It is easy to feel as if you were doing something bad these days if you do not know your vo2-Max and how many hours of sleep you get every night, or if you do not take a dozen different supplements and review each piece of food that makes its way in your mouth. “Biohackers” and other longevity researchers – with their many podcasts, YouTube channels and X accounts – would make you believe that if you diligent all your body functions and meticulously adapt your nutritional and exercises, you can reprogram your body to live longer and escape dreaded diseases, like a computer can be programmed to perform a disorderly task.
As a doctor, I hear these daring affirmations and I fear that my patients feel so failed if they develop a serious illness. As a framework for biotechnology, I have healthy respect for the power of biology – and our inability to control it precisely.
The logical defect of these people is to assume that the biological processes of your body are just as predictable and controllable as transistors on a chip. What they do not understand or choose to ignore is that the human organism is far too complex and unpredictable for this level of control.
Take, for example, recent fashion among people without diabetes to closely monitor the glucose levels of their body. Many longevity seekers recommend carrying a continuous glucose monitor, a device with a small needle that resides under the skin, constantly measuring the level of glucose in the body. (It was initially developed to monitor the glucose levels of people with diabetes.) They claim to use the data generated by these devices to learn how to personalize their diet for optimal glucose levels.
The problem is that the response of our body glucose to food intake is far too incoherent to produce informative results. Researchers in a recent study Fournis participants were identical meals separated by a week in a highly controlled hospital environment, while participants wore continuous glucose monitors. Even when you eat identical meals under these artificial conditions, the glucose measures of a given participant did not seem more similar than when the participants each ate a completely different meal. A dispersion diagram that the researchers made by comparing the results of the glucose of a meal against the identical meal a week later, seemed to have been made by a person throwing tarts blindfolded.
The random is inherent in life. Our parents’ chromosomes are mixed as a card game before receiving half of each of their genetic code. The immunity of our body against the disease through antibodies is the product of a random sorting process called V (d) I recombination, where our white blood cells produce billions of different antibodies, hoping that they will target the right pathogen. Some of them do it, most do not do it, and sometimes they target our own body instead, creating autoimmunity.
Diseases are often the result of random processes. In the case of cancer, there are certain behaviors that we control which predispose to carcinogenic mutations, such as smoking or exposure to ultraviolet light. More than two thirds Cancer cancer mutations, however, are not due to everything we have put on our body. They are the inevitable result of random errors introduced into our DNA by molecular machines that copy our DNA before our cells divide. Regardless of your exercise routine or diet, you cannot prevent these random mutations.
Once the mutations are incentives, our immune system can still save the day by finding cancer cells and destroying them. Again, this process is influenced by chance. If the right white cell to identify a cancer cell is to be in the vicinity of mutant cells, it can find cells and eliminate them before cancer becomes detectable. If these white blood cells are not in the region, cancer cells can proliferate. Lifestyle choices only have a limited impact on this protective layer.
Luck also plays a key role in other diseases. We have all become familiar with the arbitrary way that COVVI -19 infections propagate in a group, infecting certain people who are exposed and who inexplicably save others – even, in some cases, those who seem more vulnerable to infection. More viral particles could occur in the air to one person and far from another, and some people may have better immunity against infection for reasons that are still not well understood.
If a blood clot is formed in the left side of the heart, it can float out of the heart and in the great arteries of the chest. If the clot takes a turn and makes its way in the carotid arteries, it can cause a devastating blow. If, on the other hand, the clot moves down the bottom of the head, it will often cause less serious damage and could pass entirely untempt.
Implicit in the Biohacking movement is the belief that if only one could optimize with diligence all body inputs, we could avoid fatal diseases such as cancer. But the important role played by chance in our health results should remind us that the disease can affect anyone. In my practice, I see too many patients who blame themselves for their conditions. They wonder if they have eaten bad foods, have not done enough exercise or have been exposed to certain toxins harmful earlier in life. Although all these factors can cause diseases, they should also consider the very real possibility that there was nothing to do to avoid their state. They may simply have drawn short organic straw.
There is an increasing industry of people and companies selling biohacking advice, follow -up devices and supplements. They believe they sell people of hope for better health. In reality, they can sell people of guilt that they have not already done more to control their health and can create a burden of unrealizable expectations.
Of course, none of this is intended to involve that we can do nothing to affect our health. Basic health maxims always apply: do not smoke. Do not drink excessive amounts of alcohol. If you are obese, lose weight. Check your blood pressure and cholesterol. Exercise. Get vaccinations and cancer screens adapted to age.
But obsessing a tiny at minute in your level of glucose or following your blood levels of a dozen different vitamins and minerals will probably not be likely to have a massive impact on your health. If you get the pleasure of following all these details, I could question your choice of hobby, but I will not try to dispense with it. But if you do these things because you think you can exercise total control over your health results as a programmer writing a piece of code, my message is: Do not sweat little things.
Alex Harding, MD, is a doctor in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and entrepreneur in residence in Atlas Venture, a life venture capital company in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
