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Easy and Safe Tips for Biohacking Muscle Growth
There are plenty of ways to help muscle growth on top of your workout routine. We have gathered here the best tips for biohacking muscle growth – ranging from boosting your immune system through smart drugs and more.
What is Biohacking and What Drives Someone to Biohack Themselves?
Biohacking is a broad term encompassing practices that optimize biology and metabolism for self-improvement. While some experimental methods—like gene therapy, cryotherapy, or blood transfusions—exist, rest assured nothing here involves test tubes or stem cells.
At its core, biohacking means taking control of your body in innovative ways, beyond traditional medicine. It can influence brain waves, boost physical performance, and strengthen your immune system.
More importantly, biohacking is about asking “why” your body works the way it does and identifying small, sustainable improvements. This growing movement stems from a universal desire to feel better and perform at our best—especially when conventional medicine offers limited options.
In this guide, we’ll explore simple and safe biohacking tips to support muscle growth, fitness, and cognitive function.
How Different Is Biohacking From Traditional Medicine?
Traditional medicine usually refers to health practices using plants, animals, manual therapies, or more to diagnose and cure illness or improve well-being. Just like biohacking, this covers a wide range of different approaches and techniques.
The main difference between biohacking and traditional medicine is that the latter is based on experience, traditional cultures, and practices (that can vary from one place to another). Some aspects of traditional medicine can be scientifically explained, but a lot of practices are not and rely on traditional knowledge that has been developed over generations.
Biohacking, on the other hand, relies heavily on science and biology in its approach. Some techniques and hacks can be considered as experimental still or can show various results depending on individuals, however, biohacking, in general, is science-based.
Biohacking Your Functions: Supplements
There is a wide variety of supplements you can take to improve your overall metabolism functions and therefore your muscle growth. They fall into two different categories, smart drugs and vitamins/nutrients types of supplements.
Smart drugs: (also known as nootropics)
Biohacking is a rapidly evolving field with exciting research showing promising results. Improvements in cognitive abilities, problem-solving, working memory, and overall mental performance are just the beginning.
Enhanced focus and relaxation don’t just improve your daily routine—they can also give you the motivation needed to achieve muscle growth goals. Several supplements are gaining attention in this space for their effectiveness:
- Creatine: Naturally produced by the body, creatine fuels muscles and tissues. Extensive research shows it improves muscle strength, enhances workout performance, and supports recovery.
- BCAAs (Branched-Chain Amino Acids): These amino acids, metabolized in muscles rather than the liver, have been shown to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, reduce muscle damage, and even combat fatigue.
- L-theanine & Gingko Biloba: Both supplements support mental clarity, relaxation, and focus, making them great additions for both cognitive and physical performance.
For more details, check out our our article on nootropics. Additionally, we’ve covered insights on nootropics from biohacking pioneer Tim Ferriss—don’t miss it!
Vitamins and Nutrients:
Supplementing one’s diet has been popular for a long time, but the research and new products in this area can be a little bit overwhelming.
Here are some ideas of supplements you can experiment with, to see if any of them work for you:
– Magnesium is one of the most popular supplements for a good reason: magnesium deficiency is very common, and it has a big impact on sleep quality but also on body benefits in general. One of our favorite products is from Thorne.
– Vitamins: we discuss the benefits of vitamin D below, but others such as vitamin A, various types of vitamin B, and vitamin K12 also have benefits for your body. If you are not sure where to start, check out Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s vitamin supplements and the products we enjoy at EHM.
– Fish oil is also a popular diet supplement when it comes to muscle growth. Some studies have shown that it has benefits on the metabolism overall, but also that it can help improve physical performance, energy levels, or joint health.
Supplements and nootropics use and dosage vary from one person to another, so if you are unsure where to start, you should consult a doctor or a sports specialist.
Biohacks for Overall Health and Happiness
Whether it’s improving your sleep, your cognitive performance, or your skin health, there is a lot you can do to improve your health and overall happiness.
Sleep:
Sleep plays a critical role in your overall health and fitness. Even moderate sleep deprivation can significantly affect cognitive functions, increase cortisol levels, and harm your well-being.
At first, sleep might not seem directly linked to muscle growth, but it’s more connected than you think. Here’s why: inadequate sleep elevates cortisol, the stress hormone, leaving you lethargic and low on energy. This slows recovery from workouts and compounds negative effects over time.
Prolonged high cortisol levels can make weight loss and muscle gain more challenging. They can also suppress your immune system, increasing your risk of illness, and elevate the likelihood of anxiety or depression.
On the other hand, quality sleep helps regulate cortisol, boosting energy, mental clarity, and recovery. With proper rest, your muscles get the recovery time they need to grow and strengthen, making sleep a vital tool for biohacking muscle growth.
By prioritizing sleep, you’re not just improving your overall health—you’re setting yourself up for better performance, faster recovery, and optimal gains.
Here are Some Basic Tips You Can Try to Incorporate to Maximize Your Sleep:
- stopping using screens one to two hours before going to sleep to help your brain slow down.
- getting your bedroom completely dark and lowering the temperature in it can also improve the quality of sleep.
- we mention meditation below as well, but trying to slow the “brain chatter” down before going to sleep can help feeling more peaceful and relaxed before going to bed.
- reducing consumption of caffeine and alcohol quite a few hours before bedtime is of course also known to improve sleep quality.
- Try this Onnit Melatonin Spray.
You can check out our article here on Biohacking your Sleep – detailed article here.
Mental health:
Mental performances can depend on factors such as your diet and sleep pattern, but your general mental state is also important. There are many habits that will improve your overall mental functions. We already looked at some diet supplements that can improve your cognitive functions, but there are other tips you can use.
One that gets a lot of attention (and for a good reason) is meditation. You will find plenty of apps such as Calm or Buddhify that will help you get started.
Another very easy thing to do to improve mental state and mood is to be outside. Enjoying nature regularly and soaking up that vitamin D has huge benefits on your mood and therefore your cognitive performance and mental state. Vitamin D has been proven to help fight depression or some diseases such as multiple sclerosis or the flu. It is of course also available as a supplement, but getting a moment of sunlight every day, even for 15 to 30 minutes, is great for your mood and your body.
Diet:
There are a lot of diet options that you can look into in order to improve your metabolism and therefore your overall fitness and endurance. Diet doesn’t have to be only about losing fat, it can also help muscle growth by impacting your metabolism.
One of the most popular ways of increasing muscle growth is to increase protein intake in your diet, before or after a workout., if your current diet does not include enough proteins for example. There are plenty of protein supplements available on the market that can be used to supplement or replace meals. Here is one of our favorites – it is unflavored so you won’t be overpowered by artificial sweeteners.
We will not go into too much detail here about each of these diet options, but you can start by reading our detailed previous post about lean body hacks.
Here are some of the options that you could experiment with that have proven efficient for a lot of people:
Intermittent Fasting:
You can experiment with fasting or rather eating during a specific window of time. A lot of people consider this option for weight loss, but studies also show that intermittent fasting boosts the levels of human growth hormone in your body, which can help build muscle mass, as well as repair and healing. Read more details about intermittent fasting here.
Keto diet:
An increasingly popular option in the last few years, the aim of this diet is to get the body into ketosis, a state where you get your energy from burning fat. The food intake is switched in favor of fat, with some proteins and very little carbs. The keto diet has become popular because of its potential results for weight loss. It has also been promoted as being effective for helping with some health issues and improving mental performances. Check out our best keto snacks here.
Slow-carb diet:
Tim Ferriss’ popular “ 4 Hour Body” book covered a lot of tips for improving muscle growth, but also a diet plan that has been very popular over the last few years. The diet and the way you can supplement it to lose weight but also retain muscle mass has been hugely popular and is detailed at length in his book and on our blog.
Biohacking Muscle Growth Through Your Workouts:
If you are looking at gaining muscle mass, you are probably working out. Here are a few ideas of easy biohacking tips that you can experiment with for your workouts:
Blood flow restriction training:
This is also called occlusion training. Occlusion training is based on a simple idea – reduction of blood flow to muscles can increase growth hormone while exercising. This is done by placing a tourniquet on the muscles using an elastic band or plastic tubing. Some studies show this technique has benefits in strength training and muscle growth and therefore can be a way to speed up the results of your training.
Enjoy a good sauna:
Research has been conducted on the regular use of sauna after a training session, and some show benefits. The sauna will cause your blood vessels close to your skin to dilate and your heartbeat will increase. As a result, you are training your heart and improving your cardiac functions. It has the potential to increase blood flow and the efficiency of your body’s cooling system.
Finally, you can also try to exercise in the sauna. The combination of both has been shown to increase the production of growth hormones, as well as increase blood flow to the skeletal muscles.
Cold-water bath:
Also known as cryotherapy, this technique has been used by some athletes. The research and science behind it are still mixed. However, a lot of athletes feel that a short ice bath (5 to 10 minutes) after hard training. It is believed that this helps their recovery and makes them feel better overall.
The science suggests that immersing yourself in cold water after intense training has meaningful effects. This includes reduced swelling, constriction of blood vessels, and flushing of waste products out of tissues.
Conclusion:
As you can see, there are various areas where biohacking can help improve your overall health. From biohacking muscle growth to improved cognitive functions, increased endurance, and more.
If you have been experimenting with other biohacking techniques that you found efficient, feel free to share them with us!
Learn more biohacks to keep yourself moving forward here!