Dr. Poonam Desai: The 5 Labs Women Need, Heart Disease Risk, Microplastics, and Perimenopause

We're pregnant with our first baby, and there is a lot more to share than the announcement. From how long it took us to conceive to the moment we saw a positive test, this is the personal side of a journey I have spent years preparing for. Join the most comprehensive *female-specific community for health and longevity optimization.* After over a decade dedicated to human performance and women’s health, I created this space to share everything you need to know to optimize health and lifespan. Inside, you’ll get access to exclusive protocols, live Q&As, the latest female longevity science, and a private, supportive community of like-minded women. https://kayla-barnes-lentz.circle.so/female-longevity-community Support lean muscle and recovery with PerfectAmino essential amino acids: https://bodyhealth.com/products/perfectaminoUse code “kayla20” for 20% off. Take a longevity approach to skincare with OS-01, the peptide that targets senescent cells. Get OneSkin at oneskin.co/KAYLA with code “KAYLA”. My husband, Warren, joins me to answer your questions about conceiving naturally, why we previously froze eggs and created embryos, and the changes we made while trying. We also share how my wearable data gave me an early clue, how I told Warren, and what has already changed in my sleep, meals and daily routine. We talk about the family we hope to build, our early thoughts on birth and parenting, and the conversations we are having as we prepare to become mom and dad. We also open up about getting married quickly, learning to communicate, our marriage meetings, and the role our Christian faith plays in our life together. We are still figuring plenty of this out, and I wanted to share that part of the story, too. In this conversation: How long it took us to conceive and why this pregnancy was not through IVF

Menopause does not begin when periods stop. Ovarian reserve and egg quality have been declining for decades, and that decline accelerates for many women in their late 30s. I sat down with Kutluk Oktay, MD, PhD, FACOG, a reproductive endocrinologist, ovarian biologist, and pioneer in ovarian tissue cryopreservation and transplantation. He explains why women are born with the eggs they will ever have, what changes after age 37, why adult ovaries do not appear to regenerate eggs, and why one AMH result should not be treated as a complete picture of ovarian reserve. Join the most comprehensive *female-specific community for health and longevity optimization.* After over a decade dedicated to human performance and women’s health, I created this space to share everything you need to know to optimize health and lifespan. Inside, you’ll get access to exclusive protocols, live Q&As, the latest female longevity science, and a private, supportive community of like-minded women. https://kayla-barnes-lentz.circle.so/female-longevity-community Optimize your sleep with the Eight Sleep Pod. Get up to $350 off at https://www.eightsleep.com/Kayla with code “KAYLA”

Most skincare is designed to improve how aging looks. But can it change what is happening inside the skin itself? In this conversation, I sit down with Carolina Reis Oliveira, PhD, co-founder and CEO of OneSkin, to explore what actually drives skin aging at the cellular level. Carolina explains how senescent “zombie” cells, UV exposure, inflammation, hormonal changes and a weakened skin barrier affect how skin functions, not just how it looks. Get OneSkin's new Rich Cream and the rest of the OS-01 line at: oneskin.co/KAYLA with code KAYLA. We break down the benefits and limitations of retinol, why chronic redness and flaking are not signs that a product is working better, and whether popular ingredients such as NAD+ precursors, methylene blue and GHK-Cu can penetrate the skin and remain stable. We also discuss collagen supplementation, red light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, exercise, sun exposure and the relationship between skin-barrier health and systemic inflammation. Carolina also shares the science behind OneSkin's OS-01 peptide and its new Face Rich Cream, including findings related to collagen, hyaluronic acid, elastin, filaggrin, hydration, firmness and fine lines. In this conversation: -Why many anti-aging products target visible symptoms rather than the biology of skin aging -How senescent “zombie” cells contribute to inflammation and tissue decline -How to use retinol without chronically damaging the skin barrier -Why ingredient penetration, stability and formulation matter -How skin-barrier dysfunction may affect inflammation throughout the body -What collagen, red light, hyperbaric oxygen, sauna and exercise can do for the ski - What OneSkin found when testing GHK-Cu copper peptides -Why moisturizer alone may not solve age-related dryness -How OS-01 is designed to target the underlying biology of skin aging

Most longevity conversations focus on the brain, heart, muscle, and metabolism. Far less attention goes to the thymus, an immune organ that starts shrinking almost as soon as puberty ends, and new research suggests it may be quietly linked to fertility, hormones, and even how millions of women taking birth control are aging on the inside. I sit down with Dr. Abud Bakri, a board-certified internal medicine physician and hospitalist who founded Systems, a performance and longevity practice built around treating the body system by system rather than symptom by symptom. We start with the foundations that determine whether any advanced intervention can actually work: light exposure, circadian timing, mitochondrial health, metabolic function, and the parts of modern life working against all of it. Then we get into the thymus itself: why it shrinks after puberty, what that has to do with an unexpected finding in ovarian development, and a harder question Dr. Bakri raises about whether birth control may be accelerating that shrinkage in ways no one is currently studying. We close on peptides: why Dr. Bakri treats them like drugs rather than supplements, what separates receptor-based peptides from the ones we understand far less, what we actually know about BPC-157, thymosin alpha-1, SS-31, and GHK-Cu, and how a peptide protocol could eventually be timed to a woman's cycle instead of applied the same way to everyone. Join the most comprehensive *female-specific community for health and longevity optimization.* After over a decade dedicated to human performance and women’s health, I created this space to share everything you need to know to optimize health and lifespan. Inside, you’ll get access to exclusive protocols, live Q&As, the latest female longevity science, and a private, supportive community of like-minded women. https://kayla-barnes-lentz.circle.so/female-longevity-community Optimize your sleep with the Eight Sleep Pod. Get up to $350 off at https://www.eightsleep.com/Kayla with code “KAYLA”

We talk about aging like it happens to a whole person at once. It doesn't. It happens organ by organ, at different speeds, and most people never find out which part of them is running ahead until something breaks. Dr. Will Cole has spent sixteen years running one of the first functional medicine telehealth centers in the world, and he came to this conversation with a case that is both clinical and personal. In 2023 his father lost consciousness at the wheel and died in the crash. The autopsy pointed to cardiometabolic changes, and his heart cells had been aging faster than the rest of him. That same year, Stanford researchers found that one in five adults over fifty has at least one organ aging faster than the others, and that when it's the heart, the risk of a cardiac event more than triples. His new book with Dr. Josh Axe, Heal Your Cells, makes an argument that reframes most of what gets called normal aging. Exhaustion, brain fog, the weight that will not move, the hormone shifts nobody can explain. These are not the calendar. They are cells that have stopped reading their own instructions clearly, and that is a state you can change. We get into what actually makes a cell feel unsafe, why your gut lining is one cell thick and therefore the first thing to break, and the point almost nobody makes about elimination diets: the reintroduction matters as much as the elimination, and a protocol you never came off of is a cast you left on until the muscle atrophied. We also get into light. Not just morning sun, but the darkness half, which matters more for women than most people realize. Melatonin is not only a sleep hormone, it's one of the more important antioxidants for ovarian aging, and light levels most people would call almost nothing can cut its production substantially. Track your sleep, recovery, strain, and HRV with WHOOP. Get one month free at https://join.whoop.com/kaylabarnes Optimize your sleep with the Eight Sleep Pod. Get up to $350 off at https://www.eightsleep.com/Kayla with code “KAYLA” Join the most comprehensive *female-specific community for health and longevity optimization.* After over a decade dedicated to human performance and women’s health, I created this space to share everything you need to know to optimize health and lifespan. Inside, you’ll get access to exclusive protocols, live Q&As, the latest female longevity science, and a private, supportive community of like-minded women. https://kayla-barnes-lentz.circle.so/female-longevity-community