Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Today we're unpacking one of themost talked about approaches to
longevity and anti aging in the Wellness world, Brian Johnson's
Blueprint. Johnson, a tech entrepreneur
turned self experimenter, has spent millions trying to reverse
his biological age and engineer the body of an 18 year old.
His protocol is extreme, precise, and controversial.
(00:23):
Welcome to the Aging Well podcast, where we explore the
science stories and strategy behind living a longer,
healthier, and more purposeful life.
I'm your host, Doctor Jeff Armstrong, an exercise
physiologist with a passion for making science simple and life
better as we age, with my Co host Corbin Bruton.
In this episode, we explore whatBlueprint entails, what
(00:45):
motivates Johnson's pursuit of optimized aging, and whether his
approach reflects Wellness or simply a refusal to grow old.
We also asked what lessons can the rest of us take from this
ultra disciplined experiment andwhere it might miss the mark on
what it truly means to be aging well.
Today we're talking about one ofthe most talked about and
(01:07):
honestly most controversial figures in the aging and
longevity space, Brian Johnson and his Anti Aging Protocol
Blueprint. Yeah, this should be fun.
And I want to kind of on the onset, you know, be clear that,
you know, respect what he's doing.
I don't necessarily agree with what he's doing and how he's
(01:28):
going about it. I don't necessarily agree with
the results or the purpose for anything that he's doing.
But yeah, this gets, you know, gets attention because it's part
biohacking, which we do tend to poo poo a lot on this podcast.
It's part performance art and it's actually part genuine
experiment and pushing human limits and kind of balancing
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through those is important in the conversation, but it also
raises some bigger questions about what it really means to
age well. So I mean, let's start with the
basics here. Who is Brian Johnson and why is
he so invested in this? What's his back?
Story so Brian Johnson and it's hard to believe any of our
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viewers and listeners probably aren't familiar with him, but
Brian Johnson is the tech entrepreneur who founded
Braintree or Venmo sold that to PayPal for I think it was like
$800 million. So he he's a billionaire.
He is somebody who recognized that years of stress depression,
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weight gain running a business just paid a toll on his body.
And for whatever reasons, he turned his attention to
neuroscience and enhancement, started the company called
Kernel and he developed what hasbecome called the blueprint as
an attempt to optimize literallyevery organ system in his body
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to function like that of an 18 year old.
And the guy spends like $2,000,000 a year on this
project. So when where I think I really
deviate from his intentions is that I think he sees disease or,
or aging as a disease that has to be reversed or slowed through
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data discipline and technology. And, and, you know, we want to
slow the aging process. That's what aging well is all
about. But I don't think we see it as a
disease. I don't see it as a negative,
but he sees it as a disease and it's something to be reversed.
He kind of has this whole Don't Die persona.
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You know, he does speaking engagements and he's all over
YouTube. I think you mentioned recently
in a in the podcast episode thathe has a Netflix documentary.
So yeah, that's who Brian Johnson is.
He's trying to defy aging. He wants to live forever.
Would you say this is more aboutcuriosity and science or is this
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kind of a fear driven resistanceto aging?
That's a good question. I, I mean, honestly, I, I can't
speak for him and he would better speak for himself.
But in watching various videos and interviews with him, reading
about what he's trying to do, I think it's likely a combination
of both. I think a lot of it is motivate,
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motivated by control, but also, you know, to a certain extent,
progress and a philosophical rejection of bodily decline.
He says he wants to make death optional.
And to me that seems deeply uncomfortable.
It just seems that he is not comfortable with kind of losing
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control as we age. You know, there's we can't
control, in my opinion, we can'tcontrol everything that's going
to happen every circumstance of our life going forward.
And the more we try and stress out over trying to control every
little factor, to me, the less we're aging well.
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(05:11):
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(05:33):
recommending to our valued viewers and listeners.
Thank you. And now back to the podcast.
All right, So what does this protocol actually involve?
I mean, walk us through the blueprint itself.
So the Blueprint, and you can look at it a couple of different
ways. He has a blueprint product that
he sells and we'll talk a littlebit about that.
It's I think about $360.00 a month or something like that.
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But for him, it starts with a very strict daily routine.
He's up at 5:00 AM. He prides himself in his perfect
sleep, so he goes to bed no matter what.
Same time gets up at the same time he exercises.
His specific exercise routine has a specific diet that's a
caloric restriction diet. He involves A tremendous amount
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of supplementation. I believe he takes about 100
pills a day. Significant amount of tech
monitoring. So I'm sure, you know, he's got
the top of the line, you know, activity trackers, sleep
trackers, you know, various devices that he uses in order to
track basically every conceivable biomarker that might
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be linked to aging. His diet is a vegan diet.
He dropped down to, I think he'sa little bit higher than this
now. He was taking a very, very
specific calorie intake every day, 19177 calories I believe it
was tracking everything to the gram.
So every item of food is measured.
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Like I say, he takes over 100 different pills.
These are anything from supplements to nutraceuticals,
is a daily exercise program involves cardiovascular
resistance training. He has a very strict routine on
sleep optimization. And like I've mentioned, he's
constantly tracking every potential biological marker.
(07:21):
He does everything from epigenetic clocks to gut
microbiome. And I think you even pointed out
in an earlier episode, he actually even uses his own son's
plasma, and it was formerly actually using young blood
transfusions to kind of change out his blood on a regular
basis. So overall, the goal is the goal
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of Blueprint is to make his bodyfunction like it did when he was
18. So I mean is it working?
Well, depends kind of who you talk to and what what you define
is working. I think there's mixed results.
Some of the markers have improved, he insisted.
All his biological markers have improved, you know, less
(08:05):
inflammation, less liver fat. His telomere lengths have
lengthened. I've I've heard different
numbers, but his biological clock is somewhere between 48.48
and little over .5 S Theoretically, he's aging at
half the rate of the average individual.
(08:25):
Again, take that with a grain ofsalt.
His skin age is down but not drastically and I think it's
interesting with his skin. There's a couple of videos out
there where he talks about how people just start hating on him
when he was doing this project and how that he looked, how he
looked older. And when he started on this low
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caloric diet, he lost a significant amount of body fat.
And so if you've ever lost a lotof weight, you know, you lose
weight in your face, your face gets thinner.
And his face had gotten much toothin, which made him look much
older. So he took an approach and I
forget all the five different steps that he took.
There are different things that he tried.
One of the things that he tried doing was he he couldn't, he
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didn't have enough fat on his own body to use his own fat to
inject into his face. But he had a donor fat that was
injected into his face and that was meant to kind of give a
little bit more puffiness, normal looking nest to the face
that didn't work. A few other things that he tried
and didn't try. And one of the things he did for
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around the eyes was plasma rich,what they call plasma rich
fibrant, which is similar to PFR, but it gets injected below
the eyes and it's like we would use in a joint to repair joint.
And he has to do that like 3 * ayear.
Again, it's a costly effort to do that.
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So you know, if we look at OK, yeah, his biological age is not
equal to his chronological age. He's age aging theoretically at
a younger rate, but does this equate to kind of emotional
spiritual maturity, what we would label as aging?
Well, I. Mean I can definitely see the
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appeal of precision health and and taking ownership of your
well-being. But I guess my question is,
what's the catch here? Well, the catch is it's
extremely expensive. I mean, how how many of us have
$2,000,000 to invest a year in our aging Well?
And I understand, you know, partof his goal is to be an end of
(10:37):
1, to push the limits of scienceand find the ways that we can
slow the aging process. But the methodology is just
beyond normal aging. I mean, it's nobody has that
kind of money. It's so time consuming.
I mean, his entire life is now invested in not aging.
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And to me, what's the point in not aging if you're not going to
actually live a life? And so it kind of creates a
false sense that aging is something, you know, just simply
a technical problem that we can solve.
And I think we did an episode recently on on that whole
premise that, you know, aging isnot a problem to be solved.
Yeah. I think his his approach misses
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the big picture and misses the picture of what we're trying to,
you know, educate people on in this podcast.
Is it aging also is about meaning, It's about
relationships. It's about identity.
And it's about letting go. I mean, yeah, we're going to get
older, but So what? So we have a few wrinkles, so we
maybe have a little bit more body fat.
(11:40):
Yes. To me, the goal is to live as
long as possible, but what is the point of living longer if
there's no joy that comes with that?
And if it's going to cost me millions of dollars a year.
And you think about if you're spending $2,000,000 a year to
live to be 147, which is what hehe believes he's going to live
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to based on his rate of aging. And he's, I think in his near
early 50s. So he's probably talking about
wanting to live another 100 years.
So you're talking $200 million, right, invested in keeping
yourself alive for that period of time.
What could we do with that $200 million to make everybody age
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well? And so with this whole approach
that he's doing, I think there'sa risk of more moralizing
health, you know, that some people begin to believe, you
know, and, and if he is successful and more and more
wealthy people begin to kind of take on the blueprint, are you a
failure if you don't have an 18 year old liver at 47?
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Well. Do you think the blueprint is
aging well or do you think it's resisting aging?
To me personally, I think it's performance of youth.
It's not necessarily a cultivation of wisdom or
well-being. You know, aging well means
becoming more fully yourself, not just not aging.
You know, it's, it's not trying to be a younger version of
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yourself, it's trying to be a better version of yourself as
the years progress. And it really brings me to, you
know, really two of the key concepts that we tend to focus
on in this podcast, and that's our spies.
Again, a shout out to Jay, you know, well centered fitness and
our six pillars. And those are what we are trying
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to accomplish as we age, at least from my perspective, not
just simply relying on the physical, which is what he's
really doing. He's he's emphasizing the
physical aspects of aging without looking at the
spiritual, the intellectual. And he might argue that, yeah,
all the science involved here isthe intellectual piece, but I
see nothing in what he's doing that relates to the emotional
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and social pieces of aging. Well, and, you know, we can
address the six pillars and how they kind of relate into what
he's trying to do. But you know, we also have to
consider, how do you relate to community, the mystery of life
and death Blueprint really avoids that side of aging.
Yeah. But I mean, to be fair, Brian
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Johnson is all in on this. But are there parts of the
blueprint that everyday people might benefit from?
Well, absolutely. And I think a lot of it is, you
know, we've already talked aboutwithout spending millions of
dollars on this podcast, you know, there's consistency and
exercise and diet, you know, just eating well.
He eats a vegan diet. He eats a very restricted number
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of calories. I think that could be a bit
overly restrictive, but having that consistency in our diet,
eating, you know, whatever type of diet you choose works best
for you. I guess you're maybe not
necessarily choosing which worksbest for you, but what works
best for you. Sticking with that and being
consistent with it, having an exercise protocol that you're
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doing regularly and doing effectively, those are all good
things. Sleep prioritization is one of
our pillars, you know, and I think we've elevated that to
probably one of the most important things that we can do
to age well, and that's to have good sleep hygiene.
So being a little bit overly strict when it comes to our
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sleep can be a good thing. You know, getting into those
habits that give us the routinesthat get us to sleep well is
going to help us to age well. But again, that doesn't cost us
anything except a little bit of time and time management.
Data tracking can be helpful, but it's not absolutely
necessary. And it's something we can overly
stress about. And so using data to help inform
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our decisions, help us make those baby steps toward aging
well and realizing that it's nota all or nothing kind of thing.
It's about asking how does my current lifestyle impact long
term vitality? And so, yeah, there's some
positive things that he is doingand how people can benefit from
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this, you know, So again, what can I do from his protocol that
would work for me? But we have to be careful
because Blueprint assumes that the body is a machine and that
optimization is the goal. And the goal of aging well isn't
optimization. It's having a mindset of grace,
rest, imperfection, and living life with vitality and purpose.
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So maybe the best take away is not necessarily the method, but
the intentionality. Maybe what matters is not how
many pills you take or how optimized your metrics are, but
whether your life is in lined with your values, your purpose,
your relationships. Yeah, but if you're talking to
someone who's curious about the blueprint but doesn't have
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millions to spend or a lab in their own house, like, what
would you say? Well, I would say first start
with presence, not performance. You know, try and build up that
purposeful social connection. You know, that's going to be a
bigger priority than spending millions of dollars.
You can pursue health without obsessing over perfection.
(17:10):
You know, I think of the Blue Zones and how it not one of
those have I heard of a single octogenarian who has commented
that they live to be 100 becauseof their biohacking, of the
supplements that they took, of their red light therapy, of the
injections of plasma under theireyes, or you know, the list goes
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on. None of them are talking about
biohacking. It's all about basically
following the spies and the six pillars to live a life that has
purpose, meaning and social connection.
So it's better to ask questions that are things like what kind
of older adult do I want to become, you know, have a goal.
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What are what are we looking at accomplishing as we age?
Who do I want to grow with? You know, what kind of community
do I want to have around me? What kind of life am I
cultivating and not just preserving?
I don't think Brian Johnson is necessarily asking those
questions. Well.
I mean, do you think he's not asking those questions?
Because it's never been, it's never been thought of.
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He's kind of like going rogue ina groundbreaking way, one would
argue. Well, and I, I don't necessarily
accept that argument that he's going rogue.
I mean, he, he is, but is it beneficial?
He's spending a tremendous amount of money.
He's not necessarily doing things scientifically.
(18:40):
You know, he's throwing so many different variables into the mix
and, you know, he can't identifyany one or two or three or
hundred different things that he's doing in the protocol that
are specifically increasing his longevity.
You know, so somebody else is going to have to kind of tease
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to OK, yeah, all these things have worked.
Now we have to refine the science and look at that.
And end of 1 is never enough to make good scientific
conclusions. Now he is testing out a lot of
different theories. Some of it might be working, but
I just don't think he is thinking because I've not heard
a single interview where he talks about why he wants to live
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forever. You know what?
What is he going to contribute to the world about being able to
live longer other than being able to live longer?
And I got to appreciate him in as much as there's reason not
to, like Elon Musk. I heard an interview with him
where he was asked about, you know, kind of falling after,
like, Brian Johnson. Well, you know, does he want to
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live forever? And he's like, no, I don't want
to live forever. I think it's in bad judgment to
live forever because when we live too long, we don't get new
ideas. And society doesn't progress.
Society doesn't change and so the question I'd have for Brian
Johnson is what are you contributing to society?
What are you doing to make the world better other than the fact
(20:08):
that you will look like your 18 year old son for a longer period
of time? Yeah, it's a deep question.
I really, man, I love that question.
Well, and that's exactly the kind of conversations we're
committed to here on the Aging Well podcast.
So if you enjoyed today's episode, we'd love it if you'd
leave a review, share it with someone who's wrestling with
(20:31):
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miss any future episodes. Thanks for listening and as
always, cheers to Aging Well. Thank you for listening.
I hope you benefited from today's podcast and until next
time, keep aging well.