Chapter 1: What motivates Bryan Johnson's longevity experiment?
Today's guest is a longevity expert. He's a health advocate. He's basically his own guinea pig. You know, he's kind of the doctor and Frankenstein in a way. He's an entrepreneur. He's been experimenting on himself, trying to beat the final chapter, the coffin. Yep. He wants to live forever and we're going to learn about it.
I'm grateful to have a conversation today, which we got to do quickly because I think he's got to be in bed at like 4 PM. I'm very happy that he's here. Today's guest is Mr. Brian Johnson. Yeah, this lemon water, dude, I drink this a lot. I hear that it's good for inflammation. Yeah. And I do a lot of fasting, and so that's been something that on a fast I will have this. Yeah. A certain amount.
I like the chunks of ginger, man. That's solid.
Oh, yeah. Do you chew on those? No. Yeah, have you done that? Nuh-uh.
It's good. Is that a thing, chewing on ginger chunks? Yeah. Wow. Never even thought of that. What do you know exactly what it does? You just feel the vibes of it.
Yeah. It's very strong vibe. So yeah. Yeah. It's a nice reward at the end. Like, let me give you a punch in the face. Ginger does something similar.
Hmm. Yeah. Maybe I'll throw one in the old, you feel better after doing it though. I just feel like I'm on, on, I have a plan and then I'm sticking to it.
So much of life is like that. If you like, kind of doesn't matter if it works, but like, it's like a thing is structured, planned kind of the thing.
Yeah. Well, it starts to give me a little bit like of integrity with myself, you know, and it becomes kind of a pattern. Um, that's been one of the toughest things I think for me. And I would guess probably for most people is just, uh, starting a pattern sometimes, you know?
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Chapter 2: What insights does Bryan share about his dietary practices?
Yeah, well, it's like, well, if I know if I have this to do tomorrow and it's a positive thing, then sometimes it's like if there's something negative the night before, I'm like, I can't do it. I already have a commitment, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it has been tough.
I go in spurts where sometimes it's better than others, but honoring commitments to myself and just building that integrity that I know I'm going to be here for myself every day, that's been a challenge for me. It's gotten better over time. But it's been a tough, that's been probably one of my tougher things. I would imagine it might be for most, for a lot of folks.
Yeah. Like the disconnect between like what you want to do and then what you actually do.
Yeah.
Which is like the human condition. It's like what our existence is defined by. And like how big is that divide probably determines if you're happy or not in life.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, that's one of the things that I think about the most is how far away am I from what I would like to be doing, what my behaviors would like to be. Yeah.
Where are you at now in life? Like, I mean, you've gone through various stages. How would you assess now?
Um... I think, like, with work, work and things like that have been good. You know, that stuff has been good. I think, you know, on the wellness side of, like, probably emotional wellness, you know, I've suffered with, like – or I've dealt with, like, a lot of, like –
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Chapter 3: How does Bryan Johnson measure the impact of food on health?
It's tiring to like repeat that again and again.
yeah yeah i think that is that's that's definitely true and then it's like you start to compartmentalize things okay well i'll just go on a date here or i'll just you know have this part of my um relationship or intimacy here and it's like you know and that's not uh that's not the healthiest way to operate either um but congratulations yeah they just showed your lady right there yeah it's kate tolo oh
Beautiful lady, man. Congratulations. You guys were smiling in that picture, too.
Oh, man. We have so much fun together. Oh, that's good. It's like I get teary just even talking about it. We laugh and play. It's just so good.
Yes, she really does something for you, huh?
She does, man. I wrote this up online. I was thinking I'm a big fan of Ernest Shackleton. And he was just a – The explorer? Yeah, exactly. So he did the trans-Antarctic expedition. He was trying to go shore to shore for the first time. So from top to bottom? Just down to the south pole from like one side to the other side. Okay, just at the south pole. Yeah. So they got the ship all prepared.
They got all their materials, like enough food and materials for the entire duration. They get stuck in the ice before they even get there, early winter. And then the entire book is about this insane survival story, like what they went through and not a single man in his crew died. But when you read what he went through, it's just unimaginable that they were able to endure these kinds of things.
And I know this is like, it's too dramatic of a comparison, but there was some similarities. I was thinking before, like, what does it feel like to not have deep companionship in my life where I've had relationships and they weren't good, right? They ended up being bad. And then having something that is good, it felt like I'm sure what Shackleton and his crew felt like.
putting their feet on land after being adrift in the ocean for, you know, I don't know what the total duration of time, maybe a year, but just like stable, sturdy, solid, you know, instead of like, what's happening today? What do I have to deal with? Is my life at risk? Like just all the emotional whiplash you get and like challenging.
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Chapter 4: What is Bryan's perspective on social media and its effects?
Yeah, yeah. It's just hiding. It will manifest in a few minutes.
That's what I was going to say there. When it starts to bubble up. Yeah, that's right. When your keeper, whoever's operating you on the app. That's right. Turns up the tip. And the mask slowly starts slipping. It's like. Oh, yeah, like your database is showing, dude, or something.
Yeah, exactly.
So just so our viewers know, and so many people know about you now, man, there's so many clips of you out there. You're kind of this astronaut that hasn't left the planet in a way, kind of, because it's like you're kind of using yourself as an experiment. That's what it seems. You're life-maxing. That's what people say.
Can you just explain to us kind of what your general sort of goal is or what your motive has been?
Yeah. So I'd say, here's an example for you. In 1870, the big talk of the town was there was this divide over this guy who had ideas that the reason why people were getting sick and dying is because of these microscopic objects called bacteria. And half the town was like, that's stupid as fuck. What are you talking about? The other half was like, honestly, that could be legit.
Now, they didn't have the ability to see these microscopic objects. But it turned out it's true. These microscopic objects are called bacteria, right? They can cause infection. So if you don't wash your hands in between surgery or when you're maintaining hygiene practices, you get infection and increase your risk of dying. And so that's the kind of example where a new idea showed up.
it was seen as crazy. And eventually it turned out to be true. And now today we're like, oh, of course. That happens every year. Every year, yeah, exactly. And so the idea I'm basically suggesting to the world is that we've reached a point of humans on the planet where we may not die. Now that sounds batshit crazy. Whereas in we can live forever. Not even forever, right?
Because it's kind of a concept we understand. It's just that we might be able to extend our lifespans to horizons where we can't really imagine. For example, like 150, 200, 500, 1,000, like some number we don't even know that breaks our brains. So it's just not like a 70 year expectancy, right? It's something much longer.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of sourcing and testing our own food?
So. We want to source our own food. We want to test it. I want to know what I'm putting in my body. And so we just, I've learned way too much. I'm like, I'm so jaded now. So the lentils, they were using human shit on their crops and it was getting into the lentils somewhat. That's why. Because otherwise, if you think about it, you're like, what foods naturally have high levels of blank?
Or like cocoa has high levels of heavy metals. It has high levels of cadmium naturally.
Chapter 6: How can we regain control over our health and diet?
But then people test that. They're like, here are the brand rankings. But then glyphosate can also be present. And so we found that the brand had the lowest levels of cadmium, had the highest levels of glyphosate by like 10x. They had an oat filler. So it was in the oats. And so this is the thing. Once you actually...
take a topic and you actually slice it up to capture the nuance, it's just the conversation online is almost never right. Like when the things that drain, that gain trendy popularity, it's almost always wrong.
And when you said that all, some of it almost is negligible then, because at a certain point, just overall, we are in a very tough spot with, um, yeah, with what is in our foods, no matter what.
A hundred percent. Like this, I'm saying like, it is, I don't, people are going to feel stressed about this conversation. So I want to like, make sure we close. I want to get, I want to, I want to get like a few tips where people can regain control of their life. Okay.
Cause I don't want to terrify. I know it's terrifying.
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Chapter 7: What are the key tips for improving sleep quality?
Well, one of the things that I even, I think you've already done is that's why you're saying like, okay. you may have this diet. If you have an olive oil that you take when you're eating, that it will lessen the effects of your diet on your system at the time. And those are the types of things that are kind of important.
It's like, okay, well, I know that even if some stuff I know is going to be not great for me, how do I at least just mitigate what's going on while our science hopefully gets uncompromised, while our food system hopefully gets uncompromised and we're able to get back into a better place. But you were saying, there are some things you want them to take away. Yeah. Okay, cool.
So here's like, uh, in short, um, this, this list of things will hopefully help people feel empowered and not anxious. So yes, there's like all kinds of shit to be aware of, but if you focus on these things, so one is I've learned out of all the things I've measured out of, I literally have like billions of data points on my body that, over the past five years.
If you distill that and say how many are useful signal, probably a few hundred million. But it's the largest data set in human history. The thing I care about the most is what is my heart rate before bed? It is like the most useful biomarker. And it's so easy because it's free.
So if you have a wearable, you can just pull up your phone, see if you're wearing, so you go, you lay down on your bed, take a few deep breaths, and you calm yourself down, and then you see a number. Let's say it's like 55 beats a minute or 60. Your goal in life now is to lower your heart rate. So you say you start off at 60 and a month from now be at 55.
And so the way you do that, one, is you have your final meal of the day four hours before bed. Yeah, I know, I know, I hear you. And no snacks? No snacks, no food. So if your bedtime's at 10, at 6 p.m., you're done. There we go, that's a great chart. Got it. So these are the things. So when you increase your heart rate before bed, it wrecks your sleep. Yes.
When you don't sleep well, your willpower falls off a cliff.
Mm-hmm.
So the next morning, when you're trying to decide, do you eat the croissant or the donut for breakfast or not? If you haven't slept well, you're like 90% more likely to eat the donut or the croissant. If you slept well, you have a little juice in the system. You're like, you know what?
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Chapter 8: How does AI influence our understanding of longevity?
No, it's not good for me. And I'm going to exercise, which then also increases your willpower. So you get this really positive loop. So all starts with sleep and sleep is determined by your heart rate. So for example, like, so four hours before bed, that is going to lower. So when you have that distance, it allows your body to digest the food.
It allows your body to say, I'm going to get ready for bed. So it lowers your body temperature, lowers cortisol, increases melatonin. So your body's in a much better state to go to sleep and stay in deep sleep. The second thing is your phone needs to be off an hour before bed. You can't be in bed scrolling, working, texting.
You need this separation because your body, the phone in hand is going to increase your cortisol, increase your sympathetic activation. You'll be more anxious. And so you need an hour of separation instead of the phone to go for a walk, talk to a friend, hang out, like breath work, meditation, read a book, like anything but be on your phone that will lower your heart rate.
And there's other small things. Like I do this nighttime discussion with, where I go to bed at 8.30. At 7.30 p.m., Sleep Brian comes on duty. And Sleep Brian is a version of me that defends my sleep. And so all the Brians line up. So Ambitious Brian lines up. He's always the first one. He goes to work. And he's like, I got a fucking banger idea, right? A brand new thing we're going to do.
And Sleep Brian says, we see you, Ambitious Brian. You're doing a good job in life. Keep at it, man. Also, We're getting ready for bed. So we're going to write down your idea and then tomorrow we'll come back to it. And ambitious Brian's like, are you sure? And sleep Brian's like, yeah, yeah, we got you. So then he walks away, then anxious Brian shows up.
And he's like, yo, today when you were with Theo, you said that thing and you were a jackass to him, right? It's like, thank you, anxious Brian. Great self-awareness. Appreciate you. We're going to write that down. We're going to hit Theo up tomorrow. Make sure we're all good. And they're like all the Brian's lineup.
And so, you know, this isn't even get Brian ever show up. He's like, Hey, stay up all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, this Brian is fricking leave me alone, Brian. Yeah.
So you'll see this, like whether you do this or something else, um, the way this manifests is if you don't do this, um, you put your head on the pillow and then you loop, right? Like you have these thoughts that just like go and go and go, and they're the same thoughts. And then you finally fall asleep, you wake up three hours later, there they are again, looping.
And so they cause your heart rate to go up, which causes your sleep to go down, which crashes your willpower, which crashes everything else. So by doing this like internal harvesting, like you're trying to clean up, you're lowering your heart rate, you're settling yourself down, you're getting to some point of reconciliation.
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