In health news, 45-year-old tech millionaire Bryan Johnson is spending $2 million a year, drinking green goo, and sleeping while wired to a boner counter to keep his body in teenage shape:
Bryan Johnson, 45, who made his fortune in his 30s when he sold his payment processing company Braintree Payment Solutions to eBay for $800 million in cash, is touting a daily routine that he says has given him the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity and fitness of an 18-year-old.
Johnson has a team of 30 doctors and regenerative health experts overseeing his regimen, he told Bloomberg News.
…The initiative, known as Project Blueprint, requires Johnson to abide by a strict vegan diet amounting to 1,977 calories per day, a daily exercise regimen that lasts an hour, high-intensity exercise three times a week, and going to bed every night at the same time.
…Johnson wakes every morning at 5am, takes two dozen supplements, works out for an hour, drinks green juice laced with creatine and collage peptides, and brushes and flosses his teeth while rinsing with tea-tree oil and antioxidant gel.
Before bedtime, Johnson wears glasses that block blue light for two hours. He also constantly monitors his vital signs and undergoes monthly medical procedures to maintain his results, including ultrasounds, MRIs, colonoscopies and blood tests [Ariel Zilber, “Tech Mogul Bryan Johnson, 45, ‘Spends $2 Million Each Year to Get 18-year-Old Body,” News Corp Australia, 2023.01.26].
I graduated high school in 1989. I weighed around 150 pounds and ran 10–14 miles around Lake Herman a couple-three times a week mostly for fun.
Since then, I’ve spent $10,000 on eight bicycles and one pedal tricycle, plus uncounted thousands on bike gear and maintenance on the pedal-powered transportation that I use more frequently than my car. I can’t identify any other item in my household budget arguably dedicated to any specific health regimen.
Before blogging this morning, I enjoyed an unhurried Saturday ten-mile run around the city. I usually eat cereal for breakfast, but after today’s sweaty run, I treated myself to a kingly breakfast of a “cheese”-and-“bacon” toaster pop and the rest of the apple-cranberry Juicy Juice, none of which was green. Before that kingly breakfast, I ran ten miles around the city. I still eat mostly what I want, and I’ve convinced myself that more than once a week I want a healthy salad loaded with pumpkin seeds, craisins, cucumber slices, and other exciting bits.
I take my glasses off to read before bed. I sleep with nothing wired to my kibbles or bits. I occasionally glance at my iPhone step counter (15,000 so far today, but a week-high 22,000 at work yesterday), but I don’t regularly monitor any other personal health data. I haven’t seen a doctor since living in Aberdeen (which city, I suspect, tried very hard to kill me, sending me to the doctor with pneumonia, covid, and that one good gash on my noggin after a head-over-teakettle encounter with a pothole north of 8th and Main).
I weighed in after my run this morning. 147 pounds, before the toaster pop.
Bryan Johnson is spending each year more money than I’m on course to make in my lifetime (the Blog Tip Jar is good—thank you!—but not that good). While he’s counting supplements and getting MRI’d and ultrasounded, I’m blogging or running or out doing other stuff. He’s spending $2 million a year and numerous hours each week to enjoy maybe marginal health advantages over a guy who will probably live as long and as happily.
Do what you want with your life. Eat, exercise, work, sleep as you think best keeps your body in the shape in which you want it to be. If you have the means and want spend more money on nutritionists and coaches and other health help, go ahead, write those checks. And if you have a personal health regimen that makes you feel good and that you want to recommend to our readers, the comment section below is open to your advice!
But I can tell you: a couple good bikes (you gotta have two, because how will you get around when one bike is in the shop?) and a few salads will do your body a lot of good for a lot less than $2 million.
imo he looked better in 2017.
Yeah, pretty much agree. I think it’s important to eat good food, not junk. Cut down on sugar and carbs, bump up whole foods. I walk now instead of jogging or biking. It probably is good to have an annual checkup, though what they do for a basic physical these days is minimal. I like data, so I get my various blood chemistry parameters checked every year. Doing this I was able to use the data, diet and exercise to maneuver my cholesterol and triglyceride levels down to normal over five years and skip the medication doctors push. I have a blood pressure cuff to make sure my blood pressure is maintained.
Mr. H is probably one of the top 5 fittest bloggers blogging about South Dakota. He could stand to eat a bit more hearty of a breakfast, I’d say.
For those of us with osteoporosis and arthritis, a home treadmill can replace the bicycles. (I no longer bounce when I fall.) Eat what you want, as long as it isn’t fast food 3 times a day. Stay away from soft drinks for a number of reasons (calories, cavities, chemicals). I’m a firm believer in daily meditation as well, just to take a breather from all the devices we’ve surrounded ourselves with. And don’t take it all too seriously. We’re all going to die someday. Try not to make it too soon (get your tetanus shots, and other vaccines), but also – after a certain point, longevity is more in your genes than anything else.
In a world full of health & food nazis it’s a very refreshing seeing a libertarian stance on happiness.
“Life is nothing until you live it.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
Bryan Johnson may be spending $2 million a year on Project Blueprint but since he invented Project Blueprint every penny, which he spends is tax deductible. You all know, in America only the middle class and below pay for things. The elite don’t spend money. They use money to keep score.
Why bother? Have a good drink, walk at least three miles a day, read, type your two cents worth. It’s all better than breakfast. The going to bed at the same time probably helps, so don’t try to be a tennis star or watch it. The Australian finals are on tonight starting at 3:30 am. Now that’s a bother, would that interfere with the boner count?
Ride your bike, as slogging on a treadmill is just a weak sister. And then hook wires up to your dangly bits, as Mr. H fixated upon in his blogging, and sleep tight.
Grudz, this dog isn’t a weak sister. https://images.app.goo.gl/j6vfvwrAGPLGkzWS7
Cory, strange comparison.
A social commentary.
I suggest we also look at this new angle coming chiefly from Rolling Stone magazine. It suggests this blog is poisoned by elite Democrats, aging boomers, who control everything and have their feet on the throat of Trumpist Republicans.
“But old-fashioned liberalism is dying away with the boomer generation, and the elites, distrusted by the public, deprived of institutional authority, have gambled on riding the tiger of rule by internet mob.
[We] deny them a voice in any forum where their words might confuse the faithful. The elites own most of the nation’s institutions, but they have a lock on the institutions of communications and messaging. They can marginalize Republicans and conservatives simply by keeping them out of the shared spaces in the public sphere—by condemning their opinions as a threat to democracy and deriding their facts as wild conspiracy theories or “misinformation.””
Rule by internet mob. That’s what we do here, apparently. So you are “good” by pragmatically (albeit perhaps obsessively too) achieving what the bad guy tries to do expensively. So blogging about it makes you really the bad guy. That’s as far as i can understand what Matt Taibbi’s next big thing is.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-23-america-this-week-with-matt-taibbi-and/id1640531112?i=1000596991579
https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2023/01/18/the-fifth-wave-twittermania/
(good old Geo Mason Univ-“owned” by the Koch Industries)
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mercatus-center/
(Right wing think tank)
Leslie, I guess I’ll have to admit Margorie Tayler Greene is filled with facts and is beautiful. It’s so hard controlling everything isn’t it?
I don’t believe the centenarians I know in Loma Linda California have done anything quite so attention seeking as Bryan Johnson. According to them, attending to the physic is necessary however, ones’ outlook on life and how they interact with others and their environment is so much more important. They also credit the way they were raised, the food they ate, their genealogy of course, and the activities they did and didn’t do. They don’t dwell on themselves and how they look so they exercise for the great feeling they it gives them.
Cory, I met you at the March for Science in Aberdeen in 2017. You looked marvelous!!! More important however, you were a bundle of energy, charismatic, and exemplified leadership qualities to the max. If they wired you up like Bryan Johnson, you’d blow out the circuits.
I eat healthy foods (well 90% of the time), still do the fitness routine the US Olympic team physician gave me 26 years ago 3_4 days a week, walk or bike unless the travel is out of town, shovel my snow by hand, and work long hours 6 days a week in Summer at a job that is about 20% manual effort. My weight is nowhere near as the 170 low as it was as a teenager (240). According to the charts, I’m “obese” but there is not great deal of fat there. Besides, IMO, we all need a little fat stored in case of emergency :) My heart rate ranges from the mid 40 bpm (mid workout) to low 70’s at rest. That’s actually better to what it was as a teenager. Blood pressure just fine.