Kayla Barnes, a 33-year-old wellness CEO based in Cleveland, was eager to pick up her date from the airport one spring evening last year. It would be the first time she would meet Warren Lentz, who lived in Los Angeles, in person, and the next step in a month-long burgeoning relationship that included countless FaceTimes, texts—and, most notably, a detailed exchange of personal health information.
After meeting Warren on Raya, a private, membership-based dating app, and before their first date, Kayla requested his health labs—including a gut health test and a total toxin test, measuring levels of heavy metals and environmental toxins in the body, plus a slew of other assessments, of nutrient levels, inflammation, and a range of biomarkers. Warren dutifully had them all performed by a local California clinic without hesitance. And Kayla knew, however unromantic, that both his compliance and his results would show more than any other dating compatibility test or ordinary deal-breaker question ever could.
“He did all of them without question,” she tells Fortune. And good thing, she adds, explaining that it was crucial to have a partner who appreciated and encouraged her strict lifestyle—and admitting it would “never work” to have a man who came home, drank beer, ate chips, and watched TV.
“Health outcomes are so much better when we have a great support system around us,” she says. Luckily, his labs looked good, with some room for improvement to strengthen and optimize his gut health, she says. Most importantly, he was also eager to see the results and to get healthier with her.
He passed other tests, too—including Kayla asking her suitor if he frequented L.A.’s elite organic food store Erewhon (he did), as well as quickly stalking his Instagram to make sure he was following an adequate number of health influencers (he was).
“I had never had anyone ask me for my health labs in the context of dating,” says Warren, 36, the chief revenue officer at a marketing agency and previous founder of a talent agency for Gen Z influencers. “But I liked how she was confident about the fact that that was important to her.”
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Kayla has always chased perfection. As a kid, she worked to hone her gymnastics skills; as a young adult, to study nutrition and achieve a brain coach certification from Dr. Daniel Amen, a neuroscientist known for giving wealthy public figures brain scans.
And now, as an entrepreneur, it's part of her job: She’s host of the Longevity Optimization podcast and co-owner of LYV the Wellness Space, an up to $1,000-a-month membership precision health and longevity clinic headquartered in Cleveland, where novel technology and health trackers are not only within reach, but career requirements.“I always had super high ambitions for myself, and I just wanted to become the absolute best version of myself,” she explains.
Here’s just a glimpse of how she aims for that now: strict 8:30 bedtimes, set meal times of only organic foods with never a drop of alcohol, morning strength sessions, weekly body composition measurements, cold therapy, red light therapy, sleep tracking, grip strength tests, walking meetings, routine blood and toxin tests, and quarterly stem cell therapies for preventative purposes.
She admits her lifestyle and values are not the least bit relatable. But while some may call her a health nut or fitness fanatic, in today’s lexicon, Kayla is the epitome of the modern biohacker: someone with a pure dedication to experimenting and optimizing health by using data, technology, and lifestyle interventions. In the age of longevity, where more people are eager to spend in the name of living longer, we're familiar with many novel biohacking lifestyle choices. But there's a new frontier we've yet to hear about: the biohacking dating market.
Kayla says she trusts the science of protocols like stem cell therapies to slow aging, especially because she’s interviewed so many in the field on her podcast. Still, she recognizes that this is her personal protocol and does not consider herself a health provider for the wider public, despite co-owning a longevity clinic.
But naturally, she yearned for a partner who does more than invest in a high-end gym membership, gulp down a green smoothie, and try to eat organic. Finding a suitable biohacking mate, she realized, would prove to be a whole different feat.
But then came Warren, who ignited Kayla’s yearning for connection and her desire to have a partner who would fit in with her lifestyle.
An atypical first date
Following their first encounter at the Cleveland airport and a walk, Kayla showed Warren her home, where it was hard to miss the numerous “health robots,” as Warren nicknamed them, distributed throughout. A $7,000 sauna shared her bedroom, along with a $2,500 Faraday cage to protect against electromagnetic pulse, a $45,000 PEMF to reduce muscle fatigue after exercise, and $2,000 red light panels on the back door of her closet to reduce skin aging (according to the Cleveland Clinic, while small studies show promise in low-level red-light therapy, longer-term research is needed to call it a viable treatment for treating the skin).
“Being healthy as a lifestyle not as a burden was definitely at the forefront of her life,” Warren recalls about observing her cabinets, which resemble pharmacies rather than homes for boxed pasta and paprika.
“I knew right away he was gonna be in or out because probably not every day that you go to meet someone you're dating do you open up the fridge and see syringes [full of peptides to reduce skin aging],” Kayla says.
On the first meeting, Kayla also gave a tour of her longevity clinic and the pièce de resistance of the date: an hour-long session for two in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber—a healing tube for the body originally meant to treat people with carbon monoxide poisoning and to increase oxygen in scuba divers after pressure changes, according to the FDA. And there, albeit not across from each other at a candle-lit dinner, the two had everyday first-date conversations, touching on their interests and lifestyle values, all while enclosed in a Back-to-the-Future-esque tube.
Their chemistry was evident to both.
“We were pretty intentional, which I loved,” says Warren, who was health-conscious already at that point, albeit not to Kayla's level. “If other people heard [about the date], it might not sound super romantic, but it was so exciting to us. It was what we had been waiting for."
A quick but important note about biohacking
While the $27 billion longevity market is embraced by many, its specific practices are not always scientifically backed, FDA-approved or physician-recommended—a fact that Kayla and Warren understand and are comfortable with, but which newcomers might want to parse out on their own.
Still, the industry has amassed a cohort of loyal followers, from Silicon Valley’s Bryan Johnson to researcher David Sinclair and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. Women like Kayla are also leading the way in taking preventative measures for their health to live longer, healthier lives. And within that conversation, the need for social connection is seldom mentioned—despite strong evidence that it’s the strength of our interpersonal relationships that most often predicts our happiness, and which in turn prevents stress, anxiety, and depression, all accelerants to aging.
Biohacker Wedding Bells
After just three months of dating, Kayla and Warren got engaged while long-distance in the mid-point of Austin, Texas—although she jokes, she would have loved it to be at their go-to date spot of Erewhon.
At the wedding less than six months later—an affair where 150 guests enjoyed bone broth, organic grass-fed, grass-finished meat, and an organic keto cake—the hitched Lentz and Barnes-Lentz sported matching Levels Dexcom continuous glucose monitors, visible on each of their arms.
They now live together in L.A., and disclosed they make seven figures, making it possible to spend in the low six figures on their longevity protocol. While she knows her protocol isn’t accessible to the masses, Kayla admits that no-cost lifestyle changes are the most important in making people healthier and also hopes to influence people to make a fraction of the changes she makes. Since moving in together last year, Warren has followed Kayla’s lead in eating a purely organic diet, going to bed by 8:30, and limiting all so-called guilty pleasures allowed with the renowned 80-20 rule, an age-old principle that champions being disciplined 80% of the time and giving yourself wiggle room the other 20%.
Before meeting Kayla, Warren would stay up past midnight and indulge in the occasional ice-cold Diet Coke or Dr. Pepper, though he admits it was a trait she hated, prompting him to give it up.
“It is probably one of the hardest things, sadly, that I did or had or had to do for the betterment of us as a couple. But man, a Diet Dr. Pepper,” he says, seemingly dreaming of one still. “Kayla is all in, 10 out of 10 the healthiest person I have ever met,” he says, admitting that “doing longevity as a couple is unique because there's always going to be one person who might be pushing harder than the other.”
That’s Kayla, of course—something Warren says makes him a lucky man. Now, he calls his wife the “chief health officer” of their family. For example, Kayla has cut out microplastics, refusing to drink from a plastic cup, though Warren still uses them occasionally.
It’s a nickname welcomed by Kayla, who admits, “I knew that it was going to take someone really unique to fit everything that I was looking for,” she says. “But being married has been one of the biggest biohacks I've ever done.”
Being married has been one of the biggest biohacks I've ever done
Kayla Barnes-Lentz
Much as they assess their physical and mental health, the biohackers have a monthly marriage optimization meeting to ensure their partnership is optimized, too. “It's created a space for her to tell me, ‘Hey, when you eat past 8 p.m., that doesn't make me frustrated or act out of the blue, but it makes me sad because I want you to be your best.’” They also make space to compliment each other, and both agree it strengthens their emotional bond.
FOMO? Never heard of it
Of course, the duo has to forgo social plans if they are too late into the evening and interfere with their bedtimes. And no, they tell Fortune they don’t have FOMO, mainly because they have each other. The game they are playing is too fun, and they wind down their nights by reading or watching a show on the couch.
However, they try to make some social plans work by leaving them early, eating before a dinner party, or offering an alternative. “I'm becoming someone like Kayla who doesn't get joy out of eating food that's not organic or grass-fed finished,” Warren says. “I'd rather have sparkling water with some lemon than a cocktail,” he says, adding his family is curious yet accepting of their lifestyle.
At the wedding, Warren's sister paid homage to the unique pairing. “His sister said I was the most ‘unrelatable person,’ but I loved it. It was the best,” she says. Now, Warren’s family members all come to Kayla’s clinic to get their own tests.
With biohacking together comes the reality that, if all holds up well and the protocols work, the two could spend far more time together than the average married couple—perhaps another half century till death do them part. “I don’t know to the extent we could push 200, but I think it's a really exciting time to be alive right now,” Warren says. “We are in it for the long haul.”
Despite initial adjustments, Warren says adhering to this strict regimen was a “no-brainer” and has helped him feel healthier—all in the name of love.
“I’m definitely all in,” he says. “Very few people go the extra mile to get a perfect score, and that's what she's been doing.”
Since meeting Kayla, he shares, his testosterone, the sex hormone responsible for libido and sperm production, has gone up 200 points (a healthy range is from 300 to 1,000 nanograms per deciliter), and he has not craved sugar fixes like he used to.
Says Kayla, “I want to live as long as my husband does, so that means that I need to prioritize doing everything in my power with all my resources, access, and knowledge to optimize his health. For an optimal marriage, we both have to be running at the same speed.”
The couple is preparing to bank their stem cells for rejuvenation down the road, for when they get sick and for emergencies, all of which Kayla plans to post about on her personal website and social media accounts.
“We'll continue to look at biomarkers to see what is improving, and that's kind of the whole name of this game,” she says.
And with that, the couple hopes to introduce a brood to their abode—five to seven children, to be exact, whom Kayla hopes will be biohackers, too. “I'm excited that we are going to be able to have the healthiest children ever,” she says, noting that part of the plan includes investing in a biohacking home outside of the city. There, while curating a healthy lifestyle for her children, she plans to balance the following: “How hard do we push into [health optimization], and how hard do we let them find their own path?”
For Warren’s part, he says that Kayla pushes him in the right direction—and could seamlessly do so for their kids, too. “This is someone who would obviously not just be an amazing wife,” he says, “but also an amazing mom.”
