I have learned the hard way that you enter a minefield as soon as you make claims about nutrition in combination with (un)scientific health claims. I’ll mention a few crossroads: dairy acidifies the body, eggs are a chicken’s period and ‘if you eat average, you also feel average’. Not my ideas, but assumptions that online dieticians share with their hundreds of thousands of followers.
So I started the first episode of it on Monday The Biohack Project. Former Olympic rower and ‘biohacker’ Govert Viergever will teach five celebrities how to “master their body and mind”. They allow themselves to be buried alive, walk on a 100-meter-high gangplank that protrudes from a skyscraper, and break bricks in half with their bare hands. If they withstand exposure to “extreme stress,” they experience less stress and more focus afterwards. With Viergever’s “tools and techniques” they will “learn to get the most out of their bodies.”
The idea of the body as a machine that you can optimize by turning the right buttons is anything but new. I never get further than good sleep, healthy food, sufficient exercise, but that is really too simplistic. The biohacker borrows from science and applies its knowledge even if nothing has been demonstrated or proven (yet). Science journalist Adriaan ter Braack, known for his online pseudonym Sjamadriaan on X and Instagram, KRO-NCRV already accused of giving “pseudo-science” a platform. Biohacking, he writes, is a “hip rebranding of alternative medicine.”
The new series ‘The Biohack Project’ misleads the public, writes Bernard Leenstra.
Soft language
Monic Hendrickx, actress, hopes that after The biohack project she will “feel good about herself” and “enjoy the moment itself more”. Défano Holwijn, media maker, participates for “personal growth” and to become “a better version” of himself. There is no shortage of soft language. It is a matter of being “consciously concerned with yourself”, keeping “attention on your own process” and the brain “in the here and now”.
But there are also ‘hard’ figures, because for a biohacker, measuring is knowing. The candidates’ stool, urine and blood are examined, and the DNA is checked for “very specific, relevant values”. It turns out that short track skater Sjinkie Knegt should give up the four sandwiches he always eats at lunch. Bread, says Govert Viergever, has a negative impact on his system. Too bad for Sjinkie, because he “lives on bread.” The DNA of Lize Korpershoek, also a media maker, shows that her body does not break down caffeine well. Défano Holwijn is advised to take magnesium to dampen the stimuli in his brain and Monic Hendrickx could reduce her adrenaline production by taking a cold shower.
I also heard a few disclaimers. Viergever says that anyone with medical complaints should go to the doctor, and he emphatically reiterates that biohacking is not an exact science and that there is no scientific consensus yet on the methods used. That’s not the impression I got when I poked around his company’s website Human Upgrade. There I can also have research done into my microbiome, epigenetics and neutotransmitters. When I download an example of such an extensive DNA study, I read about the ADM1 gene, which indicates reduced enzyme activity, about oxidative stress and about nutrition that can be adapted to my genes. Hey, and it just says: “Biohacking is science”. Let’s see who else works at the company besides the ex-rower. A former top hockey player, a neurophysiologist, a naturopathic specialist. No doctors. I hear a bomb going off in the distance.