Try Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint HIIT protocol
Bryan Johnson is a prominent but somewhat controversial figure within the longevity world. To his supporters, his intense ‘Blueprint Protocol’ is a groundbreaking and necessary exploration of how far science and technology can extend the number of healthy years available to humans. To his detractors, he is a vain millionaire living an unrealistic (and unenviable) existence of punishing self-restraint and exertion, all for an exorbitant cost and very little scientific value.
We’ll discuss Bryan Johnson and the Blueprint Protocol in more depth later on in this blog, but first we’ll look at this month’s Blueprint-inspired longevity challenge.
The challenge
Whatever your opinion of him, you have to admire some of the physiological improvements that Byran Johnson has achieved. Most impressive to us is his VO2max, a key measure of cardiorespiratory fitness that is strongly associated with longevity (as we’ve written about in a previous blog). Johnson claims to have a VO2max of 58.7 mg/L/kg, a staggeringly high figure that is up there with elite athletes and puts him in the top 1.5% of scores for 18-year-olds.
The most effective way to improve VO2max is through high-intensity interval training (HIIT), so for this month’s longevity challenge we want you to try out Bryan Johnson’s weekly HIIT routine, which we’ve summarised in the graphic below:
Who is Bryan Johnson and what is the Blueprint?
Bryan Johnson is a 46-year-old millionaire entrepreneur turned longevity fanatic who is attempting to optimize his health and extend his life through a meticulously controlled protocol he calls Project Blueprint. Many elements are well-established and science-backed longevity interventions, albeit taken to extreme degrees. This includes a rigorous daily exercise regime, tightly controlled diet, 20 hours of fasting each day, a plethora of supplements and pharmaceuticals (totalling more than 100 pills daily), and a strict sleep schedule. Other aspects of Blueprint are more leftfield though; he starts each day with an LED light bath, uses an electromagnetic device to strengthen his pelvic floor (to ensure his bladder function doesn’t interrupt his sleep), and last year he was infused with his 18-year-old son’s plasma.
All of this is informed by reams of data and algorithmic interpretation. Johnson has proclaimed himself to be the ‘most measured human in history’, with everything from his epigenetic age to his telomere length to the microscopic health of his skin recorded on a regular basis. This is a key cornerstone of Project Blueprint, as it allows Johnson, his team of doctors and a suite of algorithms to assess the results of all his interventions and make changes to optimize his protocol. It also allows him to gauge how close he is to achieving his overall aim of ‘reversing’ his biological age. On a more profound level, Johnson talks about Blueprint as an attempt to wrest control from his conscious self and give complete control of his life to data and algorithms, which might seem wonderfully utopian or terrifyingly dystopian, depending on your outlook.
So, is this a positive thing?
There are reasons to feel positive and skeptical about Blueprint. Johnson rightly points out that he is spending a massive amount of money, estimated at $2 million per year, researching cutting-edge longevity interventions and is making the results (including detailed data) available for all to see. He is also encouraging others to join him, although, as many have pointed out, it’s hardly an affordable or realistic lifestyle for the vast majority of the global population, and the beneficent nature of the project has been slightly muddied by the fact that he now sells Blueprint products, such as extra virgin olive oil and nutritional powders.
The scientific worth of his endeavour has also been questioned. Any study is only as good as its sample size, and Blueprint’s sample size is as small as possible: one. So although it will be fascinating to see what Johnson can achieve in terms of his health and longevity, it will be hard to know if any of it will be relevant to other humans, even if any of them could afford it.
In our opinion, Blueprint is pushing the boundaries of longevity science and investigating many of the more experimental interventions that are unlikely to receive funding through public investment, which is a positive even if the results generated aren’t yet robust or translatable. Johnson is also bringing publicity (both good and bad) to longevity in general, which may mean that more people work on the undeniably beneficial basics, like regular exercise, healthy diet, good sleep hygiene and well-validated supplements. All of which we think is a good thing!
