An expert in preventative and functional medicine has weighed in on Bryan Johnson's approach to 'biohacking'.
Most of us will've seen Bryan Johnson in the headlines, but for those of you who don't know, he's the man using 'biohacking' to try and reverse his age - doing things like measuring his nighttime erections, taking over 50 pills a day and even using his son's blood plasma.
But is it all really necessary to try and achieve optimum health? Is it completely safe? Should others try to adopt the same vigorous approach? And is it actually working?
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Well, GP, longevity expert and the brains behind health clinic HUM2N, Dr Mohammed Enayat - known as Dr E - has told UNILAD what he really thinks of Johnson's approach.
First things first, Dr E is quick to make the distinction that Johnson is the physical but not the entire intellectual brains behind his 'biohacking' approach - his health plan is created by a team of doctors and scientists and specifically for him.
He tells UNILAD: "Bryan Johnson didn't come up with a solution himself. No, he went to scientists and doctors who helped him put together a programme of care that works for him in his budget and what he wants to achieve."
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And it's fairly obvious Johnson's approach to ageing can't be adopted by everyone - the 46-year-old spending a whopping $2 million per year - but would Dr E advise it anyway, irrespective of cost?
Well, Dr E thinks Johnson's approach is 'actually [...] working for him' - and it shows in the results - but that doesn't make it 'realistic' for other people to adopt and that's not just because of the cost.
Dr E explains: "That's [Johnson's] sole purpose in life. [...] He's got a [...] regime, he's very strict in his diet and supplementation. He's not having what most people would say is a quality of life they want to have."
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Not only this, but the healthcare professional actually thinks there's 'definitely [...] cause for concern' because Johnson appears to be undergoing so many processes and putting so many things into his body at the same time with 'no triaging' - or using what scientists call 'the Maslow's hierarchy of needs'.
Dr E thinks the scientists and team who are working with Johnson are embarking on more of a 'throwing the kitchen sink at it approach' and Johnson has previously admitted himself the team 'frequently make mistakes' and are 'stumbling into new things' as they experiment with how to reduce his biological age.
Dr E worries this could come with a 'risk' of certain methods or drugs interacting negatively with one another in current 'unknown ways' - potentially proving toxic to areas such as the liver or kidneys.
Contrastingly to this, Dr E's clinic HUM2N has a 'structural based approach to driving quality of life' which starts with 'five or six key pillars'.
Dr E says for 75 percent of people all you need to do is look at those 'important five or six systems to begin with' to be able to help improve both quality of life and promote longevity too.
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"And once you do those, then OK, there's a couple more you can go on top of that, and maybe a couple more on top of that," he adds.
The GP is also 'concerned' with the 'experimental' nature of Johnson's health plan and the 'lack of application' on other patients, questioning if the doctors have carried out their methods on anyone else.
While Dr E notes it 'must be fun' for scientists to be 'curious' and experiment, he says he personally 'wouldn't do that' if he were Johnson's doctor, noting the 'responsibility to [his] patients' 'safety and longevity'.
He adds: "I think there is a high degree of a lack of responsibility potentially with the number of interventions that he's doing that are overlapping."
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Dr E points out Johnson is 'doing a lot on the outside to look good' but questions whether all those processes are working 'as efficiently [...] internally' too.
Although, it's important to note Johnson is willingly being a human guinea pig and has even sold his company to push funds into his health-orientated endeavours - his personal projects including an anti-aging regimen called Project Blueprint, neurotechnology company Kernel and venture capital fund for science and tech companies OS Fund.
There are also 'certain principles' Dr E thinks we can actually learn and take from Johnson's approach.
Similar to some of the methods Johnson uses, HUM2N has tools and technologies which help reverse ageing - some help 'build muscle in the right places' and the clinic also has a bone density machine 'which reverse bone thinning'.
There's also lung enhancing machines and a kind of hyperbaric oxygen chamber therapy proven by studies to 'slow down biological ageing'.
The clinic also uses cryotherapy - cold exposure - which 'improves your blood sugar response and mitochondrial health'.
But for the average Joe like me and you who don't have the funds to rely on regular high-tech treatments? Well, Dr E has some of his own hacks too.
One tip Dr E uses himself on a day-to-day basis is having 'energy or state awareness'.
"[So] how much energy do I have? Can I manage my state better so I'm not over-exerting or unnecessarily using up too much energy," he explains.
Dr E sees the human body as a 'battery' and so treats it as such, such as when he's sick, viewing 'a pool of energy' being used up for immune system support and fighting infection.
The medical professional adds you can improve your 'energy state' or 'life force' through what you eat and how you respond to stress, how much and well you sleep and your general routine.
"You can really kind of improve and reduce the revving on your engine that will give you longevity in the long run," he says.
Dr E also recommends blue light exposure which keeps your 'adrenal and stress responses down as much as you can' alongside focusing on the 'power of the breath' and taking part in cold water exposure in the morning - a much cheaper version of a cryotherapy machine.
He said: "It trains you to get out of your head and into your body. We spend too much time in our head.
"Once you start to learn to feel more, less thinking more feeling, becoming in tune with your body - it's a much better state to be in generally."
Oh, and Dr E does take supplements each day like Johnson, however, not to anywhere near the same extent.
He takes three to four, or sometimes 'up to seven or eight' supplements per day and the number and type changes depending on what he's 'looking to heal at that time'.
For example, 'you don't need to be on gut-healing supplements forever' the medical experts reassures, you just need to make sure you're doing different types of 'annual work' to support your biological processes properly.
Overall, despite some of his concerns, Dr E resolves Johnson is certainly 'gathering a lot of data' which is 'good'.
He concluded: "He is a kind of voluntary experiment that will be learned from."
UNILAD has contacted Bryan Johnson and his doctor Oliver Zolman for comment.
Topics: Science, Bryan Johnson, Celebrity, US News, World News, Health, Mental Health