"VAN" (Europe Bureau - Aleksey Vesyoliy) :: On April 26-27 Riga held a conference on biohacking. It was the first one in Latvia and the biggest in the whole Baltics.

The H2O centre that belongs to a private RISEBA university has fit nicely into the concept of the event. The atmosphere of the space gives just the right amount of urban loft feel and is as technological as it should be.

The spacious H2O hall, which is a separate building by itself, feels rather comfortable.

There was a big topic, on a world wide problems, such as polution and problems around us - for example: most poluted place are our apertments, mostly childrens room. All factors we are missing daily, speakers were pointing them out, to track them and of course solve them like a real biohacker would do so.

Whole conference was aimed to show people different approaches on taking body and mind care. Speakers explained plenty good hacks, on how to understand and manage your daily habbits, to stay more productive. Good example would be Teemu Arina on the stage, he was looking more like cyborg there, but that was only gadgets around his body, and his approach to understand body - it was exactly how engineers look at problems that needs to be solved, and he shared his thinkings about overall approaches he did solving out his progressive diseases.

The first ones to take the stage were organizers of the conference. I had the honours to personally meet one of them during break and ask couple questions to Kaspars Vendelis.

- Kaspars, would you please explain to me in simple terms what is biohacking?

- Biohacking is a systematic approach to body and mind improvement. Today this word is a hit in Silicon Valley. But using a new term doesn’t mean that the methods of “hacking” the body were unknown before. It often occurs, as I make presentations on the matter that people say to me, “it seems that we were doing biohacking unknowingly for a long time now”.

Yes, there are supporters of biohacking who are trying to put microchips under their skin or hope that soon it will be possible to upload a human mind into computer, but our team has decided to move in another direction – we are interested in understanding the natural processes of the human body and stabilization of its work.

- Can biohacking be seen as a science? Or is it a lifestyle?

- Certainly, it is a lifestyle based on knowledge from different fields of science. Biology and medicine in particular. Some perceive biohacking as a label that proves that it is possible to become a person with an ideal health in a matter of days. But three is no such cure. Instead, there are healthy habits and enjoyment of the process.

You can’t be happy only on holidays or weekends. You should learn to enjoy life on workdays too, enjoy the little things. Same applies to health. What stops you from taking a contrast shower in the morning or do a few push-ups when you have time? It is not that difficult, is it?

At first there will be laziness and excuses, but once you get over it, it feels great. A simple habit that takes just a minute a day forms a healthy lifestyle. If you dream about writing a book, dreaming about it won’t make it happen. You just need to do it.

- What future do you see for biohacking? Can it become mainstream with help of conferences like this?

- Speaking about our conference, next year we plan to shift the focus slightly. Its subject will be “Increasing Productivity” and we aim to gather 200-250 people, with half of them being directors and managers. It is important for them to learn how biohacking can increase their personal productivity and productivity of their employees too. Speaking about biohacking in general, I don’t think that people will use this term for much longer. There are plenty of ways of how to improve your health and it doesn’t matter how you call it. It is possible that in five years we will be introduced to a “new” phenomenon called “healthy lifestyle”.

Later on, with big thanks to Kaspars and his friends, I moved exploring new topics that were discussed on stage, such as how to activate Autophagy - cells responsible for Self-Digestion, that is dissemble of old and weak cells back into energy. Biohacking haven’t interested you yet? Maybe a Teemu Arinas book will do so, he shared his vision in simplified terms understandable for everyone, based on actual researches, you can find it at biohackingbook.com

Cheers, from all biohackers to all readers :)

Please read full story with photos at EUNetwork.lv.