[WarmWash]

Ehhh, not really, I have been loosely following him for a while and he is overall pretty genuine (i.e. laser focused on his health experiment above all else)

He was the founder of Braintree which sold to paypal for $800M. He then was divorced and listless with near infinite money, so decided to see what would happen if money was no object and you tried to live a perfectly healthy life as dictated by current medical research, and document it.

He does sell supplements and now whatever immortals care is, but I can't imagine he makes much money from either compared to his NW (and passive income from it). It's more likely that there is demand from people following his experiment to get in on his findings (which are all public anyway, but convenience is king), because again, he doesn't have much incentive to scam people and his goal is already a selfish one, to live forever. But at least he openly shares everything on that path.

Edit: Since people really snag on the money part, since money makes you evil by default, let me rephrase:

"Bryan Johnson, a greedy billionaire, has totally fucked up his latest scam, and you can easily copy everything he does because he foolishy doesn't even try hiding any of his routines, regimens, daily meals, or even obfuscate any of the ingredients in the supplements he sells. That's right, you can fully copy what he does without giving his greedy hands a single penny. He even accidentally shares all his medical findings publicly too."

[nwah1]

Just because someone has a high net worth does not mean they are not trying to scam people, and it is good to be on the lookout for that.

Every human being is self-interested, at least to some degree. So, it is perfectly expected that he seeks money, fame, status, power, sex, etc.

But he doesn't seem to exhibit these to an abnormal degree, and in any event, you can just evaluate his claims based on evidence and logic and they either succeed or fail.

Just because the Wright Brothers were selling airplanes doesn't mean that they didn't fly.

[catigula]

>Every human being is self-interested, at least to some degree. So, it is perfectly expected that he seeks money, fame, status, power, sex, etc.

Bit of a reach there.

[moduspol]

I buy a lot of his supplements. They're competitively priced for what they are, and what's in them is based on the studies and science they dig up. Not all of them will be cost-effective for whatever benefit you're trying to gain, but that's the case with all supplements.

[colpabar]

Could you elaborate? Which ones do you buy, what do they do, and what made you want to start taking them?

[moduspol]

I take:

- Essential Capsules - it's like a multivitamin except with better stuff. I've seen mixed evidence that multivitamins actually provide much benefit if you're already taking C and D. This fills the same kind of gap except with a lot more beneficial stuff in it

- Omega-3 - it's like fish oil except from algae, so it has fewer heavy metals. Fish oil is well understood to be a good supplement for the Omega 3, but it can be tricky to source and often contains elevated levels of heavy metals

- Longevity mix - daily shake with a bunch of different stuff for sleep / metabolism / healthy aging / performance / recovery / etc. I'm already drinking protein shakes and such each morning so it seemed like a fairly cheap way to get a little more good stuff

- Snake oil (yes it's called that) - it's just extra virgin olive oil that is very carefully sourced. Apparently olive oil is one of those things that is often mislabeled and mischaracterized as something it's not when sold en masse. Extra virgin olive oil is also one of those supplements that has good evidence for daily limited consumption, and I trust it more with someone's name on it who has something to lose if it were found to be mislabeled

You're welcome to peruse his site [1] if you want more specific details. Each one goes in-depth on what the key ingredients are and why they're in there.

[1] https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com

[citadel_melon]

Do you track your daily macros/calories and have you done progressive overload strength training continuously for 5+ years, logging your workouts?

I find most people will usually hyper optimize things like buying supplements and wrist trackers that have little p-size effects before optimizing things like muscle mass and macros/calories that the scientific literature actually says have sizable effect sizes.

[moduspol]

I'm doing both. I've only got so many years remaining and very few of these things "only" work if you've also optimized your diet and exercise. I do acknowledge that diet and exercise have a bigger impact than any supplement, but they're not mutually exclusive.

[Jonovono]

I used to buy his act too but once he started doing psychedelics and live streaming it, it became clear it was all just a scam

[Noaidi]

Yes, that was it for me too. Because anyone who understands neurobiology understands how psychedelics work and wouldn’t bother with them.

[WarmWash]

Sarcasm?

https://medicine.yale.edu/psychiatry/research/clinics-and-pr...

https://psychedelics.cornell.edu/

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/research-unit/center-science...

https://psychedelics-study.harvard.edu/research/

https://www.hopkinspsychedelic.org/

[Noaidi]

I do not get the point of this. Psychedelics work by activating the Serotonin 2A receptor.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10061-7

This is pretty settled science. So what is the big deal about taking a drug that affects a receptor? Will it cure anything? No. Because the body resorts to increasing receptor density for the drug.

[LoganDark]

Psychedelics can promote neuroplasticity, can they not? It's not just about their primary effects.

[timcobb]

> He does sell supplements

Kind of says everything we need to know?

> Since people really snag on the money part

This is the whole part :) it's a good thing to snag on in my opinion

[WarmWash]

With $1B NW, the government will pay you $150k per day in interest. In stocks you are looking at ~$500k per day (with more risk).

Why you would ever waste your time running a supplement scam, when you passively earn $150k-$500k per day doing nothing, is probably the most perplexing proposition people are making here (which frankly I don't even think they are aware that they are making it).

He could just make an AI startup if he was really interested in doubling his NW.

[dzhiurgis]

My only answer is - he lost a lot of money somewhere. He likes planes and dabbled in finance and engineering. So either lost a lot on crypto + planes. Or wants baddest biggest personal jet ever (I think he mentioned on Tom Seguro's podcast that private jets are the best luxury item you can get).

[gos9]

1B NW != 1B accruing interest

[drivingmenuts]

At some point, it's just keeping score. Elon Musk doesn't need to be a trillionaire, he wants to be one. None of the world's billionaires need to be that rich, they are just competing against each other.

[ungreased0675]

We don’t know what his ACTUAL routine is, just what he chooses to disclose. I don’t know that he’s withholding information, but I also have no way to verify how honest he’s being.

[Zenbit_UX]

Ehh, you’re giving the guy a lot of grace cause he’s rich. I believe the GP was correct and have anecdotal evidence to support that he may be deceptive.

I followed him very loosely 3 years back and he was touting the effectiveness of a hair dye that he claimed permanently restored hair color at the follicle level if you followed their prescribed routine. As in no more greys, permanently. The company was called Mayraki and nobody had ever heard of them before Bryan’s videos and while I’m not saying he was scamming, I find it likely something dubious was going on with a high likely hood of him being paid for this advertising.

He went as far as saying he had his medical team biopsy his scalp and found the hair was not grey below the skin line so therefore was 100% true. It was quite a convincing narrative at the time to try this $100 hair dye.

The internet, especially Reddit, is now full of angry people with grey hair (and less money) that claim this product didn’t do anything beyond a regular dye but for 5-6x the cost. I can attest to this myself.

[velcrovan]

"he's rich therefore he has no incentive to scam anyone" is not a good heuristic, though it will help you get a degree from Trump University.

[mattbuilds]

In fact, I think a good heuristic is probably the opposite. The type of person who becomes that rich is probably more willing to scam than the average person.

[WarmWash]

I think a better take would be "He publicly shares everything about his lifestyle and routine rather than paywalling them, so if he is running a scam, he probably needs some pointers"

Even his supplements are just concoctions of stuff anyone can buy, the ingredients are fully transparent. Anyone can follow what he does without giving him a penny.

[Zenbit_UX]

> He publicly shares everything about his lifestyle and routine rather than paywalling them, so if he is running a scam, he probably needs some pointers

Disagree. What he does is run a YouTube channel that appears to do that. That makes it an ideal vehicle to advertise supplements with little research or scientific backing to an uninformed and trusting audience.

[WarmWash]

Each day the stock market likely moves his NW more than the ARR of his supplement company.

Again, if he is trying to run a supplement scam with an NW north of $1B, he needs some pointers. Dude could announce an AI startup tomorrow and get more funding than any of his current companies would make in a lifetime.

[elcritch]

Great info, and seems less likely cash grab than some.

Still a scam can include other "deceptive schemes" – maybe he's just trying to get fame or plain old attention.

[ryandvm]

I dunno. Billionaires are wont to pick up a lot of fanciful special interests like rockets or climate change or ending world hunger, but Brian Johnson deciding that he's going to devote his fortune to his own immortality is like 7 red flags rolled into one - not to mention that it's like 50% of the comic book villain arcs.