$2 million dollars a year to live forever? A deep dive on Bryan Johnson and his Blueprint Protocol
- Michelle Adams
- 1 day ago
- 28 min read
You can check out the video version of this article here.
In today’s post, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts on Bryan Johnson and his 2 million dollar a year mission to extend his time on earth - indefinitely. If you haven’t come across him yet, he is famous for wanting to live forever and using both established and experimental ways to achieve his goal.
In January of 2025, Netflix released a documentary about him.
After I watched the documentary, I immediately went to his website and YouTube page to learn more about what he was doing, and I figured it would be worth it to share my thoughts here. There are multiple angles from which one can assess the value of what Bryan is doing. You have some people who say that what he is doing is totally useless, others who say that he inspires them, and still others who just find him to be purely entertaining. I will be sharing 2 perspectives that I have developed with regards to Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint Protocol.
First, in part 1 I will share my scientific perspective, which will be an analysis of the data that he is collecting and the message that he is communicating.
Then, in part 2 I will share my public health perspective, where I will talk about what value I think this project of his could have for society.
Alright, let’s start with part 1.
Part 1: My scientific perspective
Even if you do not like this guy, which would be hard to do because he seems to be very affable and sincere, you have to admit that what he is doing is at the very least interesting. I would guess that north of 90% of the people that watch his videos don’t actually believe that he will live forever, but it’s fun to watch someone go to great lengths to do the impossible, so they tune in. Humans have always been fascinated with avoiding death, as evidenced by the numerous epics and fairy tales that are centered on eternal life that have survived the test of time; Bryan is just the most recent and probably the most public example of this enduring obsession with cheating death. While it sounds totally nonsensical, the question of whether or not we can extend our lifespans and be like gods is not entirely baseless; research on the lifespans of other animals shows that there may be a pathway to extending the human lifespan.
The basis for life extension
Humans live and die like pretty much everything living thing does on this planet, but, some animals do appear to possess biological immortality. For example, the so called “immortal jellyfish,” Turritopsis dohrnii, can reach its sexually mature medusa form (where it looks like what you think of when you picture a jellyfish) and, when faced with stressful environmental conditions, like a drastic temperature change, revert back to its sexually immature polyp stage (where is looks like Beaker from The Muppet Show) and essentially start its life cycle all over again. It can also do this if it gets sick as a way to heal itself, or when it gets old so that it can become young again.
Researchers are studying their genome to understand how they repair their DNA and reprogram their cells, and how this knowledge can be used to repair cell damage in humans. However, we are far from being able to do any sort of hard reset like these animals do. This jellyfish is nothing like us - it is very tiny, less than half an inch at its widest point, does not have a complex nervous system with a brain, and it also does not have a heart or bones like humans do. Jellyfish also eat and poop through the same hole, need I say more? We will never be able to metamorphose backwards exactly like they do, but, knowledge of how they do this is still useful for understanding our own aging process at the DNA level.
An overview of Bryan's routine
Bryan wishes, I’m sure, that he had jellyfish DNA, but alas, he does not. Instead of lamenting this reality, he is experimenting on himself using some things that have a scientific basis, like eating healthy and exercising, and others that have not yet been shown to be effective in humans or even primates. Every day, Bryan wakes up at 5am, stands in front of a bright light, checks his inner ear temperature, measures his body composition, does a couple of hair treatments, takes 100 plus pills, does red and near infrared light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, focused shockwave therapy, exercises, does his work stuff in between, and has his last meal at 11am.
He has also tried gene therapy,
Stem cell injections,
And perhaps most famously, blood plasma transfusions, for which he took plasma from his own son and had it injected into his body.
It is his body, and he can do what he wants with it, but I do have some qualms with the way that he sells his message sometimes.
My criticisms of his message
Criticism #1
I have a problem with this statement right here:
“World’s best Longevity protocol, powered by precision evidence doses to enhance your energy, cognition, and overall well-being.”
My first question is: How does he know that this is the “world’s best longevity protocol”? He has stated that the purpose of his “n of 1” experiment was to figure out what the best protocol was, so why is he claiming that he already knows that this protocol will work? In my opinion that is inappropriate to say. The only “proven” protocol for longevity, based on observation not on clinical trials of course, is to:
Have good genetics, but we can’t control that so let’s move on to …
Be active,
Be a part of a community, or at least have some people that you can depend on,
Try not to stress out too much,
Get enough sleep,
Don’t smoke,
And of course, eat well.
Just a reminder - people in the famous Blue Zones, where there are the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world, are not primarily vegetarian or even vegan. They all consume animal products to some degree – I have an old video on this topic of veganism if you want a deeper look into this topic of vegan diets. If you would like to read what I have written on this topic, you can click here. Below is an excerpt from that article:
“People living in the Blue Zones do have a tendency to eat less meat than your average Westerner, but they are not exclusively vegetarian, much less vegan. In Okinawa, Japan, people traditionally eat a diet rich in plant foods with small quantities of pork and fish. In Sardinia, Italy, it is customary to eat small amounts of meat, fish, and poultry, and to have lots of sheep and goat milk. In Nicoya, Costa Rica, small amounts of meat are customarily consumed as well. In Ikaria, Greece, meat and fish make up a little over 10% of their Mediterranean-style diet. Finally, the Adventists of Loma Linda, California, which are the same group from the AHS-2 study, are about 50% vegetarian, and 50% non-vegetarian. Only about 8% identify as vegan, and as I mentioned earlier, they did not hold the top place for longevity across health outcomes. ”
Oh, and there is one more factor – money.
If you want to live long, it helps to be higher up on the income ladder. According to the World Bank Group, the countries with the longest life expectancies (in years - abbreviated as yrs) are:
The People’s Republic of China, specifically the Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of Macao (85 yrs) and Hong Kong (84 yrs)
Liechtenstein (84 yrs)
Japan (84 yrs)
French Polynesia (84 yrs)
Switzerland (83 yrs)
Faroe Islands (83 yrs)
Australia (83 yrs)
Sweden (83 yrs)
Spain (83 yrs)
These are not THE wealthiest countries, but they are all considered advanced economies with the exception of French Polynesia, which is still considered a high income economy. Conversely, all of the countries with the shortest life expectancies are located in some of the poorest regions of the world.
Within the United States, you can see the same trend.
Wealth is positively correlated with longevity.
Until he makes it to 200 years old, he really shouldn’t be claiming to have unlocked some previously unknown method of living longer.
Criticism #2
Going back to the same sentence, he also claims that this protocol is powered by “precision evidence doses…” but, precise for who?
“World’s best Longevity protocol, powered by precision evidence doses to enhance your energy, cognition, and overall well-being.”
Who are these doses precise for? As a dietitian, when I give nutrition recommendations to someone, I need to know a lot about them before I can even get in the realm of being precise. Nutrition needs are generally calculated using height, weight, age, whether someone is male or female, activity level, medications and medical conditions that may affect their caloric needs, and so forth. To be very precise with a person’s nutrition, you would also need to look at their genome and epigenome, the stuff that impacts how your genes get expressed, and their gut microbiome, as these factors also influence how a person metabolizes everything that they put into their bodies.
When I click the link to purchase the Blueprint Protocol, it takes me to one generic combination of capsules, powders, softgels, and olive oil. While nothing in the pack stands out as harmful, it is misleading to label it as precise. Bryan and his team couldn’t possibly know how all of these different pills and powders will precisely impact anyone. To understand how these individual elements of the protocol work in people who are not Bryan, we would need clinical trials. When it comes to nutrients, the recommended intakes for men and women can actually be different, that’s why you have men’s and women’s multivitamins. Nutrient recommendations also vary by age. I will use iron as an example.
You can see in the image above that daily, a 30 year old female would need 18 mg, while a 30 year old male would need just 8 mg of iron.
You should also know that there is really no need to take specific vitamins unless you have a deficiency or are at high risk of having a deficiency. Taking a multivitamin is in general pretty harmless, but it is possible to overdo it with vitamins. You should also be aware of the fact that some nutrients may even antagonize one another as they compete for the same enzymes, so you should not just take vitamins for the sake of taking them.
Another issue I have is with the protein powder. Why recommend that someone take a protein powder when they might actually be getting enough protein in their diets already? Making such a blanket recommendation for protein is akin to making the false assumption that most people need more protein. Most Americans actually consume enough protein, and the average guy consumes more protein than is necessary. There is only so much protein that your body can absorb in a day, and taking more just for the sake of it is just going to give your kidneys extra work for no good reason. This is not precise for anyone but the person that it was made for.
He is also taking over 100 pills a day, and has experimented with medications like acarbose, rapamycin, and metformin - substances that you would need a prescription for. These are not things that you can just get from your local Walgreens or CVS, which contributes to why I would argue that this protocol is not easily accessible for most people.
In the fine print of his website he says that you should consult a doctor for your personal health needs, which is great, but I think that his broader message of doing this to be a pioneer for humanity may be overshadowing this disclaimer.
Criticism #3
As I was scrolling on his website this video popped up.
In the video, he claims that the Blueprint Stack is based on 1000 clinical trials – this is obviously meant to grab your attention and create a sense of authority and trust, as he is telling you that this protocol is based on a large body of evidence. My problem here is that he doesn’t say what types of clinical trials these are; are we talking human clinical trials, or is he including animal studies? There is another area of the website, in fine print, where he provides details on what types of studies him and his team used to come up with the Blueprint Protocol, and they are transparent about some of these studies being animal studies and not having been tested in humans, but again, that’s in the fine print. I think that the responsible thing would be to say “1000 clinical trials in XYZ organisms” in the video itself to make sure that people who are just scrolling from one video to the next on their phones actually get that message. This distinction is important because the outcomes of animal studies do not always translate to humans. Rat studies are done to test hypotheses and get a sense of what may happen in humans, but we are obviously not rats, so clinical trials in humans carry a different weight. Just saying “1000 clinical trials” could make people think that these were all human studies that prove that everything that he is doing works in humans.
Criticism #4
In the section of the website pictured above, he claims that he is in the top 1% for his chronological age of 46, and even in some regards for people 30 years his junior. The measures that he uses are listed here. This is great for him and his family - to be healthy is a wonderful thing - but as someone with a research background, I cannot help but think of all the confounding factors in his "n of 1" study when he presents data like this. Is he in the top 1% because of the red light therapy, or is it because he eats better than most people, exercises more than most people, and has more money than most people? Just the fact that he eats a lot of vegetables and fruits puts him ahead of 90% of Americans, because most people in this country do not meet the dietary guidelines for fruits and vegetables. Most people also don’t get enough exercise – recent stats show that just 24% of U.S. adults meet weekly activity guidelines for cardio and strength training. He also does not smoke, drink, or eat any refined sugary foods. On top of that, Bryan has the huge advantage of being very wealthy. Just those factors alone would put him in the 1%. I believe that he knows this too, because he advocates heavily for eating a balanced diet, exercising, and sleeping. In essence, he is doing the basic things that are known to help boost health and longevity, and then he is doing a bunch of experimental stuff on top of those things. If he lives to 125 years, how will we know if it was because he did full-body focused shock therapy every day, or because he actually followed established generic diet and exercise guidelines and had good genes?
The answer is that we won’t know.
Criticism #5
Alright, now I’m going to talk about the photo gallery (screenshotted above). There is nothing wrong with including photos of yourself on your website.
If he wants to take off his clothes and do a semi-naked photo shoot, that’s his prerogative.
My issue with this photo gallery is that I just do not understand what purpose it is supposed to serve. He is trying to halt his aging both inside his body and on the outside of his body, but he has also been open about doing cosmetic treatments. That makes it difficult to know if when you look at him you are seeing the effects of his anti-aging protocol, or the effects of the cosmetic procedures that he has done. I respect his personal choice to do what makes him feel the best about himself, everyone has that right, but I do feel like it muddies the data that he publishes even further. I’m going to go over his posted outcomes for each region of his body next, but I’ll just briefly list what he has already done at some point or at least tried:
Hair treatments, including an herb which changes hair color
Under eye treatments
Face fat injections – which resulted in an allergic reaction, so was discontinued
Sculptra
Veneers
If the Blueprint Protocol is supposed to reverse aging, then why does he need to do cosmetic procedures that are meant to make him look younger? Imagine someone telling you that they can fly, and then they just get on a private jet – any rich person can do that. We are here to see Bryan metaphorically "fly" and wake up one day looking like his eldest son; that is far more interesting than seeing the results of cosmetic procedures. The only way that he could justify this is by saying that cosmetic procedures are a part of the Blueprint, which would be an admission to the fact that the Protocol cannot actually make anyone 18 years old again. Either way, I really appreciate his honesty on this front.
Diving into the data
Let’s take a closer look at the data that he has published about himself. He takes a ton of different measurements of different parts of his body from the microscopic level to the organ level. I’m going to highlight the measurements that I found to be the most noteworthy. Please note that he makes adjustments to his protocol every so often, so depending on when you read this, you may see some differences between what I show here and what he is actually doing. This article is based on what was posted on his website in February of 2025.
The first thing that struck me is that he is already biologically older in several ways.
Swipe to see his stats (protocol.bryanjohnson.com).
Looking at his current results (screenshotted above), his stats show that some areas of his body are older than his chronological age. For example, under heart health, GI health, and ear health you can see that some measures are as high as 70+ years old. This doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on the Protocol, as he has only been doing it for a few years. Bryan has also been open about not living the healthiest lifestyle prior to starting the Blueprint Protocol, so it’s expected that some areas of his body will reflect that. Nevertheless, the fact that some of the areas of his body are already aged decades beyond his chronological age makes success on this protocol even more improbable in my humble opinion.
Another issue that I have with these stats is that data for external appearance are muddied by cosmetic procedures. As I mentioned earlier, Bryan has been open about having cosmetic procedures done on his hair, skin, and teeth.
1. Hair
Hair loss and graying are not always about aging – people can lose hair and go grey at a young age due to genetics, so they are not the most important measures of longevity. Still, we all know that thinning and graying hair generally come along with old age and can make a person appear older. Bryan shared that he does not use traditional hair dye, but he does use a product called Myraki that contains an herbal extract that is known to change hair color. What’s funny is just from looking at his hair and noticing the reddish tint, I already knew what it was because I use it sometimes in my hair and it’s very popular in Ayurvedic hair care. The herb is Lawsonia inermis, more commonly referred to as henna. He has stated that his hair follicles are still producing pigments, but I have no doubt that the henna is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here when it comes to how his hair looks. Kudos to him for being transparent about using henna. I’ll also add that his most recent haircut frames his face better than his previous one, and I think that that also helps him to look more youthful.
Update: Since I posted my YouTube video about Bryan in February 2025, the video linked above where he spoke about his hair routine has been privated. I am leaving the link there in case that changes. Above this paragraph you can see a screenshot from the video where he is holding a box of Mayraki. In my video, I only have a clip where he mentions that he uses a hair treatment that contains "an herbal extract which has a color."
This website (above) shows the ingredients of one Mayraki product, which contains henna, but I have no way to confirm which product he is using and if it also includes henna. Some Mayraki products do not contain henna. So for now, I will just say that I suspect that he is using henna - we will have to wait and see if/when he names the herbal extract.
Skin
Now, I do not mean to be offensive at all, but some of these numbers honestly just do not make sense. Age 10 for wrinkles? Age 14 for texture?
I can look at him and tell that he does not have the skin of a pre-teen. Some of the metrics also reflect a biological age of 70. His skin does look nice and even, but in my opinion, he looks his age still. As I mentioned earlier, he has done some cosmetic enhancements to his face. In this video, he goes into detail about what he has done. In addition to increasing his caloric intake and putting on 15 lbs, he has also done the following:
Sculptra – which is an injection which helps the body to produce more collagen
Under eye platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) – this is a plasma injection which helps to re-volumize the under eye area
He tried Renuva, which is a fat transfer, but this caused an allergic reaction. He did not have enough fat on his body to use his own fat, so he had to rely on donor fat.
He also reduced his intake of lutein, a vitamin that was making his skin look yellow.
Teeth
In terms of his oral health, no issues are listed. However, he did choose to get veneers, so we are not able to get a clear picture of how his age reversal protocol affects his teeth.
With regards to the markers that show that he is aging faster - can those markers get better over time? Perhaps. He started this project when he was about 43 years old, so maybe after another 10 years these markers will improve.
Or, maybe they won’t.
That is to be seen.
Part 2: My public health perspective
Now, I’m going to switch gears and put on my public health hat.
I mentioned already that scientifically, this “research” on longevity is tainted because there are too many concurrent interventions happening. From Bryan’s point of view, I get why he is doing it this way. It’s not like he can try one intervention, die, reincarnate himself, then try another one, die and reincarnate himself again, and then do that over and over to see which interventions will extend his life the most. We get one chance at life, and so he is putting everything that he can into seeing what he can accomplish in one go. I respect that. Still, the fact remains that we would need clinical trials that focus on a single intervention at a time to really figure out which of the 100 different things that he is doing are truly effective.
This is precisely why from a public health perspective, I think that this experiment that he is doing is not actually helpful to society at large. The average person will never be able to do even half of these things simply because of the cost and how time-intensive they are. He is spending $2 million a year on this protocol and a significant chunk of his waking hours just on trying not to die.
On the Jay Shetty Podcast, he made the claim that the protocol is not really expensive and that it is actually accessible, but I don’t think that the facts match that claim. More specifically, he said that it was the upfront costs of the protocol and the testing that costs millions of dollars, and that the daily protocols were not that expensive. You can take a listen for yourself by clicking the clip above.
Also, on his website he has the total monthly cost of following the Blueprint protocol listed as $870, which I find to be wildly misleading (see image above). The only aspects of the protocol that are relatively low cost are the generic parts – diet, exercise, and good sleep. Everything else is out of reach for most people, and he even admits to this a little later on in the podcast. He works with a team of people to measure “thousands of data points a week.” Who can afford to have a team of people working to measure their bodies on a weekly basis?
Additionally, the upfront costs are astronomical, even for some of his daily therapies. In the 2025 Longevity Protocol video, he mentions using:
Red and near infrared light therapy,
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and
Focused shockwave therapy (done by a technician).
Here are the results of my Google search for the costs of these therapies (swipe right).
A full body red light therapy machine costs around $1,500-$18,000+. A hyperbaric oxygen therapy tank costs at least $30,000 for a decent one, though the price can be higher. Lastly,
focused shockwave therapy costs somewhere between $200-500 per session (depending on what part of the body you do it on), and he is doing it daily, so even if we go with the lower end of the cost range, that would be $200 per day x 365 days per year = $73,000 per year.
I should also mention that he has a whole clinic in his house – with an ultrasound machine. I will let you Google how much that one costs.
Even when it comes to his fitness routine, there are elements that are just far out of reach for most people. He has a gym in his home, which is not strange for a person with that much money. Ignoring that fact that he has a personal gym and doesn’t have to share with the public like us normies, he also uses special machines like this one to stimulate his muscles. This is not something that you will find at your local 24 hour fitness.
Swipe to see images of some of the testing that he does in addition to the "Initial Test Costs" listed in the first image (protocol.bryanjohnson.com)
Anyone trying to mimic his protocol would also need to be doing tons of regular testing and adjusting to make it work for their bodies, not just a “blood panel,” so it’s disingenuous in my opinion to brush off all the testing as something extra, as he does in the Jay Shetty interview linked above.
The flawed thinking that underpins this whole endeavor
The way that he expresses himself at times gives me the impression that he thinks that his body can serve as the standard for everyone else to go off of. He speaks as though he can handle doing all the measurements, and the rest of us just need to follow the protocol that is developed from his results.
This is flawed thinking.
It is also ironic considering that this is how white male researchers used to think several decades ago, before we understood that there are gender and racial differences that need to be accounted for when studying health outcomes. Clinical trials that were designed to enhance our understanding of disease processes and how pharmaceutical drugs are metabolized used to be done mainly on white men, as women and minorities were assumed to be variations of that "standard." However, we now know that the same disease can manifest differently in women and men, that drugs may metabolize differently in female and male bodies, and that race can play a role in the prevalence of a disease. This article includes a nice quick overview of the topic with links to research studies. This book contains a more detailed analysis of this topic. The point is that no single sex or race can serve as the prototype for everyone else on the planet. This is why clinical trials in a diverse set of human beings are necessary.
On the off chance that this protocol works for him and he ends up living longer than Jeanne Calment, the longest-lived person ever who made it to 122 years and 164 days, it will only benefit people who are ultra-wealthy and biologically similar to him. Like I said before, wealth already adds years to your life, so the money being spent on this experiment is basically going towards giving more years of life to people who already live the longest. I would much prefer to investigate how we can extend the lives of people who are dying too soon from preventable diseases and injuries.
A public health-oriented approach to improving longevity
Let’s talk about how this might play out here in the United States.
This may come as a surprise, but race is linked to longevity in the United States. On average, people of Asian descent have the longest average life expectancies, 85 years, followed by people who identify as Hispanic, White, and Black. Native Americans come in last place, with a life expectancy of 68 years. That’s a gap of 17 years between the people who live the longest lives and the shortest lives in this country.
Are there going to be genetic differences that put some people in better or worse positions? Of course. Still, I wouldn’t just chalk these differences up to genetics because there are broader factors at play here. One of them is wealth. When we zoom out to global longevity statistics, we can see that while income is not the only factor that matters for understanding differences in longevity, it is a crucial one. People in higher income countries generally live longer than people in lower income countries. The Asian countries with the longest-lived people also happen to be among the wealthier Asian countries: China, Japan, and Singapore, which have average life expectancies of 84-85, 84, and 83 years, respectively. Despite having relatively high GDPs, Indonesia and India have much lower average life expectancies of just 68 years. Zooming back in to the United States, Asian households are the wealthiest households in this country. In 2022, they had an average family wealth of $1,800,000. White households are the second wealthiest with an average family wealth of $1,360,000, while the corresponding numbers for Hispanic and Black families are in the $200,000s.
The lower life expectancy of Native Americans and people of African descent is not purely a matter of genetics or poverty, though. A significant portion of what we are seeing are the cumulative effects of centuries of psychosocial and economic disparities that continue to impact those communities to this day (see this article, and this one). Major issues plaguing underserved Native American communities include insufficient healthcare funding, a lack of community healthcare workers, and poor access to fresh foods, including traditional Native American foods. Native American communities are also impacted severely by chronic diseases, homicide, and drug and alcohol abuse. It should also go without saying that centuries of systematic violence and abuse starting with displacement, appropriation of their lands, genocide, forced sterilization, breaking up of families by putting Native children into boarding schools so that they could be better assimilated into “Whiteness,” and loss of identity also have immeasurable psychological and economic impacts on this demographic of people.
Moving on to the group with the second shortest life expectancy in this country, Black Americans live on average 12 years less than Asian Americans. The exception to this rule is Manassas Park, Virginia, where the average life expectancy for Black people is 96 years. This is just one region of the U.S. that was identified by the Black Progress Index to have a higher life expectancy for Black people. Black people in this country live longer in communities where they have a higher median household income, higher rates of home ownership, and higher rates of entrepreneurship. Education, safety from gun violence, and having an intact family unit are also key. Black immigrants do particularly well.
Helping shorter-lived communities to uplift themselves could look like providing funding to organizations in those communities that are run by locals who intimately understand the unique issues of that community. Those organizations could be ones that are designed to improve health care access, reduce gun violence, mentor at-risk youth, provide scholarships to children who cannot afford to get a good education, improve school systems from pre-kindergarten and beyond, improve access to healthy food, and the list goes on. These organizations exist across the country and could do a lot of good with a $2 million per year budget.
Here are some more stats for you:
Black women die from complications surrounding childbirth at a rate that is more than two times higher than the rate for women of other races. Perhaps funding could be allocated to helping these women “not die.”
The rate of death from prostate cancer for Black men is more than double that of other races too. It would be wonderful to invest money into helping these sons, fathers, and grandfathers to “not die.”
There is no shortage of work to do to narrow the gaps in health outcomes between people here in the United States. This is a problem that deserves the attention of any person who wants to help people “not die.” What makes the fact that Bryan is spending so much of his wealth just on himself even more interesting is that he himself said, many years ago, that he wanted to help people as a result of bearing witness to how hard some people have it. This was after he traveled to Ecuador as a missionary with the Mormon church at just 19 years old.
I can’t imagine that he is unaware of the life-extending effects that something as basic as access to proper healthcare can have. Yet, his mission to help the world has morphed into a mission that seems to be more about healing from his difficult past than anything else.
Bryan choosing to spend all of this money on his own longevity goals in and of itself is not an issue in my opinion – it’s his money, and he can do what he wants with it. He is far from the only multi-millionaire that spends their money in ways that non-millionaires find to be unethical or unwise; at the end of the day, it’s his prerogative. What makes Bryan different from those celebrities that spend their millions on gold chains and Maybachs, however, is that he has claimed on multiple occasions to be doing this to help humanity - take a look at the thumbnail and clip below for just a couple of examples.
And that’s the rub.
If you say that you want to help the common man, and you have millions of dollars laying around, and there are known ways that you could be helping people, then why not use those methods instead of doing experiments on yourself that will ultimately not be useful to those people? But hey, at least he is not trying to use his wealth to meddle in government affairs. Jokes aside, even if he is just doing this for himself, at least he is not actively harming anyone. He clearly just wants to be able to spend as much time as possible with his son Talmage, and I don’t think that that makes him a malevolent millionaire.
I do also want to point out that some of his money is going to causes that could contribute to the common good.
How is he actually helping anyone?
You have probably heard about Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is a brain interface technology company. Neuralink uses brain implants that are designed to pick up brain signals and send them to a computer. This allows the user to literally think about doing something, and then actually do the thing on a computer. As I was doing the research for this post, I learned that Bryan Johnson has a company that is doing something similar, with the major difference being that his company uses non-invasive technology.
His company, Kernel, measures changes in oxygen levels in the blood in order to indirectly measure brain activity using a helmet.
These and other brain-computer interface companies are developing technologies that can be used to restore functionality for people with neurodegenerative conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord damage. He is also the founder of the OS Fund, which is a company that provides funding to other companies that are doing meaningful work in the biotechnology space.
Even though I think that his mission to live forever is ultimately an egocentric endeavor, there are some positive things that I can say about Bryan and what he is doing. One thing that I already mentioned that I appreciate about him is his transparency – I wouldn’t have been able to present and critique the information that I did in this article if it were not for the fact that he publishes so much of his personal information online, including things that people would normally hide. He also seems to be a genuinely kind and sincere person. I don’t get the impression that he is doing this purely for attention or money; I think that he really believes in his mission, and I respect his earnestness. I also appreciate how disciplined he is. The Blueprint Protocol is extensive and takes up what looks like most of his day. That is an inordinate amount of time to spend on one thing, and he has been doing it for a few years now, so kudos to him. I also like that he promotes sleep. Hustle culture seems to have lost some popularity in recent years, but there are still people out there who glorify not getting enough hours of shut-eye. Sleep is restorative and should be treated as a priority, just like eating well and exercising, so I’m glad that he is putting this positive message out there.
Alright, and that brings me to the end of today's post. Please feel free to share your thoughts down in the comment section and let me know your answers to the following questions:
Do you think that he will live to 125 years?
Do you think that he will live forever?
Do you think that all of this is nonsense? If so, why?
Take care!
References
Bryan’s YouTube page: @BryanJohnson @ @BryanJohnsonBryanJohnson @BryanJohnson
Bryan’s Instagram page: @bryanjohnson_
Bryan’s websites: https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/
My 2025 Longevity Protocol | FULL DAY
Channel: Bryan Johnson
Jan 8, 2025
Why I Take 100+ Pills Every Day
Channel: Bryan Johnson
21 jun 2023
How I Reversed My Hair Loss + Greying
Channel: Bryan Johnson
8 feb 2024
I Tried To Make My Face Younger
Channel: Bryan Johnson
10 oct 2024
Why I got veneers..
Channel: BryanJohnson
20 jan 2025
The World Is Making Us Sick
Channel: Bryan Johnson
2 ago 2024
My Complete Anti-Aging Workout
Channel: Bryan Johnson
15 abr 2023
f**k it. i built the perfect meal
Channel: Bryan Johnson
10 ago 2024
(Blood boy CGI short)
If you're doubting having children, here's one good reason.
Channel: Bryan Johnson
30 abr2024
Inside my $6.8m Anti-Aging Home
Channel: Bryan Johnson
26 jun 2023
ABC News interview:
Reverse aging mogul discusses regimen as he strives for the biological age of an 18-year-old
Channel: ABC News
21 nov 2023
Jay Shetty Podcast interview:
This Man Discovered How To REVERSE AGING & Make Himself 31 Years Younger (Data-Proven)
Channel: Jay Shetty Podcast
Jan 13, 2025
This Week in Startups interview:
Founder Bryan Johnson sold Braintree to build OS Fund & help humanity w/science
Channel: This Week in Startups
Sep 18, 2015
Articles and research papers (in order of appearance):
Wikipedia page for the Immortal Jellyfish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii
Scientific articles on the immortal jellyfish:
Yui Matsumoto, Stefano Piraino, Maria Pia Miglietta, Transcriptome Characterization of Reverse Development in Turritopsis dohrnii (Hydrozoa, Cnidaria), G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, Volume 9, Issue 12, 1 December 2019, Pages 4127–4138, https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.119.400487
Kubota, Shin. “Repeating rejuvenation in Turritopsis, an immortal hydrozoan (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa).” (2011).
What people eat in the Blue Zones:
Buettner D, Skemp S. Blue Zones: Lessons From the World's Longest Lived. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2016 Jul 7;10(5):318-321. doi: 10.1177/1559827616637066. PMID: 30202288; PMCID: PMC6125071.
Longevity stats:
Chetty R, Stepner M, Abraham S, Lin S, Scuderi B, Turner N, Bergeron A, Cutler D. The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014. JAMA. 2016 Apr 26;315(16):1750-66. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.4226. Erratum in: JAMA. 2017 Jan 3;317(1):90. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.18691. PMID: 27063997; PMCID: PMC4866586.
Iron:
National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements
Iron Fact Sheet for Consumers
Updated: April 5, 2022
USDA Dietary Guidelines:
U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025. 9th Edition. December 2020.
Stats on fruit and vegetable intake and exercise:
Lee SH, Moore LV, Park S, Harris DM, Blanck HM. Adults Meeting Fruit and Vegetable Intake Recommendations — United States, 2019. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2022;71:1–9.
CDC. National Center for Health Statistics
Exercise/Physical Activity
Last Reviewed: September 24, 2024
CNN report on Bryan’s wealth
Meet the man who is trying not to die
CNN Business
N.D.
Why diversity in clinical trials matters:
‘We’re not a world of men – it's as simple as that’: how gender diversity in clinical trials improves health outcomes for women
GSK
06 March 2023
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Policy and Global Affairs; Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine; Committee on Improving the Representation of Women and Underrepresented Minorities in Clinical Trials and Research; Bibbins-Domingo K, Helman A, editors. Improving Representation in Clinical Trials and Research: Building Research Equity for Women and Underrepresented Groups. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2022 May 17. 2, Why Diverse Representation in Clinical Research Matters and the Current State of Representation within the Clinical Research Ecosystem. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK584396/
Longest lived person:
Link to Wikipedia article about Jeanne Calment
Health and wealth disparities in the United States:
Arias E, Kochanek KD, Xu JQ, Tejada-Vera B. Provisional life expectancy estimates for 2022. Vital Statistics Rapid Release; no 31. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. November 2023. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:133703.
Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America
April 25, 2024
Native Americans have shorter life spans, and it's not just due to lack of health care
By Arielle Zionts
April 15, 2024 / KFF Health News
Why Native Americans Are Dying Sooner
Céline R. Gounder
October 5, 2022
The Black Progress Index
The Black Progress Index: Examining the social factors that influence Black well-being
Andre M. Perry and Jonathan Rothwell
September 2022
Hoyert DL. Maternal mortality rates in the United States, 2021. NCHS Health E-Stats. 2023.DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:124678.
QuickStats: Age-Adjusted Death Rates from Prostate Cancer, by Race/ Ethnicity — National Vital Statistics System, United States, 1999–2017. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2019;68:531. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6823a4.
Comments