10 of My Most Important Daily Biohacks You Need To Be Doing

Ben Greenfield

Ben Greenfield (USA) BenGreenFieldFitness.com, Human Performance Author & Consultant, Top 100 Most Influential People in Health & Fitness Ben Greenfield is an ex-bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, Spartan racer, coach, speaker and author of the New York Times Bestseller “Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life” (http://www.BeyondTrainingBook.com). In 2008, Ben was voted as NSCA’s Personal Trainer of the year and in 2013 and 2014 was named by Greatist as one of the top 100 Most Influential People In Health And Fitness. Ben blogs and podcasts at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, and resides in Spokane, WA with his wife and twin boys.

Ben Greenfield shares 10 of his most important daily bioh

Ask yourself as you're going through life: what is it this week that I've really challenged myself with, or have I just stayed on cruise control? Variety is key, novelty is key, and challenge is key.

Summary

- Jaw realignment via trigger point work targets the vagus nerve to improve sleep quality, increase deep sleep cycles, and significantly boost heart rate variability. - Combining infrared sauna sessions with high-dose niacin and cold plunges helps detoxify fat cells, improve recovery, and effectively eliminate jet lag symptoms during travel. - Stabilize blood glucose and improve insulin sensitivity by consuming apple cider vinegar, Ceylon cinnamon, or bitter melon extract prior to eating meals. - Stimulate neurogenesis and increase cerebral blood flow by regularly challenging the brain with novel activities such as table tennis, learning a new instrument, or practicing a new language. - Daily intermittent fasting within an 8-to-12-hour window promotes leanness and metabolic health, with specific adjustments recommended for women to maintain hormonal balance.

Article

Ben Greenfield’s 10 Essential Daily Biohacks For Peak Performance And Longevity

A London Stage Turned Into A Laboratory Of Human Performance

At Biohacker Summit 2016 London, held on 21 May 2016 in London, United Kingdom, Ben Greenfield did not deliver a sterile lecture on optimization. He staged something closer to a demonstration of modern self-experimentation, equal parts ancestral ritual, quantified living and improvised practicality.

Greenfield, the American performance consultant, author and endurance athlete, arrived with the irreverence of a seasoned speaker and the intensity of a man who had tested nearly everything on himself first. His presentation, titled *10 of My Most Important Daily Biohacks You Need To Be Doing*, moved briskly through routines that ranged from jaw trigger-point work to sauna-induced detox protocols, from intermittent fasting to intranasal light therapy.

The effect was not simply a list of hacks. It was a portrait of a culture increasingly determined to fight back against fatigue, inflammation, metabolic chaos and the ambient damage of modern life.

As Greenfield put it, “Biohacking allows us to mitigate the damage of modern living so we can live a fully bold, daring, and courageous life.”

The Strange New Marriage Of Ancestral Living And Biohacking

Greenfield framed his philosophy as a balancing act. He spoke of a “marriage between ancestral living and biohacking,” while also mocking the tendency to overcomplicate health. Sometimes, he suggested, sophistication had its limits. Sometimes the answer was not an exotic protocol but movement, novelty and consistency.

“There is a marriage between ancestral living and biohacking,” he said, “but sometimes you should just do jumping jacks instead of cold thermogenesis.”

That tension ran through the talk. On one hand, Greenfield championed tools such as OURA ring sleep tracking, low-intensity PEMF devices and intranasal light therapy aimed at cytochrome P450 activity in the brain. On the other, he returned repeatedly to older principles: fasting, heat, cold, breath, music, rhythm, language and play.

Breath, Heat And The Pursuit Of Morning Energy

One of the most vivid moments of the session came when Greenfield led the room through a short burst of Kundalini breath work. He described the practice as one of the most effective ways he had found to increase blood flow to the brain, citing electroencephalogram-based evidence and his own daily use of the routine inside a sauna.

The exercise was theatrical but purposeful: forceful breathing, repetitive arm movements, eyes closed, focus fixed on the “third eye,” then a held breath paired with total muscular contraction. Greenfield said he had folded this into a 20 to 30 minute morning ritual and credited it with raising energy, circulation and mental readiness.

In his view, the best form of exercise was not one ideology or one discipline, but variation.

“The best workout is whichever workout you are not currently doing,” he said.

That line served as a broader thesis for the day. Adaptation, in Greenfield’s telling, depended on refusing stagnation.

Targeting The Vagus Nerve Through Jaw Realignment

Among the more unexpected interventions was Greenfield’s enthusiasm for weekly jaw realignment. He linked the practice to the vagus nerve, the sprawling neural pathway central to parasympathetic regulation, digestion, hormonal signalling and heart rate variability.

Greenfield argued that tension, weight training, impact and poor mechanics often leave the jaw subtly misaligned. By applying trigger-point pressure to the muscles around the upper cheek and opening and closing the mouth under tension, he said, it was possible to influence trigeminal and vagal pathways in ways that improved sleep quality, deep sleep duration and autonomic balance.

He described the results in distinctly quantified terms. The morning after treatment, he said, his heart rate variability readings rose sharply. In a field where the line between anecdote and evidence is often blurred, Greenfield’s authority rested on exactly this kind of self-tracked conviction.

Light Through The Nose And Mushrooms In The Coffee

Another pillar of his morning regimen was what he called a “brain flush.” This involved 810 nanometre intranasal light therapy, designed to feed light into the brain through the nasal cavity and support neural function while reducing inflammation.

To this he added a nootropic mixture stirred into coffee: lion’s mane extract for neural inflammation, bacopa for cognitive support, and black ant extract for acetylcholine-related effects. The combination, Greenfield said, had become a staple of his mornings.

It was a familiar rhythm throughout the presentation: a small device, a stack of compounds, a physiological mechanism and a strong testimonial. Whatever scepticism such protocols may provoke, Greenfield’s appeal lay in the practical certainty with which he delivered them.

Sauna, Niacin And Cold As Instruments Of Recovery

If Greenfield’s biohacks often sounded unusual, they were grounded in a recognisable ambition: to recover faster and function better.

He described a daily hot-cold contrast protocol built around high-dose niacin, infrared sauna exposure and cold immersion. Niacin, he said, helped release triglycerides and toxins from fat cells when paired with heat. After 30 minutes in an infrared sauna, often combined with Kundalini yoga, he would move into cold exposure, either in a pool or through a contrast shower when travelling.

He also outlined a travel-specific jet lag strategy that was notable less for gadgetry than for discipline. Upon landing in a new city, he sought out a Turkish, Japanese or Russian bath and rotated through sauna, cold plunge, steam room, cold plunge, hot bath and cold plunge again. For a man crossing time zones regularly, this was presented as a way to force recovery without the strain of a gym session.

The underlying message was simple: stress, correctly applied, could be medicinal.

Fasting, Fertility And Metabolic Control

Greenfield said he practised intermittent fasting 365 days a year, usually compressing food intake into an eight-to-12-hour window. For him, the rewards were leanness, metabolic flexibility and sustained performance.

But he also drew a distinction between men and women that has become common in performance circles. Women, he argued, may respond differently because of hormonal signalling involving kisspeptin and reproductive regulation. For some, he suggested, strict fasting could be softened with fats in the morning rather than total caloric abstinence.

“In many cases, fertility is synonymous with health,” he said.

The point was not ideological purity. It was adaptation to the body in front of you. Greenfield’s version of fasting was less a rigid dogma than a tool to be adjusted according to sex, goals and biological feedback.

Blood Sugar As A Daily Battleground

There was, too, a practical streak in Greenfield’s emphasis on blood glucose. If chronic blood sugar instability drives inflammation, vascular damage and cognitive decline, then controlling post-meal spikes becomes a form of daily maintenance.

His chosen methods were strikingly simple: two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar before meals, Ceylon cinnamon in substantial quantities, and bitter melon extract. He pointed to evidence comparing bitter melon favourably with metformin for postprandial glucose control and urged listeners to verify these effects using continuous glucose monitors or standard finger-prick devices.

He paired supplementation with movement. A treadmill desk, a nearby heavy bag, and short bursts of activity between work blocks were, in his account, small acts of physiological housekeeping that prevented the afternoon crash and kept insulin sensitivity intact.

Novelty, Music And The Plastic Brain

Perhaps the most resonant section of the talk came when Greenfield shifted away from compounds and hardware and toward novelty itself. He argued that the brain required challenge, discomfort and unfamiliarity if it was to remain plastic.

“Learning a musical instrument is one of the best ways to enhance neurogenesis and stimulate the growth of new neurons,” he said.

He travelled with a ukulele, he explained, and used it not merely for pleasure but for brain health. Singing, humming and musical practice, he noted, could support vagal tone while also provoking neurogenesis and the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

He also extolled table tennis as an unusually powerful stimulus for cerebral blood flow and described language learning as another weekly cognitive stressor. The principle was larger than the examples. A healthy brain, in this telling, was one repeatedly forced out of habit.

Quantification, Sleep And The Fight Against Invisible Stress

Greenfield’s closing ideas circled back to the costs of contemporary life: electrical pollution, poor sleep architecture, chronic inflammation and overexposure to artificial environments.

He spoke approvingly of low-EMF self-quantification, especially tools such as the OURA ring that could collect useful sleep data without constant wireless emission. He also mentioned low-intensity PEMF devices, used over the forehead or brachial plexus, as portable aids for inducing delta brainwaves and improving sleep onset.

Temperature mattered too. Lowering the sleeping environment, he suggested, could pull resting heart rate down earlier in the night and deepen restorative sleep. Essential oils such as lavender, rose and bergamot were part of his nightly rotation, while peppermint, cinnamon and sweet orange played a role in daytime alertness.

The aim was not merely better rest, but a buffer against what he saw as chronic environmental assault.

A Philosophy Of Resilience, Not Perfection

There was, inevitably, something extravagant about the world Greenfield described: light devices, custom yoga protocols, black ant extracts, portable diffusers and biological metrics all woven into the fabric of an ordinary day. Yet the deeper appeal of his Biohacker Summit 2016 London presentation lay elsewhere.

Underneath the spectacle was a coherent philosophy. Move often. Fast intelligently. Expose the body to useful stress. Chase novelty. Protect sleep. Measure what matters. And above all, refuse to let modern life quietly erode health.

Greenfield’s talk did not ask the audience to become laboratory specimens. It invited them to become more attentive custodians of their own biology.

For all the eccentric details, that was the central proposition he left hanging in the room: that longevity and peak performance were less about one miracle intervention than about a stack of daily choices, repeated with intention, in open defiance of the age.

Part of Biohacker Summit 2016 London