Biohacker Reviews

The Internet is making everyone stupid, and that's a good thing!

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains is a book that dramatically changed how I view the Internet. You don't need to read this book because the title says it all - your suspicions are correct, the Internet is NOT very good for our minds.

What is MCT Oil (Medium-Chain Triglycerides)?

Medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil is popular among athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and individuals trying to lose weight. As the name implies, it consists of medium-length chains of triglyceride fatty acids, which are easier to digest than long-chain fatty acids. Coconut oil is a rich source of MCTs, as MCTs make up more than half of coconut oil’s fat content.

What is MCT Made Of?

Medium-chain triglycerides exist in four forms:  caproic acid, caprylic acid, capric acid, and lauric acid. However, most MCT oil products available commercially use caprylic and capric acid. Each MCT variation has unique properties that may enhance exercise performance and support weight loss efforts. MCTs also have antimicrobial and antifungal properties that can combat the growth of yeast and bacteria.

From PureBulk.com

Biohacker Review: "Pharmaceutical Grade" Bacopa

I put Pharmaceutical Grade in quotation marks because there's not really such a thing as pharmaceutical-grade herbs and Adaptogens, but I use the phrase because it's known to mean of the highest quality and purity. This is super important with Bacopa in particular. You'll want to read or listen to my meta-analysis of Bacopa before purchasing or consuming this.

Book review: Masterful magical realism!

I recently finished the third book in the compelling historical fiction series ”War God” by Graham Hancock, about the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Cortés and his band of conquistadors.

What captures your attention for hours on end and makes the novel such a page-turner is its descriptions of the scale and severity of violence. This book is a snapshot of probably one of the very most violent episodes in human history; when one of the most ambitious men in the world, Hernán Cortés, with a technologically superior force of several hundred conquistadors took on an empire of possibly as many as 30 million Aztecs and ultimately prevailed.

Biohacker Review: Siberian Ginseng will bring out the Genghis Khan in you!

This is my review of Eleuthero by Superman Herbs, which is now called Lost Empire Herbs, which is actually a rebranding that I dislike. I'll explain why later.

I've been using Eleuthero (often referred to as Siberian Ginseng), which is a performance-enhancing herb, for a little over a year now; this 100-gram package has lasted me that long, which is pretty impressive! There are a lot of herbal performance enhancement millage from a supplement that costs about $40.

Biohacker Review: ESS60 is next-level C60...

In my nearly 9-years of obsession with biohacking, the super antioxidant C60 really stands out as a game-changing anti-aging agent.

As an antioxidant, C60 doesn't fundamentally hack anything in the body on its own; instead, it just helps the body take out the trash. At the root of aging and nearly all diseases are tiny free radicals bouncing around your body, causing havoc. Antioxidants, like C60, bind to these trouble-making molecules and escort them promptly out of the establishment. With that (very) simplified explanation of C60 out of the way, let's talk about ESS60 and my experience with it...

My first session with the EmWave2 was a little awkward, at first, the Coherence indicator was a major distractor, so it added to the consummate compartmentalization challenge that is Dual N-Back training.

I used EQPro, a version of the leading Dual N-Back software from IQ Mindware and my friend Dr. Mark Ashton Smith, which trains emotional regulation simultaneously. EQPro is the Dual N-Back task with emotional data that you have to either ignore or remember.

Book Review: An HRV-Hackers Guide to Living Fully for Every Beat

HRV is a topic I've been interested in for a while as a Biohacker. I've completed over 300 HRV training sessions with HeartMath's devices; which has made me a better meditator and generally, a cooler cat. HRV is a particularly pragmatic metric for the Biohacker thanks to the abundance of science done on the topic and the advent of consumer-grade devices you can use to track yours.

The Pulse Cure, by Dr. Torkil Færø, is the most recent (and, in my opinion, approachable and actionable) book on the topic. The book is the result of a study group of 198 Norwegian volunteers that Dr. Torkil (as he refers to himself on his popular Instagram account) led in using HRV wearables. It is punctuated by a number of anecdotes from Dr. Torkil's Garmin watch study group. For example: Melina, 41, adds

Don’t get stressed out thinking that you have to follow all of the scores and data every single day. Go at your own pace! Eventually you won’t need to track all the data. You will learn when it is the right time to check your status. (p. 94)

Tusen takk (Norwegian for “a thousand thank-yous”), Melina!

Biohacker Review: Get smarter FAST (20 days) with this boring brain game...

I downloaded HighIQPro, installed it, and launched the application. I began the first N-back exercise (of course, without reading any instructions!) and was immediately confused by a screen that a blinking red square sporadically appeared on. Not sure what to do I exited this game and went back to the main screen where I clicked the help icon.

This took me to a page on the HighIQPro website that instructed me to first take an IQ test and a Jouve-Cerebrals Test of Induction (JCTI) fluid intelligence test. I took a free 40-minute IQ test and scored 100. So as of May 1, 2012, I have a perfectly average IQ score for an American, I guess that makes me an ideal test subject for this case study. After the IQ test, I was a little frazzled, so I slept for a night before taking the JCTI test. I found the JCTI a little more challenging but ended up scoring 102, so I'm pretty damn average!