A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A lot of people have a daily routine that they swear by, but it's probably nowhere near what tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson does. His day starts at 4:30 a.m.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "DON'T DIE: THE MAN THAT WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER")
BRYAN JOHNSON: I wake up. I turn a specific light on in my bathroom that gives me sun-like exposure. I take three pills, go downstairs, start HRV therapy, so I put a little electrode here in my ear. I take 54 pills with a concoction that I call the Green Giant. I put a cap on my head for hair growth.
MARTÍNEZ: Then he works out for an hour, eats, does electromagnetic ab stimulation followed by red light therapy for healing, audio therapy for his hearing, eats his last meal before 11 a.m., takes 34 more pills along with any other thing that his antiaging protocol - that he calls Project Blueprint - has lined up for him. Johnson's routine and reasoning for this is the subject of a documentary streaming on Netflix titled "Don't Die: The Man That Wants To Live Forever." He argues that he promotes a healthy lifestyle backed by science.
JOHNSON: The irony is the majority of the things I do to achieve these health markers are the basics we already know - sleep and diet and exercise. I'm just consistent in those routines, and I also minimize environmental toxins and other bad things. But these things are free. They are available to most people. And mostly, they're just topics of habit and choice.
MARTÍNEZ: But Johnson ain't your average Joe. He made a fortune when he sold Braintree - his online payment company - to eBay in 2013, and he's been using his fortune to fund his often-stated quest for immortality.
JOHNSON: I thought four years ago, what if I could build an algorithm for my health? What if I could Google Maps for my health, where it looks at all my data for my body, it consults all the scientific literature, and then it makes decisions in real time based upon what foods I should eat, exercise protocols, sleep protocols, therapies? And so that's what we've done. We've built an algorithm that takes better care of me than I can myself.
MARTÍNEZ: He has spent millions on a lab at home and staff who track everything about his health. And he pays for more experimental untested treatments such as gene therapy. He's also selling products, such as olive oil and supplements, which he claims can help you live longer. Medical experts in the Netflix documentary argue that what Johnson is doing is not real science and that it's dangerous. But Johnson says that people need someone to look up to, not another medical study.
JOHNSON: The most powerful thing we could do on a global scale would be to make health cool. And so the biggest value is not another clinical trial. The biggest value is to change the global culture around health and give humans a new reason to want to live.
MARTÍNEZ: However, there's no guarantee that Johnson's medical experiments will work for everyone. Here's Matt Kaeberlein. He's a professor of pathology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was interviewed as part of the documentary.
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MATT KAEBERLEIN: I think there's value in these individual N-of-1 experiments where people are testing different things on themselves, but it's never going to be accepted by the broader medical community or regulatory agencies. We need the more rigorous clinical trials.
MARTÍNEZ: And Johnson himself has admitted that some things he's tried have not worked. Take rapamycin, for example. The drug has been shown to slow down the aging process in mice, but it is unproven in humans. Johnson took it for five years before stopping. He posted on X that he decided to stop taking the drug because of side effects such as infections and an increased heart rate.
So what's the point then of Johnson's experiments, especially when death - as we all know - is inevitable, even if you find ways to try and slow it down? Bryan Johnson says he wants to extend the horizons of what's possible, whether people agree with him or not.
(SOUNDBITE OF LEAVV AND BEATS FOR TREES' "AUTUMN GROVE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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