Women and people of color have turned to naturopathic medicine for decades. Why is biohacking, as coined by men, seen as something new?
Recently, longevity investor Bryan Johnson, who is known for his extensive efforts to prolong his life through biohacking, hosted a “Don’t Die Dinner” for celebrities and high-profile individuals. If you Google the term ‘biohacking,’ there is no shortage of news, trends, and tips on how to tap into “natural” remedies that have a high barrier to entry for many people. The tag has well over 100 million views on TikTok and is dominated by men.
By definition, biohacking is the practice of employing methods drawn from fields like biology, genetics, neuroscience, and nutrition to enhance physical or mental performance, improve overall health and well-being, or achieve a specific health outcome. What many may not realize is that women and other marginalized groups have been employing what we now know as biohacking long before it became commodified into another high-end wellness trend.
The history of western medicine is also paired with outright dismissal of the importance of women and people who weren’t European white men as both patients and practitioners. As a result, these people have long turned to broader forms of medicine to address conditions and symptoms that their medical doctors had no tools for. Naturopathic medicine is the modern form of the healing and care modalities that these groups kept alive. Thanks to this continued advocacy, some of these therapies have now been researched with scientific rigor. Naturopathic medicine is not simply anecdotal but historical, empirical, evidence-driven, and backed with clinical wisdom. It is a form of biohacking – it taps into both scientific and historical use remedies to help relieve symptoms and assist in healing, providing people tools to better manage their health without having to turn solely to medication. Women facing challenges getting pregnant, period symptoms, or going through menopause have historically leaned on naturopathic practices like acupuncture and nutrition-focused solutions. If you think about it this way, biohacking is basically a rebrand of naturopathic medicine for men.
Today, the narrative has also shifted away from so much of where ‘biohacking’ originally stemmed from – supporting the people who needed it most – and is now dominated by men. It begs the question: was no one paying attention when men weren’t the ones driving the conversation? Even when it comes to women-focused health and wellness solutions, this is the case. In 2022, 57 FemTech companies with all male-founding teams raised $731M collectively, while 105 FemTech companies with all-female founding teams raised $408M collectively, according to Sifted. Put another way, male founders in FemTech had an average deal size of $13.3M, while female founders’ average deal was $3.9M.
It’s not like us to focus on the problem but instead on the solution. However, it’s important for us to acknowledge that health and wellness industries so often leave out the people doing much of the work and end up making the solutions inaccessible to the people who need them most. This is all while men, who generally speaking have always had the privilege of being understood by doctors, are biohacking themselves into feeling well while money and resources flock to them. We’re not saying that men can’t have a piece of the pie – we know well the market opportunity is a big one, and we’re not fans of a scarcity mentality. However, this issue goes back to the systemic barriers put in place for women and people of color to not only succeed but even just to feel well.
The bottom line is that women are building strong businesses and products, and we no longer need empowerment, we need funding. Without the resources to scale a business, of course, the representation and solutions aren’t going to be there. The whole reason biohacking has come to the forefront as a male-dominated topic is because they have the resources.
Our call to action for investors looking to back strong businesses of the future is to fund women. Put your money where your mouth is, amplify these voices, and give women a platform. They are the ones who have been driving societal progress and expanding access to health and wellness solutions instead of putting up more barriers.
