They say money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy you the brain, heart, lungs and other vital organs of an 18-year-old in a highly complex process of reverse ageing. It might sound like the stuff of science-fiction, an ill-thought out plot line for a Netflix movie that barely registers for audiences around the world, but for 45-year-old software entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, his reality is one focused solely on longevity as he looks to reboot his entire body.
Working with a team of 30 doctors and health experts, Johnson is scrutinising every part of his body all in the hope of reversing the ageing process. His team, led by 29-year-old regenerative medicine physician Oliver Zolman, are entirely focused on reversing the ageing process in every one of Johnson’s organs. In what has been labelled Project Blueprint, Johnson is effectively a guinea pig for their testing as they look to hack longevity with the most promising tests and treatments available to modern man. The catch? Johnson is on track to spend at least $2 million USD on his body this year alone, as he wants to have the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, tendons, teeth, skin, hair, bladder, penis and rectum of an 18-year-old.
As he explained to Ashlee Vance of Bloomberg, “The body delivers a certain configuration at age 18. This really is an impassioned approach to achieve age 18 everywhere.”
Johnson created a payment processing company, Braintree Payment Solutions LLC, when he was in his 30s. Then, he was a workaholic spending most of his days seated at a desk, working tirelessly on his company and feeling the weight of such stress. Though the company proved to be a major success and was ultimately sold to EBay Inc in 2013 for $800 million in cash, that time isn’t something Johnson looks back on with fond memories. Rather, the long hours and tireless work left him overweight, deeply depressed and bordering on suicidal. When he sold the company, he told himself he’d get his life together, that he’d get fit, healthy, shed those extra kilos that had crept up around his torso. But it didn’t take long for a simple health kick to morph into something else entirely, something that outsiders can be quick to label an unhealthy obsession.
You almost wonder how someone has the time to do all this, given that Johnson has taken 33,537 images of his bowels, analysed the thickness and length of his eyelashes, blasted his pelvic floor with electromagnetic pulses to improve muscle tone in places that are harder to reach through regular exercises alone, and enlisted a device that counts the number of his nighttime erections. Daily measurements include that of his body mass index and body fat, walking body temperature, blood glucose, heart-rate variations and oxygen levels while sleeping. He also does regular blood, stool and urine tests as well as whole-body MRIs and ultrasounds.
Johnson insists that people don’t have the most important information they need to live a healthy life. To him, data is critical and not surprisingly, his health tendencies have already come to determine his work as he founded a biotech-focused venture firm, before Kernel in 2016, a company that makes helmets that analyse brain activity to learn more about the mind’s inner workings. Johnson wants to see things in black and white, he wants the numbers of his health and bodily function. “You can look at your body and your situation and turn it over to willpower,” he explains. “And, like, good luck.”
As Bloomberg details, Johnson’s routine is one that involves careful consideration but ultimately runs to routine, leaving little by way of spontaneity or the pursuit of other interests. At 5am, he takes two dozen supplements and medicines including lycopene for artery and skin health and metformin to prevent bowel polyps. He works out for an hour, consisting of 25 different exercises, before having a green juice with creatine, cocoa flavanols and collagen peptides amongst other ingredients. Throughout the course of the day, he eats some solid health food, but the recipes have all been tweaked dependent on the results of his latest tests. After breakfast, he brushes, before rinsing with tea-tree oil and applying an antioxidant gel.
He eats just 1,977 vegan calories a day and sleeps at the same time every night, after spending two hours wearing glasses that block blue light. His body fat now sits somewhere between 5 and 6 per cent, and doctors are excited about the results already, boasting that his tests show Johnson has already reduced his overall biological age by at least five years. “Their results suggest he has the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old and the lung capacity and fitness of an 18-year-old,” reports Bloomberg.
Many have been quick to brand Johnson’s routine – and by extension, personal goals – nothing more than deranged behaviour bordering on an eating or psychological disorder, while also criticising the medical staff who are entertaining it. But while Johnson has heard the criticism, it clearly doesn’t deter him. Instead, he has a website where he details his entire course of treatment and results, and has launched another site encouraging others to do the same, called Rejuvenation Olympics. For Johnson, he doesn’t buy into the widespread fads like ice baths or shots of testosterone. Instead, he wants people to approach their health with more rigorous medical science and hopes that in seeing such a lifestyle become more popular, access to and affordability of some of the procedures will be improved.
“If you say you want to live forever or defeat ageing, that’s bad – it’s a rich person thing,” he says. “If it’s more akin to a professional sport, it’s entertainment. It has the virtues of establishing standards and protocols. It benefits everyone in a systemic way.”