2023-11-10 18:12:33
Is Bryan Johnson simply the best wellness influencer in tech? In just a few months, this crazy American millionaire has gathered around him a community of thousands of followers.
You’ve probably already come across Bryan Johnson’s slightly pale face and muscular body. This 46-year-old serial entrepreneur set out to rejuvenate at the cost of a draconian pace of life and various experiments on his own body. His extremism and the presentation he makes of it on social networks have earned him numerous articles, interviews with podcasters and TV reports, from New York Times has TF1. He’s not the first Silicon Valley tech bro to have this ambition. But he is certainly the only one to have made this the main objective of his existence. Because Bryan considers himself an explorer of the future. This is what he explains in his self-published book (an improbable transcription of a dialogue between his inner voices) simply called Don’t Diedon’t die, then.
Thanks to Bryan’s crop top, we’re talking health
This extreme personality is not only of interest to the media. In recent months, communities have been forming around Bryan Johnson and his rejuvenation program that he called BluePrint. In the United States, as in Europe, there are a few thousand who follow his advice more or less rigorously. On Reddit, they are for example 9,000 to have joined r/Blueprint. “You could consider us fans, I would say more that we are hyperinterested in what Bryan does, more than in himself. He has an eccentric personality, which can be shocking, because he measures everything precisely, he poses in a crop top, gets his son’s blood transfused… And that’s good, because everyone is talking about the subjects it covers: health and longevity,” explains Maxime Berthelot, VP growth for a startup.
At 40, he has already consulted nutritionists and tested various fashionable diets including “keto” and intermittent fasting. “I was often frustrated by the exchanges I had with doctors, because I do not adhere to this principle of One Size Fits all (translated as: a one-size-fits-all approach). I didn’t understand why I was prescribed diets or treatments without having information on my metabolism, without measuring my hormone levels for example. » In January 2023, he decided to try “BluePrint” after listening to a podcast with Bryan Johnson. “ What I liked was not the excesses of his personality, it was his data-driven and scientific approach.. He tests each product and measures the results. But also the fact that he shares all his information for free in open source, while it is not uncommon to see nutritionists charging 100 or 200 euros per month. »
Blueprint consists of a fairly strict diet – mainly vegetables and oilseeds – lots of dietary supplements, some medications, exercise and rigorous monitoring of biomarkers. Bryan Johnson adds all kinds of experimental therapies and other very precise monitoring of his nocturnal erections (he spends 2 million dollars annually), which few members of his community can obviously afford.
Maxime mainly focuses on monitoring certain metrics and especially on diet. “80% of my meals are compatible with the program,” he says. This means that like Bryan, he primarily eats two meals: the Super Veggie (a mix of greens and lentils) and the Nutty Pudding (a mix of fruits and nuts). The third meal of the day is freer but should not exceed a certain number of calories. Furthermore, he would like to point out that his diet is adapted to his lifestyle. “I sometimes deviate, I don’t eat the exact same vegetables, I don’t take all the food supplements and medications that Bryan takes. I adapt according to my own needs, and also the seasonality of vegetables in France, for example. In a way I “forked” the Blueprint to make it my own. »
Its objective is more modest than that of the millionaire: “to live as long as possible in good health” and therefore avoid certain diseases often linked to aging – cancers, strokes and diabetes in particular.
A protocol deemed unscientific by doctors
He is rather very satisfied with the results. “I have lost 12 kilos since January, I sleep much better, I have gained 20% on my sleep performances (sleep performance) according to Whoop (a connected bracelet). Sleep has always been a problem for me though. As I sleep better, this obviously has a positive impact on my days, on my sports recovery. His enthusiasm rubbed off on his young colleague Max Guérois, 27 years old. He started using the Blueprint method last June and is a fan of the recipes. “Everyone loves them,” he says. The Nutty Pudding is just amazing. But it also removes a huge mental load from me – that of thinking about what meal to prepare. And I started to see results quickly: weight loss, fat loss…”
Some doctors, however, have doubts about Bryan Johnson’s supposedly scientific method. In TimeDr Nir Barzilai, Director of the Research Institute on Aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, asks. “What he’s doing isn’t necessarily safe, because some of the treatments he’s taking are actually antagonistic,” he says, adding that doctors normally study the effects of one drug at a time, rather than the effects cumulative of more than 100 pills taken in parallel. “Even if it works for him, how do you know if it works for you? he explains. Blueprint, he adds, “is not a protocol that we accept as scientists or doctors.”
Zero Club
But that doesn’t stop longevity enthusiasts from giving it a try. In September, Bryan Johnson invited his X followers to create local communities to help each other follow the program. Max and Maxime therefore felt legitimate and creates the “Zero Club”, which very quickly opened up to other European countries. There are now 300 of them chatting on Circle and WhatsApp, to give each other advice, share resources around BluePrint, and more broadly talk about longevity, health and nutrition. “We also did it to meet people. The good surprise was to discover that there were lots of people who were interested, who understood the protocol, and that we were not alone,” explains Maxime Berthelot.
On their online discussion spaces, we see many profiles of entrepreneurs, tech workers, traders. An attraction which can be explained by Bryan’s profile (before being the guinea pig of his own program, he founded the payment company Braintree then Kernel). But also because its approach centered around data reasons with profiles who work with figures and are familiar with the approach test and learn, estimates Max Guérois. A large majority is represented by fairly young men, even if the two co-founders argue that women have also joined the community. There should be more of them because Kate Tolo, Bryan Johnson’s associate, has recently been following the BluePrint program, with some adaptations specifically made for women. All its measures and the evolution of the “rejuvenation” of “BluePrint XX” (that’s Kate’s nickname, therefore) are closely followed and should be released within a few months.
Zero Club members generally claim an appetite for biohacking, longevity and nutrition. We can read somewhat confusing comments such as: “I believe in a future where everyone could choose their life expectancy. » But nothing as extreme as the mantras of Bryan who, remember, intends to control the needs of his body thanks to an algorithm.
Le Uber du Nutty Pudding
The exchanges are more practical than philosophical. People are especially happy to share their journey (adventure, Editor’s note), to explain in detail how they apply BluePrint. Because one of the big topics for the community is the sourcing ingredients and food supplements.
“We cannot find all the brands mentioned by Bryan Johnson in Europe, so we are doing research to find French equivalents,” explains Max Guerois. The two friends even went further. They carried out group purchases of ingredients sourced in Europe to offer around thirty Green Giant preparation kits (a Bryan concoction mixing cauliflower, algae, chocolate highly concentrated in flavanol, collagen and around ten others ingredients).
And some communities have even made meal preparation a business model. In some cities, there are special BluePrint delivery services, which are quite confidential at the moment. In San Francisco, Jeff Tang, one of the enthusiasts followers by Bryan Johnson got into this business. Last November, he was pleased to have delivered 70 BluePrint meals to San Francisco during an event organized by a tech startup. In Lisbon, London and Berlin, services also exist. Paris should follow soon.
Wasn’t Green Gaint discontinued from Blueprint?
— BlackBoat (@GoldenValor) November 6, 2023
In addition to preparing meals, Bryan’s fans are also looking for information to be “tested”, that is to say, to check certain markers via blood, urine and other tests. In total, Bryan Johnson checks 52 indicators including the classic cholesterol, triglyceride, but also measurements normally reserved for certain pathologies or specific screenings such as reticulocytes (generally to detect anemia), cystacin C (which can detect certain liver diseases ) or testosterone level. “In France it is not easy to obtain your analyzes because it is preventive medicine, but few doctors practice it, they will not prescribe you analyzes if you are not sick,” explains Maxime Berthelot. On Zero Club, we therefore find a list of “longevity-pilled doctors”, European doctors familiar with the concept of longevity, who agree to prescribe fairly in-depth analyzes to patients without specific pathology.
Forget DNA tests, here are longevity tests
The other solution is to turn to startups that develop self-tests like BioStarks et TruDiagnostic, which respectively offer a longevity test by measuring different markers and a test calculating your biological age. A bit like consumer genetic testing, where users send a saliva sample, here they must take a drop of blood to send to the company which then analyzes the results and offers recommendations. Zero Club lists this type of company on its site, and offers promotional codes for certain services.
Despite the use of these technologies, and the adjustments they make to their pace of life, Maxime and Max do not particularly feel like they belong to transhumanism. They still recognize that there is a philosophy of life behind BluePrint. For them, however, it is above all about “feeling good in their bodies”. For Bryan Johnson, the stakes seem much higher. “Blueprint is not a simple revolution in health, nor even a scientific revolution, it is a revolution in thought,” he writes in Don’t Die. Not sure that eating Nutty Puddings and broccoli 7 days a week will persuade you to change the world, but why not. In the meantime, a whole longevity industry is flourishing.
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