A billionaire tech guru whose quest is to ‘live forever’ has revealed how he hacked his complex daily routine to extend his life as long as possible.
Bryan Johnson, 45, a California-based tech mogul who sold his business Braintree Venmo to PayPal for $800 million nearly 10 years ago, spoke to Steven Bartlett on theย Diary of a CEO Podcastย this week.
He believes that always sleeping at the same time, never eating after 11am and taking 111 pills are the keys to eternal youth.
The mogul added that his main goal in the 21st century is to ‘not die’ and he does anything possible to extend life – which has included injecting his 17-year-old son’s plasma.
‘I’m revolting against the culture of death,’ he said on the podcast.
A billionaire tech guru whose quest is to ‘live forever’ has revealed how he hacked his complex daily routine to extend his life as long as possible. Pictured with his breakfast
Bryan Johnson (right) had his plasma removed and injected into his father, while his teen son (left) donated his plasma to Bryan in an attempt to ‘reverse ageing’
‘I was ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ง to introduce this new idea to humanity,’ he told Dragon’s Den star Steven.
‘In the 21st Century, the only goal is not to die. It’s the rallying cry for the 21st Century, those two word: “don’t die”,’ he added.
Speaking this week,ย he also revealed how being ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ง Mormon and struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts lead to his success now – but said that he worries that previously not looking after himself earlier in life could have caused damage.
Bryan added that he thinks it’s ‘absolutely possible’ to ‘live forever’ and that he makes all his decisions via algorithm, so he does not give his mind ‘authority’ to make decisions.
Bryan also said that sleep is the most important thing for him, and that he measures the quality of his sleep, getting 100 per cent quality for six months straight.
The mogul added that his main goal in the 21st century is to ‘not die’ and he does anything possible to extend life – which has included injecting his 17-year-old son’s plasma
The mogul revealed that he goes to bed at 8.30pm everyday, which can be detrimental to his social life – but said that it is worth it.
When he wakes up, he often doesn’t speak to anyone for four or five hours so he’s able to ‘think’.
‘I probe myself to deep levels, but you can get knocked off so fast.
‘Someone saying “how are you, how was your sleep” can knock me off.’
The father-of-one also allocates 2250 calories to eat a day, which is strictly plant-based, eating everything between 6am and 11am.
Wine, he says, should also be drunk in the morning and limited to 3oz a day.
‘I’ve built my life around sleep,’ he explained.
‘That’s the opposite of cultural norms, most people will blow their bed time if they want to go out with friends.
Tech mogul Bryan Johnson, 45, spends $2million a year on a project to reverse the ageing of all of his body’s organs
Johnson undergoes regular tests aimed more specifically at his kidneys, prostate, thyroid and nervous system
‘I’ve made the hard decisions. There’s a bunch of small things.
‘My last meal of the day is at 11am, by the time I go to bed I have more than eight hours of digestion.
‘I ran a few hundred experiments on this. I sleep best with an empty stomach’.
He added that he ‘never shares a bed’ with anyone and won’t have ๐โฏ๐ after 8.30pm either.
‘I’m single, I’ve tried to date before, I’ve given them a list of 10 things that will make them impossible to like me.’
Bryan also said that he grew up in ‘typically American’ and ‘not healthy’ way where he ate many sugary cereals, but now eats zero cane sugar because it has ‘no benefits’.
His company Kernel makes helmet sensors which attach to the head to take recordings of brain activity
He has undergone a significant transformation since embarking on the project. He is pictured here in 2017
‘We’re ๐๐๐๐ฆ steps away from creating super intelligence, we cannot model out what the future is like in any way, shape or form,’ he explained.
‘The only thing we can play is don’t die, don’t ๐๐พ๐๐ each other. And don’t underestimate AI.’
Discussing his diet, Bryan said he eats 2250 calories a day and ‘every calorie has to fight for its life’.
He starts his day with a bowl of ‘super veggies’ which includes broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, ginger and hemp seeds with extra virgin olive oil and cacao. He doesn’t add any salt or seasoning except potassium chloride.
Eating around a kilogram of vegetables a day, he says that he adds the dark chocolate to put off any sweet cravings.
He then has a ‘dessert’ of macadamia nuts mixed with berries and proteins.
He believes that always sleeping at the same time, never eating after 11am and taking 111 pills are the keys to eternal youth
Johnson’s home in Venice, California, was modified to include a full medical suite
Three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, as well as a drink of ‘green giant’ are also part of the diet – as well as 111 pills.
Bryan spends $2million (ยฃ1.6m) a year on a team of more than 30 doctors and medical experts that oversee and test almost every one of his organs. Their aim is to engineer his body into that of an 18-year-old.
He has taken 33,537 images of his bowels and monitors everything from his bone weight to his number of nighttime erections.
He and his doctors claim that in two years he has reduced his overall biological age by more than five years and now 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. His medical team is led by Oliver Zolman, a 29-year-old doctor researching ageing therapies in Cambridge .
In his 30s, the entrepreneur founded of Braintree Payment Solutions, a hugely successful company which he sold in 2013 for $800million.
The tycoon in 2019 with his ex girlfriend, the directorย Taryn Southern
Bryan started his anti-ageing research when, after selling his company and going through a messy divorce from the mother of his three ๐ค๐ฉ๐ช๐ญ๐ฅren, he found himself 60lb (27kg) overweight
But the lifestyle he once led to build that company left him feeling depressed and suicidal, leading to him embarking on a journey to understand the workings of his body.
Along the way the father of three founded several bio startups before, two years ago, committing to perhaps his most ambitious project yet – reengineering his body.
As part of what he calls Project Blueprint, Johnson lives according to a regime that looks more like a full-time job.
He has had his pelvic floor blasted with electromagnetic pulses to improve his muscle tone in hard-to-reach places, and wears glasses that block out blue lightย for two hours before he goes to sleep at the same time every day.
Johnson was ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ง into a large Mormon family in Utah. He was raised by his mother and stepfather, who worked as a truck driver. At 19 went on a two year mission to Ecuador.
As an undergraduate atย Brigham Young University, he ran a business dealing cell phones to other students, helping him pay his way through college. He then attended the University of Chicago where he did an MBA and would go on to form Braintree.
The transfusion took place in a Dallas clinic, but it was not Johnson’s first time receiving plasma from young, healthy donors
Richard got a transfusion from one of the healthiest humans on earth – his son. He said: ‘I won the lottery. There has to be a benefit in getting this much volume of him’
He also launched OS Fund, a venture capital fund whose mission was ‘to invest in entrepreneurs and scientists who are working on quantum-leap discoveries that promise to rewrite the operating systems of life.’
Later he invested $54million fund his new venture Kernel,ย Dirt reported, a company with the not immodest goal ‘to build the world’s first neuroprosthesis to enhance human intelligence.’ The company makes helmet sensors which attach to the head to take recordings of brain activity.
Johnson now lives in Venice, California, in a home he purchased for $5.7million and later modified to include a full medical suite ahead of Project Blueprint.
His lifestyle and obsessive commitment to trying to undermine the effects of time have garnered significant criticism, with many viewers of his online content comparing him to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
‘This is expected and fine,’ he says of the criticism he’s received.
‘What I do may sound extreme, but I’m trying to prove that self-harm and decay are not inevitable,’ he told Bloomberg.
Johnson’s son Talmage, shown above, got the shortest end of the stick:ย while Bryan wins by getting blood that, based on somewhat limited conclusive study, will rejuvenate him from the inside out.
Although the details are unknown, his doctors suggested to the outlet that he is about to embark on some far more experimental procedures, including gene therapies.
‘There’s got to be a better way than what’s going on now,’ he said.
Most recently, he has been undergoing plasma swapping. Before doing so with his father and son, Johnson had been undergoing plasma transfusions from a young, healthy, anonymous donor who he had carefully screened by making sure the person had an ideal body mass index, lived a healthy lifestyle, and was free of diseases.
After plasma was extracted from Talmage, the process was repeated with Richard, who had some of his blood drained and infused with some of Bryan’s blood.
The science behind plasma transfusion as a cure for aging is far from settled and has its roots in experimentation with mice.
I ask Bryan if he feels younger now that he’s infused with a litre of blood from his son, a star high-school athlete (pictured together)
Bryan’s goal is to biologically become 18 again. He exercises for at least an hour every day and has the heart of a 37-year-old
In 2005, a group of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley made the shocking discovery thatย conjoining young and old mice changed their cellular ages.
Once they conjoined an old mouse and a young mouse so that they share blood and organs, they examined the mice for five weeks. The muscles of the old mice had healed about as quickly as those of the young mice while the old mice had grown new liver cells at a youthful rate.
A later study would show that transferring blood from an older mouse into a younger one wouldย actually speed up the aging process.
Talmage gets the shortest end of the stick, while Bryan wins by getting blood that, based on somewhat limited conclusive study, will rejuvenate him from the inside out.
Richard, meanwhile, probably comes out the biggest winner, as he gets a blood transfusion from one of the healthiest humans on earth. Richard and Bryan have had a frought relationship, and the former sees the transfusion procedure asย a familial renewal and a deepening of his bond with his son.
Richard told Bloomberg: ‘Yeah, I won the lottery. There has to be a benefit in getting this much volume of him.’
When Bryan’s plasma was removed from his veins, he remarked on the yellow-gold hue indicative of healthy blood.
He said: ‘Hey, look at that. This is how you can tell if Iโm a fraud or not. The color is nice. Itโs pristine.’
