Biohacking festival founder Radek Sali warns against 'unhealthy obsession' with health tech
The architect of Australia's biggest longevity festival has exposed a dark secret about health tech, revealing why he regularly abandons the wearable devices his industry promotes.
Radek Sali, the founder of Australia’s biggest biohacking and longevity festival, intentionally switches off the health technology his own industry promotes.
Constant data monitoring can lead to an “unhealthy obsession” that causes stress, revealing a cautionary paradox from a leader in Australia’s ‘human optimisation’ and ‘bio hacking’ sector.
Mr Sali, founder and executive chairman of Wanderlust and the former boss of vitamin group Swisse, revealed he takes periods away from his personal wearables, such as his Oura ring and glucose monitor.
He said relentless monitoring can defeat the purpose of optimisation – the quest to live healthier for longer – underscoring the tension between leveraging analytics for maximum health span and falling prey to data-driven anxiety.
“It can become an obsession and something that, I think, some healthy monitoring and looking at data points (as) movable depending on what’s happening in your life, but they’re not the be all and end all,” Mr Sali said. “They are just another set of numbers.”
Mr Sali comments come after he hosted this year’s Wanderlust Wellspring biohacking and longevity summit. The event attracted more than 3000 people to the Gold Coast, with big names including Dave Asprey who is often credited with coining the term biohacking and a goal to live to at least 180.
Biohacking, at its core, is living healthier for longer. Mr Asprey and Bryan Johnson, who is spending $2m a year in an attempt to cheat death, are among its strongest devotees.
The practice involves leveraging quantitative data from innovative health technologies, such as nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) supplements, continuous glucose monitors, and hi-tech body scanners, which the Wellspring festival showcased.
But for Mr Sali – the energetic entrepreneur, who made $250m from the $1.67bn sale of Swisse in 2015 – the goal of a device should be temporary data collection rather than a permanent lifestyle anchor.
“I think that there’s that fine balance. You don’t go and see a doctor every day. You should see a doctor, probably every 12 months or every six months, depending where you’re at with your life and proactively kind of talk to your health,” Mr Sali said.
“It’s the same thing with monitoring your health. With these devices, they should be something you pull out for a period of time, feel comfortable with the results you’re getting, but shouldn’t run your whole lifestyle around it. And then, return back to it, whatever time period you feel comfortable with.”
Instead, Mr Sali argues that users must maintain an “intuitive part” and trust their own judgment. For example, when Mr Sali was using a continuous glucose monitor — a medical device now popularised among health-conscious consumers — he discovered that the most significant disrupter to his own metabolism was not his diet, but his mental state.
“Stress wasn’t diet,” he said. “Diet was actually a very good diet, but stress was causing my glucose to increase.”
This finding reframes the focus from dietary discipline to psychological health as a critical factor in physical wellness, a concept often overlooked in the wearables ecosystem.
Mr Sali said that traditional practices like meditation, which help with “recognising the crazy narrative that we’ve got going on mentally,” are more powerful tools than any gadget for managing this problem.
He acknowledged the existence of “personality extremes” in the space, pointing to individuals like longevity expert Kayla Barnes-Lentz who uses body scanners to track over 40 biomarkers and claims to have reversed her biological age by 11 years. But Mr Sali said that her level of dedication is not for everyone.
“You have the extremes to kind of land somewhere in the middle,” he said.
Mr Sali still welcomed the movement’s more unconventional elements, challenging sceptics who dismiss biohacking as “woo-woo”. “I feel sorry for them. I just want to give them a cuddle.”
He said optimising the body is a path to a better life, both personally and socially.
The Wanderlust Wellspring summit showcased future health technologies like NMN supplementation, which geneticist David Sinclair advocated. NMN acts as a precursor to the coenzyme NAD+, which is crucial for cellular energy and declines with age.
The local industry received a significant boost with the announcement that the Therapeutic Goods Administration is set to include NMN in the permissible ingredients legislation this December, a move that will allow it to be used in listed medicines for the first time in Australia.
Other longevity tech included blue light blocking eyewear aimed at mitigating the negative effects of blue light from screens on sleep and circadian rhythm.
Mr Sali argued that the “ultimate hack” for health and longevity is not a piece of technology, but human connection and foundational self-care. He advised a return to basics: “The pillars are nutrition, mindfulness, movement and sleep.”
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