Biohacking: a race with death or self-deception?
Konstantin Ermolaev, RIA Novosti
One of the main topics of the end of last year was biohacking – a way to improve health, activity and psychological state through a healthy lifestyle, proper nutrition, and most importantly, taking a variety of medications and dietary supplements.
It turns out that the saying "money can't buy health and happiness" has lost its relevance. And most importantly, they can now be given, for example, to a man on February 23.
But is this technology as useful in life as it is on paper, and where did it come from? Pavel Volchkov, head of the Laboratory of Genomic Engineering at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and psychologist Tatiana Shalagina told the correspondent of Social Navigator about this.
A newfangled trend
According to Pavel Volchkov, biohacking, or rather DIY biology (from do it yourself – "do it yourself"), of which he is a part, originated in 1988. Then people were engaged in experiments, for example with E. coli or gene modification of mice, as a hobby. Experiments on his own body appeared later.
Initially, the expert notes, biohacking was done only by scientists from related fields or who went into business, but did not want to give up research. But today, due to the availability of equipment for experiments, many amateurs have joined them, whose knowledge is limited only to popular science articles in journals, since articles from professional journals are too complicated for them.
"If a person is shown an article from Nature, then every second word will cause him difficulty. But if you chew this information to him, he will think that he will also be able to do science," Volchkov stressed.
"That hype regarding biohacking, and this is exactly HYPE, grew out of the fact that a huge amount of scientific literature was adapted by the popularizers of science," Volchkov noted.
According to the scientist, there is nothing wrong with DIY biology. It's like a hobby. If a person has an interest, why not? Someone does carpentry after working in a bank, and someone likes to read scientific articles and make experiments.
What is behind this hype?
However, if we consider biohacking as a way to improve health and increase activity, then everything is not so clear.
"From the point of view of scientists, the worst thing you can do is to put an experiment on yourself. There is a dogma in science that you can't do anything on yourself, otherwise you deprive yourself of the objectivity of research," Volchkov stressed.
To achieve the desired effect, biohackers take various medications, including antidepressants.
"As far as I understand, the author of the article is from America, and there is trouble with psychotropic drugs there now. Take, for example, Xanax. This is the plague of America at the moment. This is an antidepressant, which is used by about 20% of American adults," Volchkov said.
According to him, this drug relieves the feeling of fear. You stop freaking out, experiencing stress and just objectively perceive reality. However, there is a colossal addiction to it. "It's very difficult to get off Xanax, it's almost like a drug, because there is a so–called xanox withdrawal," Volchkov stressed. Having stopped taking the drug, the expert notes, a person begins to constantly experience causeless bouts of fear.
"You understand that if you suppress your fears or emotions and at the same time increase the dose of the drug, then there will be a post-effect. This is true for almost all the drugs that we use," Volchkov stressed.
There are other consequences. You can quickly exhaust the resource of your body. A striking example is sports.
The main biohacking of our time
"Do you understand that modern sport is a pharmaceutical competition? This is the professional biohacking controlled by doctors that exists today. Obviously, there may be consequences," he said.
For example, according to Pavel Volchkov, thanks to injections of erythropoietin, a drug that athletes initially took in the form of doping, it is possible to increase the number of red blood cells in the blood to an incredible level, which will allow you to run a marathon without shortness of breath. However, if you systematically take this drug, the stem cells will divide faster, which means that their resource will be exhausted faster.
"But this is a clinical case, I don't think it is still used in biohacking," Volchkov stressed.
Scientific breakthrough or ordinary fear?
"In general, the medicine for all diseases has always been sold. These statements were both 1000 years ago and 100. This is nothing new. Today, only the wrapper has changed," emphasizes Volchkov.
As they say, demand creates supply.
"If you offer a cure for cancer to the sufferers, of whom there are a lot around, they will immediately turn to you," Volchkov noted.
The fear of death is one of the reasons for the popularity of biohacking, says Tatiana Shalagina.
"In our modern society, death is considered something terrible, vile, indecent, so you need to try by any means to push it away and prolong your life. Of course, the desire to live for a long time while maintaining motor and mental activity is great. But without fanaticism!", – notes Shalagina.
Any fanaticism, according to the psychologist, is a direct path to addiction. And addiction is a disease.
Shalagina also believes that modern people are passionate about the desire to prolong life as long as possible and biohacking will become increasingly popular.
"This phenomenon is very dangerous for the psyche, as it violates the laws of nature. And in nature, the human physical body is inextricably linked with the psyche. It is impossible to become a wise aksakal, being in a young and active body," the psychologist noted.
According to her, wisdom requires peace and contemplation, and a young body requires constant movement.
"Nature has already done everything, intelligently and expediently arranging life. Is it worth going against nature?! Moreover, no such experience has yet succeeded ...", – she summed up.
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