01
Sleep
If sleep were a pill, it would be the most effective drug in the world. Light in the morning, a deliberate wind-down in the evening, and nothing that disturbs the night.
Biohacking · Meaning, method, limits
Biohacking: what it means, how it works, and where it ends.
Biohacking is the art of understanding your own system and shaping it on purpose, with tools from science, technology and mindfulness. The point is to find out what works for you, so you have more energy, clarity and joy in life. Not gadgets, powders or personal records.
By Max Gotzler, a biohacker since 2014, founder of Flowgrade and author of two books on biohacking (in German). Last updated September 2026.
BiohackingTesting, systematically, what is good for your body and mind: sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, relationships, surroundings. Observe, change, observe again. Keep what works.
OriginThe term comes out of Silicon Valley. It was popularized by entrepreneur Dave Asprey, who calls himself the “father of biohacking”. Max Gotzler met him in 2013 and a year later founded Flowgrade, one of the first German companies devoted to biohacking.
Max Gotzler’s approachBiohacking is the method, not the goal. It builds the energy you need to push through resistance and get into flow. If all you do is optimize, you miss what you were optimizing for.
In one lineHealth keeps you alive. Aliveness tells you what for.
In the press
What others have written.
Verbatim quotes, translated from German, with date and link to the original. Some articles are behind a paywall.
WELT“Max Gotzler is Germany’s best-known biohacker.”31 Oct 2022
FOCUS“Max Gotzler is one of the leading advocates of simple biological self-optimization.”23 Dec 2021
Men’s Health“the experienced biohacker Max Gotzler”31 Jul 2024
ZEIT ONLINE“the author and biohacker Max Gotzler”4 Feb 2021
brand eins“The Body Optimizer”, a profile in the issue on self-tracking, by Christoph Koch03/2014
Twelve years
From measuring to living.
Numbers don’t lie. Basketball taught me that. So I started measuring myself: sleep, blood work, nutrition, neurofeedback. A board full of ideas turned into a small company, and the company turned into a scene.
2012Moved to Berlin with the idea of offering lab diagnostics by mail.
2013Met Dave Asprey, the man behind the term biohacking.
2014The business magazine brand eins profiles him as “The Body Optimizer”. Founds Flowgrade in Berlin, then called Biotrakr.
2015Launches the Flowgrade Show. Today more than 300 conversations with scientists, doctors, founders and athletes.
2017First flowFEST in Munich, a festival for flow, biohacking and longevity. Every year since.
2018First book: „Biohacking. Optimiere dich selbst“ (riva).
2020„Der tägliche Biohacker“ (FinanzBuch Verlag): 366 prompts, one a day.
2025„Die Flow-Formel“ (Deutscher Wirtschaftsbuch Verlag): the question of what all of it is for.
How far it can go: the neurosurgeon Jack Kruse dared me to ski in my underwear, for the sunlight above 1,500 meters and the cold that comes with it. I went the next day. The story is in my first book.
The method
Six levers that mesh like gears.
Sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, relationships, surroundings. There is no ranking, because each one depends on the others: sleep badly and you eat worse, move less and snap faster. There is only a place to start.
02
Nutrition
Steady energy starts with metabolism. More protein, less processed food, a clear rhythm. Once you’ve watched your blood sugar in real time, you eat differently.
03
Movement
The simplest biohack in the world, and it’s free. Not extreme, just regular. Ideally outside, ideally every day.
04
Stress
Stress isn’t the problem. Missing regulation is. Two short inhales through the nose, one long exhale through the mouth: the fastest way back into your body.
05
Relationships
The strongest predictor of a long, healthy life isn’t your blood work. It’s people. Conversation, community, belonging. The most underrated lever of all.
06
Surroundings
Where you live is how you live. Light, air, places that make you move and meet. Your surroundings decide before your willpower even gets asked.
In 2018, in my first book, the areas were still movement, nutrition, recovery, balance, focus and surroundings. Today they are sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, relationships and surroundings. Focus has moved over to flow psychology, and relationships have joined, because they decide more about a long life than any blood marker.
Sleep
2 weeks
Two weeks on six hours a night leaves attention as impaired as two nights without sleep. And people rate themselves as rested.
Van Dongen et al., Sleep, 2003, 48 participants
Breathing
5 minutes
A day of the double inhale with a long exhale. After one month it lifted mood more than mindfulness meditation of the same length.
Balban et al., Cell Reports Medicine, 2023, Stanford University
Relationships
since 1938
That’s how long the Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed its participants. The best predictor of a long, healthy life was good relationships, not money and not cholesterol.
Waldinger & Schulz, The Good Life, 2023
Every day
Biohacker bingo.
Ten boxes I use to close my biohacking talks. If you can tick five of them at night, you had a good day. Nobody gets all ten, and that isn’t the point.
- Slept at least seven hours
- Ten minutes of daylight, ideally in the morning
- Five minutes of sitting still or meditating
- Eight hours without food, overnight counts
- A protein-rich breakfast
- Fed your gut bacteria, with fiber and fermented food
- Worked up a real sweat
- A cold bath or a cold shower
- Three liters of water
- One hour without your phone
Cold and fasting are not for everyone. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant or take medication, talk to a doctor first.
Measuring
Measuring is a start, not a goal.
Biohacking runs on measurement: sleep, blood sugar, heart rate variability, blood work. That’s useful as long as it answers a question. Track your sleep for two weeks and you learn something about yourself. Track it for two years and mostly you learn to stare at a number.
For ten years I measured almost everything that can be measured, including a neurofeedback program that cost as much as a trip around the world. The harder I chased it, the less I found what I was chasing. Today I measure on purpose: to find something out, not to watch myself.
Worth measuring
SleepTwo or three weeks, to see patterns. After that, how you feel in the morning is usually enough.
Blood sugarTwo weeks, once, with a sensor on your arm. After you’ve seen what a bowl of pasta does to your afternoon, you don’t need a rule.
Blood workThe basics once a year, with a doctor who can actually interpret them.
How you feelHow much energy do I have right now, from one to ten? The oldest measurement there is, and often the most honest.
Limits
Where biohacking ends.
Biohacking is no substitute for medicine. If you’re ill, you belong in a doctor’s hands, not in a self-experiment.
The second limit is easier to miss: the point where optimizing itself becomes the stress. When the protocol matters more than the life it’s supposed to improve, it has lost its purpose. I’m still a passionate biohacker. But biohacking must never become an end in itself.
What works, what’s just expensive
The most effective biohacks cost nothing: daylight, sleep, movement, a good conversation. It usually gets expensive where the benefit is smallest.
Max GotzlerSupplements without a reason, gadgets that end up in a drawer after three weeks, protocols from people whose lives look nothing like yours: that’s the expensive part. The basics are the cheap part, and the part that works.
What for
Biohacking is the method. Flow is the goal.
Biohacking builds energy. You need energy to meet the resistance at the start of every worthwhile thing. Only then can you let go and get into flow. And the result is what this was about all along: aliveness.
We don’t just want to grow old, we want to be alive while we do. That’s the difference between longevity and what I mean: not just living longer, but living more.
For me, biohacking and flow belong together: one is the method, the other the goal.
From Biohacking, 2018, translatedRead and listen
Two books, three hundred conversations.
Both books and the podcast are in German.
riva · 2018
Biohacking
The way in, covering every area from sleep to surroundings. It ends with a two-week crash course.
In the shop →
FinanzBuch Verlag · 2020
Der tägliche Biohacker
366 prompts, one a day. Six chapters from motivation to fitness, plus a 28-day program.
In the shop →Listen
Flowgrade Show#289 · The underrated organ: the microbiome, with Prof. Michaela Axt-Gadermann8 Feb 2026
Flowgrade Show#183 · Modern spirituality and biohacking, with Laura Malina Seiler30 Jun 2023
HEALTHWISE#107 · Biohacking, with Max Gotzler16 Jul 2025
ANTENNE BAYERNGet Happy, episode 1 · Biohacking with Max GotzlerPodcast
Questions
Short answers.
Biohacking is the art of understanding your own system and shaping it on purpose, with tools from science, technology and mindfulness. In practice: work on six levers, sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, relationships and surroundings, watch what changes, and keep what works.
Partly. The basics are very well researched: sleep, movement, nutrition, stress regulation and relationships. Many products and protocols are not. Rule of thumb: the more fundamental the lever, the better the evidence, and usually the cheaper it is.
Five to ten minutes of natural daylight in the morning, two glasses of water and a little movement, before you turn on your phone. It costs nothing, affects sleep, energy and mood, and it’s where most people feel a difference fastest.
No. Trackers help when they answer a question, say two weeks of sleep or blood sugar to spot patterns. You don’t need them for good. Supplements make sense when a deficiency has been found, not on a hunch.
The basics aren’t. Extreme protocols can be: long fasts, strong cold exposure, high-dose supplements, especially with a medical condition, during pregnancy or on medication. Then the question belongs with a doctor. Biohacking is no substitute for medicine.
The most effective levers cost nothing: daylight, sleep, movement, a good conversation. It usually gets expensive where the benefit is smallest. If you start with money instead of habits, you start at the wrong end.
Longevity asks how long you live and how much of that time you stay healthy. Biohacking is the toolbox for it. Max Gotzler adds a third question: how alive. Not just getting older, but staying in shape while you do, in mind and body.
Biohacking strengthens the body: sleep, nutrition, movement, light, cold. Flow psychology asks what for. Biohacking is step one: it builds the energy you need to meet resistance and get into flow. More on the flow psychology page.
Max Gotzler has been a biohacker since 2014 and combines biohacking with flow psychology. In 2014 he founded Flowgrade, one of the first German companies devoted to biohacking. He is the author of three books, host of the Flowgrade Show with more than 300 episodes, and founder of flowFEST in Munich. In 2022 the German daily WELT called him Germany’s best-known biohacker.
In his keynotes, in German or English, such as “What really works, what is merely expensive?” on the six levers; at flowFEST every year in Munich; at conferences such as the Biohacking Congress; and on his retreats. Get in touch via the speaking page.
Sources
- Van Dongen, H. P. A., Maislin, G., Mullington, J. M. & Dinges, D. F. (2003). The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness. Sleep, 26(2), 117–126.
- Balban, M. Y., Neri, E., Kogon, M. M. et al. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895.
- Waldinger, R. & Schulz, M. (2023). The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster.
- Gotzler, M. (2018). Biohacking – Optimiere dich selbst. riva.
- Gotzler, M. (2020). Der tägliche Biohacker. FinanzBuch Verlag.
- Gotzler, M. (2025). Die Flow-Formel. Deutscher Wirtschaftsbuch Verlag.
Next
Bring biohacking to your stage.
The keynote “What really works, what is merely expensive?” sorts the six levers honestly, for health days, leadership offsites and conferences. In German or English.
