Is biohacking helping or hurting? | Fortitude in 15

0:00Welcome to Elevation Nation with your host Sam Panich and Parker Yablon. Elevation Nation is a community focused on bringing together young adults for elevating themselves and others every day. Each Thursday we take 15 minutes to talk about what's going on in the real world and touch on all the great things that Elevation Nation is up to. What is up Elevation Nation? It is Thursday, March 19th, 20th, 26th and we are back for another 14-15. What's going on Sam, I know you're down in Savannah, enjoying time with the fam.

1:02Are the bananas there? No bananas here this weekend, but good golf, good vibes, good weather and working, still working, not on vacation. We are grinding, we got a lot to do, a lot of amazing exciting things happening for us in our lives and it's been nice though to have some family time. How about you Parker, you took some time off, are you feeling refreshed and rejuvenated? Feeling good, it's funny, went skiing for four days. My biggest injury came in the shower, I fell in the shower, I slipped and I hit my ankle against the wall of the shower and I have this massive bruise on my ankle and we went down all the slopes and everything and I didn't have any falls but yet my only fall was in the shower. It's funny how that works, the stitches held up, I've got the stitches out so the hand is feeling good, it's good to be back in New York City, unfortunately for you, I'm

2:04sad that the Savannah bananas are not in town when you were there but they're on a world tour anyway, they might never go home. They're too big for Savannah, they're too big now, they literally made them home. I'm glad you had some time to rest, well deserved time off because we're about to hit pedal to the metal with how much we have going on on our plate so I've been trying to hold down the fort for you but I am relieved that you are back because we have some exciting things happening for elevation nation including one next week, right Parker? Yeah, next Tuesday we're elevating down in west Palm Beach, the colony hotel with the modern gentleman at the gentleman's table, 25 person event, men's event and we're key noting. It's going to be fun, it's going to be excited if you're in the area, feel free to join us. Go to the modern gentleman's Instagram, check their link in bio, buy a $30 ticket, it's going to be well worth it, you're going to get a plated dinner and you'll be able to

3:06see us in action and you'll be able to get some free stuff and connect with some really cool people. $30 is a steal so check out their bio for the link to buy tickets, Sam I pumped, we're back in action and we got, it's a start of a lot of action to your point, we got more than 12 to 15 gigs this upcoming which is, it's incredible, I'm excited but that's not the topic of the conversation today, I came across this stat and this one hits me hard because I've gone through the loop, I've gone through an apple watch, I've worn the, not the Garmin right and I came across a stat called orthosomnia spike, in 2026 there's a study that found that there was a 30% increase in a sleep disorder, Sam called orthosomnia caused specifically by the stress of trying to achieve a perfect sleep score on a wearable

4:10and so I wanted to talk about biohacking a little bit today because when I came across this I was like I'm raising my hand, I'm more stressed about my wearable telling me that my sleep's good or bad when I wake up in the next morning and I feel like we're in this world now where like everyone's trying to optimize for perfection of their life whether it's they wear the aurora ring, they wear a watch or they have their phone or AI right like everyone's telling you all this information but is it actually helpful, is it actually useful or is it just causing us more anxiety and more stress? I love this topic, for me I think it's very useful if people realize that they can't fix everything overnight because we read books, we watch documentaries, we realize that we want to make a lot of changes in our life to be healthier and to be happier and it's all rooted and for the most part a lot of cool science or ancient medicine but it's really hard in a modern day and age to go to the extreme levels that these books talk about.

5:16So instead Parker right, we've read a book together that we love that kind of changed our perspective on health by Dr. Casey Means and in that book there's dozens and dozens of things that we should be doing differently when it comes to our food, when it comes to our fitness, when it comes to our health and so for me personally I've implemented just two main ones, one I try to walk while I work as much as I can on meetings with you because sitting for an hour, being sedentary for eight hours a day is very bad for us and then two, I'm trying to get closer to my food source because the nutrients are more dense when you get food grown locally and so those are the two main things that I've been working on but if I were to try to do every single thing in that book, it gets overwhelming right I look at some of our friends who inspire us on their health attorneys right, certain parts of our buddy CVC right he has some things that we wish we could do, can't necessarily

6:21go quit our jobs right now and go to Guatemala and live like him but there are some small things that maybe we can do in our day to day and so I think it gets overwhelming for people when they realize oh my god, I don't know if I can live the life that I want health wise in 2026 America. It's like an information overload so it's not even just taking the information that of wearables taking from you at each and every day that companies are gaining as you wear that wearable every day it's your point there's so many ways to like live and optimize life whether it's your food source, whether it's getting more walking, more sunlight, more time in the outdoors, everyone has their perspective. I think the challenge for me and I've told you this Sam before with the whoop is right if you don't know what a whoop is everyone, it's like a wristband that you wear on your wrist, it has no clock and it completely connects to your phone and it's tracking your

7:26heart rate and your steps and your fitness and your you know your activities throughout the day, your strain and then of course your sleep and then when you wake up the next morning it gives you a score on how you slept and then basically coaches you throughout what type of activities you should take on to optimize for your goals that you want. And I remember Sam wearing that thing and it was so good, it knew it's so well that I wake up in the morning and some days you'd get a red, yellow or a green score. And days when I thought I had great sleep like seven and seven eight hours uninterrupted didn't drink any alcohol the night before, I felt good, I woke up and I'd look at my phone and I'd see a big red bad sleep score like you got a 29 out of 100 and I'm like how's that possible? I slept so well. But this device is telling me that it knows everything

8:28about how I slept. And so as a result of that, my mindset for that day was damn, I didn't sleep well. Now I feel sluggish or I shouldn't go work out hard because my sleep score was bad and that's not good if you don't get the last sleep, you shouldn't train yourself. And it set me in this like mindset of gosh, I'm like over optimizing everything to just feel I don't know, not great or actually my life and my mindset is being controlled by something else. And so I got rid of it. I couldn't stand it anymore. It was too much in my face and the garments a little bit better. But I'm imagining a lot of people feel this way now too is like they want the device, they want the information, but they're letting it like kind of control how they take on their day. And I think that has more negatives and positives in a sense. So I hear you and I think right, we live, this comes beautifully full circle Parker. We didn't plan this. We live in a society where we want inputs and changes right away. Parker

9:35didn't sleep well. So what does he have to do the next day to adjust that? I challenge you with all the information and data that we're getting from biohacking. Instead of going, how does that impact me the next day? What if you didn't look at any of the data you gathered from the food you ate to your whoop to whatever for a month? And you took that data and you put it into AI or you went to a functional health doctor and just let them analyze the data for overall health trends. And the reason why I think that's important is sure you got a bad night's sleep. But you felt good. You could have had a much better day if you didn't know you got a bad night's sleep. That being said, if you did a month straight of sleep where you thought you were getting good quality sleep and you weren't, that can lead to underlying health issues and maybe show some issue with your sleep sleep apnea or whatever it may be and you don't even realize that you have an issue. So I think it just comes back to American specifically but modern humans want answers and fixes right away. Instead of trying to use all these hack biohacking things, it's more for a

10:38long term solution. I mean Parker, I'll tell you what I just did over the weekend. I went, I took all my Fitbit data for the last six months, downloaded it, synthesized it in AI. I took all my 23 and me DNA data, downloaded it, synthesized it in AI. I took a blood test for food sensitivities a couple months ago, put that into AI. I then had to AI spit up a summary report. I'm going to a functional health doctor like we read about in our book separate from my primary care doctor, but someone that looks more holistically at the human body and I'm going to bring her all of those findings as well as different symptoms that I'm feeling and say here's the bigger picture and here's data that I've collected on it. This should help inform you better than if I came in with nothing. And so using these things more strategically instead of a scorecard, you know, for a day long exam, I think we need to look at it more as a library that's collecting information constantly year over year time over time to then help us make better lives. To that point then, like you're collecting all this information, I think it's a valid point,

11:46I think it's very fair and I think it's very cool what you're doing. It comes down to yeah, you're collecting more information and you're going to use this information over a long period of time and then you're going to go to a doctor to help you make informed decisions, but collecting all that data and looking more, looking at things that you never even thought about before or feeding it into an AI and have an AI tell you something you've ever even considered in your whole life before. Does that cause you more anxiety or more positive, like more negatives or positives? And I understand good information is information you go from there, but like the same time, what if you find out something that is so underlining? I don't know. That you never had an issue with. I think information's power in the earlier we can prevent issues the better. But that's just me. I have a lot of health issues in my family that I'm trying to prevent. Yeah, it's like the guy I'll know if you ever read about Brian Johnson, the guy wants to live forever

12:47and he's really spending millions and millions of dollars on optimizing his life and making sure that he lives a world that is perfect for him and prolongs his life and he does have pretty decent hair and he's an old guy. It looks much younger than he actually is. Hopefully we can learn some things from these people, but it also makes me think. It's like people live their entire lives from thousands and thousands of years without this information. And so is the technology a blessing or is it going to be some weird curse in some way? Well, I think the technology is going to continue to be more rooted in natural stuff as well. Right? Right now we're on a lot of hard markers. I think there's going to be a lot of stuff that's like go get some sunlight or get some fresh air or whatever it may be. You know, your energy vibrations are low. Go be a nature. I think as we get more technologically advanced,

13:48it's going to go from just normal modern medicine back to kind of ancient medicine that we knew about but couldn't necessarily put our finger on scientifically. You know, things that I know Parker, you and I both certainly believe in. Yeah, totally. And our good, our guy, Michael Pollan, one of our favorites, just wrote a new book. I'm excited to dive into it. I think it talks a lot about what we're talking a little bit about today. Just consciousness is humans of plants and of the world and how it all intertwines and can help us feel more connected. But cool, I like the conversation. I know you wear you wear Fitbit, right? I do. Yeah. You wear Fitbit every day. You wear it when you sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I wear the Garmin. Even though Garmin told me my heart rate was pretty low when I felt like it was much higher. I might need to do like a software update on this thing because it's a calibration. Yeah, I got I was a dinner and it was like a 42

14:51heart rate and I'm like, am I going to die or am I just in super athlete because that's really low. That's very low for dinner. Yeah, that's crazy. No, I like the topic. I mean, Parker, it's something it's funny. We didn't even talk about this. You picked this topic. I literally booked a session with a functional health doctor that Scott Smith recommended to me in Arlington. So coming full circle trying to get closer to our health. It's beautiful. Nice. Good thing. Does that get covered by insurance? No, I don't think so. So I was just going to be expensive. But taking care of the body. Taking care of the body. Great conversation. We're on the march. It's March, Madness. We'll see you at the colony hotel next Tuesday night. A couple more tickets left. Go get them on our vent bright. The gentleman's table. Parker and I will be keynoting. It's going to be three

15:51course meal at one of the fanciest hotels in West Palm, bourbon tasting, suit fitting. You name it. We got it. Come be a gentleman with us or a general woman. Until next time. Peace. To join Elevation Nation or get more information about the nation, please visit our website at www.elevationation.io. Until next week, Elevation Nation. Peace.