Sleep, stress and exercise: your longevity toolkit | Kayla Barnes-Lentz

Summary

Podcast Summary: Sleep, Stress and Exercise—Your Longevity Toolkit

Podcast: ZOE Science & Nutrition
Episode: "Sleep, stress and exercise: your longevity toolkit | Kayla Barnes-Lentz"
Host: Jonathan Wolf
Guests: Kayla Barnes-Lentz (biohacker), Dr. Federica Amati (Head Nutritionist, Zoe)
Date: November 27, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Jonathan Wolf is joined by Kayla Barnes-Lentz, celebrated biohacker and “the world’s most measured woman,” and Dr. Federica Amati, scientist and author, to explore the intersection of extreme self-experimentation (“biohacking”) and science-backed lifestyle strategies for longevity. Together, they debunk myths, discuss cutting-edge interventions, and—most importantly—agree on five fundamental lifestyle pillars that form a practical longevity toolkit for everyone, regardless of gender or access to high-tech therapies.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining Biohacking and the Move Toward “Optimization”

• Kayla’s modern take on biohacking focuses on “longevity and healthspan optimization”—not just pushing lifespans, but maximizing quality of life in healthy years.

  "Yeah, I would just say upgrading the environment internally and externally...But, yeah, I prefer longevity and health span optimization." (Kayla, 02:55)

• Biohacking is both experimental and data-driven, but true optimization means looking at individual data, gender differences, and context.

2. Kayla’s Personal Longevity Journey

• Motivated by health challenges in her late teens and desire for peak performance as a young entrepreneur, Kayla began experimenting with nutrition and lifestyle changes:

  "I got really obsessed with this idea. Okay, nutrition made such a big impact by upgrading my nutrition...I feel better now at 35 than I did when I was 18 years old." (Kayla, 06:04)

• Delved into advanced lab testing, noted lack of attention to women in research, and underscored the need for female-focused protocols.

3. Risks of Copying Biohacks Designed for Men or Animals

• Federica calls out risks from extreme caloric restriction and fasting in women, often based on male- or animal-centric data:

  "Young women who are lean already, these prolonged fasts, these caloric restrictions are usually going to be harmful." (Federica, 07:15)

• Kayla describes pivoting her approach using literature reviews and new biomarkers specific to women's health.

4. Self-Experimentation: “N of 1” Studies

• Kayla runs experiments on herself, tracking interventions with extensive labwork (biomarkers, wearables) and making changes only when data supports the benefits.

  "Myself as the experiment. So the variable is one. And I'm just benchmarking against my own data." (Kayla, 09:40)

• Federica highlights the value and limits of “n of 1” data, noting these studies can spark larger scientific research but aren't population-wide evidence.

  "It worked for me. It doesn't mean all of my audience should do this, but it just means that she's sharing her findings on herself and that could help spark new science." (Federica, 09:48)

5. Female-Specific Approaches and the History of Gender Bias in Medicine

• Women have been underrepresented in clinical trials (not even included until 1993 in the US) and even in animal studies.
• Hormonal fluctuations have wrongly been seen as ‘confounding,’ but male biomarkers also fluctuate daily.
• Kayla and Federica both stress that protocols for longevity, risk management, and disease prevention must be individualized for women:

  "The biohacking industry as a whole has kind of been... male figureheads...but longevity or if we want to say biohacking for women has really just not been addressed." (Kayla, 17:20)

• Major risks for women (autoimmune, neurodegenerative disorders) are different in incidence and presentation compared to men.

6. Radical & Traditional Interventions

• Kayla’s most extreme biohack: multiple rounds of therapeutic plasma exchange—removing and replacing blood plasma to reduce toxin load.

  "I have removed all of my plasma...and replaced it not once but twice now." (Kayla, 02:33)

• Describes using hyperbaric oxygen therapy, advanced supplement regimens, and tracking new metrics (like “ovarian age”).

7. Historical Self-Experimentation in Science

• Dr. Amati recalls the example of a scientist who proved stomach ulcers were caused by H. pylori by infecting himself—a story illustrating the long tradition and risks of self-experimentation.

  "He literally got some H. Pylori and infected himself...then he cured himself with antibiotics...used himself to prove his theory." (Federica, 22:10)

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The Five Pillars of Longevity: Biohacker and Scientist-Backed

[35:27]
Kayla and Federica agree that longevity isn’t about expensive tech or supplements alone, and present a consensus “toolkit” for healthy lifespan:

1. Oral Health (36:05; 36:44)

• Often overlooked but critical—oral microbiome, gum disease, and tooth health are linked to brain and cardiovascular health.
  • Advanced protocol: oral microbiome testing, coconut oil pulling, hydroxyapatite toothpaste, gum-focused red light therapy.
  • Recommendation: "Just brush your teeth and floss. It makes the world of difference." (Federica, 38:11)

2. Sleep (38:46; 39:58)

• Structured, protected sleep routines as central to health:
  • Early meals (cut off 2-3 hours before bed), morning/evening sun exposure, dark/cool room, relaxation rituals (breath work, nature walks, screen curfews).
  • Women may need 20-30+ minutes more sleep depending on cycle.
  • Quote: "If you just walk away from this podcast with one thing and that's going to bed early tonight and getting high quality sleep, it'll be a game changer." (Kayla, 41:31)

3. Exercise (42:13; 42:22)

• Both cardiovascular and strength training are essential, with tailored protocols:
  • Target: 150 minutes of zone 2 training, plus high-intensity bursts and 4-5 strength sessions per week.
  • Trackable metrics: VO2 max, grip strength, bone density, and muscle mass—the latter especially key for women.
  • Personalization: Adjust intensity around the menstrual cycle and by day-to-day energy, not strict “cycle-syncing” dogma.
  • Quote: "If there was one pill for longevity, it would be exercise." (Kayla, 42:22)
• Include pelvic floor health early, especially for women (46:13).

4. Nutrition/Diet (47:12; 48:20)

• Optimal diet is Mediterranean-style: 50+ plant species/week, high fiber (40–50g/day minimum), organic/seasonal/local priorities.
  • Emphasis on omega-3 rich fish, high diversity for microbiome, fermented foods, mindful eating, and not relying on ultra-processed foods.
  • Supplements only after testing (micronutrient analysis, gut health, etc.).
  • Quote: "I aim for...about 50 different plant species per week." (Kayla, 33:52)
• Shared meals and slowing down improve nutrition and social health.

5. Social Connection & Stress Management (51:45)

• Strong, supportive relationships and stress management—e.g., walking, mindfulness, and crafting supportive routines.
  • Social eating, cooking, and connection have both psychological and biological benefits.
  • "Start slow, start easy, master those basics. Social connection, we didn't talk too much about, but a little bit about social connection, stress management, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and you will be absolutely thriving." (Kayla, 51:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Reality of Extreme Biohacking:

  "I don't eat out at restaurants...I'm very regimented as well. But I think it's all about how you perceive that, right?" (Kayla, 14:23)

• On Female Data Gaps:

  "Women weren’t included in medical research here in the US until about 1993...about two thirds of studies are still on men." (Kayla, 10:29)

• The Power of Basics:

  "If you master the basics, you're going to be healthier than 99% of people." (Kayla, 51:46)

• On Personalization:

  "Weighed the pros and cons...we know that these two toxins are sometimes correlated to a variety of negative health outcomes. And I also felt symptomatic..." (Kayla, 28:32)

• Exercise as Longevity Medicine:

  "Grip strength is a really good marker of health...using it earlier in life to really see whether you should pay more attention is a good idea." (Federica, 44:09)

• Dietary Diversity:

  "There’s really elegant science...how time spent sharing meals at tables correlates with health outcomes across the world." (Federica, 49:01)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:33] Kayla’s most extreme biohack: plasma exchange
• [06:04] Kayla’s origin story in health and biohacking
• [13:32] Enjoying health and vitality now vs. chasing lifespan
• [16:07] Lack of female data and female longevity protocols
• [22:10] History of radical self-experimentation in science
• [24:53] Deep dive: plasma filtration after LA wildfires
• [33:52] Kayla’s supplement protocol and “food first” approach
• [36:05] 1st pillar: Oral health
• [38:46] 2nd pillar: Sleep routines and sex differences
• [42:13] 3rd pillar: Exercise for healthspan
• [47:12] 4th pillar: Diet and nutrition, plant diversity, fiber
• [51:45] 5th pillar: Social connection, managing stress, "master the basics"

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Tone, Style, and Takeaways

Through a frank, data-driven, but relatable conversation, the episode balances Kayla’s high-tech, intensive experiments with Federica’s insistence on scientific rigor, individual context, and the prioritization of foundational health behaviors. Both agree: meaningful longevity is less about outlandish interventions and more about consistently nailing the basics—sleep, exercise, nutrition, social support, and daily habits tailored to your individual profile.

Final Takeaway:
If you want to maximize your health—and perhaps your years—start with foundational habits, personalize them as much as possible, and don’t wait for magic bullets. “Master the basics, and you will be absolutely thriving.” (Kayla, 51:46)

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Zoe Science and Nutrition, where world leading scientists explain how their research.

[B]

Can improve your health.

[A]

The year is 2099. As you pick up your hoverboard and head towards the door, a microchip in your brain tells you it's time to eat. You knock back a fistful of multicolored pills while your AI powered robot helper ties your shoes. On your way to the cryotherapy center in your 5G proof electro bubble, a thought crosses your mind. Surely there's a simpler way. There are an estimated 100,000 biohackers globally and this number is growing. For many of these people, life is one long self experiment, trying new gadgets, supplements and even surgeries, all in the pursuit of living past 120. It's an interesting approach, but does it really work? Well, today I'm joined by Kayla Barnes Lenz, the world's foremost female biohacker who claims to be the world's most measured woman. We explore the lengths she goes to as she pursues her mission of living to 150. We'll also hear from Dr. Federica Amarti, head nutritionist here at Zoe, a scientist at Imperial College London and author of the best selling book Everybody Should Know this. Federica will help us explore the boundary between biohacking and science backed advice. By the end of this episode, you'll have some simple lifestyle interventions that both biohackers and scientists agree will help you live a long and healthy life. Kayla, thank you so much for joining me today.

[C]

Thank you so much for having me.

[A]

And Federica, wonderful to have you as well.

[D]

Always fun.

[A]

So Kayla, we have a tradition here at Zoe where we always start with a quick fire round of questions from our listeners.

[B]

Are you up for that?

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

All right.

[A]

And we have some very strict rules.

[B]

You can say yes or no or.

[A]

A one sentence answer if you have to.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

All right, Kayla, are you confident that you will live until you're 150?

[C]

No.

[B]

Are you the most measured woman in the world?

[C]

Yes. Publicly measured? Yes.

[A]

Federica, does extending your life have to be expensive?

[D]

No.

[A]

Does self experimentation in science always fail?

[B]

No.

[A]

And finally, Kayla, what's the strangest thing you ever tried in your quest for longevity?

[C]

I have removed all of my plasma from my body and I have replaced it not once but twice now.

[B]

And so that's like the plasma in your blood?

[C]

Yeah. It's like an oil change for your body.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

This word biohacking is a term that I've heard used a lot recently. But to be honest, I don't think I really understand it. How would you describe what biohacking is?

[C]

Yeah, I would just say upgrading the environment internally and externally. So you are using different modalities. That can be the basics that we'll get into, like nutrition and exercise or. Or it can be much more advanced. Looking at labs and then incorporating interventions. Maybe like hyperbaric, but internally and externally, upgrading your environment.

[B]

And how do you figure out, like, what that upgrading is? Because I'm thinking also that hacking word makes me think a bit about something sort of a bit experimental or something like that.

[C]

I don't use the term biohacking as much these days. I definitely like longevity optimization or health span optimization because a few things. Number one, I think that it's a little bit more bro y that this biohacking side of things. And, you know, I've been in this industry for over 12 years now, and I have went from being kind of like this woman that was doing this weird stuff on the corner of the Internet, I felt, to now women are really, you know, having our moment, which I'm so excited about. But, yeah, I prefer longevity and health span optimization.

[D]

I love that. Because as a medical scientist, Jonathan, you'll know what I hate about the term biohacking is this idea that we can somehow hack our biology. Our evolutionary biology is so much smarter than we are. So exactly to your point. It's about how can we support these processes that are there to help us stay healthy and thrive. Optimization is almost a better term to explain it. Right?

[C]

Yeah, that's my preference.

[D]

Yeah, I agree with you.

[B]

All right, I love that. So longevity optimization, which sounds to me like wanting to live longer than I would do otherwise. Am I understanding that right?

[C]

Yeah. But we also have to be focused on healthspan, Right. We don't want to live, you know, much longer in poor health or not remember our family members. So I think in the immediate, it is addressing health, current health status, future health status, with the idea that hopefully we can live longer as well.

[A]

And how did you first get interested in this?

[C]

So I became an entrepreneur at about 17, 18 years old, and I didn't grow up on a healthy diet at all. Very, as we call it, the sad diet here in America, the standard American diet, often leading to being quite sad. So grew up on those sorts of foods, and what I realized is if I wanted to be able to perform at the level I would need to, to run my own business and grow that business, I was gonna have to upgrade my biology because even though I was young I was still suffering from a lot of things that many individuals have brain fog, a little bit of fatigue, some GI issues. So I just got obsessed with this idea. Okay, nutrition made such a big impact by upgrading my nutrition. That made a big difference. What else can I do? But yeah, I got really obsessed with it. Trained under Dr. Daniel's brain health certification practitioner program. That was all just for myself, though. I was like, how can I make myself feel better and perform better? And it seemed like everything I was incorporating, I did feel better and perform. I mean, I feel better now at 35 than I did when I was 18 years old. So that was part of it. And then I got super deep into the labs in about 2018. So I got ready to open a longevity medicine clinic. And I had an entire medical team at that point. Medical doctor, functional medicine, nurse practitioner, the nurses mas, pas, and I had access to thousands of labs overnight. So I started ordering just thousands and thousands of different markers. And by the way, my standard doctors had never recommended any of these labs. They never recommended gut testing, total tox, burden testing, any sort of like advanced thyroid panels, no, nothing. So I got these numbers back and I saw areas that I can improve. Even though I was young, I was like, I want to make these as good as they possibly can be. So my medical team and I put together this protocol and it started with a lot of the, let's say, science backed longevity practices, which, like caloric restriction, for example, is one that we know in worms and then mice help to extend lifespan. So we put a lot of these into my protocol. And then a couple months into doing it, I realized that maybe that might work for men or obviously in mice and worms, but I saw some of the wrong trajectory starting to happen. So my hormones became dysregulated for the first time. My thyroid started to decline. And so then I took a step back and I said, okay, I really have to focus on this as a woman, you know. So I hired a small team of PhD candidates and researchers to pull all the female literature. We started then incorporating that and just looking at it in a more bio individual. So what do my lab say? What does my data say? My genetics? And then we put together a new comprehensive longevity protocol.

[D]

The amount of women who follow these very strict long fasting protocols, massively reducing their caloric intake and negatively impacting their hormonal health. It's still happening a lot. So to hear how you discovered that and when you were like, hang on a minute, I'm not a mouse, I'm not a Woman, I'm not a man. Does this work for me, especially as a young woman, Young women who are lean already, these prolonged fasts, these caloric restrictions are usually going to be harmful. So, yeah, music to my ears, Jonathan. Wonderful.

[B]

I really want to follow up on that thread, actually. But just before we do, I think what I'm hearing is sort of this idea that you're almost experimenting on yourself. So you're trying, you know, you're describing these protocols, you're trying something and then you're measuring the results of that.

[C]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

And so this is a sort of constant experiment. And could you maybe take me through that? Like, do you experiment and then you decide, yes, that passes, I keep it, or it fails. How does that work?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. Let's say hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So I have a 2.0 ATA chamber in my home. So it's like a medical grade chamber.

[B]

Could you explain for a minute what this thing is that you're describing?

[C]

Yeah, so it kind of looks like a submarine kind of. It's like this metal chamber. And what it does is it combines pure oxygen with pressure. What we'll do is we'll take biomarkers, we'll run an intervention, and then we'll take biomarkers again to see if anything happened. Sometimes I will say it's a bit difficult to parse out because I am already doing so many healthy habits. So there's a few new lab tests that are coming down the pipeline that I'm very excited about. So there's a company called Timeless Biotech and it's going to be the first AI time to menopause prediction. So essentially it'll be able to measure ovarian age. So of course we still need more data on it, but I'm excited to be the first woman in the world to have my ovarian age measured. Then we'll implement the intervention. Right. So let's say 40 sessions of hyperbaric. We'll retest the ovarian age and see if anything occurred. Right. So my hope in doing that is because I have these resources, because I have this team that I've built, I can try a lot of these interventions and of course say this is n of 1. So keep that in mind. This is my data, but maybe there's a massive improvement or maybe there's not. So I'm trying to just clarify a few of those things. I mean, same thing with tpe. You know, I did the total toxic burden test, I incorporated the intervention, and then we retested and now I have the data as to how efficacious that treatment is, at least for me.

[B]

Amazing. And one of the things I'm hearing because you said this thing n of 1, what does that mean?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah. Myself as the experiment. So the variable is one. And I'm just benchmarking against my own data. I'm sure you might be able to add a few notes on that.

[D]

Yeah. So when we speak about n of 1, it just means that we can't conclude that this advice or that this intervention would work for the population. For that to happen, you'd need many more people to do exactly the same protocol and then see whether there's an outcome for them as well. But having n of 1 studies can often be the sort of trigger or the spark for an idea to then go on and do larger trials that involve more people, which people like Professor Sarah Berry can then run and see if it's applicable to more people. So it's important that people like Kyla point out this is N of 1. It worked for me. It doesn't mean all of my audience should do this, but it just means that she's sharing her findings on herself and that could help spark new science. I mean, the ovarian aging thing is amazing.

[C]

I'm so excited. I mean it's obviously, you know, women weren't included in medical research here in the US until about 1993.

[D]

Globally.

[C]

Yep. Oh, globally, thank you. Now I know. And still here at least, and maybe across the globe, about two thirds of studies are still on men. So for me, the way I see it is I don't want to wait around. I look, I love randomized control trials. I love using that data, I love science. But at the same point it's like there's not much information on women. I mean, the fact that it can take between 10 and 15 years to get, you know, a PCOS or endometriosis diagnosis is just absolutely mind blowing.

[A]

Right at this time of year. Many of us focus on supplements, quick fixes or food fats to stay healthy. But one of the most powerful tools we have is something much simpler, sharing food with other people. The science is really clear on this. Eating with others naturally encourages us to slow down, which supports better digestion. People also tend to choose more nutritious, balanced foods when they eat together. It's all of those simple habits that.

[B]

Makes a real difference to our well.

[A]

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[B]

To go back to one of our first questions right at the beginning where I asked whether you're confident that you'll live until you're 150 and you pause for a minute, whereas I would have been like, no, I'm definitely going to be long dead at 150. But you also said, oh, you know, I'm not confident about that. How long do you think you can live? Like, what is the goal here with all of this optimization?

[C]

Well, my goal is 150, but I also, I want to be a real idealist because I don't want people thinking there's going to be some magic bullet and then not focusing on the basics that will improve our health now. Right. So I do believe we know, I think the upper limit is about 120. That's what we have seen. But with AI, I do believe so much more is going to be possible. I mean, if we think about even the hallmarks of aging, right, we went from having nine to 12, now we have 14. And you know, from the longevity researchers that I speak to, they feel that we only know about 20 of why we even age, Right. So we need to understand that mechanism first to then develop better interventions, therapeutics potentially. And I think that will happen in my lifetime. So I do believe I will live to 150. But I also don't want to be, you know, so arrogant to say, like, I certainly am confident that I am.

[D]

You know, but I think what I love about what you said a little earlier, how you feel better now than you did when you were 18, Jonathan, like, you know, we might walk out of this building and get run over. So the point is not so much like, will you live to 150? Like, hopefully, yes, that'd be so cool. But at the same time, Kyla's having a nice time. She's having a good life. She's enjoying her body and her vitality. And that, to me is where the magic lies in doing these kinds of activities.

[C]

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, definitely optimizing health because I mean, health is literally everything. I mean, when you feel better, you can show up for your family, you can go after your goals all these things. So for me, there's. There's nothing more interesting than the abilities that we have at this point in time to measure real time from at home wearables. We can talk about all the lab tests that I do, but. Or that home tracking. We've never seen this. And we've also never had such a great ability to have preventative care.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

What does this mean for the way you are going to live the next 115 years? And I ask that because we did a podcast with Brian Johnson and I was struck that he basically has to live in his house and he's so regimented. What does this life look like? And how do you decide the line between the extending to 150 and I guess, enjoying the next 12 months?

[C]

You know, I think I was actually one of the first people to interview Brian. So I came across him when he had a little blog and was sharing his routines. And I said, wow, I have never ran across another person that lives like I do. Right. So I saw so many similarities there. And I do live very similarly. Right. Like, I'm done eating at 4, I go to bed at 8. I have any, like, friend, social connections, they come to my house. I have the food made because I don't eat out at restaurants. I'm very regimented as well. But I think it's all about how you perceive that, Right? So I think as a society, we've really conditioned ourselves to celebrate wins with things that are a little bit harmful to ourselves. So you do something great, you go celebrate with alcohol, which we know is a neurotoxin we also know increases your risk of cancer. You do something celebratory, you have a huge meal that might not be the healthiest for you. So for me, waking up feeling incredible literally every day, almost like I rarely get sick, I rarely feel fatigued. To me, that's, you know, the best life. And you know what, too, Having a partner. So my husband and I do this together. Like, we know having accountability partners and support makes a journey a lot easier. So going back to, like, how is my life gonna look? I get to do this with my husband, whom I love, you know, the most in the world. So I am also happy about that.

[B]

That's brilliant. So I'd like to return to the thread that you were talking about before about women's health. And I think I was struck already by the thing that you described about looking for all the data on women and different from men. And the first thing I actually thought, because obviously all the studies we've done at Zoe is how hard it must have been to find data on women because historically that was banned in the US For a long period of time. And generally the studies isn't there. And even when they are like trying to pick out differences between men and women, I imagine was very hard. So tell me a bit more about that.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, it was very scant. You know, there wasn't much to operate off of. We got a few like hypotheses. But then we said let's just double down on the bio individuality and kind of walk back to principles thinking. Right. Like now we're thinking about longevity plans as like top longevity risks for women in particular. We all know what the major causes of death are, you know, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, even metabolic related diseases incidents, of course. But myself and my medical team think about like, how can we structures for women? So we put on there like autoimmune conditions, a big longevity risk because 80% of them are women. We put neurodegenerative diseases even higher because we know about 2, 2/3 of Alzheimer's diagnoses are women. So when we're making this plan, because there's not that much research, we just have to kind of take a step back and say ovarian longevity or ovarian aging. Is there anything we can do there? But there's no literature around that, you know, I've interviewed some of the top experts for my podcast on ovarian aging and we just know so little. So we're just trying to take data that we have and then implement interventions and see if anything works.

[B]

And you had this reference, I think earlier, which made me smile about like bro science associated with, I think you're talking about extremes of fasting. What does that word, bro science mean?

[C]

Well, I just feel like the biohacking industry as a whole has kind of been. It's all been male figureheads, which is amazing right there. I mean, I love the attention to the industry that has been drawn, but there really have not been female figures in this space. There have been a few incredible doctors that have rose in like the menopause industry, but longevity or if we want to say biohacking for women has really just not been addressed. But the interesting thing is, is that, you know, even, you know, like Dave Asprey for example, has said massive amount of his audience is women. So women are doing it. We just don't have any, you know, data for us. We just don't have enough protocols for us. We. So we kind of have to build them from the ground up.

[B]

And I think you touched on it. But I'd like to answer a bit more. Why might it be different for a woman than a man? And I think back again to this stuff that was explained to me a long time ago. Like, isn't a woman just a small man? From a scientific perspective, there's that, but.

[D]

There'S actually one of the reasons why women weren't included in RCTs, and even female mice, by the way, were often excluded.

[B]

Is that right?

[D]

Yes, because there was this belief that the hormonal fluctuations in premenopausal women and in mice, because mice don't really go into menopause, would influence or impact the outcomes. And so what would need to happen is you'd need to have, like, three times as many females to make sure you capture the different phases of the cycle so that you could then rule out the effects of estrogen on the outcome. So instead of spending that extra money and the extra time recruiting, of course, researchers had limited funds, limited time, and they were like, well, just don't do the women, because then we don't have this problem. Now. Actually, when we look at males, males testosterone levels fluctuate daily. So actually, women's hormonal fluctuations are much more predictable and slower. If you test a male in the morning, their testosterone levels are gonna be way higher than if you test them later in the day. So it's a false problem. And now we've moved to a place where women have to be included in a lot of studies. And. And the problems we saw in medicine around this were things like the way that cardiovascular disease is treated. Like, a lot of cardiovascular disease intervention is modeled on men, and it's just not the same for females. So we have a huge problem in public health, for example, of even identifying heart attacks in hospitals. Many women are missed entirely and get sent home with a heart attack. So not only is health different for females, it's also like how symptoms present, how the disease progresses, and then how to treat it in a good way. Like, how to treat it in a way that's really efficacious is different for women.

[C]

And also, I'm always thinking about how many different life stages women have. You know, we have, of course, menstruation, but then we have, you know, pregnancy, and we have postpartum, and then we have perimenopause. And then with menopause and each one of those areas, you know, we. We could make amendments to what our lifestyle looks like. That's also another Big consideration. And then as you mentioned, but the risk factors, you know, what might we get that men might not? You know, so in thinking about that from a lab standpoint, so we can prevent those potentially and also from a treatment perspective as well.

[D]

A classic example of that, Jonathan, is iron. Right. So females who menstruate under the age of 24, the estimates are that in countries like the US and the UK, about 40% of girls are iron insufficient. There's obviously a scale. Some will be really deficient in the immune and some will just be insufficient. But that has a massive impact on learning outcomes, on cognitive function, on health. It's a big problem actually in public health. And it's only specifically for really women who start their periods in the first 10 years. Life stages are so important. It's critical for us to understand. Exactly. You said, like, what do girls need when they start their periods? What do they need when they enter their most fertile years? And then of course, childbearing is becoming later and later now in our society. So like, well, how can we support female fertility to extend beyond 35 when many women will have their children later? What happens now is a lot of crossover between postnatal and perimenopause, because if you're having your child at sort of 39, you have this very odd transition and it's unique to women.

[B]

I'm sort of intrigued by this history of self experimentation, whether this has ever happened in the past with scientists and with people with classifieds. I'm going to start by going straight at you, Federica. Have you ever experimented on yourself?

[D]

Oh, on myself, yes, I have. So I like tracking, of course, Jonathan. I love taking our gut microbiome test and experimenting how I can improve on our test results. Some things I've learned through my sleep tracking. So I've learned that for me, I don't drink much alcohol anyway, but if I will have a glass of wine, I need to have it way before I go to bed. Otherwise my entire night my resting heart rate does not go down. So I've learned things by observing how different behaviors impact my metrics. Another thing I do is DEXA scans. I keep a really close eye on my body composition, making sure that at my lean mass is. Is going up and my fat mass stays healthy levels.

[A]

And are there examples from history of.

[B]

Scientists experimenting on themselves?

[D]

So many. Should I pick my favorite one?

[A]

Go on.

[D]

Okay. Because there's some really good ones. I mean, smallpox is really the best known one, I think. But I love the H. Pylori story. So the scientist thought that these gastric ulcers were being caused by bacteria. He was like, it's not just stress. It's not just. There were so many theories about why gastric ulcers happened.

[B]

And gastric ulcers are so.

[D]

Gastric ulcers are these incredibly painful holes, essentially, that happen in your stomach lining. So you can imagine the stomach is extremely acidic. So our stomach lining is very carefully designed to take that acidity level without destroying the tissue and without pain. If you have a gastric ulcer, this is an erosion of that layer that protects the tissue, and it is incredibly painful. You can imagine it's like literally acid burning your flesh. Okay. Very common. It is absolutely tied to stress, by the way. But people couldn't really figure out what was happening. Was it genetic? Is it due to eating too much? Hormones, food? Is it because you ate, like, chili? There was all sorts of theories, but the treatment for it was kind of mysterious and sometimes quite aggressive, and you'd have operations. So this doctor was like, actually, I think this is something to do with a pathogen. And he was sure about it, but he was absolutely rejected by the medical community. Don't be ridiculous. No bacteria could survive and then cause this. So he literally got some H. Pylori and it infected himself.

[B]

What is H. Pylori? Okay, he just drank this bacteria?

[D]

Yes. He infected himself and then watched himself get stomach ulcers and showed it and was like, see, I caused myself to have the infection. And then he cured himself with antibiotics and it cleared the ulcers. So he literally used himself to prove his theory.

[B]

That sort of radical. I'm going to infect myself painful with a dangerous bacteria to prove that it causes this problem, show it to everybody. And that's far out. Now, is that an experiment you might.

[C]

Do on yourself that's not on our docket for protocols to try? But you know what? I'm very grateful that he did it, because, you know, now that we know.

[B]

So how do you decide, Kayla, what interventions you will try?

[C]

I certainly have a team that's helping me review this all as I recommend. Of course, anyone that is going to go down this path to do so, that's step one. But also, you know, there are some things that are a little bit more out there, but it's all about weighing the risk versus reward. And, you know, there's also some things that I haven't done yet that have been offered and that other individuals in the industry have done, like gene therapies. So I am only 35, many of the individuals in this industry are a bit older, you know, late 40s, early 50s. They've already had their children. I still want to have children in the future. So there are a few things I haven't done. And I think for me, the risk just currently would outweigh the reward.

[B]

So I'd love to go back to this thing you described right at the beginning about having half your blood stripped out and replaced with something else.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Could you just talk about through that experience how you think about it and then like the experiment and how do you decide whether or not it worked?

[C]

Removing the plasma, it kind of like hooks you up to what would look like a dialysis machine. So you have one line going into this vein, one line going into this vein. It's actually filtering the blood from the plasma and then it's removing all that plasma. They just dispose of it. They replace it with something called albumin. I am very excited, though. So there are new versions of these. They're not available here in the US but like in use phoresis or apheresis, where you're keeping a lot of the beneficial aspects of the plasma, but you're removing some of the, let's say microplastics. We'll take that as an example. You can filter just for microplastics. We know that micro and nanoplastics have now been found in every organ of the body. So I think that this, let's say plasma filtering, or we can call blood filtering, maybe for a simple term, will be something of the future, to be honest, because we are experiencing these incredibly high levels of toxic burden. So it's helping to remove those substances from the body.

[B]

I don't really understand what's exactly in my blood. So what's the plasma versus what else is in there? Can the two of you help me to understand a little bit more what's going on there?

[D]

Yeah, if you think of the plasma, like the liquid that transports your red blood cells and your white blood cells around the body, it also contains a lot of the messenger signaling. So like your hormones, the peptides that are sending information about your health status from tissue to tissue, from brain to gut, and also vitamins. So the plasma is really the liquid that transports everything around your body. So there's a lot of information in the plasma. So the total plasma exchange, TP removes all of it together and then replaces it with albumin, which is another, like protein containing liquid ess. Both of these, by the way, Jonathan, are used in medicine. So if someone comes into the hospital and they have horrendous poisoning from an exposure to a well known toxin. They will get hooked up. And dialysis is another great example. If your kidneys are failing, your kidneys are the organs that naturally sort your plasma out, remove the things you want to remove and excrete them. So if your kidneys have failed, a machine has to do that for you. And that's very similar. I think what's really clear now is that the filtering Kayla's talking about, that has real future for removing things like microplastic and pfas because you're not removing all of the hormones and peptides and the other parts of your plasma that are actually integral to your homeostasis. So your body likes to remain in balance. And a lot of the information it gets on how things are going is from this plasma. So when you strip it all out, I mean, it's interesting. There's not enough data on this, but we don't know how your body then goes, whoa, what just happened? Where is everything gone? And how it resets. So I'd love to hear what your markers showed for that. But yeah, I think I'm much more positive about the filtering. You know, I'm actually going to have my microplastics and PFAS measured this month and if I find that they're higher than I would like, I would not go for TP for me.

[B]

You mentioned pfas.

[D]

Yeah. Forever Chemicals. Forever chemicals are a group of. And PFAS is just one of them that are very persistent in our environment. The biggest exposure we get is from tap water, but they're found in all sorts of things like plaque, plastics. PFAS is also what makes things waterproof. So unfortunately it's a big part of our environment. But there's better data for forever chemicals and its impact on health than microplastics. Microplastics we still don't really know what's happening with, but it's like less. They have less of an irritating effect. Whereas forever chemicals are not a good thing.

[B]

So you've done this experiment, you've hooked yourself up. How do you decide whether it's a good idea and you should do it once a week or actually you tried it and it's a bad idea you described and actually I need to, to not ever do it again.

[C]

There was one significant event that I for sure knew I wanted to do it for. So I was living in LA during the LA fires and thank God we didn't have to evacuate. Our home wasn't lost. But because of all the wildfire smoke and the burning of materials that just simply shouldn't be burning. I've been doing the total toxic burden test, which is looking at environmental toxins, heavy metals, molds and mycotoxins for six years. So I'm very clear on my baseline. I do it four times a year. When I tested in the middle of the fires, it was this contamination of my body like I've never seen before. Went from having zero toxins in the high range to having over 30 toxins in the high range nearly overnight. It was unbelievable. So at that point it made enough sense because I actually, I agree with you that I think the future is the filtering. Because there are a lot of positive things in the plasma that I would like to keep. But at that point it's again, we weighed the pros and cons, like, wow, we've never seen a toxic burden like this on you. We know that these two toxins are related or sometimes correlated to a variety of negative health outcomes. And I also felt symptomatic, you know, so I was starting to get some brain fog. I had a couple little rashes developing that I had never developed before. So we decided it was the best case to do the plasma phoresis at that time. And then we retested and I saw a pretty significant decrease in all of those toxins that had been elevated. And it was immediate. Right. So this would have taken months to reduce. On my own, it would have taken months, even with other interventions like sauna, which I'm a huge fan of. But this was the quickest way to help rid those toxins from my body.

[A]

So what happened?

[C]

There was about an 11 reduction across the board. So if we took the averages. But some were more than others. Right. So maybe some heavy metals were pulling out of maybe 20%, maybe some, you know, mycotoxins being pulled out at, you know, 5%. But across the board it was about 11% reduction. Reduction, but that's in one treatment. So I thought that was quite good. And then I was able to resolve the rest of that with the next treatment session I did. I didn't do all the plasma. I did about 750mls versus I believe 2.5 liters. So I kept some of the good stuff, got rid of some of the bad stuff, but then now they've been completely eradicated from the body. I also did sauna throughout that time and some binders. So.

[D]

So how long did it take you to get from the elevated back to zero elevation?

[C]

So I tested within a three month range. So I did one right before the tpe, one right after the week after, and then one three months later. So that's impressive.

[D]

Three months is quick.

[C]

You know the other thing that I found interesting is that obviously like these TPO antibodies, right? So I've never had TPO antibodies. It's essentially a marker of your thyroid, kind of building up some defenses, attack against itself. And it's very common. For the first time when I had that toxic burden, my TPO antibodies started to increase. They went from non detectable to about 12 to about 20, which is still low. But after the therapeutic plasma exchange they went back to zero and they stayed there.

[B]

What you're saying is you've been measuring yourself four times a year for the previous six years. You were living in la, then they had these fires. I think everyone around the world has seen this on tv. And you're saying that there was lots of chemicals in the air that wouldn't normally be and that's not from the burning trees?

[C]

Well, I think some of the molds and mycotoxins were probably from the burning fires. But then a lot of the environmental toxins and forever chemicals and bpa, my BPA went through the roo, you know, that was, you know, so many plastics melting businesses. So yeah, there were a lot of different toxins that were in my body that had not been there before.

[A]

What about supplements?

[B]

How many supplements are you taking each day?

[C]

Yeah, I mean I take around 30 or so. It changes though. So I'm constantly amending my supplementation and I do my supplements in kind of a unique way. So I think about supplementation in three buckets. So I have what I call my foundational supplements or things that I'll probably, probably always take. So a high quality Omega 3, a magnesium and a vitamin D depending on how much sun exposure. Obviously you should test your levels of vitamin D, but I aim to keep mine between about 60 and 70, which is higher than the standard ranges. But then I use something called a micronutrient test to actually determine what I'm deficient in. So instead of just randomly guessing of what supplementation I should be taking or anything of influencer posts on social media, I look at my blood and, and I look at the cellular and serum levels of the nutrients. So am I low in vitamin C or B vitamins or aminos or minerals? And it'll actually show me. So I do that test as well every quarter and then I amend my supplementation. I also, you know, have gut tests, like let's say I have a Few findings on my gut test that will be in my protocol supplements. And then I have a third bucket of what I call longevity supplements. So these are things I'm testing things like NMN or nr, spermidine, urolithin, a different compounds like that.

[D]

And not everyone has access to this kind of micronutrient testing, but that's a very smart way to do it.

[A]

And how do you figure out whether.

[B]

This is good or maybe even potentially harmful? How do you know?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I really believe in the testing.

[D]

Right.

[C]

So we'll incorporate the intervention, let's say this supplementation for 1/4 and then we retest. And are the levels adequate now? Are they optimal or are they too high? And then obviously we can, you know, bring that back. I mean, also you can self report, like, are you feeling better? Are you having more energy, Are you sleeping better? And then, you know, I have at home, you know, kind of, let's say, diagnostics or biomarkers that I look at as well.

[D]

Do you change your diet as well? So if you see that there's a deficiency, for example, and vitamin C is a good example, do you then, yeah, look to increase vitamin C intake from fresh fruits and vegetables, for example?

[C]

Yeah, I certainly try to put a food first approach whenever, you know, practically possible. So certainly making changes to my diet, nutrition all the time, I, I aim to get about 50 different plant species per week.

[D]

50 is great. We love that.

[C]

Yeah, so that's why sometimes it's dirty, sometimes it's not. Those are also incorporating like some sleep supplementation, things of that nature. But, yeah, it varies.

[B]

Do you ever worry that some of these supplements might interact in some way with each other and cause a problem?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, it's a really valid concern. I think we need more information on this. There's some apps being developed and I am starting to try to play around with them a bit. But it's all new. Right. Like, people haven't been taking many supplements for a long period of time.

[D]

So this is fascinating because it's a new area of medicine. So polypharmacy has been a very longstanding problem in medicine. People get prescribed too many medications and then they interact with each other and they cause more of a problem. Right. And now there's polysupplementation. So now we're seeing more and more patients coming in with liver problems, kidney problems. So oftentimes people also don't think about if they're taking a prescription drug. Some supplements will interact with it or decrease increases of efficacy.

[C]

Yeah, I agree with that, I will say we do monitor, like my liver and kidney function, you know, constantly. I'm kind of trialing the rapamycin protocol from the Vibrant study. It's not peer reviewed, the study's not done yet. But I'm very excited about the potential to delay ovarian aging with this rapamycin. Have you seen that? So I am trialing that, but that's really the only the pharmaceutical that I'm using.

[B]

I'd like now to start to talk about actionable advice. I understand the two of you had.

[A]

A little chat and have come up.

[B]

With five topics that we can cover, Is that right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So what's the first going to be?

[D]

The first one's kind of a new one for us, Jonathan. It's oral health.

[C]

It's not super popular yet, but it should be. I mean, we have known for a long time the link between brain health and oral health. Right. And cardiovascular health and oral health. So I think it's really important that we don't just gloss over the oral microbiome. So, I mean, I do do a test. It's a oral microbiome test, just like a gut microbiome test, but just the basics, right. Ensuring you're seeing your dentist as, as often as you can. Getting the proper cleanings, the checkups, flossing. I mean, it's so boring, but it's so important.

[D]

So important.

[C]

The obviously adequate brushing. A few more advanced things from like an oral protocol that I do is I do a little bit of coconut oil pulling. You take coconut oil, organic coconut oil, and you swish it around the mouth. It can help with any bad boy bacteria. Also, it can potentially whiten the teeth.

[A]

So and you do that after you brush your teeth?

[C]

Yes, after. And then I kind of like do a quick re. Brush at the end because it will leave a bit of a film. But yes, and I do that like once a week and not on a daily basis. I also use, you know, a nanny hydroxyapatite toothpaste with prebiotics in it. So it's feed your good guys. So looking at the quality of the toothpaste for oral health, the other thing I'm excited about though is red light therapy for the gums or the mouth.

[D]

Mouth.

[C]

It looks like a mouth guard and you just slip it in. And so gum inflammation is a very common thing. Right. So that helps to. We know red light therapy, good for inflammation. So that's another part of my oral protocol. And the last thing I will say, I'm not sure if you have These in the uk, but here in the us, we have something called a biological dentist. So it's like the functional medicine of dentistry, right? It's like root cause, whole body, they do really interesting scans. They do something called a cone beam scan. And so I was having a chat with one of the biological dentists here, his name's Dr. Dom, and he was explaining this massive link between even some cancers and cavitations in the mouth. So the cavitation's like an ongoing infection in your mouth. And, you know, I'm not saying it's necessarily causation, but it seems that, you know, sometimes when they scan the mouth, they find these so very important to just take a deeper look. And standard dentistry doesn't always look for those things.

[D]

It's fascinating because actually, sort of oral health and specifically gingivitis, so gum disease has been linked to increased risk of heart attacks for decades. It's not new science, but I think it is becoming more popular. And it's interesting because whenever you speak to people who've really suffered with their gum health and they lose teeth later in life, they often say, I wish someone had told me just how important it is to just brush your teeth and floss. It makes the world of difference, Jonathan. And what's beautiful about oral health is when we think about our GI tract. You know, the mouth, the throat, the stomach, it's all one tube. So what's becoming clearer now with the advances in science is that when you detect certain dysbiosis, so bad microbes in the mouth, it often correlates with bad microbes in the gut. Everything's talking to each other. And when you have higher inflammation. So bleeding gums, sore gums, swollen gums, it's a massive red flag. I first got really into this, looking at pregnancy. So women who are pregnant and have bleeding gums and gender biscuits have a much higher risk of preterm birth. It's worth knowing your mouth. Loving it. Go see your dental hygienist. It is worth it.

[A]

What's next on the list?

[D]

So next on the list, we have sleep. I mean, we could do a whole podcast on sleep, I think. So tell us your sleep protocol.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I really build my life around sleep, you know, So I go to bed at 8 o' clock every night, wake up naturally around like 4, 4:30, somewhere around there. But I have a bit of an intense sleep protocol, so I'll actually start in the morning. So I get morning sun to really, like, optimize my circadian rhythm. So tells my Brain and body, what time it is. Because obviously light and food are two major influences on knowing what time it is. So get morning light, watch evening sunset if I can to really just anchor that circadian rhythm. Um, I stop eating at 4pm But I would definitely say at least stopping eating two to three hours prior to sleep. Because we know that if you're eating food it's not telling your body it's time to go to bed. It's obviously time to eat. So it can suppress your melatonin production. Also if you are eating these meals late at night, it can potentially keep you out of the deeper stages of sleep, like deep in REM because you're digesting your food. So eating early, super important. I keep my room completely dark. So dark room, cool room. And then getting your resting heart rate as low as possible, you know, relaxing before bed. I think this is a huge part that people miss. We have to relax because if we go to bed stressed we're not going to be getting the hikes while we're sleep.

[B]

And how do you achieve that?

[C]

So I love to do some breath work. Also like to take a long walk with my husband in nature. Really like wind down. So after dinner we're off our phones, we are doing very non stimulating activities. So not watching something scary or anxiety inducing. So we just try to make it very calm at night. Sometimes a warm bath, Sometimes I'll do a sauna about two hours prior to bed. I switch with my sauna sometimes either right after exercise to continue those benefits or about two hours prior to bed. You don't want to do it too close to bed though because it does increase your heart.

[D]

So having a hot bath before bed or if you don't have access to sauna, that change in temperature from being very hot to cool gives your brain that sign, oh, it's time to go to sleep.

[C]

To tie it back really quickly to the women's aspect. So you know, I think the research suggests that women need between about 11 and 20 minutes more of sleep. I believe the Aura data set, which is obviously a massive data set, suggests about between 20 and 30 minutes more of sleep. And just for me, my n of 1, depending on where I am in my cycle, if I'm in the like late luteal phase or early follicular phase, I sometimes need even more sleep than that. So I think that has been a big learning for me doing this protocol as it relates to sleep that yes, the science supports we need more sleep, but it might be even more than.

[D]

We originally amazing and Our Zoe studies, Jonathan, showed very clearly that eating closer to bedtime does impact sleep quality. And actually just making sure that you don't eat. Most people go to bed between half 10 and 11pm so later than you. But so not eating past 9pm Has a really important impact on your, your sleep quality and your metabolic health the next day.

[C]

Yeah, and high quality sleep, I mean outside of all the negative side effects, right, like increased hunger hormone ghrelin, reduced natural killer cells that are fighting off cancer, reduced immune system, you know, higher blood pressure, all of those. But also you're going to have, you know, less adherence to any nutritional plan potentially the next day because you're, you have these cravings and you're hungry and you didn't sleep well. I mean, you know, we've all been there. So it's like if you just walk away from this podcast with one thing and that's going to bed early tonight and getting high quality sleep, it'll be a game changer. And for women, you know, it's so tightly regulated with their hormones as well. So very important.

[D]

Also, anyone listening who's a new parent, there's also very good long term data to show that you can have periods of poor sleep and you do recover.

[B]

And so what's number three on the list?

[D]

Exercise. So I would actually love to understand your exercise protocol and how you treat exercise in this context. Context.

[C]

So we know exercises, you know, if there was like one pill for longevity it would be exercise. But we think about my protocol in hitting every area of longevity. So we want to think, of course, cardiovascular health. And a couple metrics to measure on that is like VO2 max. Right. We know that VO2 max, the higher your VO2 max, it is actually pretty well correlated with how healthy you are, but also potentially how long you would live. So we have cardiovascular training, then we have zone two training, but it's a little bit difficult. So about 150 minutes of that per week, one to two higher intensity zone two trainings. Also I love to track this on my Oura ring. So I have like cardiovascular age in my Oura ring and I took my cardiovascular health from negative 6 and a half to negative 11 and a half.

[B]

Could you help me to understand what that means to go from minus six and a half to minus 11 of something?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's not a perfect metric, but Oura ring will give you an estimate of cardiovascular health. Maybe you know exactly how they do it. I know, it's the pulse wave, I believe.

[D]

Yeah. So they actually Use the data from the Oura ring to try and work out what your VO2 Max would be if you did the VO2 Max test. And it's a good way to understand cardiovascular age. So Kayla's was already at six and a half years younger.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And got it to 11 years younger. And you'd want your heart to be as young as possible. Right. It will keep you alive for longer.

[C]

Yeah. So that's cardiovascular training. And then of course, we have strength training. So I strength train about four to five times per week, release focus, focusing on progressive overload, meaning adding more weight to get stronger. I measure my muscle mass, I look at my bone density, but I'm doing, you know, compound lifting. Of course, if you're just starting out, work with a trainer or watch videos. I'm very glad that we're past the days of like these tiny little weights. You know, I was in the gym, you know, doing some presses this morning with like 35, 40 pound weights. I mean, I'm trying to go. And, you know, I see it in my grip strength. I mean, my grip strength right now is £100, so.

[D]

And interestingly, grip strength is a really good marker of health. So we use it usually in older populations. If you measure grip strength, you get a sense of how much frailty that person has. So using it earlier in life to really see whether you should pay more attention is a good idea.

[C]

Stability, mobility and flexibility, as we age, we will also lose in these areas. So I'm doing balance work, I'm doing small joint movements, mobility, so wanting to keep those also as optimal and young and healthy.

[B]

Is there anything different that you would be thinking about as a woman as you're thinking about exercise versus, like the advice that might be vegan to everybody?

[C]

This is a super interesting topic right now because the Internet is very divided on either cycle syncing, which means you would upregulate training in the follicular phase because we have more estrogen. You would probably do your max at the ovulation phase and then you would downregulate training in the luteal phase because, you know, our progesterone increases, we're a bit more sleepy. But the way I do it is by my data. So if we were downregulating our training for half of the month, every single month, then we're going to miss out on those longevity benefits. Right. Consistency is so key with exercise. So what I do is I wear a wearable of some sort at home and also self report. You know, I don't have PMS symptoms. If I did, I'm sure that I might want to downregulate more often. But for me, I feel good. So I'm not making too many treatments, but I think this is an important conversation because I think it should be more bio individual. There's also women that are not ovulating, you know, in ovulatory cycles, so then estrogen is higher the whole month. So, you know, maybe they're downregulating and not needing to. But I also think as it relates to programming exercise, the bone density and the muscle mass, Right. So women have less muscle mass originally, so we need to be focusing on adding that on. So I think for women getting a DEXA scan, looking at the amount of, you know, muscle mass you have, and then strategically planning your exercise programming. I do jumping, a lot of jumping for bones. I do jump, roping, box jumps because I'm trying to load the bone. Same thing with, you know, heavy lifting. Also, also loads the bone. So I think that would be a couple of unique takes that I would consider as it relates to female exercise programming.

[D]

And I think what you just touched on, Kayla, about personalizing exercise. So lots of the scientists we've worked with, including Stuart Phillips, have done good randomized controlled trials that show that actually the best way for a woman to understand how hard she should go in the gym is just to listen to her body. Move your body every day if you can, but you don't need to sync to your cycle to adjust your training program. The bone mineral density is a huge thing. Another thing I think I would add to that is to really think about your pelvic floor. So making sure that you're engaging your pelvic floor muscles with exercise in a really healthy way. Maybe get some training, go to, like, a Pilates class with someone who's well versed in this. It can really help to support pelvic floor health for the rest of your life. If you have children, you'll need that pelvic floor strength and it really serves you later in life. So start that as early as possible and integrate that into how you breathe, like when you lift heavy weights. Making sure you're engaging properly, properly is a. Is a really useful thing to think about for women specifically as well, adding.

[C]

It to my protocol.

[D]

Oh, there you go.

[A]

What's next on the list?

[D]

Diet and nutrition.

[B]

I'm not surprised. There would be many Zoe podcasts that aren't going to touch on diet at all.

[A]

What does your overall diet look like overall?

[C]

The diet is Mediterranean. So I've found that to be the most science backed for longevity. And I also mentioned the 50 plant species. So really trying to focus on getting diverse diet with organic plants when possible. Biodynamic, you know, the cleanest that I can. I do consume meat in small quantities like grass fed, grass finished. I actually do sometimes more so load that in the early phase of my cycle when I am, you know, menstruating because the iron. But lots of wild caught fatty fish like salmon. I love to rotate the proteins too like maybe someday a branzino, then a wild salmon. Lots of avocados, olive oil, sprouted nuts and seeds, seeds, lots of blueberries. Love blueberries, blackberries, definitely no ultra processed foods. And I focus on the highest quality I can get. And then I also use things like the micronutrient test and there's also an app called Chronometer so you can plug in exactly what you're eating. So it'll not only give you your macronutrients like protein, fat and carbs etc, but also give you an estimate of micronutrients. So I do try to optimize for both of course, micro and macro macronutrients in my diet.

[B]

That sounds pretty yummy.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And I also make all of the meals for my husband and I at home. I have in different phases of my life had very similar meals on a day to day basis. But from what I understand that's not optimal for gut diversity and you know, overall gut health. So I also try to do local as much as possible in small farms near me. So I try to be really thoughtful. But I also want to enjoy the process of making the food and enjoying it. I mean there's even something to it when you're smelling your own food cooking, your digestive enzymes increasing because you're making it yourself, which is better for the nutrient uptake. Also relaxing while I'm doing that so I can have better nutrient absorption.

[D]

So there's really elegant science that's been done looking at how time spent sharing meals at tables correlates with health outcomes across the world.

[C]

Love that.

[D]

So countries like the US and the UK that spend very little time tend to have worse like dietary patterns, whereas those countries where they, you know, take an hour and a half for lunch tend to have better diets. It's a correlation of course, but it just goes, goes to show that when we treat food in the way that we should, which is an essential part of how we live and how healthy we are, but also a source of connection with the people we love, it helps us to actually slow down and focus on one thing at a time. So something we're very passionate about, Zoe, is mindful eating. And it's like this idea that we need to give this food the proper attention that it deserves. What are we putting into our bodies? How is it nourishing us? How is it helping our gut microbiome to thrive? And so. So what you just described is so good. And the seasonality, trying to get some local produce, that helps to switch things up, helps to get more diversity in. You haven't mentioned fiber.

[C]

Oh, that's okay.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

No, actually, in my brain, I was like as soon as I forgot to mention that. So, yeah, I aim for actually quite high level of fiber, about 40 to 50 grams per day.

[D]

And that's excellent because we have good data from RCTs that shows that there doesn't seem to be an upper limit to fiber. So one RCT from that wonderful podcast we did with the scientists who looked at the African Heritage Diet diet, they had 90 grams a day and saw even better health outcomes. So, you know, I always say 30 grams a day is a minimum recommendation. So going above that is perfect. And the omega 3 rich, fatty fish, we always want to encourage people to include whole grains and legumes. So these are the beans, the peas and the lentils. They're really nutritious foods. So nutrient dense, diverse diet.

[C]

Another thing I didn't mention was fermented foods, of course. So I do have. That's kind of like the base of my plate for each meal is. Is like a protein, a fermented food, some sort of usually like legume or lentil and then a huge, like, you know, slot of plants, you know, of some sort or vegetables. But also, yeah, I've really enjoyed the process of making the food. And it's also kind of a love language, you know?

[D]

It is. And it's a skill. It's like a life skill to be able to cook delicious food. Right.

[C]

Yeah. I just started making. I got excited about making seed crackers. I also love. There's a product, actually. It's called Zen Basil. Have you ever heard of this?

[D]

I've seen it here in Palm Beach.

[C]

Yeah. It's like double the amount of fiber. So it's a basil seed instead of a chia seed, which people love for fiber. So I've been doing basil seed pudding. Tastes amazing and great way to get in a lot of fiber.

[B]

I don't want to wrap up without asking Kayla about the one piece of advice you'd give to a listener who is hearing this and saying, oh, I'd like to sort of start on my longevity journey and like, what is, what's the one thing that you would say they should do first and maybe they could set out to do, you know, even today.

[C]

Can I have a small preface before that? You know, we've talked a lot about these advanced therapies, right? And kind of like interesting devices and tools, but without a doubt, if you master the basics, you're going to be healthier than, you know, 99% of people, right? So start slow, start easy, master those basics. Social connection, we didn't talk too much about, but a little bit about social connection, stress management, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and you will be absolutely thriving. So if you want to start with sleep tonight, I think that's a really great place. And then maybe add on exercise in the morning.

[B]

Beautiful.

[A]

I would like to do a quick.

[B]

Summary like we always do on the show, and please correct me if I got any of this wrong.

[A]

So I start with the fact that.

[B]

You think you can live till you're 150, which I think is amazing and as a goal is pretty spectacular. And you're very dedicated to get there. So there is a submarine chamber in your house that you go into regularly. You have literally filtered the plasma out of your blood in order to remove, like, these forever chemicals and plastics and things like that, which is really amazing. And despite that, actually, I think that there's a lot that we've been talking about that feels very irrelevant, relevant to me, for example, who's definitely doesn't have the dedication to go that far, nor probably room in his house for a submarine chamber and talk about like, these five core things that actually seem quite similar to things that we touch on many of the different podcasts. So the first was really interesting that the oral health was so high on the list. And we did do a podcast on this a while ago talking about just how important that was for risks and things like Alzheimer's. It's fascinating to me that that's so high. Then sleep. You have this like, very structured routine, right, where you're saying you're going to bed at 8pm, you're not staying up late watching Netflix. That's just keeping you up for no good reason. You've got the discipline and therefore waking up quite early in the morning, but just sort of naturally, because you've had enough sleep, really focusing on getting morning sun to get you going. All of these things that feel in line, relatively short, therefore, period of time that you're eating so it's not food at 4pm so probably about 8 hours or something that you're eating somewhere about around there.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Going outside and you talked about that has been a very important part also of like getting ready to sleep and therefore not shutting yourself away from the outside environment, but embracing it. Then the fourth thing you talked about was exercise, how important that is and how that's even more important probably for a woman if you're listening to this than it is for a man, because you have to think about things like bone density, pelvic floor exercises, but a lot about muscle mass and how do you do all this stuff. And embracing seen the idea that strength as well as cardio is. Is really important. And I understand from Federica that there were three of you in the gym this morning. So the two of you are clearly serious about doing this. And I wasn't in the gym, so I apologize. And then lastly, of course, we touched on food. You know, 50 plants a week I love because we talk a lot at Zoe about like hitting 30 plants a week being the thing that unlocks like really big benefits for your microbiome. But of course, that isn't a ceiling.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I track it with my app all the time and I'm normally actually around that 50 level, which I feel very.

[D]

Jonathan, good for.

[C]

You guys define it as like plant species. Right? So it can be plants or like seeds or spices.

[D]

Right.

[C]

And herbs.

[D]

Yeah, it's important to include. They all have their own benefits.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I love. That's one of the things I love actually is tracking.

[A]

I love to hear fermented food that.

[B]

Would make my co founder, Tim Spector, very happy recipe. More than 40 grams of fiber. Like, these things sound very similar, I think, to what we talk about here. You mentioned you do have some meat and you're also thinking about timing that to do with your own cycle. But then I love also talking about this sort of social nature of this that you're like, you're cooking the food, you're having the food with your husband. So there's this sort of social nature that comes up a lot. And the last thing I learned is that there's something better than a chia seed, and I think it's called a basil seed. And Federica, I'm very disappointed that you haven't already tried it.

[D]

I'm just gonna have to get someone check it out. I need to find out what's in it.

[B]

I expect you to report back and we will talk about it on the next podcast.

[D]

Wonderful.

[A]

At Zoe, we never stop being curious about how people respond to food. Recently, we asked thousands of people about breakfast, what they eat, and how they feel about it. Their answers may surprise you. Over 70% told us that their breakfast is balanced, yet only 6% get enough fiber. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that's not enough to be balanced, so it's no wonder that only 16% felt energetic after eating. And more than half of these thousands of people were hungry again within three hours. Clearly, breakfast is broken. But what if you could get a breakfast that actually supports your energy and keeps you feeling full? Daily 30 Our 30 plant gut supplement is a simple addition to your regular breakfast breakfast. It's one small fix that doesn't require you to overhaul your current morning routine. Daily 30 is designed by Zoe Gut Health scientists and features ingredients that support energy, gut health, digestion, daily nutrition, immunity, and skin and hair. Deliciously crunchy, you can sprinkle it on eggs, yogurt and berries, avocado toast and even pancakes. It tastes great on lunches and other meals, too. As Professor Tim Spector discussed on this podcast recently, the wrong breakfast can lead to grabbing sugary snacks throughout the day, so it's crucial to start building good habits at the start. Get your breakfast fix and try the new [e-mail] Daily30 Our scientists recently released the latest version of Daily30, which now includes even more plants, including raspberries, goji berries, fermented green tea, kombucha, kale, and marine algae. Go to zoe.comdaily30 to get started. Started. Try it for a week and see how you feel.