Last fall, tech entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Bryan Johnson spent two hours having all the plasma in his body removed. There was nothing wrong with his plasma; he simply hoped that replacing it would help him achieve eternalyouth. So, despite very limited scientific evidence, Johnson swapped it all for a protein-based fluid called albumin.
It’s not the first time Johnson’s pursuit of immortality has made the news. The 47-year-old allegedly spends about $2 million on anti-aging treatments each year. In 2023, he injected himself with a liter of plasma harvested from his then-17-year-old son. At the time, Johnson he was trying to “become like an 18-year-old.”
I turn 32 this spring. That’s not old, but it’s old enough to have gotten my first few wrinkles. Over the last few years, I’ve watched my friends get laser facials and boob jobs. I’ve watched them spend a fortune on face creams and dyes, an endless and expensive game of whack-a-mole with their laugh lines and battle scars. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and I feel validated. Sometimes, it does, and I feel I’ve been left to grow old alone.
As women, we’re taught that we are desirable as long as we’re beautiful. We’re useful as long as we’re young. But it’s not just the cosmetic aspects of aging that scare me. I’m also afraid of the pain and endless surgeries my grandparents—both in their mid-80s—are enduring right now. I’m afraid of having to hang up my ice axes and skis, and give up steep trail runs for slow walks around the pond. I’m afraid of the day that achy knees cost me access to all the places I love.
That fear is very human—and very common. While Johnson may be one of the more extreme longevity obsessives, he’s far from the only one.
You may have heard of 81-year-old real estate mogul Kenneth Scott, who spends about on “vampire facials”—a skin treatment involving injections of your own blood plasma—supplements, and other unproven therapies. Or posh gym chain Equinox, which recently launched a $40,000-per-year membership aimed at helping its members live longer. Other folks go the budget route, paying just $10 to $100 per month for , an off-label immunosuppressant that’s recently become the darling of longevity zealots.
With the advent of experimental new therapies, pop-science books like The Blue Zones, and big-name wellness influencers like Andrew Huberman and Wim Hof, more people than ever are tapping into the longevity trend. According to research firm Grandview, the current longevity market was valued at $37 billion in 2020. By 2028, it’s projected to .
I get it; I’m not immune to the allure. But still, when I first started reading about the extreme lengths people go to for longevity—the plasma swaps, the drugs, the weird diets—my initial reaction surprised me. It wasn’t bemused curiosity; it was a flash of fist-balling, brow-sweating, red-hot anger. It pissed me off. I just couldn’t put my finger on why.
Bound By Biology
It’s said that there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. And while a privileged few have proven that extreme wealth can help you avoid taxes, they have yet to successfully fend off death. With infinite money and resources, most problems seem solvable. But how much control do we really have over our lifespans?
To find out, I called up Cambridge professor Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan, a Nobel laureate in chemistry and author of Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality.
I chose Ramakrishnan because of his expertise in this field. But, more importantly, he’s not peddling anything. Unlike other top longevity authors and researchers,Ramakrishan isn’t selling a training plan, video course, or pill. He doesn’t own any longevity-coaching startups, and he doesn’t have any supplement sponsors forking over a commission.
Our lifespan is dictated by factors outside of our control, Ramakrishnan told me. All our cells undergo regular wear and tear just from living, eating, and surviving. Different species have adapted different strategies for dealing with that wear and tear. Some animals have robust mechanisms for cleaning out problematic cells, which helps them live longer. But developing and maintaining those mechanisms takes energy and biological resources.
That cost might be worth it for a large animal, which isn’t likely to get eaten quickly. An elephant, say, is going to last a while, so it makes practical sense for the species to develop some strategies for cleaning out dead cells and living longer so it can reproduce more and defend the community group.
Small animals, on the other hand, tend to get eaten pretty early in life. To work with that constraint, they evolved to grow, mature, and reach reproductive age as fast as possible. It never benefitted them to develop sophisticated biochemical machinery for dealing with old age because they never got there. For millions of years, small animals evolved under that constraint. Everything about a rabbit or mouse—from their rapidfire puberty to their litter size to their fast metabolisms—adapted within the bounds of this shorter life. Same with human beings. All of our machinery is adapted to work within a medium-sized lifespan.
In other words, our capacity for longevity is built into the blueprint of our species. It’s the framework—not a feature you can freely dial up or down.
The Illusion of Control
Still, some human beings live longer than others. Take Jeanne Calment, the oldest woman who ever lived. She died in 1997 at the age of 122. Allegedly, she also smoked a cigarette and drank a glass of port wine every night.
“She was simply lucky that she didn’t come down with cancer or other diseases,” Ramakrishnan says. “There’s definitely luck involved.”
There’s also genetics. In an old but often-cited on twins, researchers found that about 25 percent of longevity was heritable—in other words, predetermined by your genes. The remaining 75 percent can be influenced by individual lifestyle factors.
But when it comes to those lifestyle factors, we don’t have as much control as we’d like to think. According to the Social Determinants of Health, a for thinking about factors that influence overall health, our personal habits—like eating, smoking, drinking, and exercising—only account for about 30 percent of influencing factors. The rest are structural and social forces far harder to control: about 40 percent of a person’s health is determined by socioeconomic factors, 10 percent by their physical environment, and 20 percent by their access to healthcare.
Even if radical new therapies did come online in our lifetime, there are bigger forces at play here. A in the journal Nature indicates that people cannot live much longer than they do now. There is a cap on the human lifespan, and we’ve reached it. No one has lived to 120 since Calment died. There’s no guarantee that anyone ever will. At least, not until we cure all cancers, dementia, and other neurological diseases—something Ramakrishnan says is still very far off.
The truth is we have little control over our lifespans. Many of us obsess over what we eat and how we exercise not because these habits hold the secret to health and longevity, but because we feel helpless, and are comforted by the illusion of control. But even if you eat and exercise perfectly, you can still die young.
When The Plan Goes Awry
My father wasn’t perfect. He often worked too much. He stayed up too late. He had a weakness for Little Debbie Nutty Buddies. He once binged an entire season of Game of Thrones in a single sitting even though he’d sworn to my brother and I that he’d wait to watch it with us (we’ll forgive him someday). And often, at the dinner table, he would make me laugh so hard I’d shoot orange juice out my nose.
But he did a lot of things right, both as a dad and as a health-conscious American man. He ate mostly rice and vegetables, wore sunscreen, and woke up at 5:00 A.M. every day to run five miles and lift weights. He was thin. He had a rich social life. He was a good husband and father. He spent time outside. And despite all that, he died from an out-of-nowhere heart attack at age 53.
Six months before my dad’s funeral, I lost my dear friend and former boyfriend Alexander. He was a vegetarian. He fasted. He’d just taken the MCAT and was on track to be a doctor. He exercised and stretched. He even flossed every day. And he right before he turned 25.
Both of themdid practically everything right. And they’re gone.
And that, I realized, is why I’m angry.
Johnson often wears a T-shirt that says “Don’t Die,” as if it was that easy. As if, for my dad, it was avoidable—and all his fault for not doing the right things or adopting the correct obscure therapies soon enough.
As if, instead of spending his free time with his family, he should have been flying to Dallas to get his plasma replaced or consulting with overpaid doctors about a custom nutrition plan. As if that would have saved him. As if any of us could be so arrogant as to pretend to play defense with the Reaper.
Can You Extend Your Life?
Of course, it’s Johnson’s prerogative to spend his free time pursuing various therapies and longevity-boosting routines. We all have our hobbies. And maybe it’s not my place to say this is a less-worthwhile use of time than dodging cactuses on a steep trail run under the hot Colorado sun, which is how I spend many of my free afternoons.
The good news is that some studies show that lifestyle choices can make some difference—and even help offset our genes. One long-term study published in 2021 examined more than 350,000 individuals with DNA markers indicating they were genetically predisposed to early death. The study showed that exercise and other healthy habits reduced that chance of early death in those populations by . The effects aren’t necessarily dramatic. The researchers estimated that even if you adopt such habits by age 40, they’re only likely to add about five years to your life. Still, eating relatively healthy and exercising: definitely good for you.
The nitty gritty of what you eat or how you exercise tends to be less important. A recent study shows that only exercising on weekends is just as beneficial for your health as sticking to a strict daily routine. Concepts like the Blue Zone Theory—which purports that people living in certain areas of the world hold the secrets to longevity—rest on shaky science, according to critics.
However, some research shows that how much you eat does matter. In animal studies, animals placed on restrictive diets tend to live longer than those that aren’t. A quick caveat, though: these fasting studies often use animals on a gluttonous, all-you-can-eat diet as the control group. They don’t always compare fasting mice to mice who eat in moderation.
“So these studies might just show that all-you-can-eat isn’t healthy, not necessarily that fasting is the benefit,” Ramakrishnan says. Regardless, the science does indicate that caloric intake makes a difference.
Sleep is another big lever you can pull. One of more than 700,000 U.S. veterans showed that folks who slept at least seven hours a night lived 18 percent longer on average. And even if you don’t sleep a ton, sticking to a can also increase your life expectancy.
Cold-exposure therapy and contrast therapy (the practice of alternating between heat and cold) are also commonly touted as ways to boost longevity. But while cold therapy has been shown to help —both contributors to chronic disease—the effects aren’t necessarily long-lasting. Longevity studies thus far have mostly been limited to mice and worms. There’s no evidence that cold exposure can make human beings live longer.
Does Biohacking Really Work?
So, what about the biohacking stuff—the rapamycin and the lasers and the thing Kenneth Scott does where he bathes his face in his own blood? Does that give us the power to take back control?
Ramakrishnan calls some of these therapies “promising.” Rapamycin, for example, mimics the effects of calorie restriction by targeting similar metabolic pathways. In mice, rapamycin has been shown to extend lives by 20 percent. But humans aren’t mice.It’s also only FDA-approved as an immunosuppressant for organ transplant patients, because it helps prevent the body from rejecting the new organ. Its side effects include slower wound healing and a higher risk of infection—the opposite of what you want if you’re trying to live forever.
Stem cells are another promising (albeit new) area of research, Ramakrishan says. So are genetics—i.e., reprogramming cells. However, both involve injecting human beings with new cells or new DNA, which is difficult to do safely.
Johnson’s plasma replacement strategy represents another approach: cleaning out senescent cells that have stopped dividing because they’re too old. Scientists think they can have a domino effect on nearby cells, causing them to become senescent, too. This is an enormously complex process, though. And while plasma replacement sounds good in theory, it might not actually address any of the root causes of senescence. We just don’t know yet.
In other words, the science on all of this is new. The studies that do exist are small and mostly inconclusive. And many of the folks who say otherwise are trying to sell you something.
Yes, there are some promising therapies and drugs on the horizon, Ramakrishnan says, but it could take decades before they’re available. Plus, they’re expensive and time consuming.
As I researched, I started to do some mental math, adding up all the time I’d spend planning out therapies, working to pay for them, and agonizing over whether or not they worked. I realized it wasn’t worth it: I was more likely to spend years missing my life by trying to extend it. Perhaps the right question to ask isn’t how to live a longer life, but how to live a better life.
The Gift of Growing Old
When I started writing this story, I wanted to punch Johnson in the teeth. For his dumb shirt. For his arrogance. But now, I just want to shake him. He—and all of his adherents—are missing the point: the hours you spend swapping plasma or getting your skin lasered to look younger are hours you could be spending with your family and friends. The money you spend on rapamycin could go toward a plane ticket to visit that college roommate you haven’t seen in ages, or to a date night with your partner. Spend it on a scuba certification, a telescope that lets you see the stars, a skydive, a dance lesson, a concert. On any one of a million things that make this life worth living.
I think of the afternoons I’ve spent flopped on my housemate’s bed, talking between sunbeams about what it means to grow older. I think of the pre-party minutes we’ve spent examining each other’s roots, our new freckles, the pudgy bellies we laughed over. I have such fond memories of growing up—even when it was hard or painful or ugly. I want fond memories of growing old, too.
Alexander never got the chance to watch his hair go gray, or to see time etch his laugh lines into place. He will be 24 forever. I think often of how much he’s missed.
If I’ve learned anything from his death—or that of my dad—it’s that aging is a privilege. It’s precious and bittersweet and wonderfully human. It isn’t easy. But nothing worth doing is.
