The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Most Replayed Moment: This Longevity Protocol Actually Works! - Biohacker Bryan Johnson

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Bryan Johnson is a tech entrepreneur, longevity researcher, and founder of Blueprint - a project to reverse his biological age through rigorous data, diet, and discipline. Known as one of the world’s most committed biohackers, Johnson lives by a strict protocol involving 111 pills a day, precision meals, and relentless self-tracking. In today’s Most Replayed Moment, Bryan dives into his purpose for pursuing such a life. He then breaks down the exact protocol he follows - from daily pills to the meticulously engineered meals he eats - to optimise every aspect of his biology. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/6oGS7xtMkWb Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/8lvwhFCMkWb Watch the episodes on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Head to bluehost.com. That's B-L-U-E-H-O-S-T-com to start. now. What mission are you on? And why does that mission matter to you, but also to everybody else listening to this right now? My mission is for the human race to survive and thrive. And it's figuring out what we do that creates the highest probability of that being possible. And why specifically have you taken on that mission versus any other mission you could have committed your life in time to. Why you? And I want the long answer to this. Yeah. All the context going right back to the beginning. I had this transformative experience when I was

19 years old. I went to Ecuador and I was a missionary. And I lived among extreme poverty, dirt floors, mud huts, people not knowing how they're going to make ends meet day to day. And I came back to the United States and my family was poor growing up, but it was opulent. compared to Ecuador. I couldn't believe that I had lived in a bubble my entire life, unaware of circumstances of other realities like where I was at in Ecuador. And I was facing decisions in college, what to study, what to become, who was going to be, you start creating these identities. All I could identify was this fire that had lit within me, that I wanted to spend my life trying to improve the human race at a global scale. I don't know where it came from,

But just coming back from Ecuador, it seemed like that was what I wanted to spend my life on. I didn't know what to do. I was 21 years old. I didn't have any ideas. And so I thought I would become an entrepreneur, make a whole bunch of money by the age of 30. And then with that money, try to figure out a plan to do it. And so lucky me, I sold Braintree Venmo at 34. I made a few hundred million dollars.

It sold for $800 million, right? And then I set my mind to this question of what one thing in existence could I do that that would be relevant. in the 25th century. I grew up on biographies, and so I'm accustomed to thinking about things on a century's time scale. So doing things that, not the matter in the news cycle tomorrow,

but the intelligence in the 25th century would say, you know what? We appreciate what happened in the early 21st century. You've only really been following this protocol for a couple of years now, right? Yeah. I mean, my, I guess I really do understand myself

as on a singular mission for intelligent existence to thrive. That is what I am, that is what I'm doing, that's what I'm pursuing. Nothing else matters to me. The question, the ultimate question, I think, in, you know, that you just said, all these people are going to say, I'm weird or whatever else, there's this ultimate question because you're very, very clearly mission-driven. And there's always a cost Much of what I do here

When I meet extraordinary people Is to understand the cost In fact, the reason I start this podcast Is because we, let's call the diary of a CEO It's because we see the CEO stuff But we don't see the diary That's why it's called what it is And it started as media sharing my diary

And I shed everything from masturbation My mental struggles, everything My issues with my family I shared it all to put the cost out there to the world Cost of my mission My calling my pursuit The thing that was dragging me the ultimate question becomes are you happy

never more so in my entire life unquestionably and what does that mean I've never felt more fulfilled I've never felt more stable I've never felt a more expansive consciousness I've never felt more free I've never felt more bold

I've never in my entire life been this alive. And you experienced the antithesis of happiness, right? You experienced, I mean, maybe some people would argue that it's something else, but you experienced the bottom of the crevice of depression. You know what that felt like? I do. The voices in your head that were telling you to do things, the unthinkable actions of suicide.

What goes on in your head now? what are the same voices saying it's all play i'm i've never had more fun most of my life has just been a grind it's like doing the things to achieve the objective because that's what the societal role play says to do and that what i'm doing now i'm not doing this for anyone's expectations i'm not doing this to achieve anyone's acceptance this is the game I've selected to play, I don't care what anyone says about it, sincerely. I just feel free. I noticed there's something on the chair over there.

And I'm actually starving. It's just gone four o'clock, and I haven't eaten today. But you were very kind in bringing me some food. So I want to talk about food. Jack, could you bring me the food, please? and you can tell me what you've brought me to eat presumably this is what you eat that's right good

okay so you've you've brought me a meal today I did just for anyone that's looking I'll try and tilt it up so people can see if anyone's watching on YouTube or Spotify where you can get the video you can see what's in these bowls and you've brought me two little buckets of pills here and there's a drink here what is this food

this is this is the answer if you ask the body what do you want to eat to be an ideal health this is the answer that it generated so this is not to say that is the only food you could eat it is a version where you could eat so the my daily caloric intake is 2,250 calories a day every calorie has to fight for its life there's not a single calorie in my entire life protocol that exists for any reason other than serving an objective in the body. So dish number one is called super veggie. It's broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, garlic, ginger, hemp seeds. And over a month, if you were to do this with me, you would eat around 70 pounds of

vegetables per month. 70 pounds of vegetables per month. Wow. Wow. And I think we also have in there extra virgin olive oil and chocolate. Yeah, I can taste like cacao, like dark chocolate. So I pair the chocolate in here. It's an unexpected pairing.

The way we think about this is you could say chocolate is good for you, which might lead you to eat a Snickers bar. The more precise way of thinking about it is you want dark chocolate, undutch, test for heavy metals, and has a high polyphenol count. If you don't do all five layers to qualify the value of the chocolate, you have an inferior chocolate and nutritional value for your body. body. So everything we do at Blueprint uses that frame of reference of understanding everything a full stack way of how do you serve the body's objectives in the maximal way.

That is a mushroom covered in chocolate. How fun. So interesting. Yeah, those are mataki mushrooms. Mataki mushrooms. This is a normal broccoli, isn't it? That's right. You didn't put anything on it? No. No salt. I use potassium chloride, new salt.

And we've got some broccoli in there. So is that, is that that dish explained? That's explained. Okay. And then this is, looks like dessert to me. Nutty pudding. It is, many people consider it to be a dessert. It's macadamia nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, sunflower lachian, pomegranate juice, berries, and pea protein. And is this the entire meal you'd have in one day? There's one more dish, which we don't have, which varies. day to day. Okay. But this is really it. I have three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. One's in here. Then I have an avocado and a third meal a day. And this drink here that you've

given me. Yeah, make sure you stir that up. Okay. That's the green giant. So the way that works is I'll wake up in the morning. First thing I'll do is drink the green giant, take 60 pills, work out for an hour, then eat super veggie, wait for an hour, eat nutty pudding, wait for one more hour and eat my third meal of the day. And then I'm finished for the day. How many pills were you taken one day. Currently 111. Wow. And you take 60 of them in the morning. That's right. Wow. Wow. That's an interesting taste. I've got to say, it doesn't taste amazing. You know, it's not like something I'd find in a, like a juice bar or something. Right. There's a little bit of a after taste to it. That's not, not fantastic. And I mean, I like vegetables. So I like most of

this stuff. The chocolate, I think, is a bit of a spanner in the works. It's not like a chocolate that you'd get. It's not milk chocolate or a Mars bar. That's right. Right. It's a very, very dark, bitter taste, which is a strange thing to add to a mushroom. Yeah.

You can also put the dark chocolate in the nutty pudding. Or you can have it independently. I find it's fun because it's a new experience for people to try. So it's really an optional thing. Oh, this is nice. This nutty pudding is really nice. That's really nice. That's really, really nice.

So what are your principles for eating, then? You talked about caloric restriction. How important is that? Because I eat a lot and I don't count. I just... Just eat. Yeah, and I'm like, you know, my heaviest on 15 to 105s,

which is what, about 100 kilograms or something. So I'm quite heavy. And I eat and I go to the gym every day, but I eat a lot, kind of out of control. It has compelling evidence. Chloric restriction has compelling evidence that it's one of the most effective lung longevity interventions that can be done.

And what are your sort of wider nutritional principles that people can very easily introduce into their lives? It's, I have this experience where I learned how to fly an airplane. I became a pilot and we'd get up at altitude and I would use my hands and try to fly the airplane. And I'd go left, right, up down. I'd try to be perfectly on the attitude indicator of maintaining exactly the altitude, which I was pegged at and the direction. And then I would engage autopilot. and this plane would just sit up straight and it would be perfectly pegged it was so far superior to my ability to do it and that's kind of how I think about my diet is if I use my mind I kind of

ping pong around life eating this and that and like I hear this thing that there and I hear this thing there I kind of do whatever's available to me if you think about putting your body on autopilot I call it my autonomous self but the body report out evidence algorithm in and it just runs this is the result this is autopilot for my body and so every single thing we do is is tracked in the body every pill has to justify its existence if it can't be measured and quantified we don't do it and so it's a system a closed loop system that has an algorithm running me which is so far superior to my mind which is it going to do it's going to add the cookie to the order and it's going to eat blank because of whatever

i'm presuming you're not going to take these back okay so this are all the pills you take in one day. That's right. A hundred and twenty-odd pills in a day, almost. Yeah, 111, yeah. That big one right there. Can see that guy right there? This one here. Yeah. Jesus. Lord, Jesus. What is in these pills? A lot of things you would expect basics like vitamin D and C, more advanced things like alpha ketogluterate or metformin or Carbos or other things like that. It spans from

basic and common to some more advanced drugs. A lot of my friends when I, well, one of my friends in particular when he knew that I was speaking to you, he asked me about NAD plus. That's obviously something that's become quite popular in the longevity culture. What's your perspective on NAD plus? Yeah, he's trying to modulate those levels in his body and there's nice age graphs. So people, to enter this into an understandable frame, people, it's not commonly understood what a biological age is versus a chronological age.

Somebody can be chronologically, I'm 45, but it can biologically be different. I could be either 30 or 35 or 55 or 70 according to the markers. So in levels of NAD, intracellular NAD in particular, there are certain levels that would peg you at age 18, age 30, age 50, because they reliably go down with age. And so when you supplement to try to change these, you're trying to peg yourself to a more youthful state because it's a energy the body runs on. And so what I did is I people in the longevity community do have a lot of questions about how you increase your intracellular NAD levels and there's a big debate.

Do you do NR or NMN? I think this big debate and everyone's always able to fight about it. And so I trialed both. I did 90 days on NR. I did 90 days on NMN and I measured my intracellular blood levels throughout. And I showed that both were basically effective in doing the objective.

So I was able to peg my intracellular NAD at the 18-year-old mark on both supplements. Oh, wow. So it basically doesn't matter, just to get it measured and just titrate your dose to make sure you're getting what you need. Nice. And I really want to make sure, because I feel like if I'm never going to, you know,

meet someone who I feel like is so well versed in how the things I put in my mouth have an impact on my biological age. So what advice would you give to me about, say that you could, I'm a blank canvas. And I'm going to believe everything you say. my objective is to increase my health span and to not age poorly. What would you say about the things that I put in my mouth?

Give me some rules. Do exactly what I've published. Okay. I'm going to make it dead simple for you. I say tongue and cheek that Blueprint is the best health protocol ever developed. Prove me wrong with your data. If someone can achieve better biomarkers with their protocol, it's going to be amazing for me.

and everyone else because now we have a comparison. But right now, the tricky thing for someone like yourself is if you go out into the world and you try to figure this out, you've got to sort through 100 gurus, everyone's saying a different thing. And even now, if you give five anti-AG experts the same scientific papers and ask them to develop a protocol for you, you'll get a different protocol from every single one. They're not going to agree. There's no way to go out there and get consensus in the world.

So you need to pick a path and then measure. And I've done exactly that. So I've basically tried to punch through all the. noise and say is there actually something I can do which has some believability that's what I've done so I've published all my data and so blueprint provides people a starter a starting point to say I'm going to do something that I can see works and measure myself then iterate and improve upon it so health and wellness is all like a religion where the king James version of the Bible supports a hundred different denominations they all say they're gods one and true only

same with health and wellness everyone claims are god's true health and wellness program and I've tried to punch for the whole thing to say it doesn't matter what guru status is, share the data. Eat in the mornings? If I was a blank canvas. I'd say trial. I'd say follow my protocol exactly, see how you feel, and then try and experiment what you do later in the day. And then compare the two. Sugar.

Zero. Zero sugar. Zero sugar. Why? It does nothing useful for your body. Now, our body needs sugar to run. So if you eat sugar in berries, which you're having now, that's great. But highly processed white sugar or cane sugar, there's no value for your body.

There's other things of much higher value for your body. God, it's hard to exist in this world without sugar, isn't it? Do you do anything with your testosterone levels? Yeah, I do a testosterone patch. I supplement with a patch. I supplement because I'm on a caloric restriction diet. And when you do that, your testosterone naturally goes down. So I keep my testosterone pegged in the normal range between 6 and 800.

I'm about 850 right now. So I'm not trying to get above it. I'm just trying to be normal. One of the reasons why I said to you before when you sat down that men of my age start thinking about longevity is we notice that our hairlines have started to receive. I mean, getting to 30 with the receding hairline, it's actually quite good. Some of my friends started a little bit earlier. And then we start noticing these gray hairs in our heads.

You have fantastic hair. And in fact, a lot of the comments I saw were, What's he doing with his hair? There was one particular comment. I was like, someone asked him, this was online, someone asked him how he's got that hair. What advice would you give to me? Listen, I'm at that age now where I've got to make a decision.

Do I let this thing go back? Yeah. Or do I fight it? Don't do it. Yeah. Fight. Fight with everything you've got in you. Really?

Yeah. Trust me on this. I will. Trust me. You don't want to clean up of, you don't want to clean up aging damage. that you can prevent right now. And I can prevent my hairline receding? Yes.

How? I started losing my hair in my early 30s. Yeah. And it's been a grind to try to keep it. And so my hair protocol, here's what I do. I have a custom formulation that we've built. It basically has monoxidil and a few other things. So people can get that easily.

I have a red light therapy cap. I wear every morning for six minutes in my morning. routine. I do a PRF. So I inject, I get blood drawn, spun up, and then re-inject it into my scalp once every maybe month or three. And then I take a few supplements that are listed online for the blueprint website. So basically like four things. Help prevent hair loss and encourages hair growth. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do all of that and walk my dog. So I'm like, Is there like a silver bullet that I could? So here's how it works is I know it sounds overwhelming.

If you build habits that just make these things so you don't think about it, it sounds overwhelming in the beginning. But if you just get into a routine where every morning you do your thing, and when you're doing that thing, you just throw a cap on your head and it just is on for six minutes. And then at night, before you go to bed, you put a little liquid on your scalp and you rub it in. and then you take a few pills every day with your routine.

It's entirely about building systems so you don't think about it ever. So it's never a burden on you. What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description.

Thank you.