You might know him as the West Coast technology entrepreneur who spends millions on his health — or perhaps as the man who doesn’t want to die. Bryan Johnson gained a global audience after a Bloomberg story two years ago highlighting his strict longevity routine, which includes dozens of daily supplements, tests and extreme dietary restrictions.
This month, a Netflix documentary, “Immortal: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever,” follows Johnson’s life, offering an even more intimate look at his regime and his motivations for becoming, as he calls himself, the most tested by history.
“I’m trying to be on the most extreme frontier of possibility for science,” the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, now longevity enthusiast, said in the documentary.
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Johnson’s longevity consultant, Dr. Oliver Zolman, comments on his protocol: “It’s pretty safe so far and maybe it works, and maybe we can learn from it.”
Johnson’s quest for immortality led him to try some unconventional and controversial procedures: he claimed to have seen “no benefit” from an injection of his teenage son’s plasma, which was not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was intended to help him reverse aging, and made a cosmetic mistake by injecting donor fat into his face to look younger.
But Johnson, who claims to be aging at a rate of 0.69, meaning he biologically ages just eight months each year, acknowledges that certain protocols are not recommended for the average healthy person, and that he is “trying to show what it’s possible,” according to the film.
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As his popularity grew, Johnson allowed media and content influencers into his home to interview him about his protocol and even to test out some of his longevity tricks for themselves. (A guest in the documentary tries to stretch with Johnson as they consume their breakfast of pecan pudding, killing two birds with one stone.)
Referring to Johnson’s strict 1,950-calorie-a-day diet, which consists of bowls of vegetables and nut pudding (a mix of nuts, his company’s cocoa, fruit and pomegranate juice), all consumed within a five-hour window , the visitor asks: “Are you always hungry?”
“I’m pretty hungry,” Johnson admits in the film. “The saddest part of my day is the last bite.”
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And yet, despite the feeling of hunger, Johnson says it’s all worth it.
“I found more relief in lowering my mind and elevating my body than I have in my entire life,” he said in the film, referring to his years of poor mental and physical health. “This feels so freeing to me because my whole life I was desperate to get rid of myself.”
