Can You Biohack Your Anexity?

SARA ANDERSON KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT SHE NEEDS TO MANAGE HER ANXIETY:seven hours and 18 minutes of sleep; 20 to 30 minutes of journaling and 10 minutes of meditation each morning; a B8 vitamin supplement that she says lightens the tightness in her chest and helps her sleep; no cold food (it causes her to tense up); and limited caffeine, alcohol, and sugar.

The 28-year-old, who works for a tech company in San Francisco, first saw a doctor about her anxiety as a teen. He prescribed sleeping pills to help with her insomnia (which he thought was contributing to her anxiety), but she never took the medication—and never fully addressed her anxiety. She coped by doing yoga and meditating, but her symptoms persisted.

Then, in her early twenties, Anderson moved to Silicon Valley to work at a start-up where 80 percent of the company was male. “It was very stressful,” she says. “I was successful in my career, but I was really anxious and edgy. I couldn’t focus, my body hurt, and I was so fatigued I could barely keep my eyes open at work.”

She didn’t want to take medication, so when Anderson, who’s always been “very analytical,” heard about biohacking—tracking personal metrics like sleep, diet, and exercise to glean insights about your body and tweaking those variables to feel better—she jumped at the chance to try it. Using data to deal with her anxiety made perfect sense to her. After more than two years of tinkering with her sleep, diet, and even her birth control, she says she feels anxiety-free and better than ever.

What Is Biohacking?

The buzzy practice originated in Silicon Valley and is loosely defined as experimenting on your body—everything from eating less junk food, microdosing on psychedelic drugs, eliminating certain foods from your diet, or taking supplements—all to “hack” your biology and improve your health. “You look at your body as a study,” says Molly Maloof, M.D., a general practitioner in San Francisco who specializes in helping engineers and start-up founders biohack safely. “You have a hypothesis on what’s causing this problem, and then you do an experiment to see if you can fix it.”