Why you should hack your health for a longer lifespan and healthspan.
Everything you need to know about health hacking and how you can get started
Imagine knowing yourself to your very core, down to the very fabric of how you’re made and how you function at your most optimal.
Envisage creating patterns of eating, sleeping, moving, and thinking that increase your productivity.
Picture feeling younger in your body, more agile in your mind, retaining the wisdom of your years whilst regaining the vitality of your youth.
Visualise priming your day for maximal energy just by making simple, easy changes that mean you’re energised from within, every cell in your body is working for you, creating molecules of energy that transmit through you, so that you’re recharged, revitalised, and ready, fully present for your work, for your family, for yourself.
See yourself reversing ageing.
How do you do that?
You do it through health hacktivation!
What is health hacktivation?
Health hacktivation is taking control of your health by taking action. It’s health optimisation that puts you in control of your health - now and in the future.. It’s a mechanism for turning health from something you have to something you do. As I said in my TEDx talk, Health is a verb not a noun. Everything rests on your health. Which is why you need to be an active participant in it and H: Hold E: Engage A: Action L: Learn T: Target H: Harness it.
Health hacktivation gives you the tools to do exactly that, to make health your skill, a skill just like any other skill that you can continue to get better at to achieve an optimised healthspan and lifespan and wealthspan.
And just in case you're wondering what the connection between health and wealth is, well, to be wealthy, you need to be healthy. Without optimised health you cannot build the lifestyle you want, create the successes you desire, have the freedom you cherish. Health comes first. Your health is your route to wealth. Hacking it is what puts you in the driving seat of your own destiny,
But here’s the thing. Most doctors don’t like the word “hacking”. And most doctors don’t like other doctors who use the word “hacking”! But I love the word. And here’s why. Because, as a medical doctor, it means that whilst I guide, support and empower you to unlock your most phenomenal potential to live longer, younger, I also hand over control of your health to you. Why do I do this. I do this because your health belongs to you.
You might have heard of health hacking being called biohacking - hacking into your biology. Biohacking is a practice you can do every day. In fact, you might already be doing some things that are considered biohacking.
Do you ever watch the sunrise or sunset? Do you wear blue-light-blocking glasses at night or maybe tracking your sleep with a wearable watch? Have you tried fasting? Do you use a sauna every now and then? These are just a few common biohacks that can benefit your health and longevity. Health Hacktivation, Health Hacking, Biohacking means taking ownership and taking actions to optimise your physiology, neurology, psychology, anatomy, metabolism, biochemistry, genetics and evolution.
One of the fundamental aspects of health hacking is that it’s all about you as an individual! Unfortunately, the biggest problem currently is that large parts of the healthcare industry focus on a population-based approach to health - the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The problem with this is that despite extrapolations that can be postulated from large scale clinical studies, when it comes to health and wellbeing, a one-size-fits-all approach does not work. If it did, we wouldn’t be seeing exponential rises in every disease.
But it doesn’t have to be this way for you.
Health Hacktivation 101
The bread and butter of health hacktivation is in its n=1, individualised approach, meaning the most important person is YOU and knowing how your actions and habits impact your biology, and what you can do to achieve long-term optimal health. In other words, not wasting time, money and energy on things that don’t work for you, and doing more of what does work for you - without guesswork!
A term that’s often used in conversations about biohacking is self-quantification. These two go hand in hand because to reach optimal health, you must measure it. Subjective feelings without objective measures will not give you the full picture. You’ll need both! This allows you to have an objective understanding of whether your lifestyle choices, such as diet, sleep, training and mindfulness, move the needle to the right direction. This is how you move from off-the-shelf-care to strategic-self-care.
Track it to hack it
No matter where you are in your health optimisation journey, one of the most important steps you should take as a biohacker, or what I prefer to call a “health hacktivator”, is to quantify your personal baseline, in other words, your starting point, and to track your journey.
On any journey you go on, you have to know 3 things: Where you’re starting, where you want to get to and how you’re going to get there.
It’s exactly the same with your health journey. The challenge with health is that with so much health and wellness information now available to you, it can often feel incredibly overwhelming knowing where to start and what to focus on, which is why so many people stay stuck.
But that no longer needs to be the case for you.
Hello LQ!
If you don’t know which area of your lifestyle you should optimise first, then find out your LQ. What is LQ? Well. you’ve heard of your IQ, your Intelligence Quotient, which is a measure of your cognitive intelligence, and your EQ, Emotions Quotient, which is a measure of your emotional intelligence. Your LQ is your Lifestyle Quotient, a research-backed measure of your lifestyle intelligence, telling you how knowledgeable you are about optimising your lifestyle and which area of your lifestyle needs your attention the most.
Nothing works in isolation
The human body is a beautifully interconnected, incredibly intelligent system where nothing works in isolation. As you begin to make positive changes to one aspect of your health, it triggers a ripple effect across the whole system, with every body system working in synergy- a change in one area impacts another area.
For example, when you clean up your food choices to lose weight, weight loss is not the only outcome. Your sleep will improve, your brain fog will go away, your skin will glow and you’ll have a lot more energy.
What you have control over
I mentioned above that health activation means taking ownership of your health. How do you do that though? What can you “hack”?
Now that you know your LQ and what area of your lifestyle to focus on, let’s look at what I consider to be the key components of health hacktivation.
My key components are contained within my Health Hacktivation Code® – a code to unlock your phenomenal potential for health optimisation through strategic self-care.
It’s a three-part code that zones in on Data, Devices and Decisions.
These three key components serve a critical role in ensuring you make data-driven decisions using devices to empower you to determine your destiny as you test, track and transform your health.
And by using the LQ and my 10-step blueprint, The Lifestyle First Formula, you can take targeted health hacktions in the 10 key areas of your lifestyle that you need to focus on to create heightened health and lengthened longevity: Life’s Purpose, Identity, Food, Exercise, Sleep, Time Out, Your Connections, Learning Habits, Emotions, First – motivation and mindset.
Data, Device and Decisions – you don’t have to do it all alone
While biohacking is an individualised journey, you don’t have to walk the path all on your own. I’ll be honest, looking at the abundant health data that is now available to everyday consumers, is overwhelming. The important thing is knowing what to do with your data.
Trackers, wearables and cellular level tests are vital to help you unlock and modify so much of your biology, but most people are not equipped in data analysis and nor do they have the time to untangle what the data means, what devices to use and how to incorporate this into one’s life in a way that will create a lasting positive impact.
Seeking out a healthcare professional’s advice until you get more skilled in interpreting your own data can be very useful. Which is why as part of my programmes, I include data sharing and data interpretation from a range of devices.
With the guide of an expert, you’ll see patterns and connections unfold and soon develop your skills in interpretation of your own bio data. Remember, the data belongs to you, so it’s worth taking the time and energy to develop the skills to understand it.
My 3 top biohacks
There are a diverse range of biohacks that you can use, but here are 3 that are most popular with my clients and that have the most significant impact on age reversal and health optimisation.
Intermittent fasting/Time restricted eating: I prefer to refer to this as Time Connected Eating - TCE so that it’s less about what you’re missing and more about what you’re connecting to when you change your eating patterns. When you eat within an 8-hour window, you connect directly to gene activation- MTOR, AMP-K, Sirtuins - which are key age-reversing genes.
Blood sugar tracking: Continuous glucose monitors are an excellent tool to have access to data on how your food choices impact your blood sugar. With only 12% of Americans being metabolically healthy and 64% of UK adults being overweight or obese, managing blood glucose levels is critical to improving these statistics.
Sleep tracking: Sleep is one of the most undervalued biohacks. It’s a common belief that the body and mind shut down at night, yet it’s the opposite – they’re working even harder. Tracking your sleep allows you to gain valuable insights on how your physiology adapts to stress of the past day and how ready you are to conquer the day ahead.
Remember, biohacking is all about making more informed decisions based on objective measures, so you can have more control over your biology. It also has the power to change behaviour for the better.
If you have any questions about biohacking or health hacktivation or are not sure what your next step should be after taking the FREE LQ test, please feel free to reach out to me here. I answer all messages personally and want nothing more than for you to be a Health Hacktivator!
Interested in learning more about biohacking?
Join me on my health hacktivation retreat to gain practical experience and intellectual understanding of how to tap into your mind and body’s innate capacity to evolve so that you L.I.V.E. with Longevity, Impact, Vitality and Energy.
