There’s nothing more powerful than monitoring your daily habits and adjusting them to create a healthier lifestyle. We track how many steps we take in a day, plug in our completed workouts, count macros, and the sort. And when it comes to our diet, mental health, and physical performance of our bodies, making small changes over time can result in us having a longer and more optimal life.
With that, there’s a health trend taking off with claims to help us “hack” our way into better living, known as “biohacking.”
What Is Biohacking?
If the term "biohacking" brings up thoughts of a matrix-like world with 1’s and 0’s being logged into our genetic coding, there’s a reason for that. “Biohacking is a person who uses science and technology to optimize the function of their mind and body,” Rachel Kreider, MPH, RD, vice president of product innovation and science for GNC tells xoNecole.
While the concept may carry a negative connotation due to its correlation to the IT space, Kreider shares that biohacking is notably different, representing a positive approach to optimizing one's well-being and performance.
“Biohacking requires one to take on the mindset of a scientist conducting a '1 of 1' experiment, whereas traditional wellness practices are something that we do because perhaps your doctor told you to,” she explains. In fact, biohacking goes beyond traditional wellness practices by putting our mindset around wellness and health before the actual practice from an experimental approach.
“If you are ‘hacking your biology,' you form a hypothesis that taking a certain supplement or engaging in a certain protocol will yield a certain result,” Kreider notes. “Once you begin taking the supplement or using the protocol, you’ve got to tune in to the results and then tweak your experiment. You might use a journaling technique to monitor your results or even use lab tests to determine the success of your intervention.”
For those new to biohacking, taking targeted daily supplements and improving your sleep hygiene is a great place to start.
Since sleep helps with our physiological and cognitive functions, however, many of us aren’t getting enough of it. Having the proper time allotted for our bodies to recover and restore themselves while we sleep is essential to our health.
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To that, Kreider recommends trying out these “cost-free” practices to hack our circadian rhythm and get an adequate amount of sleep:
- Aim for a consistent bedtime and wake-up time.
- Get exposure to bright light upon waking.
- Avoid eating and exercising late in the day.
- Minimize exposure to bright light at night time by turning down the lights and minimizing phone and computer usage.
- Use a melatonin supplement to shift the time that you begin to feel sleepy. A supplement may not be necessary if the other techniques are effective.
In a sense, biohacking makes you the scientist and subject of your health — which can be empowering for those looking for introductory ways to improve their internal well-being and become more in tune with their mind and body connection.
“Many of us live on autopilot and don’t realize how great an impact that our behaviors, diet, exercise, supplementation, and more can have on our overall health,” she says. “We all have different access to tools and funding, so know that no matter where you stand in that regard, you can participate in a way that works for you.”
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak