+34
A personal health crisis led me to 'biohacking.' Combined with ancient practices like meditation, the future of health may be personalized, tech-driven approaches to healing.
Research shows oxygen, cellular energy, and electromagnetic therapies strengthen the body's repair systems. Our studies and others show that ancient practices like meditation and breathwork are biohacking, too.to mask my symptoms.
I declined—not out of contrarianism, but because I understood enough about physiology to know that suppressing signals rarely addresses their source. I was worried I'd burn my body out further by. I was really surprised to find out that not only did my energy come back, but so did my ability to be creative.
In fact, I wrote my second book,Alongside the hyperbaric sessions, I was also using IV therapies like NAD+ and Niagen, compounds said to support cellular energy production and brain function. Together, these two approaches—experimental as they felt at the time—seemed to be giving my body the raw materials it needed to repair itself. Or was it allAs a research scientist, I needed to understand this better.
I found that by delivering concentrated oxygen to the brain and reducing neuroinflammation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been shown to improve cognition, memory, and focus. A 2024 review indescribed it as an emerging neuromodulatory technique with applications across a range of neurological conditions, and a systematic review infound positive effects on cognitive function across multiple patient populations.
At the hyperbaric center I went to for my sessions, I met stroke patients who swore the chamber had given them their life back, veterans with. Could something as simple as oxygen help all of these people? The science is still developing, but the underlying idea is compelling: Rather than treating disease after it arrives, what if we could strengthen the body's own systems?
Biohacking is a term that was first coined by Dave Asprey, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur intent on finding the key to longevity and optimal human health. That's when I realized I had been doing a version of it for years without calling it that. I'd spent myat Stanford and Yale researching holistic and functional ways we can improve our mental health through what we could perhaps call"ancient biohacking.
". We have seen how breathing techniques like Sky Breath Meditation can heal posttraumatic stress in veterans returning from war and helpand prevent mental health crises. We've also examined how relationships and social connection can improve the rate of healing, increase physical health, and even extend longevity. And we've seen how exercising compassion can fight off, erase the impact of stress on longevity, and reduce inflammation at the cellular level.
Traditional and ancient methodologies, it turns out, are powerful technologies in their own right. My personal experience with HBOT and IV therapy opened my eyes to what newer technologies might also offer.
Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, for instance, is showing real promise: a 2024 study infound that PEMF accelerated the formation of new blood vessels by shifting how cells produce and use energy at the mitochondrial level, and a 2025 systematic review found meaningful benefits for pain and physical function in patients with chronic low back pain. The thread connecting all of these approaches—oxygen, cellular energy, electromagnetic stimulation—is that they workThat curiosity eventually led me to Dave Asprey's biohacking conference, where I experienced this world firsthand—breathing in hydrogen, placing my body in various devices, and encountering everything from frequency and electricity to red, blue, and green light therapies.
The conference floor also included technologies I could not evaluate: devices combining multiple modalities simultaneously, frequency-based interventions, and approaches that are either decades ahead of the published research or waiting to be tested by it. I wanted to try one of the many"med beds" combining red light, sound frequency, and ozone therapy in a single session, but people lined up at 7 a.m. to get on the list.
I did spend some time in a large copper geometric enclosure emitting what were described as coherent frequencies, and found it genuinely relaxing—though there's obviously a gap between subjective experience and controlled evidence. I tried a meditation device that sent my companion into deep parasympathetic rest and had me agitated. As a scientist who has spent my career studying mental health, well-being, and resilience, I am excited about the future of healing when we combine ancient technologies like meditation, breathwork, and yoga with newer ones designed to strengthen the body's ability to heal and detoxify itself. When I asked Dave Asprey about the future of biohacking, he said: personalization. And that's interesting, too. We are all different, with different bodies, different needs, and different histories.
It makes sense that we would benefit from different modalities, at different doses, in different combinations. The fascinating question is how we figure that out at scale—and that may be whereBin-Alamer O, Abou-Al-Shaar H, Efrati S, Hadanny A, Beckman RL, Elamir M, Sussman E and Maroon JC Hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a neuromodulatory technique: a review of the recent evidence.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-69862-x Kull P, Keilani M, Remer F, Crevenna R. Efficacy of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy on pain and physical function in patients with non-specific low back pain: a systematic review.
Emma Seppälä, Ph. D.Self Tests Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist?
Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
Scratch the next story
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News: You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
From rockets to brain implants, here's a look at Elon Musk's vast empireElon Musk, the world’s richest man and now first-ever trillionaire, controls a lot of different businesses.
Read more »
From rockets to brain implants, here's a look at Elon Musk's vast empireElon Musk, the world’s richest man and now first-ever trillionaire, controls a lot of different businesses.
Read more »
From rockets to brain implants, here's a look at Elon Musk's vast empireElon Musk, the world’s richest man and now first-ever trillionaire, controls a lot of different businesses.
Read more »
Families, friends gather at San Francisco Zoo to raise money for brain cancer researchSaturday morning, hundreds of families, friends, healthcare providers and survivors gathered at the San Francisco Zoo to raise awareness and funds for brain tumors and the Northern California Brain Tumor community.
Read more »