A race against time: How science and technology are being used to delay aging

In case you missed the latest headlines, blood transfusions from his 17-year-old son didn't do much. But that hasn't deterred tech tycoon Bryan Johnson from his multimillion-dollar mission to turn back the hands of time and prove he is the future of aging.

"If you imagine how we're going to live in 20 years from now, that's what I'm doing today."

Johnson, 46, calls himself a professional rejuvenation athlete, and he is leading a race against time — a journey he shares online with videos of himself undergoing gruelling physical workouts, preparing a diet of mostly mushed-up grains and vegetables, and downing dozens of supplements daily.

In June, he granted an interview to CBC's The National at his sprawling modernist home in Venice Beach, Calif., which includes a state-of-the-art clinic equipped with sophisticated instruments that identify biomarkers of physiological aging. It's all part of his one-man experiment he's taken part in for the last two years, backed by a team of experts he's hired, to create a scientifically sound protocol for healthy longevity.

Johnson says his job is to strictly follow it. While his daily life requires enormous self-discipline and he acknowledges it is restrictive, he says he doesn't plan to stop any time soon because he's never felt better.

He wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and goes to bed at 8:30 p.m. He eats a vegan-based diet, consumes less than 2,000 calories a day and stops eating by noon. He admits he's hungry most of the time but powers through customized daily exercise routines and undergoes painful treatments to improve the condition of his skin.

Like the teenage blood transfusions that he hoped would enhance his cognitive health but proved to have no real benefit, examining what's working and what's not is why Johnson calls himself "the most measured person in human history."

He undergoes regular scans, ultrasounds and blood tests. The data is critical, he says, to prove a hypothesis that age is just a number — or in his case right now, a bunch of them.

"My heart is 37, my diaphragm is 18, my left ear is 64. So some of my biological ages are in great shape, some are not," he said, "but if you're looking at my DNA methylation patterns, which you cannot see with the naked eye, that's telling you that I'm aging slower than the average 10-year-old."

It may sound fantastical, definitely futuristic, but there could be a bigger lesson for those who don't have the time or resources to follow Johnson's plan, even if they wanted to.

It turns out that relying on data to reverse the aging process is critical to a longer and healthier life, says renowned biologist Dr. Leroy "Lee" Hood, a best-selling author and biotech entrepreneur who is known for inventing revolutionary biological instruments that paved the way for the Human Genome Project.

He doesn't believe that the point of living longer is to prove you can, and says old age is the biggest risk factor for chronic disease — but only if you let it.

Hood is almost 85 years old but says his biological age is 70, thanks in part to his daily exercise routine that includes 200 pushups, 100 sit ups, and stretching and balancing exercises. He also practises intermittent fasting and takes several supplements.

He says all of those efforts are based on his own personalized genetic profile and mean he's been able to ward off illness.