Unlock Your Health: Bryan Johnson’s Data-Driven Methods

Bryan Johnson

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Well, thank you for your time today. I want to just set the road right away. And of course, I want to ask you anything you want to add to my introduction, anything you want to emphasize that people could find interesting to know about you as well.

Bryan Johnson

The origin of Blueprint is a thought experiment. And after selling Braintree Venmo, the question I posed was imagine that we’re observing a conversation that people are having in the 25th century. What do they observe about the early 21st century that they find remarkable that allows intelligent existence to thrive in this part of the galaxy? And I found that to be a fun game because focusing on the here and now, you oftentimes can get trapped in the current status quo. And if you look throughout history, you read biographies of people who lived in a certain time and place, basically lived in the past because they were parroting the views and opinions and science of what has been. 

And there were a few people among them that had really seen the future, but they were thought, usually thought to be crazy or they were rejected by others. And so it’s always a fresh reminder that whatever you see today is actually the past. You’re living in the past and the future is already here. You just need to be able to discern where it is. So that’s really where Blueprint came from. And I think this is something that would be remarked on this general thing we’re all working on in the 21st century.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Well, this is great. And we can mention a lot of names that even recently, you know when Elon Musk started and others, this is what they were blamed for being too futuristic. And then a decade or two after they are the people leading the train in that sense. So I know you invested a lot of time reading, experimenting, trying, you know, what have you learned that you would love to transmit today to people listening to us who are very concerned about not wanting to be sick long and optimize their health span. And if you can give them some fasting. 

Bryan Johnson

Yeah. I’ll share a little story that will capture this and that will be memorable. So there’s a navy captain out at sea and they received a transmission change course 20 south the navy captain radios back change course 30 north and they received back communication repeat changed course 20 south. At this point, the captain’s irritated and they report back. This is Captain so so of the fleet so so, change course 30 north and they receive the chance to transition back, this is a lighthouse change course 20 south. Now, in that moment, the captain had always gotten its way because it could use their power and authority, and bluster to make anything move out of their way. In this case, there was a lighthouse that he had to contend with. 

And when I was approaching my health and wellness, I wondered, is health and wellness at a lighthouse moment or previously we used our minds to make this or that guess like eat this or do that? We listened to your charismatic people tell compelling stories, but we recently crossed into a threshold where the data and the science have crossed the threshold of being good enough where it is now a lighthouse. Our health and wellness no longer need to thrive on stories. It can be we can look at data and evidence, and we can be this close-up cycle with algorithms. And that’s what the blueprint is. It represents this moment in time where Homo sapiens transitioned from storytelling for their health to data and science.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And that’s fantastic. And, you know, as you know, I’m a big believer and inspired by Valter Longo. I think he’s one of the few as well that spent a good two or three decades just doing science on longevity before he came out with the. And I agree with that there is enough science on different corners now that if we aggregate them together and if we use, I don’t want to use the word AI, but using more algorithms to tailor those to every person as well, this is where we can reach the optimum longevity.

Bryan Johnson

Exactly. Yeah. That’s a blueprint is like, we basically, I hired a team of 30 doctors and we dever to say if we search through every single study that’s ever been published on health span and life span. We ranked them according to priorities and then we tried to implement it. And basically, with perfect adherence to the protocol, what could be achieved in science today? And that’s what we’ve tried to do is provide a data point of where are we at in 2023 with implementing all the best gold standard scientific evidence.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And what are the things that you’ve learned? What are the things that you’re applying to your health do you think people should do? What are the big Aha, the biggest? We are for sure of that and then we’ll say we’re less sure about other stuff.

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, I think there are about 20 accomplishments we have as a project that I think are compelling. So for example, like I reduced my speed of aging, looking at my DNA methylation markers by the equivalent of 31 years by now, my body accumulates, aging damage slower than 88% of 18-year-olds. My total bone mineral density is a top .02 percent of 30-year-olds. My VO2 max. As I measure my cardiovascular capacities in the top 1.5% of 18-year-olds and so on and so forth. So even if a scientist wants to comment that one of these markers is not reliable because of whatever this or that, if you look at my health profile, it’s I’m in stunningly good health across the board. And so I think the thing that’s interesting is the science works. If you actually look at the science, you implement the science and you measure it, it is actually really promising. So and that’s especially true. It’s like I really trashed my body and mind for two decades. So I did not come at this from a place where I’d lived this whole way my entire life. And so if I can turn my body around, you know, so can everyone else listening. But I guess the point is it really does work according to evidence and data, not someone’s story.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And what are the few things that you do to reach that point?

Bryan Johnson

I eat a very strict diet. So it’s exactly 2250 calories. Every calorie has had a fight for its life. There’s nothing that’s in there for a random purpose. I fast for between I guess it’s about 18 to 20 hours a day, thereabouts. I go to bed at the exact same time every night. I have six months of a perfect 100% sleep score.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Right. What time?

Bryan Johnson

8:30.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And this is important because, you know, I met you a few weeks ago and you were kind enough to host me at your place. And one thing that really struck me when I was when I was there was you do the opposite intermittent fasting than most people do, right? They typically skip breakfast. They keep their, they starve their body all the way to the end, and then they binge or they eat a lot right before they sleeping. And then can you talk about when do you eat? Because I think this is one of the really effective secrets. You’re taking the calories and you can,  more when your body needs them because which is in the morning. But yeah, you can talk about that.

Bryan Johnson

I ran a few hundred experiments about what to eat and when to eat. And as it relates to my sleep because my sleep is there’s nothing that changes my conscious experience more than sleep. And I finally, after a few hundred experiments, I found that if I consume all of my day’s calories by around 11 a.m… So I have, you know, about 10 hours or so of digestion. By the time I put my head on my pillow, my resting heart rate is about 46, and while my resting heart rate of 46, I’m almost guaranteed a perfect night’s sleep, two and a half hours of REM, two and a half hour deep, like less than 30 minutes awake, like it’s really high quality. Now, if I know if I ate my last meal at six or seven, I’ve exceeded my calories or I’ve eaten something that I shouldn’t have eaten, my resting heart rate will be somewhere between 56 and 65, and I will have a terrible night’s sleep guaranteed.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And this is I think is critical because, you know, fasting grew and this is the number one diet in the U.S. for several years. I mean, if you take away clean eating and low carb and now this science is showing a lot of great positive impacts and some articles are showing that not great outcomes. And it’s not that fasting works or doesn’t work is that you have to do the right fasting. I think this is what you do. A lot of us Satchidananda Panda, and the Valter Longo’s of the world and us here, you and I, we’re big believers of goal run and intermittent fasting. Meaning eat early in the day.

Bryan Johnson

Yes.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And then don’t go to bed full. This is when fasting fails in some of the trials is when people are just eating and then snacking before they sleep as well. And they spend the entire day, it’s very important in the morning is where the essential organs the morning they go to work. So the brain is working in the high-capacity, muscle, right? Sometimes we go to the gym in the morning for those who do that to go to work. So in the morning is the true need for calories. This way you lose weight if you skip it, but you’re skipping the wrong times. Don’t skip it in the morning. Skip it late in the day.

Bryan Johnson

Yeah. I mean, that evidence kind of matches up with my life experience where I’ve had a few dozen friends and family try to do what I’ve done. And I have a caveat and say, look, this is me. You may be different. Like you may find that you do better when you eat at night. And so I don’t want to say anything about that. You just run your experiments. And so far, every single person that has tried to do this has ended up eating their calories in the morning. I’ve yet to find somebody who does it at night. Now, that’s not to say that someone can do it at night and still be successful. Maybe they can. It’s just that my experience has been it worked for me and everyone around me. So I agree it’s pretty compelling with what I’ve seen so far.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Yeah, and to be practical, a lot of us are also social creatures. Many one who still have their dinners. Yeah. Hey, get it at 6 p.m. which exactly is six-seven which is where what our ancestors in human evolution are. We didn’t have electricity late at night to stay up. They had to rush, gather a few things, go and prep to sleep, and then eat when the sun is down and this was, we always talked about the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016 on autophagy, but the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2017 was the biological clock of the organs. Yeah, like having to sleep overnight. Every organ has to sleep not just the brain and the muscle. And it’s important that they have a full, perfect sleep versus being disturbed by food. So yeah, those listening to us today we are not saying all of you like Bryan, you should eat just in the morning. It’s a pretty hard commitment that he is making and he’s trying to lead by example. But 100% try to have your dinner as early as possible versus eating and sleeping.

Bryan Johnson

And another way around it. So for example, when I go out for a social event with friends, I found early on that if my plate has nothing on it, everybody at the table is so uncomfortable it’s like, why are you not eating? Are you okay? And so then all the questions get directed towards me and then no one gets to have the dinner experience I really wanted, which is to hang out and have fun. As I started solving for that, I would save up around 500 calories and I would just get some steamed vegetables and I would just kind of pick away at a dinner. So that way I have something on my plate. No one’s going to ask me questions about my behavior and everyone’s there. I get to enjoy the social event, so I do make modifications. When I do that, sometimes I’m okay that my resting heart rate will be around 46, 48, 49 and I’ll still be okay. But I will say that, for example, to your point on the perfect quality sleep, why so important is the next day following sleep. If you’re staring down a cookie, like I say, like a, you know, a big delicious, you know, creamy chocolate chip cookie, the probability that you’re going to eat that if you’ve had good sleep. Yeah. I’d say is like 1% because you have good discipline. So you have a lot of willpower. If you had a poor night’s sleep and you’re not feeling great, you’ve got like a 75% chance of eating it. So I found that my willpower is directly tied to my sleep which still allows me to be strong and it is just what I do. So it’s really building this cyclical compound of momentum where I can be the kind of person I want to be in life because I’m powered to do it.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

So I’ll do a little bit similar when I go out and my friends are eating and I’ll be on the pack of ProLon or something. So we have the soups, the fast bar, or the fast shake that you can get, and your body would still even cross. You do it with vegetables. And if you do a little bit of the healthy fats from the nuts, which we haven’t at fast but advancing shake it even keeps you ahead. You haven’t ate all that all that night but thanks for the tip because a lot of people would be asking that okay, how am I going to survive that dinner? Yeah. And tell me, what do you eat otherwise? Like, what do you eat between 8 a.m. and 11? What is your diet like? What are the ingredients?

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, the first meal of the day is super veggie. It’s broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, ginger, garlic, hemp seeds, and then a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. My next meal of the day is nutty pudding which is macadamia nuts, walnuts, flax seed, pomegranate, two ounces of pomegranate juice, sunflower legend, berries, and some pea protein, and a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and third meal. The day varies every day according to just average vegetables and berries and nuts. And then I yeah, I have some dark chocolate, and that accounts for the 2250 calories.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

So it is a lot of we focus a little bit on fast, you were saying what are the pillars of your diet and lifestyle today to be able to and I think you did the Horvath test and other tests that show that you’re younger than. So, what are the other pillars that you do throughout the day?

Bryan Johnson

I exercise for an hour a day a combination of stretching and cardio strength. And I did markers on that. For example, like I again I’m top 1.5% of 18-year-olds. My body’s ability to utilize oxygen which is phenomenal. I can, you know, single like rep max 800 pounds on my leg press, 240 on the bench. So I’m not training for real strength, but you’re like, I guess what I’m saying is our data to show that these things are compelling. And then I’m always as a team, we’re always trying to figure out new therapies that work. So for example, I’m currently doing whole-body muscle skeletal rejuvenation. So we’re basically posing the question. Can I get my tendons and ligaments back to a teenage functionality? Now, it’s a pretty big challenge because you can’t regenerate cartilage, you know, as you know. But we take on these unreasonable challenges who try to say, what can we do to really push the boundaries of what’s possible, like we’ve done with my other organs like we’ve tried to say, can we take my heart and get down to age 18 functionality? It’s kind of a crazy thing to say in 2023 that we do these kinds of unreasonable endeavors to see what we can push the science.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

The fast that you do? Do you do any intensive exercise?

Bryan Johnson

I do. Three times a week, 4 minutes of high-intensity training, 4 minutes rest, 4 minutes high intensity, 4 minutes rest. So for about four intervals, I did that three times a week.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

That’s it. And how about stress management? Do you do anything for stress management?

Bryan Johnson

I meditate morning and night and then throughout the day. I’ll pull off and I’ll do some breathing exercises for just 2 to 5 minutes, like even the shortest window of time, just relaxing my body to shake away the stress. So I do try very hard to keep my body in a relaxed state.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And how about sleep? How do you optimize sleep? Or temperature type of any regulation sleep that you do.

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, my life is built around sleep and that is exactly contrary to the status quo where if you sleep under your desk could go days without sleep. You get hero stories told about you. And I’m here to say that a new norm is here. You know, just don’t die. So my eating is highly structured for sleep, but I have a temperature-controlled mattress, eight hours sleep, and blacked-out curtains. I don’t do anything in my bed or my room except for sleep so it’s only for that. Same time to bed every night. And yeah, I just completed six months using WHOOP with a perfect 100% sleep score. No one has ever done that before, and many people have used this wearable for a year, and have never achieved 100% a single time. And I got every single night for six months as it was something I wanted to show that you can achieve high-quality sleep every single night. You just need to work at it.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And how do you prepare for it? So we talked about eating early in the day and meditation before sleep right? Yeah.

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, yeah. Most importantly on that bit is that I have an hour wind down time, so by 7:30 I need to stop working because if I don’t have an hour for my brain to wind down and I work right up to when I go to bed, my brain is still in work mode and I will ruminate on work problems all night long and my sleep will be terrible. So I need the one-hour separation and then I can be in my proper state. But I just know that from experience I wind up next to bed and I see some invisible night.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And Bryan, talking a little bit about your level of happiness, and social capital, are you feeling you’re compromising to enhance your longevity? Are you feeling, you know, is this like tell me a little bit about first how you missed it versus your family, your friends, etc? And number two, how are you feeling going through this experience?

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, I never would have believed myself if I could travel back in time and I could tell myself how good we would feel. I would never want to believe me. I’ve never been happier or more fulfilled or more stable in my entire life. I think I was on this roller coaster chasing my next dopamine hit, whether it be from food or some event or binge-watching my new show. I was chasing this pleasure and now my life is just very steady. I don’t experience these big highs and these big lows. It’s just very pleasant to be me and for the most of my life, it was not very pleasant at all to be me. I was chronically depressed for a decade. I went through some really difficult times as an entrepreneur or as a father or a spouse, like some really hard stuff. And boy, I wish that in those hard times, I wish somebody like myself would have been able like, I wish I could have spoken to someone like myself and say, hey, like, what do I do? And, you know, making your health your number one priority, it’s like when you’re told in airplanes, you know, if a situation happens, put your mask on first and then help others. And you do that because if you don’t put your mask on first, you going to pass out, you’ll be unconscious in seven seconds. And so you really need to put your mask on first in life, then you can help others. So making life your healthy number one priority just makes life really much more enjoyable.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

That’s fantastic. And when do you before we depart here, what do you want people to know? What if you want one, I mean, we talked about a lot of things that we want them to know, but you want to summarize in two or three points. And if you want to try to impact their life, what would be your final messages to them?

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, you can do this. If you’re listening. You can do this. And I’ll tell you the trick I did, they got me to get me started is at 7 p.m. there was a version of me Evening Bryan, and he was so stressed out and upset about life. He had so many problems at work and he was in a challenging relationship and he had three little babies. 7 p.m. would arrive in the weight of the world, would be on his shoulders, and the only way he knew how to cope with the situation was to go to the fridge and get those brownies or cookies or whatever it was, and he would binge eat as a way to dull the misery and the pain he felt. And that led to me being 50 pounds heavier than I am now and just miserable. That would, of course, wreck my sleep, which would make my depression worse. And so one day, tongue in cheek, very frustrated. I said, Evening Bryan, you’re fired. Like, I was just desperate. I’d tried so many times like, Bryan, I’m not doing it again tonight. I’ll do it again tonight. And so I fired that version of me and he null. I revoked his authority. So he didn’t, he never had the ability to eat from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. And it changed my life. And once I really understood that I am a collection of Bryan’s. I’m Morning Bryan, Afternoon Bryan Ambition Bryan, Dad Bryan, like I am all these different kinds of persons. I’m not just one that changed my life. And so for you who are listening, sometimes stopping the bad things in your life is the most powerful thing you can do to start doing good things in your life. Most of us think we want to start doing something positive, but very, very hard to get started. If you get a little bit of a win by tackling some version of Rascal version of yourself, sometimes I can give you the like just enough get up and go to get on the right track.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

And when is the time to start? If you would like to be, when is the time to start? Today?

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, let’s see here. You know, it’s really worth thinking. Like, for example, like if I am thinking through that situation. Evening Bryan, I felt probably a few hundred nights where I said, I guarantee, I promised myself I will not binge eat tonight. I did. It probably took me a few hundred times and it was discouraging and I wanted it so badly every day to stop. But, you know, like I committed the right time is like when you can really get yourself in a position where you’re like, You know what? I think I’m ready. And I think I have the tools and the capacity to do it. It’s also important to be realistic with yourself like change is very, very hard and you don’t want to beat yourself up and make the situation even worse. So you’re okay. It’s okay. You can get yourself out of any situation you’re in, And don’t create unrealistic expectations of yourself. Create a plan where you can win. So when the time is right and you’ll know when it’s right, I.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

I can relate to that. I had also a chunk of my life where I would do the same, which probably most people do the same. And then up until actually a notion of it wasn’t just the right way of eating, but actually even as working. Because we always say, if I don’t work at night, I have a lot of work going to be to work. And yeah, it actually when you stop doing that and you have the right sleep, you’re more productive at work, You get to work much better. But it is such a short period of time the next day with a lot more fresh face and focus and mental clarity and all of it. And what helped me also is that I was probably into the same reading some biographies about different types of people. In a lot of them actually, you know, they do that and they just digress little bit at night. The morning even. They take time to wake be a little bit social with the family or read the newspaper. So it’s not the time you put on the project it is the quality. I mean sometimes it’s your job but your job is pure mechanic that you have to do the time. Yeah. Executive to say, oh, if I don’t work 14 to 16 hours, I’m not going to get it done is actually no. If you work with that 12 to 14 max hours you’d actually would get more done versus working that 16 hours.

Bryan Johnson

Exactly that that’s the thing is like you there’s been a paradigm shift. Most of people don’t know what’s happened. Previously. It was imagined if you want to build the future, sleep under your desk, or work through the night. And now I’d say if you want to build a future sleep, it’s very counterintuitive. It’s countercultural norms. It takes courage to do something. But that’s where we’re at as a species. And I don’t, I think, again, when the 21st century looks back, the 25th century looks back, they’re going to see this don’t die movement where we homo sapiens figured out that death was potentially no longer inevitable. And it really changed everything on how we think about taking care of ourselves and each other.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

So Bryan, before we define what is your goal for your longevity? What do you think you’re good at? How do you see your future?

Bryan Johnson

I mean, after a few billion years of evolution on this planet, lucky us, we exist. When superintelligence is baby steps away. Death has always been inevitable, and for the first time ever, it may not be inevitable. Now we don’t know. But we’re on, we’re on the cusp of it. And so to me, the only thing that matters right now is don’t die. Don’t die individually.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Live enough. Live enough to live with the velocities.

Bryan Johnson

Exactly. Don’t don’t die individually. Don’t kill each other. Don’t destroy the planet and, like be around for what could be the most extraordinary existence in this part of the galaxy. And, you know, it just would be such a tragedy for our loved ones, for any of us to miss out on this future. So it’s a different time to be alive. And the faster you can hear this message and take care of your health, the better off you’re going to be. You don’t want to miss like this is the thing, you know, like when germs were discovered as this vector of people were dying during childbirth, their surgeries, you don’t want to find out about germs and infection 20 years after the discovery, you know, because you want to die. You want to find out right when it’s done. And that’s what this here is, I think, is that moment for all of us.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Bryan Johnson, thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate it very much.

Bryan Johnson

Yeah, enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

Joseph Antoun, MD, PhD, MPP

Thank you very much.