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If you haven’t heard of Bryan Johnson, he’s the millionaire tech founder on a mission to live forever — or at least as long as humanly possible, and the latest in that mission is the new weight loss pill he’s been taking.
He’s known for his extreme 'Blueprint' routine, where he claims to have reversed his biological age by more than a decade through strict diets, early bedtimes, and enough medical tests to fill a hospital database.
But Johnson’s latest experiment didn’t go quite as smoothly as his usual biohacks. The 48-year-old revealed this week that he’d been microdosing a well-known weight-loss drug, one that’s taken the world by storm — and the results were a little more heart-thumping than he expected.
After three weeks of taking tirzepatide, the active ingredient in blockbuster weight-loss medications, Mounjaro and Zepbound, Johnson says he has pulled the plug on his experiment.
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He wrote in the above post on X (formerly Twitter): “I am halting Tirzepatide microdosing because it increased my resting heart rate by three bpm, lowered my HRV by 7 and decreased my sleep quality by 10%”
That may not sound like much, but for someone whose resting heart rate normally sits in the mid-40s — a level of calm most yogis can only dream of — it was enough to raise alarms.
Johnson added: “A lower RHR is foundational to perfect sleep. The increase in my RHR decreased my HRV by 7 points, and decreased sleep quality by 10%”
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Essentially, his quest for metabolic perfection actually made him feel worse.
Tirzepatide belongs to a family of drugs known as GLP-1 agonists, which mimic a gut hormone that controls blood sugar and appetite.
They’re mainly prescribed for diabetes and weight management, but Johnson, who claimed last year that he had less than 10 per cent body fat, tried taking just 0.5 milligrams per week, a fraction of the normal dose.
Even at that tiny level, his body seemed to push back.
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Summarising his findings, he gave a verdict, saying: “The risk/harm outweighs the benefit”.
Johnson further explained that while there might be long-term brain benefits, such as potentially reducing dementia risk, those gains were ‘very long term with no readily measurable effect’.
For Johnson, who already considers himself ‘metabolically optimized’, the trade-off wasn’t worth it, as he said: “The damage from the long-term reduction in sleep quality is way more likely to outweigh the benefit.”
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While the self-styled biohacker may be done with the injections, he did admit the drugs could have real value for others, as he noted: “My risk/benefit profile does not apply to most people.
“For those in need of metabolic optimization or weight-loss, the benefits of GLP-1s probably outweigh the harms.”
So while the rest of the world might be queuing up for miracle jabs, Johnson’s experiment is a reminder that even the smartest man in the room can’t hack his way past biology.
That’s at least not the case for now, anyway.
Topics: Bryan Johnson, Mounjaro, Ozempic, Health
Ben Williams