Longevity News Blog

Hi friends, We might be the first generation that doesn't die. To that end, my team and I have spent the last few years building the world's first Don't Die protocol. Some of you don't care about Don't Die, you just want to be hot. That's cool too. It's really the same thing.To make this Don't Die thing understandable, I've made it into a game because humans love games. You'll learn how to flex your biomarkers with friends. You'll be able to share the science with friends on why poor sleep is a terrible idea.Personally, I have kind of taken this whole thing to the extreme. There's the world's fastest person, and the richest, but never before has there been the "Healthiest Person in the World." I've tried to become that person. I am certainly the most biologically measured person ever. Online, people refer to me as "immortal unc." That's what we care about. We are family and we care about your well-being. In fact, I want to be the strongest voice in your mind encouraging you to make health your top life priority.To remind you that you will be a better father, mother, brother, sister, friend, colleague, and human when you do so.If you're new to this game of health, don't worry. I made disastrous health decisions in life until I was 42 and my body has bounced back. No matter your situation, you can too.Below I'm going to share everything my team and I have learned over the past few years, spending millions of dollars researching, experimenting and measuring. We've made the mistakes for you.Know that we are also hard at work to make all of this easier, more accessible and fun.We are living in the most exciting time in human history. The future is probably cooler than anything we can imagine. Our goal is to get there, together. Don't Die, Bryan JohnsonPlanet Earth, 2026 ___________________ CONTENTS AboutBryan Johnson's BiomarkersWhat is the one thing I can do to improve my health?Do these things to lower your resting heart rate before bedMaster these 5 habitsHow to avoid bad habitsWhat is the protocol? ProtocolsSleepExerciseNutritionSkinOral careHairClean waterFemale protocolPregnancyMeasurement My daily routine Other Advanced TherapiesMesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs)Gene TherapyCerebrolysinRx / PrescriptionsHBOT ProtocolSaunaMy sauna protocol Products I use ___________________   About Bryan Johnson's Biomarkers When I started Project Blueprint, I was a broken down 42 year old. Sugar cereal and soda as a kid, a decade of chronic depression, and 20 years of sleep deprivation. I was overweight, my joints hurt, and I was losing my hair.Five years later, I'm surprised. Really surprisedHere is a sampling of my biomarkers: muscle: 98th percentile (all men) fat: 98th percentile optimal (all men) bone mineral density: 99th percentile (all ages) resting heart rate: elite athlete level fertility: top 99th percentile (all men) sexual function (NTE): 99th percentile (all men) blood pressure: lower than 90% of 18-year-olds vascular function: late teen / early 20s VEGF: top 1% healthy individuals sleep: top quartile for 18-29-year-olds DNA biological age markers: telomeres: age equivalent 10-15-year-old telomeres regenerating rate: 12-year-old epigenetic speed of aging: 0.48 grip strength: top 5% of all ages blood glucose: lower than 98% of 18-25-year-olds blood sugar control: better than 99% of 18-25-year-olds I share this to give you hope that you can meaningfully change your health for the better. There are of course limitations with today's science, but more can be accomplished than most people think.   What is the one thing I can do to improve my health? The most common question I get: what is the one thing I can do to improve my health? I'll tell you. It's free and within your power.Lower your resting heart rate before bed. After spending years working on health, lowering your resting heart rate (RHR) before bed is the single most effective thing you can do for your health. Why? Because sleep is the best performance enhancing drug in the world. Get your dose every night. The reason why RHR works: when your resting heart rate (RHR) is low, your sleep is better. When your sleep is better, you're more likely to exercise and eat well. When you exercise and eat well…you do more positive things for your health. Conversely, if your RHR is high, you won't sleep well. Then you won't exercise and you'll eat poorly. Poor sleep destroys your self control. A vicious cycle.What increases your RHR before bed? Do these things to lower your resting heart rate before bed Eat your final meal/snack of the day four hours before bed. I stop eating around noon each day and that will get my RHR to around 39 beats per minute right before bed. If I achieve that, I'm going to have a perfect night's sleep. If my RHR is 56 because I ate an hour before bed, my sleep quality will be around 30-40% worse. Screens off 60 minutes before bed. Your body needs time to wind down. Your phone will keep you stimulated via doomscrolling, work and other activities. Read a book ten minutes before bed. In the sixty minutes before bed, do your hobby, listen to a podcast, read, go for a walk, journal, meditate, breathwork, or call a friend. Things that calm your mind. Be mindful of stimulants like caffeine, which has a half life of 6 hours. A cup of coffee at 4 pm leaves a half a cup of coffee in your system at 10 pm when you're trying to go to sleep. Use red and amber lights in the evening. Bluelight is bad for sleep. You can get blue light blocking apps (f.lux), glasses and also turn red mode on your phone. No fights after 5 pm. Fight in the morning when you're well rested.   Master these 5 habits People read the headlines about me and mistakenly believe that what I do is not accessible to them. The opposite is true. You can achieve similar health benefits by building some simple life habits. Sleep – high quality sleep is the world's #1 longevity drug. It underpins every healthy behavior including exercise, nutrition, and emotional resilience. I've built my life around great sleep, and I encourage you to do the same. Nutrition – I abide by a philosophy that every calorie must fight for its life. See the Don't Die food guide below. The key here, try to never let your mind make eating decisions on your behalf. Build and rely upon life systems. Exercise – 6 hours a week is ideal. Incorporate strength, cardio, flexibility and balance. If you can't do that, even 20 minutes a day is great. Family, friendship and community – love and be loved. It will extend your life. Things to avoid – fast food, junk food, smoking, vaping, excessive alcohol and social media, and anything addictive. Addiction makes you a prisoner.   How to avoid bad habits Years ago I could not stop myself from overeating everyday at 7 pm. I was building a startup, had three little kids, struggling to get along with my partner, and having an existential crisis with my born-into religion. The pressures of life forced me into the open arms of stress-eating. One day out of desperation, I said "Evening Bryan, you're fired. You make my life miserable. I can't sleep. I'm 60 lbs overweight and I feel awful all the time."Giving that version of me a name and then writing down his persuasive tactics such as "tonight is the last night" or "tomorrow we'll work extra hard to burn off the calories" gave me the tools I needed to stand my ground. Evening Bryan's authority to eat between 5 pm and 10 pm was revoked. No matter what, Evening Bryan cannot eat food because if given the chance, he'll eat too much and ruin life for Sleep Bryan, Morning Bryan, Work Bryan and Dad Bryan. We all have bad habits. Things we do that we don't really want to do. They never actually make us happy. They in fact make us sad and regretful. We all know this to be true.Here's one approach to move past your bad habits: Identify a version of you that is responsible for self destructive behavior and give them a name (i.e. Evening Bryan). Write down the persuasion techniques they use to get what they want ("today's the last day"). Prepare a list of rebuttals that enables you to stand your ground ("this is not what we really want", "we know this makes us sad and regretful"). Identify which versions of you should be in charge (i.e. Morning you) and give them the authority to make decisions on behalf of your Evening Bryan. Make firm rules about what you will and won't do. None is easier than some.   What is the protocol? What is the Blueprint Protocol? I think it's the best health protocol in the world. And I'm going to make it easy for you.I'm going to guide you to do fewer, not more things for your health. Habits and not expensive, exotic therapies.As you progress, I'll help you level up to do the best therapies too. I promise you, if you implement my protocol, you will feel better than you can remember. I promise you. As we go through this, you're going to feel the tension of your current habits, social obligations, and existing lifestyle. Don't worry. We'll work through it. Step by step. But again, I promise you. On the other side is a version of you begging your current self to take this seriously and give it a go.   Protocols Sleep Watch: top 10 sleep habits High quality sleep changed my life. It took me years to build the habits and systems that led to eight months of 100% perfect sleep. As far as I know, this is the best in the world. I'm going to teach you the habits for excellent sleep. We all know the energizing feeling of a great night's sleep. It rejuvenates the body, boosts brain function, powers the immune system, and regulates hormones. It's the foundation for well being and longevity. On the other hand, sleep deprivation impairs. Being constantly awake for 18 or 24 hours is equivalent to having a blood alcohol content of 0.05% or 0.1%, respectively. In the U.S. 0.08% is considered legally intoxicated. Get six hours of sleep or less on average and you're 4.2x times more likely to develop the common cold. A study in young healthy participants showed a 20% increase in S100-B levels following a single night of sleep deprivation, the same following a traumatic brain injury. One night with 4 hours of sleep showed a 70% reduction in the activity of natural killer cells in 18 out of 23 participants. One night of subsequent normal sleep was enough to restore NK activity to its baseline. Natural killer cells are what's killing cancer cells among other functions. Preclinical studies have established a causal link between the lack of sleep inhibition of immune surveillance and increased tumor growth in animal models.   Sleep deprivation diminishes cognitive functions, slows reflexes, and gives rise to poor decision making. It's linked to obesity, anxiety, depression and weakened immunity. If you only do one thing for your health: sleep. Master 10 habits Reframe Your Identity: You are a professional sleeper. Make sleep your #1 priority. Nothing influences your conscious and unconscious existence more. Plan your day around sleep. It's the most important appointment in your calendar. Sleep will make you a top performer. Create a 30–60 minute wind down routine: Set a specific time each evening to start winding down, for example reading, taking a warm bath, breathing exercises, soothing music. Focus on transitioning your work and worry brain to sleep mode. Get Morning Light: Get outside within the first 15–30 minutes of waking to set your circadian rhythm and boost mood or use a light therapy device (10000 lux) if natural sunlight isn't available. Regulate Evening Light: Dim the lights one to two hours before bedtime to create a relaxed atmosphere. Use warm (red is best) lighting in the evenings. Install blue light filters on your devices (i.e. flux) and consider blue light blocking glasses. Limit screen time at least an hour before bed and blackout your bedroom. Regulate Your Bedroom Temperature: Keep your bedroom temperature between 65–68°F (18–20°C). Choose breathable bedding and light sleepwear. Use fans or cooling devices and consider taking a warm bath before bed. Ventilate your room and or use a temperature controlled mattress if possible. Keep a Consistent Bedtime: Choose a bedtime that allows for 7–9 hours in bed each night. Avoid scheduling late nights and be consistent even on weekends. Set an alarm for winding down. Track your sleep patterns with a journal or sleep tracker. Curate Your Sleep Environment: Ensure your bedroom is quiet, dark, and cool. Invest in a comfortable mattress and pillows. I have a copper pillowcase. Remove distractions and keep your bedroom clean and clutter free. Consider using a noise machine to offset environmental sounds or earplugs if necessary. Buy a temperature controlled mattress if you can. Eat your final meal of the day hours before bed: Try to have your last meal of the day at least two hours (experiment with 4 and 6 hours before) before bed and avoid large meals close to bedtime. Eating close to bed creates large metabolic demands on your body, causes blood glucose fluctuations, reduces melatonin production, and disrupts your body's natural process of lowering core body temperature. Avoid Stimulants Before Bed: Try to avoid caffeine, alcohol, and other stimulants at least 8–10 hours before sleep. Caffeine has a half life of 6 hours in the blood. That means that consuming a cup of coffee 6 hours before bedtime is equivalent to drinking half a cup immediately before going to bed. Opt for herbal teas or other relaxing drinks in the evening. Gather Data: Track your sleep habits and patterns with a journal or sleep tracker. Use the data to make informed decisions and adjustments to your routine. Continuously monitor and tweak your habits to optimize your sleep quality.   Exercise Exercise 6 hours a week. 3 sessions of strength training 3 sessions of cardio Aim for 150 minutes of moderate activity (Zone 2) during which you can maintain a conversation. And 75 minutes of vigorous exercise where you're unable to converse (like HIIT). Include flexibility, balance, and mobility exercises.   A workout protocol guide can be found here. A few important tips: Avoid injury. Injuries can create serious limitations, create body imbalances and cause long term complications. It's worth being cautious even if it means not doing certain things. Create an exercise habit. Do it everyday, no matter what (unless you're injured, have a limiting medical condition, or under doctors' orders). You don't even think about it. It just happens out of habit. Do not give yourself the option to decide. Work on strength training, cardio, balance and flexibility. Move throughout the day. After each meal, be active for 5 to 10 minutes. Every 30 minutes, get up from your desk and move around a bit. Don't get caught up and paralyzed in all the nuances and rabbit holes of exercise. Being active, in whatever ways you can, pays big for your health. Considerations for premenopausal females: Women should prioritize high intensity and strength training during the follicular phase (first half of the cycle), as estrogen enhances performance, muscle growth, and recovery. In the luteal phase (second half), focus on lower intensity activities like Zone 2 cardio and lighter strength training, as higher progesterone reduces exercise capacity and slows recovery. Considerations for postmenopausal women: Prioritize strength training and HIIT to help maintain muscle mass, improve insulin sensitivity, and protect bone density. Weight bearing exercises are essential for reducing the risk of osteoporosis and maintaining overall functional strength as estrogen levels decline.   The scientific evidence behind exercise is compelling, plus it makes you feel great. Regular physical activity is extremely important for increasing life expectancy and overall health. Regular physical activity can reduce the risk of all cause mortality by 26 to 31% and cardiovascular disease by 28 to 38%. (link) A 2012 BMJ cohort study of ~1.1 million Swedish adolescent males showed that those in the weakest third for muscular strength had about a 20 to 35% higher risk of premature death (before age 55) compared with the strongest third, independent of BMI and aerobic fitness (Ortega FB et al., 2012). Every pound of muscle burns 3x more calories than a pound of fat (6 versus 2) (Zurlo et al., 1990). Working out 2 to 4 times beyond the minimum recommended amount of vigorous physical activity (150 to 299 minutes per week) is associated with a 21 to 23% lower risk of all cause mortality (link). Combining moderate and vigorous physical activity can provide nearly the maximum mortality reduction of 35 to 42% (link). Even small amounts of intense intermittent lifestyle physical activity (such as brief bursts of fast walking or stair climbing for 1 to 2 minutes) are associated with lower cancer risk.   Nutrition My philosophy on nutrition is that every calorie must fight for its life. We've reviewed the scientific literature for the best longevity foods and created the guide below. What I eat everyday: Daily macros: Calories: 2,250 (10% caloric restriction) Protein: 130 grams (~25%) Carbs: 206 grams (~35%) Fat: 101 grams (~40%) Note: A lot of people want to label others into nutrition camps that war with each other, i.e. plant based, carnivore, keto, paleo, etc. I don't identify with any of them. I follow the scientific evidence and data in determining what I eat. Whatever your food preferences, it's best if you measure your biomarkers to determine if the foods you eat are serving your body.   My daily food routine:See below for my entire daily schedule. Considerations for premenopausal women: During the follicular phase, women should focus on higher carbohydrate intake due to improved insulin sensitivity, while maintaining moderate protein levels to support muscle growth. In the luteal phase, as insulin sensitivity decreases, reduce carbohydrate intake and increase protein and healthy fats to support muscle maintenance and counteract the catabolic effects of progesterone. Supplements: Luteal phase: magnesium, Ashwagandha, Rhodiola Rosea, sodium, potassium can help reduce stress, balancing hormones, reduce PMS related fatigue, and combat water retention and bloating. Considerations for postmenopausal women: Increasing protein intake is crucial to support muscle mass and counteract the effects of declining estrogen, which can lead to muscle loss. Calcium and vitamin D intake should be prioritized to help maintain bone density and reduce the risk of osteoporosis. Supplements: calcium (1000 to 1200 mg per day) and vitamin D (2000 IU per day)   Skin Skin is the largest organ of our bodies. Up until just a few years ago, I kind of destroyed mine. I regularly got sunburns, had a poor diet, and didn't really do anything to nurture healthy skin. Now in my 40s, the damage is apparent. When we started Blueprint, we had the goal to measure every organ of the body, including skin, and slow its speed of aging and reverse the aging damage. I had a lot of skin aging damage, and we've used various technologies to measure my skin age. When I started Blueprint, my skin was in the 98th percentile for damage, with a skin age of 64. Now, my skin age has improved to age 36. Skin care basics This may seem like a long list but they're really all habits that you'll soon forget you're doing. Get sunlight early in the mornings and later in the afternoons Avoid direct sun exposure when the UV index is high (10 am to 4 pm) If in the sun during high UV times, use clothing, a UV umbrella or wear a hat and or mineral sunscreen Prioritize your sleep And eat a Blueprint like healthy diet Avoid junk, fried, highly processed foods Consume 20 to 30 grams of Collagen peptides daily. It's good to pair Vitamin C with peptides, which the Blueprint stack has.  Supplements: Niacinamide, Vitamin C, Polyphenols and Antioxidants, and Omega 3 fatty acids. These are in the Blueprint stack including Essential Capsules and Longevity Mix.   My skin daily protocol I reversed my skin age by the equivalent of 9 years. Effectively freezing my skin aging over the past five years. Here is the summary of how I did it. + Blueprint Cleanser+ Blueprint Serum+ Blueprint Moisturizer   Pro tips + Other UV Protection: UV-tinted windows (blocks 99% of UV) and a UV umbrella when outside. + Red Light Therapy: Daily 6 minute full body sessions per week for collagen production, healing, and mitochondrial health. Note, if you don't have easy access to red light therapy, don't worry. The basics are a great place to start. Measuring skin health We measure my progress and tailor treatments with Multispectral Imaging (Canfield's Visia device). It provides detailed views of skin health, tracking UV damage, pore size, and spots. Reveals much more than the eyes can see. Some wellness clinics offer this service, you can search locally to find one. Advanced skin therapies I've tried quite a few skin therapies and am currently doing these two. I'm always playing with new things though so I'll update this. Here is a summary of the advanced Skin focused therapies + 1927 nm laser (1x every 6 months, can do more or less depending on your status and goals) - improves skin tone, texture, dyschromia, sun damage, and fine lines, while also reducing actinic keratoses and pigmentation through accelerated epidermal turnover and renewal. + 1550-nm laser (1x every 6 months, can do more or less depending on your status and goals) - penetrates deeper into the mid-dermis, where it creates controlled microthermal injury that stimulates fibroblasts to produce new collagen and elastin, leading to improvements in skin firmness, wrinkles, acne scars, and overall structural integrity. + Sofwave (1x every 6 months, can do more or less depending on your status and goals): non-invasive ultrasound skin tightening system that delivers controlled energy into the mid-dermis to stimulate collagen and elastin production without damaging the skin's surface. By activating fibroblasts through precise thermal stimulation, it improves skin firmness, laxity, and fine lines, especially on the face and neck, with minimal downtime.   Oral care Oral care protocol:Nine steps you can follow to get your oral health in order: Waterpik: the first thing I do when waking up is use a water pick. It uses a high pressure stream of water to remove food, plaque, and bacteria from hard to reach places. Morning and night. Floss: after using the Waterpik to loosen particles, I use floss for plaque and debris removal. Brush: I use an electric brush, but you may prefer a manual. I enjoy soft bristles as it cleans effectively without unneeded harshness on the tooth or gums. Morning and night. Tongue Scraper: This is a game changer. If it's not part of your oral routine, I encourage you to try. It can significantly improve oral hygiene. Morning and night. Tea Tree Oil: I previously used tea tree oil, 2 to 3 drops with 2 oz of water. Recently I discontinued using it. Years ago it helped improve my oral health. Now that my baseline is back to ideal I have not needed it in my protocol. Bruxism Device: For 20 years I was grinding my teeth at night. If you have Bruxism, I strongly encourage you to address it. A dentist on Blueprint recommended the SomnoDent Bruxism Device, and for the first time in my life, my Bruxism has stopped. Wear while sleeping. Link Cleanings: Make sure you visit your dentist at least 2 times a year. It is important to identify problems early and remove hardened plaque. Even with diligent brushing and flossing at home, it's difficult to remove all plaque from your teeth.   Oral Hygiene Tips: Reduce sugar: Try sweeteners like Trehalose, Monk Fruit, Xylitol, and Allulose. Acidic Liquid: Avoid extended exposure to acidic fluids, such as coffee and lemon water. Avoid dry mouth: Stay hydrated. Saliva protects your teeth by washing away food debris, neutralizing acid, carrying essential ions like calcium, which help remineralize your enamel, making it stronger. Water pik, floss, and brush upon waking Travel Toothbrush: If I spend the day on the go, I'll take a travel toothbrush with me. Throughout the day you can sneak away to a bathroom and give your teeth a clean.   Hair Genetically, I should be bald. I started to lose my hair and go gray in my late 20s. Now, at 46, I've got a full head of hair and less gray. Here's how I did it (watch video). Start early and be proactive: I made the mistake of addressing my hair loss and graying after noticing it. By age 20, about 20% of men already have some visible hair loss. Many people lose up to 50% of their hair before they start to notice thinning. By age 50, up to 40% of women will have noticeable hair loss. Consider starting a hair health protocol before you can visibly detect loss. Nutrition: proper nutrition is important for hair health. You'll want to make sure you're getting adequate protein, Omega 3 fatty acids, Biotin (Vitamin B7), Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Iron, Zinc and Biotin. The Blueprint stack has all of these. Blueprint Shampoo (scalp treatment) and Peptide Serum: The Blueprint system combines a water based, residue free, peptide serum and shampoo with patented delivery systems that target receptors for maximum impact, along with nanofluorosome technology activated by the Blueprint 302 Laser Cap.The serum contains eight biomimetic peptides, more than any other product, including EGF, Thymosin beta 4, SCF, hGH, VEGF, PDGF, Follistatin, and Copper Peptide 1, while the shampoo features a similar stack of peptides designed to optimize scalp health.   Instructions Step 1: Blueprint Peptide Shampoo (scalp treatment) Wash hair with your regular shampoo. Rinse thoroughly. Apply 1 to 2 pumps of Blueprint Shampoo directly to the scalp. Massage and lather onto scalp. It foams nicely. Leave for 2 minutes. Rinse out. Follow with your regular conditioner routine.   Why do I need another shampoo?Blueprint Peptide Shampoo is a scalp treatment.Wash with your regular shampoo first to remove oil and buildup, so this formula can work on a clean scalp and deliver peptides where they're needed. Step 2: Blueprint Peptide Serum Apply daily to dry scalp. Use a dropper to apply directly to the scalp and focus on areas of concern. One full dropper covers the entire scalp, adjust as needed. Massage in. Wear the Blueprint red light laser cap for 6 min to activate the ingredients. Wait until serum is completely dry, before using other styling products.   Topical hair formulation - I use a topical solution (7% minoxidil + a few other ingredients), 1 mL applied to my scalp each night. I then massage my scalp with a silicon scrubber for 1-2 minutes to stimulate blood flow. Blueprint is now fulfilling Rx for hair. Blueprint 302 Laser Cap (655 nm) - six minutes a day and you can be doing your morning routine as you wear it.  Oral Minoxidil - I take 3.75 mg a day. I started with 2.5 mg and evaluated for side effects. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial involving 90 men with androgenetic alopecia AGA, oral minoxidil (5 mg daily) was found to have similar efficacy to topical minoxidil (5% solution applied twice daily) after 24 weeks. Oral minoxidil is generally considered safe at low doses, but it can have side effects such as hypertrichosis (excessive hair growth) and headaches If you want to start oral Minoxidil, you can get the Rx from our friend Dr. Marjon Vatanchi, Irvine Dermatology. 949-800-8551, Concierge@irvinedermatology.com.   This protocol has worked remarkably well for me. I wouldn't take finasteride given its side effect risks. Good luck to you friends. Wishing you each the best in maintaining a full head of vibrant hair.   Clean water I'm using an alkaline water filtration system ($1,300 cost). There are similar systems that cost $300. System components: Carbon Filtration: removes all dirt (solid blocks are better because they can remove smaller particles and volatile organic compounds) Reverse Osmosis Membrane: dirty water is diverted for disposal, >85% pure water at this point Mixed Bed Deionization: removes impurities that the RO membrane misses and polishes water to laboratory grade high purity (all chemicals and pharmaceuticals removed to parts per billion) Remineralization and Alkalization: water infused with coral calcium sand (>70 naturally occurring trace minerals) Coconut Carbon Fiber: makes water taste as natural as possible If you're in the U.S. you can get my same water system from William @ +1 323.356.3142. I use simplelab to test the water.   Female protocol FOLLICULAR PHASE:This phase is distinguished by the growth and maturation of ovarian follicles containing eggs, starting with the first day of menstruation and ending with ovulation. During the follicular phase estrogen starts off low and slowly increases leading up to ovulation. Progesterone remains low throughout this phase. These hormonal changes lead to: An increase in estrogen levels causes increased insulin sensitivity (i.e. improves carbohydrate metabolism). Improved muscle synthesis: Estrogen promotes muscle recovery and growth. Lower core body temperature: Low progesterone levels lead to a lower core temperature, improving performance during high intensity sessions. Faster recovery: Higher estrogen levels contribute to improved recovery.   Protocol: Day 1 to ovulation (day 1 of menses to ovulation). Individual responses vary. Training:a) Prioritize high intensity workouts and strength training during this phase.b) Recovery is faster, train more often. Nutrition:a) Eat higher carb during this phase as insulin sensitivity is improved.b) Protein intake at 1.5 g per body weight in kg per day. Supplements:a) Standard Blueprint stackb) Calcium 1200 mg daily   LUTEAL PHASE:During the luteal phase, progesterone rises, peaking after ovulation and remaining high until menstruation. Estrogen also rises but decreases before ovulation. Increased core temperature: High progesterone elevates core temperature, reducing performance and slowing recovery. Insulin resistance: Progesterone decreases insulin sensitivity. Catabolism: Progesterone promotes muscle breakdown, requiring a higher protein intake and slowing recovery. Water retention: Progesterone increases water retention. Neurotransmitter changes: Progesterone can affect neurotransmitters like serotonin, leading to fatigue, irritability, and PMS.   Protocol: Post ovulation to menstruation Training:a) Prioritize zone 2 cardio and easier strength training.b) Recovery is slower, lower intensity and regularity of activities. Nutrition:a) Increase protein and healthy fats. Reduce carbohydrates as insulin sensitivity is reduced.b) Protein intake at 2.0 g per body weight in kg per day.c) Combat water retention with adequate electrolytes. Supplements:a) Increase Sodium 200 to 400 mg dailyb) Increase Potassium 200 to 400 mg dailyc) Increase Magnesium 100 to 200 mg dailyd) Ashwagandha 300 to 600 mg and Rhodiola Rosea 200 to 400 mg daily to help regulate stress, reduce bloating, and alleviate PMS symptoms during early and later luteal phase.e) Melatonin 1 to 3 mg nightly to help improve sleep quality.   Late Luteal Phase: Last week to a few days before menses. Training:a) Light training. Self care activities. Nutrition:a) Continued hydration.   How do you identify ovulation: Monitor your basal body temperature: Many wearables now track basal temperature during sleep or upon waking. Look for a 0.5 to 1.0 degree increase, which begins 1 to 2 days after ovulation and often persists until menstruation. Cervical mucus changes: You'll notice increased production and a change in consistency clear, slippery, and stretchy, similar to egg whites.   PERIMENOPAUSE AND MENOPAUSE: Training:a) Focus on strength training and HIIT to maintain muscle mass and prevent insulin resistance.b) Weight bearing activities and high intensity exercise are critical for protecting both bone and muscle mass. Nutrition:a) Increase protein intake to support muscle mass.b) Aim for 2.0 g per kg of protein per day. Supplements:a) Continue with the regular Blueprint stack.b) Use Ashwagandha and Rhodiola as needed for stress and mood management.c) Magnesium: 100 to 200 mg daily, as needed for mood.d) Calcium: 1200 mg daily.   Pregnancy If pregnant and on the stack.. What do you do: The ingredients in the following Blueprint products are known to be safe during pregnancy. However, we suggest you consult your doctor before use if pregnant or breastfeeding:a) Longevity Proteinb) Blueberry Nut Mixc) EVOOd) Protein powderse) Collagen The following supplements included in the Blueprint stack should be avoided during pregnancy:a) Longevity Mix, Ashwagandha, Curcumin, Red Yeast Rice, Nicotinamide Riboside, CA-AKG, Glucosamine Sulfate, Creatine, Sodium Hyaluronate, N-Acetyl-Cysteine. Consider adding the following supplements:a) Prenatal Vitamin with adequate methylated B vitamins (at least 600 mcg Methylfolate, 2.5 mcg methylcobalamin).b) Magnesium 500 to 600 mg daily.c) Iron 30 mg daily.d) Calcium 1200 mg daily.e) Omega 3 Fatty Acids DHA/EPA 1000 to 2000 mg daily (Low metal source, Blueprint Omega-3 out now). Nutritional recommendations:a) Balanced diet with at least 100 g of protein daily.b) Avoid processed sugars and foods to reduce gestational diabetes risk.c) Consume at least 30 g of fiber daily.d) Avoid raw meat, processed meat, unpasteurized cheeses, and high mercury fish.e) Avoid alcohol and limit caffeine to 200 mg daily. Exercise Recommendations:a) Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week.b) Strength training at least 90 minutes per week.c) Consider adding in pelvic floor exercises.   Measurement We are working on a Mobile App and Biomarker testing products to enable you to track your health, measure blood work, engage with others, share updates, and meetup in real life. More details coming soon, sign up here to be updated. Routine Measurement Blood draw, every 3 to 6 months Full body MRI annually (if over 40 or a family history of high risk) Mole check, annually Dentist, every 6 months Eye doctor, annually Blood glucose CPM Breast self examination, monthly (ideally a few days after your period ends) Testicular self examination, monthly   My daily routine Bedtime In bed by 8:30 pm because every day starts the night before. Sleep is my #1 life priority because high quality rest makes hard things easy and impossible things doable. Following my sleep protocol, I achieved eight months of 100% perfect sleep. I apply my custom hair serum (1 mL) and then massage my scalp using a silicone scrubber. Morning ~5 am, I awake naturally as abrupt alarms can have negative effects. Body composition measurement: weight, fat, muscle, hydration, arterial stiffness. Breathing exercise or meditation for 5 min to get my mind and body right for the day. My eyes get light from a 10,000 LUX for 3 to 4 min as I'm up before the sun. Apply the Blueprint Peptide Serum to the scalp and wear the Blueprint red light therapy cap. Shower, wash stuff out of hair. 5:25 am (pre workout) An 8 oz drink consisting of: Blueprint Longevity Mix 1 scoop Creatine 2.5 g (Longevity Mix has 2.5 g for 5 g total) Microbiome Prebiotic galactooligosaccharides ½ tsp Inulin 1 tsp Arabinogalactan powder 1 tsp 5:35 am breakfast (pre workout) Blueprint Longevity Protein (watch: how I prepare) with: Blueberry Nut Mix Blueprint Collagen peptides 11 g Extra Virgin Olive Oil 1 Tbsp (15 mL) Berries I'll take the following pills: Blueprint Essential Capsules (2) Blueprint Advanced Antioxidants (1) Ashwagandha & Rhodiola (1) Omega-3 (EPA/DHA/DPA 800 mg)  Proferrin 10.5 mg NR (450 mg) or NMN (500 mg)   Morning longevity protocol Check air quality indoors and outdoors. 6:00 am - 60-90 min workout: I focus on balance, flexibility, strength training and cardio. Here is an example workout. I'll rotate listening to music, a book, podcast or educational video. On the weekends I'll hike, play pickleball, ride a bike, climb, etc. See exercise session for weekly goals. 7:30 am Dry sauna: 200F for 20 minutes. I place an ice pack on the boys. Important for fertility health. 8:00 am Red and NIR light therapy: 10 minutes. 8:15 am Shockwave therapy: 5 minutes, 3 times a week. 4500 shocks per session (sofwave, stemwave). 8:30 am shower: Blueprint face wash + moisturizer Apply 2 pumps of the Blueprint Shampoo to my regular shampoo and massage into scalp for one minute. 9:00 am Either HBOT (90 min) or IHHT (42 min). ~10:00 am Blueprint Metabolic Protein Extra Virgin Olive Oil (1 Tbsp) Blueprint Collagen peptides (1 scoop) Berries 10 am - work Every 30 minutes I'll do ~2-3 minutes of light activity such as walking, bodyweight exercises, stretching, light household activity, or dancing. All liquid I drink is mineralized, meaning it's tea or with electrolytes or the Blueprint Longevity Mix in them. This helps avoid having to get up at night to go to the bathroom. I also stop drinking fluids at 4 pm. ~10:10 am A 10 minute walk. Begin work. My morning hours are my best. My desk and chair are situated so that I can rotate between sitting and standing, always maintaining proper posture. Identify and focus on the highest priority items for the day. I try very hard to avoid checking messages or social media until now and even after I get my first hour of focused work in. 11:00 am My next meal: a Super Veggie like meal Black lentils, 45 grams dry, ~150 grams cooked Broccoli (head plus stalk), 250 grams (can also use broccoli sprouts) Cauliflower 150 grams Shiitake or White Mushrooms, 50 grams Garlic, 1 clove (a piece) Ginger Root, 3 grams Lime, 1 Cumin, 1 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar, 1 Tbsp Hemp Seeds, 1 Tbsp After prep, drizzle 1 Tbsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil 1 to 4 Tbsp of fermented foods i.e. cabbage, kimchi, beets, etc. 11:15 am Focused work. Every 30 minutes I'll do ~2 to 3 minutes of light activity such as walking, bodyweight exercises, stretching, light household activity, or dancing. If not, my body screams at me for non movement. Noon, my final meal of the day which will be some combination of veggies, nuts, seeds and berries. Here's an example: Stuffed Sweet Potato, 500 calories 300 grams cooked sweet potato Chickpeas 45 grams cooked Grape Tomatoes 12 Avocado ½ Radishes 4 Cilantro ¼ cup Jalapeno Pepper 1 large Limes 2 whole Lemon 1 whole Chile Powder 1 teaspoon 1 Tbsp of Blueprint Snake Oil My Rx stack Armour Thyroid 60 mg (Rx) Levothyroxine 100 mcg (Rx) diagnosed hypothyroidism age 21 Minoxidil 3.75 mg (Rx) Metformin 500 mg (Rx) (6 week cycles on and off) Tadalafil 2.5 mg (Rx) Jardiance 10 mg (Rx) Acarbose 200 mg (Rx) Repatha 140 mg (Rx) once every other week Approximate daily macros: Calories: 2,250 (10% caloric restriction from RDA) Protein: 130 grams (~25%) Carbs: 206 grams (~35%) Fat: 101 grams (~40%) 7:30 pm A 10 minute walk outside. Social time with friends and family. Wind down routine. No messages, social media or screens. Night time mode activated. 8:00 pm Wash face, apply skin and hair serums. 8:30 pm - in bed and asleep within 3 minutes of my head hitting the pillow.   Other Advanced Therapies Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs)Trialed using young Swedish bone derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from CellcoLabs. In March 2024, I had 300 million MSCs injected into my knees, hips and shoulders. Follow up MRI is in 12 months. (watch video) Gene TherapyReceived my first gene therapy in October 2023, Follistatin (watch video). CerebrolysinTrialed daily 5 mL cerebrolysin injections intramuscularly for cognitive benefits for three months. No effect measured. This does not mean it didn't help or hurt, we were just unable to identify a biomarker that could inform. Rx / Prescriptions Acarbose 200 mg daily - helps blunt post meal blood sugar spikes, improve insulin sensitivity, and has been shown in long term studies to reduce cardiovascular events and extend lifespan in animal models, making it a valuable tool for metabolic health and longevity. Tadalafil 2.5 mg daily - enhances endothelial function, reduces inflammation, and potentially protects against age related cardiovascular and metabolic decline. Also, if you think it's the cause of my titanic erections, match my dose, and post your numbers to compare with my average of 2 hr 57 min of night time erections. Candesartan 8 mg daily - evidence that it reduces blood pressure, protects against heart failure progression, preserves kidney function, and possibly reduces brain inflammation. Jardiance 10 mg daily - good evidence of SGLT 2 inhibitors as a longevity intervention and calorie restriction mimetic in animal experimentation. Repatha 140 mg/mL every two weeks for cholesterol optimization.   Rx Armour Thyroid 60 mg daily - diagnosed hypothyroidism age 21 Levothyroxine 100 mcg daily - diagnosed hypothyroidism age 21 Minoxidil 3.75 mg daily - hair growth   HBOT Protocol Hyperbaric oxygen therapy ranks as one of the highest value health therapies I've done. Starting a new HBOT protocol (Nov 2024)HBOT results (Mar 2025) Protocol Conditions: 100% oxygen at 2 atmospheric pressures.Schedule: 60 sessions, 5 sessions per week, duration: 90 min (20 min followed by 5 min air break, repeat).Chamber: HPO Tech hard shell hyperbaric chamber, ambient pressurized air (normal 21% Oxygen) with 100% oxygen delivered through a face mask. Caution: avoid chambers with 100% ambient oxygen: irritates the eyes and causes cataracts higher ignition risk harder to take a break or emergency stop the session Here are my results following 60 sessions (12 weeks): Wiped out all systematic inflammation in my body, hsCRP below detectable levels. Telomere and telomerase activity Extended my telomere length by 2.6% (10.3 → 11.4 kb). (Context matters here, as my baseline telomere length was already that of a 10 year old, so this extension is at the bleeding edge of longevity.) Telomerase activity of a 12 year old, associated with biological age Microbiome 250% and 290% increase in Short Chain Fatty Acids and n-Butyrate, respectively (important microbiome markers) Complete elimination of metabolic imbalance in my gut 300% increase in VEGF (formation of new blood vessels) Improved muscle oxygenation 235% spike in my vitamin D levels, unprecedented uptick, despite no change in my supplementation dosage in the last few years (likely a secondary effect of microbiome improvements) 28.6% reduction in pTAU217, an early dementia and AD risk marker in healthy people Dramatic improvements to skin health Sauna Regular dry sauna use at 175–212°F has been shown in multiple long term studies in Finland to dramatically reduce cardiovascular mortality by 63% and all cause mortality 40%. If true, that's a step function level reduction in risk of death. On par with exercise (35% reduction), mediterranean diet (25%), stopping smoking (50%), blood pressure control (30%), and weight loss in obese individuals (40%). My sauna protocol Type: Dry sauna (Plunge) Temperature: 200°F (93°C) Frequency: daily, 7 days a week Duration: 20 minute sessions Protection: Ice pack applied to the groin area to safeguard testicular and sperm health. Rehydration: 36 oz mineral supplemented water to replenish minerals (via Blueprint electrolytes ETA this summer) Tips for you… Aim for 3 to 5 sauna sessions per week, lasting about 15 to 20 minutes each, at 175–194°F (80–90°C) After workouts is ideal, as sauna boosts muscle recovery. Always hydrate thoroughly afterward Be cautious above 194°F (90°C). Cover your head with a damp cloth, breathing through it to protect your airways Never use a sauna when dehydrated, and drink plenty of water afterwards to rehydrate Use minerals and water to dehydrate in case you are a salty sweater (can be measured)   Caution points: Avoid or skip sauna if you: Have serious heart issues or uncontrolled blood pressure Are pregnant (consult your doctor) Have an infection, fever, or feel unwell Have a history of seizures Struggle with respiratory conditions (asthma, COPD) Have irritated or inflamed skin Recently consumed alcohol or recreational drugs Are taking medications such as beta blockers, stimulants, anticholinergics, or diuretics   Sauna Results 1/ Massive detox following 15 sessions 15 sessions of sauna dramatically reduced toxins in my body. 65% drop in 2,4-D 100% drop in MEP 15% drop in MBP 100% drop in MEHP (undetectable post sauna) 56% drop in NAPR 56% drop in HEMA 100% drop in Perchlorate (undetectable post sauna) After completing fifteen sauna sessions, each lasting 20 minutes at 200°F, led to a significant reduction in my environmental toxins, three went from being abnormally high to undetectable post sauna. The results show meaningful and consistent improvements across nearly all parameters. At 23 sessions Central blood pressure CBP: ↓12.6%, Biological age <20 (↓ 5–10 years)Central pulse pressure CPP: ↓28.6%, Biological age <20 (↓ 20 years)Pulse Pressure Amplification PPA: stable, Biological age 30sAugmentation pressure AP: ↓50%, Biological age 20s (↓ 3–5 years)Augmentation index AIx (stable): Biological age <20Subendocardial Viability Ratio (SEVR): ↑4.1%, Biological age <20 (↓ 2–3 years)Resting heart rate RHR: ↓4.4% (↓2 bpm) Biological age <20 For men doing a sauna protocol: definitely ice the balls! Here's my icing protocol ice the boys during sauna use a non toxic, reusable ice pack material I wear cotton boxers and shorts place ice packs in between boxers and shorts keep in place for the entire session My fertility markers improved from my pre sauna baseline after 27 sessions with ice on the boys: total motile count ↑57% concentration ↑26% motility ↑16% morphology ↑15% Damage from 15 sessions with no ice protection on the boys: 54% drop in motile count 57% drop in motility 55% drop in normal morphology Hot dry sauna has strongest clinical evidence and a unique mechanism Not all saunas are made equal, evidence points at the protocol we've deployed. Dry sauna sessions at high temperatures (≈80–100°C) and longer sessions (>19 min) have the strongest and longest running evidence for lowering resting blood pressure, improving arterial elasticity and, over decades, cutting cardiovascular and all cause mortality. This is what makes dry sauna unique, and very likely superior to wet (steam bath) and infrared saunas. By heating up skin way faster than your core, dry hot sauna (Finnish sauna) flips your core → skin temperature gradient, eliciting the following hormetic benefits: Enhanced Blood Flow: The heart pumps up to 70% more blood, similar to intense aerobic exercise (zone 2–3). Increased Sweating for Detoxification: To maintain a stable core temperature, the skin produces 0.6–1 liter of sweat per hour, facilitating significant detoxification. Improved Heat Tolerance: The body becomes better at handling heat, leading to a lower core body temperature (offering metabolic advantages). Safe Activation of Heat Shock Proteins: The skin experiences substantial heat shock protein activation, while a modest 1°C increase in core temperature is sufficient to activate these proteins without the risk of hyperthermia. Extended Exposure at Higher Temperatures: Dry saunas are more tolerable for longer durations and at higher temperatures, maximizing the benefits.   Red and Near Infrared Light Therapy (RLT) 2x 10 minutes daily (morning and evening routines)(JOOVE full body panels)Intensity measurement, energy dose calculations?? Shockwave Therapy I'm using it for proactive rejuvenation. This is my protocol: → 4500 shocks, 3 days a week→ Intensity: Level 14→ Area: cervical spine, shoulders, ankles, elbows, forearms, lumbar spine, hips and glutes, knees   Products I use Stuff you may want: Blueprint stack Blueprint hair care Blueprint skin care Blueprint blood biomarkers Dry sauna Air purifier (this is what I have which is probably overkill for residential) Wearable: Apple, Oura, Whoop, Garmin, they're all great. Eight Sleep bed

Link to downloadable PDF instructions How to test Follow the video for instructions Do each test Fill in your scores and ‘bioage/ranking’ on this chart.   1. Continuous Push-Ups Objective: Measure upper body strength and muscular endurance.Evidence: Associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease.¹Target: Be ‘good’ or above for your age and gender Instructions:a) Lie face down on the floor with hands placed slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, elbows fully extended.b) Lower your body until the chest touches the floor, keeping the body in a straight line from head to heels. Keep an eye out for rounded backs (hips in the air).c) Push back up to the starting position. This counts as one push-up.d) Perform as many push-ups as you can without rest (considered to be holding at the top for more than 3 seconds), maintaining proper form.e) Record the number of push-ups completed. Equipment needed: noneMeasurement: Count (no units), greater number is better   2. Mobility Test: Sit Rise Test Objective: Assess flexibility, strength, and balance.Evidence: Predictor of all-cause mortality.² Instructions:a) From a standing position, sit down on the floor with legs crossed, without using hands, knees, forearms, or side of the legs for support.b) Rise back to a standing position without using any support (this is the goal).c) If support is needed, the scoring is as follows:i) Deduct 1 point for each hand, knee, or forearm used going down and upii) Deduct 0.5 points for unsteady executiond) The maximum score is 10. A score of 8 or more is considered ideal. Clarification notes: non-slippery flat surface, barefoot. It’s also a skill, so it’s ok to redo this a few times.Equipment needed: noneMeasurement: Count (no units), 10 is a perfect score, greater number is betterTarget: You want to get as high a score as you can - if you’re younger than 45, less than 8 puts you in the bottom 25% of the population.   3. Sit and Reach (YMCA) Objective: Measure flexibility of the lower back and hamstrings.Evidence: Flexibility plays a key role in health related fitness: injury prevention, risk of falling, postural deviationsTarget: You want to get as high a score as possible – aiming for at least ‘above average’ according to this chart (point to side of screen). Instructions:a) Sit on the floor with legs extended straight out in front of you. Using a tape, measure around a 10–12 inches of distance between your feet, with the tape being beneath your extended heel. Mark with tape.b) This is easier to do with no shoes on.c) Then use the tape measure at the 15” mark between the ~5–6 inch mark of the first tape marking (think like you’re making a “T” or a “+” with both tape measures) – the zero should be closest to the person. Heels should be resting on the masking tape.d) Instruct them to place one hand on top of the other, palms facing down, and reach forward as far as possible along the measuring line.e) Ensure you hold the stretch for 1–2 seconds.f) Measure the distance reached by the fingertips.g) Repeat twice and record the best distance. Equipment needed: yard stick, tape with sharpie to mark feet location on floorMeasurement: Distance (inches / in), larger number is better     4. One-Leg Stand / Balance Test Objective: Measure balance and lower body strength.Evidence: Successful 10-second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals (aged 41 and above). Inability to perform a 5-second OLS is a predictor of injurious falls. To perform a 10-second OLS test is associated with a lower all-cause mortality risk.Target: varies by age and gender Instructions:a) Stand with eyes shut and on one leg with the other leg bent at the knee and lifted off the ground and free floating.b) Hold this position as long as possible without touching the raised leg to the ground, using external support, or touching your other leg.c) Record the time you can hold the position in seconds.d) Perform the test on both legs and record the times. Clarification notes: do this barefoot, keep elbows extended, the arms naturally placed close to your body. This particular study allowed for 3 attemptsEquipment needed: timerMeasurement: Time (seconds), longer time is better   5. Reaction Time Test Objective: Measure quickness of response to a stimulus.Evidence: Reaction times become slower with age, increase with task complexity, and are more pronounced in women than in men. One study found that slower and more variable reaction times were linked to an increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality. Instructions:a) Download the App “Reaction Time & Reflex Test.” Click on the Game “Lights Out”b) Start a new test.c) Place your thumb or finger on the screen to start the countdown. All 5 lights will illuminate. As soon as the lights turn out pull your finger or thumb off the screen.d) Repeat 5 times and take the best score of the 5 tests. This will be the lowest number. Equipment needed: Free app downloaded and installedMeasurement: Time (seconds / sec), smaller time is betterGoal: achieve a faster-than-average reaction time for your age/gender.   6. Waist-to-Height Ratio Disclaimer: Not indicative of ‘biological age’, it’s more a general indicator of visceral fat + general body composition. This will affect your longevity.Objective: Measures your height and your waist, then gives a ratio. Lets you assess body fat distribution, metabolic health and risk.Evidence: Waist-to-height ratio is more predictive of years of life lost than BMI, as it is a proxy for measuring central (visceral) adipose tissue, which is more strongly associated with health risks than total body fat.Target: A ratio of less than 0.5 (or in the green area) is considered healthy. Instructions:a) With shoes off, use a tape measure or marking on a wall to measure your height in centimeters (cm).b) Measure your waist circumference at the narrowest point between the ribs and the hips in centimetres, pulling up your top.c) Clarification notes: do not “suck in” your stomach. You should be in a relaxed state during this measurement.d) Calculate the ratio: Waist Circumference (cm) / Height (cm). Equipment needed: measuring tape, calculatorMeasurement: Ratio (no units), smaller is better   7. [BONUS]. Grip Strength Objective: Assess hand and forearm strength.Evidence: Strongly linked to lower mortality and cardiovascular disease.³ Instructions:a) Use a grip strength dynamometer – costs about $20 on Amazon.b) Stand upright and hold the dynamometer at your side.c) Squeeze the dynamometer as hard as you can.d) Record the highest reading in lb after 3 attempts in each handi) The graph we have included is in pounds, not kg Equipment needed: dynamometerMeasurement: Force (pounds / lb), larger number is betterTarget: Aim for a ‘strong’ grip strength for your age            

Originally published in WIRED on July 21, 2025 Bryan Johnson Is Going to DieBy Katie Drummond Millions of dollars in treatments, supplements, and scans. Immortality through AI. Bryan Johnson’s longevity script has everything—except an ending. At first, the two bowls of fruit on Bryan Johnson’s kitchen island look perfect. They’re brimming with plump kiwis, hardy avocados, and ripened bananas. These are the food of the gods, I figure, for a man who aspires to live like one. But then I look closer. A lone orange, its skin flecked with mold, sits adjacent to two lemons, both almost entirely consumed by a layer of white fuzz. Something, it seems, is rotten in the estate of Johnson. That estate, it’s worth noting, is a predictable one. Johnson’s home in Venice, California, is the angular, concrete-floored template of a dwelling you’d assume is owned by a man. Specifically a man who worked in tech, made his millions, and subsequently embarked on a midlife, post-wealth search for purpose. All of which Johnson is, and did, and still appears to be doing: After selling his web payments company, Braintree, for $800 million in 2013, Johnson parted ways with both his wife and his lifelong Mormon religion. In 2021 he announced Project Blueprint, an effort designed to reverse his own body’s aging process. This involves an all-consuming, unproven regimen including but not limited to daily exercises, blood tests, a doctrinal sleep routine, MRIs, plasma transfers, scalp stimulants, urine tests, several dozen supplements, Dexa scans, light therapy, and caloric restriction. If the rotting fruit didn’t give it away, then no, this is not a kitchen where household memories are made over milk and cookies—although a collage of candid photos taped above Johnson’s stove offers hints of familial warmth. (Johnson has three kids, one of whom is infamous for donating data on his youthful erections and his own plasma to his father’s anti-aging efforts.) This is a kitchen, after all, that shares a home with specimen cups of semen and coolers of Johnson’s blood; where pills and powders, which I find meticulously stocked in Johnson’s walk-in pantry, are mixed, optimized, and consumed; where food is not eaten so much as nutrition is performed. Performance, of course, is Johnson’s specialty. There’s the performance of his body, which Johnson claims is now the single healthiest on Earth. And there’s how that body shows up to the viewing public, which it does quite often. Johnson has been the subject of dozens of profiles and interviews, as well as a Netflix documentary released earlier this year. He has amassed more than 4 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, and X, and he posts an ongoing stream of content about his sleep habits (sublime), his diet (meticulous), and his erections (trigger warning). Johnson has also used his online reach to push back against recent controversies, including a legal battle with his former fiancée Taryn Southern, and a New York Times investigation into his extensive use of confidentiality agreements to prevent, among other things, Blueprint employees from publicly talking about Johnson as well as his business dealings. Over a 90-minute conversation, Johnson spoke at length about his longevity protocol, his assessment of RFK Jr.’s MAHA movement, and those agreements that he continues to enforce. He also took great pains to convince me—and all of you—that this wasn’t just about health and longevity. No, like most tech men living in boxy modernist homes and saddled with illusions of grandeur, Johnson has a new holy grail with which to galvanize his faithful following: artificial intelligence, baby. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. KATIE DRUMMOND: I’m going to ask you a very simple true-or-false question that you can answer however you want. Ready? BRYAN JOHNSON: Yes. True or false: You, Bryan Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day at some point in the future, will die. False. Tell me more. Death has always been inevitable, so we have made all these preparations. We talk about immortality in professional achievements. We talk about life after death. There are the ways that we’ve dealt with death up to this point. And now we have this real possibility of extending our lifespans to some unknown horizon. So that’s extension. But we also have the ability to begin moving ourselves to computational systems. So currently, in a very crude form, I have a Bryan AI that has digested everything I’ve ever said. You do currently have this? I do. OK. And that Bryan AI is pretty good. As the technology gets better and better, the most prized asset is going to be existence; immortality as we thought about it before, through accomplishment or through offspring or the afterlife, will be devalued relative to existing. And that’s my fundamental bet on the future. If there was a world where, let’s say in five years, you could upload Bryan into an AI—and AI Bryan is pretty much as good as Bryan Bryan—does Bryan Bryan eat the cheeseburger? Let’s think about your question in a different way. Most people today spend every waking moment pursuing wealth; and the time they’re not spending pursuing wealth, they’re pursuing some sort of status or prestige. When you give birth to superintelligence, you can start extending lifespans to some unknown horizon: 200 years, 1,000 years, 10,000 years. Millions of years. We don’t know. When that happens, the entire game of humanity shifts from that singular focus on wealth accumulation and status and prestige to existence. Now, embedded in existence, we may still play games of power, but it will be conditioned that existence itself is the highest virtue. That’s the shift that’s starting to happen right now. Let’s move the conversation to your immediate existence. You’ve talked at length about your protocol. Walk us through a day in the life right now. OK, cool. I have built my entire existence around sleep. My sleep profile is that of an early twentysomething. I’ve worked very hard at this. So it’s eight hours and 34 minutes. I’m up less than one time per night on average, I go to bed within two to three minutes of my head hitting the pillow, and I have 94 percent sleep efficiency. Typically, most people’s sleep signal is like the stock market, and mine is just flat. But to do that, you can’t just show up and say, “I’m going to put my head on the pillow and fall asleep.” You have to build your whole life system around that. So my day begins the night before when I go to sleep, and then I wake up around 4:30 or 5:00. First thing when I wake up, I get out of bed. I try to get up within one minute of waking. Within one minute? I try to avoid the “10 more minutes” or pull the phone up and start scrolling. I get up, I will get light in my eyes within a few minutes of waking—I wake up before the sun, so it’s 10,000 lux light. I’ll take my inner ear temperature. One thing we’ve noticed, as I’ve done this for the past four years, my body temperature has dropped almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit. And there’s good evidence that species with lower basal temperatures live longer. I will then put a serum on my hair, my scalp. Rub my scalp with a silicone scrubber for hair growth. I’ll take a quick shower, and then I’ll come downstairs. I have a morning drink. I will eat something, I’ll work out for an hour. I’ll do red light therapy, then hyperbaric oxygen therapy, then some sauna, then I’ll rinse off, and then get ready for work. That is quite a regimen. And then you stop eating for the day at … ? Around noon. Really quickly, rapid fire, ask me a couple questions about myself, and then tell me how I’m doing in the Bryan Johnson universe. Great. Go. What is your resting heart rate? 48 beats per minute. That’s fantastic. Thank you. What is your most recent body inflammation blood test result, your hsCRP? Bryan, I have no idea. What is your blood glucose level? A good one. OK. How many continuous push-ups can you do? Probably 10. OK. If you stood on one foot and closed your eyes, how long could you stay standing? A minute. What is—a minute? Yes, a minute. That’s very good. Yeah. Try me. Not right now. What is the length of your telomeres? I don’t know. OK. What are your omega levels? I don’t know. OK. These are very involved questions. What is your speed of aging? Well, according to the skin test I took earlier, Bryan, it was 1.9. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were just going to ask me if I smoke. Or exercise. Or sleep enough. I can pose a question, like “How’s your sleep?” And you can give me a generic answer like “I sleep great,” but if you look at the actual data of your telomere length, it tells me the story of your overall health. These are readouts of your biology. They just say, “This is me in raw form.” There’s no storytelling. It’s just the data. I’m relieved that I don’t have that data for you right now. Now, you were a successful entrepreneur. You felt like you weren’t living your healthiest life. You parted ways with Mormonism. You got divorced. You went through all of these seismic life changes. A lot of people make major changes to their lives. Exceedingly few people—very, very, very, very, very few people—go as far as you have. What made you take this to such an extreme? I’m really motivated by having read various biographies of people throughout time and place. In their moment, they were able to identify the most far-ranging ambition identifiable in that moment. You couldn’t have sequenced the genome in the year 1800. You probably couldn’t have gone to space in the 1920s. In any given time, a new emergent possibility is present. Then two questions arise. One is: What is it? And two is: Will somebody do it? The year 2021 was the first time in human history where a person could say “We are the first generation who won’t die” and not be ridiculed. I saw that and I thought, this is a moment when it comes together, where you see it and you can do something about it. If you talk to people who know me, if you ask my husband, poor guy, they would say that I’m a very controlled person. I wake up at the same time every day. I do the same exercise. I tend to eat a lot of very similar foods. There’s a lot of routine and structure to my life. When I hear about the way you live, I, as a very controlled person, am astounded at how controlled your life is. Was control always something that was a defining characteristic? I would reframe it and say you’re actually a really smart engineer; you realize that the metabolic cost of you having to make these decisions every single day is so expensive that you say, “You know what? It’s not worth it. I’m just going to systematize this so that my brain can be allocated toward other higher-level thinking.” I view it the same way: Why would I fight these daily, miscellaneous, ultimately irrelevant decisions on a moment-to-moment basis when they can just be automated? I’d rather spend my scarce brain capacity thinking of higher-level things—about the future of the human race, for example. In 2023 I was leading the newsroom at Vice, and we published a story on you. You talked about your body image from decades ago. You talked about how hard it was at that time to control yourself around food at night. You said you now often go to bed hungry, and you’ve learned to find joy in that. You eat mostly plants. If I stripped your name out and looked at a bulleted list of those comments, that sounds a lot like me 20 years ago with a very serious eating disorder. It wasn’t about the number on the scale. It wasn’t about how I looked. It was about being able to systematize and control my environment. I think if you were to ask some doctors and psychiatrists, they would say, “Well, that sounds like disordered behavior. That sounds like an eating disorder.” How do you respond to that? Particularly when we’re talking about you as a public figure advocating for a certain approach to health, do you have concerns about what you’re advocating for? Most people I know in America have an eating disorder. I rarely meet somebody who doesn’t find themselves, late in the evening, powerless to stop themselves from eating the ice cream or the cookies or the chips. I clearly struggled with controlling my food intake. I would say it’s really more of a widespread societal problem, that we have an addiction problem with food, our phones, and our entertainment, our scrolling. I don’t know if my addiction is more excessive than other people’s addictions or if it’s just weighted more toward food versus the phone, but I’d say I’m probably pretty average on a population-level addiction scale. So you’ve taken what used to manifest in one way, which was an inability to control what you were eating and when you were eating it, and essentially adopted a new approach, which is saying, “I eat these things at these times, and I eliminate the variables. I take the choice out of it, and that is how I am going to manage this part of my health.” Exactly. And I guess more broadly it’s a cultural commentary, where I’m saying the most powerful forces in all of society—corporations—are pointing their power at getting you to be addicted to their thing. Whether it’s scrolling their app, eating their food, watching their show—all their intelligence is pointed at you and trying to get you to be addicted. I don’t want to be addicted to anything. I want to have agency and freedom over my existence as much as possible, so that’s what I’m trying to build. I realize that people on the outside looking in, they say, “He’s working through his childhood trauma. He’s working through a food addiction.” I’m open to all those explanations. I would be the first person to be self-deprecating and be like, “This guy has got issues.” Unquestionably. You’re addicted to longevity. I mean, there’s probably no way of actually getting over addiction other than controlling where your addiction is pointed. I want to ask you about MAHA. When President Trump won the election, you congratulated him on social media. You were photographed with RFK Jr. What is your assessment of RFK Jr. and the Trump administration vis-à-vis American health? How do you rate the administration so far? RFK is certainly not a status quo person. You could say that. The status quo in the US is not working. If you look at the data around the health of our citizenry, it’s embarrassingly bad. I think we spend 1.8 times our peer countries in health care: $13,000 per person versus $7,000 or so in the other developed countries. We spend more and we get less. Whether RFK is the solution or not, what we’re doing is not working, so I’m open to change, and I’m open to a variety of possibilities. It’s not to say that everything he’s doing is correct, but I do support the idea that we definitely need to change. Do you worry about medical research being delayed by years or decades if it’s curtailed right now? Oftentimes, when one path is discontinued, everybody thinks it’s an end of something; but actually, that change produces a new path that people didn’t anticipate. So no, I support the creative destruction. I think it could have some positive outcomes. Clearly, there could be some drawbacks. When you break things like this, it goes both ways. It’s not a clean win or loss. I think what would be cool is if we as a country said, “We want to be number one in the entire world for life expectancy.” That is a very clear goal. Let’s talk about faith, because for so many people, religion or faith is fundamental in informing how they think about life and death. They think about the afterlife, they think about heaven or hell or whatever version of an afterlife exists. If you are not a person of faith, and I am not, you think, “Well, my body disintegrates and goes into the ground and then it helps the trees grow and that’s just how this works. I am a biological organism.” How do you contemplate the idea of an afterlife or what happens after we die, given that you spend a lot of time focused on not dying? This is the biggest question. This is the one that everybody has to grapple with, which is, What is existence? But for the history of humanity we have not had an opening to ask the question, What does existence mean? Right now is the first opening in literally tens or hundreds of thousands of years. The new answer to existence is that existence itself is the highest virtue. Sounds like you now have a religion. Yes. When did that become an idea, and ultimately … why? You’ve got your public persona, you have your protocol, you have a business. Why bring religion into this? Companies come and go. Countries come and go. Religions have endured for millennia. Confucius built a system of ethics. Muhammad received visions. Jesus was the son of God. Adam Smith wrote about the invisible hand. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital. The American founding fathers wrote a constitution. Satoshi dropped the White Paper. If you look at the major ideological and technological phenomena of the world, they’ve landed in different ways. It’s very obvious that right now, in this age of AI, a new ideology is going to drop. It always drops in answer to technological disruption. An ideology must help humans make sense of the world. When I look at the world right now, I can’t see any ideology that helps explain this moment, that helps me make practical day-to-day decisions. You can’t go to Christianity and say, “Tell me how I behave in this moment.” You can’t even go to democracy. You can’t go to capitalism. I want to make sure I understand. Your premise here is that AI will be this transformational technology that will extend our lifespan in some way, and there is not an ideology that supports mankind at that moment? I’m saying nobody knows what’s going to happen. All we know is that AI is improving at a rate that is unfathomable to our minds. Now, that doesn’t stop humans from saying, “I will explain to you what’s going to happen. It’s going to make the world an abundant place, and we humans are going to be able to do whatever we want, and we’re going to have one day a week where we work.” To be clear, I think that’s a very utopian and very unlikely scenario. I agree. I don’t believe any human knows what’s going to happen. I only believe we have an event horizon. Nobody can see past it. This thing is moving very fast. We as a species don’t move that fast. We can’t move that fast. We can’t change our society at that speed. So there’s going to be some kind of dislocation. And I’m trying to say we need to prepare ourselves in the most basic way we can. My solution for this is we choose to not die. That’s it. I’m not arguing for immortality. I’m not arguing for utopia. We as a species, our existence is at risk. We do not know if humans have a role in the future. We do not know if we’re going to survive this moment. We are already at each other’s throats. We have nuclear annihilation as a possibility. It’s a moment where we evolve into a species who say: The single thing we have in common is that nobody wants to die right now. That’s it. What is required for someone to be a disciple of this religion? At a foundational level, it’s a humility to say we don’t know what’s coming. Therefore, the most sober and practical thing to do is lock in our individual and shared behaviors. I’m not going to do things that kill myself. We’re not going to kill each other. We don’t kill the planet. And then we align AI with Don’t Die. Right now you’ve got the US developing AI, and China developing AI, and open-source models, and closed-source models, and we’re basically just putting it all into this coliseum where everyone’s going to fight it out for power. I don’t think we want to give birth to AI in a warlike scenario. So wouldn’t aligning your movement, in the context of AI, have more to do with making sure the AIs don’t kill us than taking supplements? You’re saying that so much of what you do is not about health, but so much of what you put into the world is about health. I do feel like this is legitimately an opening that we haven’t seen for a few thousand years, for a new global ideology to emerge rapidly and be the fastest-growing ideology in history. Something’s going to rise and fill this void, whether it’s Don’t Die or something else. So I was trying to figure out, how do you actually talk about this? People don’t care about philosophy. They don’t really care about ideas, not until it’s really important. What they do care about is their health, how they feel in the morning, how they look. I tried to approach this conversation in a way that would be understandable, where Don’t Die as a philosophy is going to bed on time and eating nutritious foods and saying no to junk food. Once you get people in, and they can understand health is a really good thing, you can bridge to philosophy and be like, “There’s this bigger thing going on that we can talk about.” So you are the founder of a religion. You are also the CEO of Blueprint; you sell supplements and a variety of products. You sell a finger pinprick aging test. Where do the religion and the commercial business start and stop? Where do they overlap? And why run a commercial enterprise off the back of this? I agree with you a hundred percent. And honestly, I am so close to either shutting it down or selling it. How close? I’ve been talking to people about this. I don’t need the money, and it’s a pain-in-the-ass company. Practically, I was having to solve these basic problems myself, like how do I find clean protein powder that is tested by a third-party lab and has low heavy metals? I need it for my body. Once I started doing it, friends were like, “Can I have some?” I’m like, “Sure.” It just evolved in a way where I was trying to do people a solid. The problem is now people see the business and give me less credibility on the philosophy side. I will not make that trade-off. It is not worth it to me. So yeah, I don’t want it. The New York Times published a story about you recently, and that story included reporting about the integrity of the products that you sell and about the financial health of the company. Is the decision to potentially sell or shut the company down informed by that, either that controversy or the fact that the company isn’t working the way you had hoped? It has nothing to do with The New York Times. I am not hiding from the New York Times article. I’m happy to take, head-on, every single allegation they made. I will say [their reporting on] the business, that was fucking made up. They take things and they contort it to fit their narrative, but anybody who’s been on the side of a hit piece knows it’s bullshit. You know it. I know it. [“We are confident about the accuracy of our story,” says New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha, “which included reviewing legal and internal documents as well as interviewing 30 people close to Mr. Johnson and his company.” —Ed.] As a journalist, I believe that our industry operates in good faith. I respect The New York Times. I read them every day. I know a lot of great journalists who work there. Obviously I had nothing to do with reporting that piece. Is the company right now a profitable company? Are you running a profitable company, whether you sell it or disband it? They painted it like we are in some kind of emergency financial situation. That is not the case. We are break-even, and I’ve said that publicly many times. We’ve had profitable months, we’ve had loss months. I’ve been very clear, we priced our products at the exact level to basically be break-even. Additional margin is just not worth it to me. It’s been a consistent strategy the entire time. The thrust of the New York Times piece was around how you use confidentiality agreements. You have a former fiancée who was also a former employee, and at least two other former employees, who have filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board about confidentiality agreements that sound very extensive. In some cases, they’re 20-plus pages. Sometimes there’s an additional opt-in agreement. You’re so transparent about yourself publicly. I know so much about your body—more than I would like to—and that’s my choice. I can close the tab if I don’t want to hear more about your penis. But you are so transparent, and then you’re essentially saying to your employees, “Support me in my transparency, but don’t fucking say anything yourself,” right? I grew up poor. My mom made my clothes for me. I was poor until I was 34, and then I made a couple hundred million dollars. I’m new money. In that moment, when I made that money, I did not understand what it means to have money and how it fundamentally changes your relationship with the entire world. Over the past 12 years, I’ve learned what it means to have money. I will tell you, and anyone who’s been in this situation will tell you the same, it changes everything. My fiancée attempted to extract $9 million from me, and she used, quote-unquote, “the most feared law firm” in the whole world. They sent me this really scary 13-page letter and said, “Look, we’re going to say these terrible things about you, but you can make it all go away if you just pay us $9 million this week.” It was the first legitimate attempt on [my money]. [Quinn Emanuel, the law firm, declined to comment. In its settlement offer, it proposed that Southern would “enter into a full mutual release of all claims” against Johnson and “give up rights to use her life experiences” with him for the flat sum. —Ed.] This is at the tail end of “Me Too,” where I had friends and others losing their entire professional life over something, right? So it was a very high-risk situation for many people, who were seeing very serious consequences for public allegations. Often deservedly so. Sure. Whether deserved or not, when a phenomenon like that emerges, a cottage industry will emerge and people will say, “This is an opportunistic time for me.” We know there’s a variety of legitimate and not-legitimate situations. Do I cave and pay $9 million to make this go away quietly, or do I stand my ground? I slept on it and said, “I’m going to stand my ground. What they’re saying is not true, and I’m not going to buckle. I’m not going to pay for this.” To be clear, the allegations in the letter, in your view, were false? After two years of legal disputes, if you read the report, the arbitrator and then the superior court judge said there was no evidence for what she said. That whole legal process vindicated me, after millions of dollars in legal fees. Five years later, it’s resurfaced through The New York Times, and they don’t mention any of that. They don’t mention that she was discredited as a truth-telling person through this legal process, that she’s on record having said things that are just fundamentally not true. [LTL Attorneys, which represented Southern in her 2021 lawsuit against Johnson, declined to comment on litigation. According to court documents, the arbitrator did not adjudicate Southern’s claims, as she found that Southern “had not raised a triable issue.” Similarly, the state judge ruled Southern had “not established grounds to vacate the arbitration award,” which she had contested. —Ed.] When I’m walking into this world of Blueprint, I’m saying, “OK, now I’ve seen a few patterns here where people use things as an advantage for their own gain, and sometimes it ends up in an extortion-like effort.” So I said, “To address this, I’m going to be incredibly transparent. I’m going to say: When you come and work in my environment, this is what you could expect.” It was the most fair gesture possible. I understand this idea that you amass wealth and people see opportunity in that. And that if you want to come work at a company where someone is talking about their erections on the internet, they should sign something testifying that they are OK with that. What I’m not quite clear on is placing intensive limitations and restrictions on what employees can and cannot say about their work environment and their company. How does that tie into what you’re describing? I think you would agree that that is standard practice for a corporation. When you are a corporate entity, and even when you’re a married couple, there’s things you discuss in private which you don’t discuss in public. Corporations have boundary conditions around information, whether it’s IP, whether it’s product development. But everybody has rules and systems for how you control information. Almost nobody in society operates with complete transparency, because everybody has learned life lessons that things go wrong. People will use this to their advantage and to other people’s detriment. What I’m doing is not atypical at all. In your view, do you run a safe and supportive workplace? Yes. Is this a good place to work? Absolutely. You feel very confident in that? We have three goals at the company. The first goal is that our customers write us love letters. That’s the most important goal. Number two is that people say it’s the best job they’ve ever had. And three is that we say we are the best in the industry at what we do. I say this every single week in our company meetings. And on number two, I’ll say, “What this means, you guys, is if you’ve got an issue that you’re dealing with, if something is causing you to not like your circumstance, if it’s a process that’s annoying, if it’s something that doesn’t make sense to you, if your screen is too small, whatever the issue is, you have the opportunity to raise it. And when you raise it, we’re going to show you we have the organizational capacity to address it.” Most of the time when people experience things that they’re not happy about, the course of action is to talk to the coworker and be like, “I’m going to gossip about these things.” I don’t like it. I call this pebbles in the shoe. Do you have an HR person who helps with the pebbles? Yes. We call this person out and we say, for any issue you have, you can go directly to her; anything you have, you can raise it. Do you like being famous? From when we assigned that story at Vice in 2023 to now, you have become much more famous. I think the more famous someone becomes, to some degree, the less they can control the narrative out there about them. That’s right. Do you worry about a level of fame where you can’t systematically address the entire world and what’s being said? In the Netflix documentary, you seemed to take great joy and almost glee in reading nasty shit people say about you on the internet. I’ll take all the dunks about me all day long. It’s when they say something about you that challenges your trustworthiness—that’s what I would isolate. It’s trust that I deeply care about, and being respected by the 25th century. Maybe humans are not around, but whatever form of intelligence is around, I really care about them saying, “You know what? We’re grateful that there was a guy who tried to piece this thing together.” If my trust is in question, I can’t go after these bigger goals. On fame, I think it’s fantastic. If I had to choose between fame and a billion dollars, I would choose fame 100 times out of 100. It’s very hard to achieve. It’s uniquely valuable. I get access to almost anyone in the entire world at this point. If the goal is to create the fastest-growing ideology in the history of the human race and to pair it with the time when the species is evolving into something else, you need fame. So you’re not thinking about your legacy in a 10-year, 20-year, 50-year timeline, you’re thinking about hundreds of years? It’s the only time that makes sense to me. I did a thought experiment where I imagined being present in the 25th century. I’m sitting with them, and they’re talking in whatever form they’re talking, and they are looking back on the early 21st century. Just like we look back at other centuries and we compress them into a few major things but otherwise we don’t get into the details, they will do the same thing for the 21st century. So if they do that, what do they say? I thought about this question for years. One: They would say that’s when humanity gave birth to superintelligence. Two: That’s when humanity figured out that they were the first generation who wouldn’t die. And so I thought, how can you possibly act now on that information? You could build a biotech company, or you could try to pass governmental policy. But it’s very obvious we need a new ideological framework, and what’s more powerful than religion? So in the 25th century, when people are sitting somewhere talking about that guy Bryan who did this and that and the other thing, what are you doing? I joke that I am inevitably going to die from this ironic thing. I mean, that tree right there is about to fall, and it’s going to be over right now. Exactly. At least you will have been witness to it. It would be an amazing story. The article would be a banger. That’s the thing: It’d be good for business for you.