Sam - a Biohacker in the Making!

Samundra is a 34-year-old biohacker in the making. As soon as we sat down with him for an interview we realized that he’s a ball of energy, radiating positivity and glee. As we delve further into his health journey we discovered how GlycanAge played a part in it and what changes did his family and friends notice first.

Sam, can you tell us what encouraged you to get started on your biohacking journey?

It all started back in 2013 when I went to Afghanistan. At this point, I was only working on my fitness journey and I was following a trainer who had gone through a similar type of testing. At that time I was working out a lot and trying to eat healthily, but I didn’t have a concise plan like I do now. It wasn’t until 2018 that I first heard of the term biohacking. 

That’s when I connected my fitness routine to my overall health and got a recommendation from my friends to test my biological age. I was curious to see the difference between my chronological and biological age.

And what were the results? 

The first time I got tested was last year. I was in shape, training in the evening and sticking to a pretty good diet plan. So you can imagine my surprise when my test came back and showed my biological age to be 42 when I was only 33. That’s when I figured that I need to make some changes. 

I can imagine your shock. What type of changes did you implement at that point? 

I had to make a few changes. I started with my diet. Although my diet was pretty good up until that point, I knew that in order to bring my biological age down I had to take a more serious look at what I was putting in my body. That’s why I started doing keto along with intermittent fasting and I cut all sugars from my diet and started eating only whole food. 

I also started to exercise in the morning, instead of the evening and worked on not putting too much stress on my body. At that point, I started meditating and looked for other ways I could better my overall health.

After six or seven months, I retook my test and my biological age was reduced by 5 years. That’s when I knew I found what works best for me and my body and I decided to continue on. 

Congrats! That’s amazing. Now that you’ve brought your biological age down, what are your next goals on your biohacking journey? 

Right now, I’m preparing for a marathon. I guess that would be my first goal right now - to complete a marathon. I would love to complete two or three marathons this year. Of course, marathons like all other events are put on hold because of COVID, but I have one planned for September and another for October so we’ll see. 

Overall I want to be healthy and inspire other people to be healthy as well. In the future, I may go into bodybuilding, but for now, I’m focused on feeling good and looking fit. 

Have you had any surprises on your health journey? 

I have to say that biohacking has completely changed my life. It changed the way I talk and approach people and my relatives all saw a huge change in me. 

I come from a military background and I got recruited in 2006. But surprisingly, now, that I’m 15 years older, I am in better shape than I was even back then. And that’s the first thing I hear when I visit my family or talk to friends I haven’t seen in a while. Everyone wants to know how I got so fit at 34 and look better than I did when I was in my early 20’s. 

Your physical transformation has been truly amazing. Is there a spiritual element of your journey?

Admittedly, I haven’t gotten too deep into my mental health. I slowly started learning about different practices like meditating and journaling. Meditation has benefited me greatly. I try to meditate 5 days a week. I like to do it as soon as I wake up and just before I go to sleep. 

Sleep is still something I have to work on. The maximum I sleep at night is 5-6 hours so that’s still a work in progress. I journal every day and I’ll write something on my mirror to motivate myself and to help me visualize my goals. 

I became very self-motivated and nowadays if I go for a long run, like a 20 km run, I’ll push myself to keep on whenever I feel like I might give up. I feel more energetic than ever and I also understand how to motivate myself to be better than yesterday. 

At the end of the day, the most important thing is to love yourself and from there you can truly start to love other people. I think that’s the best lesson I’ve learned so far, to love myself and take care of my body.