A Step-By-Step Blueprint For Longevity: The Most Advanced Age Reversal Strategies Known To Humankind

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, I kind of playfully say, blueprint is the best diet ever created for health in history. And if you want to prove me wrong, do so with your data. So I do so, like, with a half smile of like. Basically, we've tried to create this diet which produces perfect biomarkers, and we're just looking at the data, nothing else. There's no tribalism, there's no opinion. We're just watching the data. And in doing that, I did express a preference that we be plant based. It does not mean that meat is bad. It doesn't mean that it can't be done with meat. It doesn't mean that meat's not better. It just means I expressed a preference and said, is there evidence in the world that would allow us to build this protocol? And could we achieve basically perfect biomarkers across hundreds of variables by doing this?

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show. Well, I'm pretty excited, as a matter of fact, at the time I'm telling you this to my house this weekend. I've got two amazing scientists coming to visit and talk all about the latest and the greatest in ketone research. Both of these guys work with what I would consider to be one of the most cutting edge ketone companies out there. Now, ketones are basically a form of supplement that you can drink to shift yourself into ketosis and to get all the mental clarity, the athletic performance, and the metabolic health from ketones, but without doing things like never visiting an Italian restaurant, never having pasta or bread. Not that eating oodles of pasta and bread is good for you, but you get what I'm saying. We want to have even things like blueberry and sweet potatoes, but maybe also be able to unlock all the mental and physical power of ketosis. By the way, ketones are also great for fasting. They're also great for keeping your appetite satiated for an incredible period of time. Like when you're sitting on an airplane and you want to skip the airplane food that smells so good and that tastes so bad, or at least is so bad for you. You get what I'm saying? This drink is truly cutting edges. Ketone ester and HVMNs is called ketone IQ. They made it through a $6 million contract from the US Department of Defense and deep partnerships with some of the top researchers in ketone science. No insulin spikes, no caffeine jitters, no mid afternoon energy crashes. And they stand by their product 100%. If you don't like their ketone esters, your order's free. That's how much they believe in the power of ketones. You can get them online. I'll give you the URL in a second. You can also, if you live in California, lucky you, you can get them at California Earth Bar locations located within Equinox Gym and also at Sprouts grocery store locations. So there you have it. If you're in California. If you're not in California, also lucky you. Sorry Californians. Visit hvmn.combeng hvmn.combeng and use code BENG20 for 20% off any purchase of Ketone IQ. That's in exclusive offer for my podcast listeners. Hvmn.combeng and Use Code BENG20 for 20% off any purchase of Ketone IQ.

Hey.

So one of the biggest issues when it comes to aging, aging poorly that is, is what's called senescent cell accumulation. Senescent cell accumulation Senescent cells are often referred to as zombie cells. They're not all bad. As a matter of fact, they serve a purpose, just like inflammation serves a purpose. But if they remain in your body long after their functional lives, they can waste your energy and resources. And senescent cell accumulation can contribute to things like slower workout recovery and joint stiffness and discomfort and the kind of sluggish mental and physical energy you might associate with middle age. Now, senolytic ingredients, or so called senolites are these evidence backed molecules that help your body naturally eliminate senescent cells. So we're talking about things like fisetin, Piper longumin, Senactiv and a whole bunch of other research backed ingredients that help combat senescent cell accumulation. So this new product, you don't have to take it very often. A couple times a month you pop a few capsules and it nukes your senescent cells. That's a good thing. It's called qualia senolytic. They pack nine vegan, non GMO gluten free senolytic ingredients into one formula. And that provides you with the most complete senolytic support of any formula that currently exists on the market. And they're gonna give you 100 day money back guarantee and an additional 15% off if you go to neurohacker.com that's n e u r o hacker.com and use code senoben that's s e n o benurohacker.com and that's how you can get your sen essence cells, those zombie cells, nuked. What if I told you you could put on this little vibrating thing and it could shift your focus, your mood, your sleep, your recovery, near instantaneous drugs or supplements. It exists. It was actually developed by a MAPS researcher who's worked with a lot of plant medicines as a way to shift the physiology. And he realized, hey, you can do this with vibration too. Vibration on the wrist or vibration on the ankle. So he developed this thing and sure enough, it's called the Apollo Neuro. And Apollo users experience 40% less stress and feelings of anxiety on average. They've done partnerships with Aura to check on deep sleep. 19 crazy. 19% more deep sleep. On average, 11% increase in HRV, a marker of your nervous system resilience. Up to 25% more focus and concentration. I have mine scheduled. So in the morning it starts vibrating. Give me focus and concentration, wakefulness. About 8:30pm after dinner, I have it set to start to lull me into a relaxed mode. And then about 9:30, it shifts into sleep mode. If I wake up in the wee hours, I can push it again and it goes right back into sleep mode. This thing's amazing. You can wear it on planes. Oh my gosh, it's amazing on planes. Just go to nap, go to sleep. Just like that. Lulls you off. There's something crazy about these haptic sensations. I wish more people could experience this. You can. So unlike wearables that just track your biometrics, leaving you to decide how to act on the data. The Apollo actively improves your health. And the more you use it, the better you notice that it works because it trains your nervous system to get used to those vibrating cues. So you should check this thing out. I'm going to give you a discount on it. BG15 gives you 15% off. You go to Apollo Neuro. A P O l l o neuro n e u r-o.com BenGreenfield ApolloNeuro.com BenGreenfield Use code BG15 for 15% off. That's. Check it out. The Apollo. Super easy, super effective. You're gonna love it. All right, folks, if you're into longevity, anti aging, age reversal or anything of the like, you've probably come across this incredibly popular age reversal blueprint. There's a guy who is really making waves in the longevity realm. His name's Brian Johnson. Now this dude comes from a corporate background, not like a health and fitness background. He's probably best known for founding Braintree, which He sold to PayPal for like 800 million in 2013. And then he started to develop all these different technologies, including one called Kernel, which is super interesting, spelled the K, which is a company that's building advanced neural interfaces to augment human intelligence using what I mean by that is hardware and software systems to improve cognitive function. And this guy has a crazy protocol that he's doing to live an incredibly long time, or at least marry healthspan and lifespan in a really elegant and scientifically informed way. So I will link to his entire blueprint protocol and everything we talk about in terms of what he's done for age reversal, for gray hair reversal, for a decrease in his biological age, for massive improvements in fitness, in muscle composition, in fat percentage. He's aging slower now than the average 10 year old based on his data, and he slowed his pace of aging by an equivalent 31 years. And while I'm certainly, as I've said on podcast before, not a fan of simply living a long time just to do it and have bragging rights, this guy is like functional. He's a dad, he's running a big company, and he's doing some amazing things in the longevity realm. So we're super lucky to be able to tap into the brain of Brian Johnson. Everything I talk about on today's show you can find@bengreenfieldlife.com Brian Johnson and one last thing before we get to Brian. You know, I didn't want to talk over him too much, but I get a lot of questions about my own age reversal strategy. And while I don't have a comprehensive website like Brian does, that blueprint website where everything's laid out in great detail, I can share with you some of the big wins for me. So if you stay tuned for when Brian and I hang up and quit chatting to each other at the end of this podcast, I'm going to give you an overview of what my own longevity enhancing protocol currently looks like, from supplements to sleep habits to temperature regulation to workouts, et cetera. So should you be interested in that, just keep listening. When Brian and I finish chatting and again, all the shownotes are going to be@BenGreenfieldLife.com Brian Johnson.

Brian, first of all, welcome to the show. And second, I'm just curious how you got into all this. Man.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be hanging out with you. Maybe by mistake, I mean, I guess from a personal side, I was trying to fix a problem I had where I couldn't control my eating habits at Night it led me to be 60 pounds overweight and I was in a tough time of life. And then a second part of it was I was thinking about the future of humanity, of what does the future of our existence look like? And the two of them kind of collided into a practical way to solve my own problems and a philosophical thought process on how we might understand ourselves as a species going forward.

So for you, with this kernel company that you founded to kind of optimize cognition, which I'd be curious to learn just a little bit more about, is that what initially got you interested in studying up on the human brain, the human body?

I mean, it was a combination of if we zoom out on planet Earth, we try to contemplate what is the most important thing going on. I would say it's the creation of intelligence, where with computers and now artificial intelligence, the cost of manufacturing and distributing intelligence is going to zero. Intelligence is going to be everywhere. It will permeate all things. And with that is the case, contemplating what is our role going to be in this, we need to figure out a way to scaffold our progress, like in a way that is measured, quantifiable. And we can take one step. We can go version one to version two to version three. Not that we become our technology, but in a way where we can systematically evolve and improve ourselves. And so kernel was the idea that our mind is one of the most important things we have, but yet it's now currently one of the only things we can't routinely and reliably measure. And so to put it in practical terms, if you buy, I guess, a washer and dryer, you don't think whether it's going to fit through your front door. You just know it's going to because society has built engineering standards on you build a washer and dryer to this spec so it fits through everyone's doors and everyone's door is roughly the same size. If you could measure the mind, you could re engineer society around the mind, but we just don't know. We go by our feelings and so it's kind of a disaster. So kernel was a way to try to build the world's first mass market device that could measure the brain in the mind, basically be capable of measuring every brain in mind on planet Earth. So we built basically wearable fmri. It works. It took us five years. It was impossibly hard with the edge of physics, but it's now built.

You mean a wearable MRI like people would normally go and lay in one of those Big MRI chambers to do something like a brain scan. I actually did something like this down, down in Florida, this Fountain Life facility, and they did a whole scan. It was super interesting. As far as predictive data, what you're saying is you could do that same thing with a headset that you wear.

Exactly like a bicycle helmet. You just put it on your head and it scans. With our technology, we don't get the full depth of the brain. You're getting 15, 20 millimeters into the cortex. You're sacrificing deeper structures, but you're still getting entire cortex, which is something that just hasn't been possible. Whereas FMRI MRI is too expensive and too constraining to be practical for societal wide adoption. And EEG isn't good enough. We basically got right in the middle of it to say high enough quality that it's highly useful and also scalable for the entire world and also that you don't need surgery. And so I think we really threaded the needle nicely. Now we're onto the difficult part of can we figure out the first markets for adoption, which is always equally as hard as building the technology.

Yeah. Also doubles up as a protective device for your head during any mountain biking excursions. I saw you on the web, really expensive mountain bike. I saw you wearing it on your website, on the blueprint website. And by the way, folks, you're going to want to check it out. Brian's website. I'll link to it in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Brian Johnson, and his name spelled a Y by the way. Brian, I saw you wearing what, what I assume is the kernel on your website, like this big kind of bicycle helmet, techie looking device. But is that actually available for people right now or is it just all in, in beta and under wraps?

It's in clinical studies. So we have a few clinical partners where we're exploring early detection of cognitive decline and also depression. So we'll find a market somewhere in those areas. But yeah, it's not yet ready for a consumer device.

Okay. And I assume you probably scanned your own brain with it and I know you do a lot of self quantification. And actually before I even ask you about like your intriguing protocol which goes all over the map, I'm just curious if you could tell folks what it is that you've experienced as far as like the age reversal that you've quantified or perhaps qualify. Because honestly, for people watching the video, you look like you're like 16 years old. How old? Are you?

I'm 45, but right now, can you see my face? Can you see how it's all peppered up?

Well, I wasn't sure if it was the pixelation on Skype or if you'd done some kind of a facial protocol. What is going on? You almost look like a little bit Avatar Ish.

Yeah, if you look at my neck. I did a pretty intense laser treatment on Saturday, so 48 hours ago. And we have this new laser protocol we've been adopting, and the technician I have is wonderful. She tells me I have the highest pain tolerance she's ever upset anyone she's ever worked with, so she really gets after it. And so, yeah, Saturday was the most intense we've ever done. I mean, it felt like the worst sunburn I've ever had in my entire life for 24 hours. It just was excruciating. Now it feels a little bit better, but, yeah, I mean, I look like I basically got tattooed all over my face with this or these red dots.

Yeah. It's funny because I actually have a guy locally who does that, Cameron Chestnut. He's been on the podcast, and I've had a few celebrities come up and crash at my house to get their laser treatments, and they come back and it literally looks like their face is peeling. It's nasty. They're sunburned, they're embarrassed to go out in public. You actually don't look too bad, considering it's, what, Monday today and you did on Saturday. Yeah. So anyways, though, besides the spotted neck, you look pretty good, dude. So tell me about what you've experienced as far as your actual results.

I think the most interesting results we have are the reduction in the speed of aging. And so we use this algorithm using DNA methylation built out of Duke, called Denude and Pace. It's a longitudinal study out of New Zealand looking at five decades now. And they basically are trying to say, can you peg someone's the speed at which they're aging with this DNA methylation test? And we like it because we feel like epigenetic clocks are emergent. They're interesting. They're not yet gold standard. They're still a standard. This pace of aging has been highly responsive to all the things we're doing. So, in short, I've slowed my speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years, and I now accumulate aging damage slower than the average 10 year old. Now, a lot of people don't realize that 10 year olds accumulate aging damage. They do. We accumulate aging damage their entire life it just accelerates as we get older and compounds. And so I'm accumulating AG damage slower than 88%, 18 year olds and 90, I think 4% of people my chronological age.

Okay. I think actually that that clock that you mentioned, the dune and pace. Ryan Smith, who runs true age diagnostics.

Yes.

He sent me this website called Rejuvenation Olympics where it shows like all the different people with the top age reversal scores. I think you were at the top, but there's actually like this competition where you can see how slowly people are aging. And I think the way that I contextualize it, because I think I brought it up on a podcast before, was let's say that your rate is like, I don't know, 0.73 or whatever. That would mean you're only aging like what, 250, 260 days out of a 365 day.

Right? Yeah, that's how I've explained it to simplify it. That's right. So like every year I get September, October, November, December for free.

Yeah.

I launched the Rejuvenation Olympics with Ryan. And so the idea was to have some fun because as you know this band better than anyone in the world of anti aging, health and wellness, there is an endless number of choices for gurus. And the difficulty for the average person trying to decide what to do is what do you do and why? And I know like my parents are just totally confounded by this thing. And so I wanted to create a competition to say, all right, let's actually, let's put some numbers on the board. Let's have some fun and compete. So yeah, we created the rejuvenation olympics.com based upon DNA methylation. And so I did. Out of the 1750 people that have been measuring their speed of aging over a multi year period, I ranked number one as having reduced my speed of aging.

So you have kids, right?

I do.

Are they like jealous? Are they doing the same thing or are they concerned that their dad might eventually be younger than them?

They have different responses. My 17 year old is all in. He does everything that I do. My 19 year old's at college and it's difficult being at College. And my 13 year old daughter, she's got different priorities in life, but I mean, it's definitely a family conversation. It's fun. Over the holidays we did a Rejuvenation Olympics as a family. So we did like sit and reach, we did grip strength and a few other things. So we play around with it a lot. It's just part of our culture. It's family, it's fun, but it's also like, it's a big contrast. Like, my son took what I call this super veggie to school, lunch them every day, a bunch of vegetables. And his friend tweeted out, taking a picture of him eating it. I don't know what's wrong. Wait, what did he say? This boy's been eating this every day for the past month. I don't know what's wrong at home. I hope everything's okay. But it was just like, it was so jarring for his friend that he was eating vegetables in comparison to his friends eating Doritos pizza and soda for lunch, that he was like, what's wrong with him? Is he okay?

Yeah, yeah, actually, that leads in. So I wanted to ask you, what does your diet look like? Before we talk about fancy supplements and hacks or anything else, I'm just curious what you eat in a typical day.

2,000 calories. It's a primarily vegetables, berries, nuts, and seeds. So for breakfast, it's a broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, garlic, ginger, mushrooms. Then for midday, the second meal of the day, it's macadamia nuts, flaxseeds, walnuts, pomegranate seeds. And then the final meal of the day is just the vegetables, berries, and nuts. And then, yeah, take 100 supplements, but, yeah, 2,000 calories.

Oh.

Then I take three tablespoons of olive oil, so 45 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil and then dark chocolate for a total of 2,000 calories.

Oh, amazing. I could get on the olive oil dark chocolate bandwagon. Actually, I think I heard you talking about that at one point. And obviously I've seen a lot of other stuff on cacao, flavanols, and some of the omega 3s and benefits of olive oil, and started putting about a tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkled up dark chocolate in my morning smoothie. And you feel absolutely fantastic with that. But is it literally the same thing every day for you?

Yes, except for the third meal, which varies every day, it is. So 75% of what I eat every day is the same.

Even on days that you work out, do you adjust calories at all or is it just like same thing?

Yeah, that's the thing that surprised me. It's no matter what, I do the exact same thing every single day. And we have this experiment. Could I basically be plant based? Could I be 2000? Could I work out for an hour a day? If we just hit autopilot and let it run. What would happen? And so far so good. We can't find any deficiencies in everything. We did a full body MRI of fat muscle across my entire body. We're measuring hundreds of biomarkers. We're measuring, we're optimizing them for optimal clinical outcome ranges. So it all looks fine. There's a few things we had to crack for. Like when you're on caloric restriction, your testosterone goes down. So I do trt with the patches, but other than that, seems like everything okay.

Yeah. Yeah. And as far as like what you described for your meals, I mean it sounds like a little bit of like a typical vegan esque diet. And it also sounds though like you're taking some of the steps. It sounds like some of this stuff is like fermented or in its whole food source and not necessarily ultra processed, but possibly even like more bioavailable through fermentation or whatever. Like have you taken a dive into the why behind each of those meals or is this just like what you like to eat?

No, it definitely is. So the, the calories we have because it's 2,000 calories, every calorie has had to fight for its life. Every single ingredient is based upon evidence. And so from the broccoli and the cauliflower and the black lentils, it's not to say that they're the only thing that can be done, it's to say that they are a thing that can be done. And so we say food in and the output is the few hundred biomarkers and we say are they pegged in the optimal clinical outcome range? So for example, like this week I was looking at my liver enzyme, some altogether AST GGT and I think this number was 49. And I tweeted that out and I said, does anyone else have a better liver enzyme sum than this? We really are looking at the outputs of do the biomarkers hit the ranges we think are optimal. Again, if you look at my pace of aging, my liver markers, or hundreds of other markers, they're all ideal. Certainly diet has some relationship with that. And none of these things were really based upon my genetics or anything of the sort. It was just we found evidence that, you know, ingestion of these things had these relationships with these certain markers. So I don't eat anything that we can't measure.

Yeah, most 45 year old dudes who are working out an hour a day would be kind of hungry on 2000 calories. Like are you hungry all the time? Really?

Yeah. And that's the thing that's been really interesting is I've been waiting for my body to recalibrate and say actually we're okay. You know, like we don't need food. Because my body fat hovers around 5% or so. But I still have the under. I don't have any drawbacks. I'm not experiencing any symptoms. As far as we can tell from all the data, everything is working as expected.

Yeah, I did notice you said on the website that your body temperature is running cooler than when you first started, which obviously can sometimes indicate a slight drop in the metabolic set point, which could mean your body kind of like adjusted to that lower calorie intake. Do you think something like that could have happened?

Yeah, quite possibly. I mean, so routinely when I measure my. Every single morning when I wake up, I measure my, my waking body temp and it's, you know, routinely 95.9, 96.1. And that was never the case before. And so. Yeah, possibly, yeah.

Do you take anything for thyroid or, or like iodine or anything like that?

I do, yeah. 125 MTGs of iodine. And then I also take. I got diagnosed with hypothyroidism when I was 21, so I've been taking levothyroxine and armor thyroid for the past 20 years.

Okay.

But all thyroid levels, T3, T4, TSH, they're all normal.

Okay, got it. And that body fat percentage is, is pretty low as well. You know, it's pretty rare actually that I interview somebody who has kind of like the same issue as I do. Like the difference between you and me is I eat like a horse, it seems, but my body fat percentage just ranges like 5 to 7% to. People always ask me, dude, why do you starve yourself? I'm like, I don't. I'm just. That's my leanness, you know, based on DEXA scans and everything. And it just is what it is.

Yeah. What's your caloric intake?

Oh, I range from 3,000 to 3,500 calories a day and I do a lot of. It looks like the type of like Mediterranean and Asian type of vegetable and plant forward foods as you do. But I also like my. I have the same thing for breakfast every morning. For me it's a raw liver smoothie with bone broth and colostrum. So it is a little bit more like nose to tail meat base. And in the afternoon, my lunch is usually like a really good cut of fish served over vegetables or miracle noodles or Japanese yam. Or something like that. And then dinner is widely varied, but it's always a very good like grass fed, grass finished meat or pastured pork or something like that with roasted vegetables. Honestly, like even on that calorie intake I'm still kind of hungry. But I use these, these drinkable ketones. Have you ever messed around with ketones to keep your appetite satiated in between those meals? I have, yeah. Interesting DNA protective effect and I, I think they actually definitely play a role in, you know, in a longevity based diet. Do you like them?

We tried it and they spiked my liver enzymes.

Oh really?

Yeah. So immediately we discontinued them. After 19 days they spiked it from. It was like 200 in 19 days.

Yeah, that's some. Sometimes agents that upregulate autophagy cause a short term rise in liver enzymes. So it could have possibly been the case. So you also said that you take a hundred different supplements a day.

That's right.

How do you decide what it is that you're going to take from a supplement standpoint?

The same as the diet. Every single supplement has to justify its existence. It has to fight for its life. And everything needs to be measured. And so nothing is included because it's trendy or cool or sounds interesting or because others do it. Everything has evidence, everything has an endpoint. And if we can't measure the endpoint, we don't do it. And so they're all tied. So the basics like you would expect a D and a C and an E. But then others like metformin, rapamycin, acarbose, everything has a purpose and it's just kind of grown to about 100.

Are there any in particular that supplements that you use that you really feel like that are non negotiables for you as far as not keeping your fingers crossed that they might be having a protective effect or a longevity enhancing effect, but you're just like, I feel amazing when I take these particular supplements.

The only thing I feel that way about is my sleep. I sleep, I just can feel maybe you like me. I can just feel it so thoroughly. If I get a bad night's sleep, my next day is wrecked. But otherwise I don't eat junk food. My diet's so stable. I don't think I really necessarily fill the supplements. I don't recall a time when I could.

Sandra Kaufman, who has a pretty good anti aging protocol in a book and is also somebody who I've interviewed in the past, kind of like priority ranks a host of different longevity enhancing compounds like astaxanthin NAD C60, et cetera. Of the supplements that you take, would you say that certain ones have really leapt out to you as hell? Yeses. In the longevity category and in terms of the research that you've seen or the effects on your own age reversal.

My team has systematically reviewed every lifespan study and every health span study and then systematically ranked each one according to the evidence and assessed each one according to the quality of the trial that was run. And then we stack rank all the studies, look at all the evidence and we try to prioritize which evidence we think is worthy and then we take those and then it's also, is it an animal model as a human? And then we go from there. And so we've tried to go from highest value add and work our way down. Yeah. So I guess the protocol is built based upon that methodology.

Yeah, that's interesting. It's very, very data driven. And you've mentioned a couple times you have a team. Is this like the team at colonel who's kind of like moonlighting, overseeing your health protocol or do you actually have a team that you've specifically hired just to like manage Brian Johnson and measure Brian Johnson?

Yeah, there's several full time and then several part time. So like the 30, for example, we have an EPIC 5 ultrasound machine here at the House medical grade system and we have several sonographers, we have one that specializes in the heart, one that does musculoskeletal, and one that does all other organs of the body. And so that's for example, three members of the team. And so it's basically built up on everyone we need for every organ and every diagnostic protocol we have. And because we do full body ultrasound on a regular basis, we need to have that kind of expertise that can do it. And we don't want an MSK person to be doing a cardiac. We really want a person that is absolute expert in their given area. We value really measurement above all. That's the whole thing that enables blueprint. If, if I can't measure anything I'm doing, it's very hard for us to know the cause and effect relationship.

And I assume you're tracking and measuring your sleep because you mentioned that as being something that's really important to you. I'm curious how you set up your sleep. Like, are there any particular steps that you take to optimize sleep?

Yeah, I mean it's honestly the number one priority of life. Because I, I know from my personal experience, Matthew Walker said this, that the difference between hope and despair is a good night's sleep. That is definitely the case with me. I mean like life feels doable and amazing with a good night's sleep and without it it feels irritable and frustrating. Nothing affects my conscious experience of reality more than sleep. And so as a result I make it my number one priority. So I do all. I mean I basically built my life around sleep. So all the things you would expect. Like I stopped eating around noon or so. So I have 10 hours of fasting that allows my resting heart rate to get to about 45 or so before I go to bed.

Wait, I got to interrupt you real quick. So all three of those meals you're having before noon?

Yeah, yeah. Six a.m. to noon roughly is my eating window.

So a six hour compressed feeding window. Wow.

Yeah.

And sorry, one other question related to that before we get back to sleep. So are you eating that first meal right when you get up or are you waiting a little while until after you've kind of gotten that cortisol awakening response.

I drink what I call the Green Giant when I wake up. This concoction of collagen, peptides and amino acids, creatine, cinnamon and spermidine via chlorella powder. I take 150 some odd supplements. Then I work out and then I eat breakfast around 7 8. I eat my next meal around 9 or 10, the final meal around 11 12.

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So back to your sleeping protocol. You finish eating at noon and that obviously can help with body temperature. And I'm the opposite by the way. I'm hypoglycemic and wake up at like 2am Unless we have these big glorious family dinners at like seven. And so it's a little bit different than me. I've, I've, I've experimented with the compressed feeding windows. I usually have my first meal around 10 or 10:30am Right before I jump into a podcast like this and then I'm generally kind of shutting off calories around 8:30. But I've got you know, a solid 10 hour feeding window compared to your 6 just because like if I, if I eat as early as noon, I can't sleep. But you seem to do okay with it.

Yeah, it's actually better. Yeah. So you're saying your first meal is around 10, your final meals around 8 or so?

Yeah, exactly. So, so leading up to sleep, are you doing any type of, anything from like biohacks, mats, you know, the cold water devices, supplements, things like that to enhance sleep.

It's really analog so I just, it's a one hour before sleep I try to turn off. So I'll hang out with my family, we'll stretch, talk, read, watch something just low key. But I try to basically stop the world in its tracks because I know that when I lay down and go to sleep and I work up until that very moment, whatever I'm ruminating on of all the to do's or like some fire that I need to put out or like whatever high stress situation that's on my mind, I'll dream about it all night. I'll be have a restless night if I can have that one hour to wind down and just kind of tune out the world. I get high quality sleep. So one hour is a non negotiable. And then I do small things like blue eye blocking glasses. I'll take 300mcgs of melatonin. So I don't really do a whole lot. I think what I really win at is it's every single night is the same. So the routine never deviates. My lifestyle built in a way where I don't have things that are disrupting it like alcohol or not eating pastas or something like that that also have negative effects. I have a blacked out bedroom. So it's really a hinge, just the consistency of the routine. My body expects it and it's in a system now where every night I get high quality sleep. And for my entire life I never could knock out high quality sleep. It was like a roll of the dice every night I had no idea what was going to happen. But now it's just every single night it's high quality.

Wow, what's a blackout bedroom?

Oh, just there's no light.

Okay. So it's not like full on like EMF kill switches, Faraday cages, stuff like that. Just like no light.

Yeah, actually fancy discovery now.

I mean you lie, but I actually have a kill switch in my bedroom and then a push button remote control, Faraday canopy I had to make it look aesthetically pleasing for my wife and everything. So it's like a princess poster bed, and you push the button, you cannot send a text message, you cannot take a phone call, and you're completely cut off to anything electronic the entire night in that thing. And my only complaint about it is it gets a little bit muggy if my wife's at home and sleeping in bed because she's like a freaking furnace with her metabolism while she sleeps. So I have a little oscillating fan on one of the bed posts, and that keeps the air circulating. But. But for me, that's amazing because I can just be totally cut off from electricity during. During my night of sleep, and it seems to help a lot. What. What time do you go to bed?

Around 8, 8:30.

Okay. And I. I'm assuming you're doing, like, eight hours?

Yeah.

Okay. All right, cool. Do you. Do you do any, like, napping or siestas or anything like that?

Nope. I try to avoid it because. Yeah, keep. It messes things up.

Yeah. Our protocols are a little different because I. I go to bed typically by the time I get the kids to bed and have done some reading and stuff, you know, I'm usually asleep by 9, 45, 10. But then I usually get up around 3:45 or 4, just because that allows me time for my spiritual practice and my me time and, you know, prepping for the day and some of the early work. But then every day after lunch, usually either in the hyperbaric chamber or. Or on this, like, big. Are you familiar with pulse electromagnetic field frequency? Like these PEMF mats? Yeah. So I'll lay on one of those or climb inside the hyperbaric chamber, and I'll do about an hour of meditation or yoga nidra or something like the braintap device, which is like a light sound hypnosis device. And the reason that I've developed that protocol is it's a little bit of a hack because it buys me an extra hour to an hour and a half every day, because even though on paper, I'm shorting myself on sleep during the night sleep cycle, I'm getting what feels like a full sleep cycle or two in the afternoon, which is an hour dedicated to that. So it's. It's kind of. It's not quite that. Like that uberman sleep cycle that some people talk about, but it's. For me, it frees up so much productivity.

Do you find that in these rhythms, your markers change with these protocols?

You mean sleep specifically or.

Yeah. I mean, just that the things you're watching, your measurement are they. Do they track with these things?

Yeah, typically, as long as I get that, that siesta in what I track would be like the aura rings, resting heart rate, readiness score based on heart rate variability, sleep cycles, et cetera. It does fine if I don't get that nap in, obviously. And I'm short doing that short of a sleep cycle. Everything goes to crap after a couple of days. So it is kind of hypercritical. To make sure my team knows, don't schedule Ben for anything between about 2 and 4pm Cause that's kind of the time that I'm tucked away. So I understand that you mentioned that you work out for about an hour a day. I'm curious how you developed your workout protocol and what it looks like.

Basically, I try to flex and stretch every muscle of my body and so it's about 40 movements. Inspired a lot by my knees over toes.

Oh, you mean Ben Patrick?

Yeah.

Oh, he's great. Like, yeah, he's been on the podcast before and his protocols are amazing for especially what you're talking about, the longevity stuff. So tell people about it.

Yeah. So Ben's wonderful friend and so he, he came, hung out with me and showed me some of his stuff, which was wonderful and appreciated. And so it's 40 things. It's upper body, lower body, cardio, flexing, stretching muscle. So it's really. I'm not necessarily, I guess the other day this youtuber came and visited me and he's like, hey, but wait a second. What if you're dropped into the middle of the jungle and you need to fight a wild animal? Well, I don't know, I'm, I might.

Get eaten pretty far fetched. Hypothetical.

But I was like, you know, like I really, I'm. I'm optimizing for a singular thing, which is my speed of aging. I'm not trying to do an ironman. I'm not trying to be dropped in with another wild animal. And so everything I'm doing for the routine is all about that. And so we really watched the evidence on what would a, you know, an elite athlete in their early twenties be capable of in basic things like a single rep, bench, single rep, leg press, sit and reach, VO2 max, all the above. So we watch those variables as the guiding pose. And then we also use ultrasound, for example, and look at my tendons and ligaments and whatnot. So we watch my body change as the exercise protocol.

Is it the same like your nutrition every day? The way you work out?

Yes.

So every single day of the week it's the same?

Yes.

Interesting. My workout routine, it's, it's similar from week to week, but definitely not the same every day. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this since I kind of hung up the hat myself on athletics. Namely for me it was obstacle course racing and Ironman triathlon. And now mostly it's just pickleball and walking and a little bit tennis. I've adapted my routine to really be based around two primary modalities. Blood flow restriction training. I don't know if you've messed around with that at all, like these Katsu bands or anything that kind of increases lactic acid in the muscle and increases blood flow to the brain, et cetera, post workout. And then single set to failure training for which I use one of these big, it's called an ARX device. It's a 2 horsepower engine that just completely exhausts each muscle group in about two minutes. And so three days a week I do the single set to failure training and then I use this thing called a Vasper that circulates cold water through blood flow restriction bands for a 21 minute hit workout. And so that's typically Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are all sauna, cold breath work, walking and tennis or pickleball. And then some days a free day off day for Frisbee, golf or whatever. But that single set to failure training using something that magnifies, you know, via from a supra maximal standpoint, the eccentric load like the ARX or there's another device called the X3 bar. You've probably seen the toenail before. That wall mounted device that kind of throws you around. That combined with the BFR training are two things that are really the staple of my program. And it is kind of the same Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday split. But have you messed around with much of that? Like the single set, the failure or the blood flow bands?

We looked at the blood flow bands. We couldn't find the evidence to justify it.

Okay, so even from the fitness standpoint, you pretty much have your team looking at evidence for every last move that you do.

Everything. Yeah, and it's like, it's not the, like, I guess the reactions that I hear to blueprint, you know, I'll say I'll do a given thing. Like I do the same thing every day, seven days a week. And then inevitably you'll get like 100 responses. But wait, what about, you know, and. Yeah, there's a million. Wait, but what about Things and that one can consider or do or shortcomings or this or that. And the objective is not to say that we've covered every possibility in the universe on what can be done. It's just simply to say we have a very specific goal of trying to slow down the speed of aging and reverse aging damage that has happened. And we're trying to do things that have evidence because we're measuring hundreds of biomarkers and we're tracking them. And so if something has the evidence to get into the conversation, we look at it. Blueprint is different in that we're so focused on this specific objective that leaves a lot of people confused with their weight, what abouts they don't understand how we're guiding our objectives on this thing.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm curious, you know, from the blueprint standpoint, you talked about the kernel, which is obviously a piece of technology that you're using for your brain. I mentioned the hyperbaric and the PEMF for example. But are there any technologies whether it be for recovery or for longevity or for immunity or anything else that you, that you use on a regular basis?

I mean, I guess the. Yeah, the major pillars we've got diet, the pills, we've got the prescriptions which is rapamycin, metformin, a carbose, I'm taking Alpha Estradiol 17 Alpha E2.

Okay.

Which is the non feminizing estrogen. Yeah, those are the big ones. Yeah, that we're doing. Than exercise and sleep.

Yeah, so. So you don't, you don't use anything like, you know, because you hear a lot of people in the longevity world, including myself, of course I've talked about this before. Hyperbaric chamber for example, or you know, infrared sauna or like heat cold therapy modalities like that. Do you mess around with any of that stuff?

We just completed a, an extensive look at hyperbaric and we couldn't find the evidence to do it. In our analysis it appeared as if it was interesting for acute injury, but we couldn't find it for rejuvenation and so we didn't move forward with it.

Yeah, I think that from a tissue oxygenation standpoint it has some utility. And this is for me based on just N equals one anecdotal information. Because on the Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday that I do breath work, it's kind of like the bonding activity that I do with my sons. So I have 15 year old twin boys and we go into the sauna and just sweat our eyeballs out and do anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes of breath work. And we especially focus on the inhale locks and the exhale locks. Whenever I'm using the hyperbaric chamber regularly, I get an extra 30 to 40 seconds on my exhale and typically an extra 10 to 20 seconds on my inhale. So I know there's something going on from an oxygenation standpoint, even though I'm using a, you know, a home unit that only goes up to about 1.5 atmospheres. And I think for me, the other thing is I used to have one of those float tanks. You've probably seen those before. The upkeep on it was horrific, but it was nice to be locked away with nobody being able to bug you. For me, the hyperbaric chamber, since I'm using that in the afternoon for relaxation, is kind of similar. You got to zip yourself up, you can't hear anything outside. And it's almost like a self inflicted sensory deprivation chamber. And there's something about yoga nidra or self hypnosis or these light sound stimulating machines that when combined with the oxygen mask, just allow you to check out and drop ruminating thoughts almost right away. So for me, it's a very, very relaxing session for the day.

Yeah, but I would imagine people visiting you. You're like P.T. barnum's circus coming to your home with all your stuff with your Faraday cage and whatnot. I'm sure it's going to be very exciting for people to see all the infrastructure you've built. What opinions do we hear people expressing?

Yeah, I mean, typically, like if I'll have a podcaster come up to my house to record a show or company over, they do what we do, you know, they do what the family does. So, you know, I'll lay them out on like the sound healing table and turn the PMF mat on and let them kind of do like a little 15, 20 minute journey on that. They'll climb in the hyperbaric chamber for their naps. They use this thing called a biocharger in the basement that it's like an electrical medicine modality. You know, before dinner we'll typically have like breathwork parties in the sauna and then go jump in the cold pool and you know, they'll use the vest burn the different machines. So it's just kind of, it's kind of fun. It's just like a wacky adventure. And you know, people inevitably wind up feeling pretty good. But of course, you know, I balance that out. Like we meet for family meditation every morning at 7:30 and family music time and story time and prayers and more meditation in the evening. And we have many, many special comings and goings as a family. You know, at 7pm all work gets shut off and we just have this massive glorious family dinner. Playing games, talking, playing table topics, et cetera. And you're no doubt familiar with a lot of the longevity enhancing effects of just not being lonely. Right. And prioritizing relationships. So like from a softer side of things, do you, do you focus on much of that like, like the relationship or the happiness piece from a more psychological or spiritual standpoint?

I do, yeah. My community has been, I've kind of been throughout different communities of my life. I was raised in a deeply religious community. That was actually pretty amazing to be inside the only as I grew older I kind of learned the trade off where if you're in a certain group, there's an out group in group good, out group bad, you know, or like you want the out group to become the in group. And then I've kind of moved throughout various communities throughout my life and I feel like I'm. I'm now in a good spot where I'm creating a new community around this new way of being. It really takes a lot of synchronization because if I'm going to bed at 8 or 8:30, a lot of the activities that are societal norms would just not be conducive. And so building community around people who are also on the same page has been really great. So I'd say it's been nice to settle in because then basically I've had to get a resynchronization with people who are cool with this kind of thing and I'm there now. So it's been a nice recalibration.

Yeah. What's it like with your kids? Like are they joining in a lot of these activities with you? Are they still preparing their own meals? Or how do you align this with your children real quickly? The reason I ask is like at our house it's kind of like the shoemaker's wife wears no shoes. Like my wife doesn't have anything on her side of the bed for sleeping. She's very analog like you. You know, my sons will sometimes take some of the supplements that I set out for them and encourage them to take based on some of the genetic testing that they've done. But I mean they're eating cinnamon rolls and mom's sourdough bread and pretty carboholic diet all day long, whereas I'm kind of Keto. And you know, the family kind of sort of watches what I do, but doesn't engage with that much of it. How's it look like in your house?

My 17 year old basically does everything I do, which is great. He does this by choice, so he's invited to participate and I'll support him. But it sounds like you do the same thing I do. I'm pretty hands off. But I'd say in the house we don't have anything that one can be naughty with. If you go into the pantry and you're feeling naughty, you can drink olive.

Oil or take some supplements or some dark chocolate. Dark chocolate you could be a little naughty with.

Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. 100% dark chocolate. But it's just nothing. And so that's one of the rules I have in the house is we just don't want to keep that stuff around because it's just no good.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I'd say the family, you know, they all have their different. They're in their different places in life, different priorities. They're dealing the best in the circumstances they're at. But generally my son and I, we're kind of in synchronization on doing this together.

Yeah. And I know people are going to ask, so I'm going to beat them to the punch. Are you particularly selective about your olive oil and your chocolate? And if so, what kind of metrics do you look for?

We're extremely particular about everything. And so we think about this really as five levels. So if you start at the level one, you say chocolate is good for you. That may lead someone to believe a Snickers bar is okay because at least some portion of that bar is chocolate. Level two is dark chocolate. Level three is dark chocolate undutched. Level four is dark chocolate undouched without heavy metals. And the fifth is dark chocolate undutched non heavy metals with high polyphenol. And so we, with every single thing we do, everything is five layers deep. And so nothing gets a cursory look for every single protocol. And so, yeah, we source our chocolate and olive oil from all over the world. It's been really hard to find the performance specs on those things. It's so hard so that we're actually going to. We. Since blueprint became better known, we're going to make these available as products because we ourselves had so much difficulty trying to find the product specs that we needed ourselves. Yeah, we're just gonna make it easy for others. But yeah, those two are such Important inputs of diet and they're so hard to get.

Yeah, yeah. And when you say undutch just for people who might raise an eyebrow and understand what that is, what's that mean?

So there's an alkalization, Alkal. Alkalinization process that can happen that can eliminate a lot of the benefits. And so there's a way the chocolate needs to be managed so you get the highest nutritional value.

Okay.

And they do it to, to eliminate the bitterness.

Okay, I got. When was the last time you had meat? Or have you always been plant based eater?

I ate meat my whole life up until two years ago.

Okay.

I kind of playfully say blueprint is the best diet ever created for health in history. And if you want to prove me wrong, do so with your data. So I do so like with a half smile of like. Basically we've tried to create this diet which produces perfect biomarkers and we're just looking at the data, nothing else. There's no tribalism, there's no opinion. We're just watching the data. And in doing that, I did express a preference that we be plant based. So it does not mean that meat is bad, it doesn't mean that it can't be done with meat, it doesn't mean that meat's not better. It just means I expressed a preference and said, is there evidence in the world that would allow us to build this protocol and could we achieve basically perfect biomarkers across hundreds of very variables by doing this? Yeah, that's, that's it. So just a preference on my side, but I would love to see someone else do it on meat and see what data it produces.

Yeah, that'd be interesting. You know, I didn't, you know, I've been thinking about that myself because I've seen your protocol and of course, as I've alluded to have some different things that I do, but the meat part of what I do is, is what I would consider to be a very healthy approach to meat. Very glycine rich, including a lot of organ meats, a lot of bone broth, a lot of really clean fatty fish, and really not very much methionine rich meat. I don't do a lot of red meat, I don't do a lot of, you know, the dirty bird, the poultry. Like for me it's a lot of bone marrow, bone broth, organ meats, fatty fish, and, and clean products primarily. But you know, it kind of, kind of makes me think about this idea of like biochemical individuality, you know, and certain people Obviously responding differently to different protocols. You know, if someone were to come to you because it sounds like maybe they have, I mean, like, hey, I want to follow the blueprint protocol A to Z. Do you ever consider about their body perhaps responding differently to the supplement regimen or the dietary regimen or the exercises than you?

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So the blueprint is basically just a, a demonstration of evidence and measurement. That's it. It's just saying let's have a discussion on what we do and why we do it based upon data. That's all I'm trying to do. Just eliminate human opinion, eliminate tribal warfare. Just look at the data. And the data is the strongest thing we have because we know where optimal clinical outcome ranges are. We know that that data is very good.

Yeah.

And so really just is trying to move health and wellness away from a religious style, infighting and tribalism, warfare between humans and to be a dispassionate scientific endeavor of what actually achieves the results that we care about.

So if somebody were like, I don't know, riding on an elevator with you maybe a little bit longer than 30 seconds and you were to be able to tell them, hey, these are no matter whether or not you follow some of the nitty gritty details of the blueprint diet, these are the huge wins behind the blueprint protocol. For example, you've established that sleep is one. Would there be others that you're just like, yeah, these are non negotiables?

Yeah, I would say actually the most powerful anti aging protocol is to stop self aided destructive behaviors. We are a society that is addicted to self destructive behaviors. So eating too much, eating junk food, not prioritizing sleep, skipping exercise, infinite scroll, binge watching content, smoking, drinking. I think we all intuitively feel that we're kind of helpless against our own selves. That if we get ourselves in a situation where our mind gets to decide whether we do this naughty thing or not, we're going to lose most of the time. And that we're just, we're unreliable creatures by default. If we subconsciously process that and we say, well if we're not reliable, we ignore it and we try to bury it. But I'd say that even more positive than trying to take a supplement or two or this or that thing is to try to stop the self destruct behavior. So most of the time, as you probably experience yourself, is when I talk about blueprint, you get these very common responses of but wait, what about. And then the person brings their thing to you that they're interested In Right. And then secondly is like, you know, what is your opinion versus nr nmn. And then when I get into a debate of some specific thing or the.

Famous will X, Y or Z break my fast.

Yeah, exactly. You get the same questions every time. Meanwhile, and this is nothing about them. This is like me too. Right. You've got a bag of Doritos in your arm, it's 3am and you can't stop watching videos or whatever. And so the thing really that I found to be most powerful for me in my life was getting control of my own self destructive behavior opened up everything else. But it's not something I could have fixed by trying to cover it up by some positive things. I really had to stop it at its root.

Yeah. So it sounds like to me more, more of an omission approach than the commission approach. It's less of the do this and take this supplement, then don't do these specific self destructive behaviors.

Exactly. I mean I would say if you put these, if you look at these things and try to say what are, where are the power laws? And everybody wants the power laws. Yeah, I'd say my guess would be the power laws are in stopping bad things.

Yeah. And that, that makes sense. You mentioned like Doritos. I mean there are biggies that I think most people are aware of. Ultra processed foods, vegetable oil, poor sleep. Are there destructive behaviors that you think fly under the radar or that more people should at least be aware of.

In a couple weeks time? I'm, I'm wanting to get a group of people together, like maybe a few hundred people and working on people eliminating SAD from their life, self aided destruction. And so we could start with the basics we all agree upon, like eating junk food is not good, eating too much food is not good. Skipping sleep is not good, skipping exercise is not good. So like just like we're all cool there and then there's like a second layer where it's gray area, you know, like is social media engagement good or bad? For how long? What ways? Like you know, there should be a lot of disagreement and the science isn't that great. And then gaming is that good? For how long? What types? You know, like same thing. But basically just try to refocus the health and wellness community counterintuitively away from positive actions of taking supplements or doing this and that and moving in the other side of stopping bad things. And I want to have five different behavioral therapy coaches present their different schools of thought, whether it be CBT or something else. And then they present their school of thought and say like I, you know, this is my methodology, this is my practice, here's what I do. If this is interesting to you and it appeals to you for your personal type, come hang out with me for a month. And then we just do this fun experiment where we just try to bring awareness to how many things are we all doing in our daily lives. And I would say the easy bifurcation is if an activity accelerates your speed of aging, it's self aided destruction. If it slows your speed of aging, it's rejuvenative in nature. And because we've been using this so much in our own work, you're basically just looking at information theory. Are you causing entropy to happen at an accelerated pace or not? And are you causing information loss in your biological systems? Outside of that, we can put other abstract layers on top and say gaming blank, social media blank, whatever. But really, if you're just getting a biochemical reaction accelerate or slow it on aging period, and you have a fork and you point in different directions. But to me that would be really cool. That was the thing that got me on this path is getting my head around self destructive behaviors. Because no matter how many times I woke up in the morning, I was like, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to eat well all day. I would just blow it in some moment of weakness, everything would go out the door. Maybe others will experience something similar, maybe not, but that's something to try.

Yeah, two, two people that come to mind. They'll be interesting from a researcher standpoint. Well, one, one researcher, one more of an author would be BJ Fogg. I don't know if you've looked into some of his work on tiny habits. I think he's at Stanford. And then author Mark Manson, who's obviously written a lot about, you know, habit and willpower, et cetera, those two guys would both be, be interesting as a part of that. And obviously from an entropy standpoint, you no doubt have to take into account to a certain extent hormetic factors. If I stay in the infrared sauna or the cold bath, or even in the radiative exposure of sunlight or over exercise or anything like that. There are obviously excessive hormetic factors that cause stress and excessive entropy. Yet it seems like these slight surges or dips of the toes into the entropy pond, so to speak, seem to cause a cellular resilience effect. So I mean, do you kind of account for that when it comes to destructive behaviors? Like a little bit is good of these certain behaviors but then you need to draw the line at a certain point.

Yeah, I would pose that question to my team. Like one thing also I'm sure you've experienced as well, is you can have five scientists read the same few set of papers and all five prescribe different protocols.

Right.

There's just no consensus even with again, the same information. And that's something that is fine. The science is still emergent. But typically how we handle these kinds of questions, whether you do blank or blank or blank, my team has a process where the literature reviewed, we evaluate the evidence, we decided a protocol, yes or no, we follow it and we measure it. But we try to basically just settle all discussions with data. We just like anytime an opinion creeps into the room, it's out again. It has to be solved with evidence and data. So, yeah, I'd pose this question to my team and I'm sure there would be a wide range of opinions on this or that. But I tried to myself avoid walking down each path because yeah, these are hard scientific questions. It's still really a new world that's emergent.

Yeah. And obviously kind of a non health related question, but related to your team, have you begun to experiment with things like autonomous agents to assist with research from a GPT standpoint or anything like that? Yeah, we have that seems like it would be incredibly helpful in scenarios like this just to map out some of the complexities. The thing is, nobody's perfect. And I know you've done a lot of quantification and a lot of imagery of the body. Are there specific scenarios for you that are risk factors that you're paying particular attention to? The reason I bring this up is I do a lot to optimize my health. But for example, I know I have a high predisposition to type 2 diabetes. I have a big family risk for both colon cancer as well as cardiovascular disease. And I even have, probably due to years of racing, Ironman triathlon and some of these other excessively masochistic sports, a buildup of plaque, stable plaque, but plaque nonetheless. And so there's certain things that I'm paying particular attention to, right? Diabetic factors related to carbohydrate intake, cardiovascular factors, related things like red yeast, rice extract, CoQ10, niacin, et cetera. And from a colonic standpoint, a lot of attention paid to butyrate and fatty acids and care for my colonic flora. So for you, what would some of those factors look like?

Yeah, we're looking at all those things you mentioned. So every single organ Is being evaluated according to its markers. Brain, lungs, heart, skin, all of it. So I agree with you just down the line. And so I guess we haven't parsed it in terms of genetic predisposition. We've just looked at every single organ according to the data we acquire and then what clinical outcome ranges would be for those, and we pegged those for the targets.

Is there anything that concerns you right now that you're. That you're paying more attention to from an organ standpoint or a health standpoint?

Yeah, I mean, I spent the majority of my life destroying myself. I grew up on sugar cereal sodas when the idea was sleep was a waste of time. In my 20s and 30s, I was a startup entrepreneur. Wearing the mythology of sleep under your desk. Work hard, be ragged, and then a couple babies, chronic depression. I guess I'm really surprised. I'm actually okay given how much I destroyed my body for so long. But I'm also equally happy with how fast my body's bounced back with some care. And so I'd say we. It's much easier as you know, to prevent damage than it is to fix the damage. It's really hard to fix damage. It's so. It's so weird, Ben. Like my, you know, my lungs, like my diaphragm strength is age. Age 18, but my B lines, which is like accumulation of fluids or solids in my lungs, are like age 67. And so my lungs have these. I have like 10 different biomarkers for my lungs ranging from 18 and 21 and 22 and 33 and 37 and 67. And so we found through this extensive measurement that like my. Same with my heart, Some parts of my heart are fantastic, you know, age 20s, others are like 60s. And so we're trying to now, I guess this measurement has allowed us to go in and focus on these hyper specific areas for the organ. And we've made some good progress in some areas. We're starting to make a lot more ground now that we've kind of solved the basics of diet, sleep, you know, all the other stuff we can do. These hyper focused endeavors of finding the science behind a marker and going after the therapy.

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of cool. You can break things out from an organ system by system standpoint. And what you've just described about your youth obviously speaks to the regenerative capacity of the human body. And of course, the encouraging idea for folks listening in that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago or today. I was reading a small biography of Benjamin Franklin this morning. And it said, well, at age 42, he retired from the publishing business and then he invented like a catheter and a like 10 different inventions and then started down the path of writing a whole bunch of books. Stepped onto the advisory board for, by like at age 42, he started all of this. And so obviously we're capable of I think a lot more than what we often perceive or what we're taught. And health can bounce back a lot more quickly and efficiently than I think that some people might perceive in a defeatist manner. One thing that comes to mind for me, because this is something that I run into and I'm curious how you tackle it. You develop these complex protocols, you know, these hundred supplements a day and the special diet and everything. But do you travel? And if so, how do you manage this stuff when you're on the road?

Yeah, I've gotten really good at it. Yeah. So this past month I, past two months I traveled for eight days, I think. And so I just, I pack the supplements, I take olive oil, dark chocolate, my green Giant, some protein, and then I'll go to the grocery store, wherever I'm at, buy some avocados, some vegetables, and I'm good. And so I really figured out how to do this. I don't do, of course, other protocols when I'm on the road, but I've been able to get high quality sleep and get my dietary intake done. So it's actually much simpler than I thought.

Yeah, you know, I'm a little bit the same. I don't like to check bags, so I have literally like one hard shell. I forget the the brand, but I basically searched for the highest packable storage unit the one could use for a carry on for a hard shell. So that's my hard shell. And then I have one of those giant expandable backpacks that's also carry on friendly and essentially everything that I need can fit into those two. And then like you and often if I'm staying at a hotel or an Airbnb, I'll just basically have my assistant type in the whole foods order. That's the same wherever I go. You know, it's like bottled glass, sparkling water, sardines, avocados, organic greens, dark chocolate, some kind of like special mustard, a couple rotisserie chickens or salmon patties. And it just kind of shows up at the hotel when I'm there. But it's got, I don't know about you, but it's kind of for me gotten to the point where packing because I Travel so much is like brushing my teeth and I just, I know where the bags are. Everything goes in there. Some stuff stays at home that are, that are nice to have, not need to have. But once you get a habit down, it seems like you can do it pretty, pretty easily.

The thing I find really, I guess encouraging is I think you and I are both like a traveling circus for 99% of people. It's just not doable for them for a variety of reasons. And I like the idea of the idea that they can control stopping bad behaviors as the most powerful anti aging intervention because I certainly, I can imagine being on the other side of this conversation and feeling very overwhelmed. You know, like I, I want to be better, I want to do better, I want to feel better. I am my own worst enemy. There's no way I'm going to learn all this stuff myself. And it all feels overwhelming and how do I trust these people and all the above. But really the thing that gives me a lot of excitement is that these things are in our control just by stopping bad behaviors. I know I would have won really big if I could have come to that simple conclusion in earlier time in my life.

Yeah. And obviously that's a much more widely available, accessible and affordable solution to start with. Along with a lot of the freebies like going outside barefoot, getting sunlight, being with family, eating real food that's as close to the planet as possible, avoiding ultra processed foods. I mean like there's these, these so called non negotiables that I think are accessible to anyone before they, you know, stick the laser lights up their nose and wear the f. MRI or headset. Colonel Although I am intrigued, I am intrigued with the kernel. I'm going have to follow the development of that because I just love technologies like that. Brian, obviously I would imagine that blueprint is the best place for people to follow what you do. You have a newsletter there. I know you're robustly involved with social media, but anything happening in the background, like are you working on a book or a video series or content that helps people assimilate this a little better into their lives?

Yeah, I'm actually writing a pamphlet right now.

Oh cool.

Basically about the philosophy around blueprint and what I think are some contemplations about the future of being human.

Okay, well, cool. Well I'll certainly read it. And for people listening in, if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com BrianJohnson I'll link to Brian's website. I'm in the process actually of working because I was jotting down some notes for this podcast of a little article myself on some of the age reversal things that I do that I alluded to in this podcast, like Hyperbaric and PEMF and some of the supplements that I take, et cetera. So if that's done, I'll include a link to that or a special audio for that in the show notes as well. And Brian, it'd be fun to get together sometime and compare our, our circuses, as you called them. So we'll connect at some point in the future. But in the meantime, thanks so much for doing this, man.

Yeah, Ben, thanks for, thanks for your time. I would love to come see your stuff. It sounds like a wild ride. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Yeah. Well, next time you're up in Washington State. I know a lot of people have no excuse at all ever to come to Spokane, Washington, but if you ever do, here we are. So. All right folks, well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Brian Johnson of Blueprint shownotes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com BrianJohnson with a Y. Thanks for listening in and have an amazing week.

Okay, so Ben, again here now as I promised, I wanted to give you a little glimpse into my own age reversal strategies. I will also link to an article that goes over all these. And of course all the podcasts are transcribed as well. So if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Brian Johnson, you can check that out. And obviously, as Brian and I alluded to, there are the basics. Your relationships and social life, your sunlight exposure, your time outdoors, avoidance of vegetable oils, et cetera, et cetera. But just to make your eyes bug out in your head, I suppose here are some of the things that I'm doing right now that are big wins for me. And I actually did recently do this rate of aging clock, the dune didn't pace test that Brian alludes to. And my own results show my rate of aging is 0.73. That means for every 365 days I only age 266. And that actually is one of the lowest aging rates currently on record. Plus, perhaps more importantly, I feel like I'm 18 years old. So these are some of the things I do. Movement, as I talked about a little bit in the podcast with Brian, three times a week weight training and two to three times a week high intensity cardio. My weight training is mostly all single set to failure. I use an ARX machine when I'm at home or a tonall, which is a wall mounted machine I have in my garage. When I'm traveling I'll use something like the X3 band setup and for me it's just six major moves. Chest press, pull down or pull up, squat or leg press, overhead press and seated row. I also use blood flow restriction bands pretty extensively when I travel, combined with body weight training in my hotel room. And I also travel with what's called an electrical muscle stimulation suit, a catalyst electrical muscle stimulation suit and that thing all hit just once or twice a month right now to recruit a whole bunch of muscle fibers that I might not normally recruit. Now when I'm doing my home high intensity exercise routine, I do use intermittent hypoxic training, meaning I use this machine called a liveo2 and I'll breathe pure oxygen combined with limited oxygen during the actual workout. So I kind of outlined my workout during the podcast with Brian, but that's some of the more specifics of the actual modalities I use. And then for all my warmups and cool downs I use like Brian does some of Ben Patrick's moves. He has a great book called atg. I think that stands for Athletic training group, but ATG for life on Amazon. I'll do a lot of power plate vibration work to warm up and some moves from Dr. Eric Goodman called Foundation training, which is fantastic for the back and for turning on the glutes and then some self inflicted fascial stretching using a protocol called ELDOA E L D O A which I also have a podcast interview that I'll link to in the show notes. So my total time commitment for my weight training sessions is about 30 to 40 minutes three times a week. The cardio is 15 to 25 minutes three times a week. The injury prevention protocols, foam rolling, movement, stretches, et cetera is 10 to 15 minutes every day. And then again like I mentioned in the podcast, everything else is walking, pickleball, tennis, occasionally go for a swim and then a lot of sauna, cold and breath work. As a matter of fact, three to five times a week I'm 20 up to 40 minutes in the infrared sauna doing stretching and breath work and that always finishes with a three to five minute cold plunge. And most of my showers are as icy cold as possible, so I'm getting a lot of the longevity benefits of the hormetic effects of temperature stress. I outlined my sleeping protocol a little bit in my chat with Brian, but I sleep anywhere from six to seven hours per night. I use a PEMF mat made by a company called Body Balance during The entire night of sleep and also the Sleep Me Cold system set at 55 degrees Fahrenheit. So I'm on cold water and PEMF. During the entire night of sleep. I will often use something called a HAP B, which is magnetic stimulus device, and also an Apollo, which is a haptic device to increase relaxation and to decrease my sleep latency. I typically will play ambient noise. I use something called a sleep space app for that to drown out noises to lower me into sleep more quickly. And my supplement protocol before bed is pretty simple. Kion Sleep Element Health CBD and Magnesium Breakthrough. So I use Kion Sleep, which is basically an inhibitory neurotransmitter kind of cocktail. Cbd, which is a non THC form of cannabis, and then magnesium. And when I travel I throw in high dose melatonin from a company called Biozen. And by high dose it's like 100 to 300 milligrams. But that's only for the first few nights when I'm traveling. And then for proteolytic enzymes to heal up the body more quickly during sleep. If I've had a hard workout day, I'll take three capsules of the Kion Flex, which are proteolytic enzymes designed for Recovery and then inap, like I mentioned in this podcast, every day, 20 to 40 minutes in the hyperbaric chamber or on the PEMF mat. And I'll a lot of times use these compression recovery boots made by a company called Hyperice and also the nucalm or the Braintap Light sound stimulation machine to improve my relaxation. During a workday. I'm usually walking on a manual treadmill. I was walking on a treadmill during this entire podcast that you just heard. Or I'm standing in front of a standing desk. I use earthing or grounding mats during the entire day at work. So I'm still grounding and earthing while I'm indoors. I have what's called a nanov device that generates air that I can breathe, that assists with protein folding while I'm working. I have what's called a V light red light stimulation device for my head and a JOOVV full body red light therapy device. And so all of those are just kind of like on and off at different points throughout the day to optimize my cellular health. During an average day of work, once a week I do a detox, meaning every week I clean up my body. I take a binder like activated charcoal. I'll do a steaming session or a coffee enema and if you don't know what a steaming session is, check out the show notes. It's literally what it sounds like. You're steaming your nether regions, which feels really great using some kind of herbal tea. And then I always follow that up with a deep sweat in the infrared sauna. And for me, usually that's Wednesdays. I just detox and clean out the whole body. My diet is largely low carb Mediterranean, a lot of organic vegetables, fermented dairy and plants, organ meats, clean fish bone broth, extra virgin olive oil like Brian vinegar, dark chocolate like Brian very dark chocolate. And I do an overnight intermittent fast of 12 to 16 hours. I rarely do additional fasting besides a quarterly three to five day stint of lower calorie intake or sometimes water fasting. When I wake up, I do take supplements. I don't take 100 like Brian does, but I take a decent amount. So I drink 32 ounces of water right when I get up. That's after I've done like some coconut oil pulling and clean my face and everything. First thing go down, giant mason glass of water. I put the jigsaw health adrenal cocktail in there, which is vitamin C and minerals. I put a few hydrogen tablets from water and wellness in there. I put typically electrolytes in there like Quinton electrolytes or the Mana Shilajit minerals or protect electrolytes. I kind of go bounce around between all those. And along with that water I drink NAD Spermidine, a good probiotic. I use the one made by seed and then some kind of nootropic or brain support, usually something like Qualiamind or Neutopia. And then a couple hours after I've woken, I'll have a cup of coffee or a cup of cacao or some medicinal mushrooms like the four Sigmatic mushrooms, sometimes with a little bit of extra salt and minerals added into them. And I still haven't worked out at that point, but that's just as I'm banging through work. And then when I work out, typically around 9am before breakfast, I'll usually have a shot of feel free or an update energy drink or some nicotine gum to really boost me into the workout. And then I breakfast, which is almost always a liver bone broth colostrum smoothie along with my breakfast. I take fish oil, take the Kion fish oil. I take a little bit of C60. I use the stuff made by Wizard Sciences, my friend Ian Mitchell, who's been on the show before, and Kion creatine and that's it. And then with lunch, usually it's a bed of vegetables with some good clean fish. I'll usually have a big dose of ketones with lunch and I'll also throw in adaptogenic like reishi extract if I'm getting a nap after lunch. All day long I'm hitting kion aminos to pulse anabolism. So I take 10 to 20 grams of kion aminos throughout the entire day and then before my meals I'll take a shot of apple cider vinegar or digestive enzymes or something that will help me to digest the meal and before dinner to help me manage my blood sugar response to the meal. I take kion lean now from an anti aging standpoint. Also once a month I take a two day protocol of a senolytic formula from the company Qualia called Senolite which helps to clean out so called zombie cells. And then twice a year I'll do a peptide protocol usually 10 days long using the bioregulatory peptides that I discussed in my podcast with Phil Micans and I can link to some of my podcasts or my peptide sources in the show. Notes Like I mentioned to Brian, I do have a high genetic risk for heart disease and a beat apart from years of hardcore endurance training and an elevated plaque score. So I also supplement with red yeast rice extract which is like nature statin at night because the body does a lot of its cholesterol metabolism at night. And then I take niacin and coenzyme Q10 in the morning along with what's called Annatto which is a mixed tocopherol tocotrienol vitamin E extract in the morning. A few times a month I'll do vitamin IV, like a vitamin cocktail IV. I get them from Dr. Craig Conover. He has a company called Fast Vitamin IVs and then two, up to three times a year I'll do stem cells, V cells and exosomes, usually with Dr. Matt Cook at BioReset Medical. One or two times a year is kind of an oil change for the body. I'll also do an ozone treatment like ozone plasmapheresis. Practitioners for that tend to vary. Sometimes I'll go to Next health down in LA. Sometimes I'll go to Dr. Matt Cook's office for that. It really depends. And then over the past decade I've done two full body stem cell makeovers which are a game changer. They're expensive but they are a game changer. I plan to keep doing that once every five years with Dr. Harry Adelson at Dosheri Clinics in Park City, Utah. When I travel I'll a lot of times get an NAD IV or use an NAD patch when I'm on airplanes. And then I mean from the skin standpoint I mentioned I do coconut oil pulling typically with coconut oil or ozone oil, a little bit of peppermint essential oil. I do that in the mornings. I brush my teeth once in the evenings for about five minutes and then I floss or water pick regularly and I get a massage about one to two times per month and always include focus on the jaw and the cranial sacral areas during the massage. I also do once a week a clay mask for the entire face along with derma rolling and red light. And that's kind of like my home anti aging protocol. So those are a few of the biggies. So that's basically what my whole routine looks like. As far as all the different hacks I use for anti aging, I get a lot of questions about this so I figured I'd address it. Perfect time to do it is obviously on this show, so I hope that's been helpful for you. I hope this entire podcast has been helpful for you. And again, the show notes are at BenGreenfieldLife.com BrianJohnson spelled with a Y. More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.