The Wealthy Anti-Aging Influencers in Search of Eternal Youth

Growing older is a difficult reality we all must face, with greying hair, sagging skin, and a general lapse in energy, aging can be a dispiriting process; that’s why these influencers are spending millions of dollars to try and stave off the effects of passing years.

The best known of these anti-aging influencers is Bryan Johnson, a 46-year-old tech millionaire who has appeared time and time again on social media for going to extreme lengths to curb the effects of aging in a longevity project called Blueprint.

Johnson reportedly takes more than 100 supplements a day, undergoes constant medical assessments, keeps to a strict diet that prohibits any food after 11 am, goes to bed at 8.30 pm, and experiments with a huge variety of treatments, most notably trying blood-plasma donations from his teenage son.

He has also sought to revitalize his reproductive health with shockwave therapy.

Having been gripped by this anti-aging obsession in 2021, Johnson now spends $2 million per year on his regimen. As he states on his website “My journey and protocol is openly shared and accessible to all.”

He also published a book in November 2023 titled Don’t Die, which he wrote under the pseudonym ‘Zero’.

Several longevity experts have expressed doubts about whether Blueprint can really turn back the clock in the way Johnson claims, given how genetics play a role in determining lifespan and the severely time-consuming effort and discipline required by these methods.

Asked by Rolling Stone why he wants to publicize his his project so much, Johnson said “Blueprint may seem like it’s about diet, sleep, and health. It’s not. It’s about figuring out how we survive as a species. And if you look at this from a macro scale, we treat planet Earth like we treat our own bodies. Measure Earth with millions of biomarkers, you look at evidence and say, ‘What is the proper way to manage the coral reef, and the biosphere, and land and soil,’ and you would then create protocols that humans would deliver.”

The health-conscious tech mogul has also shared his goal to eventually have all of his major organs – including his brain, liver, kidneys, teeth, skin, hair, and reproductive organs — functioning as they were in his late teens.

The Leaders Board of Anti-Aging Influencers

But Johnson is not at the top of the leaders board on the Rejuvenation Olympics website he founded. According to the site, Johnson is ranked number seven, below other anti-aging influencers and directly below a man named David Pascoe.

Pascoe is a 61-year-old, retired systems engineer, but looks – and apparently, physically is – more like a 38-year-old. Indeed, Pascoe’s epigenetic age 37.95, and his speed of aging is 0.66 biological years for every calendar year.

The Longevity Newsletter reported that Pascoe’s philosophy is to look at what successful slow-agers are doing and emulate it, which, for him, has translated into several longevity interventions, including exercising every day, eating whole foods, mainly fruit, vegetables, and seafood, cold therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, occasional fasting and 120 supplements a day.

Although this is extreme, it pales in comparison to Johnson’s routine. For instance, Pascoe doesn’t restrict calories, isn’t vegan, doesn’t use testosterone replacement therapy, and doesn’t get a battery of tests to check on each of his organs. He estimates his entire protocol costs less than $38,000 per year, compared to Johnson’s $2 million per year.