The Biohacker's Biohacker | Teemu Arina

That's kind of the first step. And, and many of, many of those people who I see are joining the biohacking movement are really, like, uh, neurotic about performance in, in many ways.

Do you see that as a good thing or as a bad thing?

I see many of them being quite unhealthy with it. Um, and what it enables them to do is the same, but in an accelerated manner. So suddenly they start popping nootropics. It's a big, big thing, you know, um, that you can have increased mental performance, even physical performance. Maybe some athletes also look for... I mean, but they'd been doing supplements for 20, 30 years, uh, already, uh, pretty consistently. So that's nothing new. But when it comes to working in front of your computer, suddenly there is more than coffee that you can take to stay awake and focused at your work. So to me, they are seeking a solution to their problem, and once they get some advantage from this, they push the envelope even further. And I don't think that's very healthy. So I see a lot of biohackers, like, not really, um, pushing away their old lifestyle, so they might be still sleeping quite little, uh, but they're doing all these nootropics and diets that keeps the inflammation lower so they can get more out of the system. (graphics whooshing)

I'm joined by Teemu Arina, author of The Biohacker's Handbook, an all-round fascinating guy. Welcome to the show.

Wonderful to be here. (sniffs)

I am getting big podcast studio envy of the lovely setup that you have in front of you.

Yeah, I mean, I do a lot of things nowadays online, and it was only like a couple of weeks ago I was presenting to a huge Russian IT technology conference. And I don't like travel nowadays that much because I've been doing 100 talks a year for the last five, six years. So I just like to hang around in my studio, and I figured out that, you know, this is the best way to do it. So I can do live streams anywhere and, and create audio, create video. So I, I love it doing this way, and it also helps me to keep my daily routines, which is only... as a biohacker, you wanna maximize your productivity and recovery and all that. If you fly into a conference for what? Giving a 30-minute or a one-hour talk, and you spend time in airplanes and in public transport and eating all kinds of crappy whatever, you know, airport or conference food, I think it's more efficient to just stay here. I might not, you know, make those face-to-face connections, but if I met the people before, that's the way I prefer to do it.

I totally get it, man. Yeah, there's a... there's an interesting, um, sort of two camps of people as far as I can see. There's people who understand that trying to focus on efficiency and marginal gains in the way that you've alluded to there is something which is kind of what everything else emerges from. And if you look after those small things, that everything else comes along as a byproduct. And then there are the... there are the people who see that as a bypro-... as a normal part of life. It's like, "No, no, no, well, I've go- I've gotta get on the plane 'cause I gotta go to the thing, and that's the way it's gotta be done." Um...