Last weekend I walked through what felt like 100,000 square feet of promises.
The expo floor at the Eudēmonia Summit in West Palm Beach was filled with devices that glow, pulse, vibrate, chill, and compress. Nearly every booth offered a version of the same pitch, which was that this product would make your exercise, your recovery, or your sleep dramatically more effective.
I asked the same question at several booths. What is the biological mechanism that makes this work?
The answers were often vague. I heard a great deal of enthusiasm and very little physiology.
Then I would walk into a session room, where the speakers had come to teach rather than to sell. Their message was remarkably consistent, and it centered on three things: exercise, nutrition, and sleep.
While the people selling were pointing towards gadgets, the people teaching were pointing back to the basics.
You already know the 80/20 rule, the idea that a small number of inputs produces most of the results. Financial planners recognize this rule, yet they sometimes deal with clients who chase outputs without the right inputs.
A client becomes fascinated by an exotic investment, while not putting adequate attention towards their basic plan. The exotic product is rarely the problem or the solution. The fundamentals are either doing the heavy lifting or they are not being done at all.
The same holds for the body. A recovery device paired with six hours of broken sleep is an exotic investment sitting on top of an unfunded plan.
This is why I have grown uneasy with the word biohacking. To hack something implies that the system is flawed and needs a clever workaround. Your body is not flawed in that way. It responds remarkably well when you give it what it was built for, which is regular movement, real food, and sufficient rest.
I prefer the word bioaligning.
Bioaligning means cooperating with your biology before you try to outsmart it.
None of this is an argument against tools. I use a sauna and a cold plunge, I take supplements to support a healthy diet, and I track my sleep, steps, and exercise exertion. Each of those tools supports the basics rather than standing in for them. A good tool can sharpen a strong foundation, and some of what I saw last weekend may well prove its worth as the evidence matures. Our emphasis matters, though. Tools can amplify the basics, but they cannot replace them.
The encouraging part is that the 80 percent is available to nearly all of us, and most of it is free. Calisthenics costs us nothing, and neither does going to bed an hour earlier. The allure of the next breakthrough can keep us shopping for the final 10 percent while the first 90 sits unclaimed.
This Week: Before you buy, download, or subscribe to anything new for your health, consider where you stand in regard to your exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Choose the weakest area and make one small, free improvement to it for the next seven days.
Reflection: Where in your life are you shopping for a breakthrough when you haven’t fully committed to the basics?