Category: Biohacking

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 885 and Grieving Your Many Deaths

The most soothing statistic I’ve ever hoped was true is that your body turns over all of its cells every seven years. It seems to be functionally close to true. Every cell, except those in our brain, our heart and our eyes, does indeed participate in some form of cellular renewal.

Our bodies replace many of their nearly 30 trillion human cells regularly. About 330 billion of those cells are replaced every day — that’s about 1 percent of all our body’s cells. Other cells, like the tiny ones in our gut, renew within a week.

How Stuff Works

I’m not much for dreams of eternal life. Chronic disease tends to give you a bit of appreciation for Sisyphus and the torture of daily physical embodied indignities. But give me the hope for constant change and you’ve got my attention. And yes I moved a lot as a kid who do you ask?

Doesn’t 1% renewal day seem both manageable and swift at the same time? It’s one of the recommendations I give to folks who are interested in biohacking. Change one variable by a small percentage every single day. Big changes come from compounding over time.

It does make me wonder if I’ve taken adequate time to grieve the many versions of myself that have died. The ghosts of old versions of Julie haunt me. Every time Scotty beamed you up, imagine the last version of you that was killed on the transporter pad. Ghost stories right?

I’m not the same person I was yesterday. I’m not the same person I was a month ago. If I look at how much change I’ve undergone in just the last year it feels dizzying. If I consider how different June of 2023 Julie is from June 2022, I’m barely the same person.

I take solace in the 1% renewal. That even if this version of myself is suffering, I am building a future version of myself that compounds into better versions. Seems like we should be grieving a little every day doesn’t it?

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Biohacking

Day 881 and Set a Timer

I’ve always been the type of thinker who enjoy playing with differences and similarities. I find it pleasing to see common attributes of humanity. I’m soothed seeing we are more alike than not even across vast genetic & cultural distances.

I equally enjoy spotting games of “one thing is not like the other” as part of the general pattern recognition that evolutionary Darwinism implies. The freaks and mutants are who push us forward. Recognizing the value of positive differentiation is the basis for every job I’ve ever loved from fashion to finance.

This might be why I enjoy tools like timers, trackers, spreadsheets and other measurements of inputs and outputs. I like inferred knowledge and probability. Those goofy old standard test questions “this is to that: as that is to this” were my favorite.

I understand how totalizing using these tools can be. I’m currently experiencing the intense urge to smash my Apple Watch as I am asking it to “set a timer for 45” minutes several times a day. I’m setting shorter timers too.

I am spreading out a biohacking regimen while my body goes through an ugly symptom flare that suggests both allergy issues and a general immune response to what I believe is an infection from some scratching that opened my dermatitis. Fun huh?

The expectation that one’s body is unique and an N of 1 pairs poorly with averages, reversion to the mean, and the persistent beeping tinging ringing reminders of a timer going off telling you to follow the routine. So here I am wishing to some spreadsheet brained hope that my inputs and outputs will balance and I will be fine if we got the dosing right.

Which is the prayer of everyone who has ever experienced a medical malady. Set a timer, wait, and pray to an actual God as the ones in our phones aren’t up to the task of being deities just yet. More like having a troublesome djinn that promises the pain will go away if you do exactly ask it asks.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 873 and Commitments

I have two conflicting commitments at the moment. Both are with people who I’d consider intimate relationships with as much access to my inner life as my closest confidants.

I made the decision to show up for both parties last week and this week. And while I don’t regret my decision at all, the choice has had consequences. I am accepting them right now. I’m in bed and in a fun spiral of inflammation. I’m in pain, and even more annoying, I’m fucking itchy as hell. My biometrics are screaming red across every dashboard from Whoop to Welltory.

The irony, of course, is that in being so committed to showing up for others I failed to show up for myself. I didn’t know what I wanted so I did everything I’d obligated myself to do.

I can’t blame it on anyone even though it’s so easy to consider the ways I can rationalize my choices. I’m committed to good and useful things that improve my emotional fluidity and contribute to my personal growth.

Being committed to others means being committed to yourself first. The better I maintain my boundaries, the more I can show up for someone else. Knowing what we want, asking for it clearly, and being accountable for the actions you took is the whole ball game. Everything else is details. And I bet you can manage that.

I am committed to myself as I’ve got to rest and get myself under control or else I’m not being accountable. And I’m not a victim to my circumstances. I chose this.

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Biohacking Travel

Day 867 and Sleep

I didn’t get a good night sleep last night. Or the night before. Or the night before. I guess I must be jet lagged.

I am always convinced I’ve managed to avoid jet lag and it’s never actually true. I love to lie to myself about my capacity for recovery in the face of travel but I know deep down that once the adrenaline wears off, it’s all about establishing a consistent sleep routine.

I’d rather maintain East Coast Time while I’m in Europe but my body has a tendency to sync to the circadian rhythms of the sun rise and sun set even when I do my best to stay awake till midnight I’ll rise with the sun. I was awake at 6am in Frankfurt as even with an eye mask on I knew it was finally morning.

I wanted to be settled and in a good routine as tomorrow afternoon it will have been a full week since I arrived in Germany. But it’s always harder than you expect to transplant your rhythms and routines. It’s boring to write about and I’m sure boring to read but not all posts can be about corporate cosmopolitanism and the abstraction layer of task applications as anonymous servant class rootless yuppies. That’s a fun read.

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Biohacking

Day 866 and Sensory Overload

I was up very late last night as I had an evening commitment on Eastern Standard Time while I myself am on European Central Time. I finished at 6pm in New York but it was 2am for me. It was stimulating I was unable to fall asleep till well past 3am.

I didn’t successfully sleep in as much as I would have liked, so I found myself running on a bit less sleep than I would have preferred even though my Whoop suggested I was in the green with a reasonably high HRV score. When my biometrics are all in the green, even if I’ve had perceptually poor sleep, I try to let my data guide me.

I thought I was doing ok as I went about my routines and workload. I showered, meditated, did some work and even got a power nap in.

Still I found myself getting overwhelmed by basic sensory inputs. The sound of the cars on the road felt loud. I took a walk and found myself ordering an Uber to get home as I was tired and has gone too far. Alas, in the car, I found myself covering my ears and closing my eyes as the pop music and car incense overwhelmed two senses at once.

I felt as if I was an autistic cliche. I literally had my fingers in my ears humming to myself to calm myself down. After my nervous system mastery Bootcamp course, I knew my vagus nerve had gone into overstimulation.

I had gone into sympathetic shutdown without even realizing it. I couldn’t even think to ask the driver to turn down the music. I did what I could to breath.

It was a quick reminder that my daily life in the countryside of Montana is a lot easier on the body than a bustling city like Frankfurt.

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Biohacking Travel

Day 861 and 8%

I’ve been on the road all week for work (and a little bit of play). I flew an overnight transcontinental from Seattle to Frankfurt Tuesday evening into Wednesday which is yesterday for America but with the time zone change feels like two days. While I am not jet lagged (a surprise) my Whoop recovery is the worst I’ve ever received. I got an recovery 8% score. And I feel basically fine

After a rocky encounter with a new airline carrier Condor, I struggled to stay asleep sleep on the airplane. I blame the excitement of the bizarre business class setup without assigned seating. Or maybe it was because I ended up making friends with my seat mate and swapped stories over dinner.

Usually when flying overnight I take an Ambien and immediately pass out. Better living through chemistry right? Plus I’m not naturally social. Instead I was doing face masks and debating White Lotus theories over a pretty decent seared tuna.

When I landed in Frankfurt I felt quite energetic and pushed through the afternoon with ease. Or maybe it felt easy as I had several cups of coffee. I thought I’d nailed the flight even though I knew I didn’t get enough sleep.

Once I’d settled into my Airbnb, I checked my previous night’s biometrics I realized I’d only recorded four hours of sleep and my HRV had dropped into the low teens. Maybe I’d made a mistake not “force quitting” myself into a hard sleep on the airplane with a downer.

My average HRV is usually in the forties which isn’t all that impressive to begin with (I’ve got a spinal condition called ankylosis spondylitis) but I hadn’t expected all my biometrics to go flashing red quite so badly when I felt mostly fine. My guess is that the 8% reflected a significant amount of stress and I’d simply not flushed the adrenaline and cortisol out of my system.

I’m keeping it low key today as a consequence. I was up at 7am European Central Time and went grocery shopping to stock the apartment. Getting sunlight is crucial and while I plan to keep EST hours mostly while I’m here it felt good to be up and about.

I managed to fit in some work, did a load of laundry, got some Ethiopian food for lunch and still feel like I can manage a work day. It’s now past 5Pm in Germany and America is just waking up on the west coast. My husband just texted me from San Francisco so it’s time to finish my day and start the day with everyone else.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 858 and In Passing

As I’ve been working on a nervous system mastery course the past few weeks I’ve been especially attuned to how quickly emotions rise and fall in my body. Like a small child, the range and swiftness of feelings always catches me by surprise. And it is a blessing.

I don’t repress anything. Good or bad, I let it rise up and feel it deeply and completely. This can lead to some awkward timing.

I had a moment of intense grief and sadness wash over me on the airplane today as part of an exercise called somatic free diving. I let the tears overcome me only because I had on an eye mask that I knew would hide it. I was in a safe place to feel it even though I was in public.

But just as quickly as the storm blew in so too did it dissipate. The emotions are always in pass if we allow ourselves to enjoy the temporality of our reactions. If the issues are in our tissues we can bring ourselves in and out of them just by noticing where in our body we feel our emotions.

The pressure to let go of bad feelings and hang onto good ones can be intense. We rush to toss off grief, sadness, fear, abandonment and rage while we cling to happiness, joy, wonder and arousal.

But I am playing with the idea that everyone and everything is just happening “in passing.” Humans only get to live forward in time linearly. None of the probabilistic potentialities happen for us. We enjoy heavily edited narrative memory and future fantasies but reality happens in the present.

I am hoping to catch some people in passing while I am in transit. However I know possibilities are endless and my linear limitations will intersect with all of the other beings also in passing with equality linear limitations.

All of that has become beautiful and tangible to me the further I dive into my own nervous system and it’s inner workings. If you do want to join the next cohort with me (apparently alumni are able to do so) my code JULIE does something. Probably saves you some money. For me the course has saved me something far less tangible and I am grateful.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 855 and Tissue Issues

I committed to a five week Nervous System Mastery Bootcamp about a month ago. My goal was to learn more about how I react physically and emotionally by better understanding my own nervous system.

I spent the first two weeks feeling overwhelmed by all the bits and pieces. I came in with more resistance and fear than I even realized, despite writing about how I was excited by what I might learn.

I’m still behind on the materials, but thankfully I’ve let go of some of my rationalizations for why. Being behind was resistance on my part.

Finding and loosing resistance ironically one is one of the reasons reason I even committed in the first place. So I can confidently say the course is working for me.

I’ve learned a lot about the interconnected glorious mess of my nervous system, my mind and my wider reactions to pain both physical and emotional.

Lisa Feldman Barret said: ‘Your body does not keep the score. Your brain keeps the score—your body is the scorecard…’ or put it another way — our issues are actually in our tissues.

The slow journey of accepting where I am in the moment will continue. I’ll be in the next cohort as well if you are interested use code JULIE.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 830 and Nervous System

I’ve found myself angry for being so fucking stupid. I don’t remember what it was over. Maybe I got confused about some new piece of software on the course I’m taking. Maybe it was because I didn’t give myself more space today to take care of myself.

But I wanted to wag my finger at myself for all kinds of things. I was just afraid because I had to do a lot of things in a short space of time and I dislike logistical pressure. But aside from a few bumps and embarrassing moments I managed it all.

I took a little break and some extra medication to manage a pain flare. I just took everything one step at a time as it was in front of me. I wasn’t a victim to any of my challenges but fully capable and even happy to be doing so right by myself.

I am taking a course on nervous system mastery and today was the first session for orientation. I have a lot of experience in many modalities of coaching, physical biohacking, and family systems work. But the chance to specifically work on regulating my nervous system seemed like a challenge I wanted to rise to meet. Because we all have choices in how we face things. If it looks cool use code JULIE. I’ll be reporting on how it goes for me.

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Biohacking Chronic Disease

Day 790 and Siesta

I have been crashing out of my day into a sleep cycle after lunch till about 4pm while I’m in Mexico. The stress of the situation along with the heat and humidity have me needing a lot of rest.

Last time I was in a hotter climate I’d find myself crashing out into naps if I did something like eat lunch outside. I think something similar happened here. There are no air conditioned common spaces in this hotel so if I want to spend time with someone I’m outside. Sure there is shade but that doesn’t knock down anything but brightness. The heat and humidity strike anyways.

I hate this phenomenon. I don’t find it helpful to be laid flat and exhausted by two or three hours outdoors, sitting, in the shade; but it’s absolutely draining. Even if I felt like I had a full charge, which I don’t particularly, I’d be down in the red quickly.

I woke up with someone asking about dinner plans which I had offered but in truth the most I want to do is get some dinner and go back to sleep. It’s just much too draining to be outside and there aren’t many restaurants in this town with air conditioning.