Biohacking 101: Sleep and Light
A day in the life of a biohacker.
Dear Fellow Biohackers,
This post regards some recent steps I've taken which have proved valuable from my personal anecdotal experience. Many years back, I decided to take a holistic approach to biohacking. This entails viewing the process of biohacking as the complex system that it is; starting with the very basics, namely: sleep, diet, exercise, hygiene, and then supplementation. The goal is ultimately to live energetically, and slow or reverse aging in all of the bodily systems using any available (and considered safe) methods deemed viable by a reasonable number of published scientific studies—or in some circumstances, experimenting with less studied ideas that make intuitive or functional sense. I assume most—if not all—biohackers are in the same boat.
One thing I have struggled with consistently over the years is getting enough deep sleep. I track sleep on two different devices: a ring and a smart mattress pad. I've tried what feels like everything under the sun to conjure up the fleeting and mystical deep sleep—known by all, but alien to me since childhood.
Every night for the past several months, my deep sleep has ranged anywhere from 0-45 minutes, and averaged ~20 minutes per night. Often times, I'd have strings of days with less than 10 minutes of deep sleep. And in my experience, despite potential inaccuracies with consumer-grade sleep tracking devices, energy levels during the day and readings on these devices do show a clear correlation.
Quick side-note: If you are new to biohacking, I would suggest making sleep your focal point right out of the gate. Do some research on the importance of sleep and the role it plays in maintaining your body. If you’ve already done this, then I’m certain that you’re certain, that sleep is vital.
Back to my excursion for deep sleep. I’ve picked up a few tricks over the years through reading and experimentation, and some of the things I have been doing specifically for sleep are:
Consistent bedtime and wake-up time every day.
Blue light blocking glasses and nightshift mode on all devices after sunset.
Eating a whole food diet containing sufficient macro- and micro-nutrients. Vitamins and minerals are important cofactors that affect many biochemical processes in the body. And sufficient amino acids (building blocks of protein) are necessary for the body to function properly on innumerable levels; for example, Tryptophan is an essential amino acid—meaning the body cannot produce it on its own—and is, in a nutshell, the precursor to serotonin which is the precursor to melatonin.
Upon waking up: natural sunlight in the eyes and 10-20 minutes of heavy lifting to signal to the body’s circadian rhythm that it’s time to start the day.
A cooling mattress pad set to ~70 degrees.
A comfortable sleep mask that blacks out any ambient light.
Winding down the mind and body early at night and approaching sleep with no judgement. Anxiety and worrying about not sleeping will only lead to less sleep.
Using these tricks, I managed to boost my deep sleep average of ~3-5 minutes to ~20 minutes. So despite my best efforts, this was still not enough. For about 3 consistent months, I’ve been incorporating these practices into my routine, yet still, getting more than 20 minutes of deep sleep in a night was a rarity; that is, until last night.
In passing, I’ve been hearing buzz of myriad benefits derived from infrared and near-infrared (NIR) light therapy. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically exactly as it sounds. You shine a specific type of light at your body, and due to its long wavelength (most studies have used wavelengths in the 700 to 1,000 nanometer range), it penetrates more deeply into the skin and stimulates cellular mitochondria. Without getting bogged down in the nitty gritty details of how it works or listing all of its well-studied benefits (there are many), I woke up this morning after using the device twice yesterday for 15 minutes per session, and to my surprise, I logged a record high 57 minutes of deep sleep. Promising results!
Admittedly, this is an n=1 study, and the study duration was but a day. But the results were so profound, and I felt so great today, that I figured this would be a great way to illustrate a day in the life of a biohacker to anyone whom may have an interest in the art.