This transcript is a conversation between Bryan Johnson and Dave Asprey about anti-aging strategies, centered on Johnson's "Blueprint" approach. Johnson frames Blueprint as a data-driven, measurement-first diet/protocol (he prefers plant-based) aimed at producing optimal biomarkers. He argues the most powerful anti-aging intervention is eliminating self-aided destructive behaviors (overeating, junk food, poor sleep, skipping exercise, excessive screen time, smoking, drinking) rather than adding supplements. The discussion also touches on biochemical individuality, potential meat-based alternatives, and planned behavioral interventions/coaching to help people eliminate harmful habits.
Chapters
The most powerful anti aging protocol is to stop self aided 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 destructive behavior.
When was the last time you had meat? Or have you always been plant based eater?
No, I was I meat my whole life up until two years ago. Okay, so yeah, blueprint, I guess the, I kind of playfully say blueprint is the most.
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, 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, 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 it possible to find evidence? Not find, 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?
That's it, just a preference on my side, but I would love to see someone else do it on meet and see what data it produces.
Yeah, that'd be interesting. 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 me, 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 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. Okay, so 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 for we know that that data is very good. 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, like 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. And so a lot of people, of course, 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 just by default. And so if we say, 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 destructive 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. And then secondly is like, you know, what is your opinion versus nr nmn and 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. So like 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. Gave 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, 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?
So actually in a couple of weeks time 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. Skin skipping exercise is not good. So like just like we are 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's gonna 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, you know, actions. I'm 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 one 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 fitted 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 again, 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 going to buy a biochemical reaction, accelerate or slow down 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, you know, like in some moment of weakness, everything would go out the door. And so maybe others will experience something similar, maybe not, but that's something to try.
