Hacking our health

0:00Support for this show today comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. With deep research, Claude's research capabilities go way deeper than basic web search. Comprehensive, reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes. For problems worth solving, you can get started with Claude at Claude.ai slash Today Explained.

0:35That's Claude.ai slash Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Fetch. Fetch is pet insurance, if you hadn't figured it out. Do you have a pet? According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago, every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over$1 ,000. and it almost never comes at a convenient time. So check out Fetch. You get paid up to 90 % of vet bills. You can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S. and Canada. Every vet is in network. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's FetchPet.com slash save. Supplements often have really concentrated doses of these vitamins and nutrients that we didn't evolve to consume.

1:25I woke up in my 40s sore all the time, unable to recover as quickly as I used to. At high doses, testosterone in certain individuals does cause aggressive behavior.

1:42Jonquilyn Hill:I'm John Glenn Hill, and this is Explaining It to Me from Vox. In our last episode, we talked about wellness, what it is, and why we're so obsessed with it. Here are five tips from a dietitian that will actually improve your overall wellness. We're wellness girls. Of course, we're going to know the difference between a regular massage, lymphatic massage, and body work. The wellness industry is a$1.8 trillion business. Y 'all, that's a ton of money. Today, we're going to talk about some of the high-tech gadgets that people are using to biohack their bodies, starting with wearables. I've just about tried everything.

2:17Fitbit, Apple Watch, Garmin, the Google Pixel Watch, and currently I use the order ring. I wear a fitness tracker every single day, and I have for probably 12 years. It is not hyperbolic to say that my Apple Watch saved my life.

2:33Jonquilyn Hill:Vox tech reporter Adam Clark Estes has been thinking about wearables and how they relate to his own wellness. I think that we're all pursuing a state of wellness, and I think that what that means to each person varies a little bit. And it has varied for me as I've gotten older. When I was young, I was an athlete and I really wanted to be like top performing. And now I'm a young dad and I just want to make it through each day. So wellness is something that encompasses physical wellness, mental well-being, and increasingly, I'll be honest, digital well-being. With that in mind, at the beginning of the year, Adam decided to go all in on health and fitness trackers.

3:17Jonquilyn Hill:And he wrote about the experience. You know, your watches that remind you when to stand, your rings that give you a sleep score. He even tried a pair of headphones that monitor your brain. So why did he do this big experiment? I did it because I'm interested in how technology and especially gadgets can make our lives better. But I'm also well aware of the fact that they can sometimes make our lives a little bit worse. And I wanted to try to figure out what the right balance would be. I started this experiment of testing a lot of wearables. And I wondered if all of these futuristic monitors and trackers could tell me more about how what I was eating or how much I was exercising or sleeping, how that was really affecting my body and how it was making me feel.

4:14Jonquilyn Hill:Which wearables did you decide to wear? Can you run us through the list and what each one did? There is a long list of wearables that I tried, and I don't even think I can remember the name of everything. But the list of the wearables that I really sort of stuck to and frankly liked included the Oura ring, which is a smart ring. I like that it tells me when to go to bed, but I also could do that for free. I think my favorite thing about it is that you can track what you're feeling that day. So far, a lot of my tracking has been fatigue. A similar ring made by a company called Ultra Human. There was the Whoop Band, which is basically a smartwatch without the watch part.

4:52So just a band that you wear that has a little tracker on it. This will track its senses immediately when my activity level has started. And it's so accurate down to the minute for when it ends. I'm actually confused and shocked and awed by it. And it's almost creepy how accurate it is. The Apple Watch, which I had before this. It was just my watch and still is. And then I tried a couple different brands of continuous glucose monitors.

5:17Jonquilyn Hill:Which ones felt useful and which ones were like less useful? It's difficult for me to describe what useful means for a health tracker because you literally do not need to use it. What I found to be useful were the things that met my needs and helped me towards my goals. And those two were the Apple Watch, which I already had, and then the Oura Ring, which is a newer piece of tech and can do kind of all the same things that an Apple Watch can do health tracking wise, but is a lot more comfortable when you wear it for sleeping. What Apple does with fitness tracking is also fairly standoffish. like the main thing they have are rings like you're supposed to close your rings every day one is for how long you're standing one is for minutes exercised and one is vaguely defined as move it's how much you move and if you close those rings then you've had a good day or it takes it to a degree that i would not quite call woo woo but there is it is it is definitely a little bit more connected to your feelings and connected to kind of like a way of thinking about healthy living.

6:29And at the same time, like Apple, it's not giving you too much data. Some of these health trackers give you just way too much data, but or it gives you these scores and getting a score is definitely like getting a grade in school. But it like as someone who went to school, it made immediate sense to me.

6:47Jonquilyn Hill:Yeah, I mean, and I get that. Like I'm a person who wants the A. And we had lots of listeners who called in and said that it sort of made them obsessive about their health and things like that. I did become fixated on closing my rings, meeting my calorie goals in a way that it did seem it was unhealthy. I constantly check my stats, calories, steps, everything to the point where I was using that data to justify whether or not I was allowed to eat that day. I would go down our apartment, which is on the fourth floor, and go up and down our flights upstairs at like 10 or 11 p.m. at night just to close either my exercise rings or my calorie rings.

7:29So I wasn't a little obsessed. Knowing my hourly and daily step count did something weird to my brain that I couldn't turn off.

7:36Jonquilyn Hill:Did you have that experience at all? I would say by the end of it, that was the experience. The experience of being obsessed with checking these apps and of trying to make sure I closed my rings and got a good score here and a good score there and it gets really out of control if you're doing it on multiple platforms and it also like the utility of it um gets drowned out by just the um attention it takes to keep up with all these scores and metrics um I I do the thing where I forget to wear my watch to the gym um all the time. And I don't think that the workout counts. And I think that that is like tapping into some part of my brain that I would like to leave alone.

8:27Jonquilyn Hill:Yeah, it does seem like there's something in us that wants to win at health in a way. I mean, who wouldn't want to win at health? It's like kind of the whole game. But what I realized and what this experiment taught me is that those scores can be more useful than that. It's not just about getting a good score or about completing the planned workout every time you do it. I think that the data that health trackers can offer you is really feedback about how your body's doing, and it can tell you when you did a really great job in a workout. It can also tell you when you are feeling tired and would probably benefit from a less intense workout.

9:05And that's something I've taken away from this now. I used to have a pretty set workout schedule. And now I actually respond to that readiness score and sleep score and plan my workouts around that.

9:17Jonquilyn Hill:So America has this reputation of being pretty unhealthy. And, you know, these sorts of trackers have been around for a while and they're growing in popularity. But, you know, there's diabetes, there's heart disease. There are all these ailments that we have that aren't necessarily going down among Americans. Do you think that means trackers are just a dream? Like, do they not work? The real answer there is there is no one thing to do to be healthy or one thing that we can do as a nation to all become healthier. It's an incredibly complex problem. I think that a lot of our problems with health in the United States have to do with our health care system and how it works.

10:00But I will say that health trackers are a very American solution. It is a gadget. It's a product that you can buy that puts you in the driver's seat of looking after your health. I think it does make a lot of people feel empowered. And I think that these devices are actually lifesaving for some people. There is tons of research that have showed that the rise in fitness trackers and health trackers has led people to move more and walk more. So I think that's all promising. But at the end of the day, I don't think that there's a great substitute for a health care system that is open to as many people as possible and available and that delivers good outcomes and treatment.

10:44Jonquilyn Hill:So that's what goes on our bodies. But what about what goes in them? Next up, when fitness lovers take hormones.

11:05Support for the show today comes from AG1. When we go on vacation, we need to put some of our healthy habits on pause, but AG1 doesn't have to be one of them. AG1 is a daily health drink with multivitamin pre and probiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants. It's a simple habit. You can add to your morning. Just mix a scoop into eight ounces of water and enjoy. Kind of like baby formula. It's made to help maintain energy, support gut health, and support immune health. Plus, AG1 is clinically shown to support gut health and fill in common nutrient gaps. Claire White tried AG1. Drinking athletic greens is totally a part of my routine.

11:49It feels like something I look forward to in the mornings just to get myself going, get myself awake, and to ensure that I'm really nourishing my body with the proper nutrients before the day even gets started. Visit drinkag1.com slash explained to get a free AG1 travel case with seven free AG1 travel packs in your welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription, order while supplies last. That's drinkag1.com slash explained.

12:21Support for today's playing comes from Granola. No relation. When work gets super busy and you're having meetings upon meetings, you can't rely on your brain alone to keep track of the important stuff. Granola can help you out there. This Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way people actually meet. It works in the background so you can take whatever rough notes you like to take. But during your meeting, Granola securely transcribes everything. Then, after it's over, it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes. Granola also works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use.

13:02It's your standard meeting setup, but enhanced. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. just go ahead to granola.ai slash explained. That's granola.ai slash explained to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai slash explained. Who doesn't want their time back?

13:30Jonquilyn Hill:Okay, so earlier we talked about all the tech people are using to track sleep and fitness, all in the name of biohacking. But what if you're trying to do that with the help of hormones? Hormone replacement therapy exists for a reason. And that reason is it makes you feel way better. It makes your body work way better. I tried testosterone replacement and it just gives you so much virility. I mean, it'll make your penis reach for a damn deck of cards. We all have naturally occurring hormones in our bodies. These regulate everything from mood to muscle growth. But more and more men have been looking to boost their testosterone levels lately.

14:06Prescriptions for testosterone grew from 7.3 million in 2019 to more than 11 million in 2024. Dude, it's awesome. I feel alive. I'm stronger than I've ever been in my entire life. I'm healthier than I've ever been. I'm on an anti-aging protocol from my doctor that includes testosterone replacement, but I don't take any steroids.

14:27Jonquilyn Hill:So is testosterone really the secret weapon for getting all jacked and living forever? That's the question I posed to Dr. Ruth Wood. She's a neuroscientist and chair of the Department of Cell and Neurobiology at USC. She spent four decades researching the effects of steroids like testosterone. Okay, steroids are a class of molecules that are derived from cholesterol. And they're naturally produced in the body in the gonads, which means in the ovaries, in women, and in the testes in men. So testosterone acts throughout the body and it is muscle building, which is it's anabolic, and it works very well to increase muscle mass.

15:09And it's also lipolytic, which means it's fat metabolizing. So it produces more lean mass and less fat mass. And so this is what many people are looking for when they're either taking testosterone therapy or they're using anabolic steroids.

15:28Jonquilyn Hill:I think there's often confusion between anabolic steroids and therapeutic testosterone. Can you talk about the difference between the two and why that distinction matters? When we're talking about anabolic steroids sort of out there in the cultural landscape, we're usually talking about abuse of very large amounts of exogenous testosterone and other related compounds. Anabolic steroids can be taken via a variety of different methods, either injection or oral or even a gel that can be applied on the skin. When we're talking about testosterone replacement therapy, we're often talking about lower amounts of testosterone.

16:11And it's frequently being prescribed for men as they age, who naturally will have reduced levels of their own testosterone. I think what's happening nowadays is that there are med spas and low-T clinics that will not require a blood test. And so a man can come in and say, hey, doc, you know, I'm feeling kind of low energy, and I'm not really myself, and I'm frustrated by my lack of strength. And can I get some TRT? What about the cultural impact of testosterone and steroids? I think one of the really interesting phenomena is that there's a lot of media attention to the idea that men need to be really cut.

17:04Yo, it's about damn time. I'm going to get my body fat percentage, baby. Yo, 10 % body fat. 7.7%. If your physique looks like this, then you are what is commonly known as skinny fat. You're fatter than you think. That is to having bigger muscles and reduced body fat. And you can see this in a lot of advertising. And particularly if you look back to before testosterone had been chemically synthesized and therefore before it was widely available. The bodybuilders of that era in the 40s, the biggest guys, really wouldn't even rate a second glance nowadays. Because that was as big as you could get at the time without exogenous steroids.

17:49Nowadays, of course, people can become much bigger in terms of muscle mass and much more muscle definition. Everyone wants to know how you get your body to look like this. That was a washboard. so that requires some sacrifice. You don't get to eat as much as you'd like. You don't get to party as much as you'd like. You get to work out a little more than you'd probably like. The widespread availability of testosterone has made it seem normal to have relatively more muscular physique. And you see this particularly in Hollywood when you look at older stars and you think, you know, nobody puts on that kind of muscle mass just by themselves as they age.

18:31So it's generally accepted that Hollywood, as well as the military, there's definitely a lot of low-level use of performance-enhancing drugs. Why? Because they work.

18:48Jonquilyn Hill:What are some of the common misconceptions people have about taking them? So initially, when the scientific and medical establishment started looking into the effects of anabolic steroids, they said, no, it's really nothing. It's just water, weight, and all of the athletes went, sure it is. And they kept using because it does work. The real question is, are there downsides that people aren't really talking about? And that's really part of the conversation that I think we need to have when we're looking at steroid use and testosterone replacement therapy. Because they do cause changes in blood chemistry and they can cause liver dysfunction.

19:34And so there are definitely some health concerns, particularly in susceptible people, that need to be looked at.

19:41Jonquilyn Hill:There's an ongoing debate about hormone optimization clinics and longevity biohacking. From a scientific view, is there any credible evidence that boosting testosterone in healthy adults actually improves the quality of their lives long term? You know, I don't think we really know enough about the long term effects of testosterone replacement therapy because it's only come into widespread use relatively recently. The question, does it improve quality of life, though, I would say probably yes in terms of people's sense of energy and their sense of strength, if you will, as well as their libido and perhaps zest for life.

20:27If you could advise young athletes or aging adults about these substances, what would you want them to understand before making a decision to take them? I don't think that there's really any reason for young men to take TRT therapy. At this point, they are at the peak of their own endogenous testosterone production. So the only reason to take testosterone would be essentially at a level that would constitute anabolic steroid abuse.

21:07In terms of older men who are experiencing the declining effects of testosterone, then you say, well, what are the downsides of taking this? One of the key things I think to note is that once you start taking TRT, you're actually going to suppress your own endogenous testosterone production further. And that means that you really need to make a commitment to take this long term. So it's really a question of, do you want to be taking a pill for the rest of your life or an injection? Knowing that in some cases it may have negative effects on your health that don't show up immediately, but could end up being problematic down the road.

22:00Jonquilyn Hill:After this next break, we'll talk about something a lot more of us put in our bodies, supplements.

22:16Support for the show today comes from Built. There's no way around it. Housing is expensive. Rent, mortgage, it doesn't matter which one you're paying. Built was created to help ease the sting. Built started out rewarding members on their rent. That's what they were known for. But now, in 2026, this current year, it's not just for renters. Built members can now earn points on mortgage payments wherever they live. Every housing payment earns you points you can use toward flights with top travel partners like United and Hyatt. Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much more. You can download the Built app and join the Built membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com slash explained.

23:08Don't spell it with a U because it's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained. Use our link so they know we sent you.