The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
149. Kayla Barnes: The Science of Female Biohacking - Gut Health, Toxins, and Menstrual Cycles
18 Mar 2025
Chapter 1: How did Kayla Barnes start her biohacking journey?
Chapter 2: What are the challenges women face in biohacking?
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 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. Premenopause, but then there's perimenopause. 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...
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. 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 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 Barns-Lenz.
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Chapter 3: Why is mold toxicity important to address?
Anything that can compress time and do more stuff.
Yeah, exactly. 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.
Right after I got.
Did you do that at Next Health?
I did, yeah.
With Dr. Darshan?
Yeah.
Yeah, I love him.
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Chapter 4: How can women optimize their fertility?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and it's very significant in women because sarcopenia, osteoporosis. So I do a lot of my strength 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, my fat mass, my muscle mass.
I just did a PR, by the way, on the grip strength. I'm at 100 pounds. Yeah.
Is that the one that you grab?
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And there's a direct relationship between, you know, grip strength and longevity. It's a proxy for overall strength. So as women, you know, 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 working on. And then I come home. I usually do my biometrics, all the things I just mentioned. 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.
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Chapter 5: What are the key components of Kayla's nutrition for fertility?
And I love that you just said that PCOS is 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, 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 in insulin resistance. So, you know, these diets that are really high in, 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. You know, 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, that you have an at-home, real-time 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 love is there's a place to start that's going to 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 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. 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 going to be things like magnesium, fish oil, vitamin D. I mean, I keep my vitamin D level around 70. So really important for fertility, but also boosting your immune system.
Breast cancer, women, I mean, a lot of good studies in the 60 to 80 nanogram range.
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