HARDER, BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER
Improve the body and mind at UNLTD BIOHACKING RECOVERY CENTER, the Philippines’ first Biohacking facility
Mention Biohacking to anyone, and you are met with a puzzled glance in return. When I told friends and family I would be trying this much-buzzedabout “treatment,” they asked what it was. I, having never done it before and having only read about the idea in a series of articles that attempted to explain the idea through jargon, was just as confused. “I think I’m going to turn into a robot by the end,” I finally mustered up.
I first became interested in the concept after reading about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and how he used his diet as a means of Biohacking. Dorsey eats only one meal a day because he says it makes him feel clear-headed and mentally focused, therefore his entire body is geared for optimization and improvement. It sounds a lot like an eating disorder, which most of his critics say it is.
Perhaps that’s on the radical side of things. All those articles described Biohacking practitioners as mostly being white male “tech bros” from Silicon Valley obsessed with stoicism and extending their lives so they can use it to preach more about disruption to the rest of us. When I met Eli Abela, owner of UNLTD Biohacking Recovery Center, the first such facility in the Philippines, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Warm and engaging, Eli certainly doesn’t look like she’s in the practice of ascetic living.
David Asprey, the man widely known as the father of Biohacking, says it is the art and science of manipulating the internal and external environment of the biology to “kick ass” in life. “In my own words and experience, Biohacking is harnessing the multiple healing pathways of the body in order to prevent or accelerate recovery from disease,” says Eli. These pathways can be accessed in multiple ways: through bulletproof coffee, a clean high-fat diet, food timing, natural sunlight, and supplements. The fastest and easiest way, according to Eli is through non-medical but clinical-grade machines and gadgets. “Biohacking harnesses the power of “epigenetics” or the ability of the environment to turn genes on and off. In this light, we are looking to turn off the switch of genes that causes health to deteriorate,” she says.
Eli is a proponent of improving health and treating chronic disease through its root cause, rather than its symptoms, which is why she decided to open UNLTD. “I wanted to give people other options,” she says. “To those people who have ‘tried everything’ to feel better but have found themselves at a dead-end in terms of medical treatment or have been told ‘nothing further can be done,’ we say, ‘We beg to differ—there is always a way!’”
To really understand and feel the improvements of Biohacking, Eli underlines the importance of completely buying and believing in it. “One must change the way one sees or believes in the biology’s capacity to self-heal. Biohacking is the easiest, most practical way to achieve wholeness in the mind and the body. It requires a heightened sense of selfawareness that’s driven by a real self-care action plan,” she says. This means that instead of going the traditional route (visiting a clinic or hospital), the client pursues an active leadership role in their healing journey. ‘You do it by feel,’ instead of by instruction, so ultimately you determine how far and how deep you want to go,” says Eli. “It involves determining the root cause of the disease and removing all “kryptonite” from one’s life: food, practices, vices, personal care, and non-natural cleaning products.”
Convincing a client to take an active role in their treatment can be difficult: we’re all used to going to a doctor, finding the problem and being told how to fix it. As human beings, we get used to a system of doing things and stick to it, and our reliance on modern medical practices is one such example. Eli says Biohacking might seem overwhelming and new-fangled, but in fact, you might actually be practicing it anyway. “I tell people that the concept of Biohacking is not new,” she says, “I tell them that the popular practice of Intermittent Fasting and Fasting, in general, is considered Biohacking, as is Bulletproof coffee: both are “hacking” pathways in the body that instill a particular wellness outcome once practiced.” UNLTD offers the next step, a more advanced version of the practice with machines that promote a higher level of cellular repair due to the advanced technology that went into their scientific research and manufacturing.
While there are elite and amateur athletes on Eli’s roster of clients, she also works with CEOs and Executives whose goals are to maintain optimal performance in their mind and body, hands-on parents who manage their children’s lives, people of all ages who suffer from emotional pressure and trauma, and seniors who would like to feel stronger and more comfortable in their bodies. In other words, it is a large variety of people. “My customers are anyone and everyone who would like to upgrade their quality of life and performance in a way that honors and harnesses the body’s natural healing and recovery processes, without medication or medical intervention,” she says.
Her main advocacy is helping kids with special needs, to upgrade their quality of life mentally, physically and emotionally. “I have a 21-month-old baby who comes for the Anat Baniel method with NeurOptimal Neurofeedback, with Down syndrome whose movement is at par with her neurotypical peers and is showing many signs of cognitive acuity. My other four-year-old child with Down syndrome on the same therapy is starting to speak whole words. The possibilities are endless.”
THE BODY’S WORK IS NEVER OVER
At UNLTD, Eli put me through four activities, designed to help me improve my mind and body’s optimal performance. First up was Dynamic Neurofeedback, a brain training system that works with the central nervous system and acts like a mirror, which gives the brain information about its own activity, and thus allows it to organize itself. According to Eli, it is a training program that can improve cognitive and physical performance, enhance focus and deepen sleep. “I use it as adjunct therapy for my practice with kids with special needs, clients who see me for emotional freedom sessions, seniors who seek to upgrade their quality of life, high-functioning CEOs who want to be stronger and deal with their stress more effectively and elite and amateur athletes who want to address brain chatter and performance anxiety,” says Eli. One such client was the Philippine Bobsled Team, who with a combination of the Dynamic Neurofeedback and the center’s other offerings, compted in Canada and “claimed they had more mental strength and confidence in their level of performance. Where once there was fear at the starting gate, it was now replaced by passion and excitement,” says Eli. As I sat and stared at a computer screen illustrated with explanations about the benefits of Dynamic Neurofeedback, and listened to it using headphones, I wasn’t quite sure how it was going. But if it really was going to increase focus and let me sleep better, I was eager to try.
The next thing I did was Exercise with Oxygen Therapy. Sitting on an indoor cycling bike, not unlike the ones I regularly rode at spin class (albeit with a lower difficulty setting) and pedaling in quick intervals, I was breathing in oxygen-concentrated air (93%) before it would switch to oxygen-depleted air (13%) to simulate high altitude training. “EWOT is the most efficient way to increase oxygen levels in the shortest amount of time, allowing for the anti-inflammatory benefits of pure oxygen to remain for 2.5 days,” says Eli. “The modality needs only to be done a few times a week for the therapeutic effects of oxygen to remain active.” According to Eli, I did remarkably well at the oxygen-depleted airmode, which I guess is because of my almost-daily spin sessions.
I then did the near-infrared sauna. The light offered from this is the longest wavelength of what Eli calls “bio-active” light, which means it has the deepest absorption by our bodies, up to nine inches, and penetrates tissue, cartilage, and bone. “This light promotes the production of ATP, or the energy needed by our mitochondria (the powerhouse of our cells) to fuel the cells’ natural processes of regeneration,” she says. “Pairing this anti-inflammatory and anti-aging property of light with the powerful cell detoxification of heavy metals from heat that targets the structured water of the body, a 25-minute session is enough to maximize its therapeutic benefits.”
The final room was the Red Room, which uses Photobiomodulation, which is the non-invasive and non-thermal use of bio-active light to stimulate cells to produce more energy for repair and detoxification. The use of two wavelengths of red and yellow light is meant to ensure that multiple layers of the body receive the therapeutic effects of light. “The inventor of the wall panels is an expert in Chinese and Japanese acupuncture, as well as a color flow expert and submarine engineer. She infused the light panels in patterns that include quantum codes, which help accelerate healing and recovery and are responsible for 70 percent of the therapeutic benefits that clients receive,” says Eli, who notes that these benefits include improvement of rosacea, cellulitis, MRSA, decreased PSA levels, reduction of inflammation caused by cancer tumors, parasites, arthritis, delayed onset muscle soreness, and more.
THE POWER OF SELF-OBSERVING
I was curious to know how far we can push the human body through Biohacking. Eli says there are no adverse side effects, because all it does is boosts the body’s healing processes and immune responses, but some might experience a “transition” period, when there is a period of adjustment or adaptation to the new information the body is experiencing. “Biohacking is encouraged as a prophylactic practice, or disease and injury prevention,” says Eli. “It is powerful when used to build a wall of health designed to fend off threats to the immune system such as stressful physical and emotional triggers or even novel viruses.” She mentions there is no danger in using the machines on a daily basis, although three times a week is enough to maintain a healthy nervous and immune system.
Eli cautions that it can get dangerous when people take the concept of self-experimentation too far, despite lack of research, exploration or peersought advice. “It’s easy to become brazen or over confident about the effect of certain substances, such as nootropics (supplements meant to improve cognitive function), injectable peptides, even high-fat diets, that are not
practiced in moderation or with careful self-tracking, especially since these are available without a prescription from a licensed practitioner,” she says. When booking in a session at UNLTD for the first time, Eli always takes into consideration fitness level, and beginners are always on a frequency that is slow and manageable, making sure to observe for any biological effects, and to increase and decrease frequency as needed. “We always invite the client to “’intuit” or self-observe, or note their experience of themselves as a result of their Biohacking practice,” she says.
Eli herself has been using the machines since 2016, and says she has felt more mentally and physically resilient, noticing her immune system’s ability to fend off illness. “Certainly I cannot say I never catch any bugs, but when I do, the infection track is much shorter and my recovery is much faster than when I was still taking medication and antibiotics,” she says. Her sense of intuition is better, her sleep is deep and restorative, she has balanced hormones and is not experiencing symptoms usually associated with menopause. “Everything I do and know is teachable and I aim to educate those who are open-minded to seeing human health in a different, more practical and approachable light, so that they can maximize their potential, and exist as humans BE-ing instead of just humans DO-ing,” she says. “I dare say Biohacking might just be the beginning of the end of disease and may usher in a new era of health care approaches that respect instead of hamper the human biology.”
KEEPING AN OPEN MIND
A few weeks after my session at UNLTD, I’m quite unsure about how much I’ve improved. I submitted all my articles on time, but I’m not sure if that was due to Dynamic Neurofeedback or because I’m trying to turn into a new leaf at work and be on top of all my submissions (funnily enough, this article took me the longest to write). I’ve been at work on time, but again I’m not sure if that’s my brain working better or if I’m just sticking extra hard to my new year’s resolutions (and also making sure I get my full salary). I had a couple of issues with eyestrain and a clogged throat, which might have been the transition period, and didn’t amount to anything more than a need to wear my eyeglasses more consistently, which I was thankful for. Was that a sign of disease prevention? Do I have a newly optimized body? I don’t know. I am grateful to have tried Biohacking at UNLTD, and if anything, it taught me the importance of keeping an open mind, to be willing to try new things and work on improving if not my body, then my self.
1 The room used for Dynamic Neurofeedback
2 Switching between oxygen concentrated and oxygen depleted air
3 The near-infrared sauna room