Hi.
My name is Spencer Patton and I’m one of the three founders of UpRiver. I’m going to tell you a little bit about my story and how I came to become obsessed with the realm of biohacking and self-improvement more generally. I will also explore a little bit into my own method for you so that you can have a better understanding of how I apply some of the principles written about on UpRiver. Here we go.
My first experience with really trying to better myself came from always being the heavier kid in my friend group. Although today that is sometimes the case due to what would become my love of weightlifting, it wasn’t always that kind of heavy. It used to be fat. It bothered me to a point that I began to write our fitness routines based on what a 12-year-old expected fitness models must be performing. I remember barging into my father’s office when I was in elementary school with a notepad that bore some sort of chicken-scratched 12 sit ups, 15 burpees, 10 jumping jacks etc., lifting up my T-Shirt to expose a large belly and asking him excitedly “if I do this routine every day for 3 months do you think I’ll have a 6-Pack?!” To my dismay, he would always respond with the most honest answer he could, which was inevitably “I don’t know.”
Well, while that may not have been the answer the little chubby 12-year old Spencer was looking for, what the answer did do for me, was cause me to want to find out. Spoiler alert, 3 months of 5 minute workouts will not get you abs. Especially if you’re already overweight by a decent margin. In any case, such began my investigation into bettering myself.
After that point, I began to read. A lot. Since I didn’t know any fitness models personally, it was on me to go out of my way to figure it out for myself, and self-experiment. Little by little, I would develop a physique that ultimately, I was proud of. By the age of 16 fully grown men were asking me for tips in my local gym. It wasn’t so much that I looked unbelievable (although probably more intense than most people in my highschool), it was that I was training in new and interesting ways and made it quite obvious to my friends that I had learned it from a science-based approach as opposed to the typical gym-rat approaching you with the “hey bro, let me show you how to do that better…” In any case, I began to identify as someone who could figure this self-improvement thing out for themselves (although I didn’t call it that, yet) and enjoyed browsing literature on this topic that normally would bore people.
By 18, I was beginning to understand the inner workings of diet and nutrition and how different scientific principles would materialize in the real world when applied to my own body. I’d read something in a book or paper, try it out for myself, and find that if the results came true, I’d continue to pursue that rabbit hole, if not, I’d find some other author or principle to try.
Despite these early years being some of my favorite in terms of learning how to improve myself, they weren’t without their own instances of trauma. While I won’t go into it in much detail here, suffice it to say that fate would have me endure one of the most difficult things of my life to date – watching the health of one of the closest people in my life, my father, deteriorate.
While the early days were difficult (as many still are), this experience instilled a fascination in me. This fascination was the study of longevity. As many proper health-nuts will tell you, looking healthy does not mean you are healthy. With that in mind, my interests began to morph from strictly aesthetic and short-term oriented, to a position of wanting to live the longest and healthiest life of which I was capable. As fortune would have it, after moving from my hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, to the University of Toronto in Ontario, I would meet several awesome people, one of them especially fond of this field called “biohacking.”
Biohacking, my friend (to this day) would explain, is basically the pursuit of controlling both your external and internal environments so as to have as much control of your biology as possible. This meant improving brain performance, bodily performance, all-around health, and building the body of your dreams. Eureaka! I had found it. Biohacking.
The early days of biohacking were cool. Really cool. I began to read about longevity and health in more detail and by authors with more sophistication and research than those bullsh*t self-proclaimed “health guru’s” that seem to jump out behind every health-related door you attempt to open on YouTube. I would learn how stress and inflammation are big factors in being happy and healthy. This pushed me to take up a meditation practice accompanied by daily gratitude journaling. Next I’d learn about anxiety and panic (I had suffered from panic disorder for a time due to taking way too much edible cannabis with a friend of mine), which I found were greatly alleviated and mitigated through the giving up of pornography consumption.
I quickly became intoxicated by the idea of routines and habits. I built morning routines and night routines, each equipped with their own respective wake routines and sleep routines. My routines had routines. These routines turned into habits. I loved studying habits so much, it became a habit. Habbitting habits became habitually habit-forming! Sure, it got a little crazy, but things often do when you fall in love.
If you couldn’t already tell, biohacking and self-improvement became huge elements of my life. Today, I am just as enthused about the whole realm, the science emerging in it, and the people who are helping to grow it. Moreover though, as I’ve progressed a little more in my years, I’ve had the good fortune to discover simplicity and minimalism (also things associated with decreased stress). My routines have become quite a bit more refined, leaving space only for things that conform to the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule), and I try to use all my biohacking energies to apply the principles and practices that make my life truly as fulfilling as it can make it – a strategy I highly recommend.
Speaking of good fortune, somewhere in my early 20’s fate also delivered me into the presence of two incredibly smart, well-spoken and truly unique young men, Greg and Matt. These guys are trailblazers. Guys you want to be around. Let me put it this way: you never want to be the smartest guy in the room. If you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re likely in the wrong room. With that advice in mind, one can safely seek a room that these dudes are in, because then you’d be in the right fuckin’ room. Anyway, the three of us got together and started UpRiver, for each other and for you. If you want to read about their stories and their approach to self-improvement click HERE for Greg’s and HERE for Matt’s. Furthermore, if you want to hear more about us as a group click HERE for the Upriver About Us page, which will feature our mission statement and history as a trio.
Finally, for those of you interested, I will now briefly mention how my personal approach to biohacking and self-improvement has manifested in present times. Notwithstanding my presentation of these practices being in brief and bullet-form, they encapsulate the practices I believe are wholly important for performing at an optimal level, at least for me.
- Daily meditation practice → This is NOT optional nor negotiable for me. The paradox that I always keep handy and in mind is that those that have less time to meditate, need meditation all the more.
- Daily gratitude journal → I follow the exact layout outlined in our article on gratitude (found HERE.)
- Daily dynamic stretching → flexibility DOES improve muscle growth. Something I learned back in my heavy weightlifting days but had to see to believe.
- Carnivore diet → at the time of writing this, I am fully animal based in terms of diet. I do not restrict nor count calories. (check out UpRiver’s article on the Carnivore Diet HERE)
- Stoic philosophy → This is a weekly practice. I find a day each week to read one of the 3 stoic heroes (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus)
- Oura Ring → I track my sleep. This is not essential and people have been doing it intuitively for years, but hey, I’m a nerd and find the metrics cool as I adjust things in my sleep routine from week to week to determine what is optimal for me (thanks for the Oura Ring recommendation Matt…)
- Semen Retention/Karezza → During weeks or times I need extra energy, aggression, presence or focus, I do not allow myself to ejaculate. (Article HERE)
- Air & Water Filters → If you live in a city, you are exposed to lots of waterborne and airborne estrogenics among other endocrine threats. These things harm your body in several ways.
- Sunlight exposure → Get it.
- Grounding → In the spring and summer especially, I make sure that I get my bare feet planted on the earth. This encourages an ion exchange that improves mood among other things.
- Infrared Sauna → A powerful way of removing toxins from the body and decreasing bodily inflammation.
- Cold Therapy → Usually after my sauna I take a 5 minute shower of as cold as I can get it, or jump in an ice bath if I really want to see how far inside my body my gonads can hide.
- Daily exercise → sometimes weights, sometimes walks. The key is that I stay active by everyday doing something that moves my body, elevates my heart rate and keeps me active.
Other than these things here, I may rotate some experimental things in and out, but the things mentioned above are basically the things I am uncompromising on.
With that all said, I hope you now have a bit more understanding as to what brought me to the place I am today and how I presently navigate the world in which I live. I highly encourage you to read Greg’s and Matt’s posts, respectively, in order to understand their stories as well. Additionally, we recognize that whether you’re new, been around a while, or are a veteran in the biohacking space, you too have a story. We would be absolutely thrilled if you were to share it with us and our readers. Go on over to our forum found HERE, and tell us all about yourself and your journey.
As always,
Until next time biohacker, and keep moving UpRiver.
– Spencer
