Kayla Barnes: The Science of Female Biohacking - Gut Health, Toxins & Menstrual Cycles | TUH #149

I was doing some of these 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 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 pre menopause, 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.

Ultimate human. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, Gary Breca, 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 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, 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 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, of what you're doing with people. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of my fans and audience have forwarded me your content, including my daughter. Right. Probably the reason why she's here and she's a nurse and she's a tough cookie, but she loves you and loves your content, and I love how super 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. 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.

Well, not then, but now I was. And I'm like, Mom, at 7, 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 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 a gut test. 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 working.

And you did this on yourself first?

Yeah, okay. I did it all on myself first. And I was just. There were so many, like, red 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.

And were you experiencing, like, anything specific, like severe brain fog or a little.

Bit of, like, you know, like, bloating or, like, you know, some hormonal acne, things of that nature, but nothing too crazy. 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 of my life.

Awesome.

Yeah, 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 hockey. Yeah. And ozone therapy and I found hyperbaric oxygen therapy and I started learning about nad. You know, this is, I was doing peptides like way before they were cool, as I'm sure you were. 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 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 and. 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 and using some of these therapies. We do methylene blue IVs and curcumin IVs. I've done essentially olive oil extract IVs, Olaf and 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.

That's so awesome. And we, 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. 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 on. On your content. And I super appreciated it because you're being very authentic about you live in L. A And, you know, you're. You're the midst of the wildfires.

Yeah.

So you're talking about the air quality. But the one that really piqued my interest and I want to go down this rabbit hole, was the mold and the mycotoxin poisoning because, you know, as I've been on this journey too, and also own 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. 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. So, you know, everything was, let's say, quote, unquote, in range. Right. Maybe they need some E3. But nothing was jumping off the page. But they were miserable. Yeah, 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 and the pathogens, the mold, the mycotoxins, the viruses, the parasites, and our. Our functional medicine doctor, Dr. Sardo, who's a board certified OB GYN, had a lot of training in this area, and she started to bring in these functional labs, like the vibrant testing and, and what we find were in these unsolvable cases was generally one of these underliers. And when we started, you know, testing for those, in treating for those, this is when we saw the real miracles happen. Right. 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 that allows for near 100% utilization in building lean muscle and no caloric impact. So we build protein six times as much as whey, but without the excess body fat we normally get during bulking. This is the new era of protein supplementation, and it's real. If you want to build lean muscle without having to cut, 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 MO capital of the world. We want. We won that lottery. Go, go Miami. And. And you know, this. The second one, according to one of the functional medicine docs I know, is, 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.

Yeah, the water, the climate. Maybe it's because, you know, AC in the, you know, in the summertime, and maybe they're leaving the windows open in the wintertime. 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, the clients that live come in with mold. And as you know, it can. 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 that's vibrant. Right?

Yeah, I've done that too.

It's amazing.

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, 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 detoxers because we prioritize fat storage. Right. So in detox, go. 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. Wow. 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?

Yeah.

Incredibly alarming.

Right. 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? Insane fire accelerant. And I guess if you think of what's 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 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 it's clearly very concerning that these particles are obviously based on. My results are made up of things like heavy metals in 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 and clothing. I avoid plastics every which way you could do, you know, 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 labs. Tons of environmental toxins and, you know, 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 going to move because I don't think this is going to be an isolated incident. All of that, you know, debris is going to be cleaned up over the next two years, and we know it's just going to 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 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 you know, issues with pregnancy. 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 gonna 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 natural detox about four times a week 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 have on. You have actually like a walk in sauna. Do use a blanket or.

I have to. I have two saunas. 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 want to do together.

I love that too.

Yeah, I love any time.

I think it could compress time and do more stuff.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I have that and then I have a finish on 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 next health. I did. Yeah.

Dr. Darshan.

Yep.

Yeah, I love him.

So I mean I'm actually, I have another test that's pending so I will have new total toxic burn results release. Obviously the expectation is that they've been reduced significantly. But for anyone that's listening that hasn't 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 and they replace it with albumin and.

Then wild, you hold that bag up and you're like, it's like two liters of, of yellow soda. I mean it's and it's heavy.

It is, it is really heavy. Wow. I was surprised. So I did that. I'm gonna do probably two to three more sessions of that because for me, you know, 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 on all the things for fertility optimization.

We're gonna go into that too. Because you just piqued the interest of every female on this.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it's a bummer that this had to happen. It's like, you know, you're doing everything I, I do so much. Everybody jokes. I like live in a bubble and people think I'm so boring life because I 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 L. A. It can just wipe that out.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm very grateful that I'm equipped to deal with it. So doing the plasma phoresis, the TPE also doing ebu, so, you know, very high dose ozone therapy, helps to filter the blood as well. And I actually am taking something, it's a prescription called listyramine. 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 individual. Yep. Over a 12 week period. So I, I had this in my back pocket. I knew about this study as soon as I got 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'm very excited about because I mean, if this can help pull out a lot of those toxins, pfas, all those molds.

Yeah.

And help really like reduce the toxic burden. I think that's going to be an exciting one as well.

Yeah. And so, so I, first of all, I would totally agree with you. You know, inactivate 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 binders, help bind to the toxins and pull them out.

Are you using activated charcoal zeolite?

Yeah, I, I use the quicksilver binder, so.

Okay.

That's my.

Is that activated charcoal or do you know what that is?

It is activated charcoal.

Okay. Yeah. So that's. That's great because that's binding the toxins. And then EB Eboo or Ebo2 is. 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. 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 toxin B, the polyfluoro alcohols, all. All of these 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, 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? I mean, first of all, you. 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.

Yeah, love that.

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.

Oh, you do?

Our master bedrooms, actually, look, it was just slightly bigger, but it looks very similar with the Faraday cage and the.

Oh, really? 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, there's no better investment. Like, we get 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. And 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. 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, okay, let's parse this out and just make it a little bit less for the women. Kind of essentially like, yeah, body.

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, you know, 28 to 30 day cycle, whereas men, you guys, it's kind of a little bit like Groundhog Day. Right. It's like the same thing over and over. So. Makes it.

Deeply offended by that, but. No, it's so true.

But it makes it much easier.

Right.

Because you don't have the, these hormonal fluctuations. Not to mention that there's so many different cycles of a woman's life. Right. I mean, I'm in my child rearing 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, you know, mutual friends like Dave Asprey and Ben Greenfield and all these people, and it's, 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.

Yep.

We know that women, you know, they perceive and experience stress at much higher levels than men. So if I try to do the same thing that you do, let's say, you know, you can cold plunge every day, all day. That's. That's great. But as a woman, I, 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 notice that too. And we notice it in the clinical practice too, that, you know, one size fits all, let's say intermittent fasting for, for men versus one size fits all, intermittent fasting for women. And we, you know, the, some of the worst endocrine disasters we would see in women were young menstruating females that were otherwise, you know, very healthy, fit, active, that had very narrow feeding Windows.

Yeah.

And when you start to look at it, you know, some of these women would have really responsive insulin. So they were very insulin sensitive. And their. Their blood sugar was very often hypoglycemic. And so they spent, like, long amounts of time in this hypoglycemic state, then they fed. Then when they're back in this hypoglycemic state, and what it did was it really started to slow down their metabolism.

Yeah.

You'd see their thyroid hormone levels start to just plummet.

Yeah.

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, 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, not. Not for him. So. So, I mean, fertility is a huge issue. 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, with the declining rates of sperm counts, the declining fertility rates in women, skyrocketing rates of spontaneous miscarriage. So you're on that journey right now. So that's okay if I say that.

Yeah.

Because 27 million people, it's not a big deal. But I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that journey, because that is one that is really going to resonate, you know, with. 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 fires 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 biohacking industry, so I'm doing all these things that might seem way extra, but I think for me, um, 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.

I like that too.

Some things that I'm trialing again, there's not a lot of research and I've talked to almost every, you know, 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 amazing, such a story for optimizing your gut, not only because you know 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 like, this is a really, this should be a huge red flag. Right, right. And we know that if you optimize the guy, it can also help to reduce your risk of some of these conditions. So I think optimization is number one. I like a G, 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 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 going to say the preface again, you don't have to do all this stuff. This is just me taking it to like the end.

I like what you, and I don't mean to interrupt your thought though, but I like what you're saying about you sort of preparing the house before. Yeah, right. Before you move.

Exactly.

And I think that's so important, you know, you know, 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, you know, a 10 week of, you know, pre treatment before they, they did that to reduce insulin and lower the inflammatory markers. So I, I, I, I, 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 I, I, who knows what was going on when I was growing, but I want to set the best stage. 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 want to start now, you have about, it's for women and men, you know, for sperm and for eggs as they're actually forming and getting to be released. 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 much hormetic, 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 and my nutrition and my exercise to hopefully optimize fertility outcomes. But that's some of the testing also I think amh, so anti malarian 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. 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 fit 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, something, you know, like egg freezing. But you should at least know where you're at because you don't this if you want a family, I don't think it's something that you want to just kind of fly blind on.

Yeah, I totally agree. So, so you said you're going to talk about the nutrition, so there's, I mean talking about paralysis of analysis. If you get out there on, you know, 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, you know, what, what we should be doing or they should be doing for, to prepare for really healthy pregnancy. So what, what is your, what does your dietary journey look like?

Yeah, so that's also why getting some of these labs, because the best way to achieve optimal health 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 have different genetics. We could be detoxing differently. There's so many different factors. 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. So things like eggs are really great. Lots of dark, sleepy too, 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 food. 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 8. There's quite a bit of literature on extending the lifespan and even reduction in cardiovascular events. So really focusing on omegas. But you don't have to keep it too complicated. Just completely eliminate 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 get accused of fear mongering. And it's not that we're trying to say everything's going to try is going to kill you.

I mean, a lot is, but a lot is.

So actually that's very true. Like I say, it's trying to kill you.

Yeah.

But you know, a lot of what I think people call fear mongering is, is us trust trying to help people get around the system. Right. 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. It was years ago when he had. When he first started his biohacking summit, and there was a specialist there, and it was. It was just this questionnaire, 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 sort of document your meals. You're like, holy crap, I ate, like, three chocolate bars. I ate, like, know. I mean, I eat an extra half pound of nuts. 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. You realize that's fluoride. And. And, you know, high. High amounts of. Of fluoride. And then you're, like, drinking tap water, 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.

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 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 Skin Deep Database?

Yeah, Skin Deep Database. It's great. I. 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. 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. 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.

Yeah, I'm starting to get there too.

But just starting slower and just starting to swap out some of these products that, I mean, fragrance is the worst offender. Yeah, 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, radial artery and.

Yeah, 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, you know, something like an essential oil. There's also some really good brands coming about that, that can help women as well.

Yeah, there's some aerobatic brands out there that are 100 essential oils that smell. Amazing smell. So it just like, I mean, they really smell like a designer perfume.

Yeah, right, totally.

And, and, but in terms of like, cost wise, 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 Branch Basics and some of these really good brands are available widely enough available and at a price point where people can, you know, for 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, 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 nad injections and which, which I don't have a problem with per se or, you know, resveratrol. I read this thing about Ashwagandha or some new, you know, root that, that, that came out that's extending life expectancy. But the truth is that foundational health and, and, 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 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 water fasting 10,000 steps, cold punch challenge and I ran this sleep challenge. What was really astounding to me was that we had thousands of people sign up into this. And when we started doing questionnaires and surveys and doing the open 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. Bus leaves at 8:24. You know, I mean, they're, 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 could have been 8:30. Yeah, yeah. Like, Brian Johnson, who, by the way, is in town, he has his don't die summit going on here. Right. 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. 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 a bit, a little bit about your sleep? What's your sleep routine like? What's some of your sleep hacks for women?

Well, first thing that I found really interesting is that women need more sleep than men. So the research supports about six to 20 minutes. But based on my NF1 studies, I've been very lucky to be able to. Yes.

Based on my, my lifelong experiment, clinical.

Study, based on my, you know, experience. So I, I did two months of just, you know, go to bed at 8:30, wake up whenever you feel like it. So I'm very blessed to be able to do that. On average, I need more than. I need 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 of sleep as their male counterpart or that six hours is gonna 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 we're. 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, we might even need more sleep. Late luteal while menstruating. So I find that to be really interesting. When we.

I noticed that with my wife too.

Yeah.

During her. The menstrual part of her cycle. The menstruating part of her cycle, she definitely needs. Which makes sense. I mean, you're losing 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? I am done eating by 5:30. So you want to 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 usually around 5 or 5:30 right now in LA. And then I'm done eating by then. At that point, all the lights in my house go red. So we know 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. I mean, he was so upset. He's like, this is not watching baseball. Yeah. It's like. It's like nothing.

You could just get red like glasses.

I do have red light glasses, but they're not very comfortable. And then he's being exposed. So. Yes, you could. So anyways, red lights all at night. We should talk about light for women too.

I definitely want to.

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 pulsetto right now, which is like.

I do too.

Yeah. Vagus nerve stimulator. So but that I'm 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. Like every night I get like a 97, 98 sleep score and I use aura, so. Aura doesn't let you get 100, I don't think. I don't know a single person that's ever gotten 100 sleep.

I don't know on an aura. I've gotten them on eight sleep.

Yeah.

And I've gotten 98, 99. Am I getting hundreds on. Yeah, I've gotten hundreds on whoop.

I don't think it's possible though, Nora. Right.

Yeah, I'm pretty, pretty regularly. 98, 99, 97 on sleep and yeah, 8 sleeping and whoop.

Yeah. So anyways, okay, good sleep scores, but getting the resting heart rate as low as possible. You know, for me it's like doing something relaxing, 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 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. So you could get like a switch to turn your WI fi 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 WI FI switch. I love, like a weighted blanket for me really helps increase my sleep and. Or it says, I think it increases deep sleep by about 2% weighted blanket.

And over time. That's a, that's a big number because definitely, I mean, all we're trying to do is just get those.

Yeah. Incremental little.

Yeah. If you're going to be sleeping anyway.

Yeah.

So totally.

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, you know, pretty significant improvements in my sleep too. You don't want to do it too close to bed because again, it's going to jack up your heart rate and then you're not going to get as good of sleep.

We really find the Same thing. And you know, I encourage people to dishonor or what I call a contrast shower. Just a hot and cold shower. We have, we have cold plunges. One of them's a little bit warmer. So like in the 60s, 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, not a long hermetic stressor. 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 got all these catecholamines. You're really in awakened state. I think a lot of women in particular are really susceptible to the rise in these catecholamines at night. So they're kind of in this body tired, but mind awake state. Right. And they'll just ruminating about the most innocuous little things. Right. Nothing's going to change your life. And it just robs you of being able to, to go to sleep. Just said, do you read in bed?

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 magnesium at night.

Oh, I love that.

I don't really need a sleep stack. 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 you guys on the kind of the same sleep schedule.

Yeah. I mean, he used to stay up way later.

Yeah.

And of course he's like, you know, kind of change that now, but he feels better than he ever is. And also, you know, when I first met him, we, 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 9:16 naturally.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

And how old is he, if you don't mind me ask?

He's 37.

So 916 at 37 be amazing. I mean, yeah, my, my community would kill to have testosterone that low, I mean naturally that, that high. Which, which really brings me to another point. I mean, it is amazing how 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 to one o' clock in the morning and you can make it the surface of the sun and if you want to, but then your circadian biology is so, is so jacked. HAP B is an award winning digital wellness company and we invite you to join us in transforming the way people rest, renew and focus. The goal is to help people take control of how they sleep, how they feel and how they perform, all without taking drugs, supplements or high caffeine energy drinks. The neuroscientists at HAP B have created a set of mood enhancing programs. They're called vibes. So each vibe uses ultra low frequency signals to mimic the effects of relaxants or stimulants in the body. When the brain detects these signals, it reacts as if you're actually taking the substance, giving you all the benefits without the downsides. So it puts you in control of how you want to feel, when you want to feel it naturally, with no chemicals, pills or side effects. Just select a vibe on the Happy app and let the soothing electromagnetic waves wash over your body. At Happy, 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 now.

Yeah.

You're here today. You're in what, Nashville tonight, right?

Yep, Nashville, New York City.