Why “biohacking” usually isn’t evidence-based
- Karina Inkster
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 44 minutes ago
You need to hang out in the fitness/wellness space for only about 3 minutes until you’ll come across the term “biohacking”. Driven by social media influencers and an obsessive need to self-optimize, “biohacking” might sound scientific, but it’s actually frustratingly vague.
It’s often framed as cutting‑edge health management: a smarter, faster way to improve health compared to the usual gold standards like exercising and getting enough sleep. And it's been growing in popularity in recent years.
Here's a Google Trends graph for the term "biohacking":
In reality, most biohacking sits on very shaky (or non-existent) scientific ground. Let’s break down what biohacking actually is, why it’s rarely evidence‑based, and how it differs from legitimate health and performance science.
What biohacking claims to be
A recent article in Forbes defines biohacking as “individuals experimenting with lifestyle choices, nutrition, technology, and scientific tools in order to optimize human performance, extend lifespan, and unlock capabilities beyond what have historically been considered natural limits.”
On the surface, that might sound pretty reasonable. After all, exercise physiology, nutrition science, and behavioural medicine are all concerned with improving human health.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with curiosity or experimentation. I’m all for them! The issue is how biohacking is practiced and marketed.
What biohacking usually looks like in practice
Biohacking tends to involve:
Self‑experimentation (N=1) presented as universal truth
Heavy reliance on anecdotes and testimonials
Cherry‑picked or misapplied scientific studies
Expensive tech, supplements, or protocols marketed ahead of evidence
An obsession with optimization rather than real‑world health
Why biohacking isn’t evidence‑based
It relies on anecdotes, not controlled research
Most biohacking claims bypass randomized controlled trials. One random business bro feeling better after trying a supplement does not mean it’ll work for the entire population. His personal experience does not establish causation.
When someone says a protocol “fixed” their hormones, mitochondria, gut, nervous system, or dark chocolate addiction, that’s a testimonial, not scientific evidence.
Self‑experimentation can be useful for personal decision‑making, but it can’t establish generalizable truth. Why’s that, you ask? The placebo effect, for one. Also confirmation bias, and confounding variables that aren’t controlled for.
It overextends early or weak research
A common biohacking pattern looks like this: A study is conducted in mice, cells, or a very specific human population. The intervention is short‑term or extreme, and a narrow biomarker change emerges.
Biohacker conclusion: Everyone should do this indefinitely.
Scientific conclusion: Interesting, preliminary, and in need of replication.
Those are not the same thing.
It prioritizes biomarkers over outcomes
Biohacking culture loves numbers. Common targets include blood glucose spikes, ketones, cortisol curves, HRV (heart rate variability), or inflammation markers.
But these biomarkers are proxies, not outcomes. Lower, higher, or “optimized” biomarkers does not automatically translate to better function, reduced disease risk, improved quality of life, or increased longevity.
Evidence‑based health focuses on real-life outcomes. Biohacking often stops at the dashboard.
A quick story for you. One of my friends is an internal medicine doctor. When I first got my Oura ring, I texted him:
Me: “Got an Oura ring a few weeks ago. HRV is really low. But “Cardio age” is 10 years below actual age, resting heart rate is in the 50s, daily workouts, no alcohol, etc. I’ve always told clients to take data from wearables with huge grains of salt, and to look at long-term trends rather than comparing to “standard” numbers. Or should I start drafting my epitaph?”
My friend: “Too bad, it was nice knowing you… Heart rate variability, in my opinion, is meaningless outside of clinical trial scenarios. It has no real clinical significance, especially in otherwise healthy people (which you are). I have a lot of people come into my office these days worried about their HRV, and my advice is to get rid of their Apple Watch, Oura ring, etc. All it does is create stress and these are usually non-modifiable metrics.”
It avoids falsifiability
Many biohacking claims, like “quantum” health interventions, frequency-based healing, or cellular intelligence narratives, can’t be tested or disproven. If a claim can’t be falsified, it’s a belief, not science.
Some “biohacking” is just regular health behaviours
Some (but certainly not all) biohacking protocols are tried-‘n’-true health behaviours with a fancy new name. Saunas, for example, have been around for 10,000 years. Sauna culture has been going strong in Nordic countries for centuries, but only recently surged in popularity in North America when “biohackers” and social media influencers started promoting saunas as complementary to cold plunges.
Regular sauna use does appear to have some protective cardiovascular effects. (It does not, however, “detoxify” our bodies, as many proponents suggest). Saunas didn’t suddenly become powerful — they just got rebranded once we started calling everyday health habits “biohacking.”
Examples of popular biohacks (and the problems with them)
Cold exposure for everything
Cold plunges are often promoted as a tool for fat loss, longevity, inflammation, and mental health.
What the evidence actually shows:
Cold exposure can temporarily increase alertness
It may improve subjective well‑being for some people
It can interfere with muscle hypertrophy
The leap from “interesting stressor” to “mandatory longevity protocol” is unsupported.
Extreme glucose monitoring for non‑diabetics
Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are increasingly marketed to healthy people to help them avoid “glucose spikes”. Here’s the thing: normal glucose variability is not pathological. Short-term glucose spikes don’t automatically increase disease risk, and avoiding these spikes can encourage unnecessary food restriction.
There is no evidence that micromanaging glucose in non-diabetic individuals improves long‑term health outcomes.
Supplement stacks as primary interventions
Biohackers often promote large supplement stacks targeting mitochondria, hormones, cognition, or longevity. Unfortunately, most supplements have weak or inconsistent evidence. Effects are often small or inconsistent, and long-term safety is rarely studied.
If a supplement truly produced large, reliable effects, it would be considered medicine, not a hack.
“Detox” protocols
Detoxes, cleanses, and resets remain popular despite decades of evidence showing that our liver and kidneys do a perfectly fine job of detoxification. There is no reliable evidence that detox protocols improve health, and many of them greatly restrict calorie and protein intake.
Weight loss or symptom relief during a detox is almost always explained by caloric restriction, placebo effects, or temporary behaviour changes.
Why biohacking is so appealing
Biohacking thrives because it offers a sense of control, simple answers to complex problems, and identity and status. (Oh, and it usually promises super-fast results.)
Evidence‑based health is rarely glamorous: sleep consistently, lift weights, eat enough protein, walk, eat plants, manage stress, and be patient. As far as I know, those don’t sell $10,000 biohacking protocols.
When these behaviours are wrapped in jargon, tech, and exclusivity, they become “biohacks.”
Biohacking is deeply privileged
A huge, but rarely discussed, problem with biohacking is that it is fundamentally privileged. Most biohacking advice assumes access to time, money, flexible schedules, high-end gyms, recovery tools, wearables, specialty foods, supplements, safe housing, and stable income.
These are advantages, not neutral starting points. Biohacking frames health as a series of individual optimization choices while largely ignoring the systems that shape health in the first place, including income, housing, food access, racism, ableism, caregiving responsibilities, and chronic stress.
Telling people to “optimize” their sleep while they’re working multiple jobs, caring for family members, or living in unsafe environments isn’t empowering. It’s disconnected from reality.
Similarly, asking people to track biomarkers, cold plunge daily, or micromanage nutrition without accounting for access, energy, or cost turns health into a moral performance, where those with the most resources appear the most disciplined.
Evidence-based public health, on the other hand, asks not just what works, but for whom, under what conditions, and at what cost. Health does not happen in a vacuum. Any framework that ignores systemic constraints is incomplete and misleading.
Questioning biohacking means you’re pro-science
If you’re someone who, like me, questions biohacking, you’re pro-science, not against it. Curiosity, experimentation, and innovation are important, but they don’t replace controlled evidence or long‑term outcomes.
Exercise physiology, nutrition science, sleep research, and behavioural medicine already optimize human health. If it works across a population, we call it science or medicine. If it works for one charismatic business bro, we call it biohacking.
Health doesn't need "hacking"; it needs context. I offer free 15-minute coffee chats where you can ask questions, reality-check what you’ve been told, and leave with a simple, evidence-based action plan that fits your life. No biohacking required!
