Can We Reverse Aging?
Well, that my friends is the million dollar question. Actually the multi-million dollar question if you pay attention to the life of Bryan Johnson.
Who is Bryan Johnson? I am glad you asked. He is the poster boy for health span, age reversal, and all things related to longevity.
Johnson is a 47 year old centi-millionaire who wants to be 18 again. He has hired a team of doctors and is spending millions to reverse engineer his body and brain. Has he been successful? Well yes, but this requires some explanation. By the way-Happy birthday to Bryan who just turned 47 on April 9, 2025. Wait a minute, we thought he reversed his age…please read on.
Johnson has not reversed his chronological age defined as the amount of time passed since birth
(yep, Bryan celebrated 47 of those years). He has, however, through a great deal of effort, reversed his biological age. Which as it turns out is a much better measurement of our health, how we look, feel, and ultimately our health span and mortality. Ohhhh, that is what he did…what?
Scientists are still trying to agree on a standard set of aging biomarkers to assess one’s biological age. So many to choose from- telomere length, inflammaging markers, frailty indices and many others. For now it seems the best, most agreed upon, measure of biological age is called methylation. It indicates the interaction of our epigenetics and changes in our methylation across our genome. OK, enough of the Bio class. Did I mention our organs age at different rates? Yikes!
So, have we answered the million dollar question? Can we, in fact, reverse (biological) aging? The answer is a resounding YES, if you ask Bryan Johnson and many scientists in the field of human aging and longevity. Now the question is how.
HOW can we reverse aging?
That my friends is a multi-million dollar question. A very important question that we will be answering in many conversations to come. We may be talking about Bryan Johnson again, exploring the Blue Zones, and getting advice from the latest research about human longevity.
Please stay tuned…
Enjoy your day,
Just a little extra-
OK, I won’t leave you hangin’ this much. Please allow a preview of what’s to come on our journey to reverse our biological age. This sounds so science fictiony. I love it. Do you know what I love even more? It is true. There are measures we can take to reverse our biological age, extend our health span and “age-well”, one of my favorite terms.
Back to Bryan Johnson for a moment. His routine is way too “crazy” and expensive for most of us. He has started a movement for health span that we can learn from though.
Advanced preview-check out Bryan Johnson and Blueprint.
https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/Home
The Blue Zones? Yes, we need to move to 1 of the 5 Blue Zones around the world if we want to increase our chances of living to 100. Or, we can just emulate their life style and enjoy our journey.
Hint-cherish your family and friends (a good place to start).
And, finally, we can take the advice I gave to my kids.
To grow up to be big and strong-sleep well, eat well, exercise, and avoid bad (health) habits.
Longevity experts would tell us we all need to start with these important basics.
Much more to come-the details.
References
Cole, Garry. Book- Are We Old Yet? A casual conversation about aging. (Yes, my book was the reference for this conversation.)
https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/Home