Don’t Die’s Bryan Johnson Shares His Most Impactful Anti-Aging Habit — and It's Completely Free

• Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s search for eternal life — through technology and science — is documented in the Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Life Forever
• Johnson, 47, tells PEOPLE what started his search for eternal life — and says he’s learned “you do not need to do expensive therapies to achieve good biomarkers”
• He also sounds off on critics, saying in his mind, the idea of living well to which so many subscribe, is actually based on activities that “mostly cause death”

Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson is spending millions to achieve eternal life, but as he tells PEOPLE, “What else would I spend money on other than life?”

In the new Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, Johnson, 47, shares an intimate look at his rigorous daily routine of exercise, supplements, and experimental treatments — all part of what he’s called Project Blueprint. It’s where he documents his efforts to live forever through science. So far, Johnson says he’s reversed his age by more than 5 years and achieved “perfect biomarkers.”

Johnson spoke with PEOPLE about how his journey started, his message to detractors — and his favorite anti-aging habit.

Was there a catalyst to your search for eternal life, or did it happen gradually?

“It began when I was 21 years old. I was a missionary, and I lived among extreme poverty in Ecuador. I felt really compelled to want to do something that would improve the world. I didn’t know what. So the goal became make a whole bunch of money by age 30, and then with that money, find something interesting to do.”

When Johnson sold his company, Braintree Venmo, at age 34, he says it “coincided with having to rebuild myself from a decade of depression, leave my religion [Mormonism], having divorce, like just try to rebuild myself from scratch — and then this bigger question, what do I do?”

Johnson says he invested $100 million in “synthetic biology, genomics, nanotech” and built a brain interface, which he calls “the world’s best way to easily and robustly measure the brain … and then I started Blueprint to measure myself. And it all kind of came together into this one simple thesis, which is, don’t die.”  

Not everyone can spend thousands or even hundreds on these treatments. Is there anything the average person can do to improve their health?

“Sleep is a professional activity,” he says. “Take sleep as seriously as you do your job. You show up on time, you respect it, you’re very rigorous about it, you’re disciplined, you take pride in it.” Johnson also suggests having your last meal at least two hours before bed, saying “If I eat late or too much food, [it] will decimate my sleep.” 

Like sleep experts, he says to turn off screens and establish a “wind-down routine,” which he describes as a “30- to 60-minute window to wind down from work, not be on your screen, not doing work, to reconcile what you’re happy about, what you’re sad about, what you’re anxious about. You need some kind of calming mechanism.”

“Sleep is the most powerful drug in existence for anybody,” he says. “The good news behind this entire project is you do not need to do expensive therapies to achieve good biomarkers … the majority of these benefits are achieved through really basic things like mastering sleep, exercising every day, eating a nutritious diet, and avoiding bad habits and contaminants.”

One of your three children, Talmage, is doing Project Blueprint with you. How has being a father impacted your search for eternal life?

“It’s a very strong biological instinct to want the best for your children. I’m grateful that one of my three children is doing this,” Johnson says, saying that for his other two children, “I really want them to be healthy and happy. They would be more likely to be seen through a fast food drive-through than me. And that really hurts, that really breaks my heart. When I was growing up, my mom, my parents didn’t know. And I think we now know, and so the fact that we know and we still do that, it breaks my heart. I ache for my children, when society is having them do things that are really bad for them.”

When was the last time you ate something processed?

“I had a flavored tortilla chip a month or two ago,” Johnson says, explaining that a friend persuaded him to have it. “He’s like, ‘Just try one. Let me convert you to the to the dark side.’ ” Johnson ate one chip and says “it just tasted like gasoline. Just pure chemicals, and I said, ‘You have no idea how bad this tastes because you’re so normalized.’ ”

How do you respond to critics who say you’re spending your time “not dying” instead of living?

“They understand joy through the process of doing activities that mostly cause death,” he explains. They think, ‘I’m going to drink with friends and stay up late. I can eat a lot of food.’ Sleep is missed, sleep is bad, and you wake up this morning feeling miserable. But people consider that to be fun and living life,” Johnson tells PEOPLE, explaining it’s part of the “die culture” we live in. 

“These things legitimately, scientifically accelerate aging and accelerate disease progression. But that’s what people imagine to be living a happy life.”

He continues, “When they see someone like me, who’s not doing ‘die activities’, they say, ‘I don’t understand what he’s doing. He’s not living life.’ So it just really catches them in their own cultural view that they can’t understand reality other than through these diet practices. Meanwhile, I’ve never felt better in my entire life — mentally, spiritually, physically. I pattern-match people in my life who are the happiest. They’re usually people that are the healthiest. When they’re sleeping well and eating well and exercising, they typically have higher levels of happiness than anyone else.”

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever is now streaming on Netflix.