Unveil Why Experts Choose Plants & Olive Oil

Bryan Johnson

Thanks for having me, Doctor.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Everybody needs to, truly. I don’t know if there’s bad stuff about you on the Web. There’s bad stuff about everybody. You need to read about them. I just want to say a few times that I’m not sure if it’s the best protocol.bryanjohnson.com, or maybe just bryanjohnson.com. What’s the best URL?

Bryan Johnson

That’s protocol.bryanjohnson.com is all the information is at. I just acquired dot com after trying out my bryanjohnson.com for 15 years. I just got it.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I’m glad somebody gave it up. Everybody listening, this is a free website. It’s incredibly well organized, as Bryan Johnson, who is an Internet specialist, would do. If you want plant-based recipes, meal plans, supplements, and sleep aids from a world leader, you want to go over there and read through them. It’ll take you quite a while. I love it. Bryan is a serial entrepreneur in the tech world. He has a company, at least one now called kernel.com. You’re going to make our brains amazing wearing that helmet you’ve got, and we won’t dive into that today. You’ve got an investment agency.

Bryan Johnson

That’s right.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Can I send you $50, and you’ll multiply it by ten acts this year? We got a little bigger minimum than that.

Bryan Johnson

Send it on over.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

It’s kind of you, and you’ve got some other entrepreneurship. But I have to ask one business question. Is it true, I read this, that in 2012 you acquired Venmo for about $26 million and flipped it in a year for $800 million with Braintree? Is that true? That’s what the media says.

Bryan Johnson

I had been building Braintree for five years. We acquired Venmo. Then two years later, eBay bought us for a hundred million in cash.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

The whole thing is about the whole enterprise. That’s all of you entrepreneurs out there. You were waiting for Bryan Johnson’s How to Do a Business Book, but he’s giving us the Health and Longevity Book. Particularly interested there’s no doubt we could talk for hours about sleep, fitness, supplements, and nutrition in the mind and body because you share all of that with all of us. That’s one of the, go over to Instagram, 500,000 followers, and go over to Twitter, I don’t know, close to 200,000 followers. You’re on other media, too. I assume you’re on YouTube. I just noticed you’re on YouTube. I just personally find it hard to watch videos with crazy schedules. I watch all the other things. But this quest, started in 2021 to challenge convention so that you could measure your aging, halt your aging, reverse your aging, and maybe match your 18- or 19-year-old son. In terms of serious scientific measurements of aging, the cutting-edge aging measurements you or your team chose because you have a wonderful team. Dr. Zolman, hopefully, the plant-based diet that you post on, that you are allies added to many, and many of my patients are cooking your recipe. Tell us about that. What was your diet before the Blueprint project, a little bit about how, and why, of all the other choices for a longevity program.

Bryan Johnson

But trying to solve it is like I was a typical person trying to be in good health before reading blogs, listening to podcasts, reading books, and trying to piece together the challenges that everyone disagrees with. If you give the same papers to the same type of scientist, you get different answers. It’s very hard when the debate is as vigorous as that. Not everyone has a consensus on what to do. Meanwhile, people like myself and my parents just want to know what to eat for breakfast. So what I was trying to solve is the practical problem we all face daily: while the scientific community debates among themselves why doctors disagree among themselves, how can I decide what to do for breakfast? That’s when we tried to say, Instead of my mind trying to do this, let’s just look at the data, let’s implement a protocol, and let’s follow the evidence. So that’s what we’ve done for the past few years. We’ve made all of it public. My entire journey has been shared, and we have tried it. We tried to be careful not to say we’re not trying to prove any point with any given methodology. We’re just trying to find the evidence in the data, and we’ll follow it wherever it goes. We’ve tried to have evidence-based data first, and justification should not be part of our decision-making.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

When you sat down and asked if you had recently increased the number of calories in your program, was that correct?

Bryan Johnson

I was in 1977. Now I’m at 20 to 50. I got a little skinny in 1977.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

On their website protocol.bryanjohnson.com, the new URL, for example, you got nutty pudding, and that’s a rage people are making the recipes there, nutty pudding all over the world. Almond macadamia, milk, walnuts, ground flaxseed, cocoa, sunflowers, lettuce, and cinnamon cherries. Whip it all up and put some pea protein in it. That’s pretty much your staple in the morning.

Bryan Johnson

I eat my vegetables first thing in the morning. I ate that nutty pudding for my second meal of the day. What we tried to do as a team was say, if we look at every health span of life span people have ever published, we try to look at all the evidence, and then we say we want to design the perfect diet, and we have this stringent requirement where every calorie has to fight for its life. What does that look like? That’s what we have today. If you look at the mills, we have the supplements. Every single molecule has had to justify its existence first from evidence and now from data from my body. There’s nothing that’s culturally trendy. There’s nothing cool that sounds great. It has to justify its existence with a measurement. When you look at nutty putting in all those ingredients, every single one of those things is tied to a biomarker of the body. I’ve become the most measured person in history. so we have more evidence for myself on this diet. So, tongue in cheek, I say that the blueprint is the best health protocol ever built in history. Prove me wrong with your data. Now, if somebody wants to come along and just achieve better results with an alternative plan, that is amazing. That’s a great outcome. What I’m trying to do is elevate the conversation to say, Let’s move the field forward. Now, we’re in constant paralysis. Let’s move forward with the data.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

That’s amazing because I follow a lot of people on social media in the health field, some with an M.D. or Ph.D., some without, and some who are self-appointed. It’s usually a six-pack war. Who’s got the best six-pack? There’s something to be said about the physical appearance of a person, and no doubt they are probably significantly overweight, and the visual appearance of being elderly does correlate with internal aging and all. But you’re measuring an epigenetic nutritional. How many times a week do you get blood drawn?

Bryan Johnson

We have blood about once every two weeks. but I’m measuring. We said we’re measuring aging on the scale of every organ in the body. Over 70 organs, plus all the biological processes. So we’re looking at this from an organ-organ basis. That’s what we want to say: if you’re assessing and I give a protocol or therapy, tell me what it’s doing to every organ in the body, not just your six-pack. You’re exactly right. It’s not just what the eyes can see because most of society uses their eyes, and they say, I can determine whether a person is healthy or not by looking at them, which means there’s some truth and there’s some good evidence to support that. But the eyes are not as sophisticated as a bunch of other tests we can do now,  looking at our insides. So we have used measurement in a way that has allowed us to figure out how to optimize for every organ in the body.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

There’s been a trend in the last two years, too, among longevity experts and doctors that age longevity muscle, maybe the longevity organ is muscle. then the next part, which I don’t think many would disagree with having some lean body mass and not being frail is a good plan for longevity, although you don’t see a lot of people in the blue zones lifting weights. They’re just living. That’s not the only model longevity, but it’s one frequently mentioned. But the next part of that statement is that, very often, if you want to build muscle for longevity, you have to eat muscle; you have to eat flesh. You’ve been at this for two-plus years, and you’re not eating fish, you’re not eating chicken, and you’re not adding grass-fed organic red meat. You’ve kept it in an all-plant-based diet, which, in my 46 years of being vegan, warms my heart. Of course, you do supplement intelligently with things like creatine, but you’re seeing results that suggest your diet is on the right path.

Bryan Johnson

Exactly, we have demonstrated something contrary to cultural norms. I am vegan with the exclusion of 20 grams a day of collagen peptides, and I’m trying to find a vegan version of otherwise entirely vegan. If you look at my markers, my total bone mineral density is in the top 99.8 percentile for 30-year-olds, which is age-appropriate for the test. My cardiovascular capacity is in the top 1.5% of 18-year-olds. My muscle is in the top 99.5 percentile using MRI. If you just go down and look at the biomarkers on my cardiovascular system or the muscles in my bones, every marker is almost off the charts. If you look, say, a vegan can’t be strong, a vegan can’t be athletic, or a vegan can’t be. I’ve also been on a calorie-restricted diet to do all these things so we’ve disproved some idea that what a vegan cannot become is just not true.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

For people who are listening and who are unfamiliar with you, I will celebrate the upcoming one. But August 22nd, 2023, is your turn. 46. When you’re talking about metrics for an 18-year-old,  it’s because you’re setting the bar so high for your project. If you were in the top 1%, a 46-year-old would be amazing. But you’re comparing yourself to a whole generation in your son’s generation. You’re still crushing it, which is incredible. I don’t want to go too far into the weeds of the supplements you use, because that’s another hour. I’d love to do that. But what supplements do you think are particularly present? Because it’s a plant-based diet. Everybody’s listening and going to shout out vitamin B12. But what are a few others you’ve added taurine to your program? Do you think taurine is difficult to get on a plant-based diet?

Bryan Johnson

You nailed a few, and we tried to round out the others. I do take quite a few supplements. But the important thing to know about my supplementation is that we are trying to push the scientific, like I wanted to say if I’m Ferdinand Magellan, Lewis and Clark, Ernest Shackleton, or any other explorer of previous times, and we say I exist in 2023, and I endeavor to explore the possibilities of slowing down my speed of aging and health in 2023. That’s what we’re trying to do. Blueprint: Many things apply to people on an everyday basis, but I’m out there on the very edge to say what is possible with today’s science. So people don’t have to follow my supplementation. It can be a lot, but the basics are true, and like you’re identifying, some of these things, like B12 and taurine, are great. So, just to be basic, I’m saying a Blueprint is accessible. You don’t have to do exactly what I do, and the gist will get you the majority of the benefits.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

That in your program is pea protein. People would be interested. You said that goes in the nutty pudding, and it’s 29 grams a day, not 200 grams a day. Now, that’s another controversy in nutrition, obviously, about optimal protein. I introduced you to Dr. Valter Longo’s team down the street from you in Southern California. The total grams of protein a day you think you reach. You probably got this measured exactly.

Bryan Johnson

I eat about 107 grams a day now. We’ve been modulating that based on liver markers, bonding, and a whole bunch of other things. We’ve dialed it in. But I’m substantially lower. If you say, look at how I exercise one hour a day and consume 107 grams of protein, it would not be possible for me to be in the 99-point fifth percentile for muscle. but we’ve been able to do it, and so these are, I guess.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Most of your proteins come from whole foods, other than pea protein powder.

Bryan Johnson

That’s right.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I want people to be hungry, and everybody loves recipes. There’s a portion of Bryan’s website that’s called Third Meal Options: Ten Gorgeous Incredible Recipes. They’re all 500 calories. For those of you who are looking to watch your diet,  they’re great ones to try. They’d be pleasing. My favorite is the roasted veggie lettuce wrap, which everybody can go over and take a look at. There’s so much to learn from what you’re doing. Do you think this is a lifelong plan? Again, that lifelong might be a very long life.

Bryan Johnson

What I find most energizing about this is that in the past month, I bet most of us have looked both ways before we cross the street, buckled our seatbelts, and maybe changed the battery in a smoke detector. We do those things daily to not die. We play the game. Don’t die every day. The future is just getting better at not dying. So I measure myself. We’ve found hundreds of ways my body dies daily, and we try to minimize them so I die less per day. So it’s been a fun project to say, How far can we push the envelope to slow our speed of aging? It’s a fun game, and these tools of measurement get us there. But this is where the future is and can be now. We think death is inevitable, but that’s going to change. I hope that this is something that a lot of people jump on because it’s here now.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I’ve learned a lot from following you for about a year now. I want you to share with people because they may be skeptical. There’s so much that people claim about health and longevity. It’s so hard to know. But you’re doing the measurements, so you’re using a test, among many others from a company called trudiagnostics.com, and they have a test called Truage. T.R.U.A.G.E., that’s your pace of aging. Tell us what your results are and how they compare to others. that do the test.

Bryan Johnson

I slowed my speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years. I now accumulate aging damage slower than 88% of 18-year-olds. I’ve dramatically reduced it. One way to say it, an oversimplification is that for every 12 months, I get September, October, November, and December for free. I’ve dramatically slowed how fast I age, and we’re just getting better at it. So in the future, people will know their weight, how many social media followers they have, and what their speed of aging is. It would become a household norm. People will know; it will modulate around; it will build around it. This is the thing about Blueprint: I have so many data points on me. If you want to dismiss one, 20 others will take their place. It’s just irrefutable that I’m in good health. I’m from all these different perspectives. Like you’re saying, a lot of people are skeptical. But it’s very hard to argue against the collective results that we’ve generated.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I want to just touch on one last thing in this nutrition aspect of interviewing you and sharing with people. You eat the majority of your calories earlier in the day, and you’re done by noon, which is not a common program. But it’s still consistent with that old saying: breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. Except you’ve compressed that in about 6 hours. 

Bryan Johnson

That’s exactly right.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Done by noon. then you have that prolonged period where the rest of the world is doing that pyramid upside down, skipping breakfast, maybe even skipping lunch, and putting it all into, sometimes 2000 calories at 5 p.m. and doing the one-day diet, you’ve flipped it upside down, which my reading of the science says is the healthier way to diet and to do it. It may take a while to get used to that, or it’s just old hat by now.

Bryan Johnson

I did this to optimize my sleep. Sleep has become my number one priority in life. I found that when I finish eating around 11 a.m., by the time I go to bed at 8:30, my resting heart rate is around 46. If I eat late in the day—five or six—my resting heart rate is going to be around 65 or so. If my heart rate is 46 and I have a perfect night’s sleep, if I’m 65, it’s going to be awful. So for those around me, I’ve been careful to say, Look, this is just me; you may be different. Do your thing and do your trials. Person after person after person has come back and said it works like that. Earlier in the day, I ate better. I sleep at night, and so they rigorously track it. Maybe that’s nothing to be true. Others will maybe find different circadian rhythms. But in my experience, getting high-quality sleep is the single best thing I can do for my life. Eating that regimen has been the very best thing for me to get that squared away.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

If anybody’s wondering, and I’m saying this accurately, they have a variety of sleep devices out there. You’re using a whoop band, correct?

Bryan Johnson

I also have an elite bed, and I just did something that I don’t think any human in history has done. I just posted six months of perfect sleep and a 100% sleep score every night for six months using Whoop. People have had that device potentially for two or three years. They’ve never posted a single life for 100%. It’s almost like a four-minute mile. You can achieve high-quality sleep. That’s reliably good every single night.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Everybody listening wants to know about that. I will say you are on board with the same thing I am. You take 0.3 milligrams of melatonin at night, and a lot of people listening are saying, I take six, ten, eight, or four. The human body makes about 0.3 milligrams of melatonin. I’m on board with you that that is a very attractive dose. I take a little different brand than you. There is a plant-based melatonin that I’ll email you about if you haven’t seen it. I just like the data on the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory power of what they call phytomelatonin from alfalfa and rice, and I suppose I read that, but it was amazing. We’re going to shut down this phase of discussing everything fascinating about Bryan Johnson. There are hours and hours, and you don’t go anywhere. Bryan, we’re going to chat for just a couple more minutes with our premier purchases and for the rest. Thank you for listening. Again, I’ll give a shout-out to protocol.bryanjohnson.com and Bryan is B.R.Y.A.N. not the more common spelling with an I. so get it because you’ll love the website. They will go to it over and over and start making the meals, and you have to make the dark chocolate and avocado and everything else he does. It’s wonderful. Thank you all. We’ll be back. All right, Bryan, we get a chance to just dive into one more topic. I’m going to tell you that I wanted to bring this topic up at this summit. We didn’t do it last year. You may or may not be aware, but in the plant-based medical world, dietitians, PhDs, and MDS, the idea that olive oil is a war. It’s a war. It’s a research war. It divides families. It’s like blue families and red families in politics. You have a very carefully crafted diet, to say the least. Correct me if I’m wrong, but about 15% of the calories in your diet every day are from olive oil. 

Bryan Johnson

It’s exactly what it’s about. 17. I say 15, but it’s like 17. 18.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

It’s you who have chosen you. There are so many things. It could be broccoli sprouts, or it could be other things you’ve chosen. I will say this is a seven where we’re allowed to mention product names. For a second, as many people do, I have my filter function, and I’m going to take it off. This is a nearly empty bottle because it’s the one I have in my kitchen Blueprint with your name on it. This is not a coincidence. You make this ultra-premium, extra-virgin olive oil, and it comes in an insanely beautiful box that has your name and you in front of a red light panel. It’s the whole, whole package. Tell us a little bit about olive oil in your program and why you have gone commercial because anybody listening now can purchase its olive oil; it’s on the website, and it’s just going to give a shameless plug. It’s the best, and tell us about it.

Bryan Johnson

Thanks for that. I would say tongue in cheek that extra virgin olive oil is more powerful than ozempic resveratrol and our enemy in cold plunges, the sauna. your favorite podcasts.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

That is such a statement you just made. Everybody, did you guys hear that? Are you a premium listener? That was fast cold plunge sun, and then, with all these other supplements that people are taking, extra virgin olive oil is in your hierarchy, more powerful, and more essential for your longevity plan.

Bryan Johnson

It is. I do a tablespoon with every meal for 45 milliliters a day, maybe even one more up to 60 milliliters. If you look at the evidence of the benefits, it’s overwhelmingly positive. It’s just that I see it’s a staple of my diet. So we made the line. I never started Blueprint to start a business. It was simply a scientific journey. Then it blew up, and people were like, Make this easy. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to go out and look for stuff. I just want it to be done. Olive oil was routinely hard for us because it had to meet specific criteria to achieve health benefits. There’s a very small fraction of the world’s olive oil that meets the criteria. So it became too hard for us to solve it. We started sourcing it for both hemispheres, and I started providing it to friends and family, and it just became a thing. I was like, We’ll just make a saying generally available. We created a supply chain. But it’s a superfood among superfoods. So,  I fully share with everyone, even if you don’t buy my stuff, how to buy high-quality extra virgin olive oil. This is not an excuse to push my stuff. I will help you buy someone else’s stuff. Just incorporate it into your diet.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

I don’t think you’re probably planning your financial future on your olive oil enterprise. 

Bryan Johnson

Exactly.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

You’ve got a few other things going on that have worked out pretty well for you over the years. But it’s a passion for you. In this particular blend, you’ve done the third-party testing; do you think it’s the oleic acid? Do you think it’s the polyphenols? Do you think it’s just the whole package? Could you have it? Do you think you have it? It’s a high-polyphenol olive oil. It’s fair to say the highest or among the highest anybody combined worldwide.

Bryan Johnson

It’s this batch you’re drinking now. You’re consuming 5.26 poly milligrams per kg. The acid content is 73%. and then there’s a bunch of other things you want to look at, but it is in the top percentile for olive oils. You can, of course, find a higher polyphenol count. But the specs we have to achieve the objectives, and it’s associated with weight management, cardiovascular health, and no health like it just is the whole body. That’s why most of the trends in health and wellness that are common today do not deliver the benefits that Evo does. Again, it should be a staple in everyone’s diet, between 30 and 60 milliliters a day. That’s between two and four tablespoons per day, like, for example, one tablespoon, it’s even up to ten milliliters of extra virgin olive oil; less than a tablespoon will reduce blood sugar spikes by 60% post-meal, which means you should try to find other things that can do that. It’s pretty powerful.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Incredible. Some people do olive oil shots. Some people add on top of their food. What’s your typical way of doing it?

Bryan Johnson

All of the above. I put the olive oil on my veggies, but then when I eat, it might not be put in, which is more sweet. I’ll do a shot just before it, and then I’ll eat more than anybody.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Your olive oil has that real peppery burn. Be careful, because you’ll cough. I’ve heard it said you have good olive oil if it’s two coughs because it has so much of a burn on the back of your throat.

Bryan Johnson

Exactly

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

It’s pleasing; it’s high quality. It’s a desirable burn. It’s not; it’s what you want to get out of it. But I can see that like a roasted bokchoy with Japanese sweet potato, there’s burn of evo in their evoo, which for those who don’t know is the abbreviation for extra virgin olive oil, which is the only olive oil you should be looking at. You should commit yourself to never buying it. If it doesn’t say EVOO, extra virgin olive oil.

Bryan Johnson

And even then, it’s got to meet a bunch of criteria. That’s why it’s so hard. Even if you have that brand name, unless the specs, unless it’s third-party tested, you just don’t know. It’s very, very hard to know.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

This has been fascinating. Again, I just bring it up because people listening will be scratching their heads and saying, By now we’ve been talking for a half hour, this man seems intelligent, focused, and successful. But Doctors A, B, C, and D—I don’t want to call them out because they’re all wonderful human beings. I have said never and have said no oil, and I have said oil is nothing but fat that will make you fat. You’ve read the science correctly for the brain and the heart and metabolism and blood sugar, and you’re spot on personally, and that’s why my bottle’s almost empty.

Bryan Johnson

This is a fake doctor. I have shared all of my data publicly. I’ve been measured by tens of thousands of data points. This is at this time. So opinions, entertainment, or entertaining data matter. I’ve been on this protocol for three years now. The data speaks for itself. So I remember being in there like you’re in the trenches; you’re getting whipped around to and fro. Your doctor says one thing, a podcaster says a different thing and a blog says a different thing. You’re like, What do I do? It’s so confusing. That’s why I’m saying, like, I’ve tried to punch through that noise and say, Here’s my data. Here’s me for three years. If you want to be influenced by someone else, ask them to share their data.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

The data that exists that has fired up the plant-based medical community is frankly very small—five-hour studies and ten healthy volunteers. The data that’s long-term and large is nothing but positive. Thank you for being a voice there, people do what they want to do, but know that a lot of intelligent people would consider olive oil to be food from the gods, which is pretty much a powerful endorsement. Thank you very much. Again, we’ve shouted out to the protocol.bryanjohnson.com. I hope people spend a lot of time there; it’s a wonderful site. I know you’re busy. I just want to thank you so much for letting us tap into your brain a little bit.

Bryan Johnson

It is my pleasure to join. Thanks for having me there.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Just before we go, this new logo that you’ve been using for some months on your microphone is someone in front of it and it’s Don’t Die. That is quite an awesome goal that came out of your marketing and logo sense or your team’s.

Bryan Johnson

It came up in a conversation. I was like, what? This is probably it. But to me, I’ll leave you with this. For me, the most inspiring thing would be to imagine the 25th century. Looking back on the 21st century, the time you and I are existing now, and they’re acknowledging what they respect that we did with our time and place now, what did we do? What did we figure out? What should I do? What could we see that’s impossible? I would put forward that Don’t Die is the singular philosophical principle that drives the entire 21st century. It was the time when it shifted from Homo sapiens seeing death as inevitable to a point where death was maybe. Then, we figured out how to not kill our biosphere. We figured out how to build AI safely in a benevolent fashion. It is the singular philosophy to me that’s exciting. How do you see the future and occupy hundreds of years of events? How do you see it, and what are your time and place? I would submit that this is a candidate for the singular insight that matters in this century.

Joel Kahn, MD, FACC

Incredible insight. You’re very cerebral on this topic. Can you share it with us regularly? You’re a philosopher on top of an entrepreneur, but a serious one. Thank you again. Peace to your team. I’m going to sign off there. We are richer for it. Thank you.

Bryan Johnson

Thanks also.