The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 149. Kayla Barnes: The Science of Female Biohacking - Gut Health, Toxins, and Menstrual Cycles

Starting point is 00:00:00 I was doing some of these four men by men protocols and I was watching my thyroid health decline. I was watching my hormones become imbalanced because I was doing way too much. Foundational health and the extension of our health span is really found in the basics. It is amazing how well the human body functions when you give it the raw material it needs to do its job. You don't have to keep it too complicated. It's not just one thing. It's not saying that you're not working out or you're not eating healthy. It could be in your environment as well. I have a theory that the reason why the majority of autoimmune disease

Starting point is 00:00:30 we find in females and not men is because women are so selfless. We are biologically and physiologically different than men. There's so many different cycles of a woman's life. Pre-menopause, but then there's perimenopause. When you hit menopause, your risk for all causes of mortality

Starting point is 00:00:44 increases substantially. So if we can. When you hit menopause, your risk for all causes of mortality increases substantially. So if we can delay the onset of menopause, then that could be massive for female longevity. Talk a little bit about what you mean by like female-centric longevity protocols. The best way to achieve optimal health or optimal fertility is... Ooh.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Hey guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:10 I'm your host Gary Brekka, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything anti aging biohacking, longevity and everything in between. And we've been asked lately, well actually actually not just lately but for a year To just feed the female audience a little better than we've been feeding them on the podcast And I think there are some giant gaps in the biohacking community in general lots of us guys out there ultra woke biohackers talking to other ultra woke biohackers and So we've been really focusing on our feminine audience. And so today, please welcome to the podcast, Kayla Barnes-Lenz. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to have you because not just because you're a female guest, because I think you're a female pioneer.

Starting point is 00:01:54 And I actually love the fact that you didn't come from a traditionally trained medicinal background. And so tell me a little bit about how how this whole biohacking journey started for you, I mean to the place where you actually own a functional medicine clinic, right? Which I also think is amazing because you really get to see the outcomes of what you're doing with people. And you know, a lot of my fans and audience have forwarded me your content, including my daughter, right? She's probably the reason why she's here. And she's a nurse and she's too.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Simple and digestible and authentic, you know, your content is, and I feel like you're also letting people get a lens into your actual life. Just amazing. But tell my audience that doesn't know you a little bit about your journey and how you ended up owning a functional medicine clinic without going to school for functional medicine. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if we go all the way back. So I like to preface it that I did not grow up healthy. I grew up on a standard American diet, foods that, I'm like, mom, why a Pop-Tart and a toaster strudel? This is not edible, you know? You were telling your mom that?

Starting point is 00:03:10 Well, not then, but now I think back. Oh, now you are. I was gonna say, at seven you're like, Pop-Tarts baby. No, I wish I was, but I did not. So I didn't grow up super healthy. I started studying nutrition in college and just started to make little changes, you know? That was kind of the first taste that I got of feeling better

Starting point is 00:03:26 through a practice of that nature. But I got really deep into it about five and a half years ago. So I started to prepare actually to open this clinic and I was ordering all the labs. I'm like, what are we going to offer here? So I found, you know, Vibrant and Genova and all these, you know, unique lab companies. And I started ordering all these tests and I was getting the results back. And I was like, my doctor has never recommended I got tests.

Starting point is 00:03:50 They've never looked at how many toxins I have in my body. They've never looked at my nutrient status. Like I've never seen a lab panel this in depth, right? So my mind was just open. I'm very type A, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. So I've always been building something and I always wanted to feel my best and perform my best. So when I started getting this data back, I was like, this is incredible. So more than you did this on yourself first. Yeah, okay. I did all myself first. And I was just there were so many like red

Starting point is 00:04:17 flags. I'm like, Oh, I didn't know that that happened. My doctor never checked that he never looked at that. My doctor said everything was great. And you know, I was in good health, but there was a ton of room for improvement. Were you experiencing like anything specific, like severe brain fog? A little bit of like, you know, like bloating or like, you know, some hormonal acne, things of that nature, but nothing too crazy.

Starting point is 00:04:36 But I wanted to be elite. Like I wanted to do, I knew, Gary, that if I wanted to go from where I came, the life that I have now, it was going to take an incredible level of focus, energy, stamina. I'm like, I have to upgrade my biology. And this is the way to do it. I have all this data now I can upgrade all these areas in my life.

Starting point is 00:04:55 So that was the first step. And then I started to get on the phone with, you know, owning a clinic. It's like, what therapies are we going to offer here? And I started doing a ton of research, just got obsessed with reading clinical studies and medical research and found some of the things that you actually have. So I found like the ozone sauna or a hot kit and ozone therapy. And I found hyperbaric oxygen therapy and I started learning about NAD. Now this is, I was doing peptides like way before they were cool, as I'm sure you were.

Starting point is 00:05:23 I had a glucose monitor like back when you had to like actually get a prescription that you needed one and it messed up your whole health. Yeah, yeah, I had them back then too, yeah. Yeah, before they were like direct to consumer. And so I started trying this stuff out on myself. So I tried ozone therapy and hyperbaric and I would retest and retest and retest.

Starting point is 00:05:41 And around the same time, you know, I started assembling a medical team. So we needed providers in the clinic, but I'm like, well, if we get these results back, I think we both know most doctors aren't trained on necessarily these really unique labs. So I did tons of interviews, found some great providers, and then we started looking at my data

Starting point is 00:05:58 and using some of these therapies. We do methylene blue IVs and curcumin IVs. I've done essentially olive oil extract IVs, olifanilia, all this really kind of like cutting edge stuff that was not as popular back then. And I started to feel unbelievable. And I was seeing changes in my labs day, not day after day, but every single time I would test, they would start to get better. And I was just hooked. Every single time I would test, they would start to get better. And I was just hooked.

Starting point is 00:06:25 That's so awesome. And we, like, how would you characterize your young life at this point? I mean, are you active? Are you working out? Are you conscious of your diet? You're pretty, you're pretty on your game. You just wanted to go next level. Yeah. I mean, I was doing all the basic things at that point.

Starting point is 00:06:39 I mean, I did a lot of sports and stuff in high school and gymnastics and things like that. So I was active, but I still wasn't feeling as good as I thought and knew I could. Right. You know, one of the videos my daughter forwarded to me really caught my eye. I took a deep, that's when I started to take a deep dive

Starting point is 00:06:57 on your content. And I super appreciated it because you're being very authentic about, you live in LA and you're in the midst of the wildfires. Yeah. So you're talking about authentic about you live in LA and you're in the midst of the wildfires. So you're talking about the air quality, but the one that really piqued my interest and I wanna go down this rabbit hole, was the mold and the mycotoxin poisoning.

Starting point is 00:07:15 Because as I've been on this journey too, and also on a functional wellness clinic, which I just recently exited. But we had hundreds of thousands of patients. And there were always those ones coming through the system that were being treated quote unquote properly, right? And like their triglycerides were in range, their cholesterol was fine, their hormones weren't particularly out of whack. You know, their CBC and their metabolic panels were normal, nothing going on in the liver, the kidneys were healthy.

Starting point is 00:07:46 So you know, everything was, let's say, quote unquote, in range, right? Maybe they need some B3, but nothing was jumping off the page, but they were miserable. Like miserable. And the labs wouldn't tell the story of the person that was in front of you. You know, so you'd see this, this woman and I'm like, okay, if I believe the diet that you're telling me that you eat, I know that you're active. I mean, I'm looking at what you're telling me about your activity level, but you know, they were just bloated or they had massive brain fog or really abnormal menstrual cycling and things that you wouldn't tie back to the bugs in the pathogens, the mold, the mycotoxins, the viruses, the parasites. And our functional

Starting point is 00:08:31 medicine doctor, Dr. Sardo, who's board certified OBGYN, had a lot of training in this area. And she started to bring in these functional labs, like the vibrant testing. And what we find were in these unsolvable cases was generally one of these underliers. And when we started testing for those and treating for those, this is when we saw the real miracles happen, right?

Starting point is 00:08:57 Because most people are super responsive to the therapy and it's very obvious from their labs. But you were talking about your mold toxicity. If you want protein to build lean muscle, but without the caloric impact or need to cut, you need perfect amino. It's pure essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in a precise form and ratio

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Starting point is 00:09:37 you need perfect amino. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I think this is one, especially in areas like Miami, where the capital of the world, we won that lottery, go Miami. And, you know, this second one, according to one of the functional medicine docs I know is actually Malibu, California. And I was like, that surprises me because it's not super humid. Yeah, but there is obviously exposure to so much water mixed in. Yeah, the water, the climate, maybe it's because you know,

Starting point is 00:10:08 AC in the summertime and maybe they're leaving the windows open in the winter time. But talk a little bit about the testing that you did. What if any symptoms you were having and like I'm particularly interested in the journey you went on to walk yourself out of it. Yeah. I mean, I've seen so many of, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:29 the clients that live come in with mold and as you know, it can really like wreck your life. And it is something that often goes undiagnosed for so, so long, if ever found. So I have been doing at least quarterly, sometimes even more frequently, something called the total toxic burden. And the reason why real quick that I think- And at least quarterly, sometimes even more frequently, something called the total toxic burden.

Starting point is 00:10:47 And the reason why real quick that I think that's vibrant, right? Yeah, particularly important for women because we know that women actually experience a higher toxic exposure than men in the form of like personal care products and fragrances and cleaning products. So it's estimated that women leave the home with about 200 toxins versus about 100. So it's about double than men. So I love this test because this is also, before we dive into the mold,

Starting point is 00:11:12 gonna look at things like paraben and phthalates and all of these endocrine disruptors that we're exposed to, right? That many times we don't even know. They're snuck into fragrances and your body lotions and all these different products that we're applying on a daily basis So I love it for women for that reason and we also know that you know women are a bit slower

Starting point is 00:11:30 Detoxers because we prioritize fast storage, right? So in combination Right. So if we are exposed to more toxins and detox them a little bit more poorly than men do then I love this test for That reason but I do this test all the time. So I have a pretty good baseline. And during the fires, I did it mid-fire. So it was on, the fire started on January 7th. I did the test on the 18th. And the results that came back were something like I've never seen before. My medical team didn't even believe that these were my results. Everything in the red. I went from having three toxins in the medium range to having over 20 in the high range. And you're familiar with this test. Incredibly alarming, right?

Starting point is 00:12:11 So some of these things you don't even recognize and you start looking it up and you're like, byproduct of jet fuel, like what? It's a fire accelerant. And I guess if you think about burning in these homes, I mean, it's everything's being essentially vaporized. And you said something really interesting to me on my balcony. You said, you know, they show that the air quality

Starting point is 00:12:27 is decent, but it's actually not the number of particles in the air, it's what's in the particle. Exactly. So if you're in LA right now and you're looking at the AQI and this is a measurement essentially of like particle size and the particles could be anything. They could be skin cells, they could be from trees, ash, whatever. But

Starting point is 00:12:45 it's clearly very concerning that these particles are obviously based on my results, are made up of things like heavy metals and massive amounts of environmental toxins. I've never had my BPA went from the lowest range it could be to through the roof. So these are like plastics and nothing about my lifestyle has changed. No, I avoid plastics in clothing. I avoid plastics every which way you could do. At the airport, I won't even take like a paper cup. So I avoid that at all costs, but all of these molds and mycotoxins came back in my lab,

Starting point is 00:13:15 tons of environmental toxins and tons of heavy metals too that I had never had before. So if you are living in LA, I don't want it to be like a fear tactic. I mean, personally, my husband and I are gonna move because I don't think this is gonna be an isolated incident. All of that debris is gonna be cleaned up over the next two years.

Starting point is 00:13:35 And we know it's just gonna be kicked back into there. If you look into it at 9-11, there were only a few buildings in comparison to how many were just burned in LA. And there are about 130,000 people enrolled in a program from the government There were only a few buildings in comparison to how many were just burned in LA and There are about a hundred and thirty thousand people enrolled in a program from the government because of all their health issues So I just saw something the other day that they weren't going to test in LA They weren't going to look at the toxins. Of course, they're not right because then everybody would leave I mean, these are these are toxins that are linked to cancer and infertility and issues with pregnancy.

Starting point is 00:14:05 So it's so important that you either, I guess, live inside because you can. I have lots of high-quality air filtration. But for me, I mean, I'm just going to get out. But when it comes to the mold, so I've done quite a bit. Luckily, I have quite a few tools at my disposal. I mean, I'm a huge fan of sauna in general. So I do sauna. I was doing sauna about four times a week.

Starting point is 00:14:25 Now I'm doing it every single day because we need to get these toxins out. I usually take a binder beforehand, which I really love. And how do you sauna? Do you have actually like a walk-in sauna or do you use a sauna blanket? I have two. I have two saunas.

Starting point is 00:14:37 So I have a infrared sauna with a built-in red light therapy. I've been loving that because it kind of stacks two of the therapies I wanna do together. I love that too. Yeah, I love anytime I do two things. Anything that kind of stacks two of the therapies I wanna do together. I love that too. Yeah, I love any time I do two things. Anything that can compress time and do more stuff. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:14:49 So I have that and then I have a finished sauna outside. So I kind of go between the two, but usually, you know, 20 minutes, 176 to 212, that's what all the studies are based on for all the longevity and cardiovascular benefits, but massively leaning into sauna, I did something called therapeutic plasma exchange. I love that.

Starting point is 00:15:06 Right after I got- Did you do that at Next Health? I did, yeah. With Dr. Darshan? Yep. Yeah, I love him. So, I mean, I actually have another test that's pending. So I will have new total toxic burn results that I'll release.

Starting point is 00:15:17 Obviously the expectation is that they've been reduced significantly, but for anyone that's listening that doesn't know what plasma exchange is, they actually take all of your plasma out of your body. I think I got about 2.5 liters. Yeah, and they replace it with albumin. It's so wild. You hold that bag up and you're like, it's like two liters of yellow soda. I mean, and it's heavy.

Starting point is 00:15:36 It is really heavy. Wow. I was surprised. So I did that. I'm going to do probably two to three more sessions of that. Because for me, you know, it's disappointing. But like you mentioned, we always have a I'm gonna do probably two to three more sessions of that. Because for me, it was disappointing, but like you mentioned, we always have a journey, right? So my husband and I wanted to try to conceive. I just made like an hour, an hour long video and all the things for fertility optimization.

Starting point is 00:15:55 And I'm doing- We're gonna go into that too. Cause you just piqued the interest of every female on this podcast. Yes. Yeah. And so it's a bummer that this had to happen. It's like, you're doing everything.

Starting point is 00:16:04 I do so much. Everybody jokes, I like live in a bubblemer that this had to happen. It's like, you know, you're doing everything. I do so much. Everybody jokes, I like live in a bubble and people think I'm so boring life because they go to bed at 8.30 and I don't drink alcohol and I don't go to nightclubs, but I am doing all these things. And then, you know, just an environmental disaster in LA, it can just wipe that out.

Starting point is 00:16:20 I mean, I'm very grateful that I'm equipped to deal with it. So doing the plasma, the TPE, also doing ebu. So, you know, very high dose ozone therapy, to filter the blood as well. And I actually am taking something, it's a prescription called the stear amine. I could be pronouncing that slightly wrong, but it is really interesting research. So its initial indication was for cholesterol management, lipid management. But in a study, it actually removed 60% of the PFAS from the individuals over a 12-week period. So I had this in my back pocket. I knew about this study. As soon as I got

Starting point is 00:17:00 my lab results back, I sent it to my doctor and I said, Hey, thoughts, like I think we should do this. He agreed. And so I'm also doing that, which I it to my doctor and I said, hey, thoughts, like I think we should do this. He agreed. And so I'm also doing that, which I'm very excited about because I mean, if this can help pull out a lot of those toxins, PFAS, all those molds and help really like reduce the toxic burden, I think that's gonna be an exciting one as well.

Starting point is 00:17:18 Yeah, and so, so I, first of all, I would totally agree with you, you know, and activate the natural detox pathways, which is, you know, sauna, hydration, maybe glutathione. I heard you say that you were taking glutathione in a binder as well? Yep, yep, love a little bit of binder, just help bind to the toxins and pull them out. Or are you using activated charcoals, zeolite?

Starting point is 00:17:36 Yeah, I use the Quicksilver binder, so that's my preference. Is that activated charcoal, or do you know what that is? It is activated charcoal. Okay, yeah, so that's great, because that's binding the toxins. And then ebu or ebio two is sort of a really advanced ozone. I've posted a lot about it lately where they filter the blood and add ozone to it.

Starting point is 00:17:56 Sometimes they will run it through a light filter too and then put it back in. But what's really interesting, we talked about this before the podcast started, is I, I took the waste container that had, you know, the collection container and sent that to a lab for urinalysis. And this is where I saw all of the toxins that you're referring to the aflatoxin A, aflatoxin B, the polyfluoroalkyls, all of these weird accelerants like jet fuel and really, weird accelerants like jet fuel and really you know crazy environmental toxins that were in there so if you're listening to this and you're from LA

Starting point is 00:18:31 there are things that you can do and that and the total plasma exchange is even next level because that will replace it with sterile albumin and your body will remake that plasma but a lot of the junk kind of hangs hangs out in there and I've heard you also talk about the need for female focused longevity protocols. What do you mean by that? And then first of all, you and your husband are on a similar journey to my wife and I, like, you know, we're in this like sort of couple's journey together. She makes a lot of fun of me, but she's also like fully, fully on board for it.

Starting point is 00:19:03 She makes a lot of fun of me, but she's also like fully, fully on board for it. Yeah, love that. And although I just put a hyperbaric in our master bedroom, so a little friction there on that one, but- We have one in our master bedroom as well. Oh, you do? Okay, let's go.

Starting point is 00:19:16 Our master bedrooms actually look, they're just slightly bigger, but it looks very similar with the Faraday cage and the hyperbaric in there. Oh really, the Faraday cage too. Yeah, I mean, people think you're crazy, but it's like, I don't collect cars. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't collect watches. You know,

Starting point is 00:19:32 There's no better investment. Like we hit one body, you know, it's amazing that people, and I completely understand that this is, it can be a very expensive industry to be in. I'm excited for that to hopefully be reduced in cost soon. But I mean, for me, there's nothing else I would rather spend my money on. Yeah, no, me too.

Starting point is 00:19:48 I mean, I'd rather buy a red light therapy bed in a Ferrari because Ferrari is doing nothing for your cellular biology. But talk a little bit about what you mean by, you know, female like female centric longevity protocols. Yeah. I mean, women are not small men. So most of the data that we have, like scientific research is done on men. And what we've kind of tried to do so far is say,

Starting point is 00:20:11 okay, let's parse this out and just make it a little bit less for the women kind of essentially like- Yeah, Bonnie, they just do it by body weight, you're right. Yeah, that women are just small men, but that's completely not true. We are biologically and physiologically different than men and women have a 28 to 30 day cycle, whereas men, you guys, it's kind of a little bit

Starting point is 00:20:32 like Groundhog Day, right? It's like the same thing over and over. So, makes it- I am deeply offended by that. But now he's so true. You're so true. But it makes it much easier, right? Because you don't have these hormonal fluctuations, not to mention that there's so many different cycles of a woman much easier, right? Because you don't have these hormonal fluctuations,

Starting point is 00:20:45 not to mention that there's so many different cycles of a woman's life, right? I mean, I'm in my child-bearing years, pre-menopause, but then there's perimenopause, menopause. So every one of those phases requires something a little bit different. And when I started on my biohacking journey, we have a lot of mutual friends like Dave Asprey

Starting point is 00:21:05 and Ben Greenfield and all these people. And it's great, but I was doing some of these like for men by men protocols. And I was watching my thyroid health decline. I was watching my hormones become imbalanced because I was doing way too much. We know that women, they perceive and experience stress at much higher levels than men.

Starting point is 00:21:25 So if I try to do the same thing that you do, let's say, you can cold plunge every day all day. That's great. But as a woman, my body interprets that very differently and given where I'm at in my cycle. So we can walk down the line of nutrition, sleep, exercise, biohacking. I mean, there's nuance for all of these for women. Yeah, you know, my wife and I know that too, and we know it in the clinical practice too,

Starting point is 00:21:51 that one size fits all, let's say, intermittent fasting for men versus one size fits all intermittent fasting for women. And some of the worst endocrine disasters we would see in women were young menstruating females that were otherwise very healthy, fit, active, that had very narrow feeding windows. And when you start to look at it,

Starting point is 00:22:16 some of these women would have really responsive insulin. So they were very insulin sensitive and their blood sugar was very often hypoglycemic. And so they spent like long amounts of time in this hypoglycemic state and they fed. Then when they were back in this hypoglycemic state and what it did was it really started to slow down their metabolism. You'd see their thyroid hormone levels start to just plummet. Yeah, that's what happened to me.

Starting point is 00:22:42 Because the pituitary is like, hey, we're not getting enough nutrients, right? This low blood sugar we're perceiving as starvation. And, you know, I started really going down that rabbit hole too, and it's years ago, with women, because you would see you're right, you know, you, you put men and women on these, these similar protocols, and you have vastly different results. And usually, it's because a husband and wife are, you know, doing relatively the same thing. And it turns out to be a disaster for her and not for him. So, I mean, fertility is a huge issue.

Starting point is 00:23:19 Before we even talk about proving your fertility, I mean, just these, the state of fertility right now in the world, certainly in the United States, declining rates of sperm counts, declining fertility rates in women, skyrocketing rates of spontaneous miscarriage. So you're on that journey right now. So if, that's okay if I say that?

Starting point is 00:23:43 Okay, go ahead. Because 27 million people, it I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that journey because that is one that is really going to resonate with my audience. Yeah, absolutely. So we haven't officially started trying actually we were intending on starting to try this month, but then the happened and so I want to you know get my body rid of these toxins first but I think that and I don't want to make it seem like you have to do all these things remember I'm like in the bio

Starting point is 00:24:15 hacking industry so I'm doing all these things that might seem way extra but I think for me if we start thinking about labs you know what am I looking to optimize so we know that the mitochondria come from the mother. We know that the gut is coming from the mother. So for me, and in this recent video I just did, I start with gut testing and optimizing some of these tests in order to potentially optimize and extend fertility. I would, when we're done talking about this, I would love to talk about ovarian aging, because I think that's like the future, right? And I have some things that I'm trialing.

Starting point is 00:24:48 Again, there's not a lot of research, and I've talked to almost every ovarian aging expert, but the female ovaries age at double the speed that any other organ does, and we still don't know why, but I have some theories, just first principles thinking. But to go back to fertility, so some things that I have done have been gut optimization. I think there is such a story for optimizing your gut,

Starting point is 00:25:10 not only because you'll be passing on to your child, but because we know that gut dysbiosis and so many of the gut issues can lead to autoimmune conditions. We know that 80% of autoimmune conditions are women. And this is a really, this should be a huge red flag, right? And we know that if you optimize the gut, it can also help to reduce your risk

Starting point is 00:25:30 of some of these conditions. So I think the optimization is number one. I like a test called the GI effects by Genova. Any practitioner grade gut test I think would work, but I think gut health testing is super important, reducing your toxic burden as low as you can, because again, you're getting ready to house another human being and the development of that human being. So if you look at things like heavy metals, molds, mycotoxins, environmental toxins, I

Starting point is 00:25:56 think getting those as low as you can is super helpful. Some other things that I'm personally doing, I think it's interesting to look at biological age because we want to improve our biological age if possible, prior to conceiving. And again, I'm gonna say the preface again, you don't have to do all this stuff. This is just me taking it to like the end degree. I'd like to put you, and I don't mean to interrupt

Starting point is 00:26:16 your thought though, but I like what you're saying about, you're sort of preparing the house before, right? Before you move in. Exactly, yeah. And I think that's so important. We have a lot of experience in biologic stem cells, exosomes, those kinds of treatments. And the people that respond the best are the ones that went on a 10 week of pre-treatment before they did that to reduce insulin

Starting point is 00:26:39 and lower the inflammatory markers. So I like that you're actually talking about this sort of cleaning up the house before we let the baby move in. Right? I mean, absolutely. I mean, for me, I wasn't given that opportunity. I mean, who knows what was going on when I was growing, but I want to set the best stage.

Starting point is 00:27:01 But also, you know, we see this time and time again, I've interviewed a lot of fertility experts and they say that there's about a three month period, you know, prior to getting pregnant that you have the most impact. So even if you wanna start now, it's for women and men, you know, for sperm and for eggs as they're actually forming and getting to be released,

Starting point is 00:27:21 you have about three months prior that you can really lean into nutrition, exercise, sleep. Sleep is so incredibly important. Our body is either going to prioritize fertility or it's going to prioritize survival. And if you are in this state of constant stress, you're not getting high quality sleep, you are maybe doing way too many hormetic stressors, then we won't prioritize getting pregnant. So really important, and I can talk about how I actually optimize my cycle with my biohacking

Starting point is 00:27:51 and my nutrition and my exercise to hopefully optimize fertility outcomes. But that's some of the testing. Also, I think AMH, so anti-malarion hormone. If you're a woman and you're listening to this, I think you should know what your AMH is as soon as practically possible. Because although you can't actually test fertility until you try to conceive, you can know your ovarian reserves.

Starting point is 00:28:15 So an AMH test will tell you essentially how many eggs that you have left. And you can be in your 20s and have a really low AMH. You could be in your 40s and have a high AMH. I mean, it's just really super bio individual. But if you don't know that number, I think it's one of the most important ones, because if you do have a really low AMH right now, it might be a flag that you either might consider trying a little bit earlier than you had planned or something like I'm calling it fertility preservation,

Starting point is 00:28:45 something like egg raising, but you should at least know where you're at because if you want a family, I don't think it's something that you wanna just kind of fly blind on. Yeah, I totally agree. So you said you're gonna talk about the nutrition. So there's, I mean, talk about paralysis of analysis.

Starting point is 00:29:01 If you get out there on Google and you get out there on social media, you will get, any Google and you get out there on social media, you will get any woman will just get absolutely paralyzed by information, diametrically opposed information on what we should be doing or they should be doing to prepare for really healthy pregnancy. So what is your dietary journey look like? Yeah. So that's also why getting some of these labs, because the best way to achieve optimal health

Starting point is 00:29:27 or optimal fertility is your own data, right? So I'm excited to be putting out all my data and sharing the protocols I'm doing, but also, as you know, I mean, you're like the master of genetics. We can have different genetics. We could be detoxing differently. There's so many different factors.

Starting point is 00:29:41 So best way to do it is get your own data and then optimize off that. But from a nutrition standpoint, I think we've made it way too complicated. I mean, you know, this insane internet battle, it's just focus on single ingredient foods. My diet's primarily Mediterranean. I do eat meat. I actually eat a little bit more red meat during the bleed phase of my cycle because we know that we're losing blood and losing iron. But single ingredient foods, avocados, those healthy fats are so important. We know that even mothers while being pregnant, if they eat more choline, the baby's brains develop better.

Starting point is 00:30:15 So things like eggs are really great. Lots of dark leafy cruciferous vegetables, a lot of, you know, high fiber, especially because you want to be detoxing, which is really important, but it's nothing too complicated. It's just single ingredient for me. A lot of like wild caught salmon loaded with those omegas. I do an omega test as well. I always try to keep my omega index over eight. There's quite a bit of literature on extending the lifespan

Starting point is 00:30:40 and even reduction in cardiovascular events. So really focusing on omegas, but you don't have to keep it too complicated, just completely eliminating all ultra processed foods, for sure, and processed foods, you know, if you can to the best of your ability. And how do you walk your way out of this toxic burden? Because, you know, a lot of times people like you and I

Starting point is 00:30:58 get accused of fear mongering, and it's not that we're trying to say everything is gonna kill you. I mean, a lot is, but yes. A lot is, okay. Actually, that's very true. But I just say it's trying to kill you. But a lot of what I think people call fear-mongering

Starting point is 00:31:16 is us just trying to help people get around the system. Like get through the grocery store, get through a normal day. I did a really interesting exercise after one of Dave Asprey's biohacking events. It was years ago when he first started his biohacking summit and there was a specialist there. And it was just this questionnaire.

Starting point is 00:31:39 And you just walk through the day. And it's like, if you've never actually, if you're one of those people that isn't conscious of what you're eating and you for a week, you'd sort of document your meals. You're like, holy crap, I ate like three chocolate bars. I ate like, you know what I mean? I ate an extra half pound of nuts.

Starting point is 00:31:58 Like you don't realize all of these things that are sort of coming at you. And so, you know, it was really interesting for, you know, for my for my wife, but the amount of toxic burden that you encounter throughout the day, it's like, you know, you wake up in the morning, you brush your teeth, okay, well, now you, you realize that's fluoride and, and, you know, high amounts of fluoride, and then you're like drinking tap water, and then your shampoo, and then your conditioner, and then your fluoride. And then you're like drinking tap water

Starting point is 00:32:25 and then your shampoo and then your conditioner and then your body wash. And then for women, it's all of these cosmetics. So how did they start this journey of lowering their toxic load? I think the food is relatively easy. Yeah, there's a great resource that I love. It's called the Environmental Working Group.

Starting point is 00:32:41 Oh, EWG, I'm a member of those guys too. I donate to them too, they're amazing. Yeah, they're great. And they have something called the Skin Deep Database. So what you can do is you can literally just type in your product or brand and you can see the toxicity. It'll start to teach you what to look for. Really, it's called the Skin Deep Database?

Starting point is 00:32:58 Yeah, Skin Deep Database, it's great. That's how I started. I mean, I was just running every single product through there and I was just seeing time. I was like, garbage, garbage, garbage, have to throw all this stuff away. And I had no idea before that. So I think that's a great resource. Just to start slow. I don't want this to be overwhelming because, you know, when you go to buy new makeup, you can get a better, you know, more clean version of makeup.

Starting point is 00:33:18 You can do it slow so it doesn't feel like you have to change everything overnight. I mean, I've been in this industry for a while, so now I'm focusing on like, do my clothes have microplastics in them? And you know, the whole nine yards. Yeah, I'm starting to get there too. But just starting slower and just starting to swap out some of these products. I mean, fragrance is the worst offender.

Starting point is 00:33:36 They can put anything in fragrance under a trademark. So, and then think about where you're spraying it. You're spraying it on your thyroid, you're spraying it on your lymph nodes. I mean, day in and day out, sometimes multiple times a day. And your radio artery. Absolutely. So that's one of the first things that I would probably kick to the curb is fragrance, traditional or conventional fragrance, and swap it out for something like an essential oil. There's

Starting point is 00:33:57 also some really good brands coming about that can help women as well. Yeah. There's some aerobatic brands out there that are 100% essential oils that smell amazing. Smell so good. They just like, I mean, they really smell like a designer perfume. Yeah, totally. Right? And, but in terms of like cost-wise,

Starting point is 00:34:15 are you finding that you can, is the industry getting to the point where there's enough competition that some of these really clean products like Brands Basics and some of these really clean products like Brands Basics and some of these really good brands are available, widely enough available, and at a price point where people can you know afford them. No they really are. I mean especially if you look at you know a lot of women love like these luxury makeup products right the the clean versions are actually cheaper than those

Starting point is 00:34:44 those products. But definitely there are, I think, available options for really almost any budget. And I love too that you talk about sleep because I think very often, you know, especially people that are getting into the biohacking space or just going down the biohacking bandwagon, they want to jump the basics and like get to the exotics. They're like, oh, I read that NED, can you know, it's in your life so I'm going to start NED injections. And which I don't have a problem with per se.

Starting point is 00:35:10 Or, you know, I'm a res feritrol. I read this thing about ashwagandha or some new, you know, root that came out that's extending life expectancy. But the truth is that foundational health and the extension of our health span is really found in the basics. And, you know, whole foods, exercise, mobility, de-stressing, but talk a little bit about sleep

Starting point is 00:35:35 because you know what I found to be very interesting was a few months ago last year, I ran this sleep challenge. And I do challenges every month, and like water fasting, 10,000 steps, cold punch challenge. And I ran this sleep challenge. And I do challenges every month and like water fasting, 10,000 steps, cold punch challenge. And I ran this sleep challenge. What was really astounding to me was that we have 1000s of people sign up into this. And when we started doing the questionnaires and surveys and doing the open

Starting point is 00:35:59 dialogue, and finding out, you know, what's your sleep routine? Virtually no one, I would say 2% of the people that signed up for this challenge could even tell me what their sleep routine was. They had no sort of mechanism, but if I said, what's your exercise routine? What do you do in the morning to get the kids to school? It's like, bam, this at this time, this at this time,

Starting point is 00:36:20 bus leaves at 8.24, you know? I mean, they're on their game, and they usually have the same kind of structure around their job, or maybe even the structure around their, you know, their exercise, they've got, you know, they've got planned workouts. And, and so I introduced the concept of planning your sleep. And it was like, like, blew their mind. I mean, you've already told me like, I got about 830. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:36:44 which like Brian Johnson, who by the way is in town. He has his don't die summit going on here. Oh, nice. But I believe that a lot of the success that he's having in his age reversal has to do with the fact that he's so highly focused on sleep. And, you know, women in particular,

Starting point is 00:37:03 you know, the majority of your hormones are produced during deep phases of sleep cycles. And so if you're not sleeping, this could be showing up on your labs as hormonal imbalance or even insulin resistance. And then you're chasing, you're going down a road, chasing a pathology that's not there because you're just skipping the basics. So can you talk about it talk a bit about your sleep? What's your sleep routine like?

Starting point is 00:37:28 What's some of your sleep hacks for women? Well, first thing that I have found really interesting is that women need more sleep than men. So the research supports about six to 20 minutes, but based on my end of one studies, I've been very lucky to be able to- End of one. Yes.

Starting point is 00:37:44 Based on my life of one studies, I've been very lucky to be able to My lifelong experiment clinical study based on my you know experience so I Did two months of just you know go to bed at 830 wake up whenever you feel like it So I'm very blessed to be able to do that On average, I need more than an I need an hour or more of sleep than my husband On average, I need more than an hour or more of sleep than my husband. So I am at least getting eight hours. So I think that's one myth that women should not feel that they have to get the same amount

Starting point is 00:38:12 of sleep as their male counterpart or that six hours is going to work for them for so many reasons. Why do women need more sleep? I mean, we know that we're slower detoxers, right? So when our bodies are detoxing at night, that can take longer. Our hormones, you know, and the changes within hormones. So when we even get into the late luteal phase with the progesterone increase,

Starting point is 00:38:33 we might even need more sleep, late luteal while menstruating. So I find that to be really interesting. When I need more sleep. I noticed that with my wife too. Like during her, the menstrual part of her cycle, the menstruating part of her cycle, she definitely needs to be in sleep.

Starting point is 00:38:46 Totally. Which makes sense, I mean, you lose an iron, you're maybe even slightly anemic. Yeah, we also have a huge inflammatory cascade that's going on as the uterine lining is shedding. So there's so many reasons, but I think, you know, just focusing on high quality sleep for women is so important. So for me, what does that look like?

Starting point is 00:39:03 I am done eating by 5.30, So you wanna give yourself at least about three hours prior to bed to digest your food. I go by the rule, if the sun has set, you're not meant to be eating. So I watch the sunset. We have a great view of like the Hollywood Hills, watch the sunset go down. It's usually around five or 5.30 right now in LA.

Starting point is 00:39:20 And then I'm done eating by then. At that point, all the lights in my house go red. So we know that- All of them go red. Yeah, yeah, all red. Even much to my husband's chagrin, I figured out that you can actually turn the TV on a color filter and turn it completely red, like the phone.

Starting point is 00:39:35 I mean, he was so upset. He's like, this is not the same. So he's like watching baseball and he's like- It's like nothing. Yeah. You could just get red like glasses. I do have red like glasses but they're not very comfortable and he's being exposed so yes you could. So anyways red lights all at night.

Starting point is 00:39:53 We should talk about light for women. The demand is like slightly more for a variety of reasons but red light goes on. I do you know parasympathetic activity So I like this thing, I'm using a pulsado right now, which is like a Vegas nerve stimulator. So put that on the sleep mode, get into a really relaxed state. I try to get my heart rate as low as possible prior to bed because I've really learned that it helps the quality of my sleep and my sleep scores.

Starting point is 00:40:19 Like every night I get like a 97, 98 sleep score and I use Aura. So Aura doesn't let you get a hundred, I don't think. I don't know a single person that's ever gotten a hundred sleep score, do you? I don't know on an Aura, I've gotten them on eight sleep. And I've gotten 98, 99. Have I gotten hundreds on?

Starting point is 00:40:37 Yeah, I've gotten hundreds on whoop. I don't think it's possible though in Aura, right? I'm pretty regularly 98, 99, 97 on sleep and eight sleep and whoop. Yeah, I'm pretty regularly 98, 99, 97 on sleep and, eight sleep and whoop. Yeah, so anyways, good sleep scores, but getting the resting heart rate as low as possible. You know, for me, it's like doing something relaxing,

Starting point is 00:40:55 cuddling with my husband, reading. Don't do anything fear inducing. Don't turn on, you know, for some reason, women love to watch murder shows. I've heard that's like a thing. Oh, it's such a thing. I wouldn't recommend watching that right before bed because it's like really anxiety inducing. That's the opposite of

Starting point is 00:41:09 what you want to be doing. And then we keep our room completely blackout. So we now know that even light right on the skin can still disrupt your circadian clock and decrease your amount of melatonin. So that can be disruptive. Keep the room super cool. So you know, 65 Fahrenheit is what we keep our room at. So awesome. I also think you should try to make your sleep environment as restorative as possible.

Starting point is 00:41:34 So you could get like a switch to turn your wifi off. I like you have a Faraday cage. So I've measured it. The EMFs are zero inside the Faraday cage. So you could do something like that or just get like a wifi switch. I love like a weighted blanket for me, really helps increase my sleep.

Starting point is 00:41:51 And or it says, I think it increases deep sleep by about 2% weighted blanket. And over time, that's a big number. Definitely. I mean, all we're trying to do is just get those. Yeah, incremental things. Yeah, if you're gonna be sleeping anyway. Yeah. So if you don't be sleeping anyway. Yeah, totally.

Starting point is 00:42:06 I've also recently, I used to do sauna right after exercise to extend some of those exercise benefits, but I've recently moved it to about two hours prior to bed. And I found pretty significant improvements in my sleep too. You don't wanna do it too close to bed because again, it's gonna jack up your heart rate and then you're not gonna get as good of sleep. We really find the same thing. And I encourage people to do sauna or what I call a contrast shower, just a hot cold shower.

Starting point is 00:42:31 We have, we have cold plunges when I'm a little bit warmer. So like in the sixties, so after a good long sauna session, just a quick dip in there, just to kind of start to bring the temperature back down, not a long hermetic stressor. Um, and those are the nights that my wife really sleeps well when we do the sauna. So I would, I would agree with you there. And I think it has something to do with sort of breaking the cycle of your day. Right. I mean, your day's active and there's all this stuff on your mind. You've got all these catecholamines. You're really in a waken state. I think a lot of women in particular are really susceptible to the rise

Starting point is 00:43:08 in these catecholamines at night. So they're kind of in this body tired, but mind awake state. Yeah. Right. And they'll just ruminating about the most innocuous little things, right? Nothing's going to change your life. Um, and it just robs you of being able to go to sleep. Just, so do you read in bed?

Starting point is 00:43:26 I actually don't do anything in bed other than sleep. So it's really, I've developed like my bedroom or my bed just for sleep, but I will read prior. Just to relax, you know, I obviously make sure like my magnesium levels are optimized. Sometimes I'll do a magnesium at night. Oh, I love that. I don't really need a sleep stack.

Starting point is 00:43:43 I do make them for my husband though. I do like glycine, apigenin, a little bit of L-theanine and some magnesium in there. Works great for him. I just like- Are you guys on the kind of the same sleep schedule? Yeah, I mean, he used to stay up way later. And of course he's like, you know, kind of change that now

Starting point is 00:43:59 but he feels better than he ever is. And also, you know, when I first met him we had this whole experience with this testosterone where I asked him, he was on a tiny bit of tea, obviously I wanted babies. So I was like, Hey, do you mind to get off that? He did. Testosterone went down a bit, but then I put him through an entire detox protocol, changed his diet, lifestyle upgrades, and his testosterone is now like 916 naturally. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And how old is he? If you don't mind me asking? He's 37. So 916 at 37 would be amazing. I mean, yeah, my community would kill to have testosterone that low. I mean naturally that that high. Which really brings me to another point. I mean, it is amazing how

Starting point is 00:44:38 well the human body functions when you give it the raw material it needs to do its job. We forget that I think the best pharmacy is right here, you know, and when we access the power that this has over this. And we, we, what's, what's really interesting is what you're really talking about is just getting back to the basics, right? Sort of avoiding the, all of the, the modern day things that we do, like regulating our temperature, regulating our lighting. You know, you can make it, it's one o'clock in the morning and you can make it surface to the sun and you can do it if you want to.

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Starting point is 00:46:00 the vibe on the HapBee app and let the soothing electromagnetic waves wash over your body. At HapBee, we believe a more rested world is a better world. It's time to change the vibe. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. And so where do you fall on like a morning routine like breath work or sunlight or grounding or where do you where do you fall? What are some of your must because you're on a travel bender right? Yeah, I'm here today. You're you're you're in? What are some of your must, because you're on a travel bender right now. Yeah, yeah, I'm on a little.

Starting point is 00:46:25 You're here today, you're in Nashville tonight, right? Yep, Nashville, New York City. So this is a rarity. I'm much more of a homebody simply because I like to have my environment the way that I enjoy it, because there's so many variables now while traveling. But my morning routine takes about an hour and a half.

Starting point is 00:46:46 I mean, I get up, first thing I do as practically possible is get sunlight into the eyes, help to, you know, really improve my circadian rhythm. Also really good for women too, because the vitamin D, we know that women suffer from more osteoporosis, really helps to regulate the hormones. Big fan of morning sun. So do that and then I head to the gym. My strength training routine,

Starting point is 00:47:09 I have my strength training routine and then I have a split. So I'm hitting all areas of longevity. I have two VO2 max training days. I have two to three strength training days. I incorporated a power day, which is new, but really wanting to maintain those fast twitch muscle fibers. Jumping box jumps. Yeah, box jumps, explosive is new, but really wanting to maintain those fast twitch muscle fibers. So jumping box jumps, box jumps, you know, explosive pushups, super fast squats. It's like a little circuit that I do. And it's great because I don't want us to forget about

Starting point is 00:47:36 power because we need to maintain that as we get older. Yeah. Well, frailty in older ages is one of the hallmarks of mortality. Yeah, and it's very significant in women because sarcopenia, osteoporosis, so I do a lot of, on my string training days, do a lot of compound lifting, so really loading the bones. And then I measure all this stuff at home too, by the way. So I have a really smart scale where I look at my bone density and my body composition,

Starting point is 00:47:58 my fat mass, my muscle mass. I just did a PR, by the way, on the grip strength. I'm at 100 pounds. Is that the one that you grab? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, and there's a direct relationship between grip strength and longevity.

Starting point is 00:48:12 It's a proxy for overall strength. So as women, it's not really talked about for us to measure these things, but I think looking at your lung health through like a spirometer, your grip strength, knowing what your body composition is, how much muscle do you have, how much fat do you have, what's your bone density like, super, super important. So I'll go to the gym and hit one of those metrics that I'm

Starting point is 00:48:35 working on. And then I come home. I usually do my biometrics. So all the things I just mentioned, I on a weekly basis, I do the lung health, look at my sleep, I do blood pressure, I do grip strength, I do body composition, all that stuff at home. And then I will do PEMF and a little bit of like reading, prayer, meditation, something to just set my mind, as I say, before the day sets it for me. So before you get emails and calls and things happen, I like to really try to put myself into a more relaxed state.

Starting point is 00:49:08 And then I will usually have breakfast. So I usually like to eat pretty close to when I work out, always aiming for high protein. So I try to get about 30 grams plus a protein per meal. So I get about 100 grams of protein a day I weigh about 122. So that's super important for me. And then I put a lot of my biohacking stuff throughout the day as well. So I do like a NanoV, which helps reduce oxidative stress. And then I do PEMF like at my desk while working. It's called a NanoV?

Starting point is 00:49:34 NanoV, yeah. What's that? Oh, I think I've seen that machine. Yeah, it's a German device with the nasal cannula. Okay, and what is that doing? So it's supposed to reduce oxidative stress and improve protein folding. So we know oxidative stress is a root cause of many different diseases. Yeah, and is is that doing? So it's supposed to reduce oxidative stress and improve protein folding. So we know oxidative stress is a root cause of many different diseases.

Starting point is 00:49:47 Yeah. And is it a gas? No, it's actually creating a frequency and you're inhaling it. Wow. Yeah. That's right. I've seen those and I didn't go down the rabbit hole of those. I mean, I know most of the things you're talking about, especially the, the pulsator, actually

Starting point is 00:50:00 Christiano Ronaldo gave me one of those. I would see them in Saudi Arabia and when I left he gave it to me as a gift and I first tried it on the plane coming back and then I actually had a client of mine staying with me, he's also a very dear friend and he was suffering from And he was suffering from very severe tinnitus and it was actually triggering panic attacks. And I was in the living room one day and my son came running around the corner. He's like, hey dad, he's actually laying in the hallway. And so I went around the hallway and he was laying up against the wall and he was having a panic attack. And I, you know, the worst thing you can do is try to reason somebody out of panning and panning.

Starting point is 00:50:49 There's nothing for you to be afraid of. There's no reason for you to feel this way. So I just calmly put the pulsator on him and I ran the anxiety app and I'm getting like six minutes into a nine minute session. like six minutes into a nine minute session. He was very calm. I think he just overrode that signal coming through the vagus nerve. So I think a lot of these, which you could travel with some of these. Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 00:51:15 But I didn't mean to interrupt you. So the Nano-V and then you said you also have a pulse electromagnetic EMF, Matt. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I just keep that going actually throughout the day. I have it in my office chair. Oh, that's cool. And it's interesting because I did a test called. Like the full body, like, Matt. Yeah. Okay. So I just keep that going actually throughout the day. I have it in my office chair. Oh, that's cool.

Starting point is 00:51:26 And it's interesting because I did a test called- Like the full body, like- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did a test called a Mead test and it actually measures essentially the voltage of your body.

Starting point is 00:51:36 And we know that I kind of think about it like all these hits of like poor food and you know, lack of exercise, lack of movement is like draining our voltage, like our cellular voltage, right? I would agree with that. So we can do things like grounding, which is free. It just takes a lot longer.

Starting point is 00:51:50 So I have the PMF device at home, but I love doing that as well. Actually two things that I didn't mention in the beginning, though I have a very extensive oral health routine because we know that the oral microbiome and overall health is directly connected. We've known about the link to cardiovascular disease for a very long time,

Starting point is 00:52:07 but now it's becoming more and more prevalent. I see a biological dentist, which is like the functional medicine of dentistry. So I do ozone oil pulling, of course, like flossing, a really great brush in the morning, tongue scraping. And then that's obviously the first thing that I do. So, because I'm actually talking about all my challenge on Wednesday, I'm talking about oil pulling, tongue scraping, you know, flossing,

Starting point is 00:52:31 the importance of all of those things, even really the importance of getting metal amalgamates out of the mouth. Oh gosh, it's wild that it's even legal. Yeah, and even root canals. I mean, I could show you how that. Oh yeah. I'm waiting for a show you how that. Oh yeah. I'm waiting for a tooth

Starting point is 00:52:48 because I had a root canal that a biologic dentist cleaned out for me and I had a big cavitation underneath it. And what was amazing was I had two root canals and one day I just bit down on something and I cracked this tooth. And so I called my buddy as a biologic dentist Dr. Gandhi and he was like take a picture of it and so I took a picture of it and sent it to him it was the 19th tooth meridian so he asked me if I had left anterior shoulder pain left lower

Starting point is 00:53:20 lobe lung pain and the craziest thing that just literally blew my mind was he said, does your left toe ever go numb? Wow. And I was like, dude, you are breaking me out because I actually do have a little left anterior shoulder pain, which I just thought was a little bicep tendonitis from working out or whatever. And I would only get the left lower lobe pain when I was doing like hits cardio or something.

Starting point is 00:53:42 But my left toe occasionally would go numb. And my wife used to tease me because I would like tap it or I would tap it with my heel. And then it wasn't enough to like drive me to the ER or anything, but, and he's like, oh, you definitely have a cavitation in that tooth. And when he cone beam x-rayed it, you could see it. And when he took it out, cleaned it, ozone,

Starting point is 00:54:03 put platelet-rich fiber in there, he actually ran ozone gas, red light, and replaced it. Literally within 48 hours, all of those symptoms went away. And that's been two years and hasn't come back. Yeah. And for almost two years. I am such a big believer in that. Now, how do you do ozone oil pulling? Yeah, actually, my friend owns a company, it's Simply O3. They make a lot of ozone generators too. I have a Simply O3. Oh, nice. Yeah. So they make an ozonated oil pulling solution. They do? Yeah. They make a solution that's already ozonated? Yeah. And it stays in there

Starting point is 00:54:39 even when they ship it to you? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. It tastes a little bit like ozone because ozone has a very distinct. Oh yeah, I've like come to love it though because I do so many different types of ozone. Because you associate it with being clean. So you're like, yeah. It's like, I used to love the smell of bleach because it meant that things are,

Starting point is 00:54:54 I don't like it anymore, but I used, it just used to tell me, all right, well this locker room's clean, you know, or this is sanitary. I don't associate those anymore, but, so it's an oil, like a what? Coconut oil or something, do you know? Yeah, but so it's an oil, like a what, coconut oil or something, do you know? Yeah, yeah, and it's an oil and it's already ozonated

Starting point is 00:55:10 and it's a nice like glass bottle, no microplastics. And I just swish around for about 20 minutes. 20 minutes, see, that's the thing about oil pulling, man. It's a commitment. It is, I mean, you could always do less, right? Like I'll do like stretching and other things and just pass some time, you know, start my protein coffee. So I left out, yeah, first of all, oral health routine,

Starting point is 00:55:30 I think it's super important. I also do oral microbiome testing, so, or oral biome testing. So it tells you levels of bad bacteria, good bacteria, just like I got test, but we wanna make sure that that's optimal too, ideally. Yeah, there's oral probiotics that you can take too for, I mean, just for your oral microbiome, which are really good.

Starting point is 00:55:48 They're like a chewable. Yeah, I have those. Oh, you do? Yeah. I forget the name of the brand that I have. Is it Bio Harvest? I don't know. If I find out, I'll link it in the show notes, but it's actually oral probiotic.

Starting point is 00:56:00 And I couldn't be more on board with you because you know I think ancestrally our microbiome was so important and I mean obviously it's it still is and it all starts in in mouth you know and it's if you actually saw an image of the nerves leaving the jaw and all the pathways out of your mouth, into your neck, into your brain. You realize how pathogens, obviously this is a great way to get in, and where they can go to, and how many consequences they can have

Starting point is 00:56:40 that are not tying back to our oral microbiome. And what's really interesting is, I think dentistry is the only practice of medicine that thinks that you can leave dead tissue in the body. Right, so you kill a tooth and you kill a nerve, and they're like, well, it's okay to leave that in there. I mean, if your appendix died, they would take it out. Right, I mean, if something comes necrotic in your body,

Starting point is 00:57:03 you need to remove it. So you have these two necrotic in your body, you need to remove it. So you have these two necrotic things in your mouth if you've actually had a root canal, but, and you don't feel it. It's pain, like that was totally painless for me. Had I not cracked that tooth, which I look at as a blessing now,

Starting point is 00:57:17 I wouldn't have gotten both of these removed. And it's, what everyone called woke to wellness as I am, where, for me to have these two cavitations And it's what everyone called woke to wellness as I am, you know, where, you know, for me to have these two cavitations just literally, literally blew my mind. Yeah. All right, so then you're, you're, you're into your way through your, now you, do you take a lot of this on the road?

Starting point is 00:57:36 I mean, it's portable for you? Yeah, quite a bit of it. I mean, I travel with a few things for sure, but also, you know, like today, well, I do want to mention for women one thing that's important. So again, a big learning was I no longer train fasted. I think that women do better with a totally agree with you on that too. So

Starting point is 00:57:51 I do a protein coffee. So a little bit about a half cup of coffee with a little bit of for me raw milk again, you know, be advised, I don't know what the quality is of raw milk everywhere. But and then I do a little bit of colostrum and a little bit of creatine five grams of creatine. We got airwands. Love, yeah. We got airwands, so yeah, we're fine.

Starting point is 00:58:10 When you buy it off the shelf at a regular grocery store, I feel pretty good about that. So that's what I do before training. But I think that's an important takeaway for women is that we do seem to do better training fed. I could not agree with you more. You know, in fact, I think some of the most frustrating cases that we had come through our clinic are our younger fit women that are really healthy and they're exercising

Starting point is 00:58:32 and they'll say, look, I wake up at, you know, five, six o'clock in the morning, I have a cup of black coffee. I'm fasted. I go to Orange Theory. I go hammer down for 55 minutes. I do that five days a week I've been doing it for three months and I haven't lost a single pound like what's going on? My you know, you're not eating but your body is it's just kind of eating you

Starting point is 00:58:53 You know, you're probably metabolizing a lot of lean muscle and not in your your fat reserves And I think sometimes it's counterintuitive especially for women to eat to lose. Yeah. Yeah, right I mean doesn't doesn't know, intuitively make sense, but if you keep your protein intake up, you're right. So you make sure that you get protein in the morning. Are you spending a lot of time at your clinics? Not at this point. You know, the first one's in Ohio.

Starting point is 00:59:21 So now I live in LA, but we are gonna open one later this year in LA. Oh, God, great. But basically I had to buy all the things at the clinic and then put them in my house because I miss them all so much. You've been loving this research project, right? Oh, love, the best ever.

Starting point is 00:59:34 So, but yeah, so I'm spending. I'm on the same bandwagon. So what are some of the most exciting things for you in terms of female health wellness longevity? You're either gonna bring into the clinic or you want women to know about state of wellness and longevity for women where where it is where does this clinic take you in terms of the impact you're gonna have on? The longevity one of the biggest things that I'm so interested in right now is Ovarianism so again, I've spoken to so many different experts.

Starting point is 01:00:07 We don't know why the ovaries are aging at double the speed of every other organ. So I'm just using first principle thinking here. And there's a few things that I've done. So I did start taking rapamycin because some of the preliminary studies, they haven't yet gone through peer review, but they can potentially, this can potentially delay ovarian aging by about five years. Because if you think about a woman, so women live longer than men, about four to six years on average than men. But when you hit menopause, your risk for all causes of mortality increases substantially.

Starting point is 01:00:39 So if we can delay the onset of menopause and keep the ovaries healthy and functioning in the hormones where they're at, then that could be massive for female longevity. So some of the things that I'm doing that I think are interesting are low-level laser therapy. There's been some interesting studies on fertility. Actually, there was a study out of Japan within fertile women, and they did low-level laser therapy. So it's slightly different than red light. It is red, but it can be.

Starting point is 01:01:07 It's transdermal, right? It just. Yeah. They actually did the proximal technique. So they were just putting a low level laser on the neck and it was actually reducing the inflammation in the ovary so much that I think about 20 to 25 participants got pregnant. And these were all people with severe infertility. Wow.

Starting point is 01:01:24 So please like add that potentially to the stack of things in my stack of things I'm doing for fertility optimization and ovarian health in general. So I have a little low laser there. Can you do it at home? Yeah, I do it at home that I do right on the ovaries. And then I also do it on my neck as well, considering that's how the studies were done. So I think that's super interesting. But if we think about the inflammatory cascader reasons

Starting point is 01:01:45 that the ovaries could be aging so fast, so it could be the inflammatory process. So we have this entire cascade of inflammation happening as the uterine lining builds and then sheds every single month, right? So what I'm doing is doing even more red light therapy during that time on the ovaries, on the uterus, and I'm doing hyperbaric oxygen strategically

Starting point is 01:02:07 during that time as well. So I will increase. So I've already done my loading doses of hyperbaric for the year. And there's also some interesting- In 60 hours? I did about 40. And so I did one hour, five sessions per week

Starting point is 01:02:19 for 40 sessions at 2.0 for my body protocol. And then I did that same, you know, 40 sessions at 2.0 for my body protocol. And then I did that same, you know, 40 sessions, five sessions per week at one hour at 1.5 for my brain protocol. So I've had those completed, but there's also interesting data on hyperbaric. And you committed to that five days a week. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:02:38 I mean, cause that's a buy-in right there. It is. I mean, but for me, it's like the most exciting thing. Although I did see your first date was in a hyperbaric chamber. My first date was in a hyperbaric chamber. That's so awesome, Erna. It is. I mean, but for me, although I did see your first date was in a hyperbaric chamber. My first date wasn't a hyperbaric chamber. That's awesome. I mean, you were in the New York Times for like your labs, you made your husband get for it, which I think, I think is amazing. I know you got a lot of flack

Starting point is 01:02:55 for it, but I think that's amazing. But if you started your first date in it, you're committed to you have it at the house. Yeah. Okay. And it goes all the way to two ATA. Yeah. Okay. That's a serious chamber. But it's nice because you can actually swap it out and you can take it lower. So that's great. So you can put in a 1.5 and then take it down. And it's really interesting.

Starting point is 01:03:11 The first person that's actually brought that up is that I had a hyperbaric expert here, Dr. Jonathan Sauners, and he's written two amazing books on hyperbaric therapies. He's chiropractor, well, and his PhD in hyperbaric medicine. And he was explaining to me that it's not one or the other, that different pressures actually have different, you know,

Starting point is 01:03:34 different results. And the brain protocol at one three to one five was also what he was saying. And the deeper pressures for mitochondrial proliferation and things like that. It's just a commitment. So you have to get one at home. But they make some great soft shell chambers

Starting point is 01:03:55 that are safe and can get you there. And I think it's important, especially in light of the tragedy that just happened recently in the hyperbarics, to note that the hyperbaric chambers that are not 100% O2 are not flammable, right? So they can't become accidental bombs. The ones that run 100% O2, I don't even know if you can even legally get those in the home. But if you can, you shouldn't.

Starting point is 01:04:20 Even with the prescription because, you know, those are potentially explosives like hydrogen gas. It's very, you know, 100% O2, it's like hydrogen gas, it's very, you know, 100% of it is very flammable. Hi, guys, Gary here, I want to take a few minutes of your time to invite you to my ultimate human VIP community. This is a private community with front row seats to my most advanced health protocols, exclusive monthly q&a calls, a private podcast where you can ask my guests and me your most pressing questions and my own personal

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Starting point is 01:05:15 That's theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP right now to become one of my ultimate human VIPs. This is your fast pass to better health, so don't miss it. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. So you ran this hyperbaric protocol and you got your loading dose done. Now do you still do it on a regular basis or? Yeah, so now I'm really trying to align it with this inflammatory cascade of my cycle

Starting point is 01:05:43 because again, we don't have the data but that's why I'm doing all this same amount of testing. I want to see, you know, how long I can extend my ovarian health. So I'm doing hyperbaric strategically alongside my cycle to potentially reduce that inflammatory cascade. The other thing that's important to know is that actually the highest density, one of the highest densities after the heart, I believe is the mitochondria and the O sites, which you know, will develop into eggs.

Starting point is 01:06:11 And so I am always thinking, okay, number one, you need to improve your mitochondrial health overall, right? It's raining absolutely incredible for that increases the amount of mitochondria can help to kind of kill off the bad mitochondria. So HIIT training is a big part of that. But I also love things like pomegranate and urolithin A in terms of diet that I didn't mention before, and then red light therapy, right? Like I am doing a lot of red light therapy

Starting point is 01:06:37 to try to improve those mitochondria in the oocytes because they're such a high density. So that's something to really think about as well. And with hyperbaric, there is actual research. A lot of this is still developing, right? Like I have friends that are conducting trials on AMH, which is the anti-malarion hormone or ovarian reserves and hyperbaric,

Starting point is 01:06:57 but there is data on improving sperm quality. So fertility is 50%. The husband 50% and the wife 50%. So it could be either or partner or both if there's issues with fertility. So all the protocols I'm going through, my husband has also done. So the gut and the toxins

Starting point is 01:07:14 and all of the different like lab markers, he does that as well. So we're both coming to the plate and we've both had really in-depth testing. He's looked at motility and the quality of the sperm and all of that and it's in the highest region it can be. And then I've done all of the, you know, my AMH is about 5.8, which is super high for my age. But, you know, I've also taken all the other markers. So it's nothing like PCOS because sometimes people

Starting point is 01:07:38 with PCOS can have really high AMH. So if you're a woman, I mean, you should definitely- And the higher the AMH is this is this corresponding to a longer... Potentially. We don't know yet, right? But it could be. But then too high too. So women that have PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome, they will all have a really, really high AMH, usually like 10 plus. But that's because, you know, there are so many, you know, differences actually developing. So if you have that, you also, of course, wanna work with a doctor to take care of or manage PCOS, which is mostly a metabolic disorder, to reduce that,

Starting point is 01:08:11 because it makes getting pregnant more difficult because your period becomes really erratic. And I love that you just said that PCOS, this polycystic ovarian syndrome, it's a metabolic disorder. Can you dig into that a little bit? What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because,

Starting point is 01:08:26 I mean, women of all sizes and ages can develop PCOS. It's incredibly common at this point, but we see that its roots are really an insulin resistance. So, you know, these diets that are really high and like these refined sugars and carbohydrates, like you mentioned, just starting to track. And then of course we add on like potentially lack of exercise or these endocrine disruptors, all of these things that, you mentioned, just starting to track. And then of course we add on like potentially lack of exercise or these endocrine disruptors,

Starting point is 01:08:48 all of these things. It's not just one thing. It's not saying that you're not working out or you're not eating healthy. It could be in your environment as well, going back to why environmental toxin testing could be so important. But I mean, we know that people reverse PCOS, so that's really exciting that you can do that. I love for me wearing a continuous glucose monitor is really helpful too, just to make sure that my, in addition to blood labs of insulin and glucose, but you have an at-home real-time

Starting point is 01:09:14 experience of your blood sugar. So I love doing that. Yeah. That's amazing. I think that, you know, for the women that are listening to this, which lots of women are going to be listening to this, you know, what I women that are listening to this, which lots of women are gonna be listening to this, you know, what I love is there's a place to start that's gonna be low or no out of pocket costs, which are things you can fix right away. Like, you know, your sleep, your diet. I don't think that, you know, sunlight grounding

Starting point is 01:09:37 and breath work can be overemphasized. I don't think that like timing your circadian clock can be overemphasized. So these are all what I would say are, you know, modifiable lifestyle factors that, you know, should be the first go-tos, you know, before you even invest in expensive equipment and whatnot. I mean, just getting yourself back to the basics.

Starting point is 01:09:56 In terms of supplementation, what would you say are the go-to female basics? Yeah, I try to lump my supplements into three sections. So I have my absolute basics. Those are gonna be things like magnesium, fish oil, vitamin D. I mean, I keep my vitamin D level around 70. So really important for fertility,

Starting point is 01:10:15 but also boosting your immune system. Breast cancer, women, I mean, a lot of good studies in the 60, 80 nanogram range. Totally, so keeping those optimized. There's a lot of interesting new research coming out with NAD or NMN supplementation and fertility. So I do different varieties. I do IV therapies a couple of times a year,

Starting point is 01:10:34 sometimes do boosters, but you can also just do NMN supplementation. I think that's a really good one. So, and then I have other supplements that I really like. I think that something like MedoPure or Urolithin A can be really helpful. I think there's some research on CoQ10 for improving egg quality. I like, it's actually a prenatal, it's called WeNatal.

Starting point is 01:10:54 So it really hits a lot of these required nutrients that we need as women. So that's kind of like a one-stop shop. Thorin also has like novarian care. So has like some myonosetin as some of the like vitamin A the B vitamins that you need of course in the methyl forms so they're more bioavailable for you. I love that. This is a great one it could be a good multivitamin just for women too but finding something that hits all of your basic nutritional requirements I do the

Starting point is 01:11:24 Nutri-Eval so I know exactly what I'm deficient in, and then I supplement for that. Does Nutri-Eval look at the, like, is that like a cellular nutrition assay? Is that actually looking at cellular concentration? Yeah, it actually is both. Or just like blood? It is both, intra and outer cellular. Okay, so that's really interesting because, you know, I found in this type of testing,

Starting point is 01:11:44 I didn't know that the NutriVal combined the two, but if you do a cellular nutrition assay, like intracellular concentration, and then sometimes do blood, which is serum concentration, you see things like B12 sky high in the blood, but deficient in the cell. And you see that, you know, it's not methylated it, and switch the form of B12 and it instantly, the cell begins to metabolize it. I feel like everyone should be on methylated B vitamins. Oh, I do too. Just like as a baseline.

Starting point is 01:12:12 Singing my tune. Methylated B vitamins, methylfolate. Yeah. And, and, and the methyl form of B12. I mean, those are just basics. D3, K2. We totally agree with you and a good, and a good to make a three. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 01:12:26 So I have my, like those are my foundational basics then I have my protocol basics. So whatever my updated protocol is. So let's say right now I'm working on detox, right? So I have all this additional glutathione, sulforaphane, vitamin C, some corcidine, binders. So that's like what I'm working on right now based on my labs and then my longevity stack that looks like I'm really interested in spermidine right

Starting point is 01:12:47 now. I think that's an interesting molecule so that's my longevity stack. The NAD or NMN is super helpful for me. I also like to put a little bit of methylene blue that's kind of more on the new side but I like to combine that with the red light therapy. So you just take it beforehand, like 20, 30 minutes beforehand. Yeah. I've done IVs of it too. Super fun. Yeah. Super fun. It's a little bit. Until you take a pee and then you're like, whoa. Well, yeah. But it's such a cute little IV. It's like a little baby one.

Starting point is 01:13:16 It's a baby one. Yeah. And you know, the interesting thing about Methylene Blue is, you know, it's really effective in low doses. There's a great book. I think it's called The Ultimate Guide to Methylene Blue. And I'll tell you, you can get it on audiobook. And for nerds like us, it's great listening on the plane or something. And I've read it probably three times and listened to it probably four times.

Starting point is 01:13:36 I've almost committed the entire book to memory. What I love about it is, I mean, if you're not in love with methylene blue by the time that you're done reading that book, you'll never be in love with it. And you know, the way that it enhances, I like the compounds that enhance natural physiology or physiological processes in the body. And I'm raising your own levels of NAD, you know, methylene blue improving like the binding infinity of iron and getting more oxygen into the cell, methylene blue improving like the binding infinity of iron

Starting point is 01:14:05 and getting more oxygen into the cell, which means more oxygen in the mitochondria, which, you know, is really the end game is to try to have super healthy mitochondria. And all of these things that you're doing are really just feeding your cellular biology, red light for your mitochondria. I mean, you guys are gonna have the healthiest,

Starting point is 01:14:25 I'm gonna buy stock in all the babies you have. Right, because these are gonna be like the healthiest overachievers. So it's amazing. So, this, Kayla, this has been amazing. You know, I'm so glad that you came on the podcast. I definitely wanna have you back again, follow your journey, especially follow the journey

Starting point is 01:14:48 you're on with your husband. I just think it's, I think it's magical that you, you know, you guys did the, you made him give you the labs before you had your first date in the hyperbaric chamber. And you guys are so committed to this journey, because I think, you know, I think on this, on this longevity and bio-optimization

Starting point is 01:15:06 journey in general, I think there's more women than men. And I think a lot of times, the husband's not on board with the wife, you know, sort of in it on her own, even though I have a larger male audience than a female audience. Most of the females that I'm talking to are way more involved into it. We know they buy 80% of all the supplements. They're listening to most of the podcasts and digest and most of the information out there. So I think it's amazing to be a couple

Starting point is 01:15:35 like Skinny Confidential there on this journey together. So I think that's amazing. From my audience that doesn't know you, where can they find you? My website is KaylaBarnes.com. I also post a lot of content on YouTube. I think I'm the only woman posting long-form longevity content on YouTube. I think so, unless there's more, but I think so. And then Instagram at Kayla Barnes and my clinic is live-wellness.com.

Starting point is 01:16:09 OK, live-wellness.com. So I wind down every podcast by asking my my guests the same question. So there's no right or wrong answer to this question. And then and then we'll stop the podcast and we'll go into a private room for my VIPs, my ultimate human VIPs. I tip them off to what guests are coming onto the podcast. And so they knew you were coming on.

Starting point is 01:16:33 So they have a list of questions for you. And I really try to pour myself into this group. So if you're interested in becoming an ultimate human VIP, just go over to theultimatehuman.com and sign up to be one of my VIPs. It's 97 bucks a month. And I just pour myself into this community. So Kayla, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? Wake up every day, bursting with energy, limitless drive,

Starting point is 01:16:59 and being able to show up for those that you love. So good. Yeah. And I love that you said that because I think women, especially, I have a theory that the reason why the majority of autoimmune disease is, we find in females and not men, is because women are so selfless and they very often will view self-care as being selfish.

Starting point is 01:17:25 But what you're doing is very selfless. This is selfless for your husband. It's eventually going to be selfless for your kids, your career. I'm sure your clinic needs you. I'm sure your employees need you. And it's like, how do you show up for them if you're not, you know, caring for yourself? So I love that. I think health is the foundation of greatness.

Starting point is 01:17:44 I always say that. I think longevity is the foundation of greatness. I always say that. I think longevity is the new luxury. It truly is. I mean, I've heard that having abs is like more rare than being a millionaire these days. I don't know if that's true. You can fake a Ferrari, but you can't fake abs. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:17:59 You know what I mean? Well, that's awesome. So guys, hopefully you'll join us in the in the VIP ultimate human community. But if not, I will link all of the topics that we talked about some of the modalities that we talked about links to her Instagram and her podcast. And also to to some of the products that she mentioned the podcast today until next time. That's just science.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 149. Kayla Barnes: The Science of Female Biohacking - Gut Health, Toxins, and Menstrual Cycles

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