 and will attend Trinity University in San Antonio this fall.

“Cade has outstanding ability in computer programming and in implementing sophisticated algorithms despite his very young age,” Kolomeisky said. “He came up with the most efficient Monte Carlo simulations to test our theory, where the size of the system can involve up to a billion cells.”

Spaulding said the project brought together chemistry, physics and biology in a way that meshes with his interests, along with his computer programming skills. “It was good way to combine all of the branches of science and also programming, which is what I find most interesting,” he said.

The study follows a 2019 paper in which the Rice lab modeled stochastic (random) processes to learn why some cancerous cells overcome the body’s defenses and trigger spread of the disease.

But understanding how those cells become cancerous in the first place could help head them off at the pass, Kolomeisky said. “This has implications for personalized medicine,” he said. “If a tissue test can find mutations, our framework might tell you if you are likely to develop a tumor and whether you need to have more frequent checkups. I think this powerful framework can be a tool for prevention.”

The Welch Foundation (C-1559), the National Science Foundation (1953453, 1941106) and the NSF-supported Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (2019745) supported the research.

Reference: “Optimal pathways control fixation of multiple mutations during cancer initiation” by Hamid Teimouri, Cade Spaulding and Anatoly B. Kolomeisky, 13 May 2022, Biophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.05.011

The document discusses a blood test offered by a bioinformatics company that measures inflammation levels in the body, which is related to the field of bioinformatics and biohacking.

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.”

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The document discusses biohacking techniques, including the use of nootropics, and references the creation of a compound intended to improve cognitive function, relating to biopharmaceutical production and evolutionary genomics.

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
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The gene editing technology mentioned in the document is CRISPR/Cas9, which is used in DIY kits and classes for genetic engineering.

Title:

Content: DIY gene editing: This home use kit makes CRISPR accessible to all

Journalist Lana Schwartz used Jo Zayner's DIY kit to edit human kidney tissue at home.
DIY Bacterial Gene Engineering CRISPR Kit.

The ODIN

Genetic engineering for everyone!

Yes, this is possible thanks to biohacker and artist Jo Zayner's DIY kits and classes. It's possible that you met Zayner on Netflix through the documentary called "Unnatural Selections," which, released in 2019, revealed how DNA could be changed using CRISPR technology.

By establishing The ODIN, Zayner's genetic engineering education became accessible with kits such as the "DIY Bacterial Gene Engineering CRISPR Kit." Well, you may hesitate to use it, but Lana Schwartz from Vice didn't and shared her experiences.

As reported by Schwartz, she started to take Human Tissue Culture and Engineering 201 class, which aims to teach students how to edit DNA through an experiment that involves making HEK (Human Embryonic Kidney). Got the kit just a couple of days before the class, "it came with amateur science equipment, a "Biohacking is Not a Crime" sticker, the kidney cells I'd hoped for, and vials of brightly colored liquids for the DNA-editing experiment," she said.

"To edit the genome of kidney cells, students use pipettes to add a variety of liquids with funky names to the cells. One of them was a plasmid containing the DNA coding for an antibiotic-resistance gene. The other liquids were involved in, as I like to think about it, shoving the DNA into the cells.," she added.

According to Schwartz, she felt like she was cooking during the lessons and while working on the experiment kit, and she even said that she thought she could apply this experiment to her DNA after a while.

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CRISPR therapies could cause cancer

Even if CRISPR technology is a kind of revolution in genetic engineering, some experts emphasize CRISPR therapies could cause cancer or have unintended consequences. Some critics are concerned about environmental degradation, eugenics, and bioterrorism. But what exactly is CRISPR?

Acronym for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats," CRISPR is a DNA sequence family found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms like bacteria and archaea. These sequences are derived from bacteriophage DNA fragments that previously infected the prokaryote. They are used in subsequent infections to detect and destroy DNA from similar bacteriophages.

What about the kit?

You learn everything you need to know to practice bioengineering in the kit and class. Without prior experience. The class has eight lectures and experiments. The basic kit includes:

  • 0.5-10 uL pipette
  • 10-100 uL pipette
  • 100-1000 uL pipette
  • 0.5-10 uL tips
  •  10-100 uL tips
  • 100-1000 uL tips
  • Microcentrifuge tube rack
  • Petri dishes Scale and weigh boats
  •  Glass bottle
  • Nitrile Gloves
  • Orange film and Blue light
  • Microcentrifuge tubes
  • Inoculation Loops
  • LB agar
  • 50 mL tube for measuring
  • Colored water for pipetting practice
  • Bioluminescent Bacteria Grow Kit
  • GFP Bacteria Kit
  • CRISPR Kit
  • pDusk/ pDawn Biosensors Kit

Who is Jo Zayner?

Jo Zayner is a biohacker, artist, and scientist most known for their self-experimentation and work liberalizing CRISPR and making hands-on genetic engineering approachable to laypeople. At the NASA Ames Space Synthetic Biology Research Center in Mountain View, California, Zayner worked on the development of Martian colony habitats for two years. Zayner considers himself a biohacker and thinks it's important to involve the public in scientific research as opposed to keeping it confined to laboratories. In particular, Zayner found the academic biohacking community to be exclusionary and hierarchical in terms of the personalities who determine what is "safe."

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Biohacking is being explored for its potential to improve human health and overcome physical limits, which is in line with the brother's extreme lifestyle changes.

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

biohacking, reprogramming mind and body to live better

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

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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”.

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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 ».

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Neurofeedback therapy is a biohacking method used to improve mental health, with patients reporting positive results in managing conditions such as ADHD, trauma, and OCD.

A key focus of biohacking is to improve the quality of life by lowering the morbidity rate, as stated by Dr. Claudio Urbani.

According to the studies, how does intermittent fasting help?

"Biohacking involves various methods, including intermittent fasting, hydration, and sleep care, aimed at self-optimization and improving health and well-being."

According to the studies, how does intermittent fasting help?

The goal of the biohacker's approach is not only to prolong life but also to improve its quality by reducing disease incidence.

According to the studies, how does intermittent fasting help?

It reduces the risk of lifestyle-related diseases, such as metabolic disorders.

Biohacking aims to achieve a longer and healthier life through various methods, including calorie restriction and reprogramming the mind and body.

The practice of biohacking is viewed as controversial due to potential negative side effects and lack of scientific evidence supporting its methods, which can lead to addiction and other health issues.