← The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Most Replayed Moment: This Longevity Protocol Actually Works! - Biohacker Bryan Johnson
00:20:20
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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:34]
B
What mission are you on? And why does that mission matter to you, but also to everybody else listening to this?
- [00:39]
A
Right now my mission is for the human race to survive and thrive. And it's figuring out what we do that creates the highest probability of that being possible.
- [00:54]
B
And why specifically have you taken on that mission versus any other mission you could have committed your life in time to? Why you And I want the long answer to this all the context going right back to the beginning.
- [01:08]
A
I had this transformative experience when I was 19 years old. I went to Ecuador and I was a missionary and I lived among extreme poverty. Dirt floors, mud huts, people not knowing how they're going to make ends meet day to day. And I came back to the United States and my family was poor growing up, but it was opulent compared to Ecuador. I couldn't believe that I had lived in a bubble my entire life, unaware of circumstances, of other realities, like where I was at in Ecuador and I was facing decisions in college, what to study, what to become, who I was going to be. You start creating these identities. All I could identify was this fire that had lit within me that I wanted to spend my life trying to improving the human race at a global scale. I don't know where it came from, but it just coming back from Ecuador, it seemed like that was what I wanted to spend my life on. I didn't know what to do. I was 21 years old, I didn't have any ideas. And so I thought I would become an entrepreneur, make a whole bunch of money by the age of 30 and then with that money try to figure out a plan to do it. And so lucky me, I sold Braintree Venmo at 34 and made a few hundred million dollars.
- [02:12]
B
So sold for $800 million, right?
- [02:15]
A
And then I set my mind to this question of what one thing in existence could I do that would be relevant in the 25th century? I grew up on biographies and so I'm accustomed to thinking about things on a centuries timescale, so doing things that not that matter in the news cycle. Tomorrow. But that intelligence in the 21st century would say, you know what, we appreciate what happened in the early 21st century.
- [02:42]
B
You've only really been. Been following this protocol for a couple of years now, right?
- [02:47]
A
Yeah, I mean, my. I guess I. I really do understand myself as on a singular mission for intelligent existence to thrive. That is what I am. That is what I'm doing. That's what I'm pursuing. Nothing else matters to me.
- [03:10]
B
The question, the ultimate question, I think in, you know, you just said all these people are gonna say I'm weird or whatever else. There's this ultimate question because you're very, very clearly mission driven. And there's always a cost. Much of what I do here when I meet extraordinary people is to understand the cost. In fact, the reason I started this podcast is because we. That's called the Diary of a CEO. It's cause we see the CEO stuff, but we don't see the diary. That's why it's called what it is. And it started as me just sharing my diary. And I shared everything from masturbation, my mental struggles, everything. My issues with my family. I shared it all to put the cost out there to the world. Cost of my mission, my calling, my pursuit, the thing that was dragging me. The ultimate question becomes, are you happy?
- [03:56]
A
Never more so in my entire life, unquestionably.
- [04:03]
B
And what does that mean?
- [04:05]
A
I've never felt more fulfilled. I've never felt more stable. I've never felt a more expansive consciousness. I've never felt more free. I've never felt more bold. I've never in my entire life been this alive.
- [04:24]
B
And you experienced the antithesis of happiness. Right? You experienced. I mean, maybe some people would argue that it's something else, but you experienced the bottom of the crevice of depression. You know what that felt like?
- [04:36]
A
I do.
- [04:37]
B
The voices in your head that were telling you to do things, the unthinkable actions of suicide. What. What goes on in your head now? What are the same voices saying?
- [04:49]
A
It's all play. I'm. I've never had more fun. Most of my life has just been a grind. It's like doing the things to achieve the objective because that's what the societal role play says to do. And that what I'm doing now, I'm not doing this for anyone's expectations. I'm not doing this to achieve anyone's acceptance. This is the game I've selected to play. I don't care what anyone says about it, sincerely, I just feel free.
- [05:25]
B
I. I noticed there's something on the chair over there. And I'm. I'm actually starving. It's. It's just gone for a clock. And I haven't eaten today, but you were very kind in bringing me some food. So I want to talk about. I want to talk about food. Jack, could you bring me the food, please, and you can tell me what you've brought me to eat. Presumably, this is what you eat.
- [05:48]
A
That's right.
- [05:48]
B
Good. Thank you. Okay, so you've. You've brought me a meal today?
- [05:54]
A
I did.
- [05:55]
B
Just for anyone that's looking. I'll try and tilt it up so people can see if anyone's watching on YouTube or Spotify, where you can get the video. You can see what's in these bowls. And you've bought me two little buckets of pills here and there's a drink here. What is. What is this food?
- [06:13]
A
This is. This is the answer. If you ask the body, what do you want to eat to be in ideal health, this is the answer that it generated. So this is not to say that is the only food you could eat. It is a version where you could eat. And so my daily caloric intake is 2,250 calories a day. Every calorie has to fight for its life. There's not a single calorie in my entire life protocol that exists for any reason other than serving an objective in the body. So dish number one is called super veggie. It's broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, garlic, ginger, hemp seeds. And over a month, if you. If you were to do this with me, you would eat around 70 pounds of vegetables per month.
- [07:01]
B
70 pounds of vegetables per month. Wow. Wow.
- [07:07]
A
I think we also have in there extra virgin olive oil and chocolate.
- [07:12]
B
Yeah, I can taste like cacao, like dark chocolate.
- [07:15]
A
So I pair the chocolate in here. It's an unexpected pairing. The way we think about this is you could say chocolate is good for you, which might lead you to eat a Snickers bar. The more precise way of thinking about it is you want dark chocolate undutched, test for heavy metals and has a high polyphenol count. If you don't do all five layers to qualify the value of the chocolate, you have an inferior chocolate nutritional value for your body. So everything we do at Blueprint uses that frame of reference of understanding everything. A full stack way of how do you serve the body's objectives in the maximal way?
- [07:53]
B
That is a mushroom covered in chocolate.
- [08:00]
A
How fun.
- [08:03]
B
So interesting.
- [08:05]
A
Yeah, those. Oh, those are matake mushrooms.
- [08:07]
B
Matake Mushrooms. This is a normal broccoli, isn't it?
- [08:09]
A
That's right.
- [08:10]
B
You didn't put anything on it?
- [08:11]
A
No.
- [08:12]
B
No salt.
- [08:13]
A
I use potassium chloride. No salt.
- [08:17]
B
And we've got some broccoli in there. So is that. Is that that dish explained?
- [08:20]
A
That's explained.
- [08:21]
B
Okay. And then this is. Looks like dessert to me.
- [08:24]
A
Nutty pudding. It is. Many people consider it to be a dessert. It's macadamia nuts, walnuts, flaxseed, sunflower, lechen, pomegranate juice, berries, and pea protein.
- [08:36]
B
And is this the entire meal you'd have in one day?
- [08:39]
A
There's one more dish which we don't have, which varies day to day.
- [08:42]
B
Okay.
- [08:43]
A
But this is really it. I have three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. One's in here. Then I have an avocado and a third mill a day.
- [08:51]
B
And this drink here that you've given me, what's that?
- [08:54]
A
Make sure you stir that up. Okay. That's the Green Giant. So the way that it works is I'll wake up in the morning, first thing I'll do is drink the green giant, take 60 pills, work out for an hour, then eat super veggie, wait for an hour, eat nutty pudding, wait for one more hour, and eat my third meal of the day, and then I'm finished for the day.
- [09:09]
B
How many pills will you take in one day?
- [09:11]
A
Currently 111.
- [09:13]
B
Wow. And you take 60 of them in the morning?
- [09:16]
A
That's right.
- [09:18]
B
Wow. Wow. That's an interesting taste, I've got to say. It doesn't taste amazing, you know, it's not like something I'd. I'd find in a. Like a juice bar or something.
- [09:29]
A
Right.
- [09:30]
B
There's a little bit of a aftertaste to it. That's not. Not fantastic. And, I mean, I like vegetables, so I like most of this stuff. The chocolate, I think, is a bit of a spanner in the works because it's not like a chocolate that you'd get. It's not milk chocolate or a Mars bar.
- [09:44]
A
That's right.
- [09:45]
B
Right. It's a very, very dark, bitter taste, which is a strange thing to add to a mushroom.
- [09:53]
A
Yeah. You can also put the dark chocolate in the nutty pudding or you can have it independently. I find it's fun because it's a new experience for people to try. So it's really an optional thing.
- [10:01]
B
Oh, this is nice. This nutty pudding is really nice. Mmm. That's really nice. That's really, really nice. So what are your principles for eating then, Clara? You talked about Calorific restriction. How important is that? Because I'm, I eat a lot and I don't count, I just, just eat. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, my heaviest on 15 stone fives, which is what, about 100 kilograms or something. So I'm, I'm quite heavy and I eat and I go to the gym every day, but I eat a lot out, kind of out of control.
- [10:33]
A
It has compelling evidence, caloric restriction has compelling evidence that it's one of the most effective longevity interventions that can be done.
- [10:44]
B
And what are your sort of wider nutritional principles that people can very easily introduce into their lives?
- [10:51]
A
It's, I have this, I have this experience where I learned how to fly an airplane. I became a pilot and we get up at altitude and I would use my hands and try to fly the airplane and I'd go left, right up, down. I try to be perfectly on the attitude indicator of maintaining exactly the, the altitude which I was pegged at and the direction. And then I would engage autopilot and it would, this plane would just sit up straight and it would be perfectly pegged. It, it was so far superior to my ability to do it. And that's kind of what, how I think about my diet is. If I use my mind, I kind of ping pong around life eating this and that and like I hear this thing that there and I hear this thing there. I kind of do whatever's available to me. If you think about putting your body on autopilot, I call it my autonomous self, let the body report out evidence algorithm in and it just runs. This is the result. This is autopilot for my body. And so every single thing we do is tracked in the body. Every pill has to justify its existence. If it can't be measured and quantified, we don't do it. And so it's a system, a closed loop system that has an algorithm running me which is so far superior to my mind, which is going to do. It's going to add the cookie to the order and it's going to eat blank because of whatever.
- [11:57]
B
Presuming you're not going to take these back. Okay, so this, those are all the pills you take in one day?
- [12:10]
A
That's right.
- [12:11]
B
100, 120 odd pills in a day almost.
- [12:14]
A
Yeah. 111. Yeah. That big one right there. Can see that guy right there.
- [12:18]
B
This one here? Yeah. Jesus, Lord Jesus. What is in these pills?
- [12:23]
A
A lot of things. You'd expect basics like vitamin D and C, more advanced things like alpha ketoglutarate. Or metformin or carbos or other things like that. It spans from basic and common to some more advanced drugs.
- [12:40]
B
A lot of my friends, when they, when I. Well, one of my friends in particular, when he knew that I was speaking to you, he asked me about NAD plus. That's obviously something that's become quite popular in the longevity culture. What's your perspective on nad?
- [12:52]
A
Yeah, he's trying to modulate those levels in his body and there's nice age graphs. So people, to enter this into an understandable frame. People, it's not commonly understood what a biological age is versus a chronological age. Somebody can be chronologically, I'm 45, but I can biologically be different. I could be either 30 or 35 or 55 or 70, according to the markers. So in levels of NAD, intracellular NAD in particular, there are certain levels that would peg you at age 18, age 30, age 50, because they reliably go down with age. And so when you supplement to try to change these, you're trying to peg yourself to a more youthful state because it's a energy the body runs on. And so what I did is I. People in the longevity community do have a lot of questions about how you increase your intracellular NAD levels. And there's a big debate. Do you do NR or nmn? It's like this big, this big debate and everyone's always wants to fight about it. And so I trialed both. I did 90 days on NR, I did 90 days on NMN and I measured my intracellular blood levels throughout and I showed that both were basically effective in doing the objective. So I was able to peg my intracellular nad at the 18 year old mark on both supplements.
- [14:04]
B
Oh, wow.
- [14:05]
A
So it basically doesn't matter. Just get it measured and just titrate your dose to make sure you're getting what you need.
- [14:10]
B
Nice. And I want to, I really want to make sure because I feel like you're. If I'm never going to, you know, meet someone who I feel like is so well versed in how the things I put in my mouth have an impact on my biological age. So what advice would you give to me about say that you could. I'm a blank canvas and I'm going to, I'm going to believe everything you say. My objective is to increase my health span and to not age poorly.
- [14:34]
A
Yeah.
- [14:35]
B
What would you say about the things that I put in my mouth? Give me some rules.
- [14:38]
A
Do exactly what I've published.
- [14:41]
B
Okay.
- [14:41]
A
I'm gonna make it dead simple for you. I Say tongue in cheek that Blueprint is the best health protocol ever developed. Prove me wrong with your data. If someone has a better, if someone can achieve better biomarkers with their protocol, it's gonna be amazing for me and everyone else because now we have a comparison. But right now, the tricky thing for someone like yourself is if you go out into the world and you try to figure this out, you've got to sort through a hundred gurus, everyone's saying a different thing. And even now, if you give five anti ag experts the same scientific papers and ask them to develop a protocol for you, you'll get a different protocol from every single one. They're not going to agree. There's no way to go out there and get consensus in the world. So you need to pick a path and then measure. And I've done exactly that. So I've basically tried to punch through all the noise and say, is there actually something I can do which has some believability? That's what I've done. So I've published all my data and so blueprint provides people a starter, a starting point to say I'm going to do something that I can see works and I measure myself, then iterate and improve upon it. So health and wellness is like religion, where the King James version of The Bible supports 100 different denominations. They all say they're God's one and true only. Same with health and wellness. Everyone claims they're God's true health and wellness program. And I've tried to punch through the whole thing to say it doesn't matter what guru status is. Share the data.
- [16:03]
B
Eat in the mornings. If you, if I was a blank.
- [16:07]
A
Canvas, I'd say trial, I'd say follow my protocol. Exactly. See how you feel and then try and experiment what you do later in the day and then compare the two.
- [16:17]
B
Sugar.
- [16:18]
A
Zero.
- [16:21]
B
Zero sugar.
- [16:22]
A
Zero sugar.
- [16:22]
B
Why?
- [16:24]
A
It does nothing useful for your body now, like our body needs sugar to run. So if you eat sugar in berries, which you're now, that's great. But highly processed white sugar or cane sugar, there's no value for your body. There's other things of much higher value for your body.
- [16:43]
B
God, it's hard to exist in this world without sugar, isn't it? Do you do anything with your testosterone levels?
- [16:48]
A
Yeah, I do a testosterone patch. I supplement with a patch. I, I supplement because I'm on a caloric restriction diet. And when you do that, your testosterone naturally goes down. So I keep my testosterone pegged in the normal range between 6 and 800. I'm about 850 right now. So I'm not trying to get above it. I'm just trying to be normal.
- [17:06]
B
One of the reasons why I said to you before when you sat down that men of my age start thinking about longevity is we noticed that our hairlines have started to recede. I mean, getting to 30 with a receding hairline is actually quite good. Some of my friends started a little bit earlier, and then we start noticing these gray hairs in our heads. You have fantastic hair. And in fact, a lot of the comments I saw were, what's he doing with his hair? There was one particular comment I was like, someone asked him. This was online. Someone asked him how he's got that hair. What advice would you give to me? Listen, I'm at that age now where I've got to make a decision. Do I let this thing go back.
- [17:38]
A
Yeah.
- [17:38]
B
Or do I fight it?
- [17:40]
A
Don't do it. Yeah, fight. Fight with everything you've got in you.
- [17:44]
B
Really?
- [17:44]
A
Yeah. Trust me on this.
- [17:47]
B
I will. Trust me.
- [17:49]
A
You don't want to clean up of. You don't want to clean up aging damage that you can prevent right now.
- [17:59]
B
And I can prevent my hairline receding.
- [18:01]
A
Yes.
- [18:02]
B
How?
- [18:03]
A
I. I started losing my hair in my early 30s.
- [18:06]
B
Yeah.
- [18:08]
A
And it's been a grind to try to keep it. And so I. My hair protocol. Here's what I do. I have a. A custom formulation that we've built. It basically has minoxidil and a few other things so people can get that easily. I have a red light therapy cap I wear every morning for six minutes. In my morning routine, I do prf. So I inject, I get blood drawn, spun up, and then re injected into my scalp once every maybe month or three. And then I take a few supplements that are listed online for the Blueprint website. So basically, like four things. Helps prevent hair loss and encourages hair growth.
- [18:52]
B
I don't know if I'm going to be able to do all of that and walk my dog. So I'm like, is there like a silver bullet like that I could.
- [18:58]
A
So here's how it works, is. I know it sounds overwhelming. If you build habits that just make these things, you don't think about it. It sounds overwhelming in the beginning, but if you just get into a routine where every morning you do your thing and when you're doing that thing, you just throw a cap on your head and it just is on for six minutes. And then at night before you go to bed, you put a little liquid on your scalp and you rub it in and then you take a few pills every day with your routine. It's entirely about building systems, so you don't think about it ever. So it's never a burden on you.
- [19:37]
B
What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you. If you're someone running a business today, that means you're probably operating in a world that doesn't sit still. Tariffs and trade policies are dynamic, customer expectations shift constantly, and the pace of innovation is relentless, so your margin of error is becoming increasingly smaller. Making decisions without full visibility across your business is not only risky, but it inevitably slows down everything. And I see it all the time. Businesses with the right ideas, but they're stuck because they're spread across five systems that don't talk to each other. Many of my companies now use our sponsor Netsuite by Oracle, which has an AI powered business management suite that allows you to see your business more clearly. Everything from financials to HR to operations lives in one place. So instead of chasing information, you've got it all in front of you. It operates in real time so you can forecast with assurance spot problems before they even become problems, and generally move faster without blind spots. If your business is generating seven figures or more, there's a free ebook that's worth your time reading. It's called Navigating Global three Insights for Leaders and you can download it now from NetSuite.com Bartlett that's NetSuite.com Bartlett. I'll link it below.