I love what the guy is doing. It is a one-man experiment that would be very very hard to reproduce, or even get ethics approval and funding for, by a research lab.
But on the other hand, I get a sense that the public side of his results are overblown. For example, my field is epigenetics, so I had a look at his "epigenetic clock" results. He uses "DunedinPACE" to track the rate of aging and his result is supposedly 0.72 (which very roughly estimates that he ages 0.72 years per a single astronomical year).
However, what is not mentioned, is that this result, while impressive, is not so extraordinary. He is number 6 in his own online leaderboard [1]. And the people who beat him at this metric don't do anything fancy to get better numbers than him [2]. Why not mention things like that along with all the optimism?
He's also made a number of posts, often as replies to people asking the same sort of question that you are, pointing out that 95% of longevity is the simple things we're aware of (diet, exercise, etc.) and that he's just testing out all the other stuff because he can/he's interested/it's a worthwhile investment of time and money for him to get that last 5%.
>However, what is not mentioned, is that this result, while impressive, is not so extraordinary.
The lesson here is that not all phenotypes age at the same rate. Bryan doesn't have a choice in that, like none of us have. He mentions that his hair started falling out in his 30's while I have a full head of hair in my 40's. He's promoting a lifestyle and being an experiment, he doesn't need to caveat his work in any way.
>Why not mention things like that along with all the optimism?
The only people I see with extreme optimism are weird tech people. Most people I follow outside of that circle range from laughing at this to "kinda neat" (like you and me).
Is anyone convinced this is "worth it", or that what he's doing is actually anti-aging anything?
The following protocol will put most people in the top 20% of health outcomes if you're consistent for 2 years. If you're baseline healthy, it'll put you in top 10%. If you keep it up for a lifetime, I'm certain it will add at least a decade of 'high quality years' to your life (I'm not talking life extension, but quality of life).
A good diet (no/minimal processed foods), lots of water, 7.5-8 hours of sleep, limited stress, strong family/social circle, regular (3-5x per week) cardio, (2x per week) strength training, 1x per week high intensity cardio for 30 minutes, and regular stretching/flexibility for 15 minutes per day.
Maybe if he was not doing anything, his score would be 1.1?
Also, I don't think the point is doing fancy things. The people that beat him might just be doing "common sense" healthy things. Something which most people don't do. See SAD (Standard American Diet).
Yeah, of course, maybe it would be 1.1. What I am trying to say is that the results could be reported in a more scientific manner.
For instance, about epigenetic clocks, there are a lot of them now. There is GrimAge for mortality, FitAge for fitness, and dozens of different clocks for chronological age. I cannot know for sure, but I am almost sure Bryan tried at least a few. Why did they select to showcase only this one? Is it because they liked the results the most?
Same for all other markers. All of them are "optimal" "above 95%", etc. Is there no marker that is not so great and can still be improved? Also showing the history of the measurements (how they fluctuate during years Bryan is on the protocol) would be wonderful. Or measuring the same markers for a different person, who is above him in the leaderboard, but not going through the protocol.
I want to repeat that I love what he is doing. But for some reason the website gives a marketing vibe. This is our protocol, everything is optimal, here is our olive oil. Which is a bit of a weird look, given the lengths Bryan Johnson is going through.
"Maybe" isn't exactly scientific; what he should've done was keep his existing lifestyle, have the same measurements taken, but not actually look at them because they would influence the measurements.
Without a baseline, the numbers are meaningless. What if most people are under 1 but there's a few outliers that skew the numbers?
Thought this section would be helpful to highlight:
> If you’d like to stop this insanity...:identify the worst version of yourself.
> For me, it was 7pm Bryan who would eat everything in sight to try and momentarily escape life pain. He is a monster, overpowering, and indifferent about all other Bryans needs. A sweet talker and expert rationalizer. 7pm Bryan ruins life quality for all other Bryans:
> - awful sleep
> - overweight
> - poor health
> - accelerated aging & disease
> - turbulent emotions
> - depressing life outlook
> The solution: revoking 7pm Bryan’s authority to eat food.
> Now your turn:
> - Step 1: identify your 20% rascal..
> - Step 2: list what decisions they are and are not authorized to make
> - Step 3: wait for them to appear
> - Step 4: approve or deny their requests using step 2 list
> - Step 5: celebrate happy you for stopping self harm.
> Believe it or not, this is your most consequential and powerful life intervention.
There is a very weird lack of interest in slowing down or reversing aging in the scientific/medical community in general. To me it seems like it should be a top priority. Life is extremely short and extending our lives shouldn't be a terribly hard feat given there are plenty of biologically immortal and long lived organisms all over our planet.
We have so much lower hanging fruit to tackle first that doesn’t even require research: what’s the point in extending your miserable life a couple more miserable years? Adding a decade on to your life of extreme privilege is worthwhile, but for the majority of people on earth, simply getting them on to a nutritious diet would do far more for their quality of life and their lifespan than slowing down aging ever could. So much human suffering is a result of policy, not lack of scientific understanding.
Slowing down aging is like going to space: it’s a fun complicated problem for nerds to think about but it is utterly meaningless to the quality of 99% of lives on earth.
Life doesn't seem short. Heck, humans are some of the longest lived mammals in the world. I suspect people only say life is short because they are counting the days ahead of them and comparing it to the days behind them - not considering the total number of days. I bet very few 10-year-olds would say life is short, but maybe a lot of 60-year-olds would.
Treating illnesses, diseases and injuries should have higher priority, as they impact QOL and mortality much more. Once almost everyone gets to age 80 in health, then we can tackle extending the life span.
Extending our lives should definitely not be a priority. We already have enough trouble on the horizon with resources on earth provided for an exponentially exploding population. The only thing keeping this in check currently is the elderly dying from disease and old age. If we reverse the aging process, or cure cancer or something similar, this planet will very quickly become a very horrible place to live.
Yeah I'm not really sure what to think about him. He gives off serious grifter vibes and at least some of his claims are probably overblown. On the other hand, who is he hurting? He's "experimenting" on himself and making the results available for everyone. He'll sell you some of the stuff he does but the details of his entire regimen are also freely given away for anyone who wants to do it themselves. He's an unusual person for sure.
I really wish he did his research without being restricted to a vegan diet. He mentioned in one of his videos that his choice for a vegan diet isn't motivated by health, so I can't help but think that part of these recommendations are just there to mitigate the effects of that specific diet. For example, an omnivorous diet might not need certain supplements.
I am glad he is focusing on a vegan diet (especially if no technological revolutions are made in artificially derived animal products). It's nice to learn about the downsides of it in order deal with them rather than just defaulting back to animal products.
One of his main points in the intro is not destroying our biosphere and going vegan is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to support that. Supplementing B12 is not that hard of a task to ask from a population which already swallows pills and powders by the kilograms a year.
Why so? A vegan diet when supplemented is an easy way to avoid potential bad consequences of animal products, such as heart disease, cancer, obesity or diabetes.
The only real thing that meat-eaters do not have to supplement that vegans do is b12 (because livestock are supplemented with it) and maybe omega 3.
If the vegan diet was one of the outcomes from his experiments (where the goal is to optimize for anti-aging), I'd be fine with it. But it's a restriction he put on himself based on a ethical/philosophical motivation.
And maybe omega-3? That’s underplaying the role of long chain PUFAs by a lot.
And when you say annual products, are you talking about all animal products, like seafood? Because there is a vast difference between oysters, muscles, and salmon, and industrial farm raised beef.
And animal products, again, are you excluding the organ meats, which are extremely high in many things that could possibly extend our lifespan? Like riboflavin, manganese, zinc,?
I wish blueprint was more public and open about the methodology and data. Johnson is doing so many interventions and it would be interesting to have public data for them beyond a periodic aggregate snapshot on the blueprint websites which basically amounts to a marketing page. In comparison someone like Michael Lustgarten (1) publishes nearly everything, documents what intervention they are about to do, do it, and then publish the results.
I think i've mentioned this here before, but a friend of mine (Andrew Steele) is an anti-aging biologist, and has written a book on the subject. He's an excellent communicator, and a while ago did a video examining Bryan Johnson's claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rs_JK-pTTQ
Umm isn't that the point of trying to reverse aging ..to look normally youthful not look so unusual that the look isn't youthful at all just unusual. Look at all the comments here that agree some saying the look is that of a vampire. Thats what the majority thinks and wishes for when it comes to reverse aging ..to be and look 20 again yet with all the wisdom and wealth gained over the years.
Just to keep the sarcasm going: Is there a scientific test that checks for "looking like a vampire"?. Cause he sure does to me, but I'm not a vampire-specialist, so what do I know...
I think he looks old and young at the same time. It's obvious he is not 20 years of age. But he doesn't look like 44 either. It's almost like he looks much younger than his age giving him this unnatural look.
Since very few people are measured and as fit as he is, it's not strange that we think he looks strange. But mostly I think it's lightning and makeup giving him this unnatural look.
Was thinking like maybe he has cancer or something cause he doesn't look healthy ..maybe the truth is is that his diet really is about keeping him alive & trying to find a cure for what he has naturally.
This is only a thought and an opinion based on how I think he looks which looks not healthy to me, but again only an opinion. Time will tell!
I cant tell if you're being sarcastic but the protocol was developed as the result of his teams reading the latest published literature. I'm not being snarky here but if you have a problem with it, it's the result (by definition) of you not being up to date on what the corpus of science is telling us about nutrition.
His protocol was developed as a result of his team trying anything and everything that might potentially help. "The definition of what the corpus of science is telling us about nutrition" is overselling it. There's a reason the site is plastered with "this is not medical advice" disclaimers.
Readit News
But on the other hand, I get a sense that the public side of his results are overblown. For example, my field is epigenetics, so I had a look at his "epigenetic clock" results. He uses "DunedinPACE" to track the rate of aging and his result is supposedly 0.72 (which very roughly estimates that he ages 0.72 years per a single astronomical year).
However, what is not mentioned, is that this result, while impressive, is not so extraordinary. He is number 6 in his own online leaderboard [1]. And the people who beat him at this metric don't do anything fancy to get better numbers than him [2]. Why not mention things like that along with all the optimism?
[1]: https://rejuvenationolympics.com/leaderboard/#absolute
[2]: https://fortune.com/well/2023/11/04/longevity-women-biohacke...
He does mention things like that. For one, he posted a link to this article: https://twitter.com/bryan_johnson/status/1721578475759239658....
He's also made a number of posts, often as replies to people asking the same sort of question that you are, pointing out that 95% of longevity is the simple things we're aware of (diet, exercise, etc.) and that he's just testing out all the other stuff because he can/he's interested/it's a worthwhile investment of time and money for him to get that last 5%.
The lesson here is that not all phenotypes age at the same rate. Bryan doesn't have a choice in that, like none of us have. He mentions that his hair started falling out in his 30's while I have a full head of hair in my 40's. He's promoting a lifestyle and being an experiment, he doesn't need to caveat his work in any way.
The only people I see with extreme optimism are weird tech people. Most people I follow outside of that circle range from laughing at this to "kinda neat" (like you and me).
Is anyone convinced this is "worth it", or that what he's doing is actually anti-aging anything?
A good diet (no/minimal processed foods), lots of water, 7.5-8 hours of sleep, limited stress, strong family/social circle, regular (3-5x per week) cardio, (2x per week) strength training, 1x per week high intensity cardio for 30 minutes, and regular stretching/flexibility for 15 minutes per day.
Also, I don't think the point is doing fancy things. The people that beat him might just be doing "common sense" healthy things. Something which most people don't do. See SAD (Standard American Diet).
For instance, about epigenetic clocks, there are a lot of them now. There is GrimAge for mortality, FitAge for fitness, and dozens of different clocks for chronological age. I cannot know for sure, but I am almost sure Bryan tried at least a few. Why did they select to showcase only this one? Is it because they liked the results the most?
Same for all other markers. All of them are "optimal" "above 95%", etc. Is there no marker that is not so great and can still be improved? Also showing the history of the measurements (how they fluctuate during years Bryan is on the protocol) would be wonderful. Or measuring the same markers for a different person, who is above him in the leaderboard, but not going through the protocol.
I want to repeat that I love what he is doing. But for some reason the website gives a marketing vibe. This is our protocol, everything is optimal, here is our olive oil. Which is a bit of a weird look, given the lengths Bryan Johnson is going through.
Without a baseline, the numbers are meaningless. What if most people are under 1 but there's a few outliers that skew the numbers?
Deleted Comment
That to me said to me far more about the average 10 year olds diet and perhaps also likely to an increasing sedentary level.
https://peterattiamd.com/richardmiller2/
Slowing down aging is like going to space: it’s a fun complicated problem for nerds to think about but it is utterly meaningless to the quality of 99% of lives on earth.
* unbounded population increase * wealth and power directly proportional to age * dictators and other bad people not dying
Not insurmountable but all of those big problems would require massive sociological shifts.
Maybe most people are content with children, the current state of the art against aging communities?
Uh. We don't even know why we get heartburn and how to treat it. You comment sounds like, why does my toddler lack interest in reading Shakespeare.
One of his main points in the intro is not destroying our biosphere and going vegan is the single most impactful thing an individual can do to support that. Supplementing B12 is not that hard of a task to ask from a population which already swallows pills and powders by the kilograms a year.
Not sure that having people live longer helps with that.
The only real thing that meat-eaters do not have to supplement that vegans do is b12 (because livestock are supplemented with it) and maybe omega 3.
So most people should supplement, not just vegans.
What do you mean "supplemented"? The vitamin comes from animal sources.
And when you say annual products, are you talking about all animal products, like seafood? Because there is a vast difference between oysters, muscles, and salmon, and industrial farm raised beef.
And animal products, again, are you excluding the organ meats, which are extremely high in many things that could possibly extend our lifespan? Like riboflavin, manganese, zinc,?
https://michaellustgarten.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw2H_j81_50&t=75s
Since very few people are measured and as fit as he is, it's not strange that we think he looks strange. But mostly I think it's lightning and makeup giving him this unnatural look.
Many looking healthy things are literally just your body functioning correctly.
This is only a thought and an opinion based on how I think he looks which looks not healthy to me, but again only an opinion. Time will tell!
And then apparently the same dish, every day... definitely a very scientific approach.
https://freight.cargo.site/w/900/q/75/i/177f6e6b12f3c2b247d1...
It would only make sense if he wants to test if he can function optimally without getting these micronutrients from "real food"
Many people have lived very long over the years without resorting to that many pills.
You can buy and eat only organic and that might help. Even that's no guarantee of nutrient quantity though.
https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.14694/EdBook_AM.2014.34.e47...