Bryan Johnson on sleep
Johnson ranks sleep as the most powerful "drug" anyone can take, ahead of exercise and diet, and says the culture that treats sleep deprivation as heroism is backwards, because the sleep-deprived are effectively impaired. His practice is to build life around a fixed bedtime, even at a social cost, and to protect it with early, light meals, dim evening light and an hour of wind-down.
12 points · 4 appearances · 2023–2026
How the view evolved
Build life around sleep: same bedtime, no exceptions → Five rules to master sleep
In 2023 his rule was the same bedtime every night, "no exceptions, ever"; by 2024 the advice he gives others is to pick a bedtime and be in bed within plus or minus 30 minutes, as one of five rules.
Up next
2023–2026 · changed view
“The observation is that don't die is the most played game by everyone all over the world every day. You and I breathe every few seconds, we look both ways before we cross the street, we all play don't die. So it's played more than capitalism, it's played more than any religion. It's the most played game in the world.”
2023–2026 · changed view
“And even now, if you give five anti-aging experts the same scientific papers and ask them to develop a protocol for you, you'll get a different protocol from every single one. They're not going to agree. There's no way to go out there and get consensus in the world, so you need to pick a path and then measure. And I've done exactly that. So I've basically tried to punch through all the noise and say, is there actually something I can do which has some believability? That's what I've done. So I've published all my data, and so Blueprint provides people a starter, a starting point, to say I'm going to do something that I can see works, I'm going to measure myself, then iterate and improve upon it. So health and wellness is all like a religion, where the King James version the Bible supports 100 different denominations. They all say their god's one and true only. Same with health and wellness: everyone claims they're God's true health and wellness program. And I've tried to punch the whole thing to say it doesn't matter what guru status is, share the data.”
2023–2026 · changed view
“I do think that humanity is at this critical juncture. Like we could be evolving to something spectacular. We could also get ourselves into a mess in so many ways. And I see the situation for what it is. And it's hard for me to spend time on anything other than that. But that's not where people's minds are at. People want to put on muscle and they want to lose weight and they want to not feel anxious and they want to not be depressed and they want to make more money at their job and they want more status in life and they want a partner in life. These basic things that humans want.”
2025–2026
“And so, we never actually had on our radar psychedelics. They were always either an ancient medicine being used in ritualistic practices or being pointed at things like depression and anxiety in certain trials. But it was never understood as a rejuvenation protocol, something that was for anti-aging.”