What Supplements Does Bryan Johnson Take?

Bryan Johnson takes more than 40 supplements a day as part of "Blueprint", the most publicly documented anti-ageing experiment in the world — but the honest question isn't "what does he take?", it's "which parts are actually worth copying?" This guide lays out his complete 2026 stack with real doses and timing, separates the compounds with genuine human evidence from the speculative majority, and shows you how to build a sensible, affordable version rather than a $2-million-a-year one. Everything here is sourced to Johnson's own published protocol and to peer-reviewed research; where a claim is his rather than established fact, we say so.

Reviewed and written by Dr Muhammad Zeeshan Afzal (MBBS | FCPS | MRCP), independent product reviewer and content creator for Welzo. This article reports a public figure's self-experiment for educational purposes only; it is not an endorsement of his protocol, and every clinical claim is referenced at the foot of the page.

Who is Bryan Johnson?

Bryan Johnson is an American technology entrepreneur who founded the payments company Braintree — which acquired Venmo and was later sold to PayPal — and subsequently became the world's most visible "biohacker" through Project Blueprint, a rigorously documented attempt to slow and partially reverse his own biological ageing. Now in his late forties, Johnson reportedly spends in excess of $2 million a year on the project, which is overseen by a team of physicians and built around continuous biomarker testing, a strict diet, a fixed exercise and sleep routine, and a large daily supplement and prescription-drug stack.¹

His central, and contested, claim is that this protocol has produced a biological age several years younger than his chronological age, measured across multiple epigenetic "clocks". It's important to frame this correctly from the outset: Blueprint is a single-person experiment (an "n=1"), not a controlled trial, and even where his markers improve, that cannot prove any individual supplement caused the effect. That caveat matters throughout this article — and it's the same lens we apply to every compound in our wider longevity supplements guide.

What supplements does Bryan Johnson take?

Johnson takes more than forty distinct supplements daily, which he groups into tiers: a foundational set he considers reasonable "for most people", a second set driven by his personal biomarker results, and a third, experimental tier he is actively testing.² The headline longevity compounds most people search for — the ones that recur across nearly every version of his published list — are NMN, spermidine, fisetin, CoQ10, Ca-AKG, EPA/DHA omega-3, vitamin D3, creatine and NAC.

The protocol is not static. It's worth being precise about what has actually changed, because most older articles are out of date:

• Rapamycin was removed. Johnson publicly discontinued rapamycin on 28 September 2024 after almost five years, citing persistent side effects — intermittent skin and soft-tissue infections, lipid abnormalities, glucose elevations and a raised resting heart rate — that his team judged outweighed any benefit.³
• NMN was reduced from daily to roughly six days per week in the 2026 protocol.²
• Low-dose lithium and NDGA were added, positioned around brain protection.²

The complete daily supplement stack (2026)

Below is Johnson's supplement stack as published in his 2026 protocol, with the doses he lists, the biological purpose, and — crucially — our independent grading of how strong the human evidence is for each. Doses are his personal choices based on his own biomarkers and are not recommendations. Prescription drugs are listed separately afterwards because they are not supplements and require a doctor.

Prescription drugs (not supplements — require a doctor): metformin ER (1,500 mg), acarbose (200 mg), plus thyroid and hormone medications and, historically, rapamycin (now discontinued). These are prescription-only in the UK, are dosed to his personal bloodwork, and must never be self-sourced. We cover the longevity research on two of them in our guides to metformin and longevity and rapamycin.

Why he takes each core supplement

Strip away the long tail and Johnson's stack is built around a handful of well-defined biological targets. Here's the rationale for the compounds that actually carry the evidence — each of which we cover in depth elsewhere.

NAD+ restoration — NMN

NAD+ is a coenzyme central to energy production and DNA repair, and its levels fall substantially with age. NMN is a direct precursor Johnson uses to raise it. Human trials confirm oral NMN reliably increases blood NAD+ and is well tolerated.⁴ For the full picture, see our NMN benefits, side effects and dosage guide, NAD+ supplement guide, and the practical question of NMN dosage by age. Because NMN metabolism uses methyl groups, some users add TMG — see do I need TMG with NMN?

Mitochondrial support — CoQ10 and Ca-AKG

CoQ10 is a component of the mitochondrial electron transport chain and declines with age; Ca-AKG is a Krebs-cycle intermediate he takes on more speculative grounds. Compare the CoQ10 forms in CoQ10 vs ubiquinol and the emerging data in Ca-AKG UK.

Autophagy and senescence — spermidine and fisetin

Spermidine is an autophagy inducer (cellular "recycling"), while fisetin is a senolytic aimed at clearing worn-out "zombie" cells. Both are cutting-edge and still early in human testing. See spermidine vs NMN, buying spermidine in the UK, and fisetin vs quercetin.

The unglamorous foundations — omega-3, D3, creatine, NAC

These are the compounds with the deepest evidence and the lowest cost. Omega-3 and vitamin D3 correct common dietary gaps; creatine supports muscle and cognition; NAC supports glutathione. See creatine for longevity, NAC supplement UK and GlyNAC. Notably, these rarely feature in influencer marketing precisely because they can't be sold at a premium.

Diet and nutrition habits

Johnson's supplements sit on top of a tightly controlled diet, and by most expert assessments the diet does more work than the pills. He eats a fully plant-based (vegan) diet by personal choice, built around two signature meals — "Super Veggie" (vegetables, legumes and lentils) and "Nutty Pudding" (nuts, berries and seeds) — with collagen peptides as his one animal-derived exception.⁵

Two features define the approach. First, caloric restriction: as of late 2024 he reported eating around 2,250 calories a day, roughly 10% below his maintenance level, having abandoned a more aggressive 20% restriction that left him looking gaunt.⁵ Second, time-restricted eating: he front-loads his calories, finishing eating in the earlier part of the day within a compressed window (having previously trialled one-meal-a-day).

It's worth noting that not all longevity researchers agree a vegan diet is optimal — several argue a Mediterranean pattern that includes oily fish has stronger population-level evidence for longevity, and that a fully plant-based diet requires careful supplementation (B12, omega-3, and others) to avoid gaps. That debate is covered in our look at the Blue Zones and in vegan longevity supplements, which maps exactly which nutrients a plant-based longevity diet needs to top up.

Exercise and lifestyle routine

Johnson exercises for roughly an hour every day, combining resistance training with cardiovascular work, and treats sleep as the single highest-priority intervention in the entire protocol — maintaining a fixed schedule, a consistent wind-down, and using pre-bed resting heart rate as a core daily metric. He also avoids alcohol and nicotine entirely.

This ordering is the most transferable lesson of Blueprint. The interventions with the strongest evidence — sleep, resistance and aerobic training, not smoking, and a whole-food diet — are the free ones, and they plausibly account for most of his measurable improvement. Structured low-intensity cardio in particular is one of the best-evidenced longevity levers there is; see Zone 2 training and longevity. Supplements are the layer added on top of that foundation, never a substitute for it — the same principle behind how to start longevity supplements and how to lower your biological age.

The scientific evidence behind the stack

Graded honestly, Johnson's stack spans the full evidence spectrum — which is exactly why copying it wholesale makes little sense. Here's how the tiers break down.

Genuinely well-evidenced (worth most people's attention)

Omega-3, vitamin D3, creatine and CoQ10 all have extensive human data behind them; for CoQ10, the Swedish KiSel-10 trial found that four years of CoQ10 combined with selenium reduced cardiovascular mortality in an elderly population, an effect still detectable years later.⁶ NMN sits just below these: multiple randomised trials confirm it raises NAD+ and is well tolerated, though whether that translates into a longer human healthspan is still being established.⁴

Promising but unproven

Taurine generated excitement from a 2023 Science study showing it declines with age and that restoring it extended healthspan in mice and monkeys⁷ — but a 2025 Aging Cell analysis pushed back on its relevance to human ageing,⁸ which is precisely why it sits in the "emerging" tier. Spermidine, fisetin and NAC fall here too: plausible mechanisms, encouraging early data, no outcome trials.

Speculative (mechanism, not proof)

Ca-AKG, NDGA, genistein and several others rest largely on animal or mechanistic data. They may graduate as trials report, but paying a premium for them today is speculation. This whole framework — grading by human evidence rather than hype — is the backbone of our complete longevity supplements guide, and it's the fastest way to tell a worthwhile compound from a marketed one.

Risks, limitations, and confirmed vs reported

A responsible account has to separate what is genuinely established from what is claimed or inferred.

• It's an n=1, not evidence for you. Even if every one of Johnson's markers improves, that doesn't demonstrate any single supplement works, and it says nothing about what would happen in a different person with different genetics and biomarkers.
• Biological-age testing is contested. The epigenetic clocks Johnson relies on have meaningful test-retest variability, and researchers who helped build them have publicly cautioned against over-interpreting single results. His "five years younger" figure is a reported claim resting on a contested measurement, not a settled fact.
• Prescription drugs are not optional extras. Metformin and acarbose (and formerly rapamycin) are prescription-only, dosed to his personal bloodwork, and carry real risks — as his own rapamycin discontinuation demonstrates. They must never be self-sourced.
• More is not better. By most independent assessments, the benefit is concentrated in the top ten to fifteen interventions; beyond that, returns diminish sharply and interaction risk rises. Forty-plus compounds is not a target to aim for.
• Cost is not incidental to the results. The $2M/year figure buys diagnostics, physicians and experimental therapies — not just pills. The evidence-based core can be replicated for a tiny fraction of that.

Before adding anything from this stack, it's also worth reading who should be cautious with longevity supplements generally — pregnancy, breastfeeding, anticoagulant or diabetes medication, and liver or kidney disease all warrant medical advice first, as set out in our main guide.

How to build an affordable, evidence-based version

You don't need forty compounds or a physician team to capture most of what Blueprint offers. The evidence-based core is small, cheap and boring — which is the point. A sensible sequence:

Two principles do most of the work: introduce one compound at a time and give it 8–12 weeks before judging it, and buy only third-party-tested products with a Certificate of Analysis. For the full step-by-step, see how to start longevity supplements, the minimal stack and a cheap longevity stack. To verify quality, read third-party tested supplements and how to read a Certificate of Analysis.

Related Welzo supplements

Several compounds in Johnson's stack map directly onto the third-party-tested Welzo Ultra Purity range, so you can replicate the evidence-based core without importing from overseas or paying influencer-brand premiums. Where these appear first in our recommendations, it's on verifiable grounds — batch testing, Certificate of Analysis availability, clean formulation and UK dispatch — not marketing.

Browse the full Welzo Ultra Purity collection or the broader anti-ageing & longevity range. For the compounds Johnson takes that we'd class as speculative, read the evidence first via our longevity supplements guide before spending.

Frequently asked questions

How many supplements does Bryan Johnson take a day?

More than 40 distinct supplements daily, plus prescription medications, as part of his Blueprint protocol. He groups them into a foundational tier, a biomarker-driven tier and an experimental tier, and revises the list frequently based on his bloodwork.

What NMN dose does Bryan Johnson take?

In his 2026 protocol he takes around 500 mg of NMN roughly six days per week, taken in the morning — a change from his earlier daily dosing. Human trials commonly study the 300–900 mg range. See our NMN dosage guide; start low and build.

Does Bryan Johnson still take rapamycin?

No. He publicly stopped rapamycin on 28 September 2024 after almost five years, citing persistent side effects including recurrent infections, lipid and glucose abnormalities and a raised resting heart rate. It is a prescription immunosuppressant and is not a supplement — see our rapamycin guide.

What is the single most important part of Bryan Johnson's protocol?

By his own emphasis and most expert assessment, sleep — followed by daily exercise and his diet. These free interventions plausibly drive most of his measurable results; the supplements are a layer on top, not the foundation.

Can I copy Bryan Johnson's supplement stack?

You can copy the evidence-based core — vitamin D3, omega-3, creatine, NMN and CoQ10 — cheaply and safely. You should not self-source the prescription drugs (metformin, acarbose) or the experimental interventions, which require medical supervision. Taking 40+ compounds offers diminishing returns and rising interaction risk.

How much does Bryan Johnson's protocol cost?

He reports spending over $2 million a year, but that covers physicians, diagnostics, MRI and DEXA scans, and experimental therapies — not just supplements. The evidence-based supplement core can be assembled for a very small fraction of that.

What does Bryan Johnson eat?

A fully plant-based (vegan) diet built around two signature meals — "Super Veggie" and "Nutty Pudding" — with collagen peptides as his one exception. He practises mild caloric restriction (around 2,250 kcal/day) and time-restricted eating. See vegan longevity supplements.

Is Bryan Johnson's stack safe?

His supplement doses are individually within common ranges, but the protocol as a whole is medically supervised, includes prescription drugs, and is tailored to his biomarkers — not a template for self-use. Anyone pregnant, breastfeeding, on medication, or with a health condition should consult a doctor before copying any part of it.

Has Bryan Johnson actually reversed his biological age?

He reports a biological age several years younger than his chronological age across multiple epigenetic clocks. This is a genuine claim backed by extensive self-testing, but epigenetic clocks are contested and variable, and an n=1 result can't prove which interventions caused it. Treat it as an interesting data point, not established proof.

What's the difference between Bryan Johnson's personal stack and his Blueprint products?

His personal stack is a large, constantly changing, biomarker-driven regimen that includes prescription drugs and experimental compounds. His commercial Blueprint products are simplified over-the-counter formulations of the more stable, general-purpose compounds — a small subset of what he personally takes.

References and public sources

1. Blueprint — Bryan Johnson's official protocol and published dashboards. blueprint.bryanjohnson.com
2. Bryan Johnson, "The Protocol" (Blueprint), 2026 update — supplement schedule, doses and timing (rapamycin removed; NMN moved to ~6 days/week; lithium and NDGA added). protocol.bryanjohnson.com
3. Bryan Johnson, "I stopped taking rapamycin," Blueprint blog, announced 28 September 2024. Blueprint blog
4. Fukamizu Y, et al. Safety evaluation of β-nicotinamide mononucleotide oral administration in healthy adults. Sci Rep. 2022;12:14442. PubMed. See also NMN dose-response RCT data, 2022.
5. Public reporting on the Blueprint diet: fully plant-based ("Super Veggie" and "Nutty Pudding"), ~2,250 kcal/day (~10% caloric restriction) and time-restricted eating, as documented in Johnson's own materials and secondary coverage, 2024.
6. Alehagen U, et al. Cardiovascular mortality reduced after combined selenium and coenzyme Q10 supplementation (KiSel-10). Int J Cardiol. 2013;167(5):1860–1866. PubMed
7. Singh P, et al. Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging. Science. 2023;380(6649):eabn9257. Science
8. Marcangeli V, et al. Experimental evidence against taurine deficiency as a driver of aging in humans. Aging Cell. 2025. PMC

About the author. Dr Muhammad Zeeshan Afzal (MBBS | FCPS | MRCP) is an independent product reviewer and content creator for Welzo. He writes evidence-led guides on supplements and longevity, prioritising peer-reviewed human research and flagging weak or contested claims rather than overselling them.