ANA ALEKSIC: PHARMACIST RESEARCHER TURNED BIOHACKING MEDICAL WRITER AND DOULA

From quitting PhD studies to becoming a biohacking wellness writer and home-birthing mom of four.

ANA ALEKSIC

2024

MY WORK

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In 2016, Ana Aleksic was leading clinical studies in neuroscience at the University of British Columbia. She already had an MSc in Pharmacy and was on the track to become a leading psychopharmacologist when she decided to quit her PhD studies.

While she was coordinating mental health studies, her own mental health was plummeting. She felt that academia was only scratching the surface of what it means to prevent disease at the root cause and get healthy. She knew that her path was different. However, it took severe burnout, anxiety, and a whole-body no for her to realize that.

Ana is now a sought-after natural products expert and consultant who has edited over 1000 and written over 400 blog posts and articles. She has authored several ebooks, scientific articles, and book chapters in Canadian clinical guidelines. Ana is also a birth doula and educator and a published book author.

Ana’s own biohacking journey of overcoming anxiety, burnout, and hormonal imbalances fueled her passion for helping others achieve optimal health naturally. She believes that individualized science-backed natural products, holistic health modalities, and nature immersion can support people in achieving optimal health and happiness.

Ana currently divides her life between urban Montreal and rural Serbia—between mothering four littles, coaching women, and creating the most up-to-date science-backed articles about all things natural. She also loves hiking, wildcrafting herbs, and making natural remedies for the whole family.

Leading the biohacking movement

After working in an integrative pharmacy in Vancouver consulting patients and naturopaths about natural products and protocols, Ana moved across Canada to Montreal. She took on the role of the Chief Editor and Scientist at SelfHacked (now SelfDecode) in 2017 and spent over two years managing their content.

Ana was responsible for featuring the science behind the most innovative supplements and protocols in the industry, helping to establish SelfHacked as a reliable, science-based source of health information.

After leaving SelfHacked, Ana established herself as a trusted freelance writer for nutraceuticals, herbal and dietary supplements, biohacking, and holistic health.

Ana Aleksic

Several months after giving birth to twins

Transformation through birth, mothering, doula work

When she first fell pregnant in 2019, Ana started researching and reading about birth, and she never turned back. She knew that her pregnancy was meant to be a path for breaking ancestral and societal beliefs about what “normal” and “healthy” pregnancy and birth meant.

In 2020, her first son was born at home, with the support of a traditional midwife. Immensely transformed by the experience, she enrolled in holistic doula education and founded Herbal Doula to help other women go through pregnancy and birth naturally.

Herbal Doula is Ana’s ongoing project, a woman-centered natural remedies database that systematically compiles and expert-curates data on the safety of natural remedies during pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and breastfeeding. Ana also does health, pregnancy, and birth coaching with women.

Since, Ana has given birth to three more children. Her daughter was born after a wild pregnancy and freebirth in 2022. She then unexpectedly fell pregnant with twins and gave birth to them in 2023, at 37 weeks, at home.

Ana speaks about the transformation of birth as a force that all women have at their fingertips. Pregnancy and birth are meant to help women feel in their intuitive power, and the embodied knowledge that comes from this experience can equip women with the confidence they need to mother their children naturally and live in full sovereignty.

Bridging science and holistic medicine

Ana’s work in wellness medical writing and birth are tightly intertwined. Ana realized that there’s a huge gap between scientific research and traditional knowledge about natural remedies. This was especially true for women across the reproductive continuum. Women are being told not to take any herbs or supplements during pregnancy due to a “lack of safety data” without anyone systematically looking at the existing data.

The same is true for many supplements and biohacking approaches. There’s a lot of science and real-world data, but it needs to be uncovered, analyzed, and translated so that most people can understand it.

She strongly believes that in a sea of pseudo-information and regurgitated AI content, having an expert writer who understands the science and knows how to communicate it makes all the difference.

Ana Aleksic

Ana Aleksic photoshoot

As a medical writer, Ana works fully remotely with businesses across the integrative medicine, health innovation, dietary supplements, and natural products industries in the US and Canada. Her scientific background, biohacking journey, and passion for holistic health make her a unique professional in the field.

Ana is thrilled to join Biohack Yourself as a peer reviewed journalist, helping exceptional brands in the biohacking space tell their story to the world.