Blueprint health protocol
protocol.bryanjohnson.com
protocol.bryanjohnson.com
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?
That to me said to me far more about the average 10 year olds diet and perhaps also likely to an increasing sedentary level.
> 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.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.
Except that aging is the causative factor behind Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cancer, AMD, and a battery of other illnesses
Not sure what makes alzheimers an illness and wrinkly skin not an illness.
>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.
That in itself is a scientific claim that needs to be supported by evidence. How are we going to get that evidence if we aren't doing the research? We also don't have a good definition of exactly what a "nutritious diet" is. The idea that we shouldn't be be investing in health and longevity research is anti-intellectual and short-sighted, in my opinion.
That experiment has been running for the entire human existence. Richer people live longer and better lives.
30% of the worlds population is currently 'severly food insecure' (starving) [1].
Dont you think the priority first should be sorting out enough food for the existing population? When 100% of the world is fed properly and well, and we have surplus food, then maybe extending life should be come a scientific priority.
[1] - https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h...
> Lifespan and metabolic health are influenced by dietary nutrients. Recent studies show that a reduced protein intake or low-protein/high-carbohydrate diet plays a critical role in longevity/metabolic health. Additionally, specific amino acids (AAs), including methionine or branched-chain AAs (BCAAs), are associated with the regulation of lifespan/ageing and metabolism through multiple mechanisms. Therefore, methionine or BCAAs restriction may lead to the benefits on longevity/metabolic health. Moreover, epidemiological studies show that a high intake of animal protein, particularly red meat, which contains high levels of methionine and BCAAs, may be related to the promotion of age-related diseases.
* 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.
Equally true of trying to cure cancer, or infant mortality, or medicine generally - you're giving healthy years of life to good and bad people alike.
How about not having 25% of the population walking around with an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex at any one time, that need 30 years of education before they have the wisdom to do anything halfway useful. How about government policies that operate with a decades long view instead of just one election term. Global ID's would rise massively and decisions would have a far more balanced outlook.
Yes of course there are positives. Don't worry, we have never let negative consequences hold back progress before.
But the blind optimism is staggering, and let's get philosophical: what's the ultimate good, objectively? (Subjectively obviously _I_ and _you_ think it's that we get to be around for longer.) But objectively, from a humanity standpoint, is it (1) the most people in existence, (2) the most people to ever have existed, (3) the most consciousness, (4) the most happiness? Etc.
If we start letting people live forever, over a long time, because of resources, fewer people will ultimately exist. We'll also have slower progress because old ideas will live longer. It's very hubristic to think we've peaked, and it's inevitable that the first live-forever generation will put the brakes on progress/change.
I'd say those downsides far outweigh the upsides you've proposed.
> 30 years of education before they have the wisdom to do anything halfway useful
If scidnce advances obe funeral at a time, this probably means science will advance a lot less.
> How about government policies that operate with a decades long view instead of just one election term
Seems unlikely to change. Election terms are 5 years and people already live a lot longer than that.
More importantly, i'd worry about an increase in concentrated power.
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.
Nutrition is a very big component of his plan/blueprint and excluding a very big chunk of the search space (animal based foods) doesn't give me as much confidence that he found an optimal or close to optimal plan (especially compared to the effort required) to achieve his goal.
What do you mean "supplemented"? The vitamin comes from animal sources.
This comment has a lot of sources compiled https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/7ujsaf/comment/dtlj7...
LOL. Patently false. B12 is produced by bacteria in herbivores' guts.
But actually there's a solution for vegans. As the following paper in Nature eloquently puts it:
"Human faeces contain appreciable quantities of vitamin B12 or vitamin B12-like material presumably produced by bacteria in the colon, but this is unavailable to the non-coprophagic individual."
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,?
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.
However a lot of more subtle things like soft, shiny hair or good skin are correlated with nutrition.
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...
I'd be a lot more interested in this if I still had hair. But what's surprising is that the man I see in all the pictures and videos like one linked in another comment [1] clearly dies his hair. That's a very interesting choice for a someone who appears to be naturally blond based on the childhood photos in the video, and with 80% reduction in grey hair.
Also:
> Monthly Blueprint cost = $1,684.50
Being healthy was never easier if you're rich enough to afford the healthy lifestyle (it may be a lot cheaper than $1.6k/mo but still expensive). It's good that we know what it takes to be healthy but if it can only be available to a few than it won't bring a health revolution.
https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/#brain-health
It appears he has some brain markers such as white matter hyper intensities and ventricular volume that are older than his age of 46.
The Blueprint health protocol may end up giving people with healthy bodies but an aging brain, so they will be able to live many years with dementia (because the body is otherwise healthy).
Whether having a healthy body with dementia is worth spending all this money and effort for is an interesting question.
What remains to be seen, is how his brain markers develop 5-10 years down the road. I'm not sure he can reverse aging in many areas. But slow it down noticeably? Sure.
Your brain being damaged by dementia will absolutely ruin your body in a very short amount of time. In the late stages your brain can no longer perform involuntary functions and you would literally need to be fed by IV and on a respirator to stay alive.
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.My extreme prejucide is he is indeed obsessed with his health. Human health sometimes is not about the bad things we get? but how well do we handle those curve balls.
Introduction to My Longevity Tactics
So with one data point ... For all we know, his Blueprint might be over-optimize for his own body and might be extremely detrimental to most people.
Although, on a side note, seeing how my grand parent fared towards the end of their life, I did realize that I do not fear death or aging, I fear the slow withering where you get more and more diminished. So I get where this idea is coming from
Min/maxing your lifestyle is a privilege and wealth thing - mainly having to do with time and mental leftover energy.
He is literally telling people to sleep more, exercise more, eat better etc etc.
How can you be against that?
Honestly, I've followed him for quite a while and pretty much all of his content is wholesome and while a bit culty, it's not like he is forcing anyone to do anything. For the stuff that actually makes him money, he is a lot less sales-pushy than the overwhelming majority of youtubers. You can get his protocol for free and follow as much as you want to, buy the supplements and silver sheets from wherever if you want to.
He doesn't explicitly say to buy it (and in fine print says its not an endorsement) but clearly the links are there to encourage people to buy these products.
I dont know if he's getting a cut but half the products getting promoted have discount codes which is suggestive.
> it's not like he is forcing anyone to do anything
Snake-oil salesmen generally don't.
> he is a lot less sales-pushy than the overwhelming majority of youtubers.
Generally it is counter productive to be super pushy. It raises people's guard and makes them less likely to buy.
> Snake-oil salesmen generally don't.
Dude. Snake-oil doesn't do shit for you while if you follow the blueprint protocol maybe you won't live longer but the probability increases (by being healthy).
What I am saying is it's fine to make money of something you have spent so much time in researching and building. Who cares? He's giving out most of the advice, diet etc etc for free. Sure you will be able to buy some products in the future but you don't have to. It doesn't mean that lots of the advice is good advice for your health.
I just don't understand the phenomena of hating on a guy that is super wholesome, tells people to be more healthy and live longer.
I find this about as wholesome as the Nigerian prince who intends to give me part of his fortune out of the goodness of his heart.
Actually, I am not so sure. People today are effing insane, especially on the internet.
His motivations are as clear as a blue sky to me. He is building a company, the company will make money by selling products like meal replacements or good olive oil (maybe other things in the future, who knows). But in general that is probably just a way around the problem of financing the whole ordeal since he is obsessed with health and trying to figure out the optimal way to live in order to age the best way possible.
Most diet studies are just as good or bad as his because the issue with diets is that there can be so many factors playing in so it's hard to know if it's the diet or other factors weighing in. He is just trying stuff with the help of doctors and dieticians (and probably others as well) and I applaud that. Maybe things work for him that will also work for the majority of people, in fact I think it is likely.
Sure it is culty, but you kind of have to be in order to be able to live like he does. It's an extreme form of living and not for everyone but I think most people today can learn a lot from him by simply doing some of the things he does.
Today we live in a world where many countries have like 50% of the population being fat and many are even obese. If you go to any store in many western countries at least they are optimized for you to pick candy and sugar water at the end. It's hard to find healthy products in many cases, you have to read the label on basically everything. If you go on a road trip, pretty much the only restaurants by the roads are fast food that is super bad for you. It is HARD to be healthy today and the statistics clearly shows it. So much so that in my country at least many clothing stores have started to display fat models in commercials because people (mostly women) demands it. We also have mukbangs on youtube, super obese people spreading their crap online but the one that gets a lot of hate is a guy that tells people to be more healthy. That is the insane part to me.
I still see no problem here..
Personally, I'm against using my children as blood banks
C'mon dude. Stop the hate and grow up.
If my father called me today and asked for my blood in order to live longer I would gladly help him. I want my father to be healthy and live as long as possible. Besides giving blood is not bad for you, it can even have positive health effects that several studies have shown.
You also have to assume that the blood giving is consensual since there is no reason to assume otherwise.
Also it was a trial in which he stopped when no positive effects were shown: https://www.businessinsider.com/millionaire-bryan-johnson-st...
If he wasnt selling something, it might be a bit more credible! https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/collections/homepage-coll...
I assume this is some crazy conspiracy theory, but still curious.
Shameful self promotion into a cult?
The most parsimonious explanation for his behavior is that he very genuinely does not want to die.
Of course, anyone who is rich and famous is liable to veer into narcissism and abuse of power.
But if any HN reader were very serious about doing whatever it takes to live as long as possible, then reading this page would be a great start, as it is one of the most obsessively researched and documented health regimens towards this goal.
He does say he’s hungry all of the time. Not sure if I would get used to that.
Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy should be at the top of this list, but they aren't.
I get that the metric dictating this is probably "avoid skin damage", but surely the health benefits of, say, 15 minutes of sun exposure dramatically overweighs the risk of skin cancer.
Interesting, will have a look at this, thanks
Also, if you know more than others, that's great, but in that case it would be better to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. Simply posting a putdown doesn't do that.
My contribution was weak, but I do believe scientists have an ethical duty to say something, even if it’s not in the form of a complete lecture.
This applies to scientists the same as any other commenters.
I believe calling out pseudoscience as such is substantive. To be perfectly clear, I think not doing it would even be irresponsible. Also, substantiveness does not always require great detail, under most common usages of the term that I know of.
> This applies to scientists the same as any other commenters.
That is not at issue.
For the comment to count as substantive you have to explain something about why, and then you don't need the putdown part. People are slinging pejoratives and tropes like "pseudoscience" all over the internet. Adding "I'm a scientist" doesn't overcome this; besides which of course, anybody can say "I"m a" anything.
Because I used the word "pseudoscience" literally. Not as an insult, but as an academic word-label.
> People are slinging pejoratives and tropes like "pseudoscience" all over the internet.
Perhaps, but in this case, the most charitable reading is the literal one.
Deleted comment
I feel like we've drifted a bit, which is largely my fault, but the basic point is that when I look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38841126 - it's not a borderline case. That kind of comment isn't ok here.
Seems like he's doing the classic "management" tactic of setting targets, measuring progress, and coming up with models to best represent/simplify complex systems.
There is no way for regular people to "follow his protocol". But you can have shots of expensive olive oil and reap most of the benefits!
The community found what is likely the source of the olive oil, and surprise, it’s being sold at just about cost.
He created a team and measured his biomarkers, then came up with a strategy to improve them. That’s what blueprint is. You likely shouldn’t copy him, as you are not him, but some of the things, like improving sleep, exercising, improving nutrition, can be followed by many.
He’s just a rich dude focused on improving his health. It’s nice he’s publicly documenting his results, but it’s not expected for you to follow everything.
I don't get the claim he's doing this for science either because even if he lives a couple of extra decades (say to 100) it would be difficult to claim that his interventions did anything at all given no trends can be made from a single data point. And the bulk of any longevity gains is probably going to come from simple interventions like exercise and diet.
So I think you have to be cynical... I think you have to assume he's taking an extreme approach to gain some notoriety within the growing anti-aging community and is trying to leverage that for self-promotion and profit.
I mean, why is he being so public about this stuff anyway? The guy has a YouTube channel where he talks about all the things he's trying so it's not like this is simply something he is personally interested in and occasionally writing about. He's clearly making his self-experimentation a business and clearly wants people to follow his journey. For example, this isn't simply information, this is marketing material likely designed to be shared on social media, https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0128a596fea8b3a19e55...
I'm not hating though... I think it's kinda cool what he's doing honestly, but it's hard to not see this as a play for fame or clever marketing for a wellness / supplement business.
I have no idea about his health protocol, but I'm pretty sure a regular healthy life style (avoiding junk food + recommended dose of exercising) would give you the same results in term of longevity.
1. there seems to be a consensus about what a generally healthy life style is (see health organizations guideline), but no evidence that dosing the right vitamins and vegetables is going to make a significant difference. In that regards, this guy is basically experimenting some recipe on himself.
2. just by experience, we've all seen huge variation of life expectancy around us, some people die at 95, other at 75, and lifestyle didn't seem to be the only factor. There's so much randomness with genes, social relations, accidents.. that we'll never know whether his protocol provides any benefit
IMHO, this guy is just a snake oil salesman, and it works because of an illusion of control bias.
It will look to the future exactly like emperors drinking mercury to extend their lives. I love it.
To put it another way, pre-civilization life expectancy was somewhere around 30 years. Would it have been wise to say to someone who was trying to live to 60, "So what? We all knew we're going to die from the age of five or so. This is pointless."
I agree that sometimes these health protocols are excessive, and can be driven by fear of death, among other things. It's also uncertain how many years on average any given habit will add, and there are opportunity costs that need to be factored in. At the same time, I see this common knee-jerk response to dismiss any attempt to extend human life. Given the abysmal state of health of the average person, I think it's a good thing that some people are working on figuring out what contributes to optimal health.
You probably mean life expectancy at birth. The birth and childhood were pretty tough, but if you lived to adulthood, life expectancy was just a bit smaller.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-age-15
Go back 150 years and it was much more common.