In a world of bizarre cases, Bryan Jhonson takes the cake. The 45-year-old tech billionaire has been making headlines since he became famous for sharing his life’s passion for hacking biological ageing. Claiming to spend $2m every year to stay young, what's surprising is that his extreme endeavours seem to be working. Scientists shared that his biological age is 18, meaning that his body still functions as robustly as that of an 18-year-old, and projected that he will live till the age of 200. Time will tell whether Jhonson’s method works or not, but meanwhile, here is a breakdown of how he is tuning his body to reverse ageing.
Blueprint: Johnson’s Algorithm To Reverse Ageing
In recent interviews with a number of prominent publications like TIME and The Guardian, Johnson shared that for the last two years, he has been fine-tuning a system of behaviours that can reverse ageing. Calling this system Blueprint, Johnson has dedicated a website to it where he encourages as many people to join him on his quest, and shares in meticulous detail the steps by which you too can follow his method.
Johnson’s quest began after a decade of unhealthy indulgence. After selling his company Braintree Venmo to PayPal in 2013 for $800m, he spent most of it overeating, drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, and dealing with depression. However, now he calls himself “the world’s most measured man,” and lives with absolute discipline that is almost unfathomable:
- Every day, he wakes up at 4:30 am.
- Eats all his meals before 11 am.
- Goes to sleep at 8:30 pm.
- All his shelves at home are lined with plants.
- He uses air filters to ensure his house is devoid of toxic pollutants found abundantly in Los Angeles air.
- Two of the three meals he eats every day include boiled broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms and garlic.
- He also eats a pudding full of chia seeds, macadamia nuts and berries.
- He restricts his calorie intake, doesn’t drink alcohol, and doesn’t go out in the evening.
- His fitness routine includes a mixture of resistance training and cardiovascular exercises, that are tailored to enhance the maximum amount of oxygen his body is capable of inhaling.
For some, this level of discipline in and of itself might seem too much for a lot of us. But this is just the beginning. Taking things many steps further, Johnson revealed:
- He ingests more than 100 pills a day.
- Bathes his body in LED light.
- Sits on a high-intensity electromagnetic device to strengthen his pelvic floor.
- Wears a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp.
- Collects his own stool samples.
- Sleeps with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections.
Is Jhonson’s Method Working?
On the Blueprint’s website, Johnson claims that after following his algorithm he has been literally taking backward steps on the road to ageing:
- He slowed his pace of ageing by an equivalent of 31 years.
- His body’s inflammation rate is 85% below average 18-year-olds.
- His cardiovascular capacity matches the top 1.5% of 18-year-olds.
- His total bone mineral density lies in the top 2% of 30-year-olds.
- He can leg press a maximum of 800 lbs in a single rep, which is only possible for the top 1-2% of 18-year-olds.
- He can bench press a maximum of 240 lbs, which can be done only by the top 10% of 18-year-olds.
- He belongs to the top 3% of the population that has extremely low levels of bad cholesterol.
On the path to escape death, Jhonson tried many bizarre things like taking human growth hormone or blood plasma from his 18-year-old son Talmage, both of which he abandoned either due to side effects or because it didn’t work.
A minute scroll through Jhonson’s Instagram comments is enough to know that most of the scientific community doesn’t really stand with Jhonson’s anti-death algorithm, calling him a delusional tech jock who does not understand biology. One credible criticism that Blueprint has received is that it enables the improvement of typical markers of age like strength, bone density and hair thickness, but is not exactly reversing ageing.
Also Read: 7 Essential Anti-ageing Supplements You Should Try
Other criticisms that Jhonson has received are more of a philosophical type. Netizens claim that his life has to be miserable, this is why he is alone, an existence without the simple pleasures of pizza and beer is meaningless, and after all these efforts he could be walking down the street one day and be hit by a bus. Johnson agrees that these comments often get to him and make him enraged. But, as someone who has battled depression and learned to gain control over the troll sitting within his own mind, getting over online hate is not a big task for him.
Actually, Johnson claims that his end goal might be to escape death, but his pursuit of that goal is his real triumph. He is on this path not to encourage others to be as disciplined as he is but to hack ageing and crack the formula that can permanently reverse ageing. Johnson claims that in a world littered with food, porn, social media, alcohol, and other things that can give you an instant rush of dopamine, expecting people to get their “shit together,” is unreasonable. That is why he wants to give the gift of longevity to the masses through his meticulous approach. He is not the leader of this movement, but a mere lab rat, who is willing to sacrifice his years of indulgence in order to find what makes our biological clock tick.
