Bryan Johnson & Blueprint, a European View

Bryan Johnson is a US tech entrepreneur, born on 22 August 1977. He sold Braintree to PayPal for about $800 million. Since 2021 he reportedly pours around $2 million a year into a strict longevity project called Blueprint.

Blueprint is a tightly structured protocol. Johnson built it with a team of doctors and researchers, and the project references "67 interventions based on 1,000+ clinical trials". His stated goal is to measurably slow his biological aging, or as he puts it: "Don't Die".

He publishes almost everything. His numbers, blood test results, meals, full supplement list, all of it. That openness has earned him a huge audience and equally sharp pushback from scientists. Reactions range from "interesting transparent self-experiment" to "PR project with weak evidence".

Where things stand in 2026. His book Don't Die came out in 2023, the Netflix documentary Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever in 2025. In mid-2026 he made public that he has autoimmune gastritis. In this condition the immune system destroys the acid-making cells of the stomach, so iron and vitamin B12 are poorly absorbed ^[11]. His first warning sign was ferritin (a measure of your iron stores) that kept coming back low. He is now looking at experimental treatments ^[11].

This guide reads the protocol neutrally. The goal: sort out what the research actually supports, what is still experimental, and what a normal person in Europe could realistically borrow from it.

Blueprint has six pillars: a ~2,250 kcal mostly plant-based diet eaten by noon, about 8.5 hours of fixed sleep, 60 to 90 minutes of daily exercise, about 5 supplement capsules a day plus powders and prescription drugs, continuous biomarker monitoring, and a handful of experimental interventions. Here are the core parts, based on his published 2026 protocol ^[9].

A typical Blueprint day (2026 protocol) ^[9]

Time	What
~5:00 AM	Wakes up without an alarm
5:25 AM	Pre-workout drink with Longevity Mix and creatine
5:35 AM	Breakfast: Longevity Protein, nuts, collagen, olive oil, berries, plus the morning capsules
6:00 AM	60 to 90 min workout
7:30 AM	Dry sauna, then red light therapy at 8:00
~10:00 AM	Second protein meal
11:00 AM	Super Veggie
12:00 PM	Last meal of the day, then the prescription drugs
7:30 PM	Short walk, then wind-down with no screens
8:30 PM	In bed

1. Diet. About 2,250 kcal a day, mostly plant-based and nutrient-dense, with a very early eating window. The pre-workout drink comes at 5:25 AM and breakfast at 5:35 AM. Super Veggie follows at 11 AM and the last meal at noon ^[9] (earlier iterations cut off at 11 AM). That works out to about 130 g protein, 206 g carbs and 101 g fat ^[9]. Two signature meals carry the protocol: Super Veggie and Nutty Pudding. The recipes section below lists what goes into each, including the 2026 switch to the proprietary Longevity Protein. No alcohol, no sugar. Earlier iterations were labelled strictly vegan; current public documentation shows small amounts of animal-derived ingredients in some versions.

A note on the calorie number: 2,250 kcal is not extreme for a typical adult. For Johnson's specific height, weight, and high daily activity, it works out to roughly a 10% deficit. He previously ate closer to 1,977 kcal (~20% deficit) but raised intake after losing too much body fat.

2. Sleep. About 8.5 hours: in bed at 8:30 PM, up around 5 AM without an alarm. Fixed times, cool dark room ^[9].

3. Movement. 60 to 90 minutes every day ^[9]. A mix of strength, cardio, HIIT (short bursts of all-out effort with rest in between), mobility, and balance work.

4. Supplements. About 5 capsules a day with breakfast: Blueprint Essentials (2), Advanced Antioxidants (1), Ashwagandha & Rhodiola (1) and an EPA/DHA omega-3 capsule ^[9]. On top come powders: the Longevity Mix (a daily drink with 2.5 g creatine plus Ca-AKG, taurine, glycine and more ^[12]), Longevity Protein, Metabolic Protein and collagen. His prescription list has nine drugs ^[9]:

• metformin (a diabetes drug, cycled 6 weeks on, 6 weeks off)
• tadalafil (the active ingredient in Cialis)
• Jardiance (empagliflozin, a diabetes drug)
• acarbose (slows carb absorption)
• candesartan (a blood pressure drug)
• Repatha (an LDL-cholesterol-lowering injection, every two weeks)
• Armour Thyroid and levothyroxine (thyroid hormones, for hypothyroidism diagnosed at 21)
• minoxidil (a hair-loss drug)

The famous "100+ pills" figure reflects iterations from 2022 to 2023. Today's stack still includes NAC (N-acetylcysteine), creatine, collagen peptides, vitamin D and omega-3. A long tail of polyphenols and minerals sits inside the proprietary Longevity Mix and Essentials capsules.

Rapamycin is no longer part of the stack. Johnson took it off-label for nearly five years and stopped on 28 September 2024 ^[10]. His reasons: intermittent skin and soft-tissue infections, lipid abnormalities, elevated glucose, and a higher resting heart rate ^[10]. The remaining large supplement stack is still the most debated piece of the protocol.

5. Monitoring. Frequent blood work, MRI, DEXA (a body scan that measures bone density and body fat), epigenetic age tests, and HRV (heart rate variability, a stress and recovery marker). Johnson publishes the dashboards online.

6. Experimental stuff. Things like the three-generation young-plasma exchange with his father and son, gene therapies, and intensive skincare. The plasma swap is the famous one: Johnson received plasma from his teenage son, and his father received plasma from Johnson. Johnson reported no measured benefit and discontinued the exchange in 2023. These are one-off experiments without broad scientific backing, and the most-watched of the bunch landed on a negative result.

Two dishes carry the whole protocol, and Bryan Johnson has documented both in the openly published Blueprint protocol. We describe them here, we do not recommend them.

Super Veggie is a warm vegetable dish of broccoli, cauliflower, black lentils, shiitake or maitake mushrooms, garlic, ginger, hemp seeds, extra-virgin olive oil, lime, cumin, apple cider vinegar, and 1 to 4 Tbsp of fermented food such as sauerkraut or kimchi. Preparation is unremarkable: steam the vegetables, cook the lentils, season with oil, acid and spice. In Johnson's day it falls in the first half of the day, like the rest of his eating window.

Nutty Pudding is the sweet half: macadamia and walnuts, chia, flax, berries, pomegranate juice and cocoa. The 2026 protocol adds the proprietary Longevity Protein with Blueberry Nut Mix, 11 g collagen, extra-virgin olive oil and berries. The original version works without the branded powders, which makes it easier to cook in Europe.

Neither dish is evidence of anything. It is one man's eating routine. What generalises from it is unremarkable: plenty of vegetables, legumes, nuts, fermented food, little sugar. The longevity diet guide covers how well those patterns actually hold up in studies, and if you want to cook in that direction, our longevity recipes come with quantities and steps.

The basics hold up; the extras mostly do not. Sleep, strength plus cardio training, a plant-forward diet, and avoiding alcohol and nicotine are all strongly evidence-backed. Time-restricted eating and rapamycin are plausible but unsettled. Most of the supplement stack, plasma exchange, and untested combinations are speculative. The parts of Blueprint sit on very different amounts of evidence.

Well supported:

• Regular sleep is associated with strong heart and brain benefits
• Strength plus cardio training is one of the strongest longevity signals we have ^[14]
• Vegetables and minimal processed food are backed by broad research
• No alcohol and no nicotine is associated with clear drops in mortality

Plausible, but not fully proven:

• Time-restricted eating: human data are mixed ^[2]
• Calorie restriction in normal-weight adults: strong animal data, moderate human data (CALERIE) ^{[1, 4]}
• Rapamycin off-label: strong animal data ^[3], human data still thin. Johnson himself stopped it over side effects ^[10]
• Early eating window: signals mostly from observational studies

Speculative to questionable:

• Most supplements beyond vitamin D, omega-3, creatine, and magnesium
• Plasma exchange for "rejuvenation"
• Specific stacks with no check for interactions

Blueprint is one case, not a controlled trial. Even if Johnson's markers improve, that doesn't prove any single piece causes the effect. It also doesn't tell us what would happen in someone else.

Morgan Levine's critique. Morgan Levine was lead developer and first author of PhenoAge, one of the best-known epigenetic clocks ^[7]. (Epigenetic clocks read chemical tags on your DNA to estimate biological age.) When Johnson claimed in 2024 that he had slowed his pace of aging by the equivalent of 31 years, she pushed back in public. A clock is "a single imperfect estimate of aging, not a direct measure", she wrote, and a pace score "is not meant to be used in reference to an age" ^[8]. Clock readings can also shift with short-term things like illness, inflammation or weight loss. So read his clock-based claims of rolled-back biological age as a clock response, not proof of slowed aging.

The plasma exchange result. Johnson ran a three-generation plasma swap (his 17-year-old son to Johnson, Johnson to his 70-year-old father) as a small, public, family-only experiment. He reported no benefit on top of his existing interventions. He also noted that young plasma might still help biologically older people. He stopped the family exchange in 2023 but later experimented with total plasma exchange. That is effectively a negative N=1 read on one of the splashiest "young blood" interventions in the field. It is not a randomised trial. But it is the cleanest data point Blueprint has produced on a high-profile intervention, and the answer was: no added signal in his already-optimized case.

A realistic European version of Blueprint costs roughly €50 to €150 per month: a wearable, basic supplements, and yearly testing. Johnson spends around $2 million a year. Copy the high-payoff basics (sleep, strength training, plants, no alcohol) and skip the exotic interventions. Living in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland? Sort the ideas by effect per effort.

High payoff, low effort:

• Sleep hygiene: fixed times, darkness, no evening alcohol
• Strength training 2 to 3 times per week
• 30 to 45 minutes of movement a day
• Minimally processed food, lots of vegetables
• No alcohol, no nicotine

Medium payoff, medium effort:

• Time-restricted eating, 10 to 12 hour window
• Yearly DEXA scan plus a full blood panel
• Basic supplements: vitamin D, omega-3, magnesium, creatine
• A Whoop or Oura for sleep and HRV tracking

High effort, unclear payoff. Go slow:

• Supplement stacks of 50 or more with no interaction check
• Rapamycin off-label, which is legally and medically tricky. See our Rapamycin Germany guide
• Very low calorie intake at a healthy weight
• Plasma exchange, gene therapies

Most of the benefit comes from the first 20% of the effort. That is the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule of thumb.

Top 5 copyable / Top 5 skippable

Want a shortcut? Use this triage.

COPY (cheap, evidence-based, low risk): fixed sleep/wake times, 2 to 3 strength sessions per week, daily 30+ minutes of movement, a minimally processed plant-forward diet, no alcohol or nicotine.

CONSIDER: time-restricted eating (TRE) with a 10 to 12 hour eating window. A basic stack of vitamin D3 with K2, omega-3, magnesium and creatine (about €20 to €40 a month). A yearly DEXA scan and an expanded blood panel. An Oura, Whoop or Polar for sleep and HRV tracking.

SKIP without medical supervision: stacks of 50+ supplements with no interaction check, very low calorie intake at a healthy weight, plasma exchange or other experimental rejuvenation therapies, off-label prescription drugs without a prescribing physician.

Blueprint for women

Blueprint is calibrated on one male body. On very low calorie intake, menstruating women can get poorer sleep, a disrupted stress-hormone system (the HPA axis), cycle-length changes, and bone loss ^[15]. Adapt the eating window and calories to your physiology. Prioritise iron and ferritin testing (ferritin shows your iron stores). In perimenopause, keep HRT (hormone replacement therapy) on the table (see the women's guide). After menopause, strength training and bone-density work give you more longevity benefit than extreme calorie restriction.

DACH reality check

Importing the Blueprint stack into the EU can run into customs trouble. Some ingredients are not yet authorised as Novel Food, the EU approval a food needs if people in the EU did not eat it to a significant degree before 15 May 1997. NMN is the main example. EFSA gave one NMN ingredient a positive safety opinion in May 2026 ^[13]. Until the European Commission adds it to the Union list of authorised novel foods, it can't legally be sold as a food supplement (see our NMN Germany guide). A realistic European version uses basics from a pharmacy or drugstore (Apotheke, dm, Rossmann): D3 plus K2, omega-3, magnesium glycinate, creatine, plus an annual DEXA at a radiology practice (Radiologie-Praxis, €50 to €120).

Bottom line: most of Blueprint is not built for a normal user. The protocol assumes a full-time chef, a clinic on retainer, custom blood draws on a weekly cadence, and a 7-figure budget. Strip those away and what is left (sleep, training, plants, no booze) is the same advice your GP gives for free.