Kayla Barnes on Mitochondria and Ovarian Longevity

Kayla Barnes is one of the world’s top female longevity experts and has been studying female longevity for over a decade. Kayla Barnes has shared her labs publicly and is one of, if not the most, measured women in the world.

During this episode, Kayla Barnes and Kiran Kumar explore the importance of ovarian longevity interventions for female healthspan, with an emphasis on the mitochondria-ovary connection. We were particularly excited to see Mitopure® discussed for its promising benefits to mitochondria.

What is Ovarian Longevity?

Ovarian longevity refers to the length of time a woman maintains optimal ovarian function and ovulation-driven hormone production. It’s a critical determinant of female healthspan, influencing everything from fertility to heart health to brain function.

Kayla Barnes: “It’s tackling one of the most important issues in my opinion, as it relates to longevity for women, and that is ovarian longevity.”

Kiran Kumar: “Women start to see things start to deteriorate very rapidly for them during the menopausal transition. [It is] that one facet of women's health that is so closely tied to longevity. We needed targeted solutions to study it and see if we can interventionally address ovarian longevity.”

Kayla Barnes: “I love that and obviously agree wholeheartedly that it's like the most important issue.”

The Importance of Ovulation

During the conversation, Kiran Kumar highlights the importance of maintaining ovulation. Certain lifestyle practices can sometimes lead to missed periods that prevent the woman from producing ovarian hormones like estrogen and progesterone.

Kiran Kumar: “Biohacking looks different for men and women… to preserve those protective effects that estrogens and progesterones carry… you need to make sure you're ovulating successfully.”

Kayla Barnes underscored an often-missed point: even women with seemingly normal cycles can experience underlying dysfunction.

Kayla Barnes: “You can have anovulatory cycles, right? So, you can still be having menstruation. You can still be having your bleed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re ovulating.”

Both stressed the protective effects of ovulation-driven hormones, critical for reducing disease risk in women.

What Drives Ovarian Aging?

Kayla Barnes discusses how the ovaries are the fastest aging organ in the body, inquiring about some of the predictive markers uncovered by Kiran Kumar’s analysis.

Kayla Barnes: “Why do we think the ovaries age at such a rapid speed… let's get into some of those markers.”

Kiran Kumar explains how correlations between standard hormone values like FSH, AMH, and estradiol, along with lifestyle data points like sleep quality, stress levels, UTI frequency, pleasure during sex, hot-cold sensitivity, and masturbation frequency, have strong predictive performance. Kiran Kumar also highlights how early these shifts start to occur.

Kiran Kumar: “Well before estrogen and progesterone even drop, we see a drop in melatonin in women's 30s, which leads to a spike in FSH, which leads to disruption in ovulation, which leads to a decline in estrogen and progesterone.”^[1]

Clearly, the transition to perimenopause starts sooner than we think, and early interventions can potentially help move the needle for overall health.

Mitochondria & Hormone Production

Ovaries have a high density of mitochondria. When asked about leading interventions to promote ovarian longevity, Kayla Barnes and Kiran Kumar have a rich conversation about mitochondrial health.

Kayla Barnes: “So you could also incorporate interventions that would potentially slow that ovarian aging or even reverse some of the damage. Is reversing damage a possibility right now?”

Kiran Kumar: “Other things include nutraceutical interventions. There's a lot of hype around the importance of mitochondria for ovarian health. I’m drinking that Kool-Aid a lot lately.”

Kayla Barnes: “I’m pouring the Kool-Aid. I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. I'm making the Kool-Aid.”

While chatting about mitochondria, Kiran Kumar discusses how our mitochondria are essential sites for the production of vital steroid hormones.^[2]

Kiran Kumar: “I fully support this because lots of the hormones that we talk about, estrogen, progesterone, even testosterone, have a precursor hormone called pregnenolone… There's a reaction that converts cholesterol into pregnanolone… So if you don't have enough healthy fats, you don't have the ingredients you need to produce these steroid hormones.”

Enhancing Mitochondrial Health With Mitopure

Kiran Kumar: “It's very important for hormone balance and endogenous hormone production to have highly functioning mitochondria."

The conversation turned to how women can actively support their mitochondria, which play a central role in ovarian function and hormone production. One of the most discussed strategies was mitophagy, the natural process by which cells recycle and renew damaged mitochondria.

Kiran Kumar: “If you're familiar with Timeline’s Mitopure for mitophagy. So those are definitely some nutraceutical interventions that could potentially help with ovarian health.”

Mitopure is the first clinically validated Urolithin A supplement on the market. No clinical data has explored a benefit for Urolithin A on ovarian health. However, multiple human trials have shown that it activates mitophagy, improves mitochondrial efficiency,^[3] and supports muscle strength (at doses of 500mg -1000mg) ^[4]and endurance (at doses of 1000mg)^[5]. Across 11 clinical studies, Mitopure has also been confirmed to be safe and well-tolerated.

Promoting Mitochondrial Health With Mitophagy

Kayla Barnes: “Yeah. Also, you could do high-intensity interval training is great for mitophagy and biogenesis. But again, it's like it has to be taken at the right time in the right dose at the right period for women.”

Kayla Barnes: “I think red light is interesting on the ovaries directly. So, it's something that I've been just testing, you know. AMH levels and hyperbaric and a variety of different women's health conditions and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. So it could be interesting to see how, you know, 40 sessions, you know, could shift the ovarian health in one way or the other.”

Mitochondria & Reproductive Conditions

Kiran Kumar highlighted early research linking mitochondrial dysfunction to ovarian disorders.

Kiran Kumar: “What they found in early research is that women with PCOS had more mitochondrial dysfunction than women who did not have PCOS in the ovaries.”^[6]

Kiran Kumar: “And they also found that women with endometriosis had differences in their mitochondrial [structure] in comparison to women who did not have endometriosis.”^[7]

This underscores that mitochondrial health is central not only to hormone synthesis but also to resilience against gynecological conditions.

Rapamycin for Ovarian Health

Kayla Barnes brings up the early study for potential ovarian longevity through menopause delay with rapamycin.

Kayla Barnes: “Rapamycin because there was this study, right, potentially showing it could delay ovarian aging by 5 years. My response was, you know, I'm not doing it for just the biological age in general. I'm doing it for the ovarian aging.”

Kiran Kumar: “Yeah, absolutely. There are lots of things that women have been discouraged from because they backfired on men and melatonin is one of them. When it comes to Rapamycin, I'm very excited to see the rest of the study results come out for the VIBRANT study.

Kumar noted that nutraceuticals with anti-inflammatory effects may serve as gentler alternatives.

Kiran Kumar: “My take on Rapamycin, obviously, we're going to wait for the remaining results of the study as well, is if these immunosuppressive effects could potentially have benefits for ovarian longevity, what does that tell us about that pathway? And how can we take things a step further and look more at immunomodulatory molecules, which might be a little more of an elegant solution?”

Kayla Barnes: “Can you give us some examples? What would you say are these immunomodulators?”

Kiran Kumar: “So there's a whole realm of molecules that [indirectly] immunomodulate. Some of the early research that I have seen with molecules that focus on mitochondrial health and how that can reduce natural inflammation in the body.”

Kayla Barnes: “Yeah, absolutely.”

Final Thoughts on Ovarian Longevity

Ovarian longevity is quickly becoming one of the most important frontiers in women’s health and aging.

As Kayla Barnes and Kiran Kumar highlighted, mitochondria sit at the heart of this story. They fuel hormone production, influence ovulation quality, and even determine resilience against gynecological conditions.

Clinical data specific to ovarian health and longevity are not available for Urolithin A. However, Mitopure is the first clinically validated Urolithin A product supporting mitochondrial renewal and muscle health.

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