more productive lives is hugely appealing.

It's led to a growing trend for people looking to take control

of their own biology, optimising their bodies

and minds through biohacking.

But how safe and ethical is it?

And are there more natural ways of boosting your biology?

In this film, we're going to hear from both the biohackers

trying to push human health and wellbeing to its limits,

and those taking more traditional scientific approaches.

Dave Asprey is an American entrepreneur

and the self-described father of biohacking.

I fully expect, and this is not a made-up number,

to live to at least 180 years old

unless something like a tree falling on me takes me out.

A lot of people ask, can we really hack the ageing process?

And we are now on the cusp, with literally about 50

different innovations to control biology of ageing coming online

all at the same time.

And I have 100% certainty that within a few years,

our new innovations that come in happen faster than our ageing.

It's certainly true that the scientific understanding of ageing

has progressed rapidly in recent decades, but why is that?

I think one of the really big surprises that's come along

about ageing is how malleable it is.

There are... Especially in animals.

And I think what's come as a huge surprise is that sometimes

the same thing will extend the healthy lifespan of a fly

but also of a mouse.

And what that's telling us, of course, is that some

of the underlying mechanisms of ageing that we're interfering with

are in common between these animals.

So I think that's why ageing has opened up, really, to research

in recent years - the discovery that we can use these short-lived things

where we can get the answers more quickly to understand

what's going on in the creatures that we really care about,

particularly ourselves.

As the science of ageing and longevity becomes more advanced,

we're learning how to not just slow down gradually

the effects of ageing, but truly reverse many aspects of ageing.

We believe the cells in our bodies have youthful information

when we're born and over time they lose that information.

We've discovered that there's information in the cell

to reset the system in the way that you could reboot a computer

with fresh software.

For example, we've recently reprogrammed the eye of an old mouse

to be young again and those old mice get their vision back.

And that's just the beginning, I believe, of being able to turn

the clock back, literally, to make younger tissues in the body.

There are several companies within the growing longevity industry

who are working on developing regenerative therapies

to combat the diseases of ageing.

One such company is Elevian, who are investigating how a protein

found in young blood might have surprising

regenerative capabilities.

Our co-founders were part of a team that really made some

important discoveries - that young blood can rejuvenate aged animals

and vice versa - aged blood can accelerate ageing in young animals,

and out of that work, they identified this little known factor

called GDF 11 that decreases with age, and what we and other labs

have now found is that a very similar dose range of GDF 11

can be used to treat

and prevent dozens of age-related diseases.

This research, which originally began on mice,

is still in its early pre-clinical stage.

Any drug development process which arises from it

has to be thorough, which can take years.

Elevian estimate that they are about a year away

from beginning human clinical trials.

For those impatient to slow down their ageing process

and not keen to take part in experimental trials,

there are steps that people can take in their daily lives.

In many ways, our fight during ageing is in our own hands already.

It's really clear that if you can, you should take as much exercise

as is healthy,

and also eat a healthy diet and not eat too much.

Dr David Sinclair believes certain stresses on the body

can actually be good for longevity.

If you do the things that trick the body into thinking

times could be tough - short bouts of skipping meals,

so hunger, fasting, but also losing your breath.

So running on a treadmill, doing a lot of heavy weight lifting.

We also think that these are another way to promote the body's defences.

And the combination of all of those things actually is known

to extend lifespan by keeping people healthier for longer.

Some biohackers are determined to go further

and are willing to trial experimental therapies

on their own bodies.

I decided that I wanted to try every extreme intervention I could -

the stuff that billionaires are doing,

so that I could write about it and so that I could benefit from it.

I've had my bone marrow taken out, spun down to get stem cells

and reintroduced the stem cells throughout my body.

There's 150 supplements a day that are part of my regime

but no-one really needs to do that.

I am a guinea pig to see which ones work

and I'm constantly experimenting.

There are different degrees of how far people want to go

to slow down their ageing process.

The most advanced I've ever seen,

if you want to call it advanced, was there are a few people

that have tried reprogramming their body with gene therapy

and giving themselves hormones that are delivered by DNA.

To me, that's a risk. I definitely wouldn't go there

because these effects are irreversible,

and if there was a cancer-causing issue,

then, really, you're not going to live longer, right?

There is scepticism among many in the mainstream scientific community

around the role that biohackers can play

in better understanding our biology.

Do the risks of this self-experimentation

outweigh the potential rewards

or is there a middle ground that could help to push

the boundaries of optimising our health?

The idea of allowing for...

..more use of experimental therapy under informed consent

in a way that all data must be shared

so that we as a community can learn from it,

I think that's a really exciting idea.

Biohacking has become a global movement and we are out there

asking the hard questions and doing the things

that a lot of scientists would like to do

but they're not allowed to do,

because we still have autonomy over our own bodies.

And when we talk about our results, when we share them online,

scientists see them and go, "Interesting",

and then that provides fuel for studies.

The problem becomes when people start doing things

which are not evidence based.

You know, for which the information really just isn't out there.

Then I think obviously, you know, as with anything else,

it can get dangerous.

If you don't have the information on which to base a decision

to do something but you go ahead and do it, I mean,

that's risky by definition.

I think somewhere in between there is a happy intermediate.

I'm a scientist so I like to see what happens to my body

when I do X, Y or Z, but of course I'm very careful.

I measure what happens

and make sure that I'm hopefully not doing myself any harm.

Many of those trying to hack the ageing process

are also interested in trying to optimise their immune systems.

In fact, there are biohackers experimenting with procedures

such as faecal transplants - taking someone else's poo as a medicine

in an attempt to cure a range of ills.

Though less extreme, supermarkets and pharmacy shelves

are heaving with so-called immune boosting pills and supplements.

But is it even possible to alter how the body responds to disease

through consuming someone else's poo or by eating a blueberry pill?

And what are the risks?

The immune system is part of an interconnected system

running all the way through our body, involving all our tissues,

from our skin all the way through to our toes.

And in fact, the gut has one of the largest resident populations

of immune cells in our body.

Most of the body's immune cells are found in the lining

of the intestine, and the microbes in our gut play a crucial role

in keeping those immune cells of our body healthy.

They do that by providing the key chemical signals

that they get once they digest the good foods that we eat.

So a healthy gut microbiome is obviously crucial

to a healthy immune system.

The immune system is considered to be an organ, but unlike every

other organ in your body, it's one where components of the system

can migrate around the body.

You don't expect that with cells from your lungs or your spleen

or any other solid organ, but the beauty of the immune system

is it has a property of immuno-surveillance.

Immunological surveillance is when the cells of the immune system

come together to co-ordinate a response to an external threat

such as disease.

For example, your lymph nodes - the glands that swell up

when you are sick - are a sign of your immune system at work.

We often hear messages encouraging us to boost our immune system.

So, could we just take a pill to do that?

When you do meet an infectious threat,

our immune response has to react quickly to contain the threat

and eradicate it, and you don't want it to stay on

because if it stays on, it's damaging.

And that is what happens in allergy and autoimmune disease,

which are overactivity of the immune response.

So there is no wonder pill that's going to restore and boost

one part of the immune response to help us be super-powered

because it's also interconnected and the risks of getting it wrong

are really quite dramatic.

So, instead of boosting our immune system,

we should focus on supporting it.

Everything that we know already which is good for our health

will also benefit our immune system.

More exercise taken at regular intervals

has been shown to boost your immune function.

That's been shown and that's published data.

Unfortunately, the modern lifestyle is not very good

for our immune system.

Our diets of convenience foods and fatty foods that are low in fibre

alongside sedentary lifestyles with little exercise,

high stress and not too much sleep, too much screen time.

All of these combine to make our immune response

not work as it should.

Getting enough sleep and reducing stress

can help our immune system operate at an optimal level.

And even though one blueberry won't work miracles,

getting a variety of the right foods is very important.

To help your immunity, you need to be feeding up your gut microbes,

and the best way to do this is to make them more diverse,

give them more species.

And I recommend 30 different types of plant a week,

which gives you all the fibre you should need.

Secondly, you should pick plants to eat that are high in polyphenols.

These are the chemicals that are naturally found in plants

and are actually rocket fuel for your gut microbes.

So things like brightly coloured berries,

strong flavours like coffee beans, dark chocolate

and even red wine contains polyphenols.

So if what you eat and your gut is so important for your immune system,

why are some people transplanting other people's poo

into their own stomachs?

Faecal microbial transplant, or, colloquially, a poo transplant,

is taking a sample of a stool from a normal person

and putting it into someone who's unwell.

This has been done for several decades for very bad infections

of the bowel like Clostridium difficile

and it cures 90% of people, and it's since started to be used

on a number of other conditions.

This is a fascinating area of research

but definitely not to be tried at home, says Tim.

I think this is an exciting new form of therapy, but it's always best

to do this within the confines of a medical clinic

where things can be supervised