Biohacking is Dumb.

Biohacking, cortisol tracking, military nighttime routines; what's the point in perfecting our bodies if we're not bloody living in them.

Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett started an internet wide debate on lifestyle, health, fitness, wine and enjoyment.

The podcaster, author and health extremist said on his podcast that having a couple glasses of wine ruined his life for three days.

Bartlett discussed how he “never ran the experiment of not drinking for a while” so he stopped drinking and then after a year he decided to see what the effects would be if he started again.

Bartlett discovered that a couple of glasses of wine effectively ruined his life for the foreseeable. Ruining his life consisted of his sleep being poorer, eating worse the next day because his dopamine system or the cortisol system was all messed up and he podcasted worse. Now if that’s what ruining your life looks like a reality check might be required.

He mentioned how he could see all of this because he could track every metric of his health data on his watch. Frankly, the robotisation of the human body is becoming freaky.

“Biohacking is the art and science of maximising a human performance by hacking our biology. I think, simplicity-wise, it's making intentional changes in lifestyle, our environment, our body, to maximise our mind, body and emotional health,” Dr Mellissa Young from Cleveland Clinic.

Dr Young describes biohacking as “exciting and cutting edge,” but in the age of AI and instagram face how much tracking, measuring, quantifying and perfecting is too much?

I understand the concept of being as healthy as possible to live well for as long as possible, but if it impacts actually living your life what’s the bloody point?

We see, record, picture and post perfection everyday; red light therapy, IV drips and the omnipresent vitamins on shelves or on my screen is taking over. It’s all an incredibly well crafted marketing strategy to make money, nothing else.

“The wellness industry hit a record of $6.8 trillion and is forecast to reach $9..8 trillion by 2029", according to The Global Wellness Economy in 2025. These companies do not care what’s good for you or not. Anything that profits that much does not care about you.

I understand you can say the same for alcohol, cigarettes, makeup, clothing everything out there that grosses such a grotesque amounts of money only sells. Yet, the wellness industry is veiled in happiness, optimising your life, caring about the individual, well they don’t.

Bartlett was discussing his health tracking he said, “hashtag sponsored, hashtag Ad whatever,” proving the point that it’s all a bid to sell. It doesn't mean the information or scientific data is incorrect it just means they are utilising another aspect of our life to profit off of us. I know it’s obvious but sometimes the obvious has to be stated.

A glass or two of wine with your friends, feeding the soul with good music and staying up too late. Watching the light surround curtains at 5am because you lost track of time. Yes it might draw a line in my face or lower my REM but I’m not going to think about the graph on my apple watch or how little I aged when I die am I?

Gen Z are already labeled the loneliest generation, finding comfort in the computer, priding ourselves of solo dates, solo travelling and solo dinner. None of which are problematic however living an itemised life just sounds so god damn sad.

The average healthy person does not need to cross examine their sleep with their diet, their steps and their skin elasticity. They do not need to monitor their cortisol shift between 7am and 8:45. It’s not normal and it’s not living. We are not an experiment, the only thing that separates us from AI (because we may not be the most intelligent thing on the planet in a few years) is our ability to feel, make connections and understand nuance. We are on the way to eliminating those qualities one wellness step and apathetic scroll at a time.

Nuance is the most important part of this article, of course bio hacking and understanding our health is interesting and important way to manage and avoid potential risks. However, when it leads to isolating yourself at 9pm every single night to do your night time routine so you get your perfect sleep score I believe it’s a problem.

This promotion of excessive health tracking is just the veil of companies pretending to care about you when all its wellness sells right now, that’s it. We are living, breathing animals, let’s stay that way.