Chasing immortality: Who is Bryan Johnson?

Johnson, 45, is a wealthy software entrepreneur who employs more than 30 doctors and healthcare professionals 24/7 who monitor his body's every function; According to estimates, his fortune is over 400 million dollars. The goal of the team, led by 29-year-old regenerative medicine doctor Oliver Zolman, is to rejuvenate every organ of Johnson. Zolman and Johnson obsessively follow every scientific article on aging and longevity. The millionaire never tires of being a guinea pig for the most promising treatments; All is fair for Johnson on the road to youth.

He wants to do every part of the 18-year-old

This rejuvenation program is more than just creams and afternoon walks; launching and running this program, which uses the best in medical technology, required an investment of several million dollars, including the cost of a small hospital that Johnson built at his home in Venice, California. Johnson, who plans to spend at least $2 million on his body this year, wants to have every part of him, including his brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, tendons, teeth, skin, hair, bladder, penis and rectum, at the age of 18.

Bryan Johnson (born August 22, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, writer and author. He is the founder and CEO of Kernel, a company making devices that monitor and record brain activity, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage science and technology companies. Johnson has received media attention for his anti-aging attempt that he calls "Project Blueprint."

Confused by his expectations, Johnson says, "The body has a certain configuration at 18. My goal is to get back to that perfect edge." Johnson realizes this may sound like madness and that some of the methods he uses may sound like fraud, but he doesn't care at all.

"Nobody pushes the boundaries as much as Johnson"

Johnson, Zolman, and the team of doctors have been continuing their experiment, which they collectively call Project Blueprint, for more than a year. This includes strict rules on Johnson's diet (1,977 vegan calories per day), exercise (high-intensity for one hour a day, three times a week), and sleep (at the same time every night, after wearing blue-light-blocking glasses for two hours).

A hugely successful software entrepreneur, Johnson — he's actually 45 — sold a payment planning company to eBay for $800 million in 2013 before founding a biotech company called Kernel. With this enormous fortune behind him, Johnson launched Project Blueprint two years ago. The project began with a series of tests that measured all 78 organs in Johnson's body and took blood, saliva, feces and urine samples.

In order to fine-tune the program, Johnson constantly monitors his vital signs. He also endures dozens of medical procedures each month, some quite extreme and painful, then gauges their results with additional blood tests, MRIs, ultrasounds, and colonoscopies. “I treat athletes and Hollywood celebrities, and no one pushes the boundaries like Bryan,” says Jeff Toll, an internal medicine specialist who is on the team. Doctors announced that all that work was starting to pay off: Johnson's body was, by their measurements, medically rejuvenated.

His lung is as old as his son

While Johnson's 18-year-old dreams may be some distance away, his body is certainly healthier than most 45-year-olds. His body fat ratio is between 5 percent and 6 percent, which makes him look muscular. But what excites his doctors the most is what's happening inside his body. The team's tests showed that Johnson had reduced his biological age by at least five years.

According to the results, Johnson has the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity and condition of an 18-year-old. "Every organ we monitored was remarkably rejuvenated," says Toll.

You'd still recognize it if you saw it on the road

Zolman, who received his medical degree from King's College London, approaches the situation a little more realistically. The doctor emphasized that his work with Johnson has just begun and that they have hundreds of procedures to explore, including a range of experimental gene therapies. "There are no significant results yet. We had small, modest results in Bryan, and that's what we expected," Zolman says.

We need to turn work into a game

But according to Johnson, his initiative has already been successful. While he's not the first developer to become obsessed with living a healthier life, he's pursuing something tech industry types are calling the "quantified self-movement." In recent years, Silicon Valley already had the idea of optimizing internal organs. This often took the form of occasional exercise or diet fads, from intermittent fasting to special diets. Johnson said you need to count more than just your steps to get a clear picture of what's best for your body.

"What I'm doing may sound extreme, but I'm trying to prove to myself that harm and decay are not inevitable," the millionaire says. While he passes on the lessons of his unorthodox lifestyle to the rest of us, he also relies on a well-known strategy in the software business; Turning work into a game as much as possible.

Here's just part of Johnson's rejuvenation routine:

Johnson takes two dozen supplements and medications every morning starting at 5 a.m. Lycopene for vascular and skin health; metformin to prevent intestinal polyps; turmeric, black pepper, and ginger root to reduce liver enzymes and inflammation; zinc to support a vegan diet and microdoses of lithium for brain health. Then he does an hour-long workout consisting of 25 different movements, and as a reward for his efforts, he drinks a green juice filled with creatine, cocoa flavanols, collagen peptides, and many other interesting things. Throughout the day, he consumes healthy foods, with recipes adjusted based on the results of his most recent tests. After the meal, Johnson brushes his teeth, does dental care with special tools, then gargles with tea tree oil and applies antioxidant gel to his mouth. Doctors say the 45-year-old millionaire has the gums of a 17-year-old child.

Johnson has a plan and a set of measurements for each part of his body. To date, the millionaire has taken 33,537 photos of his intestines, discovered that his eyelashes are shorter than average, and investigated the thickness of his jugular vein. The millionaire exposes his pelvic floor to electromagnetic pulses to build muscles in hard-to-reach places and even has a device that counts the number of nocturnal erections.

It measures its weight, body mass index, and body fat percentage every day, and monitors body temperature, blood sugar, heart rate changes while awake, and oxygen levels while sleeping. He also undergoes regular tests that target his kidneys, prostate, thyroid, and nervous system, with ongoing blood, stool, and urine tests, as well as full-body MRIs and ultrasounds.

To repair sun damage to his skin, Johnson applies seven creams a day, gets weekly acid masks and laser therapy, and tries to stay out of the sun as much as possible. To improve the hearing in his left ear, he does sound therapy, which tests the limits of the frequencies he can hear and then produces inaudible sounds that stimulate cells in his ear and brain.