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March 16, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
47:17
20230316_piers-morgan-uncensored-the-real-life-benjamin-but
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Millionaire Reverses Biological Age 00:03:34
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Maverick billionaire Brian Johnson says he's the real life Benjamin Button.
With 30 doctors, thousands of pills, millions of dollars, he claims he's made his body five years younger.
Tonight he'll tell me how and why.
And an all-star panel of age-defying experts will also debate it.
Can we?
Should we turn back time?
From London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
It's a special edition tonight and a really special one.
Everyone's getting older, but let's be honest, none of us wants to.
Once you're old enough to drive and buy a proper drink, it's a slow but inexorable tumble down a very big and often pretty torturous hill.
Aches multiply, hangovers intensify, energy levels recede as fast as your hairline.
And a number of things to look forward to and dream of decline as we all gradually and reluctantly just run out of road.
Well time is kinder to some of us than others, even at the same age, but we're all going to die.
That is an irrefutable fact.
And whether you believe in an afterlife or not, there's a premium on making the best of the time we have and the people we love.
Humans have understood that for as long as civilization has existed and we fought a long and often fruitless war against father time.
Ancient Greeks plastered their faces with crocodile dung.
Victorians rinsed their hair in orange onion juice.
One Hungarian noblewoman bathed in virginal blood.
Thankfully, the methods have changed to try and arrest the aging process, but the aspiration remains the same.
$70 billion a year is spent on face filling, lip plumping, nose grafting and other plastic enhancements for the sagging torso.
Billions more is spent on research into things like biohacking, a scientific quest for the fountain of youth.
This field spans everything from the noble quest to unravel incurable diseases like Alzheimer's to work on reversing the age of the body's organs.
Well one man, millionaire entrepreneur Brian Johnson, has taken his quest to remarkable levels.
He spent $2 million working with a team of 30 doctors and medics to effectively reboot his body.
And he reckons he's managed to reverse his biological age already by five years.
You have to really think about it from a holistic perspective.
So it's the common things like diet and exercise, but it's also a much broader consideration.
So I have a team of doctors that I work with and we just go through this rigorous process of measurement, gold standard science, implementation, measurement.
It's produced near perfect health for me.
Sounds good, doesn't it?
Well, in a moment, I'll talk to Brian Johnston, but it's worth considering why this might not be about vanity or selfishness.
Our societies could depend on people being healthier for longer.
In 1950, one in every 12 people in the rich world was aged 65 or above.
By 2050, it'll be closer to one in four.
Those old people are expensive.
They'll need looking after.
And that gets to the heart of the question.
We're told the world's already overpopulated, that we can't feed or house the people who already exist here.
Mavericks like Brian Johnson have resources and technologies that ordinary people don't, meaning the process of reversing aging is for now the preserve of the rich.
So could it actually be, well, immoral to try to live longer?
Building a Health Autopilot 00:03:20
Can the planet afford for him to be successful in this mission?
Can we, should we, as I asked at the start of the show, try to turn back time?
Well, Brian Johnson joins me now.
Brian, great to have you on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Before we get into your new life and what you've been achieving or not achieving, I want to just take you back to life before this.
You know, you grew up in Utah.
It was a fairly conventional American Mormon life that you led.
And you became in your 20s incredibly successful, culminating in selling a business that you created called Braintree Payment Solutions to PayPal, then owned by eBay, for $800 million.
So for many people, it would have appeared that you were living the American dream.
You were a billionaire, incredibly successful guy, and yet at the same time, by your own admission, you were miserable.
You were depressed to the point of feeling suicidal.
You were very overweight.
You were very stressed.
You've been through a divorce.
And actually, you thought your life sucked.
What was the epiphany moment for you to say, right, I'm going to do something about this?
I mean, I learned how to fly an airplane.
I got my pilot's license.
And one day I was in the airplane, and I had my hands on the controls, and I turned the autopilot on.
And I was amazed at how the autopilot was able to keep the plane perfectly smooth, even in turbulent air.
And I wondered to myself, could I build an autopilot for me, a system that takes better care of me than I can?
And that's when we started.
I wondered, could I hire a team of doctors?
Could we look at scientific evidence, create scientific protocols, and then iterate that process again and again?
And basically do exactly as the science and data said and just have a system take care of me.
And in that process, I removed my mind from the situation.
So I no longer went to the pantry and tried to find food.
I didn't order off of menus at restaurants.
I didn't go to the grocery store and pick out what I thought looked pretty.
It was just simply data, science, and clinical grade protocols that got my system running on its own.
I mean, it's completely fascinating, I think, what you're doing here in terms of a social experiment.
I guess my sort of overview question is, how do you feel right now compared to what you were like before that light bulb moment?
I don't think even if I could have spoken to myself in that moment, that I could fully articulate to myself what it would feel like to be me right now.
The clarity of mind, the stability of emotions, the hope for life.
I've never felt this good in my entire life.
And it just is really difficult to articulate a sense of well-being.
We're going to get to exactly how you've been doing this, but what was the overall goal?
When you started out, what was your goal?
Well, I think we're at this really interesting time in the early 21st century.
If we zoom out on planet Earth and we try to quiet all the noise, everything going on, we try to say, what really is going on?
I would make three observations.
One is AI is progressing at incredible speeds.
Two is the biosphere of our planet is potentially in question.
Caloric Choices and Targets 00:14:21
And three, we humans are dangerously at each other's throats.
And in the early 21st century, if we say talent is the ability to hit the target no one else can, but genius is the ability to hit the target no one can see, what is the genius move for us who live in this early 21st century?
And it could be changing our relationship with self and with time.
We may think very differently about ourselves as a species, about each other, about war, about compassion and peace, if this inevitable decay in aging wasn't so omnipresent in our minds and life.
So Brian, you're 45 years old now, and yet all the experts around you believe you now have the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, the lung capacity and fitness of an 18-year-old, and the gum inflammation of a 17-year-old.
So regardless of anything else, clearly you are reversing the aging process on specific parts of your body.
Yeah, and Piers, I'd also say I think I have the hope for the future of humanity of an 18-year-old.
I have an unbridled hope for the future that I just don't think I've ever had in my life.
Okay, let's get into how you've done this because one of the stats that leapt out at me was just mind-boggling.
You've taken 33,537 images of your bowels.
Is that true?
That is true.
I swallowed a camera the size of a baby carrot and then I took laxatives for six hours and it came out 10 hours and 38 minutes later.
Yeah, all Instagram worthy photos.
Okay, you discovered your eyelashes are shorter than average.
You probed the thickness of your carotid artery.
And probably this will be of interest to a lot of male viewers.
You blasted your pelvic floor with electromagnetic pulses to improve muscle tone in those hard to reach areas of the body.
And you believe this has had a dramatically beneficial effect just on your sexual function.
Never mind anything else.
That's right.
It had an off-target result where I started experiencing more and intense nighttime erections.
It wasn't the intended target, but it was a funny coincidence.
So you are basically a human natural Viagra machine.
I suppose so.
Let's go through your day.
So you wake up, I think, at five o'clock every morning and you go to sleep, I think, religiously at eight o'clock.
And we'll come to the reasons why you're so specific about that.
But when you get up, what is the first thing you do?
My day consists of maybe 100 different activities that we've designed throughout the past two years.
Every activity I do is based upon scientific evidence and a clinical grade protocol.
So the first thing I do in the morning is take my waking ear temperature.
My body runs three degrees Fahrenheit lower than normal.
So my morning temperature reading is typically 95.9 or 96.1 Fahrenheit.
I then weigh myself looking at fat, muscle, body weight, hydration.
I have a special light for sunlight exposure.
I then go downstairs, drink a concoction I call the Green Giant.
I take 57 pills and I then work out for an hour.
I do red light therapy on my hair, HRV therapy, heart rate variability therapy via my ear, and eat my breakfast, which is a few pounds of vegetables, and then I'm ready for the day.
And how much actual exercise do you do, like physical exercise?
It's an hour.
It's about just under 40 different movements.
I try to flex and work every muscle of my entire body.
You have remarkably low body fat.
I think 5% to 6% is the average.
You've been as low as 3%, which was considered dangerous, and your medics had to do something about that.
I mean, are you concerned as you push it and push it that you may push too far?
Yeah, the body does need a certain amount of fat.
What we did is we said, I'm on caloric restriction, so it's 2,000 calories a day.
The recommended daily allowance for me is 2,500, so I'm about 20% lower than normal.
Caloric restriction has a lot of scientific evidence of being very beneficial.
I do that, and so the body, with this 2,000 calorie budget, I just let my body run.
And so we keep very close track.
We have a whole body MRI looking at fat and muscle throughout the whole body.
We use ultrasound imaging.
We use other scales.
So we track it very closely and it's monitored via every measurement modality we can access.
You're all on a strict vegan diet.
Interestingly, Bear Grylls, the great adventurer, recently came out with an interview in which he said that he tried a vegan diet for a while, and actually he's now pivoted to an organic meat diet and believes the benefits from that are much better for him.
I mean, are you convinced that a vegan diet is the only way that you can achieve what you want to achieve?
I'm vegan by choice, not by necessity.
Blueprint does not express any opinions.
There's no human opinion in the entire protocol.
We simply say we're going to measure, look at scientific evidence, create clinical grade protocols, and do the whole process again.
Measurement, science, data, again and again and again.
And so with me, I prefer to be vegan, and so I've tried this out and it seems to be working.
It does not say anything about a carnivore diet.
People can certainly do it and maybe achieve the same outcomes.
I haven't done it.
But the important thing is I have the 2,000 calories a day, which I ate a lot of vegetables, but I also take 100 supplements.
That's not just to accommodate veganism or caloric restriction.
It's basically if you ask every organ of the body, and that's what we try to do, is measure every organ and we say, hey, heart, hey, kidney, and lungs, what do you need to be your best self?
The result is the diet and the supplements I take.
So it really is a body first where the body can speak through data.
What are the key supplements do you think that you take every day?
I have them here.
So this is, for example, if you can see this, this is 57 pills that I take in the morning.
And then this here is the remaining 35 or so that I take in the afternoon.
And a lot of people look at that and say that's extreme.
It is.
Also, it is basically, we are trying to ask a question at the very frontier of scientific possibilities.
If you ask the body, what do you need to be in absolute perfect health to slow the rate of aging to the maximum degree and try to reverse aging that has happened?
That's our question.
So it's not just how do you maintain a healthy lifestyle.
It is pushing the absolute frontiers, speaking to the organs directly.
And so a lot of people who try veganism or caloric restriction, they fail because they don't account for the things they need in terms of supplementing the things they would otherwise miss.
But the point is, with the data, you can verify whether these things can or cannot work.
I take about four vitamins a day supplements.
And quite often it takes me about three or four goes to get it down my throat.
And sometimes I just gag.
I think a lot of people have issues taking pills.
You're taking nearly 100 a day?
How do you actually physically do it?
Do you do it in big, big blocks, or what do you do?
Yeah, so this is the drink I actually have.
This is the Green Giant concoction.
And I can take the 50 plus pills with about eight to 10 ounces of water or 8 to 10 ounces of fluid.
I guess I've just gotten very good at it.
The blueprint, though, this is not an expectation that people are going to begin taking 100 pills.
This is just simply the statement to say if you inquire the body via frontier medical science and you measure and use scientific evidence what is possible in the human body today, there's a much simpler version for people to do at home that is repeatable for everybody.
There's a guy called Jeff Toll.
He's an internal medicine expert on your team.
He says, I treat athletes and Hollywood celebrities.
Nobody is pushing the envelope as much as Brian.
And they say that the work so far has made you five years younger from a medical standpoint.
How far do you want to take this?
How young do you want to try and get?
Yeah.
You know, the five-year age reversal I think is interesting.
I'd say even more impressive and exciting to me is if you look at my speed of aging, how fast my body actually ages.
My last measurement was 0.69, which means I'm now accumulating aging damage equal to the average 10-year-old.
Now, when we look at a 10-year-old, we don't think they're actually aging, but they are.
We accumulate aging damage throughout our entire lives.
And the older we get, the faster we age and it compounds.
But I'm now less than the average 10-year-old.
And so I guess one way of looking at it in a humorous way is for every 12 months that pass, I get September, October, November, December for free because I age so slowly.
It's basically I've reduced my speed of aging by the equivalent of 31 years.
Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating.
We're going to take a short break, Brian.
I want to come back.
I want to ask you, I guess, a question many viewers might be thinking was, do you have any fun?
Can you eat fun stuff?
Can you drink alcohol?
Can you do anything that's fun or is it just this?
Are you now a human robot putting yourself through torture?
We'll debate that after the break.
Welcome back to a special edition of Piers Morgan Uncensored, about whether you can stop the aging process.
Well, Brian Johnson is with me still.
Brian, you've put up criticism of what you're doing on social media.
It's been very entertaining to read some of it.
Some of the examples of the critiques you've received include, Brian, you are surely miserable.
It would be hilarious if Brian got hit by a bus, lol.
I'd rather die than eat that kind of stuff.
This is dystopic.
I wish you knew my joy of pizza and donuts.
And the fact you've put it on your social media indicates to me that you have a healthy disregard for trolls on social media.
But I guess as a serious point, to commit yourself to this kind of level of extremity of health and fitness and diet and so on, does it leave much room for fun?
I mean, can you actually have any kind of normal life?
I mean, first, I love the trolls.
I just get so much joy out of seeing their comments.
You can tell people put in enormous amount of efforts to try to make the most hurtful zinger they can.
And so I made the Brian Johnson hater starter kit to share it.
So like, you know, up your game, don't use these things other people have used.
I mean, the funny thing, Piers, is I'm actually happier.
I have more fun in life than I ever have in my entire life.
And it just is almost incomprehensible to people.
They say, if I can't drink late at night with friends and I can't stay out and I can't eat my donuts and pizza or I can't do these things I'm familiar with, I can't imagine an existence.
And I say, I can't imagine it existing like that now.
I absolutely am having the most fun I've ever had in my entire life.
Okay, do you drink alcohol?
I don't.
I presume you used to, did you?
Well, for a while, I drank three ounces a day of red wine.
It was 74 calories.
It was just too expensive for my caloric budget.
So I just don't have the caloric and budget to include it.
So you've never really been a drinker.
So that hasn't been for you a personal sacrifice to have to stop altogether?
That's right.
It never was a thing for me.
Okay.
So what about treats, sweet treats, chocolates, you know, cakes, stuff like that?
Can you have that?
I eat 15 grams, so it's a tablespoon of 100% dark chocolate a day.
And if you want to really get, you know, wild, then I'll add some manuka honey and some trejalos.
But that's about it.
I don't go to my pantry.
I don't peruse around.
If you are in my house and you're feeling naughty, there's just nothing, there's really nothing to do.
So no, I just don't miss those things.
In fact, doing it, just imagine doing it just makes me sick.
I just can't imagine eating that kind of stuff.
You see, it's interesting because I've been on a bit of a health kick.
And the most difficult thing, I'm sure everyone feels this, if you're used to a certain way of life, and you get to my age, you know, late 50s, is it's how do you do that?
How do you discipline yourself to only have that one little bit of chocolate?
I'm getting better at it, actually.
And the more you do it, the easier it is, obviously.
Yeah.
But it's interesting that you don't deprive yourself completely then.
You are allowed little treats.
You just everything in very strict moderation.
That's right.
And the key thing is I've eliminated my choice.
I fired my mind.
I joke, playfully referred to this as firing evening, Brian.
This is between the 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Brian, who the former version of me would eat excessively of the worst kind of food, and I was 60 pounds heavier than I am now.
And he just made my life miserable.
And I fired him one day and just said, you no longer have decision control.
You cannot eat food no matter what.
And this program with Blueprint, I basically said, I will follow the scientific evidence and the data.
I do not have choice ever.
If I go to a restaurant, I cannot choose.
If I go to the pantry, I cannot choose.
Because I know if I give myself the slightest window of choice, I'm going to mess it up.
Unquestionably, my mind is going to do the wrong thing.
I mean, that says to me, you've got a very strong willpower.
Unusually strong.
It's taken me a couple of years to build this up.
The key thing, though, is, you know, we oftentimes think of our minds as our very best tool to solve the most complicated problems in reality.
And in this case, my mind was my worst enemy.
It was the thing that was preventing me from actually being my best self.
And it is a rascal.
I mean, it is uncontrollable.
It is relentless.
The moment I let it back in my life, it destroys me.
So it's really been this eye-opening experience for me that my mind has a particular place in my conscious existence.
Nine Hours of Sleep 00:02:56
But for the majority of decision-making, it's really a terrible thing to have.
How much time can you allocate per day for work?
I mean, you're still an entrepreneur.
You're still involved in some very big tech businesses in particular.
How much time do you devote to work a day?
I mean, I guess I've been an entrepreneur my entire life.
I'm accustomed to having multiple full-time jobs.
So Blueprint is just, it's a full-time job intermixed with everything else I do.
I'm a founder and CEO of companies, of tech companies.
And so it's all just one big fluid movement.
I have a great team around me.
So we do a lot of things simultaneously.
It's a really nice structure.
And I guess I think of myself, I'm not a biohacker.
I'm not trying to be a health hobbyist.
I'm a professional rejuvenation athlete.
And so when a lot of people look at my lifestyle, they say that's really weird.
It's because they're comparing it to a person in the 20th, early 21st century.
If you were to look at the practices of LeBron James, you wouldn't say, oh, that's weird.
He goes to bed on time and eats really well and does this kind of strength training.
You respect what he does in the court.
And so the same thing is with me.
I'm a professional rejuvenation athlete and my lifestyle reflects that.
How important is sleep to you?
Because you go to bed, I think, on a clockwork at eight o'clock, regardless of whatever you're doing.
If you're watching a movie or having a conversation or whatever, eight o'clock, bang, that's it.
Into bed and asleep.
Why so important?
And how many hours do you need?
Yes, sleep is the number one most important priority of my entire life.
The difference between hope and despair is a good night's sleep.
You get sleepwry, everything else becomes possible.
And so I typically am in bed around nine, nine and a half hours.
I wear a whoop, which is a wearable on my wrist.
And recently I was talking to the founder and we were just playfully looking at data.
We pulled up my data and I was in the 99.2 percentile for sleep quality.
I didn't realize how it compared to people doing that.
But yeah, I take sleep very seriously and it really is the fuel of my life.
I mean I think most people who hear that will know that's true.
And if I have a good night's sleep, I perform on a completely different level to if I have a night of broken sleep and feel tired.
It's just that is something I think every human knows.
How do you get better sleep?
You have to do everything that you're doing to be able to get your nine hours.
I mean, just a few basics.
One is you treat sleep like a lighthouse.
It's never negotiated away.
It can never be delayed.
It can never be the thing you just push away because you have a late night or homework or you're with friends.
It happens at the same time every night, no matter what.
I watch very closely what I eat.
So I have about eight to ten hours of fasting before I go to bed.
So my body, I have a low resting heart rate.
I have a blacked out room.
I sleep by myself, which is a luxury I have.
A lot of people don't have that option.
I have a temperature-controlled mattress, which is also great.
But I really have dialed this in over two years.
It's a system, and I get high-quality sleep every single night.
The Aging Ecosystem Problem 00:15:31
It's something I didn't before.
I mean, having three little kids and building a company and having a difficult relationship, not having good sleep just makes life miserable.
What do your kids make of it?
Particularly the one, I think one of your sons is 17, so nearly the age that you're trying to turn yourself into, 18.
What do they make of this?
Are they supportive?
Do they think it's all a bit weird?
It's funny.
One of my 17-year-old used to take this super veggie.
Actually, here it is.
This is what I eat for breakfast.
It's cauliflower, broccoli, black lentils, mushrooms, garlic, and ginger.
And he took this to school lunch with him every day.
His friends were eating Doritos, pizza, and drinking soda, and he would whip out these few pounds of vegetables.
And one of his friends tweeted out, I don't know what's going on with this guy at home, but I hope everything's all right.
You know, just kind of playing around, but it just called attention to that.
It was so weird that he was eating this few pounds of vegetables at school lunch when everyone else had their stuff.
But he's fully into it, and he's such a good sport.
Anytime we do anything new, he's jumping in to measure himself or do it.
So he loves it.
And his friends, I think, have different opinions.
They see it's unusual.
They admire it.
They like it.
They ask questions.
They are curious.
So, I mean, it's a different thing from what people are accustomed to seeing.
What about love and romance, Brian?
Because you've been through a divorce, so clearly that was an unsuccessful relationship in the end.
Can you have a relationship if you're doing all this?
I mean, I don't quite see how you would fit a woman into this life.
Yeah, that's a legitimate question, and I'm still trying to sort that out.
When I do engage, I do clearly communicate: here's the system, here's the program, here's what I'm trying to do, here's where the openings are.
And, you know, it's a pretty narrow set of potential mates because what I do is pretty rigorous, this plus the other endeavors.
And so I would say some people really get it.
Other people, you know, it's not conducive to them.
So I'd say that's the thing I need to figure out within the next version of Blueprint.
I mean, no disrespect, but I don't think Valentine's Day would be a barrel of last with you, would it?
Well, you would be surprised, Piers.
I mean, we do really fun things.
So we did chocolate-covered berries with trejilos and manuka honey.
We danced around and had a celebration.
So a lot of people think this is misery.
It's not.
We actually, I think we have more fun than most people do.
I mean, obviously, you know, having earlier established that your sexual function performance is clearly enhanced now, it does seem a bit of a waste.
That's a good point.
We should put that to use.
What I like about you, Brian, is from what I can see, you're not trying to fleece the public.
You're not trying to scam people by saying, you could give me $20,000 and you can be like me.
You're just spending your money doing this for yourself, and you want to share this with people and just show them what happens.
That's right.
And it's also the case that when, I mean, we all, health and wellness is a lot like religion.
I mean, with the Bible, hundreds of religions are robustly supported saying they're God's true and only.
And the same is kind of true with health and wellness.
There's so many different things you can do for health and wellness, and no one really knows what's true.
So most people look at it and say, like, I don't know, does anything even matter?
And what we're trying to do with Blueprint is to say, we're going to create the number one best wellness program ever created in history.
And we're going to do it with data.
Now, if somebody wants to beat us with data, amazing.
Now the public has two options to choose from.
What we're trying to do is pierce through the noise and say there are options that are better than others.
And Blueprint is not to say it's the only option.
It's a version.
But we're trying to create this competitive disposition that if you want to be in the game of health and wellness, show the data.
The results are the only thing that matters.
And so hopefully this is a helpful thing for everybody to say, I want to be better.
I want to start doing things.
What do I do?
Well, now there's an example for you.
Everything's freely shared with everybody.
But do you ultimately think that you can prove that you can reverse the aging process?
Or are you just going to be so super fit and healthy that you can arrest the rate of decline?
I mean, I grew up reading biographies.
I've read hundreds of biographies.
And my favorite thing is reading about people who, in their time and place, in whatever century they lived, they were able to identify an impossibly hard thing and go after that thing.
Those outside the zeitgeist for the time and place.
When they showed it was possible, society runs with it.
So really, I think the question here is: if we can show that dramatically slowing your rate of aging is possible and even reversing it, it's going to kick off a whole ecosystem of endeavors.
And what we've shown so far with just two years of efforts, dramatically slowing my speed of aging by 31 years, now accumulating aging damage, less than a 10-year-old, five years of age reversal, 50 perfect biomarkers is compelling.
These are just the basics.
We haven't even gotten into the more advanced therapy.
So I think it is a big shift in the zeitgeist that it is here and now.
And the more advanced therapies are just coming online right now.
Well, it's absolutely riveting to listen to this.
I've got to say, and I think everyone will resonate with at least what you're trying to achieve and would love to think this can work.
Brian, thank you for your time.
We're going to spend the next 15 minutes now debating what you've been telling me.
But thank you for sharing it.
It's really interesting.
Thank you for having me, Piers.
Well, there you have it.
One remarkable man's quest to turn back the clock.
And you're going to say, looking at him and listening to him, he seems well adjusted, happy, ridiculously fit, very healthy.
What's not to love?
I'll be joined after the break by an expert panel to get their thoughts on Brian Johnson and this potential reversal of the aging process.
Is it possible?
Or should we just all grow old gracefully or disgracefully?
We'll be back in a few minutes.
Welcome back.
I've just been doing a quick session in the gym and the commercial break there, try and get myself in shape.
Remarkable interview there with the 45-year-old tech entrepreneur Brian Johnson on his quest to turn back the clock to 18.
It's clearly a very punishing regime.
He clearly rather enjoys doing it, but is it all worth it?
But joining me now, Dr. Nyla Raja, known as the Queen of Botox, Dr. Oliver Zolman, who's worked extensively with Brian Johnson on his anti-aging project, and the Green Goddess herself, Diana Moran, a picture of blooming health as always.
Also with me are Professor Lord Robert Winston and biologist Gary Brecker.
So an all-star panel here.
Lord Winston, I was in the corner of my eye seeing you rolling your eyes at some of that interview.
What is your overview of what you've just been listening to?
Well, I wasn't rolling my eyes.
I had my eyes shut, actually.
I'm sorry that I can't see you.
I spent some of the time sleeping because, of course, this is the sort of message we've been hearing from snake oil salesmen for the last 250 years.
And there's nothing new here.
There are various things which certainly can improve your chances of living longer, exercise, better diet, not smoking and so on.
But actually the evidence of, by the way, peers, don't take extra vitamins, it's a complete waste of time.
There's no evidence at all.
There are no data to support that claim.
And I think you should know that, because if you have difficulty swallowing them, your body is telling you something, don't swallow them.
You're probably right.
Is that right?
You really think all vitamins are a waste of time?
No, of course, no, no.
Vitamins are not a waste of time, but actually, virtually everybody who has a normal diet will be taking enough vitamins that the body actually needs.
There are a few exceptions, but in fact, you know, we all get enough, nearly all get enough vitamin C, enough vitamin D. Clearly, if we live in the dark, we won't.
But with a few exceptions, all those vitamins that are taken in vitamin pills are completely unnecessary and do not actually affect your aging process.
And there's good scientific evidence to support that.
But on the specifics that he was saying.
Robert, on the specifics, the medical team around him believe he now has the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, the lung capacity and fitness of an 18-year-old, and the gum inflammation of a 17-year-old, and much better sexual performance, he believes.
Yes.
Are all those things, are they all impossible?
I heard that.
I heard that, you know what?
He's also got the intellectual capacity of a 10-year-old as well, because that's the problem.
And you know, actually, let's be serious.
These claims for different markers, biomarkers as he calls them, are just simply not there.
They're not substantiated.
You know, in the Science and Technology Select Committee, which I sit on, which looked at the aging process and published our report only last year to the government, we showed that there were a few markers, none of which are being measured in these people.
And there is a real issue here, which is actually quite important.
That is, if you, I've just come back from a part of Wales where the average longevity is about 10 years less than it is, for example, where you and I live in the richer parts of London.
And the fact of the matter, of course, is that the biggest problem we have in our society is deprivation.
We have actually serious problems in living conditions, in work, and poverty.
And these actually really shorten lifespan.
And there is good evidence to do that.
And really, if we were really wanting to do something important about longevity, we should be looking at deprivation in our community and looking at education in our community, but not wasting our time with snake oil substitutes for actually proper living.
Of course, he's right.
You can live properly.
But actually, taking minuscule amounts of food in the way that he's suggesting, I didn't hear the whole interview, but I heard enough to know that actually there is no proven evidence, good scientific data.
He keeps on quoting data, but actually he doesn't actually publish those data because he doesn't actually have the data.
And the data are available.
And sadly, you know, it's a pity because, you know, there is an important subject here.
People are dying too soon.
People are aging too soon.
But they're aging really because of the environment in which they're living.
And that's a big problem.
We should be doing more about it.
We could do much more about it.
And it's a promise the government made, actually, but in fact, it turns out that longevity in Britain over the last 10 years has actually shortened rather than lengthened.
That's a real problem.
Yeah, no, there is a problem.
Let me go to Dr. Oliver Zolman, Oxford Regenerative Physician.
You work on the team of Brian Johnson.
Pretty damning verdict there from Lord Winston, who's very eminent in his field.
Your response?
It's not damning.
You know, it's very reasonable.
You know, it's all experimental, what we're doing.
And there's a lot of mistakes in some of the media as well.
Some of the articles that have come out.
So as always with science and experimentation and research, you only want to rely on peer-reviewed scientific evidence of these results.
So we're starting to publish these results this year in peer-reviewed journals.
And any numbers other than that, I wouldn't believe, because there's a lot of mistakes in the media.
The whole wisdom basically says this is all just snake oil stuff.
It's a scam, really.
It's not based on scientific reality.
Yeah, so we have clinical guidelines that we write for each marker.
And these are all experimental clinical guidelines, which are peer-reviewed by world experts in each area.
So, you know, for kidney rejuvenation, we're looking at bringing all the best kidney doctors that are experienced in that.
Researchers as well.
So PhDs, MDs, everyone.
But yeah, for results, proving rejuvenation results, n equals one.
It's very tricky biostatistically.
It's easier in population studies or large randomized controlled trials.
So wait for the peer-reviewed publications and get involved in peer review as well.
Okay, let me bring in Dr. Nila Roger.
Botox is your thing.
You're the Botox queen.
So you specialise in making people look younger artificially, if you like, cosmetically.
What do you make of Brian Johnson?
I think it's quite extreme.
Okay, I think that some of the studies...
But is it any worse than sticking needles in your face?
I mean, there are some studies that show that you can actually improve the epigenetic age of someone.
The problem is that the cohort studies are so small that they're not statistically significant.
Obviously, I run a chain of cosmetic clinics and I can show that phenotypically I can definitely improve your appearance.
Actually, you couldn't improve this.
There's no amount of money in the world that could improve this.
And of course, with the right skincare, I have obviously a skincare collection, which can obviously make you look a lot better.
It can make you look kidding.
I'm actually an 82%er.
So I did a documentary in Los Angeles and a plastic surgeon computer printed my face and said my skin quality was in the top 18% of all men in California of my age, which given what they slap on their faces.
I took as a massive bonus.
And I suspect it's two things.
I don't smoke other than a very odd cigar.
And secondly, genetics.
On my mother's side in particular, the women all lived to be nearly 100.
So there's a genetic thing.
They all had good skin.
Yeah, of course, yeah.
And lifestyle as well.
That's really important.
I think there is, as a doctor, obviously, we would tell all of our patients to...
Did anything he's saying make you think you can reverse the aging process?
I think it is good medical practice.
It's a bit extreme what he's saying, but I think obviously if you can tell people to live a diet which is healthy, nutritious and the lifestyle which is much more, you know, obviously it includes exercise, then obviously then you can improve your overall life span.
Diet, let me bring him in.
Look, you're known to Britain as a goddess of fitness and health and everything.
Is what he's doing really anything more different than just an extreme view of what you were doing?
I really am quite amazed with what I've heard.
Let's put it that way to start with.
Good or bad?
Probably on the bad.
Really, why?
Why does one want to stop the aging process?
Well, maybe he's enjoying his life and wants to hang around a bit longer.
But some of us who have aged.
You're ageless though, so you're the last person I want to hear from about this because you're basically the female Benjamin Button.
But I can't see anything wrong with aging as the years have gone by.
Would you like to, if you could, reverse it?
No way.
Go back to 18 again?
Positively, no way.
I'd love to be 18.
I would not.
My mother had just died.
I came home from school and found her dead.
I took on the role of the family.
So it's actually a difficult period.
And mine was a very difficult period.
I cannot see why everybody's worrying about aging.
I'm loving aging.
You talked earlier on about aging gracefully or disgracefully.
I'm quite happy to do the disgrace thing as well.
And my life is I work hard and I've had my own personal problems with the cancer and all sorts of other things, but I love life.
I could show you hundreds of my, well, let's say 50 of my friends, all of similar age, we're loving life.
When I was with my mum and dad at the weekend, and they're on fantastic form.
We went out for dinner and they were on great form.
My dad's in his early 80s, my mum in her late 70s.
But I think if I gave them the chance to try and reverse it, they'd both jump at it.
Nutrient Deficiencies and Balance 00:04:26
Are you sure?
Yes, I think so.
My dad would love to be back in his 30s running nightclubs in the south of France.
He would have loved it.
But you see, the thing is that when you get, I'm in my 80s as well, as you know, my middle 80s, and you've got to this.
Are you really?
Yes.
84.
Well, you were the best advert I've seen.
You're like the female Brian Johnson.
I've been doing it in a different way.
And I've done it very naturally.
Right.
Very, very naturally.
Ever had any of the nip and tongue?
Nothing whatsoever.
That's probably why you look so good.
No offense.
But I just always think women who don't do that to their phases end up looking great.
But I was listening to the doctor talking about supplements and the likes of.
Basically, if we're eating a good diet, you've got enough.
You take any supplements at all.
I take a supplement for vitamin D.
I don't get the sunshine because I had skin cancer.
Right.
Can't sit in the sun.
Well, Joan Collins, who's 89 and looks amazing too, hasn't been out in the sun directly since she was 21.
And she puts that as extreme as that.
But possibly for the last 20 years.
Which would go out, but it always wears a wide range of hat and all that.
I want to bring in human biologist Gary Brecker.
Now, Gary, you used to work for an insurance company who could predict when people would die based on blood and DNA, which sounds a very morbid occupation, I have to be honest.
What do you make of this?
What do you make of Brian Johnson?
We've heard the expert view from Lord Winston, who just thinks it's all hogwash and snake oil stuff.
What do you think?
I think it's amazing.
I think it's amazing.
I think he's spot on.
I would disagree with the previous guest that aging is not a disease that we can control.
We know that aging is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.
The more aggressively we pursue comfort, the faster we age.
We know that if we don't load our bones, they don't strengthen.
If we don't tear our muscles, they don't grow.
If we don't challenge the immune system, it weakens.
And without data, and we generally have data on our businesses, but we have no data on ourselves.
I mean, most of us that run a business have our income statement, our balance sheet, our P ⁇ L, but we know nothing about what's going on inside our bodies.
We don't know our hormone balance, our glycemic control, our nutrient deficiencies.
And there's hordes of published clinical evidence all throughout the peer-reviewed literature in very renowned journals that supports things like nutrient deficiencies, blood sugar control, hormone balance as being the consequence of advanced aging.
And when we talk about environmental factors, the environmental factors are what lead to deficiencies.
You see, most of the consequences that we accept as aging, things like brain fog, poor sleep, weight gain, water retention, poor response to exercise, poor delta wave of sleep, these are not consequences of aging at all.
They're actually consequences of nutrient deficiencies in the body.
And unless we test and we know what nutrients our body can convert and what it can't by genetic testing, unless we look at our blood work and we see where our hormone balance lies, how well we're controlling our blood sugar, what nutrient deficiencies are causing us to have maladies that we're associating with aging but are actually associated with deficiencies in the human body, then we're just running blind.
We're eating for the sake of eating, we're seeking comfort, we're trying to control our environment, we're trying to control the temperature.
You know, in my opinion, we have to stop telling grandma not to go outside.
It's too hot.
Not to go outside, it's too cold.
To just lay down, to just relax, to just eat at the very first pang of hunger.
This is collapsing all of our natural defense mechanisms.
Things like cold water exposure, photobiomodulation, which is taking the healing energy from the sun and bringing it indoors, breath work, contacting the surface of the earth.
So you're basically...
Sorry to interrupt, Gary.
We're running a bit short on time, but just to summarize, you basically think there's a lot of merit in what he's doing.
Oh, there's extreme merit in what he's doing.
I mean, when you're optimizing things like hormone balance, nutrient deficiencies, and glycemic control, how well we control our blood sugar, you're talking about a substantial extension in life.
You know, I would say that, you know, blood sugar is the root of all evil, secondary, second to inflammation.
You know, there's links now between type 3 diabetes, insulin resistance in the brain, and early onset Alzheimer's and dementia, and all sorts of neurodegenerative disorders.
Next Week's Exclusive Interviews 00:03:05
And that's very, you know, very well documented.
It's widely available in peer-reviewed, published journals.
Okay.
And I think that people that are seeking to live longer should get data on their body and respond to that data.
Okay, well, Lord Winston made it clear he wants to see some proper data before he's prepared to accept any of this, which I think is completely fair enough.
And he's wanting to be able to get to the point of the power.
How many to send it to you, Winston?
Well, Lord Winston, actually, we call him over here.
He's a hero of the realm.
Thank you, Lord.
Thank you.
Thank you to all my panels.
It's fascinating to hear all the range of views.
It's certainly an interesting discussion point.
I think people will be gripped by this either way.
Bottom line is you can all, of course, just eat a bit healthier, do a bit more exercise, not drink as much alcohol, put enough toxins in your face.
You probably would end up living a bit longer.
So there are natural ways to do this without actually becoming a human robot.
But we'll see.
Thank you to my panel all very much and to you, Lord Winston, as well.
Thank you very much.
Well, to next tonight, some big news about the latest Piers Morgan Uncensored exclusives, which are coming off next week.
Two big interviews with big people.
What a big week next week on Piers Morgan Uncensored with some big-name interviews from very different spheres of life.
On Monday, I'll be sitting down for a one-on-one for the whole show with Richard Dawkins, probably one of the most controversial polemists in the world.
Take a look at this.
What was there at the start?
What do you think happens when you die?
You're certain it's not a god, and yet you admit you don't know.
And you're a very vehement atheist.
No, I'm not.
You're provoking me to be vehement because you're taking that tone with me.
I get that, but I don't think you do get it.
It's a different stairs at the bottom of the garden and all sorts of things are possible.
You've been accused of being an Islamophobe.
Are you?
You yourself compared Trump to Hitler.
This is the title of a horror film, isn't it?
That's Richard Dawkins one-on-one on Monday.
And later in the week, a world-exclusive interview with Martina Navratilova, the tennis champion who's been battling two cancers, throat cancer and breast cancer, in the last few months.
Now she's going to talk for the first time about what she's been through.
It should be a very emotional interview.
That's Martina Vatilova later next week.
Take a look at this.
She won 18 grand slams and smashed every barrier along the way.
Two championship points.
That's it, Seven Map.
That's it, that's it.
And the dream has come true.
She's never faced a battle like this.
Martina Ratilova opens up on her devastating double cancer diagnosis.
A world exclusive interview only on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
So tune in next week on Piers Morgan Censored all week for some big interviews.
That's it for us tonight.
Keep it uncensored.
The night.
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