Three years ago, I was the poster child for the biohacking movement. My bathroom looked like a supplement store exploded in it. My bedroom resembled a sleep laboratory. I had tracking devices on my wrist, finger, and even a continuous glucose monitor stuck to my arm despite not being diabetic. I was, as they say in the community, "optimized."
I was also exhausted, anxious, and spending more time analyzing my data than actually living my life.
Let me take you on a journey through my $50,000 biohacking odyssey - the gadgets I bought, the protocols I followed, the lessons I learned, and the embarrassingly simple solution that actually changed everything.
The Descent Into Optimization Madness
It started innocently enough. I'm a software engineer at a tech company, and everyone around me was talking about nootropics and cold plunges. I read a blog post about how some CEO wakes up at 4 AM, takes 47 supplements, and has the energy of a caffeinated hummingbird. I thought: why not me?
My first purchase was modest - a quality sleep tracker and some basic supplements. Magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3s. Normal stuff. Total cost: maybe $400. I felt like I was taking control of my health. This was going to be great.
Then I fell down the rabbit hole.
The Purchases: A Financial Autopsy
Let me break down where that $50,000 went, so you can either learn from my mistakes or be thoroughly entertained by them. Possibly both.
Sleep Optimization: $8,500
I bought a smart mattress that tracks my sleep and adjusts temperature. Then I got a separate cooling pad because the mattress wasn't cold enough. Then blackout curtains that cost more than my first car. A white noise machine. A brown noise machine (because apparently white noise is for amateurs). Blue light blocking glasses in three different strengths. A sunrise alarm clock. A sunset simulation device. A sleep mask with built-in speakers. I basically turned my bedroom into a NASA experiment.
Supplements and Nootropics: $12,000
At my peak, I was taking 32 different supplements daily. I had a weekly pill organizer that looked like a tackle box. Lion's mane mushroom for cognitive function. Ashwagandha for stress. Alpha-GPC for memory. Modafinil (legally prescribed, thank you) for focus. NMN for longevity. Resveratrol because some study on mice said I should. I was spending $400-500 per month and had no idea if any of it was doing anything. But the powder drawer in my kitchen was extremely impressive.
Red Light Therapy: $3,200
First I got a small panel for my face. Then I upgraded to a full-body panel. Then I read about pulsed vs. continuous light and bought another panel. I spent 20 minutes every morning standing nearly naked in my living room, bathed in red light, looking like I was about to be teleported to Mars.
Cold Exposure: $7,800
Started with cold showers (free, but I didn't stay there long). Upgraded to an ice bath that I had to fill with ice bags from the gas station. Bought a dedicated cold plunge tub with a chiller unit so I wouldn't have to deal with ice. Had to run a new electrical circuit for it. Spent more time maintaining this thing than actually using it.
Tracking Devices: $4,500
Multiple smart watches over the years. Smart ring. Continuous glucose monitor subscription. Heart rate variability tracker. A brain-sensing headband for meditation. Blood oxygen monitor. I was collecting more data about myself than my doctor had ever seen. I had spreadsheets tracking my spreadsheets.
Other Miscellaneous "Optimization": $14,000
Infrared sauna blanket. PEMF mat for magnetic field therapy. Grounding sheets for my bed. Blue-blocking light bulbs for the entire house. Standing desk. Walking treadmill desk. Vibration plate. Hyperbaric oxygen chamber sessions. IV vitamin drips. Executive health screening packages. Genetic testing. Microbiome analysis. The list goes on.
The Breaking Point
About two years into this journey, I had an epiphany - and it wasn't the kind induced by meditation or lion's mane mushrooms.
I was lying on my PEMF mat, wearing my blue-blocking glasses, tracking my heart rate variability on my smart ring, waiting for my cold plunge to reach the optimal temperature, mentally calculating when I needed to stop eating to hit my 16-hour fasting window, and simultaneously stressing about whether my morning cortisol levels were optimal...
When I realized I was absolutely miserable.
I was spending 3-4 hours per day on "health optimization" activities. I had canceled dinners with friends because they conflicted with my eating window. I was anxious about any deviation from my protocol. I was sleeping poorly - ironically - because I was so stressed about whether I was sleeping correctly.
I had become so focused on optimizing my health that I had completely forgotten to actually live my life.
The Experiment: Going Back to Basics
I decided to run an experiment. For one month, I would abandon everything except the fundamentals. No supplements beyond a basic multivitamin. No tracking devices. No protocols. No optimization.
Instead, I committed to just four things:
- Sleep: Go to bed and wake up at consistent times, aiming for 7-8 hours
- Water: Drink enough water throughout the day
- Sunlight: Get outside in natural light for at least 30 minutes, ideally in the morning
- Movement: Walk for 30-60 minutes daily
That's it. Nothing fancy. Nothing optimized. Just the basics that humans have been doing for thousands of years.
The Results That Broke My Brain
After one month of this "primitive" protocol, I felt better than I had in years. Actually, I felt better than I had at any point during my biohacking journey.
My energy was stable throughout the day - no crashes, no need for cognitive enhancers. I was sleeping deeply without a smart mattress telling me my sleep score. I was less anxious because I wasn't constantly monitoring metrics that I couldn't fully control anyway. I had time and energy for friends, hobbies, and actually enjoying life.
The irony was not lost on me: I had spent $50,000 and hundreds of hours trying to optimize my health, only to discover that the most effective interventions were completely free.
What I Actually Learned (The Hard Way)
The Fundamentals Are Fundamentals for a Reason
Sleep, hydration, sunlight, and movement aren't boring basics to skip past on your way to advanced biohacks. They're the foundation that makes everything else irrelevant. No amount of red light therapy will compensate for poor sleep. No nootropic will fix what proper hydration could have prevented.
Tracking Can Become a Disease
There's a point where data collection stops being informative and starts being obsessive. I was so focused on my numbers that I had lost touch with how I actually felt. I trusted a device on my wrist more than my own body's signals. This is not healthy.
The Wellness Industry Profits From Complexity
Nobody makes money telling you to drink water and go outside. But they make a lot of money selling you complicated solutions to simple problems. The biohacking industry is, in many ways, a solution in search of problems.
Stress About Health Is Still Stress
Orthorexia - the obsessive pursuit of healthy living - is real and can be just as damaging as the problems you're trying to solve. If your health routine is causing you more stress than it's relieving, something has gone wrong.
Some Things Work, But They're Not Magic
I'm not saying everything in biohacking is nonsense. Cold exposure probably does have some benefits. Certain supplements can address genuine deficiencies. Quality sleep tracking can provide useful insights. But these are optimizations at the margins. They're the final 5%, not the foundation.
What I Still Use (And What Collected Dust)
After my reset, I slowly reintroduced a few things that I genuinely found helpful:
Still using: Blackout curtains (darkness really does help sleep). A basic fitness tracker (but I check it weekly, not hourly). Magnesium before bed (helps me personally). Walking daily.
Sold or donated: The cold plunge (I take cold showers occasionally and that's enough). The smart mattress. Most of the supplements. The red light panels. All the tracking devices except one.
Collecting dust: The PEMF mat. The grounding sheets. Several expensive devices I'm too embarrassed to list.
The One Thing That Actually Worked
So what's the one thing from my $50K journey that actually worked? It's going to sound anticlimactic, but here it is:
Consistent sleep at the same time every night, combined with morning sunlight exposure.
That's it. Going to bed around 10 PM, waking up around 6 AM, and spending the first 30 minutes of my day outside in natural light. This simple practice - which costs absolutely nothing - did more for my energy, mood, cognitive function, and overall health than every gadget, supplement, and protocol combined.
Your circadian rhythm is the master clock that regulates almost everything in your body. Get that right, and everything else falls into place more easily. Get it wrong, and no amount of biohacking can fully compensate.
The Bottom Line
I don't regret my biohacking journey entirely - it taught me valuable lessons about myself and the wellness industry. But I do wish someone had grabbed me by the shoulders two years ago and said: "You don't need any of this. Drink water. Sleep consistently. Go outside. Walk more. That's it."
If you're getting sucked into the biohacking vortex, I hope my expensive education can serve as a cautionary tale. The fundamentals aren't sexy, but they work. And they're free.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a perfectly average glass of water to drink and a completely unoptimized walk to take outside. It's glorious.