Kayla Barnes is the most measured woman in history. She's reversed her age by 13 years, so her chronological age is 35 and her biological age is 22, and she and her husband Warren plan to be the first couple to reach 150 together. She's known for living an extremely low tox lifestyle, so in my quest to learn everything I can about building a healthy home, I thought she'd be the perfect person to learn from. She gave me a full tour and walked me through the ten essential categories that have made the biggest difference for her.
Water
Water is where she starts, because it's one of the most foundational things.
Drinking water goes through an AquaTru reverse osmosis filter, which she calls the highest level of filtration in water filters because it strips everything out. From there it goes into a restructuring device; she has two and picks one. For hydrogen water she uses tablets or a small hydrogen device.
I asked about hydrogen water directly, because people ask me about it constantly and I haven't done the research. She says there are hundreds of studies on it, and that although she got called out for posting about it early on, the research has proven itself. It won't change your life, but it has antioxidant components that are beneficial, and while it wouldn't be her first investment, for her the benefits are there. She's careful about what she claims: she can't say it increases energy like crazy, but her labs show a very low toxic burden she can back up with data, which she puts down to everything she does in her home and her sauna use.
The whole home system is new: carbon block filtration, restructuring, and UV light. She doesn't know that they need reverse osmosis for the whole house, because it wastes a ton of water, and thought carbon block was better for the planet long term. For drinking water, cooking and coffee, she'll have a separate under-sink reverse osmosis system. Her reasoning on restructuring is that filtering water that highly strips out the natural minerals, and she's upfront that bioenergetics is an area she's interested in but isn't an expert in. She also says to test what you're expecting, and planned to test the water to confirm the system does its job.
If a whole home system isn't possible on budget, or you're in an apartment, she used shower filters when she lived in one. Showering creates steam, so you breathe in whatever contaminants are in the water, and she says the lungs have very minimal defences against that. You can also absorb toxins through the skin, she says.
What got her started
She started her first company at 17 or 18 and knew she'd have to upgrade her biology to work as hard as she'd need to. In 2018, getting a clinic ready meant deciding which labs and services to offer, which gave her access to basically every lab in the world overnight. She calls herself quite a type A personality, saw room to improve, and has been posting her results publicly for seven or eight years.
Her first toxin test was a light bulb moment. She was already eating completely organic and had no idea she had those exposures. Then thousands of patients came through the clinic assuming they'd have low toxic burdens, and she says none of them did. Zero toxins in the high range on a comprehensive total toxic burden test is, in her experience, incredibly rare. Her read on the data is that these toxins are adding to our levels of chronic disease, and that they matter uniquely for women because some of them mimic estrogen.
Air
Air is the category she told me is the biggest, and where everyone should start.
An Airthings unit sits at the centre, with smaller sub-units in every single room feeding into it, so she can pull up the whole house on her phone. The readings she showed me: radon at 7, PM2.5 at zero, VOCs very low at 73. She called that almost unheard of, and said most homes are in the hundreds according to the building biologists she speaks with.
The house has two HVAC units. Her advice is to go as high a MERV filtration as your system will handle; hers goes up to 14 and she's running an 11. She changes filters every three months rather than the typical six month recommendation, because by then she can see VOCs creeping up on her monitors, though she notes it's a new home, and construction dust likely clogged things up faster. I pointed out MERV filters are cheap to swap, and she agreed it isn't a big expense.
An ERV system pulls fresh air in from outside, and she keeps the doors open as often as she can, because air in homes is typically dirtier than air outside. Whole home dehumidification is the one thing they don't have yet, but will before next summer. Her rule is not to let humidity get above about 50%, because that's when mold can start to grow, and she points out mold turns up where you never see it: inside walls, in a bathroom, in a floor.
They run nine Jaspr units, which she's specific are air scrubbers rather than air purifiers. The one we stood next to read PM2.5 of four and called the air quality excellent. They only tick up when she's cooking, so she keeps one as close to the range as possible, and says a great range matters for the same reason. If you want the maximum, she says to size air purification to the cubic feet of your home; her ceilings are about 30 feet, which is why there are nine. Two sit in the bedroom on night mode so there's no extra light, on fan speed one during the day and three at night, partly for the sound and partly for higher purification. She says that room is zero VOC at night.
I've made a whole video about how to find the best air purifier, including how most of them are a scam because of the way they market. Jaspr is the sponsor of this video, and they're my favorite brand I've worked with: legendary customer service, lifetime warranty, built like tanks, and they look good enough that they don't ruin a home's aesthetic.
Where to start when it feels like too much
I know this can feel like a lot. Most of my friends are up for making the changes, but the honest reaction is that you don't know where to start and everything's killing you. So I asked her.
Her answer was to choose two to three things per month or per week, whatever is manageable, and work through them by category. Sleep first, so go to bed earlier. Then exercise, two to three times a week for 20 to 30 minutes, which she says has been shown to be beneficial. Then two strength training sessions and around 8,000 steps a day. Keep adding on and let it build. Then for the home, get one AquaTru and one air filter and build from there.
Floors and furniture
The floors are naturally grounded, so with shoes and socks off you're grounding through the floor itself. They're natural European oak, no man-made material, real wood.
There isn't much furniture, and that's deliberate. Rugs can harbour mold, bacteria and toxins, and a lot of furniture materials off-gas VOCs. She has one rug, organic wool. Their furniture is custom made, arriving mid December, from natural untreated materials: real wood, wool, linen, cotton, organics.
Asked whether there were brands she'd recommend, she was blunt that there honestly aren't many, which is why they went custom. The closest she names is CB2's eco line, better but not perfect. If you want something perfect, at this point you need custom. If you have trouble finding non-toxic products, on my side we built a free database where we've screened hundreds of them.
Laundry and cleaning
They don't use any detergent. They used to use the non-toxic ones, but she considers ozone cleaning an upgrade. The system syncs with the machine and uses ozone and oxygen, putting ozone water into the clothing as soon as it's on, and you increase the oxygen to whiten. She chose a top loader on purpose, because front loaders are notorious for harbouring mold: open that plastic ring at the bottom, she says, and there's always black mold in there.
She's been a big fan of Branch Basics for a long time, using the concentrate to make window cleaner, bathroom cleaner and other things, decanted into glass bottles. In the dishwasher she uses a two in one bioenzyme detergent, which she says works. For sanitising she uses Force of Nature, which she used in her old medical clinic, and which she believes is 99.9% effective at killing germs.
The kitchen
The coffee maker is a Ratio Eight. There's plastic at the very back, but anything hot only touches glass, and the rest is metal into metal into glass. She says she got it after hearing Peter Attia had it because of microplastics. The beans are biodynamic, which she describes as organic and then a step above, and lab tested; she's been obsessed with Holistic Roasters for years.
For produce she uses an ozone generator: pour in water, switch it on with whatever you're disinfecting, and it runs about five minutes. It works for fruit and vegetables, and also seafood, meat and cutlery. Even buying organic or biodynamic, she wants to be sure there are no parasites attached. The salad spinner has plastic on the top, and she's upfront about it: finding one with metal inside was a feat, and she asked anyone who finds one with a metal top to let her know. She's okay with it because the plastic is only on top and isn't really touching the food.
The kitchen hood is super powerful and very loud, which she says matters if you're doing a lot of cooking. She cooks every single meal at home and eats out maybe once or twice a year. Her favorite pans are Xtrema, 100% ceramic. She won't name names, but her warning is that a lot of really popular health pans are only ceramic coated. She uses cast iron a lot and has three, plus some older green pans she'll use occasionally but tries not to.
Eating by four
They're done eating by 4pm every day, and she starts making dinner at about 3. Her reasoning is that you want a minimum of two to three hours before bed for sleep quality, but the earlier the better. If it were just her she'd stop at 2. Warren already thinks 4 is a little bit crazy.
Lighting
Lighting is still an ongoing process. She's ordered all new incandescent lights, and in the meantime they took the standard lighting that came with the house and turned it as warm as it goes. During the day they don't really use the overheads at all, just natural light, and she makes the point that picking a house with a lot of natural light matters in the first place. Once the sun sets, a very soft orange red light comes on.
The warm bulbs will still be replaced, because she noticed a little flicker on them. She's also turned on the color filter on the Apple TV and pushed it as red as Warren will let her, because he says turning it completely red defeats the purpose. They both wear blue light blockers at night.
How she and Warren ended up on the same page
Four o'clock dinner and a red TV screen made me want to know how her husband keeps up, so I asked for the backstory.
They connected on a dating app, and she went on one date from it and married him. Both were deliberate: he had hundreds of questions for her, she had hundreds of lab markers for him. He sent what he had from his executive physical, she sent a lot more. Their first date was in a multi-person hyperbaric chamber, and she warned him it takes seven or eight minutes to decompress if he wanted out. He said yes. An ozone sauna followed, then an organic dinner. When he got to her house, the way he described it, there was no furniture and only health robots, and the fridge was full of peptides and syringes. Her reasoning was that she needed to be as honest as she possibly could about who she is and what a life together would look like, because marrying someone who wanted to come home, eat chips and have a beer on the couch would never have worked.
EMF and Wi-Fi
The Wi-Fi isn't great. They measure EMFs in all the rooms, and an extender in one read way too high for her personal preference. She's thinking about hardwiring it, and in the meantime her team takes the footage away and uploads it. They used to sleep in a Faraday cage in LA, a box that blocked the EMFs, and it's still in the garage. Where they are now is far enough out that EMFs aren't high. She is going to put EMF paint on one wall, because a recent inspection found a little static coming through.
The bedroom
The bedroom is basic, and she loves the view. Blackout is done with light lock, which goes into the channel so it's completely blackout. The bed is organic natural fibre with an Essentia mattress, organic certified.
The one thing that isn't organic is the Eight Sleep they're trying. She held off a long time because she kept asking about EMF levels and never got a reply, which she took as a bad sign. She eventually got it and says the benefit outweighs it. On the Pod 8 there's a function that lifts your feet, and if that's plugged in the EMFs are very high, so they keep that portion unplugged and it doesn't work. With just the cooling blanket, measured at bed level, which she says is where you should actually measure rather than next to the unit, the readings came back well below standard range and within a biological range she considers acceptable. She thinks she's seen improvements in her deep sleep with the cooling. Warren's side is the side the unit sits on, which was her condition for letting it in. They also have two separate organic weighted blankets.
Whether any of this is actually fun
One question kept coming up while I was filming, so I had to ask it: do they have any fun? I asked how much joy she experiences day to day.
Her answer was that all day is joyful and she's overflowing with it. How can you not be joyful, she said, when you own a hyperbaric chamber and can go in it whenever you want. She'd done a two hour workout that morning, the sun was coming up, she'd walked with her husband and seen deer all over the place. Her framing is that health is the foundation of greatness, and without it you can't achieve your wildest dreams or show up for the people you love.
The office and recovery gear
The office is basic: a desk, a computer, and a few pieces of equipment.
The chair is an Anthros, which she calls the only biohacking chair in the world, made by doctors of physical therapy who originally built medical devices. Everything on it adjusts, including the back and hip support, and when you get one you set it up with one of their physical therapists. Her caveat: it isn't going to be the best chair for you, because it's set up for her.
She also has a Pulse XL Pro, a PEMF unit she's had for five or six years. She describes PEMF as the opposite of EMF, beneficial for cellular health, and thinks of it as grounding on steroids. Hers is set to 7.8, the frequency of the earth. She thinks it's good for energy, that it really helped when she travelled, and was a big part of having no jet lag on a twelve-day trip to Australia. There are more PEMF units as well, including one made for her in beige rather than the usual blue. Her Bible is in there too, because for her, God is the best biohack.
There's a 2.0 ATA hyperbaric chamber, which she uses for brain health and longevity, and mentions as potentially extending the length of telomeres.
For lymphatic drainage there's a BallancerPro jacket, which, as she says, they call the Rolls-Royce of lymphatic drainage; you can use the jacket or the pants. Her explanation is that the lymph system doesn't really move on its own, and breathing can kickstart it but you need exercise or something manual. Cheaper ways are dry brushing and rebounding. It has hundreds of settings, from cellulite to recovery to post leg day.
They own a company called Heavenly Heat and have rolled out their own red lights. Her reasoning is that the therapeutic range for red light therapy is typically 6 to 12 inches, and within that range you're getting blasted with EMF. Theirs works from about 3 feet to 4 feet out, so you can sit back and still get the therapeutic range without the EMF.
Getting a partner on board
Warren isn't as intense about this as she is, so I wanted to know how she got him to commit at that level. If your partner isn't on board, all of this is going to be really hard.
Her answer was that he's pretty flexible, and as long as she sets it up for him, he'll do it all. She prepares his supplements every single week and changes them, and he doesn't even know what's in them half the time, he just takes them. She prepares all their meals, organic and healthy, so he doesn't have to worry about it.
I also asked whether he helps her relax and be less rigid. Her answer was 100%. Before she met him she didn't even own a television and had no off switch. He works really hard, and when he's done working he's completely done, whereas she used to be halfway in and halfway out, always doing one more email. He taught her to stop. She also points to cuddling with him at night, and her view that a relationship with someone you love, trust and feel secure with is healing. You can take the supplement, do the workout, do the biohack, but if your nervous system isn't healed and you're chronically stressed because you can't relax, that isn't healthy. She says he brought a love, security and safeness she'd never had before.
The garage gym
Warren gave me the tour of the garage. He calls it their happy place, and it's where they work out first thing in the morning, sometimes together and sometimes separately, because he's up before she is. The gym is still coming together. The equipment is all Rogue, and the squat rack is his favorite piece. Behind him is a four-person red light sauna, an iteration on their two-person model, which is their best seller. It hasn't launched yet.
They split projects by deciding who's going to tackle what, and the floor was hers. They wanted a low VOC, low tox floor, and she did all the research. She'd looked at cork after someone she knew put it in his house, but says the Texas humidity apparently would have warped it. What she found instead is a certified floor that functions and looks like a gym floor, with that shock absorption, but without the VOCs and off-gassing. Warren says it took a while to source and he's glad they waited.
His morning runs stretch, compound, accessory, red light sauna, cold plunge, with rebounding before his compound movements and then through the day. He does about 20 minutes in the sauna and red light after the workout. His point on the sauna is that for infrared you don't need to go more than 150, though it will get up to 175. On the rebounder he likes one-legged work for the knees and joint protection as you get older, and says he's training for longevity a lot more now than at 20.
What I took away
I brought them a couple of gifts. One was a new rebounder for the gym, the Rolls-Royce of rebounders, a totally different bounce with special patented material in the bungees. The other was a set of organic custom-made ceramic mugs that say "Here's to the next 150 years." As she puts it: 150 is their goal, God willing.
I learned so much from Kayla, and from how she's worked all of this out so that it's simpler for people like you and me. But if I'm being honest, I don't think the reason she's going to live to 150 is the 4pm dinner, or the fact that she has the best water filtration system in the world. It's something much simpler. It's that she and Warren found each other, share the same values, and are working on their health together.
Being on a health journey can be lonely and isolating. On top of that, the person you spend the most time with, your partner, has a huge influence on your behavior and your health. I truly believe the greatest longevity hack Kayla accidentally stumbled into was finding Warren and falling in love, and Warren is the type of man who supports her health goals and is willing to walk this path with her.
