A Middle-Aged Centimillionaire’s Quest To Be 18 Again

He is not the first person to admit to spending a massive amount of money in the quest for youth. Tom Brady spends a pretty penny on supplements, pliability spheres, and hydration powders. LeBron James spends more money a year than the average person would make in 2 lifetimes in the pursuit of longevity. Novak Djokovic spends a lot of time in a CVAC pod that simulates a high altitude in an attempt to enrich his blood with oxygen. All three of these middle-aged elite athletes appear to be the picture of health in peak fitness, but compared to Bryan Johnson they are in the minor leagues. 

Bryan Johnson is 45 years old, and much like the athletes mentioned he is dedicated to his quest for youth. The uber-wealthy software entrepreneur has a team of over 30 doctors and leaders in the anti-aging and health industry monitoring his every bodily function. The team is led by regenerative medicine physician Oliver Zolman, who is using Johnson as a more than willing test subject for the most promising treatments that scientific literature can provide on anti-aging and longevity.

Johnson wants to basically be 18 again physically, but it is looking like it is not going to be anywhere near on the cheap side of things. Not to be sparing any costs, just getting the program up and running only cost a mere several million dollars, which included the costs of a medical suite being added to Johnson’s home in Venice, California. At the rate he is on it is estimated that at least another 2 million on his body this year. 

“The body delivers a certain configuration at age 18,” he says. “This really is an impassioned approach to achieve age 18 everywhere.” Johnson is well aware that this can sound like derangement and that his methods might strike some as biotech-infused snake oil, but he doesn’t much care. “This is expected and fine,” he says of the criticism he’s received, according to Bloomberg. 

They are more than a year into the project which has been called “Project Blueprint”. Johnson follows a program that has very strict guidelines which include 1,977 vegan calories a day, an hour of exercise every day with a high-intensity routine three times a week, and going to bed at the same time every night after wearing blue light-blocking glasses for two hours. So that part of the program is attainable for everyone with some willpower, but the rest is not so much. His vital signs are constantly monitored to keep his program fine-tuned, and every month he undergoes dozens of medical procedures, some of which are extreme and can be painful, plus the results are measured with additional blood testing, MRIs, colonoscopies, and ultrasounds. 

“I treat athletes and Hollywood celebrities, and no one is pushing the envelope as much as Bryan,” says Jeff Toll, an internist on the team. According to the team, all of the effort and hard work has started to pay off: Johnson’s body is, as they measure it, getting medically younger.

Besides the fact that Johnson is physically in phenomenal shape, there are other obvious signs that he is healthier than most 45-year-olds, such as his body fat is between 5-6% leaving his veins and muscles on display, but that is not the important part, it is what is happening on the inside that has everyone excited. According to the team, testing suggests that he has reduced his overall biological age by at least 5 years, that he has the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity as well as the fitness of an 18-year-old. Toll says that all of the markers that they are tracking have been “improving remarkably.”

But other team members are more reserved, such as Zolman who stresses that the work with Johnson is only just beginning and that there are hundreds of procedures yet to explore which includes a series of experimental gene therapies. “We have not achieved any remarkable results,” says Zolman. “In Bryan, we have achieved small, reasonable results, and it’s to be expected.” Zolman is optimistic about this program, but he is also a realist saying that it will take years to really know if the right things are being done and just how well any of it is working. 

Johnson believes that success is within range. Johnson is not the first of the uber-rich to become fixated on living a healthier life in pursuit of quantified self-improvement. In recent years Silicon Valley elites have attempted to optimize themselves with a range of methods from intense exercise regimes, fad diets, young blood, and supplements, to zen-ism, and surgery among other methods. Johnson has his own version of what is best for the body which involves more than counting steps taken. “What I do may sound extreme, but I’m trying to prove that self-harm and decay are not inevitable,” says Johnson regarding his unusual lifestyle, but he’s also counting on a strategy that’s well-known in the software business: making it feel, as much as it can, like a game.

Johnson insists that most people do not have the information that they need to live healthy lives, and seeing the data in black and white can help people to stop their unhealthy destructive habits. “You can look at your body and your situation and turn it over to willpower,” he says. “And, like, good luck.” He has forced himself to follow the strict Project Blueprint program which has removed late-night food and alcohol binges from his bad choices. All of the testing, tweaking, and results have given him the confidence that he is on the right path to doing what is best for his body. 

A day in the life of Johnson is not at all glitter and luxury of the rich, rather it begins at 5 AM by taking two dozen medicines and supplements such as lycopene, metformin, turmeric, ginger root, black pepper, zinc, and a microdose of lithium. This is followed by an hour-long workout of 25 different exercises and a green juice with cocoa flavanols, collagen peptide, creatine, and other healthy stuff. Based on the results of his latest testing throughout the day he consumes a little solid-ish food, after which he brushed, water picks, and flosses his teeth then rinses with tea tree oil and applies an antioxidant gel to maintain his teeth and gum inflammation level which was revealed to be that of a 17-year-old, according to the doctors. 

But that is not all, he also has a regime and series of testing and measurements for every part of his body. This far Johnson has taken 33, 537 images of his bowels, probed the thickness of his carotid artery, and blasted his pelvic floor with electromagnetic pulses to improve muscle tone in hard-to-reach places. He even uses a machine to count the number of nighttime erections that he has. Every day he measures weight, BMI, and body fat, as well as monitors his waking body temperature, blood glucose, heart rate variations, and oxygen levels while sleeping. The program also involves undergoing blood, stool, and urine testing along with whole-body MRIs, ultrasounds, and other testing more specific to the kidneys, prostate, thyroid, and nervous system. 

Oh but there’s still more, every day he applies seven creams and he gets weekly acid peels as well as laser therapy to repair sun damage. Additionally, he has begun to stay out of the sun. He also undergoes sound therapy to improve hearing. You might think that this guy does everything, but he has rejected trying out ice baths, high doses of testosterone, and resveratrol. 

Johnson has a website where he is posting his entire course of this treatment and results with radical transparency. He is launching another site called “Rejuvenation Olympics” in an attempt to encourage fellow youth chasers to do the same, with the goal of moving away from fads and adopting more rigorous medical science with a dash of competition. 

Right now this lifestyle is unattainable for the average person, but like anything the more popular this type of lifestyle becomes the cheaper and more readily available some of the procedures will become. “If you say that you want to live forever or defeat aging, that’s bad—it’s a rich person thing,” Johnson says. “If it’s more akin to a professional sport, it’s entertainment. It has the virtues of establishing standards and protocols. It benefits everyone in a systemic way.”

“The whole longevity field is transitioning into a much more rigorous, clinical place,” says George Church, the famed Harvard University geneticist, who has stakes in a number of biotech companies. “I think what Bryan is doing is very well-intentioned and probably very important.” He adds: “I also don’t think a lot of this stuff will be all that expensive when the dust settles.”

The basis of this program isn’t that extreme or unattainable, everything is a choice. Living a healthy lifestyle and stopping bad habits. You can choose to make more healthful choices which will have a huge impact on your life, and they really aren’t that hard. For example, you can choose to avoid sugary beverages and ultra-processed foods of convenience and opt to cook a more nutritious and healthy meal at home. You can take the stairs, go for a walk, ride a bike, take up roller skating, or go swimming, but the point is to get up and move daily. Far too many people have adopted a sedentary lifestyle which is contributing to the global epidemic of obesity. The choice is yours.