Anti-Aging Millionaire: This Habit Ruins Men! - Biohacking Routine To Feel 18 Again | Bryan Johnson
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On Today's Episode:
How far are you willing to go to achieve perfect health? Depending on your current health you may be more or less inclined to go to the extremes to practice the radical discipline required to achieve near perfect health.
Bryan Johnson has been called “The most measured man in history.” He’s an ultra successful entrepreneur that has been focused on achieving perfect health. Where things get a little extreme for the common person, like consuming 70 pounds of vegetables a month, he’s just getting started.
If you could end your self-destructive behaviors and just start getting good quality sleep every night, Bryan insists that would at least return your health to neutral. Removing your mind, your thought process, how we feel and justify everything from the health equation leaves room for you to empower your body and adjust based on the evidence and nothing else.
In this episode Bryan brings in some tasty options for Tom to try and reveals why his Blueprint is a system of opportunity.
QUOTES: “There’s different versions of ourselves, and in these different versions we behave in different ways.”
“We think of ourselves as the most intelligent species on this planet yet we have behaviors that accelerate disease and aging and misery…”
“We treat the Earth as we treat our bodies, it’s the same relationship.”
“It’s a little bit insane that we commit self-destructive behavior.”
“Talent hits the target that no one else can. Genius hits the target that no one can see.”
“We can recognize the special moment we’re in, we can create systems where everyone wins and we can shed the characteristics of ourselves that no longer serves us, like self-destructive behaviors.”
“The blueprint is less about the exact things and more about the system of measurement, evidence, and protocol.”
“Your heart can be 70 years old and your chronologically 30, so you’re not just one age. You’re hundreds of different ages.”
Follow Bryan Johnson: Website: https://www.bryanjohnson.co/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bryan_johnson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryanjohnson_/
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Johnson argues that meaningful aging reversal is possible now through evidence-based protocols that measure all 78 organs, align internal goal systems, and optimize diet, sleep, and targeted interventions—but this requires removing the mind as the primary problem-solver and letting data-driven systems govern behavior.
- Aging is driven by cellular dedifferentiation (DNA methylation patterns), which can be measured and reversed through systematic protocol adherence
- Self-destructive behaviors stem from internal goal misalignment; perfect health requires removing conscious mind's authority over the body and replacing it with measurement-based systems
- The future depends on achieving goal alignment within self, between humans, with AI, and with Earth—beginning with biology optimization
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Despite knowing that optimal health systems work universally (evidenced by Blueprint brunches showing that everyone who completes the thought experiment eventually agrees the system is beneficial), Johnson supports letting people opt out because system freedom requires agent choice, and diversity of outcome produces richness and surprise that centralized optimization would eliminate.
“To let people do dumb things? Yes. It's uh it's You're really I didn't think you were going to answer the question that way. So this is utterly fascinating. So just to put my own card on the table, I think you have to let people do dumb things. Yeah. As much as I find it very distressing and it makes me very sad... it's because it's going to produce richness of outcome. It's not entirely negative, right? There's like this diversity, the unexpectedness, and uh iteration it needs to have characteristics. Characteristics meaning you were talking earlier about the element of surprise, like there's the unexpected, all that. So there is a richness in that that you think is ultimately desirable for humans.”
The 2000-calorie vegan protocol with 54+ daily supplements represents optimization for a highly calorie-constrained context; people who attempt vegan diets without this supplementation framework fail because their bodies lack critical micronutrients necessary to sustain both function and adherence.
“the reason why I take 100 pills to the a pill today is if you if the budget is 2,000 calories a day and the objective is perfect nutrition Mhm. and it's vegan then this is what keeps my body in that perfect state. And so this is why a lot of people who do try to go vegan or do caloric restriction fail is because their their body is missing critical important pieces of nutrition.”
Society operates as a system that broadcasts information about human vulnerabilities (via advertising, social media algorithms, influencers) and then leverages this data to manipulate people into greater self-destructive behaviors through capitalistic incentives; individual optimization is necessary but insufficient without systemic redesign.
“It is unfair to the individual that they're set out in society and they have to navigate on a daily basis McDonald's and Snickers and TikTok and everything else. It is unfair. And this is goes back to your point on data if you're when you're you are broadcasting data. The capitalistic system is taking this and then using it against you so you commit greater self-destructive behaviors. And then we celebrate it and then we call people weird when they don't participate in it. The whole system is rigged against us.”
Humans have evolutionary impulses to overconsume calorically dense foods because food was historically scarce, and this ancient wiring causes modern self-destructive behavior; food is not calories but signaling molecules that trigger insulin spikes and glucose dysregulation when consumed in processed, sugar-rich forms.
“your brain was created over millions of years of evolution where food was really hard to come by and if you came by something that was calorically dense that you were going to go after it as hard as you could, remove the brakes as much as possible, overeat, overconsume. And that food is It's not a calorie is a calorie. Food is signaling molecules or food are signaling molecules, whichever. And so, they're going to tell your body to do certain things. And the things that you're prone to overeating because they were so rare are typically things that make you put on fat and that are going to spike your glucose, which then causes a huge dump of insulin, which then has a whole host of problems.”
There are currently over 300,000 people worldwide with brain implants, predominantly for Parkinson's treatment, demonstrating proven efficacy for specific conditions despite the slow timeline and surgical requirements.
“There's over 300,000 people who have implants today... It's been wildly successful to treat things like Parkinson's and and other things.”
Bilyeu's observation that he previously assumed he needed to work out fasted based on conventional wisdom but sees Johnson's superior results despite different eating timing suggests that expert disagreement in health/fitness is so widespread that data-driven personal measurement may be more reliable than guru-consensus.
“I've always thought that I needed to wake up, work out fasted, all of that, but not true. Cuz you're way leaner than I am... Even among the most elite experts in health and wellness, they disagree with each other. You know this. There is absolutely no agreement on just about anything.”
Humans cannot reliably self-report their mental state or intoxication level; in Flow studies, people's self-reports of impairment were 'wildly inaccurate' compared to objective brain measurement, indicating that subjective experience is an unreliable measure of mental health and objective brain measurement is necessary.
“when people were self-reporting whether or not they were intoxicated, you know, impaired, it was wildly inaccurate. And so the fundamental question is can I rely upon myself report, my ability to feel what I'm experiencing and report it? Is that an accurate representation of what is going on in my brain? No.”
Most doctors operate within systems (insurance, patient volume, procedural constraints) that make it difficult or impossible to implement personalized, measurement-based optimization protocols like Blueprint; sharing Blueprint publicly creates opportunity for individuals and alternative practitioners to implement it outside institutional constraints.
“I know from experience if you take this to a doctor it's a hard conversation to have with the doctor. They won't get it man. Uh Like you would have to be with somebody so specialized... the medical system is so overwhelming. I think about this in my own business. I spend so much time keeping the doors open and the lights on that I don't get to think enough about the future... And so, this is I agree that I'm saying absolutely nothing negative about doctors. All I'm saying is uh they have a way of doing things and they have systems and they play within a system which is insurance companies and they see patients like you're saying.”
Sleep and diet are among the most important interventions for health, but if someone is only going to get a few things right, the priority sequence is: stop self-destructive behavior first, then get good sleep, as poor sleep from self-destructive behavior creates a vicious cycle that ruins willpower for positive actions.
“sleep I'd say stop self-destructive behavior and get good sleep. Like you don't even have to eat vegetables, berries, and nuts. Like that would be an advanced thing. Just stop doing things that hurt you because when you do things that cause self-destructive behavior, it's so hard that it that ruins your sleep which then ruins your willpower to do be able to do good things in your life and gain some momentum. It's a vicious cycle.”
The future should prioritize human advancement over technological progress; currently humanity worships technology and sacrifices itself for technological advancement, yet allocates minimal attention to improving humans; this inversion should be corrected with Apple-style keynotes showcasing human biological and cognitive advancement.
“We are willing to sacrifice ourselves for technology. We're martyrs for technological progress. Yet, we have almost We have a minuscule amount of attention focused on improving ourselves. And it should be the exact opposite. The new Apple keynote should be the new blueprint. We should be able to showcase human advancement in ways that are stunning and exciting that gets everyone on this movement of how do we prove ourselves individually and collectively?”
The ability to slow the rate of aging and then reverse aging that has occurred is possible now; it is not hiding in the future but rather in tens of thousands of scientific publications and requires a lot of hard work to systematically extract and implement evidence-based medicine protocols.
“is the ability to slow the rate of aging and then reversing aging that has occurred possible now it's just hiding in tens of thousands of scientific publications and a lot of really hard work.”
The framework of 'can' vs. 'ought' must be inverted in policy and social thinking—rather than asking 'what can we do' with existing technologies, we should ask 'what ought we do' with human well-being as the ground truth, and then build systems to achieve that ought.
“you've answered the question why you eat veggies over meat. So, I get that. I And I think it'll be important for us to go into the N of 1 um idea. But, right now I want to talk about you have You said every calorie has to fight for its survival in terms of the right to be consumed by you. But it isn't what you asked and I just want to make sure that we tease those two things apart. What it sounds like they're hearing is if I gave you a system that would give you perfect health and you can't opt out, you are going to do it.”
People have multiple distinct personality states or 'versions of themselves' that emerge in different contexts (e.g., '7pm Brian' vs '6am Brian'), and these versions have conflicting goals; internal goal alignment requires identifying and managing these conflicts rather than relying on unified conscious willpower.
“I identified a version of yourself or someone else that you identify with. I did the same thing with me where I said, 'I'm a whole bunch of different kinds of Brians. I'm 6:00 a.m. Brian when I wake up and I'm excited about the day. I'm 7:00 p.m. Brian when I'm stressed out, I'm out of energy, and I just want to relax and do nothing, and maybe have some food I shouldn't be eating.' There are different versions of ourselves. And in these different versions, we behave different ways.”
Civilization advances through the accumulation of operations that no longer require conscious thought or decision-making; optimal systems should automate as many critical operations as possible so conscious mind can focus on genuinely novel problems rather than recurring optimizations.
“Civilization advances by the number of important operations it can automate without the person thinking about it... if I contemplate what are the most majestic games my conscious mind could play.”
DNA methylation represents cellular dedifferentiation—the process by which cells lose their specific identity (eye cells forgetting they are eye cells, liver cells forgetting they are liver cells) and begin reading the wrong sections of DNA, causing aging through loss of specialized function.
“DNA methylation, you have these little things... they're probably a protein, and they are marking the DNA saying this is a liver cell, this is a brain cell, this is an eye cell, and thusly you should only read these sections. So, read here, stop reading here. And every time a cell gets damaged, it has to go in and like remark it and say, okay, this is the part to read and not read. And aging is effectively the dedifferentiation of cells. Your eye cell begins to forget that it's just an eye, your liver cell begins to forget that it's just a liver, so on and so forth. And so it stops doing its things well because the things reading the DNA are basically being told to read the wrong parts of the DNA. And so it starts to basically get confused, and that is aging.”
The scientific validation timeline for Flow is unpredictable; initial results are coming in approximately one month, but data-driven development cannot be engineered with predictable timelines because science itself is inherently unpredictable.
“Our first data's coming out in a month where we're at. We need to answer questions... you just can't predict science. We don't know when we're going to reach a threshold to say, 'It's there.' Now, it could be in a month, it could be 3 months, it could be 12 months, we don't know. And that's the hard thing about deep tech is you you can't engineer science in a way that is predictable.”
The host suggests that human biology and evolutionary wiring are largely deterministic; people will default to self-destructive behavior patterns unless external systems force them otherwise; therefore, meaningful change requires either forcing people into optimal systems or accepting societal dysfunction.
“There is a hyper-predictable outcome to the way that the human mind is wired. And it's largely based on geography, which then gives birth to culture... on the grand arc of humanity, I think this is relatively predictable. You're being led by the nose by your biology.”
Society celebrates and normalizes self-destructive behaviors, calling people who resist 'weird' or 'out of step,' which Johnson views as collective insanity masked by social consensus.
“we've normalized it to make it okay, where we celebrate it, we encourage it. If it's a social norm that's challenged, we try to ostracize a person or make them feel like they're out of step. And if we can muster up the greatest sobriety possible about this, it's a little insane we commit self-destructive behavior.”
The strategy for planning and adaptation should be to equip a system with tools to navigate uncertain terrain as conditions change, rather than to create detailed maps and rigid plans that will become obsolete; the body, like any adaptive system, benefits from having measurement and protocol tools rather than preset prescriptions.
“Okay, robot, we're going to give you the tools to navigate the sand, no matter what happens.' So, as the landscape changes, as we know it will, it navigates its way to these end points. And so, all you have to do is point in a general direction. And that's really what this entire thing is with Blueprint is I've basically just said, 'My body is a system with tools to navigate terrain as it moves along.' So, measurement, science, protocol.”
Organs are not unified in biological age; a person's heart can be 70 years old while chronologically they are 30, and different organs can span a wide range of ages, so biological age is not a single number but hundreds of different ages that require organ-specific measurement and intervention.
“your organs are at this very wide range. So you're not one age, you're this whole you're hundreds of different ages... your heart can be 70 years old and you're chronologically 30. Your maybe so your your organs are at this very wide range.”
Biological optimization through diet and sleep changes frame of reference so profoundly that individuals begin making fundamentally different decisions about their lives and society; therefore, to prepare for an unpredictable AI-driven future, the first step must be changing human biology to produce better-thinking populations.
“if you could get your diet and sleep, gross generalization, if you could get those right, your frame of reference would be altered so profoundly, you would begin making different decisions. But, for me to try to force you into that shoot, I break something in the way the human mind works... we really have to be thoughtful... because that's so real and oh by the way, it all starts with this food, which is why we began the episode here because you have to change your biology in order to change your frame of reference in order to see this moment clearly enough. But now, this moment is very real and we have to find a way to align our goals internally, interpersonally, and with artificial intelligence.”
The human brain, contrary to being the primary problem-solving tool, is actually a major cause of self-destructive behavior; the solution is to remove the mind as the authority and instead empower the body through comprehensive measurement and evidence-based protocol adherence.
“typically we approach things in life where we think our brain is the primary tool which solves all problems before us. But my brain as most brains do is a cause of a lot of self-destructive behavior. We are prone to eat too much food or of the wrong kind of food or drink or other substances or spend too much time consuming content not prioritizing sleep. And so the solution for me was just to take my mind it was very counter counterintuitive remove my mind as a problem-solving tool empower my body by measurement through my entire body and then looking at the evidence.”
Blueprint is fundamentally not about health and wellness as such, but rather about preparing humanity for a future of computational intelligence by developing internal goal alignment, which is the prerequisite for humans to cooperate with each other and with AI systems.
“Blueprint is not It may seem about health and wellness and diet and food. It's really not. It's my best guess at the ideal way for all of us to prepare ourselves to walk into this future. And that starts with I guess what I call goal alignment.”
Zeroth principle thinking is conceptually beyond first-principle thinking; it represents breakthroughs so novel that they reframe what questions are even askable, exemplified by Einstein's relativity or AlphaGo's moves—and artificial intelligence will introduce zeroth-principle breakthroughs at accelerating rates, creating an unpredictable future landscape.
“the idea is talent hits the target that no one else can. Genius hits the target no one can see. Talent is first principle thinking... Zeroth principle thinking, uh you can't even see the target. And so this is like Einstein's special theory of relativity, where he gave birth to something that already existed, but just changes everything. Or when AlphaGo played Lee Sedol in AlphaGo, it played moves in the game of Go that could have been played by humans, but no human did.”
'Gen Zero' is a proposed generational identity unified not by birth date but by philosophical commitment to goal alignment, willingness to detach from pre-existing systems humans have built, and openness to an unknown future with computational intelligence—while honoring rather than being beholden to human civilization's prior achievements.
“Gen Zero is you know, uh in the 21st century, Gen Zero was a group of you know, people that spanned age and gender and ethnicity and blank. And they came together and they effectively said 'We're okay detaching ourselves from all things humans have built. And we're okay to walk into this unknown future in this system where we all move in together doing this goal alignment. But it wasn't it was this delicate relationship of like we honor what has had what the human race has created. We appreciate it for what it is. We also are not beholden to any of it.'”
The organizing principle of Blueprint is to measure every organ of the body, identify what that organ wants in an ideal state according to reference gold-standard scientific evidence, create a protocol to achieve that state, and maintain perfect adherence, thereby creating a system where the body can maintain itself in an optimal state.
“if you can measure every organ of the body and let the organ speak about what it wants to be in an ideal ideal state reference gold standard scientific evidence and then create a protocol and then have perfect adherence you create a system where the body can maintain itself in an optimal state.”
Blueprint is motivated by a high-level philosophical question: 'What are the most majestic games my conscious mind could play?' — Johnson is motivated to achieve health optimization to free his cognitive resources for larger questions and experiences beyond bodily maintenance.
“And if I contemplate what are the most majestic games my conscious mind could play. That's a question and a half. And let's just for a moment try to create some separation with everything we hold near and dear right now. And let's just open ourselves up and say, 'What are the most majestic things we could experience?' There's of course a a little band of what we could see and think about and imagine be and be creative, and then there's this gigantic space of unknown, of surprise.”
The problem of human 'death grip' attachment to existing systems, identities, and meaning-making is an obstacle to collective progress; humans must become more flexible and willing to let go of what has been built in order to 'walk into this unknown future' where cooperation with AI and other agents is necessary.
“We love to grasp on to things with a death grip. And for us to let go often times the biggest impediment. And so I just couldn't get the thought out of out of my mind last night as like what is this new group of people they rally around and they find meaning in this new new unification.”
Poor regulation of the default mode network is associated with ADHD, depression, and anxiety; good regulation is associated with better resilience, focus, and adaptive functioning—so training this network could have broad therapeutic and performance-enhancement applications.
“When the default mode network is poorly regulated sometimes bad things happen, ADHD, depression, anxiety. When the default mode network is well regulated, a person's in a better state.”
Johnson's daily dark chocolate intake is 100% cocoa content, tested for heavy metals, selected for highest polyphenol count, and represents a five-level stack of optimization: level 1 is 'chocolate is good'; level 2 is 'dark chocolate is good'; level 3 is 'dark chocolate un-dutched is good'; level 4 is 'dark chocolate un-dutched without heavy metals is good'; level 5 is 'dark chocolate un-dutched non-heavy metals with highest polyphenol count.'
“We think about everything uh This chocolate's a good example of a five level stack of thinking. So first statement is chocolate's good for you. Second is dark chocolate is good for you. Third is dark chocolate un-dutched is good for you. Fourth is dark chocolate un-dutched without heavy metals is good for you. And the fifth is dark chocolate un-dutched non-heavy metals with the highest polyphenol count. And so with every one of these things we want to get to level five on every single thing.”
Johnson initially considered building an implantable brain-computer interface but chose non-invasive Flow instead because: (1) implants take ~10 years development + 10 years trials = 20 years to market through slow healthcare system; (2) non-invasive technologies will iterate faster and reach market first; (3) non-invasive systems can utilize full human sensory modalities for brain inputs, whereas implants are spatially restricted.
“my analysis was that building an implantable product uh takes around, you know, 10 years ish. Once you build it, try to go through trials, get the clinical outcomes. It's like 10 years to go to market... less invasive [technologies] will come along at a faster clip than this development process, and it'll be better to be a non-invasive for the short term... when you write to the brain, you of course can stimulate. So, if you're implanted in the brain, you can stimulate a region of the brain, but there's a 100 billion neurons. You're not going to stimulate all 100 billion neurons. Whereas, you you and I right now are stimulating each other's neurons through audio-visual inputs.”
Bilyeu's personal experience of food trauma (restrictive childhood diet of processed foods, then adult resistance to new foods until recognizing this resistance limited his options) parallels Blueprint's approach: overcoming aversions through gentle exposure and recognizing arbitrary self-imposed limitations expand behavioral possibility space.
“I had a lot of food trauma. Uh eating rice-a-roni and like really basic, horrible things as a kid over and over and over... my whole thing was no one will ever get me to eat something I don't want to eat again ever ever ever... And I eat it and it was like fireworks went off in my mouth... I had missed out on 4 years of eating this incredible cheese because I was scared... if somebody offers me food sincerely, they're not trying to mess with me, if they're offering me food sincerely, I will try it every time.”
When Johnson posed a thought experiment to dinner guests—'If a system gave you perfect health but required behavioral changes, would you accept it?'—people responded with violent refusal; upon reflection they recognize this refusal as their conscious mind desperately protecting its authoritarian control over the body, similar to how Johnson's '7pm Brian' threw tantrums when fired from eating authority.
“I've been hosting these blueprint brunches uh at my home with friends. Uh called the first supper. And I pose this question, this thought experiment. I say, 'If you could have a system that takes care of you and gives you perfect health... almost inevitably, the response is 'No.' And a violent no. And their minds generate, almost like Chat GPT, a list of 45 reasons why existence no longer makes sense for them... when I got to the day and I said playfully, you're fired [to Evening Brian]. And I started implementing that. I'd write it at 5:00 and then he would show up and he'd be like, just today or like just a little bit... That version of Brian was on the floor throwing a tantrum, punching holes in the wall, kicking and screaming.”
If humans don't figure out how to 'read and write in the language of neurology' (i.e., develop objective measurement and intervention capabilities for the brain), they will become irrelevant in a future dominated by AI systems that can read and modify their own code.
“I can't imagine a world in which in I think it was 50 years in 50 years from now that humans are relevant if they can't learn to read and write in the language of the brain.”
Youth is a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' for health only to a limited extent; Johnson uses his 17-year-old son as a baseline for biological comparison, and if his son were committing self-destructive behaviors, these would show up immediately in biomarkers, indicating that chronological age does not protect from the consequences of poor choices.
“How much is youth a get-out-of-jail-free card, though? Like, uh there are people that really mess themselves up, so I imagine you'd be able to see it. So, just to turn that into a full question. So, uh you would be able to see, if you're monitoring your son, it's not like well, he's 17 and therefore everything is going to look great. If he were doing things that were off, you'd be able to pick it up right away. That's right.”
Humans have spent the past several thousand years developing systems, technologies, and cultures that are not optimized for human flourishing but for competing evolutionary aims (reproduction, status, resource accumulation); therefore, recommitment to human flourishing requires detaching from these inherited systems.
“we're okay detaching ourselves from all things humans have built. And we're okay to walk into this unknown future in this system where we all move in together doing this goal alignment.”
Kernel is developing Flow, a wearable helmet using near-infrared light to measure brain activity non-invasively across the cortex, providing the first scalable, high-resolution brain measurement technology that can be deployed in homes and clinics globally to enable data-driven approaches to mental health optimization.
“with Kernel, we've built this helmet that can measure your brain. It looks at your cortex... we can answer questions... It's basically a pulse oximeter. So, a lot of people became familiar with pulse oximeters during COVID. You put this on your finger, you see a red glow, and it tells you your heart rate and your blood oxygenation. Uh, and so, it's just a pulse pulse oximeter for the brain. Very safe. Uh, like you said, it less light in your brain than when you're going out in the sun.”
Johnson maintains a 2,000 calorie per day diet (25% caloric restriction), is vegan, and within a 6-hour eating window, consuming super veggie (black lentils, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, garlic), nutty pudding, and a berry/nut/seed mixture, while taking 54+ supplemental pills daily; he reports being hungry constantly but experiencing the best fulfillment and energy of his life.
“my diet every day is uh roughly 2,000 calories. So, it's a 25% calorie reduction of what I would normally consume... 70 lb of vegetables a month... I eat 54 pills”
Johnson reduced his epigenetic age by 5.1 years in 7 months using six independent DNA methylation clocks (not cherry-picked), setting a world record; his biological aging rate (speed of aging) is 0.76 years per calendar year, ranking him first among 1,750 measured individuals, meaning for every calendar year he ages 0.76 years biologically.
“last year I set a world record in reducing my epigenetic age 5.1 years and 7 months using using six clocks, not one, six. I didn't cherry pick a clock... my speed of aging, so the pace in which my body ages is 0.76. you look at for that? DNA methylation... I'm number one out of 1,750 people that have been measuring their speed of aging over several years cuz uh for total reduction of age.”
Johnson has invested approximately $60 million into Kernel and has sustained the company through COVID and financial crisis; the company has achieved proof-of-concept on the technology but now must demonstrate clinical efficacy to secure investor confidence.
“I've poured heart and soul. I've put over uh I've put almost $60 million in this company. Uh you know, I've been taking it through COVID and the financial crisis. Like it's just been It's been unbelievably hard to build... investors say we're good. You know, like we've I've poured heart and soul.”
Johnson previously achieved 3% body fat using one-meal-a-day protocol with same 2,000 calorie intake, which was too low; he now targets 5-6% body fat as optimal for subcutaneous fat reserves needed for cardiac function while maintaining leanness.
“I used to do uh one meal a day. My body fat went down to 3%. Woah. A bit too low... I'm at five right now... 5% is enough subcutaneous fat cuz your heart needs fat.”
Baby carrots in high quantities spike Johnson's blood glucose over 100 mg/dL, which he finds surprising and undesirable given his target range of mid-to-low 80s; this led to reduction of carrots in his diet based on glucose response data.
“baby carrots, if I eat them to satiety, I will spike my glucose over 100. Which is crazy. And I live in the sort of mid to low 80s.”
The blueprint protocol is not the only way to achieve health outcomes; Johnson's son follows an identical protocol except substituting chicken for the vegan components, and his markers are moving in the right direction, indicating non-vegan pathways to optimization are viable.
“Do you have anybody doing the Blueprint on meat? My son does... has He is identical in everything except for he has chicken with his super veggie. And his markers going in the right direction? Yes... he is our prototype.”
Johnson's objective is to achieve biological characteristics of an 18-year-old across his entire body through full-body skin treatments and other interventions; he avoids sun exposure because ongoing treatments require photo-avoidance, and measures skin across 10 dimensions using multi-spectral imaging to track progress.
“our objective is to get my entire body to have the biological characteristics of my 17-year-old... we have this machine that does multi-spectral imaging gives us, you know, 10 different dimensions of skin... I measure I look at my skin. I'm trying to basically have skin like an 18-year-old.”
The consumption of standardized, optimized food is liberating rather than constraining because it removes the daily cognitive burden of food choice and quality evaluation, freeing mental resources for other pursuits; Johnson reports that eating optimized food is 'among the most delightful experiences' of his day and that the system is 'now solved in his life.'
“eating this food is among the most delightful experiences of my entire day. I love every second of it. I also appreciate it that it is now solved in my life. I don't spend 40% of my day thinking about what I'm going to eat or trying to order what I'm going to eat or trying to It's all just built into a system so I can have my mind pointed in somewhere else.”
Johnson conducted a 35-day brain imaging study using Flow while taking ketamine (68mg intramuscular): he measured his brain daily for 5 days prior, on the day of administration, and for 30 days after; results showed that patterns of brain response to ketamine predicted depressive symptoms one week later, validating the approach to personalized drug response prediction.
“I did ketamine while wearing this brain device, Flow... I measured my brain every day for 5 days. Then, I measured it when I did the ketamine... 68 mg intramuscular dose, according to an FDA recipe. And then, I measured my brain for 30 days after. And we now have data showing what happened in my brain over a 35-day time period when I did ketamine. And it helps baseline. So, what we show from the study is a 15-person study that a person's response to ketamine predicted their depressive symptoms a week later.”
Every deviation Johnson makes from his protocol—even small ones like taking two drops of iodine instead of one—manifests as detectable changes in his biomarkers within days to weeks, demonstrating that his measurement systems have sufficient resolution to catch behavioral deviations at high sensitivity.
“I did two drops instead of one, just playfully doing it. And then a month later my labs show up and we're as a team we're looking at this and they're like, wait a second. That result makes no sense. And I had to bashfully confess, I've deviated from the protocol. I did two drops instead of one. But any deviation was a bad deviation.”
Johnson spends more money annually on his body optimization than LeBron James does, suggesting that Blueprint protocol requires resources (both financial and temporal) that are inaccessible to most people, creating an elite-capture problem.
“You spend more money on your body every year than LeBron James. Okay? Let people at home let that one sink in.”
In an alcohol dose-response study using Flow, Johnson found that at low doses of alcohol, people became behaviorally unimpaired despite measurable brain impairment (the brain compensated), whereas at higher doses the brain's compensation failed and behavioral impairment became observable—demonstrating that brain measurements detect early dysfunction before behavioral manifestation.
“we looked at alcohol dose response. So we said we had a placebo, a low, and then a medium alcohol. And so we found that when people had a a low alcohol response, they um they became impaired. Uh when they did behavioral measures, that you couldn't identify their impairment. They behaved as if they were not impaired. We could see the impairment in the brain because the brain compensates for the impairment and the person performs as well on the task as though they were not impaired, but we can see it. When they became sufficiently intoxicated, they became so impaired the brain lost its ability to make up for it.”
The hardest part of Kernel's development was threading a technological needle: finding a non-invasive path through physics to measure brain activity that everyone said was impossible; the company spent 2 years exploring every possible physics-based pathway and succeeded where consensus opinion held no viable path existed.
“like everything's hard. Uh it's yeah, it's basically it's a pulse oximeter for the brain... At the time, nobody thought there was a non-invasive path to do it. Uh if you just surveyed the world and and sample people everyone would have told you no path. And so, we spent 2 years looking at every possible path we could look at according to laws of physics. And we did everything. And we found a path that we could just barely see through. Everything had to work to make that happen. And we threaded the needle, and we succeeded.”
The host (upon tasting Johnson's food during the interview) experiences a shift in perception, noting that the food tastes better than expected and that even a burp carries a pleasant taste, suggesting that Johnson's protocol produces genuinely enjoyable food rather than unpleasant restriction.
“I'm going to confess to something. Yeah. I burped a few minutes ago and could taste the the Master Veggie and I was like, that was nice. Like even the burp was nice.”