Most Replayed Moment: This Longevity Protocol Actually Works! - Biohacker Bryan Johnson

00:00*The Diary of a CEO* is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you’re eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary; not available in all states.

00:29What mission are you on, and why does that mission matter to you, but also to everybody else listening to this right now?

00:42My mission is for the human race to survive and thrive. It’s figuring out what we do that creates the highest probability of that being possible.

00:53And why specifically have you taken on that mission versus any other mission you could have committed your life and time to? Why you? And I want the long answer to this—all the context, going right back to the beginning.

01:07I had this transformative experience when I was 19 years old. I went to Ecuador and I was a missionary. I lived among extreme poverty—dirt floors, mud huts, people not knowing how they were going to make ends meet day to day.

01:25I came back to the United States. My family was poor growing up, but it was opulent compared to Ecuador. I couldn’t believe that I had lived in a bubble my entire life, unaware of the circumstances of other realities like where I was at in Ecuador.

01:41I was facing decisions in college: what to study, what to become, who I was going to be. All I could identify was this fire that had lit within me that I wanted to spend my life trying to improve the human race at a global scale. I didn't know where it came from, but coming back from Ecuador, it just seemed like that was what I wanted to spend my life on.

01:58I didn't know what to do at 21, so I thought I’d become an entrepreneur, make a whole bunch of money by the age of 30, and then with that money, try to figure out a plan to do it. Lucky me, I sold Braintree Venmo at 34 and made a few hundred million dollars.

02:10Sold for $800 million dollars, right?

02:13Right. And then I set my mind to this question of: what one thing in existence could I do that would be relevant in the 25th century? I grew up on biographies, and so I'm accustomed to thinking about things on a centuries' time scale.

02:30I want to do things that don't just matter in the news cycle tomorrow, but that intelligence in the 25th century would say, "You know what? We appreciate what happened in the early 21st century."

02:41You've only really been following this protocol for a couple of years now, right?

02:45Yeah. I mean, I guess I really do understand myself as on a singular mission for intelligent existence to thrive. That is what I am, that is what I'm doing, that is what I'm pursuing. Nothing else matters to me.

03:09The question—the ultimate question, I think—is that you just said all these people are going to say you're weird or whatever else. You're very clearly mission-driven. There’s always a cost. Much of what I do here when I meet extraordinary people is to understand the cost.

03:30In fact, the reason I started this podcast—*The Diary of a CEO*—is because we see the CEO stuff, but we don't see the diary. It started as me just sharing my diary—everything from mental struggles, issues with my family—to put the cost out there. The ultimate question becomes: are you happy?

03:52Never more so in my entire life. Unquestionably.

04:03And what does that mean?

04:05I’ve never felt more fulfilled. I’ve never felt more stable. I’ve never felt a more expansive consciousness. I’ve never felt more free. I’ve never felt more bold. I’ve never, in my entire life, been this alive.

04:24And you experienced the antithesis of happiness, right? You experienced the bottom of the crevice of depression. You know what that felt like—the voices in your head that were telling you to do things, the unthinkable actions of suicide. What goes on in your head now? What are those same voices saying?

04:51It’s all play. I’ve never had more fun. Most of my life has just been a grind. It’s doing the things to achieve the objectives because that’s what the societal roleplay says to do.

05:07What I’m doing now, I’m not doing this for anyone’s expectations. I’m not doing this to achieve anyone’s acceptance. This is the game I’ve selected to play. I don’t care what anyone says about it, sincerely. I just feel free.

05:26I notice there’s something on the chair over there, and I’m actually starving. It’s just gone 4:00, and I haven't eaten today. But you were very kind in bringing me some food. So I want to talk about food. Jack, could you bring me the food, please? You can tell me what you’ve brought me to eat. Presumably, this is what you eat?

05:52That’s right. Just for anyone that’s looking, I’ll try to tilt it up so people can see. If anyone’s watching on YouTube or Spotify, you can see what’s in these bowls. And you’ve brought me two little buckets of pills here, and there’s a drink here.

06:12This is the answer if you ask the body: what do you want to eat to be in ideal health? This is the answer that it generated. This is not to say that it is the only food you could eat; it is a version of what you could eat.

06:33My daily caloric intake is 2,250 calories a day. Every calorie has to fight for its life. There’s not a single calorie in my entire life protocol that exists for any reason other than serving an objective in the body.

06:48Dish number one is called "Super Veggie." It’s broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, garlic, ginger, and hemp seeds. Over a month, if you were to do this with me, you’d eat around 70 pounds of vegetables per month.

07:0770 pounds of vegetables per month. Wow.

07:11And I think we also have in there extra virgin olive oil and chocolate.

07:18Yeah, I can taste cacao, like dark chocolate.

07:22We pair the chocolate in here; it’s an unexpected pairing. The way we think about this is: you could say chocolate is good for you, which might lead you to eat a Snickers bar.

07:35The more precise way of thinking about it is you want dark chocolate, un-Dutched, tested for heavy metals, and with a high polyphenol count. If you don't do all five layers to qualify the value of the chocolate, you have an inferior chocolate nutritional value for your body. Everything we do at Blueprint uses that frame of reference of understanding everything a full-stack way of how do you serve the body’s objectives in the maximal way.

07:52That is a mushroom covered in chocolate.

07:56How fun. Those are Maitake mushrooms.

08:08This is a normal broccoli, isn't it? You don't put anything on it? No salt?

08:12I use potassium chloride—Nu-Salt.

08:16Okay, so is that that dish explained?

08:18That’s explained.

08:21And then this looks like dessert to me.

08:24Nutty Pudding. Many people consider it to be a dessert. It’s macadamia nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, sunflower lecithin, pomegranate juice, berries, and pea protein.

08:35And is this the entire meal you’d have in one day?

08:39There’s one more dish which varies day to day, but this is really it. I have three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil—one's in here—then I have an avocado and a third meal a day.

08:52And this drink here that you’ve given me, what’s in it?

08:55Make sure you stir that up. That’s the "Green Giant." The way that it works is I'll wake up in the morning, the first thing I’ll do is drink the Green Giant, take 60 pills, work out for an hour, then eat Super Veggie, wait for an hour, eat Nutty Pudding, wait for one more hour and eat my third meal of the day, and then I’m finished for the day.

09:08How many pills will you take in one day?

09:11Currently 111.

09:14Wow. And you take 60 of them in the morning?

09:17That’s right. That big one right there, you see that guy?

09:21This one here? Jesus Lord. That’s an interesting taste. I’ve got to say, it doesn't taste amazing. It’s not like something I’d find in a juice bar or something. There’s a little bit of a bitter aftertaste to it that’s not fantastic.

09:40I mean, I like vegetables, so I like most of this stuff. The chocolate, I think, is a bit of a spanner in the works because it’s not like a chocolate you’d get—it's not milk chocolate or a Mars bar, right? It’s a very dark, bitter taste, which is a strange thing to add to a mushroom.

09:55You could also put the dark chocolate in the Nutty Pudding, or you could have it independently. I find it’s fun because it’s a new experience for people to try, so it’s really an optional thing.

10:04Oh, this is nice. This Nutty Pudding is really nice. That’s really, really nice. So what are your principles for eating then?

10:11You talked about caloric restriction. How important is that? Because I eat a lot and I don't count; I just eat. I’m quite heavy. I eat a lot, kind of out of control.

10:33It has compelling evidence. Caloric restriction has compelling evidence that it’s one of the most effective longevity interventions that can be done.

10:43And what are your wider nutritional principles that people can very easily introduce into their lives?

10:51I had this experience where I learned how to fly an airplane. I became a pilot. We’d get up at altitude and I would use my hands and try to fly the airplane. I’d go left, right, up, down. I’d try to be perfectly on the attitude indicator of maintaining exactly the altitude which I was pegged at and the direction.

11:06Then I would engage autopilot, and this plane would just sit up straight and it would be perfectly pegged. It was so far superior to my ability to do it. That’s kind of how I think about my diet.

11:18If I use my mind, I kind of ping-pong around life eating this and that—I hear this thing there, I hear that thing there, and I kind of do whatever is available to me. If you think about putting your body on autopilot—I call it my "autonomous self"—let the body report out evidence, algorithm in, and it just runs.

11:36This is the result; this is autopilot for my body. Every single thing we do is tracked in the body. Every pill has to justify its existence. If it can't be measured and quantified, we don't do it. It’s a closed-loop system that has an algorithm running me, which is so far superior to my mind which is going to add the cookie to the order or eat blank because of whatever.

11:58I’m presuming you're not going to take these back. Those are all the pills you take in one day—111 pills in a day. What is in these pills?

12:21A lot of things you'd expect: basics like Vitamin D and C, more advanced things like Alpha-ketoglutarate, or Metformin, or Acarbose, and other things like that. It spans from basic and common to some more advanced drugs.

12:42One of my friends, when he knew that I was speaking to you, he asked me about NAD+. That’s obviously something that’s become quite popular in the longevity culture. What’s your perspective on NAD+?

12:53Yeah, he’s trying to modulate those levels in his body. There’s nice age graphs. People—to enter this into an understandable frame—it’s not commonly understood what a biological age is versus a chronological age.

13:07Somebody can be chronologically 45, but I can biologically be different; I could be 30, 35, 55, or 70 according to the markers. In levels of NAD—intracellular NAD in particular—there are certain levels that would peg you at age 18, age 30, or age 50 because they reliably go down with age.

13:25So when you supplement to try to change these, you’re trying to peg yourself to a more youthful state because it’s an energy the body runs on. What I did is—because people in the longevity community do have a lot of questions about how you increase your intracellular NAD levels and there’s a big debate: do you do NR or NMN?—I trialed both.

13:48I did 90 days on NR, I did 90 days on NMN, and I measured my intracellular blood levels throughout. I showed that both were basically effective in doing the objective. I was able to peg my intracellular NAD at the 18-year-old mark on both supplements. So it basically doesn't matter; just get it measured and titrate your dose to make sure you're getting what you need.

14:11I really want to make sure—because I feel like you're so well-versed in how the things I put in my mouth have an impact on my biological age—what advice would you give to me? Say that I’m a blank canvas and I’m going to believe everything you say. My objective is to increase my health span and to not age poorly. What would you say about the things that I put in my mouth? Give me some rules.

14:37Do exactly what I’ve published. I’m going to make it dead simple for you. I say tongue-in-cheek that Blueprint is the best health protocol ever developed. Prove me wrong with your data.

14:52If someone can achieve better biomarkers with their protocol, it’s going to be amazing for me and everyone else because now we have a comparison. But right now, the tricky thing for someone like yourself is if you go out into the world and you try to figure this out, you’ve got to sort through 100 gurus.

15:10Everyone is saying a different thing. Even now, if you give five anti-aging experts the same scientific papers and ask them to develop a protocol for you, you'll get a different protocol from every single one. They’re not going to agree. There’s no way to go out there and get consensus in the world.

15:25So you need to pick a path and then measure. I’ve done exactly that. I’ve basically tried to punch through all the noise and say: is there actually something I can do which has some believability? That’s what I’ve done. I’ve published all my data.

15:39Blueprint provides people a starting point to say: I’m going to do something that I can see works, and measure myself, then iterate and improve upon it. Health and wellness is a lot like religion where the King James version of the Bible supports 100 different denominations. They all say they’re God’s one and true only. Same with health and wellness; everyone claims they’re God’s true health and wellness program. I’ve tried to punch through the whole thing to say: it doesn’t matter what a guru status is, share the data.

15:59Eat in the mornings?

16:03Trial it. I’d say follow my protocol exactly, see how you feel, and then try an experiment where you do later in the day and then compare the two.

16:16Sugar?

16:18Zero. Why? It does nothing useful for your body. Our body needs sugar to run, so if you eat sugar in berries—which you're having now—that's great. But highly processed white sugar or cane sugar, there’s no value for your body. There’s other things of much higher value for your body.

16:45Do you do anything with your testosterone levels?

16:48Yeah, I do a testosterone patch. I supplement because I’m on a caloric restriction diet, and when you do that, your testosterone naturally goes down. So I keep my testosterone pegged in the normal range between 600 and 800. I’m about 850 right now. I’m not trying to get above it, just trying to be normal.

17:11One of the reasons why men of my age start thinking about longevity is we notice that our hairlines have started to recede. Getting into your 30s with a receding hairline is actually quite good; some of my friends started a little bit earlier. And then we start noticing these gray hairs. You have fantastic hair. In fact, a lot of the comments I saw online were, "Someone ask him how he’s got that hair." What advice would you give to me? Do I let this thing go back, or do I fight it?

17:41Fight. Fight with everything you’ve got in you. Trust me on this. You don't want to clean up aging damage that you can prevent right now.

17:58And I can prevent my hairline receding?

18:00Yes. How? I started losing my hair in my early 30s and it’s been a grind to try to keep it. So my hair protocol, here’s what I do: I have a custom formulation that we’ve built. It basically has Minoxidil and a few other things. People can get that easily.

18:22I have a red light therapy cap I wear every morning for six minutes in my morning routine. I do PRF—I get blood drawn, spun up, and then reinjected into my scalp once every month or three. And then I take a few supplements that are listed online for the Blueprint website. Basically, like four things helps prevent hair loss and encourages hair growth.

18:52I don't know if I'm going to be able to do all of that and walk my dog. Is there like a silver bullet?

18:58Here’s how it works. I know it sounds overwhelming. If you build habits that just make these things so you don't think about it—it sounds overwhelming in the beginning—but if you just get into a routine where every morning you do your thing, and when you're doing that thing, you just throw a cap on your head and it just is on for six minutes.

19:18And then at night before you go to bed, you put a little liquid on your scalp and you rub it in. And then you take a few pills every day with your routine. It’s entirely about building systems so you don’t think about it ever. So it's never a burden on you.

19:35What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.

19:50*The Diary of a CEO* is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you’re eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary; not available in all states.

20:19*The Diary of a CEO* is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you’re eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary; not available in all states.