As technological innovation moves us into an unprecedented era of rapid change, complexity, and stress it is becoming increasingly important to consciously manage our mental health as well as our physical health.
Fortunately, along with the rise of artificial intelligence, highly-distracting smartphones, and addictive social media algorithms, there has also been considerable innovation in scientifically-validated technology tools and wearable devices that can help one to cope in this new world.
I’ve found the most useful transformative technologies are those that help manage mental performance and improve mood through meditation, relaxation practices, and guided audio experiences.
Biohacking Wearables For Improving Physical Health And Mental Performance
Let’s face it, it’s not easy navigating today’s fast-changing and hyperconnected world without at least occasionally feeling exhausted, burned out, or anxious.
That’s where biohacking comes in. Biohacking can be described as do-it-yourself biology where you use technological tools to make lifestyle changes that evolve over time into habits that recharge your mental health and well-being.
While many people turn to pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and narcotics to medicate themselves — transformative wearable technologies can offer a better way to get “in the zone”, relax after a stressful period and train our minds to thrive in a competitive world.
Here are some of the most innovative and exciting technology tools and wearables that are currently available for biohackers who want to experiment with technology-driven biological enhancement.
Affiliate Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links, which means we may receive a small commission from your purchase. This comes at no cost to you (in some cases you get a discount) and it helps support do-it-yourself biohacking guides like this one.
1. Wearable EEG Headsets
Build a meditation practice with real-time neurofeedback from a wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) headset that tracks your brainwave activity and guides you into deeper states of relaxation.
1. Muse – A wearable headband that uses EEG sensors to monitor your brain waves while you are meditating that comes with a huge suite of guided meditations and audio entrainment programs.
2. Sens.ai – A promising new brain training wearable geared toward training better cognitive performance using near-infrared light therapy to stimulate your mitochondria and audio cues to guide you into different brainwave states.
3. Neurosity Crown – An innovative neurofeedback wearable designed to help you boost your brain’s concentration by measuring your brain waves and playing music that increases your focus.
4. BrainBit – A wearable EEG headband that uses guided meditations to help you reduce your stress, improve your sleep, and train your ability to focus.
5. Mendi – While not an EEG, Mendi works in a similar way using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for neurofeedback, which detects changes in the brain’s local blood flow and oxygenation in response to neural activation.
6. BrainTap – The BrainTap headset uses guided visualization along with LED light therapy and brainwave entrainment to shift your mind into a mental state where you are completely relaxed.
7. Flowtime – A biosensing meditation headband that helps you improve your ability to concentrate and relax by using biofeedback to monitor your brain waves, heart rate, and respiration.
8. FocusCalm – A wearable with guided meditations and neurofeedback games for training. Provides a real-time display of brain activity to give you a score of how stressed or relaxed you are.
2. Mindfulness Tools
Technology-assisted mindfulness tools can help you shift out of the overthinking characterized by high-beta brainwave activity into the relaxed and meditative state of alpha brainwaves.
1. Foci – A small wearable that can monitor your breathing and give you feedback that can help you improve your focus, reduce distraction and relieve fatigue during work and study.
2. Sensate – This relaxation device uses sonic resonance to calm your nerves. Simply lay down, set the device on your chest and the vibrations from Sensate will stimulate your vagus nerve to help you relax.
3. Narbis – A pair of neurofeedback glasses that tracks how relaxed, distracted, and focused you are and provides instant feedback through the darkening and clearing of the glasses.
4. The Shift – A two-inch stainless steel necklace that resembles a dog whistle and is designed to slow your exhale so you can breathe better and calm your nervous system.
5. The Spire – A stress management device that measures your breathing patterns and gives you notifications when you are stressed and prompts you to relax with mindful breathing and guided meditations.
6. Core – A handheld mindfulness device that helps to reduce your stress levels by monitoring your heart rate and heart rate variability while doing guided meditations, giving you feedback with small vibrations.
7. N.O.W Tone Therapy System – A mindfulness-enhancing speaker system that plays tones that help you shift into a relaxed mindful state in 3 minutes.
3. Brainwave Entrainment Tech
Listening to brainwave entrainment audio programs using binaural beats and isochronic tones can be helpful for effortlessly guiding the brain into deep states of meditation.
1. Flow State Music – Access our huge library of brainwave entrainment music, guided visualizations, breathwork and meditations for accessing flow states, creative problem solving and deep relaxation.
2. iAwake – iAwake Technologies offers the largest selection of brainwave entrainment audios for hacking your mental state, expanding your awareness, and accessing deep states of meditation.
3. The Genius Wave – A 7-minute brainwave entrainment track that helps you tap into the theta wave for creative problem solving.
4. Holosync – A popular brainwave entrainment program that has been around for 20 years, which guides users to increase brainwave synchronization and enter deep meditation in the theta state.
4. Virtual Reality Apps
The heavy promotion and affordable price of the Meta Quest 2 (now Quest 3) has opened the gateway to a whole new world of virtual reality environments designed for meditation and relaxation.
1. Tripp – Imagine meditating while “floating around in a colorful kaleidoscopic abyss.” That’s how amazing meditating with Tripp can be.
2. Healium – In peer-reviewed journals, Healium has been shown to improve mood. They give the option to connect an EEG meditation headband to immerse yourself in interactive, nature-based escapes.
3. Guided Meditation VR – Choose from over 30 hours of guided meditations and match them with immersive environments designed to provoke a sense of awe.
4. Maloka – Where mindfulness meets play. Transport yourself to a meditative island where you can meet your spirit animal and experience guided meditations designed by experts.
5. Flow – Experience the natural wonders of Iceland through expert-guided meditations, music from internationally-acclaimed artists like Sigur Rós, and soothing nature sounds.
6. Liminal VR – Liminal applies research by neuroscientists and psychologists designed to induce immersive virtual reality meditation experiences of calm, energy, and awe.
5. tDCS Devices
Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation (tDCS) involves safe, non-invasive brain stimulation that delivers a low electric current to the scalp. It is generally used for improving focus, energy, and mood.
1. Liftid tDCS Device – A lightweight transcranial electric stimulation device that can improve attention, focus, and alertness in just 20 minutes of neurostimulation a day.
2. TheBrainDriver tDCS Device – Numerous studies have implied that tDCS can be a powerful tool for improving brain functions such as boosting memory, reaction time, focus, and energy.
3. The ActivaDose tDCS – A clinical-grade tDCS device that allows you to easily control the intensity of the electrical current and set an integrated timer so you can just sit back and relax during the session.
4. Flow tDCS Headset – A tDCS device designed specifically to relieve depression using a weak electrical current that helps to restore activity in brain cells which results in a reduction of depressive symptoms.
5. God Helmet – Based on the work of pioneering Canadian psychology professor Michael Persinger, the Shiva Neural Stimulation System, or “God Helmet” claims to elicit a wide range of spiritual experiences, visions, and out-of-body experiences.
6. FeelZing – A wearable patch that uses a form of neurostimulation called transcutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation (tPNS) to create the optimal state for productivity: calm alertness.
7. NeoRhythm – The first neurostimulation device using PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic fields) technology, which is similar to tDCS and helps you to reach a desired state of mind such as meditation, relaxation, or focus.
8. HigherDose Infrared PEMF Mat – Helps to recharge and ground at the cellular level for pain relief and deep relaxation.
6. CES Devices
Cranio-Electro Stimulation (CES) is a method of non-invasive brain stimulation that applies a small pulsed electric current across a person’s head. These biohacking devices are typically used for stress reduction, insomnia, and mood improvement.
1. David Delight Pro – An audio-visual entrainment (AVE) and Cranio-Electro Stimulation (CES) wearable that guides the brain into various brainwave states, increases neurotransmitter production, and improves cerebral blood flow.
2. Alpha-Stim – A drug-free treatment for relief from pain, anxiety, insomnia, and depression that is backed up by over 100 scientific studies and over 40 years of usage. It works by shifting your brainwaves into an alpha state.
3. Fisher Wallace – A neurostimulation device is cleared by the FDA to treat depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Similar to the Alpha-Stim but at a much lower price point.
4. Circadia – Circadia is a CES neuromodulation device that has been shown by research studies to help stabilize mood, reduce stress, and improve sleep quality when used for 20 minutes a day.
5. KTS CES – A generic version of the Alpha-Stim device that is much more inexpensive and also works to relax your nervous system and shift your brainwaves into the alpha state.
7. Fitness Wearables
If you want a device that makes tracking easy then these are the best fitness wearables to track your workouts, sleep cycles, and recovery through heart rate variability (HRV).
1. Apple Watch – The Apple Watch is the best option for iPhone users for tracking fitness, sleep, and recovery with heart rate variability (HRV). It integrates with thousands of third-party apps that help you build better habits and track your progress.
2. Fitbit Charge 5 – Fitbit’s most advanced fitness wearable is the leading non-smartwatch fitness wearable. It integrates a suite of features for stress management, fitness tracking, sleep monitoring, and tracking nervous system recovery with HRV.
3. Samsung Gear 5 – For Android users, this is the top-rated smartwatch. It offers many of the same features as Fitbit Charge 5 with a more elegant design such as ECG apps, SpO2 monitors, sleep tracking, and stress management tools.
4. Whoop – An innovative wearable designed to help high performance athletes track both their workouts and recovery. It measures your blood oxygen levels, skin temperature, heart rate, and respiratory rate.
5. Pavlok – A personal life coach on your wrist with the rather novel feature that it can zap you with a mild electrical current to help you break bad habits. It also includes guided mindfulness practices, habit-building tools, and the ability to track your sleep patterns.
8. Smart Rings
Smart rings are an alternative to fitness trackers that are much more discreet and generally only need to be charged once a week.
1. Oura Ring – This lightweight wearable ring provides excellent data and recommendations for improving your health and recovery. It gives you 3 easy-to-monitor scores: a sleep score, an activity score, and a readiness score.
2. The Evie Ring – This smart ring is geared toward women by blending menstrual cycle, mood, and energy data with step, activity and heart health to provide timely and meaningful insights.
3. Amazfit Helio Ring – Just announced at CES 2024, this is the first smartring that surpasses that rivals the capability of the Oura Ring.
4. Ultrahuman Ring Air – Lighter and more comfortable than the Oura Ring, it uses a range of sensors to track all kinds of data about heart rate, movement, skin temperature, sleep, HRV recovery and more.
9. Smart Headphones
There’s a whole new crop of smart headphones coming down the pipe in 2024.
1. Enophones – The first wearable EEG headphones that can measure your brain waves while you’re working and help you improve your focus and productivity with integrated binaural beats.
2. Neurable MW75 Neuro – Neurable has teamed up with Master & Dynamic to create these smartphones with EEG sensors directly on the earcups that can track your mental performance and measure your focus in real-time.
3. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones – The gold standard of premium noise-cancelling headphones have a new model for 2024 with audio quality personalization, improved noise cancellation and voice pickup.
10. Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
While you can easily track your heart rate variability (HRV) with popular fitness wearables, these biohacking devices help you train your HRV in real-time rather than just passively tracking it.
1. HeartMath Inner Balance – The Inner Balance sensor attaches to your earlobe and along with the HeartMath app teaches you how to shift from stress and frustration to balance and resilience with real-time biofeedback, based on your heart rhythm.
2. ApolloNeuro – A wearable device that’s designed to train your body to manage stress naturally using heart rate variability training. It can both stimulate you to focus and calm you for relaxation.
3. Lief – Lief works as an electrocardiogram (ECG) adhesive patch that you wear below your chest that measures your heart rate and breathing to monitor your stress levels in real-time.
4. iom2 – The iom2 measures your body’s heart rate variability to determine a resonance score, which reflects your state of stress or relaxation. This is paired with meditation journeys that help you gain more awareness of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and physical state.
11. Sleep Wearables
Given how important getting enough sleep is for cognition and mood, these sleep-enhancing devices can help you accurately monitor your sleep and improve your sleep quality over time.
1. URGOnight Headband – A wearable device and at-home sleep training program based on 4 years of research and development that is designed to improve your sleep in less than 20 minutes a day.
2. iBand+ – An EEG brain sensing headband designed specifically to improve sleep with audio-visual sensory stimuli, brainwave entrainment, lucid dreaming induction, and a sleep alarm.
3. Remee Lucid Dream Mask – Using gentle, customizable light signals, Remee can increase dream recall and vividness while helping you to become conscious in your dreams through lucid dream induction.
4. Philips Smartsleep Wake-Up Light – Unlike a traditional alarm clock, the Wake-Up Light is designed to wake you in a more natural way, using a unique combination of light and sound to simulate the sunrise.
5. Blue Light Glasses – While this may not seem like a biohacking technology, these glasses have lenses that block blue light from screens, which can actually significantly improve the quality of your sleep and overall mood.
6. LightimeTunnel Sleep Headphones – A lightweight sleep headphones mask that you wear when you go to bed. It helps you to fall asleep faster and works to relieve insomnia with relaxing music.
7. Hapbee – This device uses proprietary ultra-low radio frequency energy technology (ulRFE), which emulates specific magnetic fields to produce different feelings and states in the body such as focused, relaxed and calm.
8. Frenz Brainband – AI sleep tech wearable capable of tracking and stimulating brain activities through bone-conduction speakers to promote better sleep quality.
9. Bia Smart Sleep Mask – A smart sleep mask that uses neurofeedback to help you fall asleep faster with soothing surround sound neural music.
12. Breathwork Devices
With the explosion of popularity in breathwork practices in the last few years, a number of devices have come out that can help you measure and improve your respiration.
1. HIHBI Pulse Oximeter – An inexpensive pulse oximeter that allows you to measure your SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) levels and easily track your breath-hold improvements over time with their mobile app.
2. Airofit Pro – A smart breathing trainer that exercises your lungs, improves your breathing performance and can help to improve focus, sleep, and cardiovascular function.
3. LoveTuner – A calming device you wear around your neck that works as a single-tone flute through which we can align ourselves with the relaxing 528hz sound frequency.
4. Power Breathe – A breathing training device that strengthens your diaphragm and breathing muscles using resistance training. It uses a practice called Respiratory Muscle Training (RMT) to lower blood pressure, improve respiratory function and reduce nightly events of sleep apnea.
5. Prana – Helps you track and train your diaphragmatic breathing along with improving your upper and lower back posture. The integrated app guides you through over 80 scientifically validated breathing exercises.
6. Oxa – Oxa monitors your real-time vitals and highlights the significance your breath has on your state of mind and emotions. Through guided breathing journeys you learn to decrease stress and anxiety.
7. Respirate – This device has a sensor that tracks your breathing rate and a set of earbuds for listening to guided breathwork practices that slow your breathing and help reduce your blood pressure.
13. Vagus Nerve Stimulation
A growing amount of scientific research is suggesting vagus nerve stimulation can help calm an overactive sympathetic nervous system and help improve mood, sleep and energy.
1. Neuvana Xen – Helps boost your mood as your mind and body restore through tVNS (Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation).
2. Dolphin Neurostim – Designed to reduce sympathetic stress for the reduction of soft tissue pain through vagus nerve to fight pro-inflammatory cytokines and improve respiratory dysfunction.
3. Gamma Core – A drug-free Solution for migraines and cluster headaches.
4. Pulsetto – Activate your parasympathetic nervous system (relaxation response) to help reduce stress and anxiety so you feel calmer.
14. Light Therapy
Light and sound therapy and photobiomodulation, which uses near-infrared light to stimulate, heal and regenerate brain cells and tissue.
1. Vielight Neuro 3 – A transcranial-intranasal photobiomodulation wearable that uses near-infrared light to fight inflammation and stimulate neuronal cells, the cells that make up our brain and nervous system.
2. Kasina DeepVision – This wearable uses light and sound pulses at specified frequencies to stimulate mental activity and take you from normal waking consciousness to altered states of consciousness.
3. NeuroVizr – A light and sound device that claims to help you access altered states of consciousness intentionally. I saw this new technology at a biohacking conference and it looked pretty impressive.
15. Glucose Monitors
In the last couple of years, there has been in a lot of innovation in technologies for monitoring your metabolism, glucose levels and cellular energy in real-time.
1. Lumen – A hand-held, portable CO2 sensing device that measures metabolism and the type of fuel your body is using to produce energy in a single breath.
2. Supersapiens – A glucose stability and energy management system and wearable tool for athletes, entrepreneurs and high performers.
3. Ultrahuman – The first metabolism-tracking smart ring that seamlessly monitors important biomarkers in your body and nudges you with real-time actionable insights to improve your health and longevity.
4. Veri – A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) that sits on the back of your arm measuring your blood sugar and helps you to find the right foods and habits for your body.
5. Levels Health – This helps you see how food affects your health with personalized insights so you can optimize your nutrition and physical activity.
6. FreeStyle Libre 3 – The world’s leading FDA-approved continuous glucose monitor (CGM). Geared toward treating diabetes, one of the fastest growing chronic conditions in the world.
16. DNA Test Kits
There is a growing industry in helping decode your DNA to give you personalized health suggestions.
1. SelfDecode – A DNA analysis site where you can get personalized health suggestions based on your genes.
2. Inside Tracker – Analyzes your biological data to give you a clear picture of what’s going on inside your body and then gives you a science-based action plan for improving your health and well-being.
3. 23 And Me – DNA testing that provides a comprehensive ancestry breakdown, personalized health insights and recommendations for improving your health.
4. Ancestry – Similar to 23 And Me with a bigger focus on your ancestry breakdown and helping you contact long-lost members of your family tree.
5. EveryWell – One of the easiest ways to get test food sensitivity, food allergy, testosterone, inflammation, vitamin D and more.
17. Gut Microbiome
1. Viome – Provides a foundational test for those who want to monitor and address gut imbalances or health symptoms related to poor gut health.
2. Seed – A series of clinically-studied probiotics and prebiotics designed to help improve human and planetary health.
3. Flore – Custom formulated probiotics based on a Complete Gut Microflora Test that analyze the trillions of microbes in your gut microflora and crafts a unique formula for your unique gut health needs.
The Future of Wearable Technology
In the coming year, there is a lot to be excited about coming out in the wearable technology sector. Here are some of the most anticipated new technologies:
1. Apple’s Vision Pro Headset
Apple launched the Vision Pro mixed reality headset in mid-2023 at a high-price point and it will finally be available to the public and reviewers in early 2024. This be revolutionary if Apple’s much touted spatial computing interface lives up to the hype.
2. The Apple Watch X
In terms of wellness tracking, Apple has fallen behind many competitors. On the upcoming 10th anniversary of the smartwatch, a major design change is rumoured along with new sensors for sleep apnea and tracking one of the most important metrics for health: blood pressure.
3. Wellness AI
One of the dominant themes in 2024 will be the integrated of AI into health and wearables to make insights more interesting and actionable. So far nobody has successful put AI to use on a wearable in a groundbreaking way.
4. The Evolution Of Smartrings
While the Oura has dominated smart rings, they haven’t had a major update in years and there is lots of new competition coming out like the Evie for women’s health, the HappyRing for mental health, and rumours of smartrings from Samsung, Google and Apple.
