You are slowly dying in so many subtle, little ways that you might not even notice.
That is, until you enter a biohacking expo, where thousands interested in “hacking” their biology in the name of longevity congregate to see the latest in time-defying technology.
A man behind one booth will warn you that your nervous system is out of sync with your electrical system, a woman behind another will inform you that your blood needs to be rejuvenated via Wi-Fi-radiation exposure.
That was my experience at Biohackers World Conference at InterContinental Hotel in Midtown Manhattan over the weekend, where entrepreneurs, holistic doctors, and casual hobbyists convened to apparently extend human life.
Within minutes of my own arrival, a friendly middle aged woman named Tara running a booth in the conference’s expo hall had already sprayed a substance into my mouth that promised to open up my respiratory system.
Before I even fully realized what was happening, she had raised a tiny spoonful of purple powder to my nostril, and — for some reason — I followed her commands as she told me to inhale. The “nasal snuff,” she said, was a “brain activation product” full of “mitochondrial peptides.”
Her clients at MitoZen — usually people “who [want] to take their health into their own hands, to feel empowered, to not feel like a victim of Western medicine” — say it’s great for public speaking or an important phone call.
With my instant-delivery neuro-enhancement up my nose, I was ready to head out onto the exposition floor to learn how, apparently, to outsmart my own biology.
I was drawn like a moth to a flame to Kera Lynn, a pretty yoga coach covered in tribal style tattoos, who was standing next to a massive ceramic contraption in the corner of the room that looked like a crossover between a bathtub and a cocoon.
For betweent $18,000 and $29,000, AuraO3 promised to repair your body on a cellular level via Ozone therapy, an alternative medical practice that immerses the body in ozone gas and apparently “[increases] tissue oxygenation,” “[supports] cellular detoxification,” and “[promotes] immune modulation.”
Lynn, who is pursuing an alternative medicine bachelor’s degree, told me her product, which she rolled out in January, is in thirteen homes across multiple countries, and has helped with “chronic pain and cancers.”
The ozone therapy conducted in her AuraO3 pod, she told me, is good for detoxing from “parasites, COVID vaccines, [and] metals.” It’s also helpful for Lyme disease, re-regulating blood sugar, rebalancing hormones, and can even be, she claims, an alternative to antibiotics.
The 31-year-old from California even “supported a woman through leukemia,” she said, with the patient in remission after three months.
There’s just one small problem.
“Ozone is a toxic gas with no known useful medical application,” according to the FDA’s Code of Federal Regulations. “In order for ozone to be effective as a germicide, it must be present in a concentration far greater than that which can be safely tolerated by man and animals.”
I watched some people try out the pod, but abstained myself, wandering around a bit to mingle with attendees, who paid anything from $399 for a standard ticket to $989 for VIP status.
Philip Santoro is a local school psychologist and hobbyist biohacker. When I met him, he’d just left a booth selling kits that test your microbiome via a stool sample and was disappointed their credit card machine had been down.
Though it’s his first biohacking conference, Santoro has learned a lot about the movement from the internet. He’d already invested in products for his home, including a red light panel, a vagus nerve stimulator, and a magnetic coil, which promises to “downshift your nervous system” via pulsed electromagnetic field therapy.
The 56-year-old has also paid for microplastic testing and full body scans, coming out to a roughly $7,000 investment in his own longevity.
“It’s like a rabbit hole,” he told me. “Once you hear something that interests you… then you start getting information on other things, and then you’re like, okay, if you’re helping your mitochondria then there’s something else you can do, and then you start looking.”
I continued to browse through an endless sea of supplements and contraptions. Red light therapy helmets, vibrating pads that promise an hour’s worth of exercise in ten minutes, even a booth for biohacking your pet… “because well-being isn’t just a human goal.”
During my stroll, I stumbled upon Randy Thomas, a 44-year-old attendee who came with a friend from New Jersey to check out the conference. He remained skeptical.
“Some people get into [biohacking] to make money and rip people off,” he told me. “I’m here to see what works and what’s snake oil salesman stuff.”
Next up, I stopped at a booth selling a $9,999 palm scanner, which measures the energy flow in each of the body’s chakra with 24 karat gold sensors. Dr. Nima Farshid was manning the booth. This technology, he told me, could detect problems in the organ systems six months before they show up in blood work.
Farshid, 47, explained that our bodies have an electrical system, alongside our nervous system, and that “blockages” can go under the radar and impact various systems in the body.
“See how you’re standing right now,” he said, gesturing to my hips. I was holding more weight on one foot than the other. “You have a blockage in your hips. So now you’re holding a lot of energy in your hips. If that maintains like that, it can start to damage your sexual systems.”
He helped me place my hand on his machine, which would tell me how electricity is moving through just about every part of my body — from the brain to the small intestine and the feet to the eyes.
I asked if his test was sort of like an EKG. It was the only electric measurement I was familiar with in medicine. “No, you went too far. You went medical on me,” he said. “EKG is like, yeah, that’s like measuring the rhythms of the heart. I’m just talking about electricity.”
My results started coming in on a computer screen. An ethereal multicolored cloud spread over da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which I was told represented the amount of energy flow in various regions of my body.
The gray throughout, Farshid said, was an indication that some of my body parts were sub-optimally electrified. While my large intestine indicated a positive “blue,” my rectum was apparently offline (!) My brain also appeared to be largely unplugged from my body’s grid. Maybe it was the nasal snuff from earlier.
I continued to wander and met Tsun Law, a medical doctor in Fort Lauderdale. He was there on behalf of his clients, he said, as they keep coming in asking questions about various biohacking methods, like peptides and stem cell therapy.
“I’m here trying to get educated a little bit, because patients are coming in asking a lot of questions about [biohacking],” Law, 42, told me. “That’s kind of what everyone is asking for now, and I really don’t know what to tell them.”
In his opinion, things like red light therapy are promising, while he would recommend against ozone therapy. I asked him what he thought of people without traditional medical backgrounds developing and selling products to consumers.
“That’s okay, because a lot of times, in the medical world, some of the big breakthroughs that we’ve had actually came from non-physicians and people thinking outside of the box that leads us to do our research,” he said.
I thought about his patients — regular people encountering the biohacking world online — who are probably seeing all sorts of ads for contraptions and gizmos, powders and supplements. And I worried that some might be falling victim to the fantasy of agelessness.
On one hand, the conference catered to wealthy attendees. A yacht rental company was advertising a trip on the Red Sea, which they’d spun a “biohacking” angle onto by offering IV drips onboard. The outing cost an undisclosed, presumably large price.
But I didn’t get the sense everyone was the stereotypical gazillionare, jetting around in yachts and obsessed with maxxing their own mortality. Most felt like regular people who believe these entrepreneurs might be able to let them in on a scientific secret.
That suspicion was confirmed by a booth advertising buy-now-pay-later payment plans for biohacking businesses like medical spas. Their presence was an indication that some people aren’t just throwing money at speculative remedies, but going into debt over the promise of longevity.
I’m not a medical expert, so I’m not one to say whether the health of your reproductive system is detectable through the palm of your hand, or if you need Wi-Fi radiation delivered through your bloodstream.
But what I can say for sure after my day at BioHackers World is that it isn’t just for vain billionaires. It’s also for vulnerable people desperate to feel as though they’re in control of their own destinies and willing to pay the prices, whether the remedies have been proven or not.
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