Bryan Johnson is on a quest not to die. Whether you’ve seen a promo for his upcoming Netflix documentary, read about his immortality summits, or tried his Blueprint products, the 47 year old has risen in fascination and fame as a result of his life’s mantra that has also become his life’s work: Don’t die.
Johnson sold his company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal for $800 million in 2013 and shifted his focus to longevity – specifically, curing mortality. He calls himself the “world’s most measured human” and says he has achieved the best biomarkers of anyone on the planet thanks to his diet, lifestyle, and ongoing tinkering to reverse biological aging.
While he spends over $2 million a year to try to live forever, he says the most transformative and beneficial parts of his “blueprint” are free. Chief among them: Sleeping well. On Wednesday’s show, Johnson joined Megyn to discuss the benefits of sleep and how you can optimize – and maximize – your shuteye.
The Blueprint
Johnson has stirred up plenty of controversy with the lengths he has gone to to return his body to that of an 18 year old (think: gene therapy injections in Honduras, exchanging plasma with his son, etc.), but it has led him to “sincerely believe” it is the first time in human history you “could say with a straight face” that “we may be the first generation to not die.”
He recognizes that most people either can’t afford or don’t care to afford his longevity plan, which includes over 100 things he does on any given day to ensure his body is in the “ideal state.” But he believes “health is happiness” and some of his healthiest habits cost absolutely nothing to implement.
For example, Johnson eats dinner at 11am. Why? “This is actually really about my resting heart rate before bed, and what I discovered over the past four years is that the single most important thing for my health is my sleep… Nothing [else] is even remotely close,” he shared. “And so I have built my entire life around sleep, which is counterintuitive because our current culture is, ‘You sleep when you have time.'”
People may brag about not needing sleep or not getting enough of it, but Johnson contends it is at the expense of physical and mental wellbeing. “There is almost like this mythology that if you don’t sleep, you somehow have higher status,” he said. “But the reality is our body needs sleep. Otherwise, we just don’t function well… We are impaired like if you are drunk.”
Heart of the Matter
With that in mind, Johnson set out to optimize his sleep and discovered the strongest predictor of how you sleep is your resting heart rate before bed. The goal is to get it as low as possible (he is down to 44 beats per minute for “a perfect night’s sleep”), and that is impossible to do if you are eating too close to bedtime.
“I eat my final meal of the day at 11am because that gives my body time to digest. When I go to bed at 8:30pm, the food is fully digested and my body is now able to allocate its resources,” Johnson explained. “If I eat later – at five or six o’clock – my heart rate is going to climb 10 to 15 beats and my sleep will be reduced by about 30 to 40 percent.”
He tracks his heart rate and his sleep cycle with a wearable, but your shuteye should improve whether you know the numbers or not. “Here’s the prescription for everybody: Have your final meal on the day at least two hours before bedtime,” Johnson said. “If you go to bed at 10pm, finish eating at 8pm.”
From there, he said you can “experiment” with pushing dinner earlier and earlier. “You are going to feel a little bit hungry… but as you are going to watch as you move your last meal of the day back further, your heart rate is going to go down, your sleep is going to go up, and you are going to feel amazing,” Johnson said. “It is worth it to wake in the morning and feel great.”
Sleep Study
When it comes to the sleep itself, Johnson said his six-month average is eight hours and 34 minutes a night. He said he falls asleep within two to five minutes of hitting the pillow and tracks his sleep cycles from there.
“I sleep roughly two hours of REM [sleep], two hours of deep [sleep], and probably 75 percent of the nights I am up zero times… so that is roughly the profile,” Johnson explained. “If you lay down and it takes you 45 or 30 minutes go to sleep, it is too long; if you are not getting around two hours of REM, thereabouts, you are getting too little; and if you are up at night more than 30 minutes, it is something to pay attention to.”
Johnson said humans spend a third of their lives sleeping and yet there is no real emphasis on how to do it well. He wants to change that. “Sleep is the number one life priority,” he concluded. “It fuels all your functions… and it changes everything about your consciousness. You are a better coworker, you are a better professional, you are a better parent, you are a better friend. It makes everything in life better.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Johnson by tuning in to episode 1,014 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.