Anti-Aging Journey: Rejuvenating Face and Health Insights

He transformed his health through scientific approaches, challenging perceptions of aging and aesthetics.

### Transforming Health and Appearance: A Journey Through Aging and Rejuvenation
* 🕒 A year ago, I faced severe health challenges and public scrutiny, prompting **deep reflection on my journey towards reversing aging and improving my health**.
* 🔬 The project began with evaluating scientific evidence on slowing and reversing aging, leading to the implementation of **caloric restriction**, where I reduced my intake from **2,500 to 1,950 calories daily**.
* 📉 This significant caloric reduction resulted in **substantial fat loss**, including in my face, causing public comparisons to **Tilda Swinton** despite my impressive biomarkers improving over two years.
* 👶 To address the disconnect between my health markers and public perception, we launched **Project Baby Face**, aiming to **restore facial volume lost with age** through legitimate rejuvenation technologies.
* 💉 My first treatment involved Sculptra, a biostimulator that **promotes collagen production**, and I **exceeded the recommended dosage** to compensate for my previous deficits.
* 🍽 After an allergic reaction to fat transfer, I increased my caloric intake to **2,250 calories daily**, resulting in a weight gain of **15 pounds**, which positively impacted my **facial appearance and overall well-being**.
* 🌱 Additionally, I adjusted my lutein intake to **reduce skin yellowing** and incorporated under-eye PRF treatments to **restore volume lost over time**, enhancing my aesthetic appeal.
* 🌍 Ultimately, this journey has not only transformed my health but also challenged societal perceptions of aging, highlighting the **need for openness to evolving ideas about wellness and aesthetics** as we progress into the future.

This is me one year ago. This is me four months ago. And here I am today. What happened? You know, I used to get a lot of hate, and people were suggesting, you know, I was one step away from death. That caused a lot of reflection, and then I

was like, okay, so how did we get here? If you remember when I started this project, we were trying to evaluate how close we are to being able to stop death. And the way we did that is we looked at all the scientific evidence on what you

could do to slow down and reverse aging damage. And one of these therapies is known as caloric restriction, which means if a person like me consumes 2,500 calories a day to maintain the same weight, you'd reduce that. And so my caloric intake was

1,950 calories, substantially less. This caused me to lose a lot of fat, including in my face, so people started comparing me to Tilda Swinton. Now, this was about two years into the project, and we were pretty ecstatic. The biomarkers we had achieved in me were pretty stunning.

Remember, I was 43 years old when I started. I had led a life of poor health habits as a kid, uh, 20 years of running myself into the ground as an entrepreneur, 10 years of chronic depression. I was in a really bad state

of health. And in just two years' time, we turned it all around. My biomarkers were fantastic. We were excited. But when I went out in public, people were like, like, wait, is this guy going to die? So there was a big disconnect between the success

we were feeling as a team and the perception is that facial fat is really important to how someone gauges someone else's youthfulness. The problem was no matter how good my biomarkers were, they would look at my face and say that guy's old. So in

response we said we're going to do Project Baby Face. We know that in our youth we have a lot of facial fat that over time it lessens. In fact, in your 20s you start losing 1% of your collagen every year. So by the time you're 80

years old you've lost 75% of what you had in your early 20s. We wondered could I rejuvenate my face so I had much more volume? It's endless fun. I love every second of it. Now that is a hard problem. You probably

are aware that people use things like fillers to compensate for the loss of volume. It's why a face can look plump and round, but it's just filler. It's just masking the problem. We wanted to figure out if we could use legitimate rejuvenation technologies to restore

volume in my face. There are five things I did to restore volume in my face. The first thing I did is Sculptra, which is a biostimulator. It's injected into certain regions of the face, for example the temples, right around the mouth, through here. It's designed to allow your

body to naturally produce collagen. So instead of putting filler in the face which just expands in volume, you're getting actual collagen production. My protocol has been doing two vials every 6 months. I think the company recommends one per year, so I've exceeded what they're recommending. Also, I was

compensating from a place of pretty serious deficit, not starting as a maintenance mode of one vial per year at say age 28 and going through time. I didn't do any until I was age 46 and I lost a lot of weight, so I've been trying

to play a little catch-up, but sculpture is first. Next is I tried RUA, which is fat transfer. Now ideally, you want to use your own fat. The problem was I didn't have enough fat on my body to do a transfer, and the doctor was concerned

that if we tried to extract any fat I had, I would leave an indentation on my body. And so I used a donor's fat. When I did this, I had an extreme allergic reaction. In fact, the first day I did it, I met up with a reporter to do a story for

Bloomberg, and on my way home I blew up. I couldn't even see out of my eyes. I called him. I said, 'Just a heads up, I'm going to show up. It's me, you may not recognize it, but don't be scared because of the allergic reaction.' We discontinued

it. Now, sadly it was a promising technology. Uh, we were excited about it and we thought it might be a really good path to revolumize, but because I reacted so profoundly, we just couldn't continue it. So that stopped after one therapy. Next is we decided to increase my daily

caloric intake, going from 1,950 to 2,250. And we were probing, 'Can we increase my calories while also maintaining the same biomarkers and also putting on more fat?' And it worked. I gained 15 lb, just under 7 kg, and that

helped revolutionize my face I'll also note that uh my life substantially improved with a few more calories at 1950 you're in a pretty serious deficit you're hungry all the time it's kind of painful but I signed up for this and I was

willing to do anything in order to achieve the objective uh 1950 it turns out it was not necessary as far as we can tell to achieve the same level of biomarkers so this is a good example of the experiment we're doing where if

caloric restriction is a promising idea and it's still emergent then we're trying this out and we're measuring a bunch of biomarkers if it doesn't need to be 20% then we can move to 10 if it doesn't need to be 10 we can move

to zero it's still very early in the days of anti-aging and so these kinds of experiments I think are at least interesting as a data point on how we think about the therapies and what impact they can have on our lifespans and health spans next is I lessened my

intake of lutein which is a carotenoid from 20 milligrams to 15 and so I did that because it was making my skin yellow and I think this is why so many people were confused they saw me I looked gaunt I was yellow and they're

trying to make sense is this really what a healthy person looks like and so a lot of people were thinking I had liver failure that I didn't know about but it was simply because I had too much carotenoids in my diet and of course that I was on too much calorie restriction

finally I did under eye PRF and that is when you do a blood draw and you separate the red blood cells from the plasma and then you put the plasma back in the body and this is what I did for my sprained ankle it's what you can do

for hair growth which I don't do anymore you can also do for under eye and so over time you lose volume under your eye and there's only really two ways to revolumize one is with filler the other is it's under eye PRF the problem with

filler is it can migrate and become a nightmare so I would strongly recommend you do not do filler under eye it can be very complicated under eye PRF is helpful because it helps revolumize the loss volume also it only lasts for like 3 to

6 months so it needs to be something you repeat on a continued basis but it does in fact work and revolumize what you see disappear over time with age and I do under eye PRF three times per year right now the past few years has been wild

when I started Blueprint I did not expect it to be a global phenomena I did not expect to be scrutinized by everyone in the world I did not expect to be compared to the most aesthetically pleasing beautiful people in the world people who have been on top of their

aesthetic game their entire life growing up in a small community no one really cared about aesthetics you're just expected as you age to get fat go bald so I didn't apply face cream for example ever in my entire life until I was in my

early 40s I never played the aesthetics game and it only of course became relevant when I started this endeavor and aesthetics became a meaningful part, it's been a complicated one because I've been trying to of course demonstrate something that's never been done before

and so it's hard of course for people to understand context, I do think we are at this meaningful moment in time where we are evolving as a species into something else and I'm trying to indicate that this is a promising path for us to pursue, and so sometimes I do feel uh

saddened that the project is by itself evaluated solely on face fat or some other aesthetic component and not upon these you know comprehensive biomarkers we have, but you know what this movement needs to succeed and to do that there are some criteria including volume and a

face that need to be met, I understand I mean the objective was can I be biologically similar to my 18-year-old in every way shape or form, now that sounds inconceivable today but with enough time is it that is a question I

think worth asking as we head into into the future, many of our preconceived notions may be challenged by things that come to pass and when they do I think it's going to be best for all of us to say you know what I have an idea about

reality, but I'm wide open to thinking differently and I think aging and health and wellness is going to be one of those things, so it's a reminder to me to always check assumptions check my beliefs because something may be hiding that may really be in my best interest

if I could just see it be well if you want to see how my body has changed throughout my life check out this video here

I Tried To Make My Face Younger

Bryan Johnson is the world's most measured human. Johnson sold his company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal for $800m in 2013. Through his Project Blueprint, Johnson has achieved metabolic health equal to the top 1.5% of 18 year olds, inflammation 66% lower than the average 10 year old, and reduced his speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years. 

Johnson freely shares his protocols and data publicly for everyone to use. Project Blueprint, is an endeavor to achieve humanity and earth scale cooperation starting within Self. 

Johnson is also the founder of Kernel, creator of the world’s first mainstream non-invasive neuroimaging system; and OS Fund, where he invested $100M in the predictable engineering of atoms, molecules, and organisms. He is an outdoor adventure enthusiast, pilot, and author of children’s books, Code 7 and The Proto Project.



Bryan Johnson

Initial Project Goals and Unexpected Public Reaction

The speaker discusses his physical transformation over a year, initially facing criticism and concerns about his health.

The project aimed to evaluate the possibility of stopping death by slowing and reversing aging damage.

Caloric restriction was implemented, leading to significant weight loss and altered appearance.

Despite achieving stunning biomarker improvements after two years, the public perceived him as unhealthy due to his appearance.

The speaker details his poor health habits before the project.

Project Baby Face: Restoring Facial Volume

The project shifted focus to rejuvenating the speaker's face due to the disconnect between biomarkers and perceived age.

The project explored methods to restore facial volume lost with age.

Five methods were used to restore facial volume, aiming for genuine rejuvenation rather than masking the problem.

Sculptra, a biostimulator, was used to stimulate collagen production.

RUA (fat transfer) was attempted but resulted in a severe allergic reaction, halting its use.

Caloric intake was increased to 2,250, resulting in weight gain and improved facial appearance.

The speaker discusses the experimental nature of the process and adjusting caloric restriction based on biomarker results.

Lutein intake was reduced to address skin yellowing.

Under-eye PRF was used to restore volume under the eyes.

Reflections on the Project and Public Perception

The speaker reflects on the unexpected global attention and scrutiny the project received.

The speaker discusses the challenges of demonstrating a novel concept and the difficulty of conveying the broader scientific context.

The speaker acknowledges the importance of aesthetics in the success of the movement and the need to meet certain criteria.

The speaker questions the possibility of achieving biological similarity to an 18-year-old self.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of challenging preconceived notions and remaining open to new possibilities in aging and health.

The speaker encourages viewers to check their assumptions and beliefs.