There’s a big upside to doing biohacking right. You get more energy and vitality than you know what to do with. But then what? Once diet, sleep, training, and recovery finally click into place, that mental clarity makes you ever more curious about what else is out there.
Every year, when I attend Dave Asprey’s biohacking conference, I walk away with a handful of interesting ideas. Most things are the same. The familiar faces show up, people walk around sipping butter coffee wearing blue light-blocking glasses, and the usual brands have their booths. But this year, Asprey’s team intentionally went beyond basic biohacking knowing that he’s audience is ready for what’s next. Hence, the name upgrade to “Beyond Biohacking.”
Here are five trends that stood out if you’re ready to take your health optimization to another level.
Gene Therapy for Longevity: Why Biohackers Are Paying Attention
Millions of dollars are pouring into gene therapy and cellular reprogramming on the clinical level right now. But there’s a more accessible version of gene therapy built around two proteins, klotho and follistatin, that don’t mess with your genome. Instead, they get your body to upregulate other proteins it’s already capable of making.
Klotho vs. Follistatin: What Do These Proteins Actually Do?
Klotho is tied to cognitive function and cellular aging, while follistatin supports muscle growth, and researchers have been putting these to the test. A 2025 meta-analysis pooling data from eight studies and more than 6,600 subjects found a statistically significant link between Klotho levels and better cognitive function. Additionally, research published in PNAS found that a single gene-therapy injection of a follistatin variant enhanced muscle size and strength in animal models for more than two years.
Are these just another peptide? That was my first interpretation too, but they aren’t. A peptide injection delivers the finished product directly, and when the body uses it up, you’ll have to reinject on a regular schedule, often daily or weekly. Gene therapy skips that step. Instead of handing the body the amino acid, it hands the body the instructions for making the protein itself, turning a cell into its own small factory. That’s the appeal behind a single injection lasting up to a year.
According to Minicircle, the delivery method is a plasmid, small circular DNA molecules, injected under the skin in a single dose. Though, the plasmid enters the cell’s nucleus, it never merges with your own genome. The cell reads the plasmid’s instructions and starts manufacturing the target protein, releasing it into the bloodstream. A single injection can support that protein production for up to a year, the company says, depending on the person.
Minicircle might sound unfamiliar, but if you’ve seen Bryan Johnson’s Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, you’ve already heard of it. This is the company the tech entrepreneur visits to undergo plasmid gene therapy using follistatin.
However, it’s fair to question both efficacy and safety. Human research on these therapies is still limited, and most of what’s known comes from animal studies and a small, self-selected pool of early adopters, like Asprey, rather than large clinical trials.
Asprey says he trusts the early results. Even his 19-year-old daughter asked to try Klotho, making her, by his account, one of the youngest people to do it.
“The big question is what is the potential gain and what is the potential risk,” Asprey told Muscle & Fitness. “And the risk seems meaningfully low because they exit the body over time. And the upside is pretty high. They are studied. There are trials. So I believe them enough that I’ve done them, and so did my daughter.”
A Phase 1 trial sponsored by Minicircle is currently recruiting to test this combination on humans. The trial’s own listing notes that the injections are administered at a site outside the U.S., outside FDA jurisdiction, with only pre- and post-treatment assessments happening stateside.
Personalized Supplements Based on Your DNA
Some biohackers are still walking around with over a hundred supplements in their pocket, and others have most of what their bodies need in a few pills a day. The latter group goes a layer deeper than their blood panel and supplementing based on what they may be “deficient” in.
A genetic test can flag the specific pathways and variants that affect how you metabolize different nutrients, process caffeine, or absorb vitamin D, so you can use your genetic code to dictate exactly what goes in your daily supplement stack. Companies in this space compound personalized formulations around those results rather than what the average person might need.
Dr. Bryce Wilde, genetics specialist and lead genomics coach at Trifecta Health, told Muscle & Fitness, that most supplements, especially multivitamins, are formulated based on population averages. However, when it comes to demographics, like biohackers, who pay really close attention to precision, those are just not going to deliver the results they seek. “Your genome is the only place where truly personalized health strategy begins,” he said.
The Hidden Risks of Buying Peptides Online
It’s become really simple to access peptides without any clinical oversight. Since, they work, the demand is high, and there’s a lot of money to be made. However, that has brought with it more shady sellers than one would like to admit.
Biohackers at Beyond who still swear by peptides have gotten religious about sourcing, third-party testing, and conservative dosing. They prioritize asking the right people the right questions instead of just adding to cart and checking out on a website that makes it too easy to buy.
Buyer beware still applies. It always will in a market moving this fast. But when you get to connect with people with credentials and years, if not decades, of research behind them, it makes the caution a lot easier to navigate.
Purpose and Community Are Becoming Essential Biohacks
You can optimize and biohack until you’re blue in the face, but there comes a point when feeling on top of the world isn’t enough, especially when you’re up there alone. I talked to several people who’ve spent significant time and money to have the energy, clarity, and insight, but none of that would hold much weight if they’re not doing something with it, sharing what they’ve learned, and showing up for others the way somebody once showed up for them.
Jay Shetty’s keynote brought exactly that to the spotlight before a room of thousands of people. Purpose, he argued, doesn’t have to look like anything in particular. “It doesn’t have to be a person. It doesn’t have to make you famous. It doesn’t have to make you money. It doesn’t have to be big,” he said on stage, noting it’s your gift that leaves other people a little bit happier just for having crossed paths with them.
And many biohackers in the room are learning to discover theirs.
The Rise of Neurofeedback and Advanced Mindfulness Technology
Most people will still find some of the mindfulness and consciousness tech too out there, and that reaction is fair. Even biohackers tend to arrive at this corner of their journey after their physical health has reached solid ground. Thinking, it’s time to understand the deeper layers of the mind.
In a world constantly fighting for our attention, learning how to tune out and tune in has become a skill advanced biohackers are increasingly interested in mastering, and the technology has caught up with that demand.
Full-body immersive soundbath experiences pull you into your body in a way headphones never could. You’re literally sitting inside a soundbath bowl, with another one suspended above your head, moving vibration through you from both directions at once.
Then on the higher-tech side, neurofeedback devices read your brain activity and feed that data back to you in real time in the form of sound, vibration or visual cues, so you can train to shift your brainwave patterns not just with your eyes closed, but also when they’re wide open.
This is also just the surface of where Asprey wants to take things. He’s hosting an entire event around going deeper into consciousness this fall, Beyond Wonderland, which suggests the mind is about to get a lot more attention at these conferences than it’s gotten before.
