by - Kayla Barnes-Lentz spends all day optimizing her health to try to live to 150 years old.
- She also has her own company, so she has to fit her biohacking around her busy workday.
- She has a 2.5-hour morning routine, takes regular breaks for biohacking, and goes to bed at 8:30 p.m.
From the moment Kayla Barnes-Lentz wakes up, her day is all about improving her health.
Barnes-Lentz, 33, told Business Insider that her extensive biohacking routine helped her push back her biological age by 11 years. Biological age is a measure of how healthy a person’s cells and organs are, but scientists disagree on the definition.
As co-owner of a longevity clinic in Cleveland and host of a podcast on health optimization, she considers this routine part of her job.
“While at work, I have optimized my office for optimal productivity, and I implement health optimization practices throughout the day,” she said.
Barnes-Lentz’s habits are not all scientifically proven. But she and other biohackers, like millionaire entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, are taking their chances on experimental treatments to live as long as possible. Barnes-Lentz wants to reach 150, while Johnson’s mantra is “don’t die.”
Barnes-Lentz and her husband, Warren Lentz, in their sauna. Masha Maltsava
She is inspired by naturopathy, which is based on folk remedies rather than evidence-based medicine. Barnes-Lentz and her clinic’s medical team use scientific literature as “guidance” for what she describes as her “health protocols.” She said she has also hired female PhD students to “dig into the literature” on women’s health and longevity to inform her female-focused protocols, which she sells.
For the average person, experts say good basic knowledge can make a big difference in longevity. For example, a study published last year found that a healthy diet can extend lifespan by up to ten years, and Nathan K. LeBrasseur, a physiologist at the Mayo Clinic, previously told BI that spending just 3% of your day on exercise can contribute to a healthy life. aging.
Barnes-Lentz explained how she incorporates biohacking into running her company.
Before she goes to work, she spends 2.5 hours on biohacking
Barnes-Lentz’s morning routine lasts 2.5 hours. She starts with what she describes as an “oral protocol,” which includes tongue scraping, water flossing, and oil pulling. Tongue scraping and flossing are widely recognized as effective ways to reduce bacteria and plaque in the mouth. But there isn’t enough evidence that oil pulling, an Ayurvedic practice that involves swishing oil around the mouth, is good enough for oral health to be recommended by the American Dental Association.
She is also doing her first round of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, a non-invasive treatment that sends bursts of electrical current through soft tissue throughout the body.
“I think of our bodies as a battery, and PEMF can increase your charge,” she said.
Barnes-Lentz uses a PEMF machine several times a day. Magdalena Wosinska
There is some evidence that PEMF could be useful in treating osteoarthritis and bone fractures, but more evidence is needed to confirm this, according to the authors of a 2023 study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Barnes-Lentz also exercises, gets some sun exposure to regulate her circadian rhythm, spends time in a sauna, showers and measures her biometrics (body composition, grip strength, lung health and blood pressure) before breakfast.
She does red light therapy while she works
Barnes-Lentz works from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days and manages her longevity business, podcast and social media accounts, including her Instagram account, which has 383,000 followers. She tries to take 10,000 steps a day and move her body as much as possible.
To do this, she takes calls while she walks and takes breaks every 90 minutes to walk or do something she considers a biohack, like standing on a full-body vibration plate.
Barnes-Lentz standing on her full-body vibration plate. Magdalena Wosinska
Even when she does desk work, she said she was biohacking. This means that you sit on a ‘biohacking office chair’, which promotes good posture, and wearing a red light therapy hood to make her hair grow faster and thicker. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, several large randomized trials have found that red light therapy helps regrowth hair and increases thickness and length.
In her office, she has an air filtration system and uses natural light instead of LEDs to avoid interrupting her circadian rhythm. In a 2023 research paper published in the journal Frontiers in Photonics, experts agreed that blue light from LEDs can disrupt sleep when people are repeatedly exposed to it for long periods of time at night.
Barnes-Lentz also inhales moist air using a NanoVi machine – which is advertised as a means of repairing proteins in the body damaged by oxidative stress – to improve her cognition and brain health. Research shows that oxidative stress, caused by factors such as sunlight, alcohol and certain medications, plays a role in aging and the development of neurodegenerative diseases.
A small 2022 study suggested it could help improve cellular health and cognition in the elderly. It was published in the International Journal of Molecular Science and involved four people with cognitive disabilities who used a NanoVi for twelve weeks. However, more research is needed.
A cold dip during lunch
Barnes-Lentz and her husband take cold jumps as part of their daily biohacking routines. Masha Maltsava
“My afternoon routine consists of a full-body vibration plate and a cold plunge, which gives me a natural increase in energy, followed by a hyperbaric chamber session,” Barnes-Lentz said.
She does five one-hour sessions in a hyperbaric chamber every week, using the time to catch up on messages on her phone. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers contain a pure, pressurized form of the gas to increase its absorption into the body. They are used to treat conditions such as burns, wounds, skin and bone infections, and hearing and vision loss. Small studies have shown that they may have anti-aging benefits as well, although the FDA has not approved them for this use.
After work she goes for a walk and optimizes her sleep schedule
Barnes-Lentz and her husband eat dinner around 5 p.m., more than three hours before going to bed at 8:30 p.m., to help them sleep.
She knows that a varied diet is good for the intestinal microbiome and therefore has a variety of organic seasonal vegetables and fruit delivered every week. The structure of her meals is always the same: vegetables, high-quality protein, healthy fats and carbohydrates that won’t spike her blood sugar levels too much a few times a week, she said.
After dinner, the couple takes a 50-minute walk in the hills around their LA home to aid digestion, catch up on their days, and get more zone two cardio in.
“Then we start our relaxation routine, which may involve more PEMF or relaxing together. At sunset, we make sure the house is only red light to promote the release of melatonin,” she said.
Some studies have shown that using artificial red light at night can improve sleep quality, but a 2023 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry found no evidence that red light increases melatonin secretion and can, in some cases, increase alertness .
“I’ve worked very hard to build the life that I have. I’m incredibly blessed and very fortunate that I get to move my body and do all these things. And I’m excited to see where that leads in the future Barnes-Lentz said.