BioHacking Foundations

Who This Is For

This guide is for healthy adults who want a solid foundation to build on, with no genetic testing or lab panel needed to get started. The doses are set at population level, the amounts that suit most people, and none of them is tuned to one person's genetics. That makes it a starting point, and it isn't medical advice. Anyone living with a medical condition, pregnant or breastfeeding, or taking prescription medication should walk through it with a doctor or pharmacist first.

A Living System

Much of modern health advice quietly treats the body as a machine. Machines wear down with use, so the advice is to spare them: rest the joints, keep out of the sun, refuel every few hours so the engine never runs low. Many of the ideas that make sense for a machine run counter to how we actually thrive. A living body adapts to what's asked of it and declines when it's spared. Bone builds under load, muscle grows from strain, the metabolism learns flexibility through fasting, and skin and eyes calibrate to the sun by meeting it.

Every human body was shaped over a very long time by daylight and darkness, movement, whole food, stretches without food and the company of others. In my view, much of the dysfunction we live with today traces back to how far modern life has drifted from those conditions. This guide is a way back toward them, one foundation at a time, and each section that follows is one of the places where that drift can be closed.

The Order of Operations

Hormones sit at the centre of this guide. They shape how a body feels, recovers and performs, how clearly the mind works and how steady the mood runs, so bringing them into balance is the aim everything else here serves.

The daily habits do most of that work. Sleep, healthy fats, a steady eating rhythm, daylight, whole food, water and movement each pull on hormone balance, and together they carry the bulk of the weight. Tracking a few numbers over time shows whether those habits are moving things in the right direction. Supplements come after the basics and fill the gaps they leave; they build on good habits and can't replace them. Baseline labs come last. They show where you're starting from and which gaps are real, and the right panel depends on your own history. Even then, a single draw is only a snapshot of the system at one moment, so labs work best as a series, repeated over time. That matters most for women, whose hormones move through the month and across the years, and in every case it's the changes between draws that show whether a protocol is working and where it needs to go.

Hormone Balance

Every body runs on the same set of hormones. Men and women both make testosterone, estrogen and progesterone; what differs is the amount and the rhythm. Men need estradiol for bone, heart health and libido, and much of it is made from their testosterone.¹ Women need testosterone for muscle, drive and mood alongside the estrogen and progesterone that run their cycle. The sexes aren't hormonal opposites, and the goal is the same for both. The strategy is what differs, shaped by sex and by each person's own optimal balance.

One useful way to picture that balance: testosterone tends to focus awareness, and estrogen tends to widen it. Focus drives a person toward a goal; wide awareness reads people and situations. Everyone needs some of both. Too little focus and life can feel overwhelming, with everything sensed and no clear path forward. Too little breadth and a person charges ahead while missing what's going on around them. It's a picture of tendencies, not a rule, and part of why getting the balance right changes how life feels day to day.

The focus shifts with sex and age, though the aim never narrows to one hormone. Men are often told to chase testosterone alone, and pushing it up while ignoring estradiol and SHBG pulls the whole system off balance. Women are often steered away from testosterone, yet too little of it costs muscle, drive, mood and libido.² Doctors who treat it describe the before and after in many women as profound, even life-changing: happier, more confident and more focused. The trials so far were built around libido and haven't caught up with what these women report. Both habits of thought sit behind a lot of the hormonal trouble people run into.

For men the work is usually holding the whole profile in range as the years pass; for women it runs through the monthly cycle and the long change of perimenopause and menopause, with testosterone kept in view throughout. Either way, the foundations in this guide are the main levers: sleep, a steady eating rhythm, strength training, daylight, body fat in a healthy range and managed stress all move hormones toward balance. Baseline labs show where you're starting from, and a doctor can read them against your age and, for women, the point in the cycle.

Sleep

Sleep is when the body does much of its repair and resets its hormones, so it sits at the base of everything else. Aim for 7 to 9 hours with consistent bed and wake times, the range the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines set for adults.³ That range describes the population, though, and the number that matters is your own. After a few weeks of tracking you'll start to see the sleep length where you wake rested and your recovery readings look their best, and that's the one worth protecting. Mine sits around 7 to 7:45, well below the 8 hours 23 minutes my wearable assumes I need.

A steady wake time is the anchor that holds the rest in place, and it works best when weekends keep it too. The gap between your last meal and bed is one of the strongest levers on sleep quality. My rule of thumb is at least 4 hours, ideally 6 to 8, so digestion has settled before the night begins. Sleep efficiency, the share of time in bed actually spent asleep, is worth keeping an eye on; I aim to stay above 90%. Magnesium glycinate at bedtime (see Supplements) supports the same goal.

Rotating shift work makes all of this harder. The best defence is to protect one anchor, usually the wake time, and to expect a rough stretch after each change. It helps to know that a wearable's consistency score looks back over weeks (WHOOP uses about 30 days), so after a schedule change it will read low for around two weeks. That lag is only the score catching up, and it says nothing about your discipline.

Healthy Fats

Every steroid hormone, testosterone, estrogen and progesterone among them, is built from cholesterol, and the fat you eat supports that production. Cut fat too far and it shows up in your hormone levels. In a meta-analysis of intervention studies, men on low-fat diets had lower total and free testosterone than men eating more fat.⁴ For women, very low-fat or very low-calorie eating can quiet the menstrual cycle altogether. Fat also carries the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K into the body; in one trial, vitamin D taken with a meal containing fat was absorbed about a third better than the same dose taken with a fat-free meal.⁵

Quality matters as much as quantity. Extra-virgin olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds and eggs make a strong base, with a quality omega-3 supplement (see Supplements) covering what the plate leaves out. In the PREDIMED trial, people eating a Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil or nuts had about 30% fewer major cardiovascular events than those on a reduced-fat diet.⁶ Saturated fat from whole foods such as meat, eggs and dairy has a place in moderation. The one fat to avoid outright is industrial trans fat.

Fasting

Fasting works best when it's built gradually. Start with a daily eating window and let the overnight fast widen over time: 16:8 first, then 20:4, with OMAD (one meal a day) at the far end of that road. Moving through those stages in order builds metabolic flexibility, the body's ability to switch smoothly between running on food and running on its own stores, and OMAD is a hard road without it. When you eat matters as much as how long you fast. Ending the eating window at least 4 hours before bed lets the fast cover the early part of the night, which helps sleep as well.

Longer fasts bring new things to manage. Once processed food drops away, so does most of its sodium, and sodium, potassium and magnesium then need deliberate attention (see Hydration and Electrolytes). Protein also has to fit inside a shorter eating window (see Food). Fat-soluble supplements such as vitamin D, K2, krill oil and CoQ10 need a meal with fat to absorb,⁵ so they belong inside the eating window and can be skipped on days without food, as I do during extended fasts.

I also do a 72 to 80 hour water fast about every three months, after more than a decade of daily OMAD. That's an advanced practice and a poor place to begin. It calls for a doctor's input first, especially for anyone on diabetes medication, pregnant, or with a history of disordered eating.

Tracking

A handful of numbers, watched as a trend, tell you far more than any single reading. The useful ones are simple: morning weight after emptying the bladder, on the same scale each day; heart rate variability (HRV) and resting heart rate from a wearable such as WHOOP, Garmin or Oura; and sleep duration and efficiency. Body composition from a smart scale is an estimate, good for showing direction and little more.

Three habits make those numbers worth having. Read the trend across weeks and let the single day go. Compare yourself against your own baseline, since wearable scores are built on population norms and HRV in particular varies enormously from one person to the next.⁷ And treat every number as a readout of what your body is doing. Once a number becomes a target to chase, it stops telling you the truth.

It also helps to know that the body reports late. In my own data, illness, a hard training session, a blood donation or a rough night usually shows up in HRV and resting heart rate two nights later, so a low reading often has its cause two days back. A known one-off, whether a late night, a long fast or a donation, belongs outside the trend.

Light

Light is how the body keeps time. Daylight outdoors early in the day sets the internal clock, and dim, warm light in the last hours before bed lets it wind down toward sleep. Sunlight also makes vitamin D in the skin, but how much depends on season, latitude, skin tone and cloud cover. Through a Canadian winter the sun makes little or none,⁸ which makes a supplement the more dependable source and is a main reason vitamin D appears in the list below.

Food

Good food starts with whole ingredients, and the Mediterranean pattern is a reliable frame: vegetables, legumes, olive oil, eggs and some meat. Eaten that way, the diet covers vitamins A and E on its own, A from eggs, dairy and orange vegetables, and E from nuts, seeds and olive oil.

Protein deserves particular attention, because it's the raw material for muscle and much of the body's repair. The RDA of 0.8 g per kg of body weight is a floor set to prevent deficiency. For people who exercise, the International Society of Sports Nutrition suggests 1.4 to 2.0 g per kg per day.⁹

On alcohol, this guide follows Canada's 2023 guidance. No drinks at all carries the lowest risk. One to two drinks a week is likely to avoid alcohol-related consequences, three to six raises the risk of several cancers, including breast and colon, and seven or more raises the risk of heart disease and stroke as well.¹⁰

Hydration and Electrolytes

Water through the day is the simple part. Electrolytes take a little more thought. Sodium from all sources typically lands around 1,000 to 3,000 mg a day, and potassium around 2,600 to 3,400 mg, most of it from food such as avocado, leafy greens and legumes. Anyone who sweats heavily, fasts or eats low-carb loses more and may want to add an electrolyte drink. I use LMNT Zero-Sugar Electrolytes: one serving in about a litre of water, sipped over the day. Anyone with high blood pressure or kidney disease should talk to a doctor before adding sodium.

Movement

Movement is one of the strongest levers on hormone balance, mood and how well the body ages. Canada's guidelines for adults 18 to 64 set the baseline: at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity a week, muscle strengthening with the major muscle groups at least twice a week, no more than 8 hours of sedentary time a day, and no more than 3 hours of recreational screen time.³ Strength work deserves its place in every week, and creatine, below, works best alongside it.

Supplements

Doses are population-level starting points, lowered where a published upper limit applies. Canadian labels can differ from US products with the same name, so check the form and dose on the label before buying. Product links are the ones I use, and a missing link means no product has been checked yet.

Morning, with food

• Vitamin D3: 2,000 IU per day. The RDA is 600 IU and the upper limit is 4,000 IU (NIH). It matters most in winter, and a 25(OH)D blood test shows whether more is needed. No product has been checked yet; choose cholecalciferol (D3) in a softgel and read the label. Source: NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, Vitamin D.
• California Gold Nutrition Premium Krill Oil: 1 to 2 g of krill oil per day, about 300 to 600 mg of combined EPA and DHA. I chose krill because it sits near the bottom of the ocean food chain, so it builds up far less mercury and other contaminants than large, long-lived fish, and its omega-3s come bound to phospholipids alongside astaxanthin, a natural antioxidant. Fish oil at the same EPA and DHA dose works as well. A shellfish allergy rules krill out.
• California Gold Nutrition Ubiquinol + PQQ: 100 to 200 mg of ubiquinol (CoQ10) per day with a meal that contains fat. The capsule also carries PQQ.
• Thorne Basic B Complex: 1 capsule per day with a meal, supplying 400 mcg of methylfolate and 400 mcg of methylcobalamin. Methylfolate works whichever way a person's folate-conversion genes turn out, which makes the methylated forms a safe default. For B12 specifically, NIH reports no evidence that absorption differs by form, so that choice is a low-regret hedge and not an upgrade. Typical ranges are 400 to 1,000 mcg of methylfolate and 500 to 1,000 mcg of methylcobalamin, and this product sits at the low end. Higher is not better here, since extra methylation support can overshoot. The capsule carries 400 mcg of biotin, so stop it 3 to 5 days before bloodwork. Source: NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, Vitamin B12.
• Vitamin K2 (MK-7), optional: 180 mcg per day alongside D3, based on a three-year trial in 244 postmenopausal women that slowed bone loss at the spine and femoral neck. Skip it entirely on warfarin or any other vitamin K antagonist. Source: Knapen 2013.

Any time of day

• Creatine Monohydrate 3 to 5 g per day. The ISSN position stand puts maintenance at 3 to 5 g and finds long-term use safe in healthy people. Timing doesn't matter, and 1 to 2 kg of water weight is normal and not fat. Source: Kreider 2017, ISSN position stand.
• California Gold Nutrition Hydrolyzed Collagen Peptides + Vitamin C: 9 g of collagen per day, the low end of the usual 9 to 15 g range, as 3 tablets (3 g) three times a day. Collagen synthesis depends on vitamin C, and the tablets carry only 30 mg per 3 tablets, so add 500 to 1,000 mg separately: Swanson Vitamin C 1000 is mine. Very high vitamin C (above 2 g a day long term) can upset the stomach.
• NOW Foods L-Theanine, optional: 100 to 200 mg with coffee, at roughly 2 parts theanine to 1 part caffeine. In a small crossover trial, 100 mg of theanine with 50 mg of caffeine sharpened attention switching and cut distraction more than caffeine alone. Source: Owen 2008, run by Unilever's research arm.

Bedtime

• Designs For Health Magnesium Glycinate: 200 to 350 mg of elemental magnesium, which is 1 to 2 capsules. NIH sets the supplemental upper limit at 350 mg, because higher doses commonly cause diarrhea, nausea and cramping. Glycinate is well absorbed and gentle on the gut. Check with a doctor first if kidney function is a concern. Source: NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, Magnesium.

Hormone and Mitochondrial Support (optional)

This is what I take for hormone and mitochondrial support. It describes my choices and doesn't claim they explain my results. Baseline labs come first (see the end), and the evidence here is thinner than for the items above.
- Toniiq Tongkat Ali: 200 mg of a standardized root extract (200:1, 2% eurycomanone) per day, inside the usual range of 200 to 400 mg. Use a standardized root extract and avoid bark. It is usually cycled, for example a month on and a month off, to avoid desensitisation. Research has centred on men, though testosterone matters for women's health too and has simply drawn less study. One small 4-week trial in 63 moderately stressed adults (32 men, 31 women) found lower cortisol and higher salivary testosterone, so treat the benefit as promising and still unproven. Source: Talbott 2013; the lead author was affiliated with a supplement-review company.
- Fatty15 (C15:0, pentadecanoic acid): 100 mg per day, with a usual range of 100 to 200 mg. It is well tolerated, and the human trials so far are small (a 30-person trial in young adults and a fatty liver trial). The idea that C15:0 is an essential fatty acid comes largely from the founder of a company that sells it, so the evidence is early. Sources: Robinson 2024 (30 young adults with overweight, 200 mg a day for 12 weeks); Chooi 2023 (88 women with fatty liver, where C15:0 added to a Mediterranean-style diet lowered LDL further; co-authors from a company laboratory).
- Timeline Mitopure (urolithin A): 500 mg per day, the dose used in human trials. Human evidence is more limited than for the items above, so this one is a choice and not a core piece. Sources: Singh 2022 (middle-aged adults, about 12% stronger after four months); Liu 2022 (adults 65 to 90, better muscle endurance, no change in walking distance); both funded and co-authored by the maker of Mitopure.
- Renue NMN + TMG (nicotinamide mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor): 250 mg per day in the morning, the low end of the usual 250 to 900 mg range and the dose from the insulin sensitivity trial. In a trial of 80 middle-aged adults, 300 to 900 mg per day for 60 days raised blood NAD+ and was well tolerated, but evidence for outcomes such as physical performance or insulin sensitivity comes from small trials (the insulin sensitivity one had 25 postmenopausal women with prediabetes). Health Canada's monograph allows up to 1,200 mg per day for adults, and it asks anyone to check with a practitioner before using it past 12 weeks at 250 mg or less, and before use with diabetes. The capsule also carries a small amount of TMG. Sources: Yi 2022 (lead author from an NMN manufacturer); Yoshino 2021; Health Canada NMN monograph.

Left Out on Purpose

My own stack is supplement-heavy, and a big part of the reason is that I eat one meal a day. A single meal can only hold so much, so supplements make up the shortfall that two or three meals would otherwise cover. Anyone eating OMAD will need to make up that gap too, and the further you narrow your eating window, the more deliberate it has to be. With more meals in the day, whole food carries more of the load and the supplement list above can stay shorter.

A few items in my own stack are missing here on purpose, because they carry interaction or evidence concerns for a general reader. Berberine lowers blood glucose and interacts with medications. Nattokinase thins the blood, which is why I pause it before any procedure. Fadogia agrestis is hormone-active, with little long-term human safety data behind it.

Vitamins A and E are left to food. Preformed vitamin A has an upper limit of 3,000 mcg and there's little deficiency to correct,¹¹ and in the SELECT trial, 400 IU a day of synthetic vitamin E raised prostate cancer risk in men by 17%.¹²

HMB is left out because the evidence hasn't held up. A meta-analysis of 302 young adults (18 to 45) found no gain in lean mass or strength from adding it to resistance training,¹³ and a 2026 meta-analysis in adults 50 and older reached the same conclusion.¹⁴ Apigenin is left out because no human trial of apigenin alone for sleep turned up, and the case for it rests on mechanism and animal work. High-dose methylation support, meaning TMG or methylfolate well above 1,000 mcg, is left out too, because it was tuned to one person's genetics and labs.

Before Starting

A few situations call for a conversation with a doctor before starting. If you take blood thinners, vitamin K2 works against warfarin, and high-dose omega-3 can add to bleeding tendency. With diabetes or diabetes medication, tell your prescriber about any change in when you eat, and raise NMN with them too. Kidney disease means magnesium and creatine both need a doctor's input. Most of this list hasn't been studied in pregnancy or breastfeeding. A shellfish allergy rules out krill. And anything hormone-active, tongkat included, deserves a check first if you have a hormone-sensitive condition or take related medication.

Baseline Labs

Labs come last because the right panel depends on each person's history, and because they're how you find out which gaps are real. A reasonable starting list to raise with a doctor: complete blood count, ferritin and iron studies, fasting glucose and HbA1c, a lipid panel with ApoB, hs-CRP, TSH, liver enzymes, kidney function (creatinine and eGFR), 25(OH)D and B12, plus homocysteine if there's a reason to check it.

A basic hormone panel belongs on everyone's list too: total and free testosterone, SHBG and estradiol, plus progesterone for those who cycle, timed on the doctor's advice since levels move through the month. It gives you a picture of your own balance and a baseline before starting anything hormone-active, tongkat included. Coverage varies by province and by test, so ask which are covered, and ask when to recheck vitamin D and B12 once you've started. Treat the first panel as the first point on a line. A single result says little on its own; the meaning lives in how results relate to one another over time, and the second and third draws are where the real picture starts to appear. Stop biotin 3 to 5 days before any draw.

The doses in this guide are starting points for an average adult. Genetics, lab history and medications all shift what's right for one person, and working that out sits beyond this document.

Notes