If you look at his regimen, which he documented extensively, it is actually very thorough and well-researched. There is very little to criticize in there, given his goals.
It is a refreshing contrast to all the many people in this field who are pushing a quack diet to sell books, or who have rejected the scientific method and decided that "natural" means good.
This is the opposite of that. He has all the money he needs and just wants to actually figure out how to make himself as healthy as possible, using the best science.
Most of the medical stuff looks like testing. The only pharmaceutical I see is metformin.
Which part of this is extreme or likely to lead to problems?
I realize that even testing is not harmless, but the main problem would be inaccurate test results requiring more tests. And since he is a millionaire who is obsessed with this stuff, I don't think he is too troubled by the time and money spent on testing.
Disregarding the supplement regiment, lunch and dinner appear pretty sensible. Broccoli, Lentils, and Mushrooms for lunch every day sounds a little repetitive. Lunch could just as easily be a different soup or stew every day, with a lot more variety. Instead he appears to be blending it into a gazpacho.
The -3F body temperature drop is a huge red flag to me. This is a pretty common thing you see from excessive exercise with too low a calorie intake, it suppresses liver T3 production and you get effectively a bit hypothyroid.
Sign up every billionaire and let’s get more investment. The cost will drop 1000 fold over the next couple of decades, and maybe we’ll all get an extra couple decades of healthy living.
But it doesn't make a body that's 10 years younger. That's impossible. It just makes a healthier 45 year old body. Time is a one way street. It's measured in time, not relative healthiness of lifestyle.
I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet, in a rigorous exercise routine.
In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an icepack while doing my stomach crunches.
I can do a thousand now.
After I remove the icepack, I use a deep-pore cleanser lotion.
In the shower, I use a water-activated gel cleanser.
Then a honey-almond bodyscrub.
And on the face, an exfoliating gel-scrub.
Then I apply an herb mint facial masque,
which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine.
I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol,
because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older.
Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm, followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
Ironically, I mentioned Jared Leto’s youthful appearance at age 50 and then realized he was in American Psycho. I guess he took Bateman’s regimen to heart.
Minus the supplements, a lot of the macros look like a normal clean diet with consistent exercise. Looks like all those PBS Kids specials I watched as a kid were right - follow the food pyramid and exercise.
Definetly taking a page out of this though - this seems like a fun challenge
Doctor Roy Walford pioneered calorie restriction diets for life extension and maintained a strict exercise regimen... and then he got ALS and died at 79.
While I personally agree with your sentiment on not sweating too hard about things out of our control... I've always wondered, isn't this the same rationale tobacco smokers give about indulging their habit?
Maybe a proper balance involves not going too far into obsessions or give too far into addictions
Isn’t that largely genetic anyway? If one doesn’t have longevity in their genes no amount of self care would change the odds too much. But still, self care is warranted
> He's still going to die within the usual human lifespan limits, just like the rest of us.
I'm not so sure.
For millennia people tried and failed to fly through the air like birds. In the late nineteenth century so many people had tried and failed, it seemed like a law of nature that humans were destined to remain earth-bound. Then suddenly, miraculously, we figured it out.
I think it will be the same with the 'usual human lifespan limit' of 120 years. At some point we will figure it out, and a group of humans will have a longevity distribution whose right tail extends to 150 years. Bryan Johnson may already be in that group.
He looks like a 45 year old who takes good care of himself. I wouldn’t mistake him for a younger person. Maybe it’s the hairline. I’m more curious what Jared Leto (acting and music skills aside) does besides his veganism. He’s 50. I’m guessing it’s a decade or more of baby botox, but his face doesn’t look frozen or oddly puffy. I don’t see any neck wrinkles or hint of jowls. Of course, this doesn’t attest to the age of his organs, etc.
It's hilarious that there's actually a slider in the Colour page in DaVinci Resolve, "Midtone Detail". Push it left, wrinkles get fainter, push it right, wrinkles get deeper.
So when you view a histogram of an image, you can break it into thirds. The middle third represents the midtones. Shadows are generally depicted to the left on the histogram, highlights to the right.
In visuals, midtones are most often associated with the boundaries of shadows and highlights. If you have clearly defined shadows, midtones are what's around their edges. But they also represent a lot of the image that's neither especially dark nor light — like many skin tones.
So what Midtone Detail does is adjust the contrast in areas with lots of midtones — places where there are peaks in the midtone third of the histogram. It just so happens that wrinkles on faces are midtone goldmines, so tweaking Midtone Detail on an image of a face makes wrinkles more or less apparent.
If you crank the slider positive, you perceptibly "sharpen" midtone regions by increasing the contrast between shadow and highlight, which emphasizes both the depth of the wrinkle and the non-wrinkled skin. If you crank it negative, you "blur" midtone regions by reducing that contrast, effectively blurring the wrinkles (and pores, and facial hairs, and small blemishes, etc.) out.
On skin that reads as "erasing wrinkles", but it can also reduce fidelity of other skin textures. Sometimes that's desired, for that uncanny valley-esque "commercial-style" smoothness, but it might not be what a filmmaker necessarily wants — that's where masking out parts of the skin, or using the Beauty OFX tool, comes in.
(Midtone Detail has uses beyond faces and skin, especially for manipulating things like outdoor detail — landscape shots with shade have lots of midtones, and you might want to reduce them to emphasize a subject or increase them for a more dramatic visual. Or adjusting transitions when a camera goes from a shot where you want to emphasize midtones, like a close-up, to a shot where you don't, like an outdoor shot.)
The problem of course is that he does not look 18. He looks like a healthy 45 year old.
Of all the pictures in the article, he looks healthiest and youngest before starting his health regimen, most likely because his BMI is so low which can give faces a hollowed-out look.
I look about a decade younger than I am and do nothing. I even drink and have smoked in the past. That said multiple grandparents and great grandparents have lived to late 90s or early 100s.
I guess blame the Nephillim DNA in the distant past. I probably got some Merovingian in me.
Body of an 18 year old.
Face of a 45 year old.
To those wondering, you can achieve the same physique with TRT, peptides (hgh), and a gym membership for a few thousand a year.
And here's the thing with TRT, you have to jab yourself several times a week and get blood work done to make sure your hormones are in check. Managing sharps, sterility if injection sites, and all the BS with it.
It's like being a diabetic. I really want to get into trt but having to jab myself so much is what keeps me from doing it.
What do TRT and peptides do that regular exercise and a balanced diet don’t? Some quick googling makes seem like it’s for better muscle growth but not understanding the benefit in relation to having a “younger” body.
Trt gives you the hormonal profile of a teenager. Something exercise and diet will never achieve. A body like that at his age is nearly impossible without chemical assistance.
Unpopular fact: most fitness people are on a combination of drugs for ascetics.
Impressive, but what is his ultimate goal? To live longer? I don't know if this will help him, but to each his own. I don't have his kind of cash, but if I can keep doing 10 pull-ups, benching my weight 10 times and play a couple games of men's league hockey a week, then I think I'll be good!
This is orthorexia, a mental illness. When health becomes an obsession like this, it ironically leads people to try tons of high risk experimental methods, which eventually come back to bite you. I'm a researcher in a related field, and have a lot of friends into this stuff- several of whom have died from it.
You can get all of the real results he's gotten by eating healthy and exercising regularly, for the cost of a gym membership. Your average 45 year old crossfitter is in better shape than this guy, and there are more effective programs than crossfit.
The rest of it have substantial risk and likely no reward.
One died of a sudden heart attack, a few seemingly from cocktails of black/grey market health supplements (not steroids). Another close friend his family hid the cause of death so I suspect suicide, despite the fact that he was obsessed with longevity. Another nearly died but didn't from aplastic anemia, unknown cause... was very young and fit. I can't prove cause and effect with any of these, but they were all young fit people constantly experimenting on their own bodies with poorly understood longevity and health 'hacks.'
Crossfit is really excellent for all around 'functional fitness' but in my opinion has too much injury risk, and doesn't focus enough on building strength and muscle, which are functionally useful, and are also key for looking fit.
I would recommend most people start with an introductory strength training program that does heavy compound lifts like Starting Strength, and having a professional coach spend a few hours at the start to make sure you're doing it safely. Heavy compound lifts have a lot of specific hormonal advantages, and can be used in addition to bodybuilding type (high rep/low weight) lifts.
This, coupled with a pretty standard high protein 'recomposition' diet will transform most peoples physique pretty rapidly. Look up the article "To Be A Beast" by Jordan Feigenbaum. Other more advanced 'powerbuilding' diet programs like LOOK STRONG NAKED, The Deep Water diet, the Vince Gironda diet, LeanGains, etc. require more effort but can get you both very lean and very strong.
Exactly, I think the thing to critique is the goal. The stated goal isn't to be as healthy and happy as possible, it's to look 18. That's a fools errand.
The most important measurement will be how these effects persist over time. Will the ageing actually slow or will it stay a constant number of years? It may take 5-10 years to see if the biomarkers suddenly catch up to his chronological age.
That said it's very impressive and very useful to have so much documentation of his regime.
Definitely some diminishing returns here. I'm pretty sure he could have acheived 90% of these results for a tiny fraction of the $2M cost. That last 10% just makes him look uncanny and freakish.
But more seriously, a very interesting idea. Hopefully they can gather some useful data about techniques that work/don't work and possibly generalize the advice for others.
A lot of best practices around fitness/health evolves gradually over time through trial and error. Not a lot of actually well formed and repeatable studies
The 2 millions a year part seems to sour the mood for many people.
But it reminds me that all the results are controlled and verified by a lot of independent doctors using strict protocols. I have no reason to doubt his claim. Even better, he open sourced his regiment for everyone to see.
84 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadIt is a refreshing contrast to all the many people in this field who are pushing a quack diet to sell books, or who have rejected the scientific method and decided that "natural" means good.
This is the opposite of that. He has all the money he needs and just wants to actually figure out how to make himself as healthy as possible, using the best science.
https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.co/
If he deducts all the time that goes into this how many years has he gained (or lost?)
Which part of this is extreme or likely to lead to problems?
I realize that even testing is not harmless, but the main problem would be inaccurate test results requiring more tests. And since he is a millionaire who is obsessed with this stuff, I don't think he is too troubled by the time and money spent on testing.
Disregarding the supplement regiment, lunch and dinner appear pretty sensible. Broccoli, Lentils, and Mushrooms for lunch every day sounds a little repetitive. Lunch could just as easily be a different soup or stew every day, with a lot more variety. Instead he appears to be blending it into a gazpacho.
Over a lifetime that’s way less than the price of a billionaire’s yacht.
https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/jeff-bezos-megayacht-mo...
Sign up every billionaire and let’s get more investment. The cost will drop 1000 fold over the next couple of decades, and maybe we’ll all get an extra couple decades of healthy living.
It is quite inspiring to see someone who trades in back to back meetings with back to back appointments.
At least he gives away this for free and doesn't have to make a best seller out of it.
I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet, in a rigorous exercise routine.
In the morning, if my face is a little puffy, I'll put on an icepack while doing my stomach crunches.
I can do a thousand now.
After I remove the icepack, I use a deep-pore cleanser lotion. In the shower, I use a water-activated gel cleanser. Then a honey-almond bodyscrub. And on the face, an exfoliating gel-scrub. Then I apply an herb mint facial masque, which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm, followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
Definetly taking a page out of this though - this seems like a fun challenge
No. Sugar at the bottom. Paid by the industry.
Still, nice to see he's taken on a hobby for his retirement, I guess.
Some people can run marathons at 100.
https://people.com/sports/100-year-old-runner-holds-world-re...
https://asiana.tv/top-stories/the-worlds-oldest-marathon-run...
Charlie Munger turns 100 next year but he doesn’t get around as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger
Of course, 100 is about 25 years above the average age a US male is expected to live.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263731/life-expectancy-o...
Maybe a proper balance involves not going too far into obsessions or give too far into addictions
“People that don’t smoke get cancer too”
That’s what people used to tell me 40 years ago.
Yes, bad things can still happen to you even if you take care of yourself. On average though, people will be much healthier.
Now, if we could only convince the “we’re all going to die anyway” crowd that we can actually cure ALS, cancers, heart disease, etc.
Most people will be convinced if you actually cure these illnesses, and not very much before that point.
I'm not so sure.
For millennia people tried and failed to fly through the air like birds. In the late nineteenth century so many people had tried and failed, it seemed like a law of nature that humans were destined to remain earth-bound. Then suddenly, miraculously, we figured it out.
I think it will be the same with the 'usual human lifespan limit' of 120 years. At some point we will figure it out, and a group of humans will have a longevity distribution whose right tail extends to 150 years. Bryan Johnson may already be in that group.
Video lies just as still pictures have for many years.
In visuals, midtones are most often associated with the boundaries of shadows and highlights. If you have clearly defined shadows, midtones are what's around their edges. But they also represent a lot of the image that's neither especially dark nor light — like many skin tones.
So what Midtone Detail does is adjust the contrast in areas with lots of midtones — places where there are peaks in the midtone third of the histogram. It just so happens that wrinkles on faces are midtone goldmines, so tweaking Midtone Detail on an image of a face makes wrinkles more or less apparent.
If you crank the slider positive, you perceptibly "sharpen" midtone regions by increasing the contrast between shadow and highlight, which emphasizes both the depth of the wrinkle and the non-wrinkled skin. If you crank it negative, you "blur" midtone regions by reducing that contrast, effectively blurring the wrinkles (and pores, and facial hairs, and small blemishes, etc.) out.
On skin that reads as "erasing wrinkles", but it can also reduce fidelity of other skin textures. Sometimes that's desired, for that uncanny valley-esque "commercial-style" smoothness, but it might not be what a filmmaker necessarily wants — that's where masking out parts of the skin, or using the Beauty OFX tool, comes in.
(Midtone Detail has uses beyond faces and skin, especially for manipulating things like outdoor detail — landscape shots with shade have lots of midtones, and you might want to reduce them to emphasize a subject or increase them for a more dramatic visual. Or adjusting transitions when a camera goes from a shot where you want to emphasize midtones, like a close-up, to a shot where you don't, like an outdoor shot.)
Paul Rudd's 53, not a vegetarian, and his diet even for filming Marvel movies isn't particularly special: https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/how-paul-rudd-got...
The trick is probably:
- be attractive
- be wealthy
- have enough of an incentive and motivation to prioritize basic fitness and skincare over doing literally anything else with your time
Of all the pictures in the article, he looks healthiest and youngest before starting his health regimen, most likely because his BMI is so low which can give faces a hollowed-out look.
I've seen many people who actually look decades younger without all that stuff he's doing - epi-genetics still rules supreme.
I guess blame the Nephillim DNA in the distant past. I probably got some Merovingian in me.
This is a good reminder to read the article before commenting.
And you can still enjoy fried food and meat.
It's like being a diabetic. I really want to get into trt but having to jab myself so much is what keeps me from doing it.
A TRT service will require blood panels before, during (quarterly as we), and after (if stopped). Something men in their 40s should be getting anyway.
The vegan diet probably saves a few bucks but I doubt he's any fitter than any other guy who spends that many hours a day on exercise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXdEPiFlqH8
I wonder if he uses a "youth" filter on his webcam to make himself look like he's succeeding.
You can get all of the real results he's gotten by eating healthy and exercising regularly, for the cost of a gym membership. Your average 45 year old crossfitter is in better shape than this guy, and there are more effective programs than crossfit.
The rest of it have substantial risk and likely no reward.
This protocol doesn't involve risky surgeries, for instance.
I agree that venturing into exotic pharmaceuticals or experimental drugs would be unwise, for instance.
But if he were truly rational about an ascetic commitment to health, then he would factor in such risks and avoid experimental therapies.
Could you give some examples please?
I would recommend most people start with an introductory strength training program that does heavy compound lifts like Starting Strength, and having a professional coach spend a few hours at the start to make sure you're doing it safely. Heavy compound lifts have a lot of specific hormonal advantages, and can be used in addition to bodybuilding type (high rep/low weight) lifts.
This, coupled with a pretty standard high protein 'recomposition' diet will transform most peoples physique pretty rapidly. Look up the article "To Be A Beast" by Jordan Feigenbaum. Other more advanced 'powerbuilding' diet programs like LOOK STRONG NAKED, The Deep Water diet, the Vince Gironda diet, LeanGains, etc. require more effort but can get you both very lean and very strong.
That said it's very impressive and very useful to have so much documentation of his regime.
WTF, why? Quantify first, ask questions later?
But more seriously, a very interesting idea. Hopefully they can gather some useful data about techniques that work/don't work and possibly generalize the advice for others.
A lot of best practices around fitness/health evolves gradually over time through trial and error. Not a lot of actually well formed and repeatable studies