Here are my thoughts on biohacking

After my previous post on my learnings from the 7th Biohacking Conference, I got questions on what I think about biohacking. It's a good question and here are my thoughts

1. Hacking means shortcutting, and biohacking means shortcutting to great health. And I don't believe there are any shortcuts to great health

2. Great health requires continuous focus on and fine-tuning of the diet, lifestyle, sleep, and mindfulness (basically, this is what the Practical Health channel is all about)

3. At the same time, there are some situations when support is needed through biohacking tools like, for example, brain-enhancing nootropics. Or another popular example is coffee, we all know that when we have "brain fog", coffee can help

4. Knowing those tools gives us options to address various difficult situations, so the knowledge is power

To balance that previous post, I would like to share the paper called "The Hallmarks of Aging", this is one of the most cited papers in human anatomy/physiology space for the last decade. It's a fundamental paper that laid down the framework for research in the longevity space for years to come. Briefly, this paper talks about the 9 hallmarks of aging, see the summary picture below and the link to the paper in the first comment.

I would like to summarize them in I think the more logical way

- Issues might happen in the nucleus

1. Genomic instability

2. Epigenetic alterations

3. Telomere attrition

- In the cell

4. Loss of proteostasis

5. Mitochondrial dysfunction

- Outside of the cell

6. Stem cell exhaustion

7. Cellular senescence

8. Altered intercellular communication

9. Deregulated nutrient sensing

This paper is 16 pages of heavy reading but provides a great view of what we should expect in the longevity and anti-aging research space in the coming years, or even decades.

Stay strong, stay healthy, and learn more longevity, my friends!