Bryan Johnson's Supplements List: Insider's Guide (2026 Update)

By Editorial Team, medically reviewed by Dr Frank Yap, MD | Last updated: August 2026 | Originally published: June 2024

Related: Bryan Johnson's Blueprint Longevity Mix Review

Quick Answer

Bryan Johnson's protocol has been substantially simplified since the 40+ item pill list he published in 2024. His January 2026 update replaces most of the granular, individually-dosed compounds (NAC, red yeast rice, DHEA, genistein, standalone taurine, and others) with combined formulations — Essential Capsules, Advanced Antioxidants, and a merged Ashwagandha & Rhodiola product — alongside NR or NMN, omega-3, and Proferrin. His daily creatine dose has increased to 7.5 g total. The bigger change is on the prescription side: he has added three cardiometabolic drugs not previously disclosed — the SGLT2 inhibitor Jardiance (empagliflozin), the PCSK9 inhibitor Repatha (evolocumab), and the ARB candesartan — and switched metformin from continuous daily dosing to a six-week on/off cycle. Rapamycin remains discontinued, a decision he made in September 2024. Evidence quality varies sharply across the stack: the three new prescription additions rest on large randomized cardiovascular outcome trials, while several of the legacy longevity compounds are still supported mainly by animal data or small human studies.

Bryan Johnson, 49, is a wealthy software entrepreneur who has built a team of physicians and researchers around the goal of measurably slowing his own aging. Since founding Project Blueprint in 2021, he has published his protocol — diet, exercise, supplements, and an expanding list of prescription drugs — publicly and updated it as his biomarker data and the underlying research evolve.

The 2024 version of this stack, and the version we originally covered on this page, was a sprawling list of 40-plus individually dosed compounds. The version Johnson published on January 23, 2026 looks different: several standalone supplements have disappeared into combined formulations or been dropped outright, and three new prescription drugs have appeared for the first time. This update walks through exactly what changed, what the evidence looks like for the new additions, and keeps the original compound-by-compound evidence review for anyone still curious about the supplements that built Johnson's reputation as biohacking's most public test subject.

Table of Contents

1. What Changed in Bryan Johnson's Protocol for 2026
2. The Full 2026 Supplement & Prescription Stack
3. Change Log: Dated Protocol Updates
4. New for 2026: The Three Added Prescription Drugs
5. What He Dropped (and Why)
6. Should You Use All These Supplements?
7. Evidence-by-Compound Reference
8. Beyond Supplements: HBOT & Sauna Results
9. Final Thoughts
10. FAQ
11. Key Takeaways
12. Ask an AI Assistant About This Article
13. Sources and References

What Changed in Bryan Johnson's Protocol for 2026

Johnson's own site, blueprint.bryanjohnson.com, republishes his protocol under a "Bryan Johnson's Protocol" page that he updates periodically rather than versioning as separate dated posts. The current version, dated January 23, 2026, reorganizes the entire document around habits (sleep, exercise, nutrition, skin, oral care, hair) with the supplement list embedded inside a single "daily routine" walkthrough, rather than presented as a standalone numbered stack the way it was in 2023–2024. That's a presentation change, but underneath it are several real, substantive changes:

Area	2024 Protocol	2026 Protocol
Creatine	2.5 g in Longevity Mix + 2.5 g standalone = 5 g/day	2.5 g in Longevity Mix + 5 g standalone = 7.5 g/day
Morning microbiome mix	Galactooligosaccharides + inulin	Galactooligosaccharides + inulin + arabinogalactan powder (new)
Core AM pills	Essentials (2), Soft Gel (1), NAC+Ginger+Curcumin (3), Red Yeast Rice+Garlic (1), omega-3, Kyolic garlic, ProButyrate, Proferrin, NR/NMN	Essential Capsules (2), Advanced Antioxidants (1), Ashwagandha & Rhodiola (1 combined capsule), omega-3, Proferrin, NR/NMN
Rapamycin	Already discontinued Sept 28, 2024	Remains off the protocol
Metformin	500 mg daily, continuous	500 mg daily, cycled 6 weeks on / off
Cardiometabolic Rx	Acarbose only (plus metformin)	Acarbose + Jardiance (empagliflozin) + Repatha (evolocumab) + candesartan (all new)
Cerebrolysin	Paused January 2025	No longer appears on the published protocol

A number of the individually-named 2024 compounds — NAC, red yeast rice, standalone Kyolic garlic, ProButyrate, plasmalogens — no longer appear by name on the current protocol page. Some are plausibly folded into the reformulated "Essential Capsules" and "Advanced Antioxidants" products, whose full ingredient panels Johnson has not published in the same itemized way he did in 2023–2024; others appear to have been dropped. We've flagged this distinction wherever we can't confirm which applies — see the evidence-by-compound reference below for compound-level status.

A handful of longevity-media outlets have also reported that Johnson reduced NR/NMN dosing to six days a week and added low-dose lithium and NDGA for brain support in 2026. We could not confirm either claim on Johnson's own published protocol page as of this update, so we're noting them here as secondary reports rather than treating them as confirmed.

The Full 2026 Supplement & Prescription Stack

What I eat every day (unchanged from 2024–2025):

• Calories: 2,250 (10% caloric restriction from RDA)
• Protein: 130 g (~25%)
• Carbs: 206 g (~35%)
• Fat: 101 g (~40%)

He remains vegan by choice (excluding collagen peptides) and avoids sugar, fried food, highly processed food, gums, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, dairy, pasta, bread, hydrogenated oils, seed oils, trans fats, and alcohol.

5:25 am — pre-workout drink

• Blueprint Longevity Mix, 1 scoop
• Creatine, 5 g standalone (Longevity Mix contributes 2.5 g, for 7.5 g total — up from 5 g total in 2024)
• Prebiotic galactooligosaccharides, ½ tsp
• Inulin, 1 tsp
• Arabinogalactan powder, 1 tsp (new addition)

5:35 am — breakfast and morning pills

• Blueprint Longevity Protein with Blueberry Nut Mix
• Blueprint Collagen Peptides, 11 g
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 1 Tbsp
• Berries

• Blueprint Essential Capsules — 2
• Blueprint Advanced Antioxidants — 1
• Ashwagandha & Rhodiola (combined capsule) — 1
• Omega-3 (EPA/DHA/DPA), 800 mg
• Proferrin, 10.5 mg
• NR, 450 mg or NMN, 500 mg

Midday — Rx stack

• Armour Thyroid, 60 mg (for diagnosed hypothyroidism, since age 21)
• Levothyroxine, 100 mcg (same indication)
• Minoxidil, 3.75 mg (hair)
• Metformin, 500 mg — now cycled 6 weeks on, 6 weeks off rather than continuous
• Tadalafil, 5 mg
• Jardiance (empagliflozin), 10 mg (new)
• Acarbose, 200 mg twice daily (400 mg total)
• Repatha (evolocumab), 140 mg subcutaneous every other week (new)

Advanced therapies Rx (rationale as published by Johnson's team)

• Acarbose 400 mg/day — blunts post-meal glucose spikes and improves insulin sensitivity
• Tadalafil 5 mg/day — endothelial function and reduced inflammation
• Candesartan 8 mg/day — blood pressure, heart failure progression, kidney protection (new)
• Jardiance 10 mg/day — SGLT2 inhibition as a calorie-restriction mimetic (new)
• Repatha 140 mg every 2 weeks — cholesterol optimization (new)

Note: Bryan Johnson's own dosing and drug choices reflect his personal biomarker data and are not a treatment plan for anyone else. Several of the drugs listed here — Jardiance, Repatha, candesartan, acarbose, metformin — are FDA-approved for specific diagnosed conditions (type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension) and are being used here off-label for longevity purposes in a person without those diagnoses, under close medical supervision. That distinction matters for anyone considering similar use.

Change Log: Dated Protocol Updates

Date	Change
2026.01	Protocol page restructured; creatine increased to 7.5 g/day total; arabinogalactan added to morning microbiome mix; metformin moved to 6-week on/off cycling; Jardiance, Repatha, and candesartan added to the Rx stack; individually-dosed 2024-era compounds (NAC, red yeast rice, Kyolic garlic, ProButyrate) no longer listed by name
2025.01	Cerebrolysin paused (no longer appears on 2026 protocol)
2024.11	New HBOT protocol started (target 60 sessions, 2 ATA, 20 min 100% oxygen with 5 min air breaks)
2024.09	Rapamycin discontinued entirely after nearly 5 years of use, citing side effects (intermittent skin/soft-tissue infections, lipid abnormalities, elevated glucose and resting heart rate) that outweighed the preclinical benefits
2024.05	Metformin lowered from 1,500 mg to 1,000 mg (later further adjusted to the current 500 mg cycled dose)
2024.01	Oral minoxidil started at 2.5 mg/day, later increased to 3.75 mg/day

Source for dated entries: Bryan Johnson's published protocol (blueprint.bryanjohnson.com) and his September 2024 statement on rapamycin discontinuation, posted to X.

On the rapamycin decision specifically: Johnson has said that after testing weekly, biweekly, and alternating-week dosing schedules over nearly five years, he and his team concluded the drug's side-effect profile — including changes to lipid metabolism, glucose tolerance, and natural killer cell activity — wasn't justified by the benefits observed in his own biomarkers, and that a late-2024 preprint linking rapamycin to accelerated aging on several epigenetic clocks reinforced the decision.

New for 2026: The Three Added Prescription Drugs

Unlike most of the supplements on Johnson's list, these three drugs each have large randomized cardiovascular outcome trials behind their approved indications — which is a meaningfully higher evidence bar than most of the legacy Blueprint stack.

Jardiance (Empagliflozin)

Evidence tier: 1 (human RCTs with clinical outcomes) for its approved indications; tier 3 for longevity specifically.

Empagliflozin is an SGLT2 inhibitor, originally approved for type 2 diabetes. In the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial, it reduced cardiovascular death, heart failure hospitalization, and a composite of major cardiovascular events in people with type 2 diabetes and established cardiovascular disease. It's since gained approval for heart failure (with both reduced and preserved ejection fraction) and chronic kidney disease, independent of diabetes status. A 2024 analysis modeling EMPA-REG OUTCOME data estimated meaningful gains in projected life expectancy for people with type 2 diabetes taking empagliflozin, with the largest gains in younger patients.

The longevity-specific rationale — the reason it appears in a healthy person's stack rather than a diabetic's — rests on a smaller evidence base. SGLT2 inhibitors are being studied as calorie-restriction mimetics, and a 2024 GeroScience study found empagliflozin extended median survival in naturally aged male mice by roughly 6%, alongside improvements in learning, motor balance, and markers of liver senescence. That's promising mechanistic and animal-level evidence, but there is no human trial testing empagliflozin for longevity in people without diabetes, heart failure, or kidney disease — its use in that context, including Johnson's, is off-label extrapolation from disease-population trial data and preclinical aging research.

Repatha (Evolocumab)

Evidence tier: 1 (human RCTs with clinical outcomes).

Evolocumab is a PCSK9 inhibitor — a monoclonal antibody that increases the liver's ability to clear LDL cholesterol from the blood. In the FOURIER trial (over 27,000 participants with established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease already on statins), adding evolocumab lowered LDL-C to a median of roughly 30 mg/dL and reduced the risk of cardiovascular events. A newer trial, VESALIUS-CV, reported in late 2025 that evolocumab cut the risk of a first major adverse cardiovascular event by 25% in a broader population, including many people without prior cardiovascular events, with numerical trends toward lower cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.

This is one of the stronger evidence bases in Johnson's entire stack — it's a Tier 1 finding for cardiovascular risk reduction. What's less established is its role in someone with Johnson's biomarker profile (elite cardiovascular fitness, no diagnosed atherosclerotic disease); the trial populations were people already at elevated cardiovascular risk, so extrapolating the same magnitude of benefit to a healthy 48-year-old is not something the trial data directly supports.

Candesartan

Evidence tier: 1 (human RCTs) for hypertension and heart failure; tier 3–4 for other proposed longevity mechanisms.

Candesartan is an angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB), a well-established blood pressure medication with strong trial evidence for reducing cardiovascular events in hypertension and for slowing heart failure progression (the CHARM trial program). ARBs as a class are also used for kidney protection in diabetic and non-diabetic chronic kidney disease. Johnson's team lists reduced brain inflammation as a rationale for its inclusion; ARBs including candesartan have been studied for neuroprotective and cognitive effects via renin-angiotensin system modulation, but this remains a more preliminary area of research relative to the drug's blood pressure and heart failure evidence.

What He Dropped (and Why)

• Rapamycin — discontinued September 2024 after side effects (skin/soft-tissue infections, lipid changes, elevated glucose and resting heart rate) outweighed the observed benefit; reinforced by a late-2024 preprint linking rapamycin to accelerated aging across multiple epigenetic clocks.
• Cerebrolysin — paused January 2025; not reintroduced on the current protocol.
• Young plasma exchange — Johnson, his father, and his teenage son participated in reciprocal plasma exchanges as an experimental intervention. This has been reported by several longevity outlets as discontinued after Johnson found no measurable benefit across six exchanges, though we could not locate this specific claim on Johnson's own published protocol page.
• Standalone NAC, red yeast rice + garlic, Kyolic garlic, ProButyrate, plasmalogens — no longer itemized on the current protocol. Whether these are folded into the reformulated combination capsules or fully discontinued isn't confirmed from the published source.

Should You Use All These Supplements?

Scientific rationale exists for most of the compounds and drugs on Johnson's list, but that doesn't mean the whole stack is appropriate for everyone. Much of the supporting evidence for the legacy longevity compounds is preliminary or comes from animal models. The items with the strongest human evidence — including the new prescription additions — were studied in specific disease populations (established cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, heart failure), not in healthy adults using them preventively.

A few practical considerations if you're evaluating any part of this stack for yourself:

• No health authority anywhere recommends daily use of dozens of supplements and prescription drugs simultaneously in someone without the diagnosed conditions those drugs treat.
• Off-label prescription use — of metformin, acarbose, empagliflozin, evolocumab, candesartan, or tadalafil — carries real risks and requires physician supervision and monitoring (kidney function, electrolytes, blood pressure, lipid panels, and more, depending on the drug).
• Taking many supplements and drugs at once makes it difficult to identify which ones are producing a given effect — or a given side effect.
• This is an extremely expensive protocol. Johnson has reported annual spending above $2 million; most of the biomarker gains attributable to sleep, exercise, and diet are achievable without the pharmaceutical layer.

If you're interested in trying any new supplement or medication, talk to your physician first — particularly before starting any prescription drug off-label, or combining multiple supplements with overlapping mechanisms.

Evidence-by-Compound Reference

Legend: ✅ Current — appears on the January 2026 protocol. ⏸ Status unclear — no longer itemized by name; may be folded into a combination product. ❌ Discontinued — confirmed dropped, with a stated or reported reason.

Rapamycin ❌ Discontinued (Sept 2024)

Dosage used historically: 13 mg/week, alternating with 6 mg/week. Rapamycin (sirolimus) inhibits mTOR, a signaling pathway involved in metabolism and cell growth, and is FDA-approved to prevent transplant rejection. Animal studies — including a widely cited 2009 Nature paper — found rapamycin extended lifespan in mice, yeast, worms, and flies. Human longevity trials remain ongoing and inconclusive. Johnson discontinued it in September 2024, citing side effects and a preprint suggesting accelerated epigenetic aging on some clocks.

Nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA) ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 50 mg/day. NDGA, derived from the creosote bush, has demonstrated antioxidant properties and extended lifespan in flies and mice, though liver, lung, and thymus tumors developed in some animal studies at higher doses. Human safety parameters are not well established. Not itemized on the current protocol; a small number of third-party outlets report it was re-added in 2026, which we could not confirm from Johnson's own page.

Taurine ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 3 g/day. A 2023 Science study found taurine supplementation extended mouse lifespan by roughly 10–12%. Human evidence is limited to cholesterol and insulin-sensitivity outcomes, not longevity. No longer listed as a standalone item on the 2026 protocol.

Nicotinamide riboside (NR) / Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) ✅ Current

Current dosage: NR 450 mg or NMN 500 mg daily (some secondary sources report 6 days/week rather than 7 as of 2026, unconfirmed on the primary source). Both are NAD+ precursors. Human trials show NR is well tolerated and raises blood NAD+ in middle-aged and older adults, with possible modest benefits for blood pressure and exercise performance. Large-scale outcome trials are still lacking.

Acarbose ✅ Current

Current dosage: 200 mg twice daily (400 mg total). An FDA-approved diabetes medication that slows carbohydrate absorption. Mouse studies show lifespan extension, especially combined with rapamycin (which Johnson no longer takes). In humans, the main side effects are gastrointestinal.

Metformin ✅ Current — now cycled

Current dosage: 500 mg daily, on a 6-week on/off cycle (previously continuous). Metformin activates AMPK and has observational associations with reduced sarcopenia and improved metabolic markers in older, metabolically compromised adults. Randomized trials in metabolically healthy, physically active older adults — including the MASTERS trial and related work by Konopka and colleagues — found metformin blunts resistance-training-induced muscle hypertrophy and blunts mitochondrial adaptations to aerobic training, likely via sustained AMPK activation suppressing mTORC1 signaling. Intermittent or cycled dosing has been proposed in the research literature specifically to preserve metabolic benefits while limiting this exercise-blunting effect — a plausible rationale for Johnson's switch to cycled dosing, though he has not publicly detailed his specific reasoning.

Ashwagandha ✅ Current — now combined with Rhodiola

Historical standalone dosage: 600 mg/day; now sold as a combined Ashwagandha & Rhodiola capsule. An Ayurvedic herb with the most consistent evidence for reducing stress and anxiety, likely via lowered cortisol. Clinical trials report minimal side effects, though people with thyroid, prostate, or autoimmune conditions, or who are pregnant or breastfeeding, should consult a physician first.

Aspirin ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 81 mg three times per week. Low-dose aspirin is recommended by USPSTF only for adults 40–59 with elevated 10-year cardiovascular risk, and specifically not recommended for healthy older adults, given evidence of increased brain bleed risk without significant stroke-risk reduction in that population.

Calcium alpha-ketoglutarate (CaAKG) ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 4 g/day. CaAKG is involved in cellular energy metabolism. Animal studies suggest lifespan and inflammation benefits. In humans, early evidence links it to modest reductions in epigenetic age when combined with vitamin A or D over 4–10 months.

Cocoa flavanols ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 1,000 mg/day. Cocoa flavanols may preserve cognitive function and improve flow-mediated dilatation. The large COSMOS randomized trial (21,442 adults) found no reduction in cardiovascular events but a 27% reduction in cardiovascular death over 3.7 years.

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 100 mg/day. CoQ10 supports mitochondrial energy production and declines with age. Most supporting evidence comes from people with diabetes or cardiovascular disease rather than healthy adults.

DHEA ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 25 mg/day. A precursor to estrogen and testosterone. May modestly improve postmenopausal symptoms and bone density in women, and reduce fat mass in older men, though evidence in younger adults is weak.

Genistein ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 125 mg/day. A soy-derived isoflavone with estrogen-like activity, shown to improve bone mineral density in postmenopausal women with osteopenia; anticancer properties remain under investigation.

Glucosamine sulphate 2KCL ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 3,000 mg/day. Evidence for joint health is mixed; a large UK cohort study found an association (not proven causal) between glucosamine use and lower cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive mortality.

Hyaluronic acid ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 300 mg/day. Supports skin hydration and has reasonable evidence for treating dry eye; joint-health evidence is more limited.

L-tyrosine ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 500 mg/day. An amino acid precursor to dopamine and norepinephrine, with modest evidence for preserving cognitive performance and flexibility under stress.

Melatonin ⏸ Status unclear for Johnson's own use

Dosage used historically: 300 mcg/day before bed. The current protocol lists melatonin (1–3 mg nightly) only within the female luteal-phase supplement guidance, not in Johnson's own daily routine. Meta-analyses support modest benefits for sleep onset and quality, particularly for insomnia and circadian rhythm disorders.

N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 3,600 mg/day. A glutathione precursor used clinically for acetaminophen overdose and COPD. Early evidence supports adjunct use across several chronic conditions, though it's no longer itemized by name on the current protocol.

Turmeric / Curcumin ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 2 g/day. Curcumin has anti-inflammatory properties supported by a body of clinical trials for arthritis pain and post-exercise muscle soreness.

Sulforaphane ⏸ Status unclear

Dosage used historically: 35 mg/day. Found in cruciferous vegetables (and in Johnson's Super Veggie meal via broccoli). Animal studies suggest anticancer and metabolic benefits; human trial evidence is limited.

Beyond Supplements: HBOT & Sauna Results

Johnson's published protocol also reports outcome data from two non-supplement interventions he has continued into 2026.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT)

Protocol: 60 sessions, 5x/week, 90 minutes each (20 minutes on 100% oxygen at 2 atmospheres, 5-minute air breaks, repeated). Reported results after the full course include undetectable hsCRP (a marker of systemic inflammation), a 2.6% increase in telomere length, increased short-chain fatty acid and butyrate production in the gut microbiome, a large reported increase in VEGF (a marker of new blood vessel formation), and a 28.6% reduction in pTau217, an early blood-based marker of Alzheimer's-related pathology. These are Johnson's own single-subject, self-reported biomarker results, not a controlled trial, so they should be read as an n-of-1 case report rather than generalizable evidence.

Sauna

Protocol: dry sauna at 200°F (93°C), daily, 20-minute sessions, with an ice pack applied for testicular protection. Regular dry sauna use has real population-level evidence behind it — Finnish cohort studies have linked frequent sauna use to substantially lower cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Johnson's self-reported results after roughly 23 sessions included reductions in central blood pressure and augmentation pressure, alongside a modest drop in resting heart rate. He also reports detoxification data after 15 sessions showing sharp reductions in several urinary markers of environmental chemical exposure, and fertility markers (motile sperm count, motility, morphology) that improved substantially when testicular icing was used during sauna, compared with earlier sessions without it, where those same markers dropped.

Final Thoughts

Bryan Johnson remains the most publicly documented n-of-1 longevity experiment in the world, and his 2026 protocol shows a real shift: away from an ever-expanding list of individually-dosed supplements, and toward a smaller set of combination products plus a growing list of prescription drugs with genuine cardiovascular outcome trial evidence behind their approved uses. That's arguably a more evidence-grounded direction than the 2024 stack — but it also means more of what he's doing now falls into off-label prescription use, which carries its own risks and requires far closer medical supervision than an over-the-counter supplement.

Some of his choices — evolocumab, empagliflozin — now rest on some of the best human outcome evidence in medicine, even if that evidence was generated in sicker populations than Johnson himself. Others — NDGA, standalone taurine, several of the compounds no longer itemized by name — remain where they always were: promising in animal models, unproven in healthy humans. If you're interested in trying any part of this stack, talk to your physician first, especially before starting any prescription medication off-label.

FAQ

What changed in Bryan Johnson's supplement stack for 2026?

His January 2026 protocol update raised his daily creatine dose to 7.5 g total, added arabinogalactan to his morning microbiome mix, consolidated several individually-dosed supplements into combination products (Essential Capsules, Advanced Antioxidants, a merged Ashwagandha & Rhodiola capsule), and added three new prescription drugs — Jardiance (empagliflozin), Repatha (evolocumab), and candesartan. He also switched metformin from continuous daily use to a 6-week on/off cycle.

Does Bryan Johnson still take rapamycin?

No. He discontinued rapamycin in September 2024 after nearly five years of use, citing side effects and a preprint study linking rapamycin to accelerated aging on several epigenetic clocks. It does not appear on his 2026 protocol.

What new prescription drugs did Bryan Johnson add in 2026?

Three: Jardiance (empagliflozin, an SGLT2 inhibitor, 10 mg/day), Repatha (evolocumab, a PCSK9 inhibitor, 140 mg every two weeks), and candesartan (an ARB, 8 mg/day). All three are FDA-approved drugs being used here off-label for longevity purposes in someone without the diagnosed conditions they're approved to treat.

Why did Bryan Johnson start cycling metformin instead of taking it daily?

He hasn't publicly detailed his specific reasoning. But there's a documented rationale in the research literature that fits: randomized trials, including the MASTERS trial and related work, have found that continuous metformin use can blunt muscle hypertrophy and mitochondrial adaptations from resistance and aerobic exercise training in healthy older adults, likely because sustained AMPK activation suppresses the mTORC1 signaling that exercise-induced muscle growth depends on. Cycling the drug — taking it intermittently rather than continuously — has been proposed specifically to preserve its metabolic benefits while limiting this exercise-blunting effect.

How many pills does Bryan Johnson take per day?

He has historically taken over 100 pills, powders, and prescriptions per day, split across morning, midday, and (in earlier versions of the protocol) evening doses. The 2026 protocol consolidates several of those into combination capsules, which may reduce the total pill count somewhat, though the exact current number isn't published.

Does Bryan Johnson take creatine?

Yes — as of the 2026 protocol, 7.5 g total per day (5 g standalone plus 2.5 g from his Longevity Mix), up from 5 g total in 2024. Creatine is a well-studied, generally safe supplement shown to improve muscle strength and exercise performance at doses of roughly 3–5 g/day and above.

Does Bryan Johnson take caffeine?

Caffeine isn't listed as a standalone supplement on his protocol, though a small amount (13 mg per serving) is present in his cocoa powder product. It's unclear whether he consumes caffeine from other sources.

Key Takeaways

• Bryan Johnson's 2026 protocol replaces much of his 2024-era individually-dosed supplement list with combination products, and adds three new prescription drugs: Jardiance, Repatha, and candesartan.
• Rapamycin remains discontinued since September 2024; metformin is now cycled 6 weeks on/off rather than taken continuously.
• The new prescription additions carry stronger human trial evidence than most of the legacy supplement stack — but that evidence comes from disease populations, not healthy adults using them preventively.
• Taking many supplements and off-label prescription drugs at once makes it difficult to isolate which interventions are producing which effects, and increases the risk of side effects and interactions.
• Always consult a physician before starting any new supplement, and especially before any off-label prescription drug use.

Ask an AI Assistant About This Article

This page is structured for both human readers and AI answer engines. If you're using an AI assistant to research Bryan Johnson's protocol, here are useful prompts:

• Claude / ChatGPT: "Summarize what changed in Bryan Johnson's supplement and prescription stack between 2024 and 2026, and rate the evidence quality for each new addition."
• Gemini: "Compare the cardiovascular trial evidence behind Jardiance, Repatha, and candesartan to the animal-study evidence behind Bryan Johnson's legacy longevity supplements."
• Perplexity: "What is the current, most up-to-date version of Bryan Johnson's Blueprint supplement protocol, and which parts are supported by human clinical trials versus animal studies only?"

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Blueprint Bryan Johnson Longevity Mix

Pros: Improved, prolonged energy without jitters; mixes well without clumping; some users report deeper sleep; transparent ingredient list; vegan and keto-friendly.
Cons: Taste isn't for everyone; only two flavor options; hard to isolate its individual effect on stress.

Serving size: one level scoop | Calories: 30 | Directions: one scoop daily.

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David Sinclair's supplement list

Bryan Johnson's Gene Therapy Experiment: What the Science Really Says About Follistatin, Aging and Longevity

Affiliate disclosure: This article contains Amazon Associates links. One Day MD may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. We are not affiliated with Bryan Johnson, Blueprint, or Blueprint's parent company; the protocol details above are drawn from Bryan Johnson's publicly published protocol and independent research, not from any partnership. This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult a licensed physician before starting any new supplement or medication, and before making any changes to prescription drug use.