The Science of Living Longer: Diet, Supplements, & Sleep - Transcript
Bryan Johnson
And so I was trying to look into negative space to say, what could I do? And I couldn't see anyone trying to tackle death. And I want and I wondered and I wondered, is it possible in, you know, 2020? That one could say with a straight face, I'm going to go after death.
Mark Hyman
So, Brian, welcome to the doctor's warranty podcast. It's great to have you here.
Bryan Johnson
I'm really excited to be here.
Mark Hyman
I'm excited to hear too because, you know, you're you're kinda everywhere now. You're in Time magazine. You're in every major outlet. You're on podcast everywhere. People probably heard a lot about you.
I heard your story. And and imagine a similar goal, this guy is nuts because I would never live like this, and I don't wanna live like this. And it, you know, someone someone said, you know, I I live longer, it might feel longer. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And and I think, you know, what I the way I see it is quite different than that. I I think you're doing an experiment for the rest of us. You're taking a hit for the team. That is is using your own biology to see what's possible at the limits of human potential. You know, some people climb Mount Everest?
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Some people like my friend, Colin O' Brady, ski across Antarctica. But your endeavor has the potential not just to be one for the Guinness Book of World Records. But to actually teach us something about the nature of our own biology, the nature of aging, what's possible, within limits of human potential, from a physiologic perspective, from a psychomotional perspective. And I I find it fascinating, and I'm kinda jealous because I wish I had sold my company for $800,000,000 and could just spend on my time doing this stuff, but I'll get there. I'll get there.
And I I just wanna start by kinda asking you how how this idea came in your head because, you know, you you, you know, had a great career. You made a lot of money. You did a lot of good in the world. And you could have been off partying on a big yacht and, you know, living it up traveling on the world and you decided to do something very important for humanity. What what was the impetus for this decision?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I've been working towards this my entire life. So when I was 21, I decided that I wanted to do something useful for the human race. And it was because I'd I had just been in Ecuador And I was among extreme poverty. So, you know, I, every day, it was people with dirt floors and mud huts and not knowing where their next mill was going to come from.
And I came back to the US, and I just felt this burning sensation inside that I wanted to that. And so I didn't know what to do. I wasn't really good at anything. And so I decided that I would make a whole bunch of money by age of thirty, and then with money, decide what to do. And so then I spent 14 years being an entrepreneur.
Sold my company at age thirty four. And, you know, it was more challenging and painful and hard than I ever thought possible. And so at that moment, you know, I thought it would be a a gleeful moment of celebration. And the opposite was true. I was depressed out of my mind.
I was in a challenging a relationship. I was struggling to leave my board into religion. I was having to reformulate my existence. And so in one year's time, I sold my company, left my religion, and got a divorce. And emerged from chronic depression.
And that was about a decade ago. And so for the past 10 years, I've been trying to answer that question. What to do to try to make a difference for the human race, with the, yeah, succeeding in in phase 1 of trying to make a whole bunch of money.
Mark Hyman
You did phase 1 really well. And, you know, I I think you said it's really important that it, you know, you you you reached the pinnacle of success. And yet you were freaking miserable. Right? You you told your company.
Your marriage was a mess. You you're questioning your belief systems that you grew up with and you're faith. And and it was a period of kind of darkness for you.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And out of that darkness for many of us grows something great. And your your insight about wanting to do something great for Humanity was a good one. A lot of us have that. I have that. And and I know a lot of people have that.
But but yours took a very interesting perspective, which is how do we even question something that's not even something that we even question. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
The only thing certain is death and taxes.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And, I don't know what you can do about taxes, but you're actually Maybe move out of California. But you're but you're questioning death as a predetermined phenomena for humans. And better others say this like Davis Sinclair, and there's some people talking about it. The it longevity escape velocity. I wrote about that in my book, Young, Forever.
Talks about the advances in science happening so fast that we can actually outpace the rate of aging and come up with technologies in tools and solutions and medications and who knows what that's going to help us to keep extending our life faster than the pace of aging.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And and, you know, you're you're you're you're you're you're saying this concept, and you wrote a book about it called don't die which is very kinda crazy. Okay. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Like, I was just gonna
Mark Hyman
say it because it's like, I mean, we've hung out. You're kind of a normal guy. You're kind of over a house. You had a great conversation. Like, he's not a weirdo, but like he's he's he's challenging things.
Like, he's saying, wait a minute, the earth isn't the set of universe or it's not flat or, you know, you're you're you're you're talking about like the theory of evolution, something that's so radically different than our paradigm Yeah. That it's hard for us to even accept it or even conceive of it and and and it's easy to dismiss and say you're a whack job, but you're not. And and so I wanna dive into kind of the sinking behind this this approach to to investigating this. And and I wrote a lot about this in my book, Young, Forever. Right?
And and how there are many things that we now know can actually reverse our biologically and slow the rate of biological aging. What you've done over the last 3 years is develop a regimen to really test this hypothesis and to not just conceptually talk about it, not just do studies on mice, but do studies on humans. And and just to frame frame this for people. You know, most doctors will say this is an anecdote. Mhmm.
And anecdotes are the lowest possible form of evidence.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm.
Mark Hyman
However, it's not really true. If you look at the NIH standard on what are the levels of evidence It's it's n of one data. N of one means number 1, meaning you you you measure a person, you do an intervention, and then you measure their outcome after. And that's what you've done in spades by by looking at over, you know, 200 data points a day on your health by Dozens and dozens and dozens of data points on your health over time, imaging data.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Blood data of stooled data, saliva data, urine data, you're like the data guy. Right? Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
I have the data guy.
Mark Hyman
So this is data driven, insights about human biology that We really had before. I mean, I I I've been practicing a physician for a long time, and I I worked at a place called Canyon Ranch, had my own practice, and have dealt with, you know, people who can afford to do 5 to $10,000 worth of testing. Mhmm. And I've done that on tens of 1000 people. So I've seen learning millions in data points.
But but in a sense, you know, uh-uh, it's helped me learn about everything that I know, but it also hasn't really come close to the kinds of things you're measuring and looking at on a regular basis over time. I I just don't have the capacity and even to make sense of it all. So you know, this this approach really helps you to not just have this abstract data, but to see what's off. You know, in medicine, we treat diseases. We don't really talk about health.
But what you're looking at is you don't have a disease. You're looking at how how do I deviate from optimal levels of health, not health of a forty 5 or how old you are now. Mhmm. But a health of a eighteen year old. Right?
Bryan Johnson
That's right.
Mark Hyman
How do I get to really look at, you know, what are the metrics I should be moving towards in terms of optimal levels and how do I dial my lifestyle, my diet, my sleep, my exercise, my supplements, my relationships, my mental chatter, all of that. How do I regulate that to to influences? So you you kind of are are are doing all this stuff for yourself and you created something called the blueprint. So this is not, you know, just doing for yourself, you want to make this available to everybody. Not every obviously is gonna do a $2,000,000 worth of testing on themselves, but you've sort of created a model where you can actually use yourself as a guinea pig and then and then actually will help, create a model for people to follow.
So what is the vision for this framework of blueprint and the vision for this company that you created?
Bryan Johnson
It started with a a thought experiment. After I sold my company, I I arranged a bunch of dinners with friends, across the nation. I identified my smartest friends, and I would pose a thought experiment to them.
Mark Hyman
You didn't invite me. We were part of the time.
Bryan Johnson
You would be invited now. And I said, okay. Let's let's do a thought experiment. Let's imagine we're living in 2050. And the world is this extraordinary place.
What did we do in 2017? This is the one I was doing at dinners that made 2050 so extraordinary. And then I would just listen intently to everyone's answers, and I'd write them down. And so I did about 10 or so of these dinners. And then I drew a circle on a paper I wrote down everyone's ideas in the circle and then I said, I can't do anything that's in the circle.
I have to find whatever I'm going to do to be in negative space. And the premise behind that was that if you look throughout history, rarely do you find the future in the status quo of a given age? You find the future on the fringe of society. And even then, it may not be present yet. And so I was trying to look into negative space to say, what could I do?
And I couldn't see anyone trying to tackle death. And I want and I wondered, and I wondered, is it possible in, you know, 2020 that one could say with a straight face, I'm going to go after death. Now people, of course, have been trying for the fountain too. That's a good startup. Since being a yeah.
Mark Hyman
It's a good day. Dotcom.
Bryan Johnson
And death. Oh, who owns that URL? Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah.
Yeah. It's like trolldeath.com. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I I put my I wrote that outside the circle and I thought, if one were to be serious about this, like, how would you actually try to do it?
And then I started plotting it out. There's one element that is the health, but then there's also a philosophical element. There's a economic, social, Like, it plays on a whole bunch of different planes. And that's what I've been working off the past couple of years. I've trained my sites on.
This is like, you know, when Magellan said, I think I can sub circumnavigate the globe because the ships are good enough. The navigation tools are good enough. You know, I can do it. Yeah. So at any given age, someone says, I think this thing that has been impossible or not imagined, can we can have a go at it.
And so I Something like that.
Mark Hyman
And it's true. I mean, this is this crazy intersection of technology, science, biomedicine, understanding of aging, It's completely different than, you know, even, you know, 45 years ago when I went to medical school, I mean, it was 40 years ago. Yeah. Right. No.
Was 1983 I started. I was 41 years ago. I started medical school. So, you know, it was it was not even in the conversation to think about the things that we're talking about in biology and health now in medicine. So It's so exciting that you're thinking about that that place that, you know, is is really outside of what is the normally conceived as possible.
Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
So what is the blueprint a little bit of high level? What's the basic framework of this sort of blueprint protocol?
Bryan Johnson
It's a question first of measurement that if we can, in fact so I guess blueprint was can we measure the biological age of every organ of my body? Could we then comb through all the scientific literature and rank them according to power laws And then could we could we apply all the science of homo sapiens have discovered in the past couple 100000 years and could we apply it into me then can I become the most measured person in history? Like, just to get where we at, roughly. And it does have limitations at the end of 1, sure. But it was really interesting to us that as a starting point, a a holistic perspective from an organ, basis to all the scientific literature to then quantify everything.
So there was no storytelling. There was no trust me. It was just data and science. And we wanted to run the experiment and then be open with the entire thing so that everyone could follow along. They could do it themselves.
They we they could learn from our successes and also our mistakes. So I tried to just be open science across the board on all of it.
Mark Hyman
Okay. So so take us through because, you know, you go to your doctor. You get your annual checkup. He listens to your heartless stethoscope. He looks in your mouth.
He looks in your ears. He looks at your eyes. This is that abdominal exam. I mean, I I did I learned this in I actually remember my preceptor in medical says, you know, we're training you to do physical exam, but it, you know, it's not that how full. And you're probably barely gonna find anything.
I mean, yeah, sometimes you will if someone's really sick, you'll find signs, but most of the time you won't. And then the lab panel we get is, like, kind of archaic. It's, you know, tested a really outdated, like, the wrong cholesterol profile and, you know, maybe 2030. Maybe if you got a right fancy doctor, 50 analytes, we're talking about getting 1000 tens of 1000 of data bits on yourself Yes. To know what's going on so you can modify your environment, meaning your your global environment, we call the exposome, everything you're exposed to your diet, your activities, your microbiome, toxins, everything, water you drink, the air you breathe, sleep, all these things are your explosive.
Modify those to really regulate disturbances in this dynamic balance in the system.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And and so, you know, in functional medicine, we think of the body as an ecosystem as a network. And I think of it as the science of creating health of health optimization. Mhmm. I don't treat disease. I simply look at where the body's off center or off balance and try to restore balance by taking out bad stuff and putting in good and essentially that's sort of what you're doing.
And what I'm curious about is is what what are the metrics that you're looking at? What are the things that you're tracking? What are the tests that you've done? Just kinda get kinda walk us through it because I think it's important to understand how how you've come to learn about yourself. It's not just you know, looking at your nocturnal erections.
That's kinda fun to know. It's a, you know, fun fact, but it's not really
Bryan Johnson
that. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
It's a sort of a secondary indicator of your your blood flow and everything else, but But what, like, what should we be looking at? I'm not for for your health.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. We would take a given organ, for example, a heart, and we would pose the question where can we find scientific evidence where the heart has an age equation?
Mark Hyman
So it could be, you
Bryan Johnson
know, max heart rate. It could be, regurgitation levels. It could be, like, you you basically start listing out and then you say you can do a blood panel on the heart You can do an MRI. You can do ultrasound. You can do an EKG.
And so you just start listing out all the ways to measure the heart. And then you try to find literature where they have a study of significant size that you can then age quantify and say, okay. My valve are operating at this biological age. My, you know, my aortic structures are the following. And so we would then just start doing that for every organ.
How would you do so for the lungs? Like, what are you can do spirometry. Right? You can do a whole host of tests. You know, biopsy, of course, would be great.
You know, biopsying these these organs are hard. So where you can't biopsy, we try to get out all these measurements. And so we went through my entire body and tried to tease out hundreds of biological ages. We did fitness tests. We did, of course, DNA methylation.
We did, like balance strength, nerve sensitivity, eyesight, like, you name it. Any age test we could find that we thought was legitimate. We would do. And then we would do these baselines and then I'd do a bunch of therapies and we'd do it again. And we'd say, did it change anything functionally or anatomically has the age of that organ changed at all.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Interesting. So these these aging clocks for organs are something we don't learn about typically in medical school. We know your maximum heart rate. For example, I'm 64.
My maximum heart rate should be a 156. Mhmm. That's the amount that my heart can maximally get to when I'm working out like crazy. But I routinely get in the 180s. Mhmm.
Because I'm, you know, My biologically just 43. So I I I think, you know, the body has that capacity. Yeah. And I and and and we have these declines that we think of as normal, but this is what you're challenging. Very hypothesis is that, gee, why can't you be as fit or as un inflamed or as healthy as someone who's 18 or 20 or 25.
Bryan Johnson
Right.
Mark Hyman
And and and and Viking have the same VO 2 max, which is your fitness level or your heart rate or your your lung capacity or all these different metrics, your mitochondrial output. Yes. But you're finding you you actually can.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And you know, one of the things you say is you're measuring, for example, the inflammation level of an eighteen year old.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
So so how do you how do you know that?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. That's one one example where I think my my high sensitivity CRP is, I think, point 1. And so we found a paper that has an age graph on these inflammation scores. And to put us at that level, we did the same thing with, like, for example, NAD levels, intracellular NAD. So we were trying to because as you said, like, in medicine, you the way medicine is practiced, you do a test and they say, good or not good.
That's really a binary. You may have a reference range where you hit on the lower end or higher end. But it's not as precise as saying you've got levels equivalent to an eighteen year old or sixty five year old. And a lot of things in our biology do follow an age trend line. You know, they in a reasonable amount, not all different changes are the same.
And so we really want to put it in context of where am I on that age range. And, like, it was fun because, like, my my boys are 2018. My daughter's 14. And so any test I would do, I would immediately message them about K, I got
Mark Hyman
a new I
Bryan Johnson
got a new fun one for you because I'd always want to measure myself relative to my boys and figure out, like, even as a they've got half of my genetics what what is their biological characteristics of their age. So we are trying to look at it from every data point we could.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think it's important because, you know, we we we, we now we now don't think about medicine that way. And I when I look at lab ranges, people don't realize when you look at a lab range for, let's say, blood sugar, it says your lab range should be 70 to a 100 is normal fasting.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm.
Mark Hyman
But when you look at the data, if your levels are over 87, you're have a linear increased risk of having heart disease? Is it better to be 80 or 75 fasting? Right?
Bryan Johnson
That's right.
Mark Hyman
And and so we don't think about medicine, like, that way. It's like binary or either have it or you don't. You ever babies or you don't. You have high cholesterol. You don't.
You have high blood pressure. You don't. But it's, you know, I I got my blood pressure test the other day and that and they were very upset. I'm like, why it was it was like a 110 over 70, which, you know, I'm 64. It should be, like, a lot higher.
Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And they're like, is low blood pressure. I'm like, no, it's not low blood pressure. It's normal blood pressure. Yeah. Yeah.
And when you look at the the the risk, and this is you're talking about data. When you look at the risk in terms of cardiovascular risk, stroke risk. And it's it increases in a linear fashion from optimal levels. So it's not like it's an honorary phenomena. The lower your blood pressure, the better.
I mean, obviously, you're not gonna pass out. We have too low blood pressure, but, like, you don't have too low blood sugar. There's too low, but there's that goldilocks level, which is really what's optimal. And and what did you find in your own body that when you started this was was not good that you were surprised at? Because you were a young man.
You were still what, 40 something when you started. Yeah. When you started this
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
So so you were you were you were not a spring chicken.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Although you're my my biological 43, so I'm I'm good with that. But but but but you you you, what did you find?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Several things. One, my my left ear is age 64. So between 4000 hertz 12,000 hertz, I'm deaf. Basically, deaf.
And that was from shooting a lot of guns as a kid and loud music. I never had hearing protection on. Some it was I'm right handed to the gun my left ear had the exposure. My right ear was more protected. So and we've tried very hard to reverse that with no success.
Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
So we that that's 1. 2 is I found this is a a congenital issue. I have narrow internal jugular veins. And, the combination of that plus my poor posture was causing some backup of blood in my brain. So I had intracranial pressure, and I had a I think my white matter hyperintensities aged me at something like 47.
Mark Hyman
Oh, wow.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm. They've they've since gone down the equivalent, I think, of, like, 13 years since correcting my posture and a bunch of other therapies. So though that was a, interesting find.
Mark Hyman
So for those listening, what you just said was as we age, we tend to get these little scarring tissues in our brain called white matter lesions. They came from, like, mini little strokes or little hardening arteries, and and they accumulate as we age. And, you know, for a young guy, it's really unusual.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
You know, I I just had my functional MRI done last week as a sort of just because I'm into this stuff too. Yeah. And I was like, he's like, wow, your brainless good. There's no atrophy and you have almost no white meta lesions. You have, like, one and most people your age have, like, dozens of them.
Yes. So I think I think there's it's interesting to see. You can actually start to track this, but know, what are the other things that you found that were that were things that mostly would check? Like, most people aren't checking there. I mean, they're hearing maybe, but not looking at their internal jugular vein and white metal lesions What what are the things that you found that were was your cholesterol off or your blood sugar off?
Did you have, you know, your liver up? Or what was what was sort of something that you found that was surprising? I know it's hard to remember from all those millions of biomarkers you did.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I mean, my my speed of aging initially was, I think, over 1.
Mark Hyman
Ah, okay. Yeah. Well, that's really important.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. My my clock. I'm trying to think I need to go back in time.
My mind finds the surprises.
Mark Hyman
Well, well, let's talk about the speed of aging thing because I think it's really important. You know, there's something called the pace of aging. So just as a background for for me listening, there are many biological clocks that are being used to track the rate and and your biological age and they're they're all kinda over the place. You know, you know, if you stay with the same one over and over, it's internally consistent, but they often don't match up. 1, say you're 53, wanna say you're 43, and so forth.
But there's a particular clock that you found really helpful that's called the Needen pace of aging, and it's really the rate of aging. So if you age a year for every year, you're alive, right, it's, you know, 50, you'll be 50, and 60 will be 60. Right? But if you you know, slow. What you were saying is you were you were actually accelerating.
You were aging faster than your chronological age
Bryan Johnson
when you
Mark Hyman
started doing this. Now you're out of 750 people who are tracking this with you, you're like number 1, meaning the slowest pace of aging. So you wanna slow the pace of aging. And and you're at point 69, meaning for every year that you get older chronologically, you only get older point 69 years.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Right? And so so tell us about this this test and and what you've done to kinda modify it because it's very impressive. Yeah. But I'm I'm point 84. I was I thought I was excited about mine.
But but yours is better.
Bryan Johnson
That's no. That's honestly point 84 is great.
Mark Hyman
Okay. Good. Yeah. I don't
Bryan Johnson
I don't think we it's like, If you're in that range, you're doing a great job. I I wouldn't pick, the difference with relatively minor differences, Blake. Okay. So DNA methylation, a lot
Mark Hyman
of people So you're gonna pump me up at number 1 with you on this?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I you're trying hard. You're doing a lot of good stuff. It's great.
And I it's I think it's better for
Mark Hyman
everyone to feel rewarded for the effort and to not be nitpicky about the exact number.
Bryan Johnson
I don't think it's that I don't think we can say that much about it in this point in time. So I think it's more that we're in the general range. But the, yeah, the DNA methylation A lot of people will say 2 things about them. One is they'll say, I did various clocks. I got different ages.
Therefore, they must all suck. And the other thing they say is, is not yet tied to all cause mortality. Therefore, you know, it's not a a goal standard if you don't have to make marker. And so on the first one, what they don't realize is these clocks are trained for a specific algorithm. They train with certain data for the algorithm.
So it's not like they're they all have the same algorithm and they just have different outputs. They're trained for different objectives. So you can't compare They're
Mark Hyman
using different math, essentially. Right. Exactly.
Bryan Johnson
And different variables. And so you can't, you can't compare one to the other or use that to just credit. Right. And so we've, as a team, we like the dinner and pace because it's not an age. It's just your pace of aging And we we think of the clocks, it's a good one that we can do repeatedly to say, how is this changing like other markers?
It's relatively steady. And so we've liked it because we've seen that my speed of aging has gone up and down with various therapies. Like, sometimes a certain therapy that's doing something positive also temporary speeds up my speed of aging, and then it comes back down. So it's been cool to see just like you would see cholesterol up and down, or you'd see inflammation up or down with various changes in life. And so we have the we really succeeded initially getting my speed speed of vision down to 6.69.
It was best in world at some point And, we've since been playing the whole bunch of therapies watching that go up and down. But we like we like DNA methylation clocks. We think the next gen ones, even the omic clocks, are even much better because now you can do an Oregon by Oregon basis clock. Yeah. So I love the trajectory because, like, with cholesterol, Is there an improvement curve for looking at cholesterol, like, kinda not?
Like, we're we kinda have that one nailed, whereas these DNA methylation, it seems like we've got a lot of Frontier to explore what in fact is changing these. Now is it gonna be caught tied to alcohol's mortality and how strongly It's emergent. We're bullish. We like them. We think they're a great, it's a low cost, easy to do test.
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
I think it's right. I think it's it's important to start to track these things for ourselves and you know, to become the CEO of our own health because you're you weren't leaving up to your annual checkup with your regular primary care doc. They would have, you know, never looked at any of this. And Yeah. You'd have said, you know, I'm going in there.
I wanna I'm like 43, but I wanna become, like, 33 again. They're like, yeah, you're doing fine. You look gray. You're skinny. You're you know, look like you're in shape.
You know, keep doing what you're doing. Come back and, you know, when you're 50 get your colonoscopy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really unfortunate because not how we should be practicing medicine.
We be practicing medicine exactly like you're thinking about it, which is where are we deviating from optimal ranges of health in every area? And how do how do we implement very specific lifestyle practices, supplements, hermetic therapies, medications maybe.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm.
Mark Hyman
You know, maybe who knows what treatments like plasma freezes or stem cells. There's all kinds of stuff we can do. Right? And and and and what's possible. It's such a fascinating question.
I think, yeah, to me, it's it's like, it's so cool to meet you and to talk about this because I've been having this thought experiment in my head, and and really haven't been able to sort of do it at at at the scale you're doing. And I've done it, you know, obviously with myself and patients at a smaller scale, but It's just so incredible. So when when you started sort of looking at, yeah, the things that made the most difference, with, like, you you went from a a pace of over one aging to point 69. Yeah. What made the most difference for you?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. That one that I think the more interesting things is that when the topic of health and wellness comes up, it depends on whose company you're in, But usually everyone's going to have their thing. You know, one person's gonna say, I swear by ice baths. That's the thing. The cold plunge is what, you know, others are gonna say, not it's the sauna.
Another's gonna be like, no. It's this Eastern practice I have. The others are gonna make, no. No. No.
This sell reduces the thing that's better.
Mark Hyman
The gratitude journal in the morning.
Bryan Johnson
Exactly. Everyone has a vector to talk about what is contributing to their wellness. And Yeah. Then it just becomes disaster. Because there's no baseline to talk about anything.
And then you're just dealing with, you know, the storytelling. And so we combed through all the literature. And we tried to say, if we just looked through every paper, done and we rank them according to effect size and then grade the evidence to say, are there power laws here? And can we just take the power laws? Like, let's forget about the things at the bottom side right now, the bottom 20%.
Like, it's not even gonna be in our thought process. So we've we tried to master the basics, sleep, diet, exercise, weight, so, like, the top 5 are no smoking, you know, 6 hours a week of exercise, a Mediterranean or blueprint like diet, a BMI of 18 point 5 to 22.5, moderate to no alcohol, and then sleep. And so first things we did is master those. And so one one demonstration is I think I recorded the best sleep score ever where I had 8 months of perfect sleep using a whoop wearable. And it was for 8 months in a row, I mean, I built my life around sleep, and I wanted to demonstrate that perfect sleep is possible.
You just need to structure your life around that.
Mark Hyman
Did they call you and say, is your whoop broken? Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
It was fun. I mean, it was really a fun exercise. No one had ever done that before. And, I, you know, like, sleep to me is the number one thing we do as a as a as a intelligent being. When sleep is right, life is right.
And when sleep Amen. When sleep is off, like, life stinks. It's so much harder. It's like 10 times harder when you're not well.
Mark Hyman
It's like walking through. I call it, like, walking through my hair gel. Awful.
Bryan Johnson
And so, yeah, getting the basics right, that was initially, that's what drove down the speed of aging is is and then we on the diet side, we tried to say, every calorie I eat has to fight for its life. Not a single calorie can be present that doesn't have a specific function of my body. And we became that ruthless where if it didn't achieve something in the body, it was out. Now of course, there's many ways that you can achieve a perfect diet. Right?
There's all kinds of foods you can play with. All sorts of ratios. I'm vegan by choice, but, you know, definitely, you know, people do meat. Great. Do your thing.
But I was trying to say, can we design a perfect diet and then tag it inside the body with
Mark Hyman
the measurement. By choice, meaning a moral choice or a scientific choice or environmental choice? Or
Bryan Johnson
It's the only choice I've imposed in this experiment is veganism.
Mark Hyman
So so and in other words, do you didn't come in a prorate saying I'm open to any diet. You were like, this is I wanna be vegan. Do this as a vegan. Exactly. So it's not that you can't do this without that.
I I wanna get into that because I think, you know, as a doctor, if you don't do veganism right, it can be harmful.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Massive nutrient deficiencies, loss of muscle. I mean, cognitive effects. I mean, it just it Yes. Fertility effects. I can run.
Yeah. So, and and and you I'm looking sitting across from you here and you're like ripped. You know, I'm like, how do I get muscles like that? You know, like, and and, you know, you you obviously are doing something right. So And and and I'm imagining you're not taking a lot of processed protein powders and weird stuff because it doesn't seem like that would fit into your every calorie has to count philosophy.
So take us through your diet because it's, fascinating. Because one of the things that is is, this sort of paradox of aging And we talked a lot about it on the podcast. I've had a lot of nutrition and science experts on Don Layman and others, but as we age, we lose muscle.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And that becomes other one of the fundamental phenomena that caused us to age faster because you lose muscle and it's a vicious cycle. You get increased inflammation, higher cortisol, lower growth hormone, Yeah. You can't repair tissues as well. You go lower testosterone. You get worse cholesterol, worse blood sugar.
It's just a disaster. And plus you can't function doing things you wanna do. So keeping your muscle is a real key part of healthy aging. And and in order to do that, you need adequate amount of protein, the right amino acids, and you need exercise what you're obviously doing.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And if you look at, you know, this phenomenon of m tour, which is Mhmm. What people kinda often talk about when they suggest being vegan is that M Torres is this thing that will make you age faster because it prevents a topic to yourself cleanup or recycling. Right? Yeah. So if you eat meat, that's gonna shut that So they're right.
Yeah. But it's it also kinda you need them toward to be activated to synthesize muscle. Otherwise, you're gonna lose all your muscle. So it's it's kinda got a goldilocks. Like, you need to turn on and off.
And and so for you, how have you kind of thread the needle on a vegan diet? And looking as ripped as you do and managing the the the risk there.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. You're exactly right because you have to if you're doing vegan or any diet, you're optimizing for your speed of aging, your muscle mass, your fat, your cardiovascular capacity, your inflammation, your cholesterol. You can't just optimize for, like, one thing, muscle, and other things are short. You have to hit every single one. And so I think what's unique is I've done veganism plus caloric restriction, and I'm still in the 99.5 percentile for muscle and for fat.
And 1.5 top 1.5 percent of 18 yields for cardiovascular capacity, and top 99.8% offer for bone mineral total bone mineral density, So if you look at my metrics across the board across every vector of my health, the diet is hitting perfectly on every single thing. And so a lot of people have they just dismiss veganism as incapable of accomplishing these objectives. Yeah. That plus caloric restriction, they and you're out of the game. Right.
You can't compete. Yeah. But yet I've shown I'm as competitive
Mark Hyman
as Sitting on the edge of my seat here, Brian, what are you doing?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. So
Mark Hyman
Give us a recipe.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I just got my latest MRI results just before I arrive today. I wanna see what the new data is. So for breakfast, I e super veggie, which is broccoli cauliflower lentils, ginger, hemp seeds, and garlic. And then the next meal
Mark Hyman
is You're not kissing anybody after breakfast then.
Bryan Johnson
So it's, yeah. It's the garlic is not you cannot sense it. Or you can't smell it. You can't taste it.
Mark Hyman
Okay.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. It's invisible. And then the next meal I have is, How
Mark Hyman
do I get some of that for my wife? Because she loves garlic, and it's not invisible.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. I think so what the way we do is we cook it. We boil it. And then we, and you chop it and or blend it.
And it just doesn't. Yeah. The smell's gone.
Mark Hyman
Alright. So so that's breakfast and lunch is.
Bryan Johnson
And then the next meal today is nutty pudding, which is macadamia nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, pomegranate juice, berries, p protein.
Mark Hyman
So p protein? Yes. So using some type of, like, food product that's made in a factory in order to do this. So you need the actual protein. You don't have any grams of protein you're having
Bryan Johnson
Yes. I'm for toy every day, I'm having 110.
Mark Hyman
Okay.
Bryan Johnson
That's a lot. The lentils are, oh, is it a lot? Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Well, I mean, it's it's it's it's probably not for your weight. What I would say would be what you need to look like you, but clearly it's working. Right? So somewhere between half a gram to a gram per pound.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Most people's imaginations of protein, they're in the 150. Most men I know are in the 150 to 100, 250 a day, that somehow that that has become the standard of people's expectations.
But we even saw when my protein was around 120, I think. My bun was a bit high.
Mark Hyman
That's your that's your, kidney ability to kind of process urea, which is in protein. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Right. So I lowered the 10109, 110 range, and the bond came back down to 17. And so, yeah, we're we've tried to very carefully titrate the perfect And so, yeah, it's, I eat a lot of fat. I have extra virgin olive oil with every mill. So I do 45 mls a day tables from today of extra virgin olive oil.
Mark Hyman
So in that p protein, what would how many grams of protein was in that?
Bryan Johnson
25, I think.
Mark Hyman
25. Okay. Yeah. And so that that, was is that a spike p protein, in other words, does it have additionally amino acids that increase lucy in content? Mhmm.
It's just pure peep peep peep or I'm sure organic p protein. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yep. And then it's we do pee and hemp. And then lentils, Yep. For the 110.
Mark Hyman
Okay. And then dinner?
Bryan Johnson
I'll have, it'll be some combination of vegetable berries or nuts.
Mark Hyman
Okay. So that that's interesting. So you it's it's a very, you know, low grain, almost no grain except for beans. No dairy. And and the only thing you have sort of process is pea protein.
Yes.
Bryan Johnson
And you
Mark Hyman
do that once a day.
Bryan Johnson
Yep.
Mark Hyman
And and that's amazing. And so so, when are you doing anything else to support muscle growth in terms of supplements, hormones, anything like that?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I take I've creating. I take that. Create. 0.5 grams a day.
And then I, you know, I do, calcium alpha keticlutarate, just for phthalate index, but that's not really for muscle. You know, I don't think anything else muscle. Yeah. I'm no. No testosterone.
Yeah. And my my levels are around 800.
Mark Hyman
Amazing.
Bryan Johnson
Yep. Without it. Great. And, yeah, there's nothing else I do for Mussel.
Mark Hyman
You don't take amino acid supplements?
Bryan Johnson
No. I I did. And that was my it was contributing to the higher bond.
Mark Hyman
Oh, yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Yep. So no. No amino acids.
Mark Hyman
We call it B UN. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Okay.
Mark Hyman
It was it was a, it was a, anything happened when I was in medical school. There was a a new, a new, a new medical scooter on the on the rounds. And, you know, sometimes you see a low level when we call it B UN. Yeah. And and, we made a joke on the on the medical student because he was like, wow, this is look.
They have they're BUN's low. We we call BUN. Or their buns low. And, he said, well, well, you should call the lab right now and get 2 units of buns stat, and they call it on the lab. It's my Very funny.
Anyway, inside joke. So, so that's your diet. And and and and, you know, one of the things that that sort of I I joked about earlier is is that I think is so important for life is joy and laughter and pleasure You know, it's it's something that that it sort of makes life good. Right? It's our friends, our community, our our our ability to enjoy things and savor things.
Do you feel like you're missing out on some of the joy of food?
Bryan Johnson
It's so funny that when people you mentioned this before, when people see me, they will make, you know, 5 conscious observations and then another 5 unconscious observations, and they're all negative. They assume I'm miserable. They assume my food is awful. They assume I'm missing out on life. They assume that I just can't imagine the joy they have, eating donuts and pizza.
That, you know, so it's all negative. It's such a rare person to pause and say, Like, we we are currently having an insanity contest. Like, I Yeah. I'm thinking this person's insane. Is it possible that I'm the one who's insane?
And there's probably 998 people who do the accusatory I'm insane, and 2 who'll say, Yeah. And so it's it's it's remarkable. So, yeah, I mean, I'm always put on the on the, on the stand to be interrogated of you're so miserable, and I know you're miserable, and I'm going to interrogate you to find, you know, so you can tell until you tell me how miserable you are. But I would say on food, I've never enjoyed food more in my entire life. And you talk to people.
It's not just me. You talk to people who do blueprint And they have a contrast where they go out to a restaurant. They can taste the oils. They can they can taste the junk. The food supply chain is not clean.
And it's instantaneous, and then they see how they feel afterwards.
Mark Hyman
Right.
Bryan Johnson
And then, you know, they'll eat more food than they should outside the protocol. They feel awful. So it's an immediate, response that, like, it's pretty miserable to go out there and eat too much food and eat processed food
Mark Hyman
and
Bryan Johnson
junk food. It's awful. Like such a terrible existence.
Mark Hyman
It's true. It's true. Absolutely true. And I think I think people, don't realize how food makes them feel. And I I can tell you after practicing medicine for 40 years, even the most brilliant human beings, and I take a lot of very smart people, do not make the connection between what they eat and how they feel, their energy, their mood, their brain function, their cognitive ability, their Yeah.
Their energy, everything, their digestive function, their skin. I mean, nothing. They just did, like I'm like, yeah. Food has it to do with everything that's wrong in your body. It's basically the raw materials for is happening.
And and, you know, when you came over to our house of their day, you know, you said something that really struck me. He said, I've never been happier in my life. Yeah. You know? And that's no small thing to say.
For many people who struggle with mental health issues.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And we know we know and I've done podcasts after podcasts about this. The role of all to process food in our mental health. It was just an article in the Wall Street Journal about it. It's hitting the mainstream now. I've talked about this for years, but we know these things inflame our brain inflames our bodies.
It's all connected. So I think it's it's it's important. And and and again, it's like, what's the payoff? Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Do you wanna feel like crap just for having a moment of pleasure as sugar passes your mouth? Or, you know, are you are you gonna make a choice that's gonna be the right choice?
Bryan Johnson
I got invited by a friend to go talk to a group of high school students. And the conversation turned pretty intimate where they started sharing the burden they felt of their depression and anxiety and just mental cloudiness. And to your point, I my first question was, are you sleeping? You know, what's your sleep like and what's your diet like. And it was there was no connection in their mind whatsoever between the two things.
They they were struggling with existence. It felt incredibly painful. They didn't know what they could do to alleviate the pain, but there was not a single thought that sleep and diet may be a problem. And when, when I probed it, you know, sleep was awful. They're staying up until way too late on their phones, you know, in their beds, like procrastinating going to bed, just scrolling.
And the food the diet was just fast food, processed food, junk food, And so, yeah, just calling attention. Like, you know, you could really maybe make a nice positive stride if you could get a few basics in place, but I agree. It's pretty surprising that these things are not the most obvious go to moves when you start feeling bad in life.
Mark Hyman
It's true. People don't don't know the connection. I mean, my book's right there called the UltraMind solution. I wrote 15 years ago on the top shelf that basically is about how our body affects our brain. Right?
And and and, you know, one of the challenges I see in people adopting what you're talking about is is this catch 22 where you're in this cycle of living and eating a certain weight And it makes you crave and want the foods. Yes. And you can't break the cycle. And at least more mental health issues, then you get more depressed and you want more crap. And it's, like, It's like a a vortex that sucks you down into a spiral of disease and depression and, you know, maybe even suicide.
Sometimes we talk about and and by the way, I'm not just saying that flippantly. We know in in studies of of young kids who swap out junk food for a healthy diet that suicide rates go down by 100%. So it's not as I'm talking about data here. You know, how do how do you recommend people break that log jam where they're in that vicious cycle? They're listening to this cycle.
God, I wanna feel good. I wanna have energy. I wanna feel all these ways. Yeah. How do I stop doing these bad things to myself that I even know are bad?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. The thing that worked for me, I was stuck in that spiral. For a decade. I was £60 heavier than I am now.
Mark Hyman
£60. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
That was a beast.
Mark Hyman
Yep. Big Brian.
Bryan Johnson
A big Brian.
Mark Hyman
You know,
Bryan Johnson
I I couldn't buckle the top button on my pants. It was just too tight, and it you mean, it drove and I I didn't want to buy bigger pants. Because then I would be giving in. You know, I'd be, like, accepting the new norm. So I kept those motherfuckers.
And I was like, you know, I'm not I'm not I'm not gonna do it, but every single day, it was just such an uncomfortable reminder of my inability to get, over a control. And so the trick I applied was I learned this when I was oppressed. I read a book that made the wise observation, which has been around for a long time, that I am not my thoughts. That when my bry my brain would say, hey, Brian, maybe you should commit suicide because life is awful. And there's really no hope to exist.
You might as well end it. Like, you just you need to be out of pain commit suicide. And I would have that thought every day all day in variations. And then reading that book, it was this invitation to realize that I could observe the thoughts landing, and it I wasn't those thoughts. That was not me.
That was just something in my mind was generating. I could observe it. And try to be impartial and say, thank you for the suggestion. This may be rough right now, but you know what? Like, I don't wanna end it.
Because I probably can come out of this when I'm gonna feel differently. And so I applied the same trick.
Mark Hyman
Went from doodai to don't I. Yeah. That's exactly
Bryan Johnson
right. The that the juxtaposition is beautiful. And so now so when I was struggling for my particular advice was when 7 PM would arrive. It was I had bathed the kids. I'd fed them, bathed them, read them stories, and put them to bed.
And then I was at the tail end of the day exhausted from all the wear and tear of building a startup and, like, you know, my partner was there waiting to have a fight with me. It's like, you know, just wanted to be dead on the floor. Just play dead. It was so bad. And the only thing that would bring me pleasure was contemplating going into the kitchen and getting that pan of brownies, you know, and just eating myself into oblivion.
I wouldn't throw up, but just overeating. I would be still sick. And then I couldn't sleep. And then I'd wake up the next morning. I'd feel awful.
And then I'd stop the new cycle of, like, today is the day I'm gonna do it and then 7 PM would come and, like, And so after trying so many things for all these years to stop myself from committing this self destructive behavior, one day, just I was basically just fed up with myself. Like, I had given up. I said, even in Brian, you're fired. You make my life miserable, and you no longer have the authority to eat. And so separating my my different versions of myself from me gave me freedom to say who is to see the O'Brien character?
What are their characteristics? What arguments do they use? You know, they show up and they'd be like, hey. Today is the last day. Like legit, you know, Tomorrow is Monday.
Con man.
Mark Hyman
That's a great con man.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Exactly. It's so persuasive. He's so good. You know, tomorrow is Monday.
Tomorrow, we start. We'll work out extra hard tomorrow morning. We're just going to do one bite of the brownies, you know, not 2, just one. And I was able to then make this character. And then when he showed was able to say hi, evening, Brian.
I see you're here, and I could talk to him. And that was the last time I did it. And I made the rule that evening, Brian, could not eat food no matter what. So from 5 PM to 10 PM, I created a buffer for safety. I could not eat that window.
And that is still true today. Yeah. That no matter what, I cannot eat that window, because that's even Brian's territory. And I just I'm now he's a great character to have around, but he's not and he kind of ruined every other Brian's life.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Well, I think you you speak to something really important, which is how do we how do we start to learn about our own mind? Mhmm. And realize that we're not at the effect of our mind that we actually need to be the author of our own thinking and have agency and and not believe every stupid thought we have
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And and realize there's a inner idiot that's running the show a lot of the time that Almost all the time. But you can you can learn about it and then you can work with. And there's a lot of practices. I I've spent years working on my inner idiot. Sometimes they call my inner asshole.
Yeah. Yeah. And and, and I've gotten pretty good at it. And I and now he shows up occasionally, but he's, like, an annoying cousin that, you know, you just don't wanna have around Thanksgiving, but I just kinda ignore him and and he goes away.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
So I I think I think it's a tough thing, but it that that's a whole deeper conversation about how do we how do we tackle our minds? But at the end of the day, there there's there's some really practical things that you've learned about, not just tackling your evening, Brian, but but how do you go from just stop eating that sheet cake of brownies? To understanding some better practices. So sleep, you you made a big point about it. And I think, you know, it's interesting when you say that I wanna just linger here for a sec because what you said is I didn't eat between 5:10 PM.
Mhmm. Now you don't eat between 11 in the morning and when you go to bed, which is 8 PM. Right? And that's a long time. It'd be like, wow, stop eating at 11 o'clock.
I don't even have your breakfast alone. Yeah. And and, you get up early. You get up, like, at 4 or something. Right?
So, it's a normal sleep, but, you know, in Sardinia, for example, I visited in in in these countries where they look to be very old. They're like, people I mean, I met one couple. They were like, 200 and, I think, they were two ten years old together. You know?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And and they he late. I mean, they they they have it lunch, and then they eat, like, late at night. And I I don't know. I don't know how they do it because I go to Europe. I can't stand doing that.
I how do how do you explain that?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. There's so many ways to get to the same destination. And I've tried to say that my way is not the only way. It's a way. And if somebody wants structure, I have something for them because the burden is if you're wanting to be in good health, it's Like, there's almost this, infinitely large undertaking where you have to go out and read books and listen to podcasts and compare notes with friends.
Yeah. You have to reconcile contradictory opinions. It's a mess. And when you've got a full time job and maybe kids and the other stuff going on, trying to tackle the entirety of human health is a pretty big project for an individual. Yeah.
And no one's gonna help you guide. Like, even your most trusted people are gonna give you different, opinions. Yeah. And so I wanted to try to offer up something for someone to say, you know what? Like, this is pretty good.
It's working out pretty well for me. You wanna just have something that is stable and structured, here you go. It's free. Do that. Like, here's the food you eat.
Mark Hyman
That's the blueprint.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Exactly. I care, you know, like, here's my protocol of what I do when I go to bed. And so it's basically it's a shortcut to health and just say, now start here. If you want to change you know, when you eat, great.
If you wanna change the time you go to bed, fine. But just something stable, so you're not spending 45 hours a week. Trying to figure this out and driving yourself insane doing so.
Mark Hyman
And there's an 80 20 on this stuff. Right? You're going for that extra 20.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
But the 80 20 is is pretty straightforward for most people. You know? And I think, sleep, you know, you mentioned is is being the pill, which people think, oh, it's diet or it's exercise. Yeah. Sleeping.
What what is your sleep practice? How do you how do you get a 100%? And I'm taking those.
Bryan Johnson
I've built my life around sleep. Yeah. I prioritize my sleep schedule over anything else. And so I I do a few things. Like, my my bedtime routine starts a moment I wake up.
So I do 10,000 locks of light in the eyes right now wake up to cement my circadian rhythm. I'll eat all my food by 11 AM because I did a few hundred experiments of what kind of food I eat and when I finish eating and what my resting heart rate would be and how my sleep scores would be. And so now I just saw my best sleep is when I finish around 11 AM or noon with food. If I eat later, my resting heart rate goes up, my deep sleep goes down, my ram goes down. Like, I've tried so many times to test this and inevitably every single time.
And so I eat earlier in the day, I also don't eat things like, carbs, like breads and pastas Mhmm. That will make my resting heart rate go up and my deep and ram go down and my, wake after sleep onset go up. And I never drink alcohol. Even the smallest bit of alcohol in the afternoon or evening hours will wreck my deep sleep. Yeah.
And then for my bedroom, I have it's blacked out. There's no light in there whatsoever. I have a temperature controlled mattress, 8 sleep. I do a wind down routine every night, like 30 minutes or so, where Again, I do this self talk where I say, okay, sleep, Brian, is now in charge. And we're going to say, hey, work, Brian.
We appreciate your ambition for life. Like, thank you for you wanting to do things. Yeah. Yeah. We're currently getting ready for sleep.
So when you start minding us about everything we need to do and the problems we need to solve. And you're like, we can do it tomorrow. But I'm not gonna write it down. I'm not gonna we're just gonna be sleep, Brian, right now. And so I try to really focus my mind on the objective at hand because otherwise, like, my I have a lot of ambition.
And so my mind is always popping off with, like, what it can do next and how it can work faster and how it can solve this and how it can solve that. And those things ruin sleep. Like, if you hit your pillow, thinking about work or thinking about a problem or be if you're upset, you'll be in light sleep all night long, just ruminating on that problem. Yeah. You never go into deeper room, like, very little And then you wake up the next morning, you feel awful.
Yeah. So, yeah, those are some of the basics I do, but I really try to, nothing is more important in my life than high quality sleep.
Mark Hyman
You you find EMS play rolling your sleep?
Bryan Johnson
Sorry?
Mark Hyman
EMF's, like technology, wifi, cell phone.
Bryan Johnson
Oh, yeah.
Mark Hyman
I Like, you sleep at a fair day cage. I know.
Bryan Johnson
I've recently been wearing lambs material. Lambs makes makes they're here in Santa Monica. They, they make EMF protecting.
Mark Hyman
Oh, it's a company.
Bryan Johnson
Lab. Yeah. Oh,
Mark Hyman
I thought you're paying, like,
Bryan Johnson
Like, like, a lamb skin. Yeah. They make EMF protecting clothing. They have a whole, like, underwear shirts, jackets, And I've been wearing that lately. I have it on now.
And so, yeah, I've been trying to do more e f EMF protected stuff.
Mark Hyman
Like, in your house, do you turn off wifi at night? Or I don't. And it doesn't affect your sleep. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
I don't I also don't have a a router in my room. So it's a certain distance away.
Mark Hyman
So we got sleep. We got diet. Talk about your supplement regimen.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Same thing with the diet. We said Every calorie has to fight for its life. We said the same for the supplements. Every supplement has to fight for its life.
If we can't measure the endpoint, then we it can't be included. And same, then we said if we're doing this, can we measure the kidney and the liver to make sure there's no accumulative damage? So make sure it's very clean.
Mark Hyman
So
Bryan Johnson
we're trying to look at whole system effect, because the moment someone hears, I take, at peak, I was taking 111 pills a day, I'm now around 42 or so. Blue we we created for blueprint. We did ourselves our own pill stack, and we can press the number of pills I take. And so some of them are basic vitamins and minerals like vitamin d. I take, like, some of the more interesting ones around aging fisetin, Latollian, cal calcium alpha ketoglutarate.
Yeah. So, like
Mark Hyman
With a turmeric green tea
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
You take NMM or any DNR?
Bryan Johnson
I take NR. Yep. I tried I did 90 days of NMM, and I did 90 days of NR, and both got my intracellular entity levels same place. So they're both effective as far as we could tell, or if there's other effects, we couldn't identify them.
Mark Hyman
When you're saying you're measuring the outcome, do you measuring, coq-ten levels if you're taking coq-ten, or are you measuring some function of the body related to coq-ten, like your respiratory chain and your mitochondria, or Like, how do you how do you look at these metrics?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Cocu. Yeah. We measure COVID-ten.
Mark Hyman
So you is that what you're saying? You can measure a a blood level, but you don't know if that blood level is doing the thing you wanted to do. Right?
Bryan Johnson
We've played with the levels up and down. So we'll take a given variable and see if we adjusted it. If it's doing it like vitamin e, you know, like, I just 67 milligrams of vitamin E.
Mark Hyman
But you're targeting it toward blood levels or toward a biological function? Blood levels. Okay. Yeah. So so you take these nutrients to basically fill in the gaps and given that we live in a toxic world and we're we're all you know, basically floating in a sea of pollution and toxins and and stresses and other things we can't manage.
Right? You kinda need that. And I I agree. I think, you know, the It's unfortunate we need supplements, but I I think given everything that's gone on with our world today and and the the insults we have and the poor quality food supply and dresses and toxins. It's it's definitely essential.
So, do you take any drugs?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I take, CF. This is a funny thing. So I I hurt my leg hiking. I was out mountain running.
And I tripped and fell, and I went in for a for stitches. And so the the doctor got me on the table. And he said, alright, son, before I stitch you up, are you on any medicate are you on any medications? And I thought, oh god. What do I do?
So I said, okay. I'll give it a go. I said, yeah. I'm on Metformin. He said, the drug they give to diabetics?
Yeah. Said, I'm on a car boss. What's that? You know, and then I said, I'm on, a rapamycin. The drug they give people with organ transplantations to suppress mesa?
Yes. I'm taking, Curcitan, the leukemia drug. Yes.
Mark Hyman
And the Of course, there's a supplement too. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Well, it was Kristen. Yeah. But I'd take a statinib. Oh, sorry. I meant to say statinib.
Yeah. Yeah. And, so it just it was funny. It was such a interesting moment where it was a I had lost myself in the project, and I had forgotten how far we had moved away from mainstream medicine. Yeah.
But he was just shocked. And he said, what the hell, son? Like, what is going on? Why are you taking all these drugs? So it was a funny moment and brought back to where people are the world's at and what we were doing.
Mark Hyman
So so what Brian just kinda unpacked was some of the most promising molecules in the space of longevity. I've written about that in my book. Metformin is regulating insulin resistance in blood sugar, rapamycin inhibits mTOR, which can help with autophagy and self cleaning has definitely been the most promising journey. I think in terms of lengthening life. A carbo's another one of those things that helps with regulating blood sugar.
It's a subs basically a sugar blocker in the gut. And, what was the other drug you mentioned?
Bryan Johnson
We've been doing, for senolytic, assessment, for senly clearing. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Definitely. But that was a drug that was studied looking at reversing biological age along with course attendance. Yeah. So, I I mean, I think, you know, metformin's an interesting one because You know, I I had near bars a lie on the podcast and he's right now conducting a large randomized controlled trial that'll give us a definitive answer but there's a lot of contradictory data about it.
Some of the observational data show that it was harmful. So I'm sure that was helpful. Yeah. And, you know, one of the concerns I have is it inhibits mitochondrial ATP production. Yeah.
And so the performance after exercise, the the response to exercise in terms of muscle building is is lower if you're taking, for example, metformin. So I'm not quite sole on it yet. I'm not opposed to it. I just think You know, I'm I'm sort of holding out for the data. Yeah.
But Yeah. But I think I think, you know, we all have a different tolerance, risk tolerance for things. Now these these are these are drugs that are relatively inexpensive. They're they're I would probably not try their home without your doctor and consulting with someone being Mhmm. But but they can be helpful.
What dose of rapamycin do you take?
Bryan Johnson
13 milligrams, week 1, 6 milligrams, week 2, 13, 6 So
Mark Hyman
Go off and on.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
So you do it once a week, and the data shows that if you do it episodically, it doesn't really suppress immunity, which is good. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. And we We, we measured my blood level. So I just I did it for 13 milligrams. I measured my blood levels 2 hours post ingestion 24 hours 48, 72, 96. And so we're looking at the the Cmax.
So we're at peaks, and then we look at the half life decay to see that if I take 13 on day 1 by day 5, it should be gone from my system or day 6. I can nearly gone. We're trying to see that there's no carryover and it's compounding in accumulation of my body. So we've that dose has been determined by blood draws, not a random number that we were trying to
Mark Hyman
fascinating. So what about exercise? Because, I mean, you know, like I said before, you really look ripped and I'm, like, kinda jealous. And and, you said also that exercise 6 hours a week is enough. So when I look at you, I mean, guys in the gym, like, 3 hours a day, but you're not.
Right? So tell us about what optimize exercise your team I've had. And do you use, like, fancy equipment like blood flow restriction or VASPER or, you know, electrical stim exercise gizmos? Are you just sort of doing Fashion pump and iron
Bryan Johnson
and It's really basic.
Mark Hyman
Run on the run on the treadmill or run outside.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. So I have it. It's a routine of about 30 or so exercises. And I try to flex and stretch every muscle of my body every day. So it's low weight, reasonable rep.
Like, I'll do 10 or 15 reps per muscle group. But it's really nothing, out of the ordinary. I stretch a lot. I do some weights. I do VO VO 2 max training.
Mark Hyman
It's cardio.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. But I nothing special.
Mark Hyman
You work with a trainer? Are you doing your own? Or
Bryan Johnson
Instead of my own.
Mark Hyman
An hour a day? Yeah. Ish. Damn. That's pretty good.
Yeah. That's pretty good. So again, you don't have to be kind of fanatical about it. And if you do do it the right way, you can actually make a difference.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. This is the thing is if people's they hear the $2,000,000 headline, and they think it's not accessible, but that's for the measurement. That's the that's the expense for the medical research team and for the measurement I do, but blueprint by itself is a 1000 to $1500 a month. It's very that includes your groceries. So it's actually very comparable.
I mean, it's, like, it's actually affordable at most people. And then the the commitment on exercise and sleep They're just basically lifestyle choices. And so it's doable by many people.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think about a year. Sleep is free. You just lay down. Yeah.
Yeah. Your exercise, you okay. You need a maybe a few weights, but now you buy them once in your life. And, food, you gotta eat that anyway. And you're eating food that isn't that expensive.
Bryan Johnson
You know,
Mark Hyman
like, you're not talking about a $70 grass fed ribeye steak.
Bryan Johnson
You're Yes.
Mark Hyman
You know, lobster tails. You're basically having vegetables and fruit and nuts and seeds and oil and some some lentils. I mean, it's pretty straightforward.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And the supplements can be expensive. You know, they can they can be pricey, but, you know, there's an eightytwenty on that too, you know, I think not everybody needs to take everything. You can take, you know, basically multivitamin fish oil vitamin d and magnesium. And I think that covers it for most people. And then if you wanna play around, do.
If you have specific things you're treating, you need to be more aggressive. But Yeah. I I think, you know, the the the the one thing I sort of wanna talk about is you're sort of your your life in general because you say you're you're so happy now. And yet, you know, listening to some podcast you did and talking about that. It was like, you know, you'd stop being 11.
So for me, you know, one of the most incredible pleasures is gathering with friends and having dinners and meals. Yeah. And I and I also know that both, you know, I wrote a book, years ago called Ultrametabolism talking about the sumo wrestler diet, which is how does sumo wrestlers gain weight, they basically eat and they go to sleep. Right? So I I've written about this and that you shouldn't eat before bed, but And I know if I if I give myself 4 or 5 or 6 hours, I do better than if I'm 3 hours.
But Yeah. I I think how do you reconcile the sort of This this phenomena of longevity has to do with the social connections. Yeah. And the relationships and the meaning and purpose we get from being embedded in a deep social web with with the the more sort of structured way you live that kinda precludes some of that. Or did you just go out and donate?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I I had a dinner party at my house on Monday.
Mark Hyman
You get a lunch party?
Bryan Johnson
A dinner party. Yeah. Duh, dinner. So I had them all over. We started, 6 PM.
And I made everyone there was 14 of us. I made a, blueprint spread. So everybody has super veggie and nutty pudding, and we talked about the future of being human. And everyone had their food. I didn't have food on my plate.
I normally do. So when I go out friends, I will if we go to a restaurant, I'll order steamed vegetables. You know, just so I have a plate in front of me and food on it. If you don't, then everyone's so upset that I don't have it, then all the detention is directed towards me, and it ruins the vibe of the event.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
So just to fit in, I tried to do that. And the event though
Mark Hyman
go to pizza joints because they don't seem veggie there. I
Bryan Johnson
mean, I all meet people where they're at. Yeah. Like, I definitely, I'm cool with kind of going to the flow. And I've learned how, excuse me, how to blend in to not call attention to myself. And then if people wanna poke around
Mark Hyman
What have you say up late? I'm like, I love going to the dead and company show. Like, the I'm going to the sphere in a in a next month. It's like I get, like, the amount of pleasure and joy I get from doing that is so high. Yeah.
But the concert doesn't start till 7 or 8 at night. So I'm not in bed till, like, after 11 or 12. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I mean, so, yeah, on Saturday, I did a health rave in San Francisco. So in the morning, we did a don't die event. We had 500 people come up and we did a whole bunch of health activities and we had blueprint food. And then we had a party in the evening, and then we had our health rave started at, 9.
And so I do do these things occasionally. And not every day, but I have enough. Reserve. Reserve. Yeah.
Exactly where I'm fine. I got, I think, a Like, an 87% sleep score that night. Okay.
Mark Hyman
Well, that that makes me feel better that you are occasionally have a party.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. I really I, you know, I tried to do the perfect sleep for 8 months. And then I've really tried to relax it to make this much more approachable because as you're touching on, when people see what I'm trying to do, there's an there's a list that's, like, 20 things long on why the person can't do it. It's like, oh, it's 2,000,000 or, oh, he can't.
He's miserable or, oh, he hates his food, or he can't be all friends, or, so there's they want they no one wants to make change because change is very hard. And so everyone's motivated to list all the reasons why this is impossible for them to do. And that makes him feel better that, like, you know, it's it's they can't do it, and therefore, I must be miserable. Therefore, it's actually okay. Like, they're the ones in the in the better position.
But if you break these things down, you can actually modulate this. And I do understand people's perspective. If you go into the grocery store and buying food is hard. Finding time to repair it is hard. If you have kids, that's hard.
So there's there's so many practical things in life to make this really challenging to do.
Mark Hyman
But it but, you know, it it's doable when you when you take a look at your life and and take real stock of all the choices you make of all the things you do. Of all the ways you spend your time, the way you spend your money, the way you spend your life energy, and the result in a return I'm asking you're getting, It's often not what we want. So we say we want to live a life that's looks like this for that, but we don't often take the actions or steps allow us to do that and make the choices that actually do it. Yep. And and I think it's important for people to realize it.
It's like you're saying it's it's not that hard. You know, we're talking about here. It's not that hard. And maybe we're not gonna live forever like you, but we'll, for sure, extend our health span and our life span and I think most people listening today could easily get to a 100 healthy years. Yeah.
And it's not something that's really achievable. I I I wanna sort of dive into a little bit more of the blueprint program because one of the things you've done for your community is is diagnostic testing. Now not the $2,000,000 each because they can't afford that. But you've come up with the, again, the 8020 on what are the diagnostic tests that are important. And so can you talk about some of the things you really think are important for us to measure and know about our biology?
That we're not looking at with our traditional health care.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. We so we just built a a blueprint food product trying to make what I do very easy. And we started to do this. We started a self experimentation study 5000 participants, and we set out with them the basics of a blood draw, body composition, wearables, and then questionnaires. And for many people in that cohort, it's the most robust measurement protocol they've had in their entire life.
And the blood panel is more extensive. You know, they've never they've, of course, another way but maybe not out of scale that gives them all the data. Your body composition. Exactly. Wearables, you know, our next level, but then paired with the other things and then questionnaires, which touch on a whole bunch of different aspects of life where it teases out.
It quantifies our subjective opinions in a in a structured way. And so I like this because it's introducing the people this idea that health begins with measurement. That's how you find your baseline.
Mark Hyman
I just don't guess is what I Exactly. Test don't guess. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
And, yeah, and so that's really that each person's going to get a few 100 biomarkers on themselves, which is remarkable. And the enthusiasm in the group is palpable. It it's cool that a lot of people want to do this, but like you're saying, they go to the doctor and the doctors don't offer this up. You know, like, they have a a specific routine where are you sick, continue to drug? Or Right.
They're directing you down these paths, but they don't say, how do I think about holistically measuring you? It's a very, very uncommon. They don't. And so it's cool to see this in action. And then we're gonna publish all the data.
And so I like this because most, as you know, most supplements, you don't even know if they're legit.
Mark Hyman
Right.
Bryan Johnson
Let alone them being out there doing open science in their supplements without them controlling the message.
Mark Hyman
Right.
Bryan Johnson
And I'm just trying to, again, be open about everything I'm doing about myself, about the products we're building. It's just an open. Yeah. So It should be how we build.
Mark Hyman
It's great. So you got you've got the the questionnaires, the wearables, the the body composition measurements, and the blood Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
And
Mark Hyman
and what are the things in the blood work that you're looking at that are not typically looked at?
Bryan Johnson
I think we have if I remember 63 markers, that. I should pull it up.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. And it's stuff that it's stuff that, you know, some of it may be typical stuff you get, like, your blood chemistry or blood count, but some of it's different, like, your nutrient levels or your metabolic health, things that are really important. I mean, that's really why, I've co funded, with my with my partners, a company called function health that you talked about, which essentially gives people access to tracking their data, to learning about what's going on under the hood. And actually, for less than 4 99, you can get, I'm 4 for 4 99, you can get 110 biomarkers on yourself. And then another repeat in 6 months for about 60 plus biomarkers and look at what's going on and track the results over time and see what interventions Yeah.
Have done to those biomarkers and whether you're improved or gotten worse. And it's very motivating because people don't know. I mean, people just I'm shocked at actually what we found. We've now had over 30,000 people in and 3,000,000 biomarkers. We're seeing 30% within an autoimmune biomarker, 46% with high levels of CRP and inflammation, which is the biggest driver of aging.
We're seeing APO B, which is a very important, probably the most important cholesterol biomarker that nobody checks 50 plus percent have abnormal levels of that. We're seeing Yeah. 67% with nutrient deficiency is not at your level of what's optimal. Right? But or what I would say is optimal, but what the lab says is deficient, which is very, very, very efficient.
Yeah. That's 67% of people. In one or more of these nutrient biomarkers. So we're seeing credible results that are giving people insights about what's happening that they never knew about. That there are actionable insights that can uplevel their health and maybe slow their pace of aging.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Right? So it's super exciting. And and of course, you know, you're we're talking about working together on this. It's really it's kind of a you and I are are both really in the same mindset, which is people need to have access to their own health data. People need to use that information to see what's working and what's not working in their life.
Yeah. To uplevel their health and to have a road map or a blueprint Yes. For Yes. Actually how to move forward. And so you created it really.
It's it's I love this because you're like, you you already made your money. You're not, like, making a $1,000,000,000 of this stuff. You're just trying to, like, share your knowledge and give people insights and get people enthusiastic and using yourself as an example to say, here's what's possible.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
So maybe we'll do another podcast in a 100 years together. Nothing you imagine. Alright. We'll do it in the next year. We'll see if you're I'm gonna work on my pace of aging.
I'm I'm point 84. You're point 69, but I think I think You know, we I'm so enthusiastic about this conversation because, you know, and and the reason I wrote my book Young forever was to kinda give people a sense that The science has advanced pretty far. And we know a lot about how to dial in diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, healing our microbiome, optimizing levels optimizing our hormones, reducing our exposure to toxins. And and then even some of these other therapies that, you know, we talked about some of these drugs that may be coming around and there's even cool stuff that's coming around that that we're still exploring like, you know, plasma freezes and exosomes. And you've done a little bit of that to kind of exchanging young plasma from your son and so on.
So, you know, you've kind of explored a lot of these things that are outside of the box for most people, but it It's kind of an exciting moment, isn't it?
Bryan Johnson
Yes. I think that the thing that I'd like that's most exciting to me is the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead said that society advances by the number of things you can automate without thinking about them.
Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Bryan Johnson
And I wonder when it comes to health and wellness, if we are going to bypass education altogether and system change and algorithms are going to run our health for us because there'll be so much more efficient, being able to assess our individual needs the scientific evidence and then the therapies to be and that's what I've tried to build with blueprint. I've tried to basically build an algorithm that runs me as it relates to my health and wellness diet, sleep, exercise. And we're now on this trajectory of intelligence where it's possible. When you start getting these closed loop systems, And that to me is bullish that we can imagine a society that basically tries to generate near perfect health for everyone by default. Yeah.
No one's thinking about it. We're not fighting systems in this arcane way. We do it now.
Mark Hyman
I think it's, yeah, how do we make it frictionless? Actually do the right thing. And I think I think, you know, I think we're getting there. I mean, I think, you know, you talk about you're being, you know, I used to watch you show in as a kid called the $6,000,000 man, the bionic man. You're like the $2,000,000 man, but but but the but the thing is, you know, that price tag is gonna come down.
Yes. Right? So it costs you 2,000,000, but it cost, I don't know, a 1,000,000,000 or 3,000,000,000 to decode the 1st human genome. Now you can get it done for a few hundred bucks. Like, that's crazy in terms of savings as we see the technologies accelerate.
The cost drops dramatically even exponentially.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And so it soon became affordable for people to access their own bio data in ways that we just never had before.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And then using computational power and insights from the science and from the research and from folks like you, we can actually start to create personalized roadmaps for people to optimize her health in ways they never had before.
Bryan Johnson
Yes. The future is exciting. Don't die. Don't die? Okay.
So so let's talk about
Mark Hyman
that for a minute. I mean, to me, you know, and this is a daily thing for me. Right? Because I'm 64. I I I daily think about that the time ahead of me is likely shorter than the time behind me.
And it influences the choices I make. Who I spend time with, what I focus on, and and what I went into my life, or what I discard for my life. In a way that that it was really consequential. Yeah. And and in some ways knowing you're gonna die makes every moment so much sweeter.
Yeah. So how do you how do you reconcile this idea of, like, living forever with that sort of beauty that mortality gives us in this weird way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you've had this question asked before.
But,
Bryan Johnson
yeah, don't die is is the result of, thought experiment. It's how I enjoy thinking. So if you transport yourself in time to the 25th century
Mark Hyman
Okay.
Bryan Johnson
And you're listening to them as they converse in whatever way they communicate. And they're observing the early 21st century, our time right now. And they're remarking at what we did that allowed intelligence to thrive in this part of the galaxy. What did we do?
Mark Hyman
I mean, was it I mean, I don't know. I mean, I my first thing that's in mind is artificial intelligence is making things better. But, there's a downside and dark side to that. It's not dying, maybe.
Bryan Johnson
I don't know. Exactly. That's what I came up with is a basic you know, in the same way we look back at the 15th century, we remember that century. We remember maybe 10 things about the entire century. Right?
99.9% of whatever happened there is gone to history. We just don't pay attention to it. Yeah. So there there's a compression of time. And so while we, of course, are all caught up in our lives in this moment, the 25th century is going to compress our moment to a very small number of things.
Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
And that thought process forces you to try to reconcile with it tries to pierce through all the noise and say, what really matters in this moment? And that's when I came back that basically were baby steps away from superintelligence. And when you're right there on the
Mark Hyman
AI or Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Exactly. With AI of, like, basically creating computational intelligence in the form of AI, that is so far superior to us. It's unimaginable. Like, we know it's capable. We know it's improving in what ways.
We're not entirely sure. Like, we have some ideas. But we definitely can't predict it. And it's it's improving at a speed that our minds can't comprehend.
Mark Hyman
Totally. So
Bryan Johnson
it's gonna go in some direction, and we're gonna likely be very surprised.
Mark Hyman
Mhmm. And so
Bryan Johnson
given that, and we'll have all this new capability, What does intelligence do? Do we take this new intelligence and say, now we're gonna make more money? We're going to become better at going to war. We're going to become better social media people. And so what I'm saying is that that intelligence Instagram
Mark Hyman
followers is not the game. Exactly.
Bryan Johnson
That when you are naive, you basically say the only thing intelligence cares to do is to continue intelligence is to continue to exist. And so if we say right now, the guide that the most played game on planet earth by every human on this planet right now is don't die. Every second of every day, don't die as played when we breathe. When we look both ways before we cross the street, when we throw out moldy food, every human plays it as the as the 0th game they play. Yeah.
On top of that, if they don't die, then they play Capitalism or they play religion or they play. Like, whatever the game they play, it sits atop. Don't die. Mhmm. And so what I'm trying to observe here is I'm saying that if we as a species want to avoid annihilation, destroying each other with our nuclear weapons or bioweapons.
If we want to avoid destroying our planet, we want to avoid some disastrous outcome of AI if we're trying to navigate existential risk. We would rally around the concept of, don't die as the singular philosophical, social, political, moral ethical framework of our existence. So to complete the thought experiment, the 21st century would say, homo sapiens, as primitive as they were in the early 21st century. Like, they're basically cavemen. Pretty much.
They realized that the only objective they had individually and as a society was to not die. That's it. And everything in society was rebuilt around this framework as the 0 principal order of all things.
Mark Hyman
And So Brian Johnson's gonna be the most famous guy in 2025 then. Or maybe he'll still be there.
Bryan Johnson
Wanna be there listening to that conversation.
Mark Hyman
Wow. Me too. Me too. Well, Brian, thank you so much for your work, dedication to not just, living longer for yourself, but, making what you've learned available to all of us. I think I think it's worth everybody taking a deep look at Brian's work.
They can find it at Yeah. Blueprint.bronjohnson.com,
Bryan Johnson
or if you want my protocol for free, you wanna see my recipes and my supplements, All of it's there for you for free. And all my data is there too. That's protocol.brianjohnson.com. And you can get a good start on your new life.
Mark Hyman
Great. And we're gonna put a link to all of Brian's work and all the data and all the things you wanna look at in the show notes. You can have a deep look at that And, it might take you a minute, so you surely wanna follow his advice so you don't die before you finish reading it. It's really quite amazing and impressive.
Bryan Johnson
Start by going to bed on time tonight.
Mark Hyman
There you go. Start by going to bed on time tonight.
Bryan Johnson
Just baby steps.
Mark Hyman
Baby steps. Yeah. I I, I love when I get to bed at 9:30 makes me so happy. So, everybody, thanks for listening. Again, The Doctor's Farmacy, Brian, thanks for being on the podcast.
Thanks
Bryan Johnson
for what
Mark Hyman
you're doing. Love this discussion. Let's do another one soon when we learn more and we can compare notes again.
And so I was trying to look into negative space to say, what could I do? And I couldn't see anyone trying to tackle death. And I want and I wondered and I wondered, is it possible in, you know, 2020? That one could say with a straight face, I'm going to go after death.
Mark Hyman
So, Brian, welcome to the doctor's warranty podcast. It's great to have you here.
Bryan Johnson
I'm really excited to be here.
Mark Hyman
I'm excited to hear too because, you know, you're you're kinda everywhere now. You're in Time magazine. You're in every major outlet. You're on podcast everywhere. People probably heard a lot about you.
I heard your story. And and imagine a similar goal, this guy is nuts because I would never live like this, and I don't wanna live like this. And it, you know, someone someone said, you know, I I live longer, it might feel longer. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And and I think, you know, what I the way I see it is quite different than that. I I think you're doing an experiment for the rest of us. You're taking a hit for the team. That is is using your own biology to see what's possible at the limits of human potential. You know, some people climb Mount Everest?
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Some people like my friend, Colin O' Brady, ski across Antarctica. But your endeavor has the potential not just to be one for the Guinness Book of World Records. But to actually teach us something about the nature of our own biology, the nature of aging, what's possible, within limits of human potential, from a physiologic perspective, from a psychomotional perspective. And I I find it fascinating, and I'm kinda jealous because I wish I had sold my company for $800,000,000 and could just spend on my time doing this stuff, but I'll get there. I'll get there.
And I I just wanna start by kinda asking you how how this idea came in your head because, you know, you you, you know, had a great career. You made a lot of money. You did a lot of good in the world. And you could have been off partying on a big yacht and, you know, living it up traveling on the world and you decided to do something very important for humanity. What what was the impetus for this decision?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I've been working towards this my entire life. So when I was 21, I decided that I wanted to do something useful for the human race. And it was because I'd I had just been in Ecuador And I was among extreme poverty. So, you know, I, every day, it was people with dirt floors and mud huts and not knowing where their next mill was going to come from.
And I came back to the US, and I just felt this burning sensation inside that I wanted to that. And so I didn't know what to do. I wasn't really good at anything. And so I decided that I would make a whole bunch of money by age of thirty, and then with money, decide what to do. And so then I spent 14 years being an entrepreneur.
Sold my company at age thirty four. And, you know, it was more challenging and painful and hard than I ever thought possible. And so at that moment, you know, I thought it would be a a gleeful moment of celebration. And the opposite was true. I was depressed out of my mind.
I was in a challenging a relationship. I was struggling to leave my board into religion. I was having to reformulate my existence. And so in one year's time, I sold my company, left my religion, and got a divorce. And emerged from chronic depression.
And that was about a decade ago. And so for the past 10 years, I've been trying to answer that question. What to do to try to make a difference for the human race, with the, yeah, succeeding in in phase 1 of trying to make a whole bunch of money.
Mark Hyman
You did phase 1 really well. And, you know, I I think you said it's really important that it, you know, you you you reached the pinnacle of success. And yet you were freaking miserable. Right? You you told your company.
Your marriage was a mess. You you're questioning your belief systems that you grew up with and you're faith. And and it was a period of kind of darkness for you.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And out of that darkness for many of us grows something great. And your your insight about wanting to do something great for Humanity was a good one. A lot of us have that. I have that. And and I know a lot of people have that.
But but yours took a very interesting perspective, which is how do we even question something that's not even something that we even question. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
The only thing certain is death and taxes.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And, I don't know what you can do about taxes, but you're actually Maybe move out of California. But you're but you're questioning death as a predetermined phenomena for humans. And better others say this like Davis Sinclair, and there's some people talking about it. The it longevity escape velocity. I wrote about that in my book, Young, Forever.
Talks about the advances in science happening so fast that we can actually outpace the rate of aging and come up with technologies in tools and solutions and medications and who knows what that's going to help us to keep extending our life faster than the pace of aging.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And and, you know, you're you're you're you're you're you're saying this concept, and you wrote a book about it called don't die which is very kinda crazy. Okay. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Like, I was just gonna
Mark Hyman
say it because it's like, I mean, we've hung out. You're kind of a normal guy. You're kind of over a house. You had a great conversation. Like, he's not a weirdo, but like he's he's he's challenging things.
Like, he's saying, wait a minute, the earth isn't the set of universe or it's not flat or, you know, you're you're you're you're talking about like the theory of evolution, something that's so radically different than our paradigm Yeah. That it's hard for us to even accept it or even conceive of it and and and it's easy to dismiss and say you're a whack job, but you're not. And and so I wanna dive into kind of the sinking behind this this approach to to investigating this. And and I wrote a lot about this in my book, Young, Forever. Right?
And and how there are many things that we now know can actually reverse our biologically and slow the rate of biological aging. What you've done over the last 3 years is develop a regimen to really test this hypothesis and to not just conceptually talk about it, not just do studies on mice, but do studies on humans. And and just to frame frame this for people. You know, most doctors will say this is an anecdote. Mhmm.
And anecdotes are the lowest possible form of evidence.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm.
Mark Hyman
However, it's not really true. If you look at the NIH standard on what are the levels of evidence It's it's n of one data. N of one means number 1, meaning you you you measure a person, you do an intervention, and then you measure their outcome after. And that's what you've done in spades by by looking at over, you know, 200 data points a day on your health by Dozens and dozens and dozens of data points on your health over time, imaging data.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Blood data of stooled data, saliva data, urine data, you're like the data guy. Right? Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
I have the data guy.
Mark Hyman
So this is data driven, insights about human biology that We really had before. I mean, I I I've been practicing a physician for a long time, and I I worked at a place called Canyon Ranch, had my own practice, and have dealt with, you know, people who can afford to do 5 to $10,000 worth of testing. Mhmm. And I've done that on tens of 1000 people. So I've seen learning millions in data points.
But but in a sense, you know, uh-uh, it's helped me learn about everything that I know, but it also hasn't really come close to the kinds of things you're measuring and looking at on a regular basis over time. I I just don't have the capacity and even to make sense of it all. So you know, this this approach really helps you to not just have this abstract data, but to see what's off. You know, in medicine, we treat diseases. We don't really talk about health.
But what you're looking at is you don't have a disease. You're looking at how how do I deviate from optimal levels of health, not health of a forty 5 or how old you are now. Mhmm. But a health of a eighteen year old. Right?
Bryan Johnson
That's right.
Mark Hyman
How do I get to really look at, you know, what are the metrics I should be moving towards in terms of optimal levels and how do I dial my lifestyle, my diet, my sleep, my exercise, my supplements, my relationships, my mental chatter, all of that. How do I regulate that to to influences? So you you kind of are are are doing all this stuff for yourself and you created something called the blueprint. So this is not, you know, just doing for yourself, you want to make this available to everybody. Not every obviously is gonna do a $2,000,000 worth of testing on themselves, but you've sort of created a model where you can actually use yourself as a guinea pig and then and then actually will help, create a model for people to follow.
So what is the vision for this framework of blueprint and the vision for this company that you created?
Bryan Johnson
It started with a a thought experiment. After I sold my company, I I arranged a bunch of dinners with friends, across the nation. I identified my smartest friends, and I would pose a thought experiment to them.
Mark Hyman
You didn't invite me. We were part of the time.
Bryan Johnson
You would be invited now. And I said, okay. Let's let's do a thought experiment. Let's imagine we're living in 2050. And the world is this extraordinary place.
What did we do in 2017? This is the one I was doing at dinners that made 2050 so extraordinary. And then I would just listen intently to everyone's answers, and I'd write them down. And so I did about 10 or so of these dinners. And then I drew a circle on a paper I wrote down everyone's ideas in the circle and then I said, I can't do anything that's in the circle.
I have to find whatever I'm going to do to be in negative space. And the premise behind that was that if you look throughout history, rarely do you find the future in the status quo of a given age? You find the future on the fringe of society. And even then, it may not be present yet. And so I was trying to look into negative space to say, what could I do?
And I couldn't see anyone trying to tackle death. And I want and I wondered, and I wondered, is it possible in, you know, 2020 that one could say with a straight face, I'm going to go after death. Now people, of course, have been trying for the fountain too. That's a good startup. Since being a yeah.
Mark Hyman
It's a good day. Dotcom.
Bryan Johnson
And death. Oh, who owns that URL? Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah.
Yeah. It's like trolldeath.com. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I I put my I wrote that outside the circle and I thought, if one were to be serious about this, like, how would you actually try to do it?
And then I started plotting it out. There's one element that is the health, but then there's also a philosophical element. There's a economic, social, Like, it plays on a whole bunch of different planes. And that's what I've been working off the past couple of years. I've trained my sites on.
This is like, you know, when Magellan said, I think I can sub circumnavigate the globe because the ships are good enough. The navigation tools are good enough. You know, I can do it. Yeah. So at any given age, someone says, I think this thing that has been impossible or not imagined, can we can have a go at it.
And so I Something like that.
Mark Hyman
And it's true. I mean, this is this crazy intersection of technology, science, biomedicine, understanding of aging, It's completely different than, you know, even, you know, 45 years ago when I went to medical school, I mean, it was 40 years ago. Yeah. Right. No.
Was 1983 I started. I was 41 years ago. I started medical school. So, you know, it was it was not even in the conversation to think about the things that we're talking about in biology and health now in medicine. So It's so exciting that you're thinking about that that place that, you know, is is really outside of what is the normally conceived as possible.
Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
So what is the blueprint a little bit of high level? What's the basic framework of this sort of blueprint protocol?
Bryan Johnson
It's a question first of measurement that if we can, in fact so I guess blueprint was can we measure the biological age of every organ of my body? Could we then comb through all the scientific literature and rank them according to power laws And then could we could we apply all the science of homo sapiens have discovered in the past couple 100000 years and could we apply it into me then can I become the most measured person in history? Like, just to get where we at, roughly. And it does have limitations at the end of 1, sure. But it was really interesting to us that as a starting point, a a holistic perspective from an organ, basis to all the scientific literature to then quantify everything.
So there was no storytelling. There was no trust me. It was just data and science. And we wanted to run the experiment and then be open with the entire thing so that everyone could follow along. They could do it themselves.
They we they could learn from our successes and also our mistakes. So I tried to just be open science across the board on all of it.
Mark Hyman
Okay. So so take us through because, you know, you go to your doctor. You get your annual checkup. He listens to your heartless stethoscope. He looks in your mouth.
He looks in your ears. He looks at your eyes. This is that abdominal exam. I mean, I I did I learned this in I actually remember my preceptor in medical says, you know, we're training you to do physical exam, but it, you know, it's not that how full. And you're probably barely gonna find anything.
I mean, yeah, sometimes you will if someone's really sick, you'll find signs, but most of the time you won't. And then the lab panel we get is, like, kind of archaic. It's, you know, tested a really outdated, like, the wrong cholesterol profile and, you know, maybe 2030. Maybe if you got a right fancy doctor, 50 analytes, we're talking about getting 1000 tens of 1000 of data bits on yourself Yes. To know what's going on so you can modify your environment, meaning your your global environment, we call the exposome, everything you're exposed to your diet, your activities, your microbiome, toxins, everything, water you drink, the air you breathe, sleep, all these things are your explosive.
Modify those to really regulate disturbances in this dynamic balance in the system.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And and so, you know, in functional medicine, we think of the body as an ecosystem as a network. And I think of it as the science of creating health of health optimization. Mhmm. I don't treat disease. I simply look at where the body's off center or off balance and try to restore balance by taking out bad stuff and putting in good and essentially that's sort of what you're doing.
And what I'm curious about is is what what are the metrics that you're looking at? What are the things that you're tracking? What are the tests that you've done? Just kinda get kinda walk us through it because I think it's important to understand how how you've come to learn about yourself. It's not just you know, looking at your nocturnal erections.
That's kinda fun to know. It's a, you know, fun fact, but it's not really
Bryan Johnson
that. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
It's a sort of a secondary indicator of your your blood flow and everything else, but But what, like, what should we be looking at? I'm not for for your health.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. We would take a given organ, for example, a heart, and we would pose the question where can we find scientific evidence where the heart has an age equation?
Mark Hyman
So it could be, you
Bryan Johnson
know, max heart rate. It could be, regurgitation levels. It could be, like, you you basically start listing out and then you say you can do a blood panel on the heart You can do an MRI. You can do ultrasound. You can do an EKG.
And so you just start listing out all the ways to measure the heart. And then you try to find literature where they have a study of significant size that you can then age quantify and say, okay. My valve are operating at this biological age. My, you know, my aortic structures are the following. And so we would then just start doing that for every organ.
How would you do so for the lungs? Like, what are you can do spirometry. Right? You can do a whole host of tests. You know, biopsy, of course, would be great.
You know, biopsying these these organs are hard. So where you can't biopsy, we try to get out all these measurements. And so we went through my entire body and tried to tease out hundreds of biological ages. We did fitness tests. We did, of course, DNA methylation.
We did, like balance strength, nerve sensitivity, eyesight, like, you name it. Any age test we could find that we thought was legitimate. We would do. And then we would do these baselines and then I'd do a bunch of therapies and we'd do it again. And we'd say, did it change anything functionally or anatomically has the age of that organ changed at all.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Interesting. So these these aging clocks for organs are something we don't learn about typically in medical school. We know your maximum heart rate. For example, I'm 64.
My maximum heart rate should be a 156. Mhmm. That's the amount that my heart can maximally get to when I'm working out like crazy. But I routinely get in the 180s. Mhmm.
Because I'm, you know, My biologically just 43. So I I I think, you know, the body has that capacity. Yeah. And I and and and we have these declines that we think of as normal, but this is what you're challenging. Very hypothesis is that, gee, why can't you be as fit or as un inflamed or as healthy as someone who's 18 or 20 or 25.
Bryan Johnson
Right.
Mark Hyman
And and and and Viking have the same VO 2 max, which is your fitness level or your heart rate or your your lung capacity or all these different metrics, your mitochondrial output. Yes. But you're finding you you actually can.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And you know, one of the things you say is you're measuring, for example, the inflammation level of an eighteen year old.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
So so how do you how do you know that?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. That's one one example where I think my my high sensitivity CRP is, I think, point 1. And so we found a paper that has an age graph on these inflammation scores. And to put us at that level, we did the same thing with, like, for example, NAD levels, intracellular NAD. So we were trying to because as you said, like, in medicine, you the way medicine is practiced, you do a test and they say, good or not good.
That's really a binary. You may have a reference range where you hit on the lower end or higher end. But it's not as precise as saying you've got levels equivalent to an eighteen year old or sixty five year old. And a lot of things in our biology do follow an age trend line. You know, they in a reasonable amount, not all different changes are the same.
And so we really want to put it in context of where am I on that age range. And, like, it was fun because, like, my my boys are 2018. My daughter's 14. And so any test I would do, I would immediately message them about K, I got
Mark Hyman
a new I
Bryan Johnson
got a new fun one for you because I'd always want to measure myself relative to my boys and figure out, like, even as a they've got half of my genetics what what is their biological characteristics of their age. So we are trying to look at it from every data point we could.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think it's important because, you know, we we we, we now we now don't think about medicine that way. And I when I look at lab ranges, people don't realize when you look at a lab range for, let's say, blood sugar, it says your lab range should be 70 to a 100 is normal fasting.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm.
Mark Hyman
But when you look at the data, if your levels are over 87, you're have a linear increased risk of having heart disease? Is it better to be 80 or 75 fasting? Right?
Bryan Johnson
That's right.
Mark Hyman
And and so we don't think about medicine, like, that way. It's like binary or either have it or you don't. You ever babies or you don't. You have high cholesterol. You don't.
You have high blood pressure. You don't. But it's, you know, I I got my blood pressure test the other day and that and they were very upset. I'm like, why it was it was like a 110 over 70, which, you know, I'm 64. It should be, like, a lot higher.
Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And they're like, is low blood pressure. I'm like, no, it's not low blood pressure. It's normal blood pressure. Yeah. Yeah.
And when you look at the the the risk, and this is you're talking about data. When you look at the risk in terms of cardiovascular risk, stroke risk. And it's it increases in a linear fashion from optimal levels. So it's not like it's an honorary phenomena. The lower your blood pressure, the better.
I mean, obviously, you're not gonna pass out. We have too low blood pressure, but, like, you don't have too low blood sugar. There's too low, but there's that goldilocks level, which is really what's optimal. And and what did you find in your own body that when you started this was was not good that you were surprised at? Because you were a young man.
You were still what, 40 something when you started. Yeah. When you started this
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
So so you were you were you were not a spring chicken.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Although you're my my biological 43, so I'm I'm good with that. But but but but you you you, what did you find?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Several things. One, my my left ear is age 64. So between 4000 hertz 12,000 hertz, I'm deaf. Basically, deaf.
And that was from shooting a lot of guns as a kid and loud music. I never had hearing protection on. Some it was I'm right handed to the gun my left ear had the exposure. My right ear was more protected. So and we've tried very hard to reverse that with no success.
Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
So we that that's 1. 2 is I found this is a a congenital issue. I have narrow internal jugular veins. And, the combination of that plus my poor posture was causing some backup of blood in my brain. So I had intracranial pressure, and I had a I think my white matter hyperintensities aged me at something like 47.
Mark Hyman
Oh, wow.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm. They've they've since gone down the equivalent, I think, of, like, 13 years since correcting my posture and a bunch of other therapies. So though that was a, interesting find.
Mark Hyman
So for those listening, what you just said was as we age, we tend to get these little scarring tissues in our brain called white matter lesions. They came from, like, mini little strokes or little hardening arteries, and and they accumulate as we age. And, you know, for a young guy, it's really unusual.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
You know, I I just had my functional MRI done last week as a sort of just because I'm into this stuff too. Yeah. And I was like, he's like, wow, your brainless good. There's no atrophy and you have almost no white meta lesions. You have, like, one and most people your age have, like, dozens of them.
Yes. So I think I think there's it's interesting to see. You can actually start to track this, but know, what are the other things that you found that were that were things that mostly would check? Like, most people aren't checking there. I mean, they're hearing maybe, but not looking at their internal jugular vein and white metal lesions What what are the things that you found that were was your cholesterol off or your blood sugar off?
Did you have, you know, your liver up? Or what was what was sort of something that you found that was surprising? I know it's hard to remember from all those millions of biomarkers you did.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I mean, my my speed of aging initially was, I think, over 1.
Mark Hyman
Ah, okay. Yeah. Well, that's really important.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. My my clock. I'm trying to think I need to go back in time.
My mind finds the surprises.
Mark Hyman
Well, well, let's talk about the speed of aging thing because I think it's really important. You know, there's something called the pace of aging. So just as a background for for me listening, there are many biological clocks that are being used to track the rate and and your biological age and they're they're all kinda over the place. You know, you know, if you stay with the same one over and over, it's internally consistent, but they often don't match up. 1, say you're 53, wanna say you're 43, and so forth.
But there's a particular clock that you found really helpful that's called the Needen pace of aging, and it's really the rate of aging. So if you age a year for every year, you're alive, right, it's, you know, 50, you'll be 50, and 60 will be 60. Right? But if you you know, slow. What you were saying is you were you were actually accelerating.
You were aging faster than your chronological age
Bryan Johnson
when you
Mark Hyman
started doing this. Now you're out of 750 people who are tracking this with you, you're like number 1, meaning the slowest pace of aging. So you wanna slow the pace of aging. And and you're at point 69, meaning for every year that you get older chronologically, you only get older point 69 years.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Right? And so so tell us about this this test and and what you've done to kinda modify it because it's very impressive. Yeah. But I'm I'm point 84. I was I thought I was excited about mine.
But but yours is better.
Bryan Johnson
That's no. That's honestly point 84 is great.
Mark Hyman
Okay. Good. Yeah. I don't
Bryan Johnson
I don't think we it's like, If you're in that range, you're doing a great job. I I wouldn't pick, the difference with relatively minor differences, Blake. Okay. So DNA methylation, a lot
Mark Hyman
of people So you're gonna pump me up at number 1 with you on this?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I you're trying hard. You're doing a lot of good stuff. It's great.
And I it's I think it's better for
Mark Hyman
everyone to feel rewarded for the effort and to not be nitpicky about the exact number.
Bryan Johnson
I don't think it's that I don't think we can say that much about it in this point in time. So I think it's more that we're in the general range. But the, yeah, the DNA methylation A lot of people will say 2 things about them. One is they'll say, I did various clocks. I got different ages.
Therefore, they must all suck. And the other thing they say is, is not yet tied to all cause mortality. Therefore, you know, it's not a a goal standard if you don't have to make marker. And so on the first one, what they don't realize is these clocks are trained for a specific algorithm. They train with certain data for the algorithm.
So it's not like they're they all have the same algorithm and they just have different outputs. They're trained for different objectives. So you can't compare They're
Mark Hyman
using different math, essentially. Right. Exactly.
Bryan Johnson
And different variables. And so you can't, you can't compare one to the other or use that to just credit. Right. And so we've, as a team, we like the dinner and pace because it's not an age. It's just your pace of aging And we we think of the clocks, it's a good one that we can do repeatedly to say, how is this changing like other markers?
It's relatively steady. And so we've liked it because we've seen that my speed of aging has gone up and down with various therapies. Like, sometimes a certain therapy that's doing something positive also temporary speeds up my speed of aging, and then it comes back down. So it's been cool to see just like you would see cholesterol up and down, or you'd see inflammation up or down with various changes in life. And so we have the we really succeeded initially getting my speed speed of vision down to 6.69.
It was best in world at some point And, we've since been playing the whole bunch of therapies watching that go up and down. But we like we like DNA methylation clocks. We think the next gen ones, even the omic clocks, are even much better because now you can do an Oregon by Oregon basis clock. Yeah. So I love the trajectory because, like, with cholesterol, Is there an improvement curve for looking at cholesterol, like, kinda not?
Like, we're we kinda have that one nailed, whereas these DNA methylation, it seems like we've got a lot of Frontier to explore what in fact is changing these. Now is it gonna be caught tied to alcohol's mortality and how strongly It's emergent. We're bullish. We like them. We think they're a great, it's a low cost, easy to do test.
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
I think it's right. I think it's it's important to start to track these things for ourselves and you know, to become the CEO of our own health because you're you weren't leaving up to your annual checkup with your regular primary care doc. They would have, you know, never looked at any of this. And Yeah. You'd have said, you know, I'm going in there.
I wanna I'm like 43, but I wanna become, like, 33 again. They're like, yeah, you're doing fine. You look gray. You're skinny. You're you know, look like you're in shape.
You know, keep doing what you're doing. Come back and, you know, when you're 50 get your colonoscopy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really unfortunate because not how we should be practicing medicine.
We be practicing medicine exactly like you're thinking about it, which is where are we deviating from optimal ranges of health in every area? And how do how do we implement very specific lifestyle practices, supplements, hermetic therapies, medications maybe.
Bryan Johnson
Mhmm.
Mark Hyman
You know, maybe who knows what treatments like plasma freezes or stem cells. There's all kinds of stuff we can do. Right? And and and and what's possible. It's such a fascinating question.
I think, yeah, to me, it's it's like, it's so cool to meet you and to talk about this because I've been having this thought experiment in my head, and and really haven't been able to sort of do it at at at the scale you're doing. And I've done it, you know, obviously with myself and patients at a smaller scale, but It's just so incredible. So when when you started sort of looking at, yeah, the things that made the most difference, with, like, you you went from a a pace of over one aging to point 69. Yeah. What made the most difference for you?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. That one that I think the more interesting things is that when the topic of health and wellness comes up, it depends on whose company you're in, But usually everyone's going to have their thing. You know, one person's gonna say, I swear by ice baths. That's the thing. The cold plunge is what, you know, others are gonna say, not it's the sauna.
Another's gonna be like, no. It's this Eastern practice I have. The others are gonna make, no. No. No.
This sell reduces the thing that's better.
Mark Hyman
The gratitude journal in the morning.
Bryan Johnson
Exactly. Everyone has a vector to talk about what is contributing to their wellness. And Yeah. Then it just becomes disaster. Because there's no baseline to talk about anything.
And then you're just dealing with, you know, the storytelling. And so we combed through all the literature. And we tried to say, if we just looked through every paper, done and we rank them according to effect size and then grade the evidence to say, are there power laws here? And can we just take the power laws? Like, let's forget about the things at the bottom side right now, the bottom 20%.
Like, it's not even gonna be in our thought process. So we've we tried to master the basics, sleep, diet, exercise, weight, so, like, the top 5 are no smoking, you know, 6 hours a week of exercise, a Mediterranean or blueprint like diet, a BMI of 18 point 5 to 22.5, moderate to no alcohol, and then sleep. And so first things we did is master those. And so one one demonstration is I think I recorded the best sleep score ever where I had 8 months of perfect sleep using a whoop wearable. And it was for 8 months in a row, I mean, I built my life around sleep, and I wanted to demonstrate that perfect sleep is possible.
You just need to structure your life around that.
Mark Hyman
Did they call you and say, is your whoop broken? Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
It was fun. I mean, it was really a fun exercise. No one had ever done that before. And, I, you know, like, sleep to me is the number one thing we do as a as a as a intelligent being. When sleep is right, life is right.
And when sleep Amen. When sleep is off, like, life stinks. It's so much harder. It's like 10 times harder when you're not well.
Mark Hyman
It's like walking through. I call it, like, walking through my hair gel. Awful.
Bryan Johnson
And so, yeah, getting the basics right, that was initially, that's what drove down the speed of aging is is and then we on the diet side, we tried to say, every calorie I eat has to fight for its life. Not a single calorie can be present that doesn't have a specific function of my body. And we became that ruthless where if it didn't achieve something in the body, it was out. Now of course, there's many ways that you can achieve a perfect diet. Right?
There's all kinds of foods you can play with. All sorts of ratios. I'm vegan by choice, but, you know, definitely, you know, people do meat. Great. Do your thing.
But I was trying to say, can we design a perfect diet and then tag it inside the body with
Mark Hyman
the measurement. By choice, meaning a moral choice or a scientific choice or environmental choice? Or
Bryan Johnson
It's the only choice I've imposed in this experiment is veganism.
Mark Hyman
So so and in other words, do you didn't come in a prorate saying I'm open to any diet. You were like, this is I wanna be vegan. Do this as a vegan. Exactly. So it's not that you can't do this without that.
I I wanna get into that because I think, you know, as a doctor, if you don't do veganism right, it can be harmful.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Massive nutrient deficiencies, loss of muscle. I mean, cognitive effects. I mean, it just it Yes. Fertility effects. I can run.
Yeah. So, and and and you I'm looking sitting across from you here and you're like ripped. You know, I'm like, how do I get muscles like that? You know, like, and and, you know, you you obviously are doing something right. So And and and I'm imagining you're not taking a lot of processed protein powders and weird stuff because it doesn't seem like that would fit into your every calorie has to count philosophy.
So take us through your diet because it's, fascinating. Because one of the things that is is, this sort of paradox of aging And we talked a lot about it on the podcast. I've had a lot of nutrition and science experts on Don Layman and others, but as we age, we lose muscle.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And that becomes other one of the fundamental phenomena that caused us to age faster because you lose muscle and it's a vicious cycle. You get increased inflammation, higher cortisol, lower growth hormone, Yeah. You can't repair tissues as well. You go lower testosterone. You get worse cholesterol, worse blood sugar.
It's just a disaster. And plus you can't function doing things you wanna do. So keeping your muscle is a real key part of healthy aging. And and in order to do that, you need adequate amount of protein, the right amino acids, and you need exercise what you're obviously doing.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And if you look at, you know, this phenomenon of m tour, which is Mhmm. What people kinda often talk about when they suggest being vegan is that M Torres is this thing that will make you age faster because it prevents a topic to yourself cleanup or recycling. Right? Yeah. So if you eat meat, that's gonna shut that So they're right.
Yeah. But it's it also kinda you need them toward to be activated to synthesize muscle. Otherwise, you're gonna lose all your muscle. So it's it's kinda got a goldilocks. Like, you need to turn on and off.
And and so for you, how have you kind of thread the needle on a vegan diet? And looking as ripped as you do and managing the the the risk there.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. You're exactly right because you have to if you're doing vegan or any diet, you're optimizing for your speed of aging, your muscle mass, your fat, your cardiovascular capacity, your inflammation, your cholesterol. You can't just optimize for, like, one thing, muscle, and other things are short. You have to hit every single one. And so I think what's unique is I've done veganism plus caloric restriction, and I'm still in the 99.5 percentile for muscle and for fat.
And 1.5 top 1.5 percent of 18 yields for cardiovascular capacity, and top 99.8% offer for bone mineral total bone mineral density, So if you look at my metrics across the board across every vector of my health, the diet is hitting perfectly on every single thing. And so a lot of people have they just dismiss veganism as incapable of accomplishing these objectives. Yeah. That plus caloric restriction, they and you're out of the game. Right.
You can't compete. Yeah. But yet I've shown I'm as competitive
Mark Hyman
as Sitting on the edge of my seat here, Brian, what are you doing?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. So
Mark Hyman
Give us a recipe.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I just got my latest MRI results just before I arrive today. I wanna see what the new data is. So for breakfast, I e super veggie, which is broccoli cauliflower lentils, ginger, hemp seeds, and garlic. And then the next meal
Mark Hyman
is You're not kissing anybody after breakfast then.
Bryan Johnson
So it's, yeah. It's the garlic is not you cannot sense it. Or you can't smell it. You can't taste it.
Mark Hyman
Okay.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. It's invisible. And then the next meal I have is, How
Mark Hyman
do I get some of that for my wife? Because she loves garlic, and it's not invisible.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. I think so what the way we do is we cook it. We boil it. And then we, and you chop it and or blend it.
And it just doesn't. Yeah. The smell's gone.
Mark Hyman
Alright. So so that's breakfast and lunch is.
Bryan Johnson
And then the next meal today is nutty pudding, which is macadamia nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, pomegranate juice, berries, p protein.
Mark Hyman
So p protein? Yes. So using some type of, like, food product that's made in a factory in order to do this. So you need the actual protein. You don't have any grams of protein you're having
Bryan Johnson
Yes. I'm for toy every day, I'm having 110.
Mark Hyman
Okay.
Bryan Johnson
That's a lot. The lentils are, oh, is it a lot? Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Well, I mean, it's it's it's it's probably not for your weight. What I would say would be what you need to look like you, but clearly it's working. Right? So somewhere between half a gram to a gram per pound.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Most people's imaginations of protein, they're in the 150. Most men I know are in the 150 to 100, 250 a day, that somehow that that has become the standard of people's expectations.
But we even saw when my protein was around 120, I think. My bun was a bit high.
Mark Hyman
That's your that's your, kidney ability to kind of process urea, which is in protein. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Right. So I lowered the 10109, 110 range, and the bond came back down to 17. And so, yeah, we're we've tried to very carefully titrate the perfect And so, yeah, it's, I eat a lot of fat. I have extra virgin olive oil with every mill. So I do 45 mls a day tables from today of extra virgin olive oil.
Mark Hyman
So in that p protein, what would how many grams of protein was in that?
Bryan Johnson
25, I think.
Mark Hyman
25. Okay. Yeah. And so that that, was is that a spike p protein, in other words, does it have additionally amino acids that increase lucy in content? Mhmm.
It's just pure peep peep peep or I'm sure organic p protein. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yep. And then it's we do pee and hemp. And then lentils, Yep. For the 110.
Mark Hyman
Okay. And then dinner?
Bryan Johnson
I'll have, it'll be some combination of vegetable berries or nuts.
Mark Hyman
Okay. So that that's interesting. So you it's it's a very, you know, low grain, almost no grain except for beans. No dairy. And and the only thing you have sort of process is pea protein.
Yes.
Bryan Johnson
And you
Mark Hyman
do that once a day.
Bryan Johnson
Yep.
Mark Hyman
And and that's amazing. And so so, when are you doing anything else to support muscle growth in terms of supplements, hormones, anything like that?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I take I've creating. I take that. Create. 0.5 grams a day.
And then I, you know, I do, calcium alpha keticlutarate, just for phthalate index, but that's not really for muscle. You know, I don't think anything else muscle. Yeah. I'm no. No testosterone.
Yeah. And my my levels are around 800.
Mark Hyman
Amazing.
Bryan Johnson
Yep. Without it. Great. And, yeah, there's nothing else I do for Mussel.
Mark Hyman
You don't take amino acid supplements?
Bryan Johnson
No. I I did. And that was my it was contributing to the higher bond.
Mark Hyman
Oh, yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Yep. So no. No amino acids.
Mark Hyman
We call it B UN. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Okay.
Mark Hyman
It was it was a, it was a, anything happened when I was in medical school. There was a a new, a new, a new medical scooter on the on the rounds. And, you know, sometimes you see a low level when we call it B UN. Yeah. And and, we made a joke on the on the medical student because he was like, wow, this is look.
They have they're BUN's low. We we call BUN. Or their buns low. And, he said, well, well, you should call the lab right now and get 2 units of buns stat, and they call it on the lab. It's my Very funny.
Anyway, inside joke. So, so that's your diet. And and and and, you know, one of the things that that sort of I I joked about earlier is is that I think is so important for life is joy and laughter and pleasure You know, it's it's something that that it sort of makes life good. Right? It's our friends, our community, our our our ability to enjoy things and savor things.
Do you feel like you're missing out on some of the joy of food?
Bryan Johnson
It's so funny that when people you mentioned this before, when people see me, they will make, you know, 5 conscious observations and then another 5 unconscious observations, and they're all negative. They assume I'm miserable. They assume my food is awful. They assume I'm missing out on life. They assume that I just can't imagine the joy they have, eating donuts and pizza.
That, you know, so it's all negative. It's such a rare person to pause and say, Like, we we are currently having an insanity contest. Like, I Yeah. I'm thinking this person's insane. Is it possible that I'm the one who's insane?
And there's probably 998 people who do the accusatory I'm insane, and 2 who'll say, Yeah. And so it's it's it's remarkable. So, yeah, I mean, I'm always put on the on the, on the stand to be interrogated of you're so miserable, and I know you're miserable, and I'm going to interrogate you to find, you know, so you can tell until you tell me how miserable you are. But I would say on food, I've never enjoyed food more in my entire life. And you talk to people.
It's not just me. You talk to people who do blueprint And they have a contrast where they go out to a restaurant. They can taste the oils. They can they can taste the junk. The food supply chain is not clean.
And it's instantaneous, and then they see how they feel afterwards.
Mark Hyman
Right.
Bryan Johnson
And then, you know, they'll eat more food than they should outside the protocol. They feel awful. So it's an immediate, response that, like, it's pretty miserable to go out there and eat too much food and eat processed food
Mark Hyman
and
Bryan Johnson
junk food. It's awful. Like such a terrible existence.
Mark Hyman
It's true. It's true. Absolutely true. And I think I think people, don't realize how food makes them feel. And I I can tell you after practicing medicine for 40 years, even the most brilliant human beings, and I take a lot of very smart people, do not make the connection between what they eat and how they feel, their energy, their mood, their brain function, their cognitive ability, their Yeah.
Their energy, everything, their digestive function, their skin. I mean, nothing. They just did, like I'm like, yeah. Food has it to do with everything that's wrong in your body. It's basically the raw materials for is happening.
And and, you know, when you came over to our house of their day, you know, you said something that really struck me. He said, I've never been happier in my life. Yeah. You know? And that's no small thing to say.
For many people who struggle with mental health issues.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And we know we know and I've done podcasts after podcasts about this. The role of all to process food in our mental health. It was just an article in the Wall Street Journal about it. It's hitting the mainstream now. I've talked about this for years, but we know these things inflame our brain inflames our bodies.
It's all connected. So I think it's it's it's important. And and and again, it's like, what's the payoff? Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Do you wanna feel like crap just for having a moment of pleasure as sugar passes your mouth? Or, you know, are you are you gonna make a choice that's gonna be the right choice?
Bryan Johnson
I got invited by a friend to go talk to a group of high school students. And the conversation turned pretty intimate where they started sharing the burden they felt of their depression and anxiety and just mental cloudiness. And to your point, I my first question was, are you sleeping? You know, what's your sleep like and what's your diet like. And it was there was no connection in their mind whatsoever between the two things.
They they were struggling with existence. It felt incredibly painful. They didn't know what they could do to alleviate the pain, but there was not a single thought that sleep and diet may be a problem. And when, when I probed it, you know, sleep was awful. They're staying up until way too late on their phones, you know, in their beds, like procrastinating going to bed, just scrolling.
And the food the diet was just fast food, processed food, junk food, And so, yeah, just calling attention. Like, you know, you could really maybe make a nice positive stride if you could get a few basics in place, but I agree. It's pretty surprising that these things are not the most obvious go to moves when you start feeling bad in life.
Mark Hyman
It's true. People don't don't know the connection. I mean, my book's right there called the UltraMind solution. I wrote 15 years ago on the top shelf that basically is about how our body affects our brain. Right?
And and and, you know, one of the challenges I see in people adopting what you're talking about is is this catch 22 where you're in this cycle of living and eating a certain weight And it makes you crave and want the foods. Yes. And you can't break the cycle. And at least more mental health issues, then you get more depressed and you want more crap. And it's, like, It's like a a vortex that sucks you down into a spiral of disease and depression and, you know, maybe even suicide.
Sometimes we talk about and and by the way, I'm not just saying that flippantly. We know in in studies of of young kids who swap out junk food for a healthy diet that suicide rates go down by 100%. So it's not as I'm talking about data here. You know, how do how do you recommend people break that log jam where they're in that vicious cycle? They're listening to this cycle.
God, I wanna feel good. I wanna have energy. I wanna feel all these ways. Yeah. How do I stop doing these bad things to myself that I even know are bad?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. The thing that worked for me, I was stuck in that spiral. For a decade. I was £60 heavier than I am now.
Mark Hyman
£60. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
That was a beast.
Mark Hyman
Yep. Big Brian.
Bryan Johnson
A big Brian.
Mark Hyman
You know,
Bryan Johnson
I I couldn't buckle the top button on my pants. It was just too tight, and it you mean, it drove and I I didn't want to buy bigger pants. Because then I would be giving in. You know, I'd be, like, accepting the new norm. So I kept those motherfuckers.
And I was like, you know, I'm not I'm not I'm not gonna do it, but every single day, it was just such an uncomfortable reminder of my inability to get, over a control. And so the trick I applied was I learned this when I was oppressed. I read a book that made the wise observation, which has been around for a long time, that I am not my thoughts. That when my bry my brain would say, hey, Brian, maybe you should commit suicide because life is awful. And there's really no hope to exist.
You might as well end it. Like, you just you need to be out of pain commit suicide. And I would have that thought every day all day in variations. And then reading that book, it was this invitation to realize that I could observe the thoughts landing, and it I wasn't those thoughts. That was not me.
That was just something in my mind was generating. I could observe it. And try to be impartial and say, thank you for the suggestion. This may be rough right now, but you know what? Like, I don't wanna end it.
Because I probably can come out of this when I'm gonna feel differently. And so I applied the same trick.
Mark Hyman
Went from doodai to don't I. Yeah. That's exactly
Bryan Johnson
right. The that the juxtaposition is beautiful. And so now so when I was struggling for my particular advice was when 7 PM would arrive. It was I had bathed the kids. I'd fed them, bathed them, read them stories, and put them to bed.
And then I was at the tail end of the day exhausted from all the wear and tear of building a startup and, like, you know, my partner was there waiting to have a fight with me. It's like, you know, just wanted to be dead on the floor. Just play dead. It was so bad. And the only thing that would bring me pleasure was contemplating going into the kitchen and getting that pan of brownies, you know, and just eating myself into oblivion.
I wouldn't throw up, but just overeating. I would be still sick. And then I couldn't sleep. And then I'd wake up the next morning. I'd feel awful.
And then I'd stop the new cycle of, like, today is the day I'm gonna do it and then 7 PM would come and, like, And so after trying so many things for all these years to stop myself from committing this self destructive behavior, one day, just I was basically just fed up with myself. Like, I had given up. I said, even in Brian, you're fired. You make my life miserable, and you no longer have the authority to eat. And so separating my my different versions of myself from me gave me freedom to say who is to see the O'Brien character?
What are their characteristics? What arguments do they use? You know, they show up and they'd be like, hey. Today is the last day. Like legit, you know, Tomorrow is Monday.
Con man.
Mark Hyman
That's a great con man.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Exactly. It's so persuasive. He's so good. You know, tomorrow is Monday.
Tomorrow, we start. We'll work out extra hard tomorrow morning. We're just going to do one bite of the brownies, you know, not 2, just one. And I was able to then make this character. And then when he showed was able to say hi, evening, Brian.
I see you're here, and I could talk to him. And that was the last time I did it. And I made the rule that evening, Brian, could not eat food no matter what. So from 5 PM to 10 PM, I created a buffer for safety. I could not eat that window.
And that is still true today. Yeah. That no matter what, I cannot eat that window, because that's even Brian's territory. And I just I'm now he's a great character to have around, but he's not and he kind of ruined every other Brian's life.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Well, I think you you speak to something really important, which is how do we how do we start to learn about our own mind? Mhmm. And realize that we're not at the effect of our mind that we actually need to be the author of our own thinking and have agency and and not believe every stupid thought we have
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And and realize there's a inner idiot that's running the show a lot of the time that Almost all the time. But you can you can learn about it and then you can work with. And there's a lot of practices. I I've spent years working on my inner idiot. Sometimes they call my inner asshole.
Yeah. Yeah. And and, and I've gotten pretty good at it. And I and now he shows up occasionally, but he's, like, an annoying cousin that, you know, you just don't wanna have around Thanksgiving, but I just kinda ignore him and and he goes away.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
So I I think I think it's a tough thing, but it that that's a whole deeper conversation about how do we how do we tackle our minds? But at the end of the day, there there's there's some really practical things that you've learned about, not just tackling your evening, Brian, but but how do you go from just stop eating that sheet cake of brownies? To understanding some better practices. So sleep, you you made a big point about it. And I think, you know, it's interesting when you say that I wanna just linger here for a sec because what you said is I didn't eat between 5:10 PM.
Mhmm. Now you don't eat between 11 in the morning and when you go to bed, which is 8 PM. Right? And that's a long time. It'd be like, wow, stop eating at 11 o'clock.
I don't even have your breakfast alone. Yeah. And and, you get up early. You get up, like, at 4 or something. Right?
So, it's a normal sleep, but, you know, in Sardinia, for example, I visited in in in these countries where they look to be very old. They're like, people I mean, I met one couple. They were like, 200 and, I think, they were two ten years old together. You know?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And and they he late. I mean, they they they have it lunch, and then they eat, like, late at night. And I I don't know. I don't know how they do it because I go to Europe. I can't stand doing that.
I how do how do you explain that?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. There's so many ways to get to the same destination. And I've tried to say that my way is not the only way. It's a way. And if somebody wants structure, I have something for them because the burden is if you're wanting to be in good health, it's Like, there's almost this, infinitely large undertaking where you have to go out and read books and listen to podcasts and compare notes with friends.
Yeah. You have to reconcile contradictory opinions. It's a mess. And when you've got a full time job and maybe kids and the other stuff going on, trying to tackle the entirety of human health is a pretty big project for an individual. Yeah.
And no one's gonna help you guide. Like, even your most trusted people are gonna give you different, opinions. Yeah. And so I wanted to try to offer up something for someone to say, you know what? Like, this is pretty good.
It's working out pretty well for me. You wanna just have something that is stable and structured, here you go. It's free. Do that. Like, here's the food you eat.
Mark Hyman
That's the blueprint.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Exactly. I care, you know, like, here's my protocol of what I do when I go to bed. And so it's basically it's a shortcut to health and just say, now start here. If you want to change you know, when you eat, great.
If you wanna change the time you go to bed, fine. But just something stable, so you're not spending 45 hours a week. Trying to figure this out and driving yourself insane doing so.
Mark Hyman
And there's an 80 20 on this stuff. Right? You're going for that extra 20.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
But the 80 20 is is pretty straightforward for most people. You know? And I think, sleep, you know, you mentioned is is being the pill, which people think, oh, it's diet or it's exercise. Yeah. Sleeping.
What what is your sleep practice? How do you how do you get a 100%? And I'm taking those.
Bryan Johnson
I've built my life around sleep. Yeah. I prioritize my sleep schedule over anything else. And so I I do a few things. Like, my my bedtime routine starts a moment I wake up.
So I do 10,000 locks of light in the eyes right now wake up to cement my circadian rhythm. I'll eat all my food by 11 AM because I did a few hundred experiments of what kind of food I eat and when I finish eating and what my resting heart rate would be and how my sleep scores would be. And so now I just saw my best sleep is when I finish around 11 AM or noon with food. If I eat later, my resting heart rate goes up, my deep sleep goes down, my ram goes down. Like, I've tried so many times to test this and inevitably every single time.
And so I eat earlier in the day, I also don't eat things like, carbs, like breads and pastas Mhmm. That will make my resting heart rate go up and my deep and ram go down and my, wake after sleep onset go up. And I never drink alcohol. Even the smallest bit of alcohol in the afternoon or evening hours will wreck my deep sleep. Yeah.
And then for my bedroom, I have it's blacked out. There's no light in there whatsoever. I have a temperature controlled mattress, 8 sleep. I do a wind down routine every night, like 30 minutes or so, where Again, I do this self talk where I say, okay, sleep, Brian, is now in charge. And we're going to say, hey, work, Brian.
We appreciate your ambition for life. Like, thank you for you wanting to do things. Yeah. Yeah. We're currently getting ready for sleep.
So when you start minding us about everything we need to do and the problems we need to solve. And you're like, we can do it tomorrow. But I'm not gonna write it down. I'm not gonna we're just gonna be sleep, Brian, right now. And so I try to really focus my mind on the objective at hand because otherwise, like, my I have a lot of ambition.
And so my mind is always popping off with, like, what it can do next and how it can work faster and how it can solve this and how it can solve that. And those things ruin sleep. Like, if you hit your pillow, thinking about work or thinking about a problem or be if you're upset, you'll be in light sleep all night long, just ruminating on that problem. Yeah. You never go into deeper room, like, very little And then you wake up the next morning, you feel awful.
Yeah. So, yeah, those are some of the basics I do, but I really try to, nothing is more important in my life than high quality sleep.
Mark Hyman
You you find EMS play rolling your sleep?
Bryan Johnson
Sorry?
Mark Hyman
EMF's, like technology, wifi, cell phone.
Bryan Johnson
Oh, yeah.
Mark Hyman
I Like, you sleep at a fair day cage. I know.
Bryan Johnson
I've recently been wearing lambs material. Lambs makes makes they're here in Santa Monica. They, they make EMF protecting.
Mark Hyman
Oh, it's a company.
Bryan Johnson
Lab. Yeah. Oh,
Mark Hyman
I thought you're paying, like,
Bryan Johnson
Like, like, a lamb skin. Yeah. They make EMF protecting clothing. They have a whole, like, underwear shirts, jackets, And I've been wearing that lately. I have it on now.
And so, yeah, I've been trying to do more e f EMF protected stuff.
Mark Hyman
Like, in your house, do you turn off wifi at night? Or I don't. And it doesn't affect your sleep. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
I don't I also don't have a a router in my room. So it's a certain distance away.
Mark Hyman
So we got sleep. We got diet. Talk about your supplement regimen.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Same thing with the diet. We said Every calorie has to fight for its life. We said the same for the supplements. Every supplement has to fight for its life.
If we can't measure the endpoint, then we it can't be included. And same, then we said if we're doing this, can we measure the kidney and the liver to make sure there's no accumulative damage? So make sure it's very clean.
Mark Hyman
So
Bryan Johnson
we're trying to look at whole system effect, because the moment someone hears, I take, at peak, I was taking 111 pills a day, I'm now around 42 or so. Blue we we created for blueprint. We did ourselves our own pill stack, and we can press the number of pills I take. And so some of them are basic vitamins and minerals like vitamin d. I take, like, some of the more interesting ones around aging fisetin, Latollian, cal calcium alpha ketoglutarate.
Yeah. So, like
Mark Hyman
With a turmeric green tea
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
You take NMM or any DNR?
Bryan Johnson
I take NR. Yep. I tried I did 90 days of NMM, and I did 90 days of NR, and both got my intracellular entity levels same place. So they're both effective as far as we could tell, or if there's other effects, we couldn't identify them.
Mark Hyman
When you're saying you're measuring the outcome, do you measuring, coq-ten levels if you're taking coq-ten, or are you measuring some function of the body related to coq-ten, like your respiratory chain and your mitochondria, or Like, how do you how do you look at these metrics?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Cocu. Yeah. We measure COVID-ten.
Mark Hyman
So you is that what you're saying? You can measure a a blood level, but you don't know if that blood level is doing the thing you wanted to do. Right?
Bryan Johnson
We've played with the levels up and down. So we'll take a given variable and see if we adjusted it. If it's doing it like vitamin e, you know, like, I just 67 milligrams of vitamin E.
Mark Hyman
But you're targeting it toward blood levels or toward a biological function? Blood levels. Okay. Yeah. So so you take these nutrients to basically fill in the gaps and given that we live in a toxic world and we're we're all you know, basically floating in a sea of pollution and toxins and and stresses and other things we can't manage.
Right? You kinda need that. And I I agree. I think, you know, the It's unfortunate we need supplements, but I I think given everything that's gone on with our world today and and the the insults we have and the poor quality food supply and dresses and toxins. It's it's definitely essential.
So, do you take any drugs?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I take, CF. This is a funny thing. So I I hurt my leg hiking. I was out mountain running.
And I tripped and fell, and I went in for a for stitches. And so the the doctor got me on the table. And he said, alright, son, before I stitch you up, are you on any medicate are you on any medications? And I thought, oh god. What do I do?
So I said, okay. I'll give it a go. I said, yeah. I'm on Metformin. He said, the drug they give to diabetics?
Yeah. Said, I'm on a car boss. What's that? You know, and then I said, I'm on, a rapamycin. The drug they give people with organ transplantations to suppress mesa?
Yes. I'm taking, Curcitan, the leukemia drug. Yes.
Mark Hyman
And the Of course, there's a supplement too. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Well, it was Kristen. Yeah. But I'd take a statinib. Oh, sorry. I meant to say statinib.
Yeah. Yeah. And, so it just it was funny. It was such a interesting moment where it was a I had lost myself in the project, and I had forgotten how far we had moved away from mainstream medicine. Yeah.
But he was just shocked. And he said, what the hell, son? Like, what is going on? Why are you taking all these drugs? So it was a funny moment and brought back to where people are the world's at and what we were doing.
Mark Hyman
So so what Brian just kinda unpacked was some of the most promising molecules in the space of longevity. I've written about that in my book. Metformin is regulating insulin resistance in blood sugar, rapamycin inhibits mTOR, which can help with autophagy and self cleaning has definitely been the most promising journey. I think in terms of lengthening life. A carbo's another one of those things that helps with regulating blood sugar.
It's a subs basically a sugar blocker in the gut. And, what was the other drug you mentioned?
Bryan Johnson
We've been doing, for senolytic, assessment, for senly clearing. Yeah.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Definitely. But that was a drug that was studied looking at reversing biological age along with course attendance. Yeah. So, I I mean, I think, you know, metformin's an interesting one because You know, I I had near bars a lie on the podcast and he's right now conducting a large randomized controlled trial that'll give us a definitive answer but there's a lot of contradictory data about it.
Some of the observational data show that it was harmful. So I'm sure that was helpful. Yeah. And, you know, one of the concerns I have is it inhibits mitochondrial ATP production. Yeah.
And so the performance after exercise, the the response to exercise in terms of muscle building is is lower if you're taking, for example, metformin. So I'm not quite sole on it yet. I'm not opposed to it. I just think You know, I'm I'm sort of holding out for the data. Yeah.
But Yeah. But I think I think, you know, we all have a different tolerance, risk tolerance for things. Now these these are these are drugs that are relatively inexpensive. They're they're I would probably not try their home without your doctor and consulting with someone being Mhmm. But but they can be helpful.
What dose of rapamycin do you take?
Bryan Johnson
13 milligrams, week 1, 6 milligrams, week 2, 13, 6 So
Mark Hyman
Go off and on.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
So you do it once a week, and the data shows that if you do it episodically, it doesn't really suppress immunity, which is good. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. And we We, we measured my blood level. So I just I did it for 13 milligrams. I measured my blood levels 2 hours post ingestion 24 hours 48, 72, 96. And so we're looking at the the Cmax.
So we're at peaks, and then we look at the half life decay to see that if I take 13 on day 1 by day 5, it should be gone from my system or day 6. I can nearly gone. We're trying to see that there's no carryover and it's compounding in accumulation of my body. So we've that dose has been determined by blood draws, not a random number that we were trying to
Mark Hyman
fascinating. So what about exercise? Because, I mean, you know, like I said before, you really look ripped and I'm, like, kinda jealous. And and, you said also that exercise 6 hours a week is enough. So when I look at you, I mean, guys in the gym, like, 3 hours a day, but you're not.
Right? So tell us about what optimize exercise your team I've had. And do you use, like, fancy equipment like blood flow restriction or VASPER or, you know, electrical stim exercise gizmos? Are you just sort of doing Fashion pump and iron
Bryan Johnson
and It's really basic.
Mark Hyman
Run on the run on the treadmill or run outside.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. So I have it. It's a routine of about 30 or so exercises. And I try to flex and stretch every muscle of my body every day. So it's low weight, reasonable rep.
Like, I'll do 10 or 15 reps per muscle group. But it's really nothing, out of the ordinary. I stretch a lot. I do some weights. I do VO VO 2 max training.
Mark Hyman
It's cardio.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. But I nothing special.
Mark Hyman
You work with a trainer? Are you doing your own? Or
Bryan Johnson
Instead of my own.
Mark Hyman
An hour a day? Yeah. Ish. Damn. That's pretty good.
Yeah. That's pretty good. So again, you don't have to be kind of fanatical about it. And if you do do it the right way, you can actually make a difference.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. This is the thing is if people's they hear the $2,000,000 headline, and they think it's not accessible, but that's for the measurement. That's the that's the expense for the medical research team and for the measurement I do, but blueprint by itself is a 1000 to $1500 a month. It's very that includes your groceries. So it's actually very comparable.
I mean, it's, like, it's actually affordable at most people. And then the the commitment on exercise and sleep They're just basically lifestyle choices. And so it's doable by many people.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think about a year. Sleep is free. You just lay down. Yeah.
Yeah. Your exercise, you okay. You need a maybe a few weights, but now you buy them once in your life. And, food, you gotta eat that anyway. And you're eating food that isn't that expensive.
Bryan Johnson
You know,
Mark Hyman
like, you're not talking about a $70 grass fed ribeye steak.
Bryan Johnson
You're Yes.
Mark Hyman
You know, lobster tails. You're basically having vegetables and fruit and nuts and seeds and oil and some some lentils. I mean, it's pretty straightforward.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And the supplements can be expensive. You know, they can they can be pricey, but, you know, there's an eightytwenty on that too, you know, I think not everybody needs to take everything. You can take, you know, basically multivitamin fish oil vitamin d and magnesium. And I think that covers it for most people. And then if you wanna play around, do.
If you have specific things you're treating, you need to be more aggressive. But Yeah. I I think, you know, the the the the one thing I sort of wanna talk about is you're sort of your your life in general because you say you're you're so happy now. And yet, you know, listening to some podcast you did and talking about that. It was like, you know, you'd stop being 11.
So for me, you know, one of the most incredible pleasures is gathering with friends and having dinners and meals. Yeah. And I and I also know that both, you know, I wrote a book, years ago called Ultrametabolism talking about the sumo wrestler diet, which is how does sumo wrestlers gain weight, they basically eat and they go to sleep. Right? So I I've written about this and that you shouldn't eat before bed, but And I know if I if I give myself 4 or 5 or 6 hours, I do better than if I'm 3 hours.
But Yeah. I I think how do you reconcile the sort of This this phenomena of longevity has to do with the social connections. Yeah. And the relationships and the meaning and purpose we get from being embedded in a deep social web with with the the more sort of structured way you live that kinda precludes some of that. Or did you just go out and donate?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I I had a dinner party at my house on Monday.
Mark Hyman
You get a lunch party?
Bryan Johnson
A dinner party. Yeah. Duh, dinner. So I had them all over. We started, 6 PM.
And I made everyone there was 14 of us. I made a, blueprint spread. So everybody has super veggie and nutty pudding, and we talked about the future of being human. And everyone had their food. I didn't have food on my plate.
I normally do. So when I go out friends, I will if we go to a restaurant, I'll order steamed vegetables. You know, just so I have a plate in front of me and food on it. If you don't, then everyone's so upset that I don't have it, then all the detention is directed towards me, and it ruins the vibe of the event.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
So just to fit in, I tried to do that. And the event though
Mark Hyman
go to pizza joints because they don't seem veggie there. I
Bryan Johnson
mean, I all meet people where they're at. Yeah. Like, I definitely, I'm cool with kind of going to the flow. And I've learned how, excuse me, how to blend in to not call attention to myself. And then if people wanna poke around
Mark Hyman
What have you say up late? I'm like, I love going to the dead and company show. Like, the I'm going to the sphere in a in a next month. It's like I get, like, the amount of pleasure and joy I get from doing that is so high. Yeah.
But the concert doesn't start till 7 or 8 at night. So I'm not in bed till, like, after 11 or 12. Right?
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. I mean, so, yeah, on Saturday, I did a health rave in San Francisco. So in the morning, we did a don't die event. We had 500 people come up and we did a whole bunch of health activities and we had blueprint food. And then we had a party in the evening, and then we had our health rave started at, 9.
And so I do do these things occasionally. And not every day, but I have enough. Reserve. Reserve. Yeah.
Exactly where I'm fine. I got, I think, a Like, an 87% sleep score that night. Okay.
Mark Hyman
Well, that that makes me feel better that you are occasionally have a party.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. Yeah. I really I, you know, I tried to do the perfect sleep for 8 months. And then I've really tried to relax it to make this much more approachable because as you're touching on, when people see what I'm trying to do, there's an there's a list that's, like, 20 things long on why the person can't do it. It's like, oh, it's 2,000,000 or, oh, he can't.
He's miserable or, oh, he hates his food, or he can't be all friends, or, so there's they want they no one wants to make change because change is very hard. And so everyone's motivated to list all the reasons why this is impossible for them to do. And that makes him feel better that, like, you know, it's it's they can't do it, and therefore, I must be miserable. Therefore, it's actually okay. Like, they're the ones in the in the better position.
But if you break these things down, you can actually modulate this. And I do understand people's perspective. If you go into the grocery store and buying food is hard. Finding time to repair it is hard. If you have kids, that's hard.
So there's there's so many practical things in life to make this really challenging to do.
Mark Hyman
But it but, you know, it it's doable when you when you take a look at your life and and take real stock of all the choices you make of all the things you do. Of all the ways you spend your time, the way you spend your money, the way you spend your life energy, and the result in a return I'm asking you're getting, It's often not what we want. So we say we want to live a life that's looks like this for that, but we don't often take the actions or steps allow us to do that and make the choices that actually do it. Yep. And and I think it's important for people to realize it.
It's like you're saying it's it's not that hard. You know, we're talking about here. It's not that hard. And maybe we're not gonna live forever like you, but we'll, for sure, extend our health span and our life span and I think most people listening today could easily get to a 100 healthy years. Yeah.
And it's not something that's really achievable. I I I wanna sort of dive into a little bit more of the blueprint program because one of the things you've done for your community is is diagnostic testing. Now not the $2,000,000 each because they can't afford that. But you've come up with the, again, the 8020 on what are the diagnostic tests that are important. And so can you talk about some of the things you really think are important for us to measure and know about our biology?
That we're not looking at with our traditional health care.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah. We so we just built a a blueprint food product trying to make what I do very easy. And we started to do this. We started a self experimentation study 5000 participants, and we set out with them the basics of a blood draw, body composition, wearables, and then questionnaires. And for many people in that cohort, it's the most robust measurement protocol they've had in their entire life.
And the blood panel is more extensive. You know, they've never they've, of course, another way but maybe not out of scale that gives them all the data. Your body composition. Exactly. Wearables, you know, our next level, but then paired with the other things and then questionnaires, which touch on a whole bunch of different aspects of life where it teases out.
It quantifies our subjective opinions in a in a structured way. And so I like this because it's introducing the people this idea that health begins with measurement. That's how you find your baseline.
Mark Hyman
I just don't guess is what I Exactly. Test don't guess. Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
And, yeah, and so that's really that each person's going to get a few 100 biomarkers on themselves, which is remarkable. And the enthusiasm in the group is palpable. It it's cool that a lot of people want to do this, but like you're saying, they go to the doctor and the doctors don't offer this up. You know, like, they have a a specific routine where are you sick, continue to drug? Or Right.
They're directing you down these paths, but they don't say, how do I think about holistically measuring you? It's a very, very uncommon. They don't. And so it's cool to see this in action. And then we're gonna publish all the data.
And so I like this because most, as you know, most supplements, you don't even know if they're legit.
Mark Hyman
Right.
Bryan Johnson
Let alone them being out there doing open science in their supplements without them controlling the message.
Mark Hyman
Right.
Bryan Johnson
And I'm just trying to, again, be open about everything I'm doing about myself, about the products we're building. It's just an open. Yeah. So It should be how we build.
Mark Hyman
It's great. So you got you've got the the questionnaires, the wearables, the the body composition measurements, and the blood Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
And
Mark Hyman
and what are the things in the blood work that you're looking at that are not typically looked at?
Bryan Johnson
I think we have if I remember 63 markers, that. I should pull it up.
Mark Hyman
Yeah. And it's stuff that it's stuff that, you know, some of it may be typical stuff you get, like, your blood chemistry or blood count, but some of it's different, like, your nutrient levels or your metabolic health, things that are really important. I mean, that's really why, I've co funded, with my with my partners, a company called function health that you talked about, which essentially gives people access to tracking their data, to learning about what's going on under the hood. And actually, for less than 4 99, you can get, I'm 4 for 4 99, you can get 110 biomarkers on yourself. And then another repeat in 6 months for about 60 plus biomarkers and look at what's going on and track the results over time and see what interventions Yeah.
Have done to those biomarkers and whether you're improved or gotten worse. And it's very motivating because people don't know. I mean, people just I'm shocked at actually what we found. We've now had over 30,000 people in and 3,000,000 biomarkers. We're seeing 30% within an autoimmune biomarker, 46% with high levels of CRP and inflammation, which is the biggest driver of aging.
We're seeing APO B, which is a very important, probably the most important cholesterol biomarker that nobody checks 50 plus percent have abnormal levels of that. We're seeing Yeah. 67% with nutrient deficiency is not at your level of what's optimal. Right? But or what I would say is optimal, but what the lab says is deficient, which is very, very, very efficient.
Yeah. That's 67% of people. In one or more of these nutrient biomarkers. So we're seeing credible results that are giving people insights about what's happening that they never knew about. That there are actionable insights that can uplevel their health and maybe slow their pace of aging.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
Right? So it's super exciting. And and of course, you know, you're we're talking about working together on this. It's really it's kind of a you and I are are both really in the same mindset, which is people need to have access to their own health data. People need to use that information to see what's working and what's not working in their life.
Yeah. To uplevel their health and to have a road map or a blueprint Yes. For Yes. Actually how to move forward. And so you created it really.
It's it's I love this because you're like, you you already made your money. You're not, like, making a $1,000,000,000 of this stuff. You're just trying to, like, share your knowledge and give people insights and get people enthusiastic and using yourself as an example to say, here's what's possible.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
So maybe we'll do another podcast in a 100 years together. Nothing you imagine. Alright. We'll do it in the next year. We'll see if you're I'm gonna work on my pace of aging.
I'm I'm point 84. You're point 69, but I think I think You know, we I'm so enthusiastic about this conversation because, you know, and and the reason I wrote my book Young forever was to kinda give people a sense that The science has advanced pretty far. And we know a lot about how to dial in diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, healing our microbiome, optimizing levels optimizing our hormones, reducing our exposure to toxins. And and then even some of these other therapies that, you know, we talked about some of these drugs that may be coming around and there's even cool stuff that's coming around that that we're still exploring like, you know, plasma freezes and exosomes. And you've done a little bit of that to kind of exchanging young plasma from your son and so on.
So, you know, you've kind of explored a lot of these things that are outside of the box for most people, but it It's kind of an exciting moment, isn't it?
Bryan Johnson
Yes. I think that the thing that I'd like that's most exciting to me is the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead said that society advances by the number of things you can automate without thinking about them.
Mark Hyman
Mhmm.
Bryan Johnson
And I wonder when it comes to health and wellness, if we are going to bypass education altogether and system change and algorithms are going to run our health for us because there'll be so much more efficient, being able to assess our individual needs the scientific evidence and then the therapies to be and that's what I've tried to build with blueprint. I've tried to basically build an algorithm that runs me as it relates to my health and wellness diet, sleep, exercise. And we're now on this trajectory of intelligence where it's possible. When you start getting these closed loop systems, And that to me is bullish that we can imagine a society that basically tries to generate near perfect health for everyone by default. Yeah.
No one's thinking about it. We're not fighting systems in this arcane way. We do it now.
Mark Hyman
I think it's, yeah, how do we make it frictionless? Actually do the right thing. And I think I think, you know, I think we're getting there. I mean, I think, you know, you talk about you're being, you know, I used to watch you show in as a kid called the $6,000,000 man, the bionic man. You're like the $2,000,000 man, but but but the but the thing is, you know, that price tag is gonna come down.
Yes. Right? So it costs you 2,000,000, but it cost, I don't know, a 1,000,000,000 or 3,000,000,000 to decode the 1st human genome. Now you can get it done for a few hundred bucks. Like, that's crazy in terms of savings as we see the technologies accelerate.
The cost drops dramatically even exponentially.
Bryan Johnson
Yeah.
Mark Hyman
And so it soon became affordable for people to access their own bio data in ways that we just never had before.
Bryan Johnson
Yes.
Mark Hyman
And then using computational power and insights from the science and from the research and from folks like you, we can actually start to create personalized roadmaps for people to optimize her health in ways they never had before.
Bryan Johnson
Yes. The future is exciting. Don't die. Don't die? Okay.
So so let's talk about
Mark Hyman
that for a minute. I mean, to me, you know, and this is a daily thing for me. Right? Because I'm 64. I I I daily think about that the time ahead of me is likely shorter than the time behind me.
And it influences the choices I make. Who I spend time with, what I focus on, and and what I went into my life, or what I discard for my life. In a way that that it was really consequential. Yeah. And and in some ways knowing you're gonna die makes every moment so much sweeter.
Yeah. So how do you how do you reconcile this idea of, like, living forever with that sort of beauty that mortality gives us in this weird way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you've had this question asked before.
But,
Bryan Johnson
yeah, don't die is is the result of, thought experiment. It's how I enjoy thinking. So if you transport yourself in time to the 25th century
Mark Hyman
Okay.
Bryan Johnson
And you're listening to them as they converse in whatever way they communicate. And they're observing the early 21st century, our time right now. And they're remarking at what we did that allowed intelligence to thrive in this part of the galaxy. What did we do?
Mark Hyman
I mean, was it I mean, I don't know. I mean, I my first thing that's in mind is artificial intelligence is making things better. But, there's a downside and dark side to that. It's not dying, maybe.
Bryan Johnson
I don't know. Exactly. That's what I came up with is a basic you know, in the same way we look back at the 15th century, we remember that century. We remember maybe 10 things about the entire century. Right?
99.9% of whatever happened there is gone to history. We just don't pay attention to it. Yeah. So there there's a compression of time. And so while we, of course, are all caught up in our lives in this moment, the 25th century is going to compress our moment to a very small number of things.
Mark Hyman
Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
And that thought process forces you to try to reconcile with it tries to pierce through all the noise and say, what really matters in this moment? And that's when I came back that basically were baby steps away from superintelligence. And when you're right there on the
Mark Hyman
AI or Yeah.
Bryan Johnson
Exactly. With AI of, like, basically creating computational intelligence in the form of AI, that is so far superior to us. It's unimaginable. Like, we know it's capable. We know it's improving in what ways.
We're not entirely sure. Like, we have some ideas. But we definitely can't predict it. And it's it's improving at a speed that our minds can't comprehend.
Mark Hyman
Totally. So
Bryan Johnson
it's gonna go in some direction, and we're gonna likely be very surprised.
Mark Hyman
Mhmm. And so
Bryan Johnson
given that, and we'll have all this new capability, What does intelligence do? Do we take this new intelligence and say, now we're gonna make more money? We're going to become better at going to war. We're going to become better social media people. And so what I'm saying is that that intelligence Instagram
Mark Hyman
followers is not the game. Exactly.
Bryan Johnson
That when you are naive, you basically say the only thing intelligence cares to do is to continue intelligence is to continue to exist. And so if we say right now, the guide that the most played game on planet earth by every human on this planet right now is don't die. Every second of every day, don't die as played when we breathe. When we look both ways before we cross the street, when we throw out moldy food, every human plays it as the as the 0th game they play. Yeah.
On top of that, if they don't die, then they play Capitalism or they play religion or they play. Like, whatever the game they play, it sits atop. Don't die. Mhmm. And so what I'm trying to observe here is I'm saying that if we as a species want to avoid annihilation, destroying each other with our nuclear weapons or bioweapons.
If we want to avoid destroying our planet, we want to avoid some disastrous outcome of AI if we're trying to navigate existential risk. We would rally around the concept of, don't die as the singular philosophical, social, political, moral ethical framework of our existence. So to complete the thought experiment, the 21st century would say, homo sapiens, as primitive as they were in the early 21st century. Like, they're basically cavemen. Pretty much.
They realized that the only objective they had individually and as a society was to not die. That's it. And everything in society was rebuilt around this framework as the 0 principal order of all things.
Mark Hyman
And So Brian Johnson's gonna be the most famous guy in 2025 then. Or maybe he'll still be there.
Bryan Johnson
Wanna be there listening to that conversation.
Mark Hyman
Wow. Me too. Me too. Well, Brian, thank you so much for your work, dedication to not just, living longer for yourself, but, making what you've learned available to all of us. I think I think it's worth everybody taking a deep look at Brian's work.
They can find it at Yeah. Blueprint.bronjohnson.com,
Bryan Johnson
or if you want my protocol for free, you wanna see my recipes and my supplements, All of it's there for you for free. And all my data is there too. That's protocol.brianjohnson.com. And you can get a good start on your new life.
Mark Hyman
Great. And we're gonna put a link to all of Brian's work and all the data and all the things you wanna look at in the show notes. You can have a deep look at that And, it might take you a minute, so you surely wanna follow his advice so you don't die before you finish reading it. It's really quite amazing and impressive.
Bryan Johnson
Start by going to bed on time tonight.
Mark Hyman
There you go. Start by going to bed on time tonight.
Bryan Johnson
Just baby steps.
Mark Hyman
Baby steps. Yeah. I I, I love when I get to bed at 9:30 makes me so happy. So, everybody, thanks for listening. Again, The Doctor's Farmacy, Brian, thanks for being on the podcast.
Thanks
Bryan Johnson
for what
Mark Hyman
you're doing. Love this discussion. Let's do another one soon when we learn more and we can compare notes again.