Wellness trends for the extreme (and rich)—including frog venom
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement, right?
And as biohacking techniques like cold showers and intermittent fasting go mainstream, New York City’s most dedicated wellness seekers are venturing into more extreme territory.
Take, for instance, kambo — poison from Amazonian tree frogs that has become a favorite way for some in Silicon Valley to detox both emotionally and physically.
A patient’s skin is singed to create a small wound where the kambo is applied.
“It’s pretty wild — your face swells up like a frog and then you throw up, and you’re supposed to purge all the toxins that are in your body,” said Lauren Berlingeri, the co-founder of HigherDose, a New York-based wellness technology company that sells popular products for at-home use like red-light therapy masks and sauna blankets.
Kambo treatments are known to give users diarrhea and heart palpitations, but fans claim that it can cure everything from anxiety to migraines if you’re willing to deal with some hours of pain.
Berlingeri — who took part in a kambo ceremony and “20 minutes of flu-like purging” for an episode of her “BiohackHERS” podcast — said the most dedicated fans will travel to Peru where the most expert practitioners administer the treatment for around $150.
Then there’s ozone insufflation therapy — said to be a favorite of Gwyneth Paltrow, naturally — which blows ozone up the rectum with the promise of healing the gut and killing bacteria.
Getting the treatment professionally done at places like Next Health in NYC costs about $150 a session. But, for $1,850 you can get an at-home starter kit from biohackersupply.com. Note that the FDA has warned that ingesting ozone can be dangerous.
For those looking to slow aging, total plasma exchange (TPE) filters plasma to remove unhealthy particles — like autoantibodies that attack healthy cells — to reduce inflammation and strengthen immunity.
Multimillionaire venture capitalist turned controversial biohacker Bryan Johnson — who spends $2 million a year on “reverse aging” treatments including daily fat scans, more than 100 pills a day and a diet with 70 pounds of vegetable a month — recently announced he is a fan of TPE.
IVs in each arm remove, filter and replace your own plasma in sessions that start at $10,000 and take around four hours to complete. According to Berlingeri, biohacking experts recommend undergoing a series of six or more treatments before moving into annual maintenance treatments.
In other words, $60,000 will only get you to the baseline of where you should be, according to those who stand to make a fortune from it.
Berlingeri said biohacking treatments like these are “really great things for when you are quite ill” — but she has also seen people cross a line.
“How far can you take it, right? How good can we feel? It can also be an addiction…” she said. “So there’s also the unhealthy side of being obsessed.”
Berlingeri adds that, often, it’s the simplest practices that are the most beneficial.
“I prefer gentle daily detoxification… ” she said, referring to the infrared sauna at HigherDose. “You sweat, you detox, you feel amazing.”
But her best hack costs nothing — yet might be the most painful treatment of all for many people.
“After 6 p.m. I put my phone down … my device is very triggering.”
This story is part of NYNext, a new editorial series that highlights New York City innovation across industries, as well as the personalities leading the way.
