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Yapping7880 4 hours ago

I really appreciate how the author dramatizes hypothyroidism, which I've also had since 25, and in the modern world, it's like the most treatable, easy to live with condition on earth. Taking a tiny pill once daily, with the lone drawback that as soon as you take the pill you have a 5min timer to taking a dump.

I was reading this and didn't understand the point until I got to this:

"I overhauled my medical team earlier this year. It was the rebuild to lay the groundwork for Immortals Care, our $1M a year protocol. With greater capacity, we revisited everything."

And realized this person is speaking the language of scams.

Noaidi 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, IMHO, he is overly dramatizing "mild gastritis" and I think he is doing it so all of us sit here yammering on about him like he is some genius.

WarmWash 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ehhh, not really, I have been loosely following him for a while and he is overall pretty genuine (i.e. laser focused on his health experiment above all else)

He was the founder of Braintree which sold to paypal for $800M. He then was divorced and listless with near infinite money, so decided to see what would happen if money was no object and you tried to live a perfectly healthy life as dictated by current medical research, and document it.

He does sell supplements and now whatever immortals care is, but I can't imagine he makes much money from either compared to his NW (and passive income from it). It's more likely that there is demand from people following his experiment to get in on his findings (which are all public anyway, but convenience is king), because again, he doesn't have much incentive to scam people and his goal is already a selfish one, to live forever. But at least he openly shares everything on that path.

Edit: Since people really snag on the money part, since money makes you evil by default, let me rephrase:

"Bryan Johnson, a greedy billionaire, has totally fucked up his latest scam, and you can easily copy everything he does because he foolishy doesn't even try hiding any of his routines, regimens, daily meals, or even obfuscate any of the ingredients in the supplements he sells. That's right, you can fully copy what he does without giving his greedy hands a single penny. He even accidentally shares all his medical findings publicly too."

nwah1 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just because someone has a high net worth does not mean they are not trying to scam people, and it is good to be on the lookout for that.

Every human being is self-interested, at least to some degree. So, it is perfectly expected that he seeks money, fame, status, power, sex, etc.

But he doesn't seem to exhibit these to an abnormal degree, and in any event, you can just evaluate his claims based on evidence and logic and they either succeed or fail.

Just because the Wright Brothers were selling airplanes doesn't mean that they didn't fly.

catigula an hour ago | parent [-]

>Every human being is self-interested, at least to some degree. So, it is perfectly expected that he seeks money, fame, status, power, sex, etc.

Bit of a reach there.

moduspol 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I buy a lot of his supplements. They're competitively priced for what they are, and what's in them is based on the studies and science they dig up. Not all of them will be cost-effective for whatever benefit you're trying to gain, but that's the case with all supplements.

colpabar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Could you elaborate? Which ones do you buy, what do they do, and what made you want to start taking them?

moduspol 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

I take:

- Essential Capsules - it's like a multivitamin except with better stuff. I've seen mixed evidence that multivitamins actually provide much benefit if you're already taking C and D. This fills the same kind of gap except with a lot more beneficial stuff in it

- Omega-3 - it's like fish oil except from algae, so it has fewer heavy metals. Fish oil is well understood to be a good supplement for the Omega 3, but it can be tricky to source and often contains elevated levels of heavy metals

- Longevity mix - daily shake with a bunch of different stuff for sleep / metabolism / healthy aging / performance / recovery / etc. I'm already drinking protein shakes and such each morning so it seemed like a fairly cheap way to get a little more good stuff

- Snake oil (yes it's called that) - it's just extra virgin olive oil that is very carefully sourced. Apparently olive oil is one of those things that is often mislabeled and mischaracterized as something it's not when sold en masse. Extra virgin olive oil is also one of those supplements that has good evidence for daily limited consumption, and I trust it more with someone's name on it who has something to lose if it were found to be mislabeled

You're welcome to peruse his site [1] if you want more specific details. Each one goes in-depth on what the key ingredients are and why they're in there.

[1] https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com

Jonovono 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I used to buy his act too but once he started doing psychedelics and live streaming it, it became clear it was all just a scam

Noaidi 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, that was it for me too. Because anyone who understands neurobiology understands how psychedelics work and wouldn’t bother with them.

WarmWash 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Sarcasm?

https://medicine.yale.edu/psychiatry/research/clinics-and-pr...

https://psychedelics.cornell.edu/

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/research-unit/center-science...

https://psychedelics-study.harvard.edu/research/

https://www.hopkinspsychedelic.org/

ungreased0675 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We don’t know what his ACTUAL routine is, just what he chooses to disclose. I don’t know that he’s withholding information, but I also have no way to verify how honest he’s being.

timcobb 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> He does sell supplements

Kind of says everything we need to know?

> Since people really snag on the money part

This is the whole part :) it's a good thing to snag on in my opinion

WarmWash 3 hours ago | parent [-]

With $1B NW, the government will pay you $150k per day in interest. In stocks you are looking at ~$500k per day (with more risk).

Why you would ever waste your time running a supplement scam, when you passively earn $150k-$500k per day doing nothing, is probably the most perplexing proposition people are making here (which frankly I don't even think they are aware that they are making it).

He could just make an AI startup if he was really interested in doubling his NW.

gos9 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

1B NW != 1B accruing interest

drivingmenuts 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

At some point, it's just keeping score. Elon Musk doesn't need to be a trillionaire, he wants to be one. None of the world's billionaires need to be that rich, they are just competing against each other.

elcritch 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Great info, and seems less likely cash grab than some.

Still a scam can include other "deceptive schemes" – maybe he's just trying to get fame or plain old attention.

Zenbit_UX 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ehh, you’re giving the guy a lot of grace cause he’s rich. I believe the GP was correct and have anecdotal evidence to support that he may be deceptive.

I followed him very loosely 3 years back and he was touting the effectiveness of a hair dye that he claimed permanently restored hair color at the follicle level if you followed their prescribed routine. As in no more greys, permanently. The company was called Mayraki and nobody had ever heard of them before Bryan’s videos and while I’m not saying he was scamming, I find it likely something dubious was going on with a high likely hood of him being paid for this advertising.

He went as far as saying he had his medical team biopsy his scalp and found the hair was not grey below the skin line so therefore was 100% true. It was quite a convincing narrative at the time to try this $100 hair dye.

The internet, especially Reddit, is now full of angry people with grey hair (and less money) that claim this product didn’t do anything beyond a regular dye but for 5-6x the cost. I can attest to this myself.

ryandvm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I dunno. Billionaires are wont to pick up a lot of fanciful special interests like rockets or climate change or ending world hunger, but Brian Johnson deciding that he's going to devote his fortune to his own immortality is like 7 red flags rolled into one - not to mention that it's like 50% of the comic book villain arcs.

velcrovan 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"he's rich therefore he has no incentive to scam anyone" is not a good heuristic, though it will help you get a degree from Trump University.

mattbuilds 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In fact, I think a good heuristic is probably the opposite. The type of person who becomes that rich is probably more willing to scam than the average person.

WarmWash 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think a better take would be "He publicly shares everything about his lifestyle and routine rather than paywalling them, so if he is running a scam, he probably needs some pointers"

Even his supplements are just concoctions of stuff anyone can buy, the ingredients are fully transparent. Anyone can follow what he does without giving him a penny.

Zenbit_UX 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> He publicly shares everything about his lifestyle and routine rather than paywalling them, so if he is running a scam, he probably needs some pointers

Disagree. What he does is run a YouTube channel that appears to do that. That makes it an ideal vehicle to advertise supplements with little research or scientific backing to an uninformed and trusting audience.

WarmWash 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Each day the stock market likely moves his NW more than the ARR of his supplement company.

Again, if he is trying to run a supplement scam with an NW north of $1B, he needs some pointers. Dude could announce an AI startup tomorrow and get more funding than any of his current companies would make in a lifetime.