Biohacker Asked Husband to Do Health Tests Before They Started Dating

• Kayla Barnes-Lentz, a self-described biohacker, wants to live to 150.
• Biohackers can use experimental methods to try to extend their lives, taking the longevity trend to extremes.
• Barnes-Lentz found a partner who shares her devotion to longevity.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kayla Barnes-Lentz, a 33-year-old longevity clinic owner and podcaster living in LA. It has been edited for length and clarity.

From the second I wake up, my day is built around optimizing my health, and I feel better now at 33 than I did at 18.

I own a longevity and precision medicine clinic in Cleveland, where we identify the root cause of chronic disease in clients, and help high performers who want to extend their healthspans. I build my biohacking protocols into my workday, such as by having walking meetings, using a whole-body vibration plate for lymphatic drainage, or combining a sauna with red light therapy at midday.

I was initially interested in biohacking because I wanted to perform better and work long hours to move my business forward. Once I started to see the changes in how I was feeling by just eating more organic foods, I really went all in. I have a very Type A personality and I just got obsessed with human optimization.

So, I knew it would take someone special to be my partner because not everyone is interested in living like I do.

I wanted to find a partner who prioritized their health

Just before my husband and I met on an app called Raya, I had finally reached a place where I felt like I could date. I was so in love with my work that love just wasn’t really a priority. I had spent most of my life focused on building a business, my health, and optimizing my routines.

But when I met Warren, it was very clear that he was the one. We matched on Raya in May last year, he proposed in August, and we got married in the September.

I took our first video call in my clinic, so it felt natural to bring up health as I showed him our IV lounge, hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and where we do cryotherapy.

I knew he was very into health, too. He was already posting about it on Instagram and our first in-person date was at a really healthy grocery store called Erewhon.

I asked him for health test results really early on because we were excited to be able to optimize our health together. He initially sent me his full annual physical results, which showed hormone levels and all of the basic stuff. Then I sent him a bunch of additional tests to do, including for gut health, genetics, biomarkers, and a total toxic burden test, which looks at levels of heavy metals, molds, and environmental toxins in the body.

Everything came back really good. There wouldn’t have been a hard cut-off if his blood pressure had been a certain level or anything like that, because he had so many of the things that I was looking for. He was ambitious, we shared faith, he had an interest in health, and we wanted the same things for our futures. He felt so perfect for me, and I would have been able to help him fix whatever issues we did find in testing.

He was definitely mastering the basics before, like diet and nutrition, but I’ve helped him make changes to significantly improve his labs since he sent me those first results, such as going to bed much earlier, doing cold plunges every morning, eating 100% organic, spending time in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and sleeping in a Faraday cage. He calls me the “Chief Health Officer” of our relationship.

Some people think that is very unromantic, but anyone who knows us knows that we are so in love. We just happened to connect over our passion for health.

I want to have as much time with my husband as possible

We got married at 33 and 36, which is a little later in life, so I want to have as much time with him as humanly possible. I just want to live as long as my husband does. My goal is that both of us make it to 150.

A lot of people in the biohacking industry are kind of siloed on their own, so it’s nice to show that you can have a beautiful marriage and do this together.

Warren has also shown me how to relax a little bit more. I always prioritized very systematic de-stressing, like breathwork and being in nature. Now we’re doing something that I’ve never done before: sometimes we’ll turn on something relaxing on the TV and cuddle a bit before bed.

We also have biweekly marriage optimization meetings. We take notes on what we want to talk about, and Warren makes an agenda.

We start with compliments, then there’s “the optimization section,” which covers what we can each do more or less of to improve the relationship, and then we close with compliments again to make it a positive meeting.

We discuss anything that’s on our minds, from nutrition and trying a new therapy to emotions, which has been very beneficial.

Getting married is one of the best biohacks I’ve done because it has given me a really incredible sense of security and peace.