NORTHAMPTON — A sleek egg-shaped machine cracks open to reveal a chair lined with heat sensors and red lights. A portable wand blasts ice-cold air onto the skin. Small glass vials of clear fluid arrive in a cold, insulated cardboard box.
These strange technical contraptions at Northampton Mind and Body Wellness helped owner Nancy Godbout “hack” her way to her healthiest self.
“I just turned 50 about a month ago, and I feel better at 50 in comparison to being 40 or 30,” Godbout said.
She attributes this health turnaround to the growing wellness trend known as biohacking, or the use of technology to improve a person’s health and wellness. It could be as simple as filling in the health rings on an Apple Watch and wearing a Fitbit, or as complex as an in-depth supplement regimen and series of freezing sessions in a cryotherapy chamber.
Biohacking is not just a fringe concept, but a multibillion dollar industry. Fortune Business Insights reported that the market had reached $20.5 billion nationwide in 2025. Additionally, a 2025 survey by the Sanitary Wellness Institute, a clinician-led telehealth medical wellness provider, found that nearly two-thirds of Americans identify as biohackers.
Godbout has tried dozens of treatments since beginning to biohack about 10 years ago, and now she’s bringing her secret codes to Northampton through a new business venture. Since its opening in February 2026, Northampton Mind and Body Wellness at 30 N. King St. offers health coaching that pairs biohacking techniques with mental health counseling and nutrition. By using these modern modalities, Godbout looks at a person’s health holistically to build their best self.
“We’re tailoring their program based on their specific needs,” Godbout said. “My program is not cookie-cutter. It’s everybody’s individualized.”
Godbout’s own wellness journey with biohacking began with a health scare at 42 years old when her doctor listed a slew of health concerns, including high cholesterol, prediabetes and deficient kidney and liver functions. She weighed between 213 and 220 pounds, her heaviest after decades of struggling with weight. With two kids and a full-time career in medical social work, Godbout’s health had slipped into its worst state yet.
Despite her doctor’s pleas to go on medication, Godbout asked for three months to turn things around. She started with GLP-1 weight loss medication and peptides — simple proteins that regulate body functions. Organisms typically build their own peptides, but sometimes this ability diminishes or becomes impaired. People born with Type 1 diabetes, for instance, cannot create the peptide insulin to regulate blood sugar.
With the popularity of GLP-1 medications, people began to turn to peptides for dozens of health concerns. Besides specific peptides for obesity, diabetes and certain endocrine disorders, most peptides on the market are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), partially due to lack of studies on their effectiveness. But demand, combined with a crackdown on peptide manufacturing that has only recently been lifted, has created large $1 million to $3 million black market, according to Bloomberg.
“There’s a lot of peptides right now in the market that are not coming through licensed pharmacies,” Godbout said. “That is a problem because people are getting sick from them and they’re having side effects from them.”
As a certified peptide practitioner, Godbout has her own network of doctors and compounding pharmacies to ensure peptides are prescription safe. Like in her own fitness journey, she uses blood labs and a high-tech body scan, which will derive a human body’s composition in minutes, to pinpoint any nutrient or hormonal deficiencies. All the data helps the physicians and Godbout find the best peptide and supplement regimens for each person.
Godbout immediately saw the effects of her own peptide journey. Coupled with a strong nutritional and fitness regimen, she has lost 87 pounds and feels more energized than ever.
Her own experience laid the foundation for her coaching methods. The 12-week program, which costs around $3,300 after a free consultation, looks at everything from sleep and work-life balance to medical history and antibiotic use to create a full-scale health plan. Godbout puts special emphasis on nutrition and exercise, and comes up with specialized fat, protein and carbohydrate targets. Her functional medicine approach also incorporates therapy and the various machines around the office, depending on whether her client wants to try them.
Besides her counseling office and the spiritual room for reiki energy healings, each room contains a unique biohacking technology. The capsule-shaped chair is an infrared light sauna. An inflatable right triangle creates a hyperbaric chamber, which increases oxygen levels in the air from 12% to 88%. An angular cryotherapy machine connects to tanks of liquid nitrogen, where bursts of cold air from a thin wand will freeze fat cells.
Customers can also use each of the machines without booking coaching sessions, but prices range depending on the package. For instance, a cryotherapy package could cost $100 to $150. Godbout said to reach out to the business for the more accurate pricing. Mental health services can use insurance, but the rest require care credit or a health savings account.
Medical researchers have seen some health benefits to these treatments. Hyperbaric chambers grew in popularity during the 1940s to treat deep sea divers with decompression sickness, and has since been applied to carbon monoxide poisoning, infections and crash injuries.
Stanford Medicine reports that infrared light can improve hair regeneration and reduce wrinkles, and the therapy has become increasingly used in dermatology offices.
A 2017 literature review from the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University found that ice baths or cold shocks reduce muscle soreness and inflammation for many athletes.
Data does not back up every health claim about these treatments, like red light improving sleep. But people who have embraced biohacking swear by the results.
Mark Wilkes, one of Godbout’s clients, was a Chicopee police officer for 23 years when he suffered a sudden heart attack during an ice hockey game between his department and the fire department. He was admitted to Baystate Medical Center for 173 days in 2023, recovering from two heart attacks, a stroke, kidney failure and several other conditions.
After regaining his mobility, Wilkes worked with Godbout to find the right peptides to control his appetite that would not interfere with heart medications. Since then, Wilkes has slowly incorporated other technology like the redlight sauna. He reports feeling more energized and less tired over the last two months.
“I was sold the first half hour I was there with her,” Wilkes said. “I definitely recommend people to her.”
As a longtime therapist and social worker, Godbout respects and values conventional medicine. Biohacking and functional medicine coaching are not methods for treating cancer or slowing Alzheimer’s. But for more innocuous, yet debilitating, health challenges that may take more than a short primary care visit to solve, Godbout believes she has the solution.
“If you’re an average person who’s pretty healthy and you just want to continue to age and feel good, than this is the right spot for it,” she said.
