The Biohacking Industry Was Built on Male Data. Here's What That Actually Means For You.
- wiredandwildcore
- 9 hours ago
- 8 min read
Before we get into anything else, I need to tell you about a law that existed before most of Gen Z was born, because it explains a lot about why women are only now getting research that actually applies to their bodies.
Until 1993, it was standard practice in the United States to exclude women from clinical research trials. Not occasionally. Routinely. In 1979, the FDA published a policy urging investigators to exclude women who could potentially become pregnant from early drug research — and after that, scientific investigators began to exclude essentially all women from clinical trials, including women on contraception, single women, and women whose husbands had vasectomies. The reasoning was ostensibly about protecting reproductive health. The result was decades of medical research conducted almost entirely on male bodies, with the findings applied universally to everyone. Embryo Project Encyclopedia
It wasn't until 1993 that Congress passed the NIH Revitalization Act, which mandated the inclusion of women and people of color in clinical trials. The Act also established the Office of Research on Women's Health within the NIH and gave it authority to monitor the inclusion of women in clinical research going forward. AntidoteSociety for Women's Health Research
That's thirty years ago. Which sounds like enough time to catch up — except research takes decades to accumulate, replicate, and filter into mainstream wellness culture. A lot of what goes viral in the biohacking space right now is still built on a foundation of data that was never designed with female physiology in mind. And female physiology is not just a smaller version of male physiology. It operates on a completely different hormonal architecture, one that changes across the month, across decades, and across life stages in ways that the original research simply didn't account for.
This isn't an anti-biohacking post. I'm genuinely interested in what the science says about longevity and performance for women specifically. But "pro-accurate" means being honest about where the data has gaps — and two of the most popular wellness protocols out there have some significant ones.
Intermittent Fasting: I've Been Accidentally Doing This For Years, And Doing It Wrong
Let me be honest about something. I have been unintentionally practicing a version of intermittent fasting for most of my adult life. Not because I'm disciplined about it. Because I have ADHD and I forget to eat. Most days I don't have anything until 1 or 2pm, then I eat again around 6, and then I inevitably have a snack late at night — which I know is not great for sleep, but here we are.
My first intentional attempt at structured fasting was around age 30, during the peak of the keto diet era. I was terrible at it. I love carbs. I love carbs the way some people love oxygen. The keto experiment lasted approximately two weeks before I decided that life was too short to be afraid of bread. But the fasting window piece stuck, mostly because skipping breakfast is easy when you're not hungry in the morning.
What I didn't know then — and what most of the viral intermittent fasting content still doesn't tell you — is that the research base for IF was developed primarily on male subjects, and the hormonal response in women is meaningfully different.
The key difference between intermittent fasting in women versus men lies in how fasting affects the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis. Fasting triggers the body to move into survival mode and release stress hormones like cortisol. Research shows that fasting can not only elevate cortisol levels but also disrupt the cortisol awakening response — the rise in cortisol we experience just after waking — leading to a dysregulated HPA axis that may impact long-term hormone health. FUTURE WOMAN
In plain English: fasting tells your body it's under stress. For men, that stress response is relatively contained. For women, it can cascade through the entire hormonal system. As Dr. Sara Gottfried explains, "If you have dysregulated cortisol due to fasting, you'll sacrifice production of thyroid hormones and sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and androgens." Levels
The potential knock-on effects include blood sugar dysregulation that can lead to insulin resistance and abdominal weight gain, slowed thyroid production that decreases metabolism and affects estrogen levels, and downregulation of sex hormone production — especially progesterone, which is particularly sensitive to stress. FUTURE WOMAN
There's also a timing component that matters and almost nobody talks about. Better times to try fasting are a day or two after your period begins and about a week after that. You'll want to limit your fasting windows during the two weeks before your period is due. The week before your period is when your body is most vulnerable to stress — estrogen drops during that time, which leads to cortisol sensitivity, which is also why that week tends to bring mood swings, low energy, and increased food cravings. Cleveland Clinic
So my accidental IF habit — which has me skipping breakfast well into the afternoon every day regardless of where I am in my cycle — is probably not optimally calibrated for my hormones. Neither is the late night snack, honestly, but that's a separate issue and we're not going to talk about it.
Real talk: If you're going to try intermittent fasting, a 12:12 or 14:10 window (12 to 14 hours of fasting, including sleep) is considered a more conservative starting point for women than the aggressive 16:8 or 18:6 protocols that dominate the wellness conversation. Pay attention to your cycle. If you're in the week before your period and you're exhausted, irritable, and ravenous, that is your body communicating something. Listen to it.
Strength Training: The Thing That Actually Changed My Body (And The Research Behind Why)
I spent years on the elliptical. Years. The same 45-minute routine, at the same resistance level, listening to the same playlists, going absolutely nowhere — literally and figuratively. I was stuck at the same weight and genuinely believed I was just one of those people whose body didn't change.
Then at 35, I gained about 20 pounds over a fairly short period. I felt completely disconnected from my own body. I started going to Barre classes — just once a week at first, because I was so sore from a single class that any more than that felt medically irresponsible. And something strange happened. The weight started coming off. Not because I was burning thousands of calories in a single session, but because I was building muscle, and muscle changes how your body uses energy at rest.
I also switched from the elliptical to walking on a treadmill at 4mph with a 12% incline — a protocol sometimes called the "12-3-30," though I arrived at those numbers through my own trial and error before I knew it had a name. I eventually lost 30 pounds. I now do Pilates and Barre regularly, and I'm working on building strength in a way I never prioritized before. Currently very focused on building my glutes, for reasons both aesthetic and functional.
I tell you all of this not to make it about me, but because the research actually explains why what I accidentally did worked — and why the timing of when you strength train may matter more for women than any trainer has probably ever told you.
Researcher Lisbeth Wikström-Frisén and her colleagues published a study in 2017 — one of the sources cited in the original carousel that inspired this post — examining whether the phase of the menstrual cycle affected strength training outcomes in women. Their findings showed that women who concentrated more of their heavy training sessions in the follicular phase of their cycle — the first half, roughly from the end of menstruation to ovulation — gained significantly more muscle strength and muscle diameter than women who trained more heavily in the luteal phase. nih
Subsequent research confirmed this finding, reporting increased power and strength gains through follicular phase-periodized training. ResearchGate
The proposed mechanism is hormonal. Estrogen, which peaks in the late follicular phase, appears to support a more anabolic — meaning muscle-building — environment. Progesterone, which rises in the luteal phase after ovulation, may work somewhat against that process. In practical terms, this suggests that if you're going to have a week where you push harder, go heavier, and really challenge yourself, the first half of your cycle is probably your best window.
Now — important caveat, because this is an evidence-based space and I'm not going to cherry-pick: more recent research has pushed back on these findings, noting that estrogen is actually cyclical and elevated in both the follicular and luteal phases, which makes it harder to attribute training outcomes to any specific phase with certainty. The science here is genuinely still evolving, the study sizes are small, and individual variation is significant. What this means practically is not "only train in the first half of your cycle" — it means paying attention to how your body feels across the month and adjusting intensity accordingly, rather than following a one-size-fits-all protocol designed for a body that doesn't fluctuate hormonally the way yours does. Frontiers
What actually matters most, research consensus or not: women benefit enormously from resistance training and are chronically underrepresented in strength training culture and gym spaces. The researchers recommended that women base the periodization of their strength training on their individual menstrual cycle — which requires actually knowing your cycle, tracking it, and treating it as data rather than an inconvenience. nih
Pro tip: You do not need a gym membership to start strength training. Barre, Pilates, and bodyweight resistance workouts have free versions all over YouTube — search "Barre workout for beginners" or "Pilates for strength" and you will find more content than you can use in a year. If you want to try SolidCore specifically — which is where I trained when I lived in DC, and I genuinely loved it — they have studio locations in major cities. I'm currently at a Barre studio in Charleston. Neither of these is a sponsorship or an ad. I just actually did them and they worked. (This entire blog is proudly ad-free and I don't take sponsorships. If I recommend something it's because I use it.)
And Cold Plunges, Briefly, Because I Promised
The cold plunge research gap is real and worth mentioning even though I will not personally be testing this protocol because I am from the school of thought that being cold is not a personality trait, it is a punishment.
The short version: most cold water immersion research has been conducted on men, often athletes, often studying very specific recovery metrics. The emerging data on women suggests the hormonal response to cold exposure differs, particularly around the luteal phase when progesterone is elevated and the body's thermoregulation works differently. If you're someone who cold plunges and loves it, that's genuinely great — the research on inflammation reduction and nervous system regulation is interesting. Just know the data behind the protocol you're following was probably not built on someone with your hormonal profile.
The Bigger Picture
The supplement industry deserves its own post — and it's getting one — but I'll say this briefly: a lot of what gets marketed as "biohacking" is a product looking for a problem, not research looking for a solution. The protocols that actually have evidence behind them tend to be the boring ones. Resistance training. Sleep. Managing stress. Eating enough protein. These are not glamorous. They don't have a social media aesthetic. They also consistently outperform almost every supplement on the market.
I take magnesium. I think it helps me sleep. That's the most enthusiastic endorsement I can currently give the supplement space, and I'm working on being more informed about what else actually has evidence behind it — for women specifically, not just repurposed from the male-body data that's been the default for the last several decades.
We deserved better research sooner. We're getting more of it now. In the meantime, the most powerful thing you can do is know where your information comes from — and whether the body it was designed for looks anything like yours.
- Forever Wired & Wild⚡🌿
Citations:
NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 (Public Law 103-43). orwh.od.nih.gov
Embryo Project Encyclopedia. Title 1, Subtitle B of the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993. embryo.asu.edu
Society for Women's Health Research. Reflecting on 30 Years of the Revitalization Act. swhr.org
Wikström-Frisén, L., Boraxbekk, C.J., & Henriksson-Larsén, K. (2017). Effects on power, strength and lean body mass of menstrual/oral contraceptive cycle based resistance training. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 57, 43–52.
Sung, E. et al. (2014). Effects of follicular versus luteal phase-based strength training in young women. SpringerPlus, 3:668.
Gottfried, S. via Levels Health. Is Intermittent Fasting Good for Women? levels.com
Future Woman. Intermittent Fasting in Women. future-woman.com
Cleveland Clinic. Why Intermittent Fasting May Be Less Effective for Some Women. health.clevelandclinic.org
NIH/PMC. Effect of Intermittent Fasting on Reproductive Hormone Levels in Females and Males: A Review of Human Trials. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. (2023). Current Evidence Shows No Influence of Women's Menstrual Cycle Phase on Acute Strength Performance. frontiersin.org
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