Kate Tolo Says Her Quest to Be ‘the Female Bryan Johnson’ Is ‘for Women’

Kate Tolo, once hesitant to discuss her menstrual cycle, now sees herself as "the female Bryan Johnson." This quest began when Tolo's dad dismissed her concerns about her period, prompting her to suffer in silence for years. In her early twenties, she experienced excruciating pain during bowel movements, leading her to the emergency room where a doctor suggested she may have endometriosis.

This condition, which affects around 10% of women, causes extremely heavy and painful periods, pelvic floor dysfunction, bowel issues, and dyspareunia (pain during sex).

Tolo refused surgery due to her fears, but her boyfriend, entrepreneur and biohacker Bryan Johnson, became obsessed with finding a cure. Together, they founded a concierge health service and Tolo has been tracking over 1,500 biomarkers from her blood, urine, and stool over her menstrual cycle. This rigorous self-tracking protocol is a new role for the 30-year-old, who previously worked in fashion marketing.

Despite the discomfort and anxiety it caused, Tolo insists she is pushing herself to the limit to "prove myself to be the absolute limit of what is possible, mentally and physically."

One of Tolo's primary interests is developing reliable diagnostic and treatment methods for endometriosis. She has claimed to have diagnosed herself with the condition using noninvasive methods like a saliva and blood test and an endometriosis-specific ultrasound. They plan to create an organoid using cells from Tolo's menstrual blood to test various interventions, comparing the results to a conventional biopsy.

Tolo hopes to create a world where women can collect their menstrual blood and send it to a lab for testing to obtain an endometriosis diagnosis, avoiding the need for surgery.