Biology

Intro

I live in Stockholm, Sweden. My name is Jacob Lindberg. I’m 30 years old. I believe in taking care of myself, and a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine. In the morning, I’ll drink electrolytes to avoid dehydration while getting sunlight in my eyes to activate the circadian rhythm. I workout to increase my strenght and VO2 max. My lung capacity is in the top 2% now.

After the workout, I stretch my glutes and hamstrings for flexbility. After showering, I use a water-activated gel cleanser, then a vitamin C and azelaic serum on the face. Then I apply a moisturizer while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use a moisturizer with UV protection, because the sun dries your face out and makes you look older.

There is an idea of a Jacob Lindberg. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity. Something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am there.

(Explainer video in case you didn’t get the reference.)

Objective

Maximize the area under the curve where x=time and y=health.

Contrast this with (how I understand) Bryan’s objective of maximizing x or Peter Attia’s objective of maximizing the area under the curve of your final decade.

Philosophical Principles

  • Track data. Make it easy to track.
  • Analyze the data on a pre-determined frequency.
  • Be scientific.
  • Do the basics right and get more than 90% of the results. The basics are sleep, excersise and diet.
  • Optimize: don’t over-obsess and don’t neglect.

Static data

Nationality: Swedish Gender: Male Height: 193 cm Born: 1993

Work in progress

I am a work in progress and so is this note. You are reading the beta version of the final product. Maybe even the alpha version. Some sentences are incomplete and just note to self. It’s early days. I published this note 2023-07-16. Last modified: 2023-10-03

Current results

Summary: Low fat (8.5%), high testosterone (top 0.1%), good blood, and elite VO2 max (top 1%). Impressive, very nice.

It is important to decide what the most important KPIs are. For me, it’s clear that any longevity enthusiast should primarily care about cardio fitness (VO2 max), strength, and blood.

VO2 Max 55.4 on 2023-07-13 Interestingly my apple watch predicted almost the same value. Experts agree VO2 max is the single best indicator of fitness, health and longevity – read or watch more about VO2 max. A paper defined elite VO2 max as top 2.5% (I’m top 2%) and concluded “elite performance was associated with an 80% reduction in mortality risk”. A high VO2 max does much more good than smoking does harm.

Resting heartrate (HR) 44.5 bpm.

MaxHR 175 on 2023-07-13

Weight: 79 kg on 2023-07-13

Bodyfat 8.5% on 2023-07-13

Bone mass: todo do a dexa scan.

Blood work 2022-12-27 full results see pdf, key results below

  • B Hb 155 g/L
  • Hb1Ac
  • Vitamin D25: 59 (optimal is 75-250)
  • Vitamin B12
  • cholesterol units are mmol/L:
  • fp LDL cholesterol 3.1
  • P cholesterol 5
  • P HDL cholesterol 1.6
  • P Calcium 2.51 mmol/L
  • S-Apo B / Apo A1 = 0.77 / 1.28 = 0.60
  • Testosterone 49 nmol/L = 1414 ng/dL

Testosterone: very high, at least top 0.01%. A google search for “testosterone percentiles” returns two studies. One study says the average is 409 ng/dL among 20-24 year old men. The other study says “The 10th–90th percentiles… was 150–698 ng/dL”. 700 ng/dL = top 10% but I have more than twice that. I went to a doctor specializing in testosterone, afraid that mine was too high, and he did a more nuanced/detailed blood work and it showed that I’m fine. With this more detailed test we could conclude all is good.

Routine measurements

Weight weekly.

Bodyfat in lab yearly.

VO2 max and max hearrate in lab yearly.

Skin inspection due to brown spots on my stomach. It can be signs of skin cancer if the shape is flat (like skin) and the color is not a single color but a mix of several. Take photos monthly. Send to doctor yearly, physical visit yearly $40.

Blood work from werlabs.se XL blood test $140. Done yearly or before I do a big protocol change. Measuring: https://werlabs.se/halsokontroll/halsokontroll-xl/ or see the PDF. Most important variables

  • blood fat, cholestorol, LDL, HDL…
  • testosterone
  • vitamin D

I have decided not to wear a continous glucos monitor. According to my PT there is no evidence for it working unless you’re diabetic.

Blood work data

Link to a pdf with tables and graphs on every blood work I have done since 2017: todo link it.

Be careful when reading the tables and interpreting the graphs. Notice that due to how statistics work being “in range” just means I’m in the center of the distribution. In the blood test, they signal to be in the middle as “healthy” but on many variables being on the left or right is healthier. For example, my bodyfast is far lower than the normal range and my VO2 max is far higher than the normal range and these are healthy results. Likewise, my LDL/HDL may be in the normal range but I prefer it to be on the lower/higher side to reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease). It also means that if the tails are cut such that we have a 90% confidence interval, 5% of people will be outside to the left and 5% outside to the right, but it doesn’t mean that these 5% + 5% people have a problem. In fact, it may be that the people in the left tail are great and people in the right tail have a huge problem – perhaps not only the highest 5% but the highest 25% of people may have a health problem. I consider these statistical facts when interpreting my results.

Sleep

Procol: I wake up without an alarm. I try to get to bed around the same time, ranging 10 pm to midnight.

Measurement: Sleep cycle premium app with apple watch. It records time in bed, time asleep, movements, sounds, and generates a sleep score.

Oral

Twice per day: brush teeth, floss, tongue scraper.

Skin

Routine am and pm.

  1. Splash water in my face
  2. Massage in cerave facial wash
  3. Water in face. Dab with a towel.
  4. Serum. For am it’s vitamin c and azeliac. For pm it’s retinoid.
  5. Wait two minutes (often I brush my teeth here).
  6. Moisterizer. Either AM with UV proection or PM from cerave.

Supplements

Protein powder sprinkle over food.

Protein shake 1-5x per week. I use protein plus from sunwarrior or whey.

Daily pills:

  • Omega 3
  • Multivitamin from Thorne incl Vitamin A, C, D, E, K, B6, B12, and more
  • Magnesium
  • Chlorella

Diet

I eat food, not too much, mostly plants and protein.

I don’t count calories. It’s too much work. Instead, I weigh myslef ~weekly. Looking at these charts ~quarterly I can then see if I should eat more/less. My basic metabolic rate is 1900 kcal per day, but I workout a lot so I burn closer to 2500-3500 kcal.

Rule: I don’t eat or drink sugar. Antyhing below 5 grams per 100 gram is too sweet. Milk is 4.7g for reference. Fruit is ok but I don’t seek it out.

I eat when I’m hungry until I’m full, three times a day. The number of meals range from 2 to 5 per day.

Last meal around 6-9 pm but I try to make it 6 pm to improve sleep. First meal around 9 am – 1 pm, depending on when I’m hungry which is a factor of bot dinner time & quality but also excercise. It’s usually 12-15 hour between my last and first meal. My natural time to get hungry is 14 hours with little excersie and 12 hours with a lot of excersie.

I get hungry 1-4 hours after waking. I drink a protein shake. Unless I’m very hungry then I eat eggs, sandwitch, nuts, oat. Then lunch about an hour later.

Considering doing 24h or 48h fasting monthly or quarterly.

Have tried in the past: keto, 16:8.

I want to get 1-2 grams of protein per kg = 75-150 grams a day but I struggle to get even 75 grams. This occupies most of my “thoughts” around food. I don’t focus on kcal or timing but on getting as much protein as I can. It’s a struggle.

I eat lunch out at an excellent buffé place where I focus on getting protein + legumes + vegetables as per the slow carb diet. They have too much salt for my taste, though.

My breakfast goes like this: I quickly drink half a green giant* and take pills. I then eat two boiled eggs quickly or ~half a serving of nutty pudding slowly (takes 5-15 minutes) or yoghurt.

*To be precise on the green giant, I take 3 dl water + 1 Tbsp of chlorella + 25 grams (a scoop) of the remaining ingreadients namely protein powder, collagen, cacao, cinnamon which are mixed as in this recipe.

I naturally tend to undereat and put myself in caloric restriction. It’s what I gravitate towards when I eat whatever I want whenever I want. When I estimate my caloric intake, it’s 1800 kcal give or take ±200. That’s below my basic metablic rate. Add training and you see that I’m a deficit. Today July 2023, I need to push myself to eat more since I aim for weight gain, and that’s equally hard for me as when I have pushed myself an extra hour of fasting despite being hungry when I tried the 16:8 diet.

Meal prep

Option A) In Stockholm

Weekdays. Lunch at Tastory. The take away is huge. I eat half of it for lunch, half for dinner.

Weekends. I cook 2-4 meals and eat out 0-2 meals. Try to follow the slow carb diet, but I’m not strict – it’s more of an aspiration than a rule.

In the past I had linch/dinner from a chef delivered weekly to my door step (www.traningsmat.se) and I liked it.

Option B) Abroad

It depends. If I have good & cheap restaurants I mimic Stockholm, meaning I eat lunch and dinner out. Otherwise I will cook 1-2 dishes on Sunday and use that for lunch/dinner the entire week, while eating out 0-1 times a day.

Alcohol

Rule: max 2 units per day. This usually means 1 glass of wine on Friday and 1 beer on Saturday, nothing for the other days.

I want to drink as early in the day as possible to not disrupt sleep. My tastebuds do not like alcohol until after lunch. A good rule is thus to drink after lunch before/during dinner, but not after dinner.

I don’t party with alcohol.

Fitness

I move my body daily. I typically do a strength workout 30-45 minutes in the morning every day, and a 30-60 minutes jog / walk / yoga / sport in the evening 3-6x per week.

Goals, in order of priority:

  1. Be injure free
  2. Cardio – to reduce risk of cardiovascular desease
  3. Flexibility and strength – so that I can do sports when I’m young and go for a walk in my 90s.
  4. Have fun. I love sports like football and kitesurfing.

How should I measure this to know that I improve?

If I were to create measurable goals out of the above I would count

  1. Nr days last 12 months I could not train due to injury. I don’t measure this now, but I do write comments in my form whenever I hurt myself. I read the comment field once a year. Whenever I feel pain I talk to my PT about it.
  2. A VO2 max of a certain number (or a certain percentile of the population). I was top 2% so maybe my goal would be top 1% next time. Or increase the score by a factor of 1.1x or similar.
  3. Flexibility can be measured by stuff like splits. Strength can be measured in a few functional movements. Safe tests include: Nr of puhsups, Nr of chins, nr dips, nr leg raises with X kg weight, nr of hip thrust wth Y kg weight. I would film myself and let my PT decide the nr of correctly performed ones since it’s easy to cheat. I prefer not to do one rep tries, due to the risk of injury, but I would be fine to do five rep tries (and then use tables to estimate one rep max) for the big moves like: benchpress, squat, deadlift, romanian deadlift, shoulder press. I would also test grip strength. I never workout with machines but I would consider doing it for some machine excersises (for increased safety if I fail) e.g. leg extension, pec press,

I log all my workouts using a form I built myself.

Workout schedule A: Stockholm

I’m inspired by Huberman’s workout protocol. I do 5x quick 30 min strength sessions at home upon waking Mon-Fri. On Sun and/or Sat I do a long 1h strength coupled with 1h cardio. The wook looks like this:

  • M. am back h at home. pm optional jog.
  • T. am leg h at home. pm optional jog.
  • W. am chest h at home. pm football
  • T. am back h at home. pm optional jog.
  • F. am chest h at home
  • S. some sports/yoga/hike. optional: am 1h cardio + 1h chest & back s at gym + 20 min stretch in sauna
  • S. some sports/yoga/hike. optional: am 1h cardio + 1h leg s at gym. + 20 min stretch in sauna

Sat & Sun is at gym since it takes time to go there: eriksdals / friskis / klätterverket. Done pre breakfast or ~2h after.

Morning Mon-Fri, I have automated strength thanks to doing it at home. It’s 5 min mobility warmup + 30 min workout + 5 min stretch. Done pre breakfast. This is the foundation. It’s not negotiable.

Evening Mon-Sun, try to go for a zone 2 run 30-60 minutes before dinner. As many as possible. the longer the better. if I feel like it i sprint last 5-10 minutes to hit zone 5. Wed is Football practice 8 pm. Mon & Thu I often do yoga ~8 pm for enjoyment, flexibility and stability. This gives me Tue, Fri, Sat, Sun to jog in zone 2. If it’s cold I like going on the elliptical for 1h while watching Netflix on my iPad. I glean on the screen to check I have 130-140 bpm.

I try to get sauna per Hubermab’s and Attia’s recommendation. The min effective dose according to Attia is 3x per week, 20 min each, at 80 C or hotter.

Pros Cons:

  • pro. automate away strength => can focus energy on cardio, which I’m less inspired by.
  • con. working out at home is efficient but less inspiring than a gym. It does not feel like beast-mode is activated.

Workout schedule B: Intense

This is a more intense version that I’m doing in Roatan 2024-01. I split strenght into chest/back/leg and each session is 45 min.

  • M. Chest
  • T. Zone2 45 min. Back
  • W. z2 30min + sprints. optional leg.
  • T. Chest
  • F. z2 45min. mobility.
  • S. z2 45min. back.
  • S. z2+threshold. leg.

Sum cardio: 445min = 3h Sum strength: 645min = 4.5h

sprints and threshold are for 15min.

threshold for 15min. I think of this as “run fast at constant pace as far as I can”. to be more precise: I run at the anaerobic threshold. example: assume threshold=160bpm then the protocol is 4min at 160bpm + 3 min slow jog + 4 min at 160bpm. this is 8 min at threshold value. do aim for ~10min threhshold. example 5min fast run + 3min walk + 5min fast run. if you push hard you can maybe go up to 8min+4min+8min.

sprints for 15min. example 5*(1min intense + 2 min nothing/low). you can have other numbers using the formula: N rounds of (K intense + 2-3 * K nothing/low). if K=10s it’s like a reverse tabata. N is whatever makes it ca 15min in total. but K lift heavier and less injury risk.

  • hit each muscle group twice per week => gainz.
  • pro. if workouts are done pre breakfast/lunch => maybe better sleep than schedule B.

Workout schedule C, D, E

I have more schedules. I have a g sheet with all my weekly workout plans. When I’m in a new location for 1-2 months I will set the schedule with my personal trainer. When I travel I’m usually in a place for 1-2 months. If it’s shorter I will come up with something ad hoc, following the mantra of moving my bode in the morning and in the evning.

gastrointestinal

bryan:

Intestinal Tract – I swallowed this pill, the size of a baby carrot, after fasting for 24 hours. Then took laxatives for 6 hours. It reemerged 10 hours and 38 minutes later, having taken 33,537 images of my intestinal tract. Main things we were looking for: lymphoma, Crohn’s ulcerations, small bowel cancer, diverticula, and polyps. Nothing found. Most common small bowel changes with age are motility, peristalsis reduction, dysphagia and enteric neuropathy. Advantages of small bowel pillcams include screening and baseline results for n=1 study. Here are some of the pictures.

todo consider doing that. google how it can be done in sthlm.

gut

I neglect this area huberman talks about it https://hubermanlab.com/6-key-tools-to-improve-your-gut-microbiome-health/

todo learn more and decide if i should do anything.

Notable challenges

I am obsessed with my work. If I work too late in the day i cannot sleep because I keep thinking about work. Solved by stop working 5-7 pm then workout then eating. The workout and finnes is a thick wall between work and sleep which protects my sleep.

Was in the sun for too long with too little sunscreen as a kid.

I love house/techno music and want to listen to the best DJs. It brings me joy and excitement. But they inevitably play at night (until 3 or 5 am) often at 95-100 decibels. Solution sketches:

  • Do it once a month to not disrupt my sleep.
  • Always wear headplugs.
  • Be sober. Drink water.
  • Eat foot (fruits, nuts, proteinbar)

hamstring flex.

pimples on chest from sunscreen

dry in in area in between pecs: solved w cream

dry scalp: solved with gel

deficient vitamin D. solved by taking pills.

I don’t eat enough fat fish. I’m far from the recommendation. Solved by omega3 pills.

negelcted areas / todo:

social.

gastro / gut

supplmentation. waiting with it. I do the behavioural changes first and the supplemntation last.

heart

Values are in the section “current results”

  • VO2 Max measured in lab yearly, approximated decently with apple watch.
  • HRV measured via apple watch.
  • Resting heart rate measured with polar h10.

Brain, Eye, Ear,

I don’t do anything here now. Except for wearing sunglasses and ear plugs.

Other

I don’t do anything here now.

Bryan lists a few things under the “Other” section https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.co/#other-measurements and I do none of this.

Gear

Stuff I use, not endorsement.

  • Grip strength trainer
  • Apple watch and polar h10. Garmin when battery dies.
  • todo what isan nad test?
  • Light therapy lamp $20 with 10,000 lux
  • Weight scale $15

Gear I think about purchasing

  • scale that sends data to apple health automatically
  • Eight sleep is on my wishlist
  • speed of aging test
  • an additional light therapy lamp, perhaps bigger

Inspirations

Here is a non-exhaustive list of people who inspired me to act, and in what way.

  • Mathew Walker for the importance of sleep
  • Bryan Johnson for philosophy, vision, data obsession, and diet.
  • Bloomprint for simple rules on sleep, diet, excercise. Includes diet adjustments vs Blueprint e.g. eat more fish
  • Peter Attia for workouts e.g. get as fit as you can
  • Michael Pollan for diet

Whiteprint

I call my protocol whiteprint because it’s inspired by blueprint. On Wikipedia’s article about whiteprint it says, “Traditional blueprints became obsolete when less expensive printing methods and digital displays became available.”

First there was blueprint. Then there was whiteprint.