After excessive time spent stressing, frowning and lying awake at night feeling the crushing weight of mortality slowly bearing down upon me, I feel as though I have aged about fifty years. Fortunately, there might be a way for me to reverse the damage: Bryan Johnson, multi-millionaire CEO turned immortal-in-training, is on a mission to be 18 again. To achieve this he has become the ‘most measured human,’ with doctors constantly tracking every aspect of his health and crafting a scientifically perfect daily routine, which he has generously made available to us mere mortals. I decided to try out his routine for a day, and see if I too could un-age myself.

My preparation involved three different shops, lots of fruit, and a whopping £51.82 of expenses (turns out one fennel costs £5 in Sainsbury’s). Johnson’s lifestyle costs him about $2 million a year on food, supplements, and a variety of medical tests and treatments. His routine also includes injecting himself with his son’s blood plasma, and shock treatments for his penis, which for a variety of reasons, I will not be doing, though it’s ironic that Johnson is okay with vampirism but draws the line at eggs and alcohol. With my fridge overflowing with vegan food, I was ready to go.

“Johnson’s lifestyle costs him about $2 million a year on food, supplements, and a variety of medical tests and treatments”

The day began at 4:30 am, a time that sits uncomfortably within the uncertain boundary of ‘morning’ and ‘middle of the night.’ After lying awake the night before, thinking about how I’d just spent half my maintenance loan in Holland & Barrett, needless to say I felt rancid. The urge to go back to sleep was strong, but after looking at a picture of Bryan Johnson’s chiselled, youthful cheeks, I remembered what I was doing this for, and began the next phase: pills.

Johnson takes over a hundred pills a day, and since I’ll already be paying SFE back for that bag of flaxseed for years to come, I decided to just use the supplements I already had. After taking enough vitamins to develop superpowers, I did an hour of exercise, and then it was time for my first meal.

All of Johnson’s recipes are vegan (which I later learned is just a personal choice and has nothing to do with immortality) and mostly consist of fruit, veg and nuts. Breakfast was ‘Super Veggie,’ an alarming dish, consisting mainly of broccoli and cauliflower (clearly afternoon foods). This was just fine.

However, in another horrible plot twist, lunch and dinner followed quickly after. Johnson practises intermittent fasting, meaning he eats his last meal at 11 am and fasts until his 8 pm bedtime. For lunch I made ‘Nutty Pudding.’ If you have nut allergy, this meal is definitely not going to be conducive to you living longer. By this point I was so sleep-deprived that my ability to follow basic instructions was non-existent. What emerged from the blender was a strange purple slop that I attempted to decorate with a few sad raspberries. It was, in my opinion, deeply unpleasant, but I don’t know if that was my fault or Bryan’s.

“I was so sleep-deprived that my ability to follow basic instructions was non-existent”

Thankfully, dinner was up next and I could get rid of the overpowering walnut taste in my mouth. The only of his third meal options that didn’t involve an oven (which my college does not have) was a blood orange and fennel salad. At this point I felt utterly defeated, but thankfully the salad was actually quite nice. Stomach full of plants, the longest morning of my life was over.

In the afternoon, Johnson does millionaire things; I just cried over my dissertation and contemplated napping. At some point I saw a bag of crisps and absolutely lost my mind. In a fugue state, I devoured them all. Feeling the wrinkles beginning to develop all over my face, I was overwhelmed with guilt, but it was the closest I felt to being full that day.

So, the question on everyone’s mind: did I un-age? Well, unfortunately not. The next day, when I woke up at a normal time and had some fish and chips for lunch, I felt much better. Of course, if I were used to sleeping and waking up at these times, I’m sure I would have been less exhausted. While good sleep, exercise and a nutrient-rich diet are all obviously effective ways to improve your health, most of what Johnson does is just not accessible to the average person: constant medical surveillance, costly procedures and pills are the bulk of his experiment. Meanwhile, my 92-year-old neighbour is in near-impeccable health, and she drinks sherry from approximately 10 am every other day, so Johnson’s method is hardly the be-all and end-all of longevity.

Who knows, maybe if I’d found a blood donor, it would have actually worked. Until then, I’ll be ageing normally alongside everyone else.