Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> Johnson, Zolman and the team are more than a year into their experiments, which they collectively call Project Blueprint. This includes strict guidelines for Johnson’s diet (1,977 vegan calories a day), exercise (an hour a day, high-intensity three times a week) and sleep (at the same time every night, after two hours wearing glasses that block blue light)

So you are like an 18 year old except you can't have any fun. Why would you want to live like this? You can't ever go to a party, have a drink, or go to a restaurant? Thank you, but I'll stick to eating healthy, exercising, and living my life.



Old joke time:

Patient: Doctor I want to live to 100!

Dr: First stop smoking

Patient: Ok I can do that

Dr: Next stop eating red meat

Patient: Sure, that too

Dr: No more alcohol

Patient getting uncomfortable: Ok ok fine

Dr: Go to bed early and get 8-9 hours uninterrupted sleep

Patient: hmm

Dr: And finally, cut out sugar, don't eat so much and do a lot more excercise

Patient: Ok ok ok, and will I then live to 100?

Dr: Eh... probably not but, it will feel like it.


That's great. I heard a similar one:

A man is concerned about his health and longevity, so he visits his doctor.

Man: "Doctor, I am concerned about dying before my time. Am I okay?"

Doctor: "Do you smoke?"

Man: "No"

Doctor: "Do you drink wine or beer?"

Man: "No"

Doctor: "Do you stay up late?"

Man: "No"

Doctor: "Do you eat rare red meat?"

Man: "No"

Doctor: "Do you have sex with many partners?"

Man: "No"

Doctor: "Then why the fuck do you care?"


Or yet another version...

OLD MAN: Look at me, son. I don't moke. I don't drink. I don't take drugs. I don't eat fatty food. I don't chase after women. And tomorrow I celebrate my hundredth birthday!

YOUNG MAN: How?


He (almost) literally wrote this as a blog post...

https://www.bryanjohnson.co/articles/i-fired-myself


Worse than not having fun; you have to take all these pills a day. https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.co/#step-2-supplements

I think there's an in-between. Getting sleep. Fasting. Exercise. Avoiding sugar.


Jesus why is he on so many diabetic meds?

He's on metformin, taking 1500mg in the morning of an extended release, and 500mg extended release in the evening. Normal dosage for this is 500mg/day. Extended release means they stay in his system for 24 hours, no reason to take it in two doses, much less take 4x the normal amount.

He's also on Acarbose, another diabetic med. The recommended dosing for this is 50mg 3 times per day and hes' taking two 200mg doses. This makes no sense, your body eliminates it quickly, halflife of 2 hours. It's also 6x the standard dose.

He's also on Rapamycin, a cancer med or organ transplant med that is immunosupressive. Standard dose is 2mg/day. He's taking 13mg twice a week.

He's also taking Testesterone 6 of 7 days of the week, and half your standard does. Total nonsense.

This guy is going to wreck his kidney and liver with these meds, put himself at high risk of infection and disrupt his endocrine system. And that's just with his prescriptions, not even examining his supplements.

All this to brag that he's as fit as an "18 year old" whatever the fuck that means. I too could probably get "fit as an 18 year old" if I were taking steroids like testosterone and exercised every day. Hell, I be you could too, and probably without the testosterone.

This is the last guy I'd listen to for longevity treatments.


Honestly he's got some obsessive issues here. Mental health issues that he's willing to try anything to be younger. He doesn't look young in the face and very little can change that. He must be very insecure about it. The sad this is that the doctors see money, and with that much money people won't tell you no if you have terrible ideas.


People will go to extraordinary lenghts to avoid having to confront their own mortality.


From the article: "The team, led by 29-year-old regenerative medicine physician Oliver Zolman"

29-year-old physician? Did he complete medical school and his residency? Give me a break.


To be honest I'm actually surprised he's able to grow muscles at the rate at which he's doing it considering Rapamycin and Metformin are both known for really hindering muscle growth and general performance.


I mean ... he ran it by his team of 30 doctors he hired.


Team of 30 doctors lead by....a 29 year old.


I think rapamycin has some study supporting it


The data on rapamycin (and rapalogs in general) is mixed. There is no reliable evidence that it slows down biological aging in humans. Even if it does have some benefits we don't clearly understand the optimal dosing and schedule.

https://peterattiamd.com/mattkaeberlein2/


If only some kind of machine could help us figure that out! /s

200+ references in this journal article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6814615/


Rapamycin to me is the bat shit crazy aspect of this.

There is no research on taking a powerful immunosuppressant pharmaceutical for the next 40 years for "longevity".

Not to mention testosterone. At least testosterone will make you feel great while you actually shorten your life in the name of longevity.


These help, but genetics also play part. You can’t lifestyle your way out of bad genetics.


To a limited extent you can medicate yourself out of some bad genetics. Statins and anti-hypertensives have really changed the game.


Wow, this is sad.


True but TBH that routine sounds like the routine for anyone that's serious about getting in shape. Yeah you can look fantastic and all your friends will envy you at the pool party, but in return you have to be extremely strict with everything including diet, exercise and sleep.


No pool parties either, they're getting into late night and involve alcohol as well.


You can leave earlier. I can't believe I'm typing this.


Its also not like you have to do it every day either. Going to a pool party once in a blue moon isn't going to be a devastating change in routine, even if you stay the whole time


Kinda disappointing to see so many people on this post implying that their idea of living life is the only valid approach


Incidentally, I'm about halfway through "Time Enough for Love" from Heinlein.

Lazarus is laughing at this man.


right, he's like why doesn't this idiot just become fictional like me?!?


Context: Lazarus Long is at least 2,000 years old, has gone through multiple 'Rejuvenation' services, and seen/done just about everything in the galaxy.

A quote from page 3 of my edition: "WHERE'S MY SUIDICE SWITCH?"


> A quote from page 3 of my edition: "WHERE'S MY SUIDICE SWITCH?"

I realize this was a typo, but now I'm imagining a Russian roulette-type game, but with dice.


I had an idea bouncing around, and now I've got it:

2d6, passed back and forth. First to roll a 7 "wins".

Chances of 1/6 chambers look similar to (2d6) = 7


That's the line that got me to read the whole book.

Shortly after there was an exchange that went something like:

Person 1: "He said his suicide switch is missing?"

Person 2: "Yeah, we had to remove it. He kept pressing it."


He's trying to live long enough to reach "Longevity Escape Velocity" or basically long enough for there to be an easy and real age-reversal method. That becoming a thing is obviously not guaranteed but if it were to happen, especially around the time when he's really old, it might actually pay off.


So far longevity escape velocity appears to still be infinity. We are not making any visible progress towards an easy and real age-reversal method. If we were then we would expect to see some incremental progress with at least a few people living significantly longer. But the age record of 122 years set back in 1997 still hasn't been broken today.


Software engineers like to believe in science fiction.


Besides that, it just sounds like esoteric nonsense. What's next? Essential oils?


At the risk of missing some intended sarcasm, which part of the vegan diet, regular exercise, and sleep hygiene sounds like esoteric nonsense? I don't see how any of those are comparable to essential oils.


Presumably in the comment

"Besides that, it just sounds like esoteric nonsense. What's next? Essential oils?"

it refers to the entirety of Bryan Johnson's routine including the tea-tree mouthwashing, the weekly acid peels, the 33,000+ images of his bowels, the laser treatments, the fat injections into his face, etc.

I doubt they meant that a vegan diet, regular exercise, and sleep hygiene is esoteric.


On the contrary, they were so obvious I wondered if the parent's final comment was a tongue-in-cheek joke:

> Thank you, but I'll stick to eating healthy, exercising, and living my life.


The vegan part is nonsense.


Communities with little to no consumption of meat, like Seventh-Day Adventists, have significantly lower rates of prion disease and Alzheimers.

While it may be nonsense if your goal is solely prolonging life, avoiding meat seems like a relatively easy way to reduce your risk of becoming worthless to society and yourself; virtually everyone can agree that dementia is something to avoid.


Sounds like confounding bias. Seven-Day Adventists abstain from cigarettes, a main contributor to early death. Also any diet that avoids the standard American diet will probably increase your lifespan, even veganism, though probably less so now with all of the processed vegan foods. That has no bearing on whether veganism is an optimal diet for human longevity, it just implies that the standard American diet is a poor diet. If you look at countries with the highest meat consumption - Hong Kong and Australia - they also have the longest lifespan.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6654568/ “It is concluded that evidence was found for the thesis that abstinence from cigarette smoking is the main factor explaining the low mortality from ischaemic heart diseases among SDAs”


The argument wasn't "avoiding meat prolongs death." It was "avoiding meat reduces the risk of dementia."

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/114/1/175/617...


I find it hard to believe there's enough of a population of Seventh-Day Adventists to actually say they have lower rates of prion disease.

Prion disease incidence is 1 to 2 cases per million people per year. You'd have to have millions of 7th day adventists submitting to research to be able to assert that with any confidence.


Vegan is more than avoiding meat. As far as health is concerned, I would put avoiding salmon, eggs, and fermented milk on the "makes your diet less healthy" list. I would be very curious to see a study that said avoiding once a week liver was healthier than having it.

Daily consumption of red meat? Yeah, the jury appears to be tilted against such behavior/habit.


What is the standard rate of prion disease?


> Prion diseases are rare. About 300 cases are reported each year in the U.S.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

So, vanishingly rare. Enough to be an irrelevance.


...I mean, they could have stipulated organic fair-trade vegan. That would be nonsense. You can't very well claim veganism isn't a significant dietary choice with knock-on effects to one's health, though (albeit whether those are negative depends on whether and how you deal with the lack of things in your diet that most of us get mainly/entirely from animal products - vitamin B12, iron etc)


You can't claim we know the knock on effects outside of calorie restriction.

If anything calorie restriction seems to dominate all other variables in all contexts but people don't like that answer.


Not claiming anyone knows what any effects might be, positive or negative. Unlike the usual kinds of nonsense woo, though, there might actually be effects. That is my entire thesis.


None of those actually make you 18 in any appreciable form?


...I do get a fair bit of rhetoric about going vegan from 18-year-olds ;)


Fun fact, the "essential" in essential oil actually refers to the fact that it emits a scent (essence), not that it is something important for your body to have.


Hmmm... Are there any other examples of a suffix of "ce" transferring to "tial" to mean "about that thing"?

Presence -> Presential

Governance -> Governantial

Fence -> Fential

Evanescence -> Evanesential

The latter is at least the best conceivable name for an Evanescence cover band.


I think it's pretty common, you're just not reaching for the right set of "-ence" words.

Residence -> residential, Evidence -> evidential...

Jurisprudential, existential, penitential...

The only thing is that about half have become "having characteristics related to the thing" instead of "about the thing". Words like consequential, pestilential, preferential have a common usage in this realm but still can be used in the "discussion about a thing" sense.


Ah yeah these are good.


Since you're curious: in the original Latin you'd be looking for words of 3rd declination that have "ent" and, depending on case, end with -ens (contraction of ent+s), -entis, -entia or something like that.

I guess English took (ens -> ence) and (entia + l -> ential).


Reference -> Referential Difference -> Differential Prudence -> Prudential (now I understand the origin of this name)


Regular sleep and intermittent, focused exercise are obviously good things. Balanced vegan diet (assuming you get all your nutrients) is also an obviously (if only slightly less obviously) good thing.


There is no reliable scientific basis to claim that a vegan diet is good from a general health and longevity perspective. No one has ever performed a proper long-term randomized controlled trial. The error bars on the studies we do have are very wide, with multiple uncontrolled confounding variables and low-quality subject reported data.

You can find plenty of vegan junk food packed with sugar.


I tried to phrase my comment precisely to avoid this sort of comment. See my parentheses in the GP.


Say what you will about essential oils but peppermint oil has saved me from needing Tylenol/Advil on many occasions with a headache.


Sounds like giving up 30-40% of your prime living years to live an extra 20% at the tail end. If you're hobby is trying to live forever, then sounds pretty neat, but if you'd rather do other things, not so much.


Maybe not about living extra time but having more health longer (health span extension vs life span)




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: