Category: Biohacking

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Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1483 and Trending Up

I let myself get a little shook up by some poor health news early in the month. I’ve been pushing it physically all through 2024 as let’s be real it’s an exciting time. To fully capitalize on that acceleration we are all more focused on improving our health.

I’m taking action and optimistic about where we are headed with improvements in healthcare. I was able to rapidly iterate through options and set up surprisingly effective new treatments.

As we’ve work through the significant impact of the pandemic on our understanding of post viral illness and autoimmunity, we’ve had a more systems driven approach to testing interventions beyond pharmaceuticals reach more people.

Not that all pharmaceutical interventions are bad obviously as I’m lucky to have interleukin inhibitors in my life. I was able to find a new option with my doctor thanks to help from Claude and Perplexity.

And this progress is happening across all areas of medicine. I am also incredibly bullish on the benefits of GLP-1 inhibitors and their next generations. Inflammation and metabolism are intertwined in ways we can control barely articulate beyond “mind body connection” and yet we are developing the vocabulary.

I enjoy strange adventures in the future now. I am going to be experimenting on my body as it helps me understand not only myself but the evolving opportunities in investing. Even science fiction is excited about biotechnology.

The problems I am solving for myself teach me how we will allocate resources across many industries. The energy required to power artificial intelligence and the chips required to run those models will be pulled forward by our desire for solutions to living healthy lives

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1478 and Hoping For More

I briefly was overtaken by the desire to travel to Washington D.C for the inauguration. I am however more focused on the work in front of me for chaotic capital and on my 2025 goals of putting my ankylosis back to remission.

I finished a ten day hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy course which has made me feel significantly better.

Day 1470 and Disappointing Biomarkers

I found a new potential candidate for an IL-17 inhibitor that has recently been released in Europe.

I’d had a disappointing set of bloodwork and I was determined to push forward on new improvements. I want a personal life that is more than lying prone in bed working on my professional passions.

I want more time with my family. I want the capital to pursue children. I’ve had embryos on ice for years and been too ill to carry them. I may be too old. I have family that live outside the United States with no easy visa solutions at and that I’d like to have near me. 

 If we are able to put together the capital investment required for surrogacy (or the miracle of being able to carry myself) a family means having everyone able to be a part of the children’s lives.

Maybe this is a fantasy beyond measure.

Day 845 and Fucked Fertility

Maybe my health will never support the strain of this with the workload I choose. But I pray that visas will come, that health can be granted, that capital will be liquid, and the possibilities of getting it all together isn’t impossible even in this crazy moment. Pray for my family if you are so inclined  

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Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical Uncategorized

Day 1476 and Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough

I’m thrilled to see that the very week I began my hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy that we’ve had multiple experiments and data come in.

Bryan Johnson helped answer a few questions in my set up so I was delighted to see he himself was just wrapping up a major experiment with HBOT.

Step into my hyperbaric chamber courtesy of Bryan Johnson’s Twitter

Earlier in the week Harvard professor David Sinclair tweeted a thread on with links to the newest scientific literature on treatment. Stuff with names like Activation of SIRT1 by hyperbaric oxygenation promotes recovery of motor dysfunction in spinal cord injury rats

Esssays

A lovely meditation on what happens when you write 11,000 blog posts. In this case startup blogging. I’m written an order of magnitude less so hopefully I can avoid some of the negative consequences and enjoy the lessons.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1475 and Equalizing Pressure

I scared someone really badly today. As I was being locked into the hard shell for my eighth hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy session, I realized I had forgotten my chewing gum.

At 2 atmospheres of pressure it can be a real challenge to keep your ears from getting painfully congested. Even with yawning and blowing oxygen out your nose, it’s like going into an airplane with a sinus trouble. It’s uncomfortable but it can also be dangerous.

Careful. Equalize the pressure in your ears. If you feel your ears stuffy, equalize the pressure in the following ways. 1. Yawn 2. Swallow saliva. 3. Close mouth, pinch the nose, out of breath, blow the nose (all spelling mistakes theirs)

I got a little panicked as I was trying to stop the clinic technician from finishing the sealing process as I wasn’t sure if they could stop it once it was sealed or if I would need a full decompression cycle.

I was texting frantically “I forgot my gum can this be stopped ASAP so I can get it?”

I was tapping the window on the hardshell with a worried look and showing the text. I kept trying to make the font bigger and be clearer. FORGOT GUM OPEN?!

But it was confusing enough that everyone in the room thought something was seriously wrong. Which it would have been without the gum as I can’t do a full hour at 2 atmosphere without the help of the chewing. All the yawning, blowing out through the nose and other techniques aren’t quite enough.

It wasn’t yet an emergency. If it was I would have hit the big red button. But everyone seemed to think it was. After 2-3 minutes of frantic miscommunication it turned out that it was fine to open it up but we’d need to restart the seal and pressurize it again. I got the gum. And look who was on the TV screen.

Just don’t die while inside the chamber

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Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1473 and Sunday Slumber

I dislike having to set specific wake times up for early morning obligations. It always disturbs my sleep the night before as my mind convinces my body I must avoid missing the obligation. I’ll wake up 3-4x more than average to check the time and I’ve not oncd overslept.

As I’ve been doing an intensive course of HBOT (hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy), I’ve been obligated to show up at a specific time and place each day. And it’s really messed with my sleep as my mind seems intent on reminding me to wake up early enough to be on time.

I’ve got a day off today and I’m happy to be spending it sleeping and browsing the news.

News

A bear steepening or selloff of longer duration bonds is freaking markets out. The WSJ thinks maybe you should take the other side of the trade. Knowing what government will be functional and fiscally stable in 30 years is a hard bet for anyone to make.

Remember GameStop frenzy trying to mess up Steven Cohen and his hedge fund Point72? Well he beat other funds with 5 billion in profit this year and increased fees. But diamond hands are forever.

Trends

Disaster girls are the new professional girlfriend.

Nuclear energy is making a comeback according to Bloomberg. I’ve got an SPV for you if you are looking for early stage projects. HMU on DMs and I’ll send you along.

Luxury is tanking so maybe cater to older shoppers with money?

Reading

One of my favorite founder/authors Hannu Rajaniemi has a new book called Darkome. It’s not available in the American markets yet but he’s hosting a book party for the JPM Health Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. I have a few invites. Again DM me for the hook up. It’s a fantastic thriller

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1471 and Lemons into Lemonade

I was so disappointed yesterday as I read over my most recent set of bloodwork and found my autoimmune biomarkers headed in the wrong direction.

I’ve been well controlled though my disease is not “inactive” or in remission. I manage it as it’s worth it to me to have a quality of life that includes working in technology as I want to be a part of making the tools that enable material progress in health.

Seeing things go in the wrong direction when my life is going in the right direction had a clarifying effect on me.

Not that I’ve been unaware that I must work at my health but rather it’s hard to always be working at health as it’s a matter of survival. But when you see a change in the data you act. I got serious and immediately went into action.

I’m so lucky to have to have access to an incredible community of biohackers. That I can ask someone who is studiously pursuing health in public is the best of the internet. I get the benefit of Bryan Johnson’s open sourcing his work. I’m doing an experiment with HBOT or hyperbaric chamber oxygen therapy and I learned from him I need it to be 2 atmospheres to be effective. This helps me plan and find hard chambers.

I can use Perplexity and Claude and even make my own personal assistant trained on my condition and my data is the remarkable thing.

I’ve found a new IL-17 inhibitor that looks to have twice the efficacy of my current one at the same dose. It was only approved in Europe but finally came on the American market. I was able to discuss it with my doctor immediately after going down a short question sequence on perplexity. You have so much power to improve your life now.

Shopping

I’d like to improve my V02 max and cardiovascular health in a way that works around my psoriatic arthritis and ankylosis. I have significant fatigue from the pain and obviously high impact isn’t in the cards for me. But I can try something like a DeskCycke. It’s even possible for me to do HIIT training with one. So I bought one. My goal is to improve my V02 by 10% in 8-12 months which shouldn’t be hard as mine is absolutely awful

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Biohacking Chronic Disease Medical

Day 1470 and Disappointing Biomarkers

After my anaphylactic adventures over New Year’s, I decided it was time for a fresh round of bloodwork to see just how my inflammatory responses were doing.

I got them back and it shows exactly what you’d imagine from a patient with an active autoimmune condition. My sed rate, or erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) made a significant jump from last measurement.

I’d been on the high end of normal for almost two years and this set returned with doubling of the previous number. This biomarker is used in conjunction with C-reactive protein (CRP) test to determine overall inflammatory responses. That test came back modestly elevated but not atrocious. I also have elevated IgA levels, also known hypergammaglobulimia so that’s a bummer.

It would seem that my relatively well controlled autoimmune disorders (psoriatic arthritis and ankylosis) are moving to an active phase.

Given my use of IL-17 inhibitor injections along with a pain management protocol, lifestyle and nutrition management and a focus on holistic interventions, these results are obviously quite disappointing to me.

It would seem 2024 was harder on me than I’d have preferred and 2025 will be a year of doubling down on holistic therapeutics. Red light, infrared sauna, cryotherapy, hyperbaric chambers oxygenation, and any other anti-inflammatory treatment I can throw at it. Not that I’m looking forward to trying get another round of elimination diets but needs must.

I’ve not changed my the cornerstone therapy secukinumab since the pandemic, so it may be time to see other options like Janus Kinase (JAK) Inhibitors.

I’ve tried Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) Inhibitors as well as methotrexate (otherwise known as chemotherapy) and none of those treatments (Humira, Embrel) helped much and dosing on and off of biological injections is a long process. It can take up to six months to see results and changing a treatment that has been working comes with significant risks.

I’m lucky that even with these biomarkers I am still functional. I am able to work semi-normal hours and am able to groom and exercise. I have no personal life to speak of nor do I have hobbies beyond my work (unless reading counts) so I’m lucky to love my family and work enough to have it provide enough meaning to keep going.

Much of my success in treating this chronic complex case has been made easier with the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

Even as my physicians have retired and my care team rotates, I am able to progress and learn more thanks to large language models and search tools like Perplexity. I’m confident I will find a way to get back to remission quickly with little disruption.

Nothing provides me as much motivation to work as disease. I see how I and other patients like me suffer and I double down.

The progress we’ve made on autoimmune conditions in the wake of Covid and the rapid progression of protein discoveries as more AI tooling comes online. A chaotic world with a chaotic body drives my investing. We can do better as I see so much progress.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

1452 and Bone Deep Weather

When the weather begins a shift to wet, cold or otherwise stormy, I feel it like some poor grandmother in a folktale.

My joints begin to ache, I feel swelling across my fascia and my ankylosis pain intensifies. Why do joints hurt when a storm system moves in? We’ve got a couple plausible explanations for all too common phenomena.

Barometric Pressure Changes: Before a rainstorm, barometric pressure (the weight of the air) typically drops. This decrease in external pressure can allow tissues surrounding the joints to expand.

Humidity and Inflammation: Rainy weather often brings high humidity, which may worsen inflammation in joints, particularly for those with conditions like arthritis.

Thanks to Perplexity the bone deep discomfort of a storm front becomes much easier to understand.

Cold conditions can stiffen joints by thickening the synovial fluid that lubricates them. Reduced blood circulation may also contribute. Changes in weather can make nerves more sensitive which amplifying pain signals.

The remedies for these changes are pretty basic. Stay warm, get your blood flowing with some light exercise, stay hydrated, stretch and take anti-inflammatory medications like NSAIDs to mitigate discomfort.

I asked Grok to draw me as a cyborg granny out in front of a storm

Prompted Grok to draw me as an arthritic cyborg granny in a rocking chair waiting and watching as a storm comes in.
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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 1433 and Pardon The Interruption

I’ve been running around keeping a busy schedule while I’m on the road for a few weeks on the west coast.

I had a number of things I wanted to do today but I’m so tuckered out I have been slowly passing on everything.

My stomach is upset, I’ve got a migraine that isn’t quitting and everything hurts. So pardon me for the interruption in my regularly scheduled posting but I am going to attempt one of those sixteen hours of sleep nights in the hope that any issues can be fixed with rest.

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Biohacking

Day 1409 and Setting Up Red Light Home Automation for Better Sleep

I struggle with some chronic illnesses so biohacking is a hobby. Recently multiple friends have been discussing the benefits of using red lights at night to improve sleep quality.

There is some evidence blue light from screens decreases melatonin production which is why so many sleep hygiene guides suggest using a program like Flux on your screened devices.

Running red light for 2-3 hours before bedtime may help lower cortisol levels and increase melatonin production. Plus it gives your bedroom a fun boudoir vibe so we thought why not try it?

Philips Hue 60W Bulbs

We bought a set of Philip Hue bulbs for the three lamps in our bedroom. They sell their own automation systems to manage your thoughts but we already use Home Assistant from the Open Home Foundation for automation because it allows us to run basically everything entirely locally with no cloud dependence or internet access.

For our existing lighting we use a combo of Lutron Caseta (for built in lighting) and Philips Hue bulbs (for plug in lamps). For the purposes of the red light experiment in the bedroom, we are using all plug in lamps.

For the Hue bulbs, instead of using the Hue Bridge and the Hue App, we use the built in Zigbee radios to pair directly to Home Assistant.

Phillips should be commended for using open protocols and enabling users to use these non-proprietary standards. Interoperability is good.

To achieve the light color changes we wanted, there is a plugin called “adaptive lighting” that automatically color and brightness shifts the bulbs through the day (subject to plenty of configuration options).

In our case, Alex set them to go very red (1000K) while also limiting the sunrise to no later than 6am and the sunset locked to 630p in order to fit into our routine and preferred bed timings.

iPhones have an automatic white balance on their cameras but it is actually quite red at night

The lights mostly work automatically but for when manually control is wanted, there are Zigbee remotes on each side of the bed as well as Home Assistant bridged to Apple HomeKit so everything can be controlled via the Apple Home app or through Siri.

It may sound complicated but there are plenty of tutorials in the open source community to help guide you. As we get more data from our own biometric tracking I’ll be sure to discuss it here and on Twitter.