Bryan Johnson – the Blueprint protocol

Bryan Johnson is an American entrepreneur who has turned his own body into a measurement project. The result is Blueprint, a health protocol he publishes for free and in the open under a Creative Commons licence.

The protocol covers a great deal – diet, exercise, skincare, dental health, sauna, biomarkers and a detailed daily schedule – but sleep sits at the top of his list, with a section of its own on the habits he believes matter most.

Why he is here

Johnson is the third source in the Learn something new episode on sleep, alongside Matthew Walker and Andrew Huberman.

The point of using three sources is to stay with what they agree on. Where Walker is the researcher and Huberman the communicator, Johnson is the one who tests everything on himself and measures the result.

That makes him useful on one particular count: he is specific. Where others say “dim the lights in the evening”, he gives you clock times, lux levels and thresholds.

What he contributes to the sleep episode

• Screens off 60 minutes before bed.
• Around 10,000 lux of morning light every day.
• Resting heart rate before bed as a marker that the body has actually settled.
• The largest meal of the day at least four hours before bed.
• Stopping fluid intake early in the evening.

Read it with a critical eye

This is biohacking, and parts of the protocol are well beyond anything most people need to think about. Some of it is experimental too, built on Johnson’s own measurements rather than on studies.

It is worth drawing inspiration from if you already have the basics in place and want to fine-tune. But the order matters more than the details: enough time for sleep and a fixed wake-up time will do far more than a few extra lux.

This is general information, not individual health advice.