Bryan Johnson: The #1 Longevity Secret You Can Start Doing Today

0:00True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Sold Venmo for$800 million, has spent a fortune on a quest to stay young forever. Don't die is the general theme of what we're trying to do. It's humanity's only objective. None of us live forever, except Brian Johnson. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brian Johnson.

0:46Hi, guys. Okay, everybody stand up. Okay, what you're going to do is you're going to choose your left or your right foot. I'm going to count down from three, and you're going to stay standing on your selected foot as long as you can with your eyes closed. Okay, hands by your side. You can't be out. It's got to be close by. Your foot's got to be somewhere close by. You can't be clear out. Okay, so just choose right or left foot. And those of you on the balcony, be careful. If somebody fell off, that'd be a bad situation. Foot selected. Let me pull out my timer. And I'm going to count the number of seconds that pass.

1:26Ready? Three, two, one. Close your eyes.

1:36Five seconds.

1:40Ten seconds. And your foot can't move, stationary. 15.

1:5120. Okay, we'll stop there. Who's still up? Okay, good. Okay, good. We'll do it one more time. All right. No, no, no, stay up. This is a biological age test. As you age, part of your brain that keeps you well-balanced atrophies, and you can't maintain the balance very well. So kids are very good at this. As you age, you get worse. So if you are between 15 and 30 seconds, that's roughly age 20 to 40. 7 to 15 seconds, you're between 40 and 60. And 0 to 7, you're 60 plus as an age category. All right, ready? You can choose again, right or left foot. Your foot's got to be stationary. You can't move it around.

2:37Arms close by. Okay. Three, two, one, go.

2:48Five.

2:53Ten.

2:58Fifteen.

3:0420 make it 30 you guys 10 more seconds

3:1430 okay cool good job you guys all right you take a seat this is the neat thing about biological age testing is you of course know when you were born and therefore you know how many years you've lived. You can look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know, I have a few wrinkles, a few spots. But actually in your body, your organs have different ages. So your lungs are a certain age, your brain, your eyes, your ears, your gums, your pancreas, your liver. They're all different biological ages. And it's really important to know, for example, my left, so I'm 47. My left ear is 64 years old. It's because I shot a lot of guns as a kid.

3:54I was right-handed like this with a lot of exposure in my ear, and I also listen to a lot of loud music. And so that's really important for me to know, because when you have hearing loss and you don't correct for it with a hearing aid, it can result in cognitive decline. So this applies to all things about the heart. And so a couple of years ago, I posed this question, are we really the first generation who won't die? It's kind of the coolest question in existence. What matters more than our ability to live. And so to do this, I wanted to do an experiment. So I measured the biological age of every organ in my body as much as we could.

4:32We then went through the scientific evidence and we tried to reverse and or slow down my speed of aging. And what I've been trying to do is create a sport or a new genre of what it means to be healthy. And so I put my biomarkers out and said, basically, I have the best biomarkers of anybody in the world. Anyone's capable of competing with me. but try to make it like a quantified thing where it's just like I'm healthy or not. And so it's been a really fun journey. And so today I'm going to tell you guys in just a few minutes time, everything I've learned about health, I'm going to compress it into some very simple lessons for you because health is really complicated.

5:07It's very confusing. It's all consuming. It's overwhelming. Cool? Okay. So first, who got eight hours of sleep last night? Seven. Six, five, four, three, thank you for your honesty, two, there, thank you, sir, one, yeah, I appreciate that. Okay. Who has a confession to make? Who recently polished off a bag of chips, ate some ice cream, and then jammed some Twizzlers? What did you do, sir? Chips, a whole bag, one sitting, all right, great, who else? Yeah, what'd you do? Gelato. Gelato, yeah. I get it. Okay, cool. Okay, so you guys, the single best thing I've learned out of everything I've ever done is your resting heart rate before sleep is the best thing you can do for your health, hands down.

6:06Okay, so here's what you're going to do. Tonight, before you go to bed, you're going to get a baseline read, either with a wearable or just on your fingers on the neck. You're going to lay down on your bed, take a few deep breaths. You're going to find your resting heart rate. Let's say it's 60 beats per minute. Your goal over the next month is to lower your heart rate by 10 % or so. So if you're 60, be down at 54. And here's how you're going to do it. If your bedtime's at 10 p.m., eat your final meal of the day at 6 p.m. After 6, no more food, no more snacks. By doing that, you allow your body to digest your food, and you're going to see that as you do that, your heart rate's going to go down.

6:44And the reason why heart rate is so important is the lower your heart rate is, the better your sleep. The better your sleep, the better your willpower. Did you know if you don't sleep, your prefrontal cortex goes offline and you lose your willpower? So when you're trying to not eat the cookie, you're powerless. You can't do it. It's gone. So sleep is the best performance enhancing drug in the whole world. It's the thing you want to do every night. So first thing is eat your final meal four hours before bed. Number two is you need to turn your screens off an hour before bed. Okay. Now I realize that's hard.

7:15We are all addicted to our phones, but that one hour is so important because you have to give your body ability to wind down. And if you're scrolling or working, you're going to be in a roused state, which boosts your heart rate. Anything that boosts your heart rate before bed is going to be bad for you. Okay. Three, you want to have a amber and red lights in your house. No blues like these are very blue. You want to be mindful of your stimulants. So noon, thereabouts, is when you want to stop your caffeine intake. Because caffeine has roughly a six-hour half-life, so if you have a cup of coffee at 4 p.m., at bedtime, a half a cup of coffee is in your system.

7:52And then finally, you want to have some kind of wind-down routine where you read a book, go for a walk, do breath work, meditate, but something to calm yourself down. Okay? Now, just be sober with me for a minute. I promise you, this is the single best thing you can do for your health. And if we're honest, the majority of you in this room have some moderate to serious mental health problem.

8:23Tell me I'm wrong.

8:27waiting. It's true. Like you sample your friends. It is a pretty tough environment right now. We are on our phones all the time. We don't sleep well. We junk food. It's very hard to take a moment to ourselves to be healthy. I promise you, optimize your resting heart rate, and it's going to be the very best thing you do for your mood. If you're experiencing anxiety or depression, or you're having some other kind of difficulty, I'm telling you, high quality sleep is the thing. And culture that tells us right now that you have to grind and not sleep is a lie. It's a bad deal for you. You can be ambitious.

9:04You can have unhinged ideas about the world and still sleep. Okay, so I've got 20 seconds left. Who's going to commit to this? Yeah. Who's not? So I can shame you. Okay. Why? Why are you not going to commit? Okay. There we go. This is okay. This is it. You guys, here's it. Yes. You're a startup founder. Okay. The narrative is you have to martyr yourself, literally martyr yourself to achieve success. That is not true. You will be a better founder slash parent slash partner slash whatever if you prioritize your sleep. I'm telling you, it is a false idea. Don't fall for it. Don't die. Yes, it's about health.

9:56It's also the next major ideology for the human race. We are giving birth to superintelligence. Our ideas about reality are going to shift. Existence itself will be the highest virtue. Don't die is the next major ideology, on par with democracy, capitalism, Christianity, Islam. It is the next thing we do as a species. So friends, be well. Go to bed on time. Am I seeing this? You committed? All right, guys, be well.