Has Bryan Johnson cracked the code of age reversal? He’s spending millions a year to be 18 again
Johnson, star of a Netflix documentary, is trying to transform his body into that of an 18-year-old through a US$2 million-a-year programme
Novak Djokovic, 35, sometimes hangs out in a pressurised egg to enrich his blood with oxygen and gives pep talks to glasses of water, hoping to purify them with positive thinking before he drinks them. Tom Brady, 45, evangelises supposedly age-defying supplements, hydration powders and pliability spheres. LeBron James, 38, is said to spend US$1.5 million a year on his body to keep Father Time at bay.
While most of their contemporaries have retired, all three of these elite athletes remain marvels of fitness. But in the field of modern health science, they are amateurs compared to Bryan Johnson.
Johnson, 45, is an ultra-wealthy software entrepreneur who has more than 30 doctors and health experts monitoring his every bodily function. The team, led by 29-year-old regenerative medicine physician Oliver Zolman, has committed to help reverse the ageing process in every one of Johnson’s organs.
Getting the programme up and running required an investment of several million dollars, including the costs of a medical suite at Johnson’s home in Venice, in the US state of California. This year, he is on track to spend at least US$2 million on his body. He wants to have the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, tendons, teeth, skin, hair, bladder, penis and rectum of an 18-year-old.
“The body delivers a certain configuration at age 18,” he says. “This really is an impassioned approach to achieve age 18 everywhere.” Johnson is well aware that this can sound like derangement and that his methods might strike some as biotech-infused snake oil, but he does not much care. “This is expected and fine,” he says of the criticism he has received.