Meet The Biohackers
In the 20th century it was quite acceptable to have a mantra of live fast, die young. Today, there is a race for ever-longer living.
Time: our most valuable commodity. Most of us wish for more of it. And with the speed of scientific and technological advances, as well as a greater understanding of what makes us age faster and what to avoid, that desire may not be outside of our grasp. The average human life expectancy has doubled since the 1800s largely thanks to the invention of antibiotics. With the advent of AI, not to mention ever greater knowledge about how to optimise our bodies and minds, who is to say it couldn’t double again?
We spotlight eight prominent biohackers leading in longevity.
Bryan Johnson
Dubbed the “most measured person in history”, Bryan Johnson’s longevity journey has been well-documented, including his father-and-son blood transfusions, his 111 daily supplements, and his thrice-daily tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil.
His mantra is “Don’t Die”, because we are on the brink of AI being able to rejuvenate our brains and upend the aging process itself. While this seems highly unlikely in our lifetime, Ai is already making huge leaps in our understanding of aging.
Speaking to Billionaire, the 46-year-old tech entrepreneur says that “death is no longer an inevitability” and, in fact, is humanity’s next big hurdle to conquer in the coming centuries, thanks to “the speed of genius-level discoveries” that AI will be responsible for in coming years.
He and his team spent three years developing an algorithm called Blueprint to provide data on his aging; according to several markers on his website Protocol.com, he has broken world records for lowering his speed of aging and inflammation. He states his biological age is 21.
Every morning starts the same. After going to bed at 8.30pm he wakes at 5.30am and weighs and measures himself and begins taking his supplements: starting with 75mg of iron and 250mg of vitamin C to increase absorption. He meditates with light therapy and measures his heart-rate variability. Prior to an intense workout he mixes up a concoction of creatine, manganese, liquid iodine, collagen peptides, spermidine, cacao mixed with a teaspoon of cinnamon. He drinks this with one of his three tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil per day. This is all in the first hour of waking — and he does it every day and plans to do it every day for the rest of his life, in a bid to live to “easily” over the current recorded oldest age. He says there “doesn’t need to be a cap on how long we could live”, in theory.
If it doesn’t sound like much fun but Johnson disagrees. “I love this more than anything I’ve done in my life,” he says. “It’s everything I enjoy in life, it's hard work, it’s discipline, engineering, medium making personal growth, science, personal health, it has everything I love.”
He frames it as giving power back to his organs, rather than giving into food cravings from his brain. “By taking measurements of my body’s biological processes, I am enabling my heart, liver, lungs and kidneys to speak for themselves what they need to be in their ideal state. My mind — a story-telling creature — is unauthorised to grocery shop, peruse the pantry, spontaneously order pizza, eat a dessert, to basically make any food-related decision. This is my autonomous self.”
Peter Attia
Few are better placed to comment on aging than Dr Peter Attia, the author of New York Times bestseller, Outlive, the Science and Art of Longevity. The founder of Early Medical, who sits on the editorial board for the journal Aging, trained as a surgical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute after studying at Stanford.
His approach is not to argue about diets but focus on “nutritional biochemistry, how the combination of nutrients we eat affects your metabolism and physiology”, he says in Outlive. He also adds that exercise is “the most potent longevity drug available — no other intervention does as much to prolong our lifespan and preserve our cognitive and physical function” and “protein is critically important as we age”.
Attia finds today’s conversation about diets has radicalised people’s views with “ideological bickering and bullshit” over “low-fat, vegan, carnivore, paleo low-carb, Atkins — every diet has its zealous warriors.” He says in his experience as a doctor, nutrition should be relatively simple: don’t eat too many calories or two few, consume sufficient protein and essential fats, avoid pathogens, and “if your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise it”, don’t eat it. The best way to stay a healthy weight is “hands down” caloric restriction, which Attia admits is hard because you must track everything you eat and not cheat or snack. Dietary restriction and time restriction, known as intermittent fasting, are also very efficient
He is a big proponent of focusing on emotional health as opposed to focusing only on health-span and longevity. Attia was abused as a young child and only finally addressed his pain in his 40s with a stint at a two-week therapy clinic called The Bridge. “Emotional health and physical health are closely intertwined, in ways that mainstream medicine, Medicine 2.0, is still only beginning to grasp,” he says, explaining that Medicine 2.0 treats mental health like it does physical health — “diagnose, prescribe, bill”, whereas Medicine 3.0 looks at long-term prevention.
Attia gives as much time to his emotional health as he does to his physical, which, as an ex-boxer and athlete, is a lot. “What makes dealing with emotional health harder than physical health is that we are often less able to recognise the need to make changes.”
Dr Alka Patel
London-based medical doctor, author and podcaster Dr Alka Patel is known as The Health Hacktivation Doctor. Her ethos focuses on using data, wearable devices and transformative technology to come up with the right approach to your food choices and the best eating patterns. “Being able to challenge and explore what your mind and body can do, is the bottom line. We know so much more about our hormones, sleep, metabolism, our gut microbiome, our biological age and more. You’re making the invisible visible and you can make better choices.”
She believes people can reprogram themselves age more slowly through informed lifestyle optimisation. She believes that, with the right approach, people reach their potential to live a healthy one-million-hour life — that is 114 years.
However, she warns against making longevity too hard and fast. “We must mainstream longevity by making it something people are excited to talk about rather than being afraid to talk about. When you over-technalise something you run the risk of losing people. I think it’s amazing to be alive right now with all the technology, but we also need to bring in intuition and common sense.
Connection as human beings is key, she believes. “Loneliness kills, people die earlier if they are lonely. You add 10 years to your life with connections, you add seven-and-a-half years to your life if you’ve got purpose. If you take yourself off-piste and do things in isolation, you will miss out.”
For her longevity 101, Patel recommends “time-connected eating”, or fasting, as well as getting a regular seven-eight hours of sleep a night. Light is huge one for biohacking, she says. “Step out first thing in the morning in the light, reset your cortisol levels, step out again at midday for the vitamin D. Put on your blue-light filters in the evening. We all know this, but do we do it?” Patel recommends breathwork to many of her clients, starting at one or two minutes a day. “Start a good habit, for example, breathwork or meditation as you are turning on your computer every day, and then when you close your laptop at the end of the day.”
“No one wants a long list of longevity hacks every day to have to think about — we have to make them part and parcel of what we do every day.”
Most importantly she says, enjoy your life and have fun. “Definitely 80/20, go off and have fun on a Saturday night every now and then.”
Simon Ong
For former Lehman Brothers financier, Simon Ong, maximising longevity is about being able to live fully in the present, in an energised state. He went to rock bottom with burnout before realising his biggest problem was being energy-poor. Pivoting to become an award-winning life coach, he made it his mission to teach people how to devote energy in the right way and to the right people, as well as how to recuperate and preserve energy.
One of his teachings is to be more thoughtful about social media usage: “This desire to be busy and to always be on is one of the negative effects of technology. When we see what people are achieving on social media, we try and make faster progress towards a definition of success that may not always be ours.” He explains his ethos.
“When speaking to clients, I put it like this: when you are time-rich but energy-poor, it is hard to do anything productive and often, you end up wasting that time you do have. However, when you are energy-rich, you're able to accomplish significantly more even when time may often be working against you. You get more done in the hours and days you have than most do in weeks or months. When it comes to productivity, energy really is everything. Without it, you can't get much done and you lack focus and discipline.
“It is a truth that the world's most successful people understand. They may not be the strongest or the fastest, but they are the best when it comes to staying energised. They know that if you’re always feeling exhausted, you can’t possibly show up each day as your best self and achieve your biggest goals.
“It is your energy levels that determine your state, what you attract into your life and how you do what you do. Reflect for a moment on the state you are in when you finish a good workout at the gym. You may not always feel like doing some exercise each day, but you never regret it after. And this is because the state you are in after, means that whatever the world throws your way, you feel confident to be able to handle them.
“When I talk about energy, I see it through four dimensions: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. By making sleep, diet and exercise a priority; creating healthy boundaries to allow me to focus on what matters most, making daily learning a habit, journaling to better understand myself and dedicating time for deepening the quality of my relationships with those closest to me and, doing work that brings me joy, I feel like I’m truly living instead of just existing.
“Too many of us unfortunately experience this tragic scenario where we live as if we are never going to die and then die having never truly lived. Life is happening now and if you want to enjoy a longer life, it begins with prioritising your energy.”
Dr Tamsin Lewis
Tamsin Lewis, medical doctor and former GB elite triathlete, prefers the term 'bioharmony' to biohacking. She is unusual among her peers in not wanting to live to, or past, 100. “I would love to live to 100 with a strong heart, bones and muscle. I think in 50 years we may be able to preserve tissue to extend life but, I think for those of us in the age 30-50 range, we should be focused on living well to 90 rather than dragging out lifespan past 100,” she adds.
Lewis is the founder of Wellgevity and medical director at RoseBar Longevity at The Six Senses. She is passionate about the ethos of holistic health, the interplay between mind, body, and spirit.
Q. What do you mean by bioharmony?
Bioharmony represents a holistic approach to health and well-being that focuses on achieving a harmonious balance within the body’s biological systems to optimise aging trajectories. Biohacking is often a quick fix, involving manipulating specific aspects of biology for desired outcomes and providing short-term benefits by targeting specific goals or functions, such as improving cognitive performance or physical fitness. It can sometimes overlook the broader context of overall health and well-being.
Q. What are your three must-dos for bioharmony?
Fostering strong emotional health is crucial. Techniques such as breath-work, mindful practice, and cathartic exercise can effectively disperse stress.
Aligning daily routines with our natural circadian rhythms — through consistent sleep patterns, exposure to natural light, regular mealtimes, and muscle-maintaining exercises— is essential. Incorporating periods of slowing down and restoration is vital. Engaging in relaxing activities that bring joy and adopting leisurely dining practices.
Adopting a diet rich in a diverse array of fruits and vegetables is key. These foods provide prebiotics and polyphenols that support a healthy gut microbiome, crucial for overall health and longevity. The inclusion of antioxidants not only protects against oxidative stress but also supports gut health, which is pivotal in current longevity research. The gut-brain axis further highlights the critical role of the microbiome in responding to stress and environmental pollutants, influencing both mental and physical health. The more robust your gut health, the more robust your immune system and immun/inflamm aging pathways are strengthened.
Ben Greenfield
A former collegiate tennis, water polo and volleyball player, bodybuilder, 13-time Ironman triathlete and professional obstacle course racer, Ben Greenfield has been voted by the NSCA as America’s top personal trainer and by Greatist as one of the top 100 most influential people in health and fitness.
He also has a cult following as a biohacker. Age 43, he has 427,000 followers on Instagram, a platform he uses for an enormous and wide-reaching array of content around biohacking, including recipes from his biohacked gut-healthy recipe book, such as coconut yoghurt and buttermilk fried chicken. Other content he posts about include normalising stool checks, how to achieve the best core workout, and more far-flung ideas like electromagnetic field protection and radiation.
At odds with his ripped physique and photos grappling enormous kettlebells, Greenfield has a softer side. Last year wrote a book called Boundless Parenting, advising on bringing kids up with love rather than discipline (he is the father of twin teenage sons). He is a big believer in the power of community and deep connections to help us live longer beyond science backed techniques such as fasting and supplements.
Julie Gibson Clark
A single mother in her 50s, Gibson-Clark has earned global recognition as an accidental biohacker. The Arizona-based recruiter started a health kick after discovering she had heavy-metal poisoning — which she attributes to working with ceramics without wearing a protective mask as a student, and eating lots of tuna.
“I felt exhausted to the bone all the time, I had chronic fatigue. When I learned I had heavy-metal poisoning, I turned to nutraceuticals to heal."
Gibson Clark began to research ways to supplement her body back to health and discovered supplements through a startup called Novos. It was Novos that signed her up to be tracked as part of the Rejuvenation Olympics, a leaderboard of the world’s slowest-aging people. Gibson Clark is currently number two on the leaderboard.
“I do think I have more will power than the average person, probably,” she says, before listing off her enviably good habits. She does not drink alcohol or coffee or eat chocolate and she does a two-day fast once a month, often using the fast-mimicking approach of just consuming a small amount of low-carb, high-fat foods, such as one or two avocados daily. She drinks green tea every morning and works out daily and eats a diet of raw vegetables most of the time. Her inspiration is spending as much time as possible with her teenage son, and not wanting to be a burden to him later in life.
She believes the most important ways to support longevity are through exercise and sleep, while everything else is a “nice to have”. She enjoys her holidays to the max and 20 per cent of the time will eat what she wants, including potato chips and ice cream.
“It is an interesting concept: how long could we live if we took care of every inch of ourselves?” she says. “But we also need more simplicity in our lives, not to mention happiness and connectedness.”
Dan Buettner
American explorer and author Dan Buettner co-founded The Blue Zones in 2004, a collection of regions designated as longevity hotspots.
Q. Singapore was recently announced as the sixth Blue Zone. How did you make this decision over other regions?
For a place to earn the blue zones label, it must exhibit a long history of healthy living, tight-knit communities, and environmental factors that contribute to longevity. Many new wellness hotspots are making great strides but often lack the deeply ingrained cultural, policy, environment and social practices found in traditional blue zones. Singapore was able to achieve the label because their leaders made a decision to make strategic changes through policy and environment for health and wellness to ensue over generations simply by living in the community.
Q. Conversely, have you still been studying your original Blue Zones and are they still as long-living as you thought?
Yes, we continue to study the original blue zones, and while most still exhibit longevity they are starting to disintegrate with the effects of technology and the Western Diet. Okinawa specifically has suffered the worst degeneration of all and we do not consider it to be a blue zone any longer. With that said, you can still see many of the longevity principles if you visit the older generations on Okinawa.
Q. Do you find there are some limitations to the Blue Zones theory that don't fit into our modern pursuit of longevity?
People now are looking for the fountain of youth, magic supplement or quick fix for health and longevity and blue zones does not offer an answer to that. It is all about changing your environment for the healthy choice to be the easy choice over a lifetime. While these principles may seem traditional, they can easily be incorporated in modern society if people embrace this idea. I do not believe I’d change anything from the original study.
Q. Recent pursuits of longevity have seen people spend millions on perfecting an anti-death strategy with a strict regime. How much does longevity come down to restrictions and self-analysis, and how much to community and enjoyment of life?
Diets, supplements, and even exercise regimens do not work for the long run at a population level when it comes to longevity. Most people will not do them long enough for it to have the desired effect. It is all about setting up your environment, only about 20% of how long you live is dictated by genes while the other 80% is environment and lifestyle so ensure you are eating a plant based diet, interacting with friends, living out your purpose, getting natural movement, de stressing and doing it all for the long run, this will stack the deck in your favour.
This article originally appeared in Billionaire's Longevity Issue, Summer 2024. To subscribe, click here.
