Sermon Illustrations
45-Year-Old Spends Millions to be 18-Years-Old
An article in Bloomberg Businessweek described the quest of multi-millionaire Bryan Johnson, a 45-year-old software entrepreneur, to turn back the clock. This year, he’s on track to spend at least $2 million on his body. He wants to have the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, teeth, skin, and hair of an 18-year-old.
The effort has been named Project Blueprint, and Johnson’s doing it with the assistance of 30 doctors. They try the most intriguing new treatments on Johnson and obsessively track the results using everything from whole-body MRIs to blood draws. It's all on top of a rigorous framework of a 1,977-calorie vegan diet, and an extremely specific brushing and flossing routine. If you think he's crazy, “This is expected and fine,” he says. The crazy part is, it's working.
According to the article, "Johnson’s body is, as they measure it, getting medically younger," citing the biological age of his heart (37), skin (28), lung capacity (18), and gum inflammation (17). Each morning starting at 5 a.m., Johnson takes two dozen supplements and medicines. There’s a supplement for artery and skin health, another to prevent bowel polyps, others to reduce inflammation, and also his vegan diet. He follows a daily hourlong workout, consisting of 25 different exercises. Then there are weekly acid peels to counteract sun damage and sound therapy to better his hearing.
Kristin Dittmar, a cancer specialist, says, “I think what he’s doing is impressive, and he has personally challenged me to be better. What he does is also essentially a full-time job.” She also stresses that cancer has genetic components that no cutting-edge science, let alone juices or creams, can yet beat.
It’s also easy to imagine how a group of Johnson wannabes experimenting with ever-riskier procedures could go horribly wrong.