Women Pioneered Biohacking
Women Were the First Biohackers: Why the Wellness World is Catching Up
Long before “biohacking” became a buzzword associated with cryotherapy chambers, ketone meters, and tech-savvy podcasts hosted by men in compression shirts, women were already living it. Not because it was trendy—but because they had to.
Historically, women’s bodies have been labeled as “too complex,” “unpredictable,” or even “hysterical.” Medical research excluded women for decades, dismissing the female body as too hormonally volatile for “controlled studies.” As a result, women were left with guesswork, vague answers, and band-aid solutions.
Medical Research Bias: Men vs. Women in Clinical Studies
Historically, 70–80% of biomedical research has been conducted on male subjects—whether human, animal, or cellular. This gender gap spans decades and has led to massive blind spots in how health conditions are diagnosed, treated, and understood in women.
Here are some key stats:
Pre-1993: Women were largely excluded from clinical trials due to concerns about hormone variability and potential risks to pregnancy—even for conditions that primarily affect women.
Only in 1993 did the U.S. NIH (National Institutes of Health) require that women be included in federally funded clinical trials. That’s shockingly recent.
Even post-1993, many studies include women but don’t analyze results by sex, meaning the data is skewed and treatment protocols often reflect male physiology.
In animal studies, male animals still make up about 80% of the test subjects. This is especially alarming considering diseases like autoimmunity, anxiety, depression, and thyroid disorders disproportionately affect women.
A 2020 review in Nature Communications found that less than 5% of studies on brain disorders analyzed sex as a biological variable, despite well-documented differences in how conditions like Alzheimer's, ADHD, and depression present in men vs. women.
So have women done?
They hacked it.
They learned how their cycles affected their mood, sleep, digestion, and energy—long before apps tracked luteal phase cravings. They adjusted their diets, took herbs their grandmothers swore by, and leaned into intuition when medicine didn’t have answers. They noticed patterns when no one else was tracking. They biohacked their way through birth control side effects, fertility struggles, perimenopause, and autoimmune flare-ups—often in silence, often without acknowledgment.
They tested. They tracked. They optimized.
Not for performance metrics or social media clout, but for survival. For sanity. For their kids, their careers, their relationships, and themselves.
And while male biohackers are now experimenting with cold plunges and red light therapy (both of which, by the way, women have used for decades in healing circles and ancestral traditions), women have already been years deep in testing protocols to manage hormonal shifts, gut dysfunction, burnout, and brain fog—often with far less support or visibility.
The truth is:
Biohacking didn’t start in a lab. It started in kitchens, bedrooms, herbal apothecaries, and doctor’s offices where women refused to accept “It’s all in your head.”
Women’s health is inherently cyclical and individualized, which makes us the perfect case studies for personal optimization. We don’t fit the one-size-fits-all mold—and that’s exactly why we’ve been quietly leading the charge in personalized medicine.
So if you’re a woman tinkering with your supplements, adjusting your workouts to match your cycle, paying attention to your mood shifts, or questioning that generic “normal” lab result—you’re not late to the biohacking party.
You’ve been doing it all along.