 Hi everyone, my name is Denis and this is 15 minutes about biohacking. If you're about hacking computers, if you're about hacking emails, you might even have heard about hacking elections. But what about hacking our own body? I would start with the quote by Peter Drucker. If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. And we'll go through why is it important and how it affects our own lives. For that, let's take a look at a couple of simple examples of what we can measure and what has improved already. So this chart shows that in Western Europe average height of man is now 15 cm smaller than it used to be 200 years ago. And this chart shows that average life expectancy at birth is twice as high as it used to be just 200 years ago, which is cool. And because of the science progress, more accessible medicine, better living conditions, we have an idea that we're not going to stop here. So what is awaiting for humanity? Are we become superhumans or will we degrade into homocomputer ricos? These are some questions I will try to address, but I'm not going to give you an answer. So let's get back to what is biohacking? And there are actually two definitions, completely different. Biohacking is a do-it-yourself biology and ability to learn science through experiments. And also biohacking is an approach to changing your chemistry, to get better performance and improve your life and become superhuman if you wish. Let's focus for now at first one. This TED Talk of 2012 was a popularizing idea of do-it-yourself biology and hacker spaces where people from small kids to their grandparents can come and try and do some biology stuff. That was earlier available only to research institutions and big companies. So actually some things like that exist in Estonia and in many places around the world. They are called hacker spaces or biohacker slabs and things like that. So if we give the tools of scientists to average people from different backgrounds, we might get here for some disease, some really cool breakthrough in science or we might just get a beer that glows in the darkness, which is actually really cool. This thing has this beer, was grown from yeast and it has modified DNA and you can actually order a kid to do that online right now for quite reasonable price, I would say. So this is what happens right now. I like to think about biology as of computers in 70s. You know that they exist. You might have some friends who have one or use one or develop one, but it feels like super strange, you don't know what you can do right now. And I think in future more of us will use computers like we do use smartphones and they will affect many more of our lives. So let's get back to second definition of biohacking. Changing our chemistry, our physiology through science and self experimentation, self, not do this on others, and in order to do what? And I'd like you to meet Timu Arena. I met Timu in Portugal during European Innovation Academy when he was given talk about biohacking and Timu measures every aspect of his life. He's every step, every his breath, he measures it. And he takes a lot of samples, he changes the light, humidity and everything in his building to get the most out of his body, to get to his peak performance. So will in future more of us will be like Timu? Timu, who can predict whether he will get flu or not? I'm not sure if he's still able to prevent it, but at least he knows. So will more of us be cool biohackers? So what's the goal of biohacking actually, instead of just having fun and hacking stuff? To become super humans? We have evolved into what we are now through millions of years of natural selection. But now we have more and more tools to become better right now. Not our future generations, but improve ourselves. And biohackers want to get most of what they have right now with most of their body. And they do it affecting really simple things. Like exercises, we all know we should exercise. Some people do, and it's not only about doing a lot, but it's about doing it smart. It's about nutrition. We rubbish on input, rubbish on output. And people try to change what they eat and as Ekka has mentioned, nutritionomics, changing eating habits on the base of what your genes are and what is good for your body and not what your mother tells you or doctors. Or maybe eating the same things, but a different time. Maybe eating more often or less frequent. Also changing sleep. I love sleep. I love sleep topic. Changing the way we sleep and maybe not even sleep longer, but sleep in a different schedule. Some people experiment, try to sleep four times a day by two hours and we know that some great scientists and writers have done it. For somebody it works, for somebody it doesn't. Changing mind, meditation, music, mindfulness, understanding yourself. Also changing work habits. I really recommend to check out a deep workbook which is not related to biohacking but it's really cool about being more focused and doing more in less time and getting more done. So focusing on these areas, biohackers, trying to prove something. Everybody has different goals. Somebody for someone being a biohacker just means to stay healthy. For somebody it means being more productive. For somebody having more time by sleeping less. A difference. So I would walk you through a few examples of biohacking. So if you have watched Silicon Valley, this is Jared, he's on Adderall. This is a drug, it's called nautropic drug that allows you to keep really high level of attention, to write code really focused for 20 hours straight without any distractions. And people in Silicon Valley, some of them tend to use this drug. It's prescription drug and they shouldn't, but they do this just to get more stuff to their body. Whether it's good or not, I'm not going to tell you. It's for everybody up to the side. Using cybernetic device to track your biometric data. Sounds really fancy. It can be as simple as having some fitness tracker to track your steps or to have some smart bed that tracks how you sleep or doing any other things. Just using your smartphone, if you have Google Feed enabled, it does it. And this is fun part. This is what I would call dangerous science. It's not actually science. It's putting some implants into your body. It's not like something that many people do, but just put a magnet in your finger and you can feel extra magnetic field. You have a sixth sense. Some people put NFC tags into their body to be able to pay in the supermarkets with their hand, without a card, or open a door like you have a power. And are they crazy or not? Who knows? Maybe many people will do that in the future. I haven't done it yet, at least. And some reasons are more cool like having these exoskeletons like in Matrix to be able to leave heavy weights or to give disabled people ability to walk. It can be set as biohacking. You use something artificial to be able to do more. Another example is tracking really hard stuff, like getting to know your genomes, your blood samples, getting to know your brain waves and things like that. So now when we have some feeling what biohackers do and what they try to achieve, why I'm talking about biohacking is not a science, really. It's not. Why am I talking about biohacking at scientific event? The thing is that biohacking is approach based on science and actually many of them. So genetics. We've talked about genetics. We recalled something from high school, thanks to ECA, psychology, neuroscience, getting to know your brain patterns and how your brain reacts to certain things. And also nutrogenomics, what to eat depending on who you are. And it's all ruled by one science to rule them all, data science. Because biohacking wouldn't be true by hacking without the data. Right now we are able to collect a lot of data about ourselves and companies also do that, collect data about us. And we can use this data to track certain aspects of our life, the one we want to improve. So before going further, I'd like to ask you, who of you is taking vitamin D during the winter? All right. And who is drinking coffee? Okay. So congratulations. You are already biohackers. So you put something that was not in your body, it's not something that, like I don't know, coffee or vitamin D are not growing on trees. You put something in your body to feel better, to not feel depressed by dark, stone and winter, or to have more energy to finish your homework by drinking coffee or just listening to music that puts you in a good mood. This is basic ways of biohacking. You don't need to be a crazy scientist to be biohacker. If you know that something works for you, do it. And the really cool thing about biohacking compared to medicine, you don't need to get approvals for everything. You don't need this particular thing to work for all humans on Earth. If it works for you, go for it. So you can try something and these things that we are all doing, they are a form of biohacking. But now let me talk about sleep. I hope you're not falling asleep right now, but you will hopefully fall asleep today. And I really love sleep, but I do not have perfect sleeping habits and many students don't as well. So let's talk about Bob. Bob is a student. And he has social life. He has assignments at midnight that he has to complete. And he just don't, he can't or he doesn't want to allocate 8 hours sleep every night. But he wants to wake up in the morning with a good mood and be able to do some stuff that he wants to. So how can Bob as a biohacker solve this problem? Changing something that he can affect using scientific knowledge. Bob understands that what you put inside your body or your mind is affecting what you produce, your emotions, your mood, or just things that you do physically. So Bob goes through some papers and he got to know that bright light during the evening reduces your ability to fall asleep. That sounds obvious, but there are studies about that. And he got to know that actually blue light helps you to stay focused during the day. The blue light of our screens, of our smartphones, I mean like they have blue light in their spectrum. It helps us to stay focused. But in the evening it kills melatonin and reduces our ability to fall asleep and sleep deeply and get good rest. So and actually if you block blue light you kind of block these effects. So how to deal with it? Bob had read some scientific things and he's looking what are tools out there to solve this problem? What can help me to use the scientific knowledge to get most of what sleep I can get? How to make it most productive? He got to know that in Windows you have a night light mode that blocks the blue light, reduces the amount of blue light in the evening. He got to know that there is f.looks app that allows you to block blue light from your smartphone, Android, iOS and the same for laptops. Windows, Linux, Mac, whatever, you have everything covered. He also got to know that if you just put hotel-like blind shades to block the light from outside light of cars passing by or street lamps he can get better sleep. But there are some things inside our room. Maybe he has a roommate who falls asleep later and he cannot force him to turn all the screens on. And this light from screens from maybe a small LED in your charger it also affects your sleep and it can disturb your sleep during the night. So there is one simple tool to fight it. Sleeping mask. And actually this sleeping mask doesn't always have to be used in an airplane. So Bob gets to know about some devices. What he can now do to improve his sleep? Sleep in the same amount of time. He gets some tracker, he puts on night mask and he actually installs f.looks on his phone. And now he sleeps like a baby in many ways. And what he realizes is that he tracks his sleep before experiment during the experiment and compares whether he slept better, whether he felt better in the morning and think whether these things really work. Do they work for him? So luckily we hope that Bob has discovered that this science really works and it works for him. So what I want to tell you. There are already a lot of opportunities to track yourself and to have some fun with biology. Things that become more and more accessible today. So about genetic tests. They're not that expensive. They still are but you can get basic DNA tests for 160 euros from 23andMe. You can get devices for 10 euros or you don't even need to get a device. With your smartphone you can track your sleep. You can track your physical activities and others. And you can buy some DIY kits or ask your friend from biology studies. And let's get back to the quote. If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. And there are many more tools to measure yourself and it gives you more abilities to track something and improve what you want. You might have different goals but with this mindset you can try to reach them or reach them or die trying as 50 cent used to say. So takeaways. There are many things that you can do right now and they will become cheaper, more accessible and many more things will happen. And I hope that by hacking and biology, do it yourself, biology will become a programming of tomorrow. Maybe not everybody is going to do it. Many more people will but I hope that all of us will be able to benefit from it. Like we do benefit from computers right now. So thank you and go hack yourself. Thank you very much. Now to questions. Does anybody have these sleeping issues? Problems with sleeping person? Does anybody want to implant something? What? To implant something yourself? Do you mean boobs? That's actually one of the questions. Do you like to implant something yourself like this magnet or maybe boobs? I haven't thought of that seriously but I think if there will be cool use cases, like really cool use cases, you don't, I don't know, maybe I don't pay payment with your hand. There are a lot of issues, security issues with that but it might be fun. It's not like you implant it, it's like you can't remove it. It's not more dangerous than tattoo or piercing. So who knows, I might try someday. Interesting questions but I think it's connected to another one. The question was why French are so not tall? And is it possible to become taller using by hacking? I don't know about French people. The French people I know, they are okay. I like them. I'm not really good at French language but people are fine and food is good. What about taller? They're actually, if you are under 30, if you look up people who do jumping and like running, there are many ways to get taller. Just, I don't know, put yourself on the bar and just hang on the bar or they have read about there is a hill and you just lay on the hill and you roll like a sausage and that's what they do to become taller for basketball players or I don't know, put some weights and jump. It all helps. I don't know, can you call it by hacking? Maybe if you put, I don't know, in Ukraine we used to have a lot of TV commercial about Rostishka from Danone. So they claim that you will, if you drink Rostishka you will grow so I'm not sure. Is it by hacking? Okay, please read the answer. Maybe one more but tricky question. Actually there is one more question. How do you evaluate your own by hacking skills? I'm a beginner. I like to try things and actually I have a sleeping mask. I bought it, like I read an article about that like even a bit of light can disturb your sleep. I don't have the super cool shade so it's not super dark in my room and sometimes I sleep with a mask and I'm not sure if I get better sleep but in the morning for me personally it's easier to wake up because it's dark, it's like completely dark and now it's completely bright and this contrast kind of allows you to wake up easier compared to when it becomes lighter slowly, slowly, slowly. So I kind of haven't got two good results with my sleep tracking but I drink coffee, I drink some... I think... whether it's hacking or not. About beer, is it by hacking or not? It could be, it could be. They changed DNA so they hacked leaving like they hacked yeast they put gene of some sea plant that involves in the dark so it's like it's really cool science. It used CRISPR like super cool technology. Okay, and I think the main question for today I think... Are you single or not? I'm not single. Here is Liza, my girlfriend, so... I don't know. Okay, thank you. Nice, thanks.