Biohacking for Better Health

Biohacking is do-it-yourself biology to optimize your health by eliminating what causes harm and implementing what improves overall well-being. I have been biohacking for several years, keeping what works in my daily routine and discarding what doesn’t. Let’s look at the one most important thing to keep, and the two things that do the most harm and need to be eliminated.

I believe the most important thing you can do to optimize your health is intermittent fasting. After trying many different versions, the 16/8 method is the most successful and the easiest to incorporate into your everyday life. This involves a sixteen hour fast and an 8 hour feeding window. The feeding window can be whenever works best for each individual. I like noon to 8 PM. Since I work out in the morning in a fasted state and don’t like going to bed hungry, this works best for me.

Besides weight management, intermittent fasting has been proven to:

• Lower insulin (improve insulin sensitivity)
• Protect against disease
• Repair damaged cells (autophagy)
• Improve cognitive function

While there are no dietary restrictions, if done along with eating only real food (no ultra-processed food and no industrial seed oils) it is possible to regain optimal health. Here is some food for thought:

The two things most detrimental to our health that need to be removed from our diet are ultra-processed foods and industrial seed oils (also called vegetable oils).

Ultra-processed foods are defined as industrial formations which, in addition to the inclusion of sugar, salt, fats and oils, contain substances not used in food preparation. These include additives used to improve taste and lengthen shelf life. Over 70% of processed food is ultra-processed. These products have no nutritional value whatsoever. They are made with GMO ingredients including:

• Corn (high fructose corn syrup, corn oil)
• Soybeans (soybean oil, salad dressing, mayo)
• Sugar beets (granulated sugar)
• Canola (canola oil)
• Cotton (cottonseed oil)

Our food supply contains ingredients banned in the EU and other countries. Included are additives and preservatives with names we can’t pronounce. These substances are so foreign to our bodies that they don’t know what to do with them, so we get sick. Society blames the illnesses and deaths on the disease, but the disease is caused by the foods we eat.

Seed oils are in most ultra-processed foods and are used by fast food chains and restaurants. They include soybean, corn, canola, cottonseed, peanut and sunflower. These should be replaced with healthy saturated fats like butter, ghee, tallow, lard, olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil.

In 1911 when Procter & Gamble introduced Crisco, the population was told to stop eating animal-based saturated fats (proven to be healthy and actually provide much needed nutrients), and only eat these unsaturated fats in the form of industrial seed oils. These oils have been refined by high heat, chemical processes, bleaching and deodorizing. They have been so adulterated that they are toxic when ingested and are now the primary cause of degenerative diseases. 100 years ago heart disease was almost unheard of. It is now the #1 cause of death in the US, followed by cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and obesity. Seed oils are high in omega-6 fatty acids. The skewed ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s causes many inflammatory diseases.

We all have to eat on a regular basis. Making changes to our daily routine for better health is a very rewarding process. You feel better each day because you’re cutting out what makes you sick and eating what leads to good health. So make good choices everyday and you will see improvement. And don’t forget to keep Good & Tasty Bakes cheesecakes on hand. They are handmade with minimal, real ingredients and fit perfectly into your clean-eating lifestyle.

-Momma Joey