I Lowered My Epigenetic Age By 12 Years in Six Months and I Wish I Was Dead

Please kill me, because time won't

“Epigenetic age” — a calculation of age based on biomarkers — is much-discussed on social media these days. This is largely due to tech billionaire Bryan Johnson’s comprehensive anti-aging regime, which consists of highly-specific exercise and dietary goals. While I can’t speak to the efficacy of Bryan’s program, I have been engaged in my own set of lifestyle practices that have reduced my epigenetic age by no less than 12 years in a mere six months. This regime was developed in concert with doctors, dietitians, and Tibetan monks, and I’m sharing it here in the interest of promoting public health. I can attest that it has produced astounding gains across a variety of health metrics, with no side effects whatsoever except than I now pray for the icy touch of the Reaper to release me from the hell that I've built for myself.

1. Morning cardio workout

My first workout happens at 5:20 every morning. The warmup consists of 15 minutes of light stretching, 20 minutes of visualization, and five minutes of shadow-boxing to Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name. Next, I raise my heart rate to 140 bpm by doing a series of little-known Tae Bo moves that were banned by the Surgeon General in 1999 for being “too balls-out”. However, a contact in the Bangkok underground furnished me with a DVD, and I use the verboten moves to keep my heart rate between 140 and 160 bpm for 90 minutes.

2. Ultra-veggie power juice

Immediately following my workout, I drink juice made from the following recipe:

• Kale, 6g

• Brussels sprouts, 4g

• Estonian-grown spinach, 4g

• Creatine complex, 2.5g

• One yam, filthy

• One stick, leaves still on

• Three rocks, igneous

This abrasive smoothie power-washes your digestive tract and cleanses the body of any unnecessary organs. For extra vitality, add 20g of shark semen (WARNING: 21g of shark semen may prove lethal).

3. “Feral Beast” weight training

Developed by a disgraced Mossad agent who later served as Jeffrey Epstein’s personal trainer, the Feral Beast Workout consists of three simple phases:

• PHASE 1: Push-ups, 40 min

• PHASE 2: Mountain-climbers, 80 minutes

• PHASE 3: Burpees until blood shoots out of your rectum

Science shows that collapsing on the gym floor while blood oozes out of every orifice is the only way to build muscle. A rough conversion metric is: Every 15oz of blood secreted onto a gym floor while a bystander administers CPR = 1g of muscle.

4. Handful of oats

Human beings have evolved so that the amount we can carry in one hand is exactly the size of our stomach (source: science). If you eat more than what fits in one hand in a single sitting, there’s a change that your stomach may burst into flames like the Hindenburg. After eating my single handful of plain, dry oats, I typically feel hungry, unfulfilled, and sad, but I’ve learned that that’s merely an after-effect of the body purging itself of toxins.

5. Sensory deprivation tank

Sensory deprivation tanks remove all distractions and allow you to experience absolute sereneness. And they do that, though I’ll admit: They also get awfully fucking boring. Experiencing total nothingness is kind of cool for the first ten minutes, but I spend two hours in this thing every day and honestly it’s a gigantic time sink. Lately, I’ve been taking my phone in there so I can catch up on The Great British Bake Off while I float in a void like an astronaut who’s been cut loose in deep space.

6. Drive to the fucking gym again

Worth mentioning: When I go to the gym, it's not like I get beamed there by Mr. Spock. I drive. So, there's 15 minutes on each end of these gym trips. And actually, it's more like 25 minutes if I'm anywhere near rush hour, and those extra ten minutes exists in some kind of Einstein's Dreams hellscape where time moves immeasurably slow. About one trip out of three, my pre-workout routine consists of me pounding my fists against the steering wheel some asshole tries to push to the front where two lanes become one. Fitness regimens typically downplay transitional costs, but fair warning: Under this program, you’re going to spend a lot of time in your car unless a wormhole happens to connect your house to a Planet Fitness.

7. More goddamned weights

Do you really want to details of this workout? I could give them to you, but you won’t follow them anyway. That’s because by the time you get to the gym for the third time in 12 hours, you won’t care how many landmine squats or kettle bell swings are written on some Excel sheet of the damned. Here’s how this workout goes down in the real world:

• Bench press until your entire body yells “FUCK YOU!” and quits, which will be after one rep.

• Reverse fly with 40 pound — no, actually 35 pound, but maybe 30 to make it a round number, except that guy’s using the 30s so maybe 20, and actually 15, and let’s round it to 10 — 10 pound weights.

• Sit on the rowing machine and check your e-mail.

• 30 minutes of stretching that turns into a little nap on a yoga mat.

8. “Vitality pellet” that I’m starting to suspect is just a bouillon cube

There’s a guy in my town who claims to be an Inuit shaman in exile due to political persecution (by who…Canada? I never asked). He makes “vitality pellets” that he says gave ancient Inuit ninjas superhuman powers, and he guards the recipe like he’s Colonel Fucking Sanders with his 11 secret herbs and spices. The pellets cost $500 each and getting one is a whole production: The guy sits across from you for 30 minutes looking into your eyes, and if you’re approved, then he delivers a single pellet to your house every day on a satin pillow. He claims that each pellet is equal to a seven course meal, but I’m always left starving. I'm really starting to think that each pellet is just a chicken bouillon cube that he bought at Safeway. Of course, I can't eat a bouillon cube to compare because that's not part of my diet.

Also, I think the guy might actually be Mexican.

9. Do literally anything that might distract me from my miserable existence

Every evening, I find myself tired, hungry, and furious at the universe. I've tried anything and everything to distract myself. I built a model of the Eiffel tower out of toothpicks. I’ve played more games of computer solitaire than my grandpa did in the year before he died. I even picked up a book and read like people did back in the horse and buggy days. Nothing works. Nothing distracts me from the fact that I’m as hungry and overworked as an 1850s coal mine horse. I know this is fucked up, but my happiest day of the past six months was the day Queen Elizabeth died because it distracted me from my wretched life for a measly ten minutes.

10. Lash out at my friends and family

All my stress has to go somewhere, and most days it comes cascading down onto those who are nearest and dearest to me. Not that my displaced rage is limited to those with whom I have a personal connection: I snap at basically everyone who comes into my orbit. I called my priest the c-word. I kicked a Jehovah's Witness in the throat. I’m acting like a maniac but that seems like an inevitable consequence of a fitness program that makes Navy Seal training look like a pie eating contest. This regimen may be good for the body but its effect on the brain is not unlike the force that caused Jack Nicholson to turn on his family in The Shining.

11. Lie awake dreading the rest of my life

Is this what my life's going to be? Just the gym, shit-tasting grass juice, and hippie-dippie Eastern bullshit until I die in the year 2170? I'd rather eat out the Jolly Green Giant's ass than drink one more glass of that juice. I hope Planet Fitness burns to the fucking ground, preferably with me inside. How do I know that I’m not already dead and in hell? If my life is hell, and I’m prolonging my life, then aren’t I just prolonging my time in hell? These are the thoughts that fill my head until my alarm goes off at 4:40 AM, an hour in which even grave diggers and prostitutes are at home all snuggly in their beds.

12. Deep dish meat lover’s pizza from Pizza Hut

Fuck this diet, fuck you, fuck everything. I’m eating this entire goddamned pizza, maybe in the tub. I mean, why not? You’re not going to come to my house and measure my epigenetic age — nobody is! When I said “it lowered my epigenetic age by 12 years”, did you do a single fucking thing to verify that claim? You did not. Nobody even knows what epigenetic age is, and the ten percent of us who googled it just know the definition, but we don’t know whether or not it’s a bunch of Scientology-level bullshit. Probably no-one’s epigenetic claims have ever been verified, because anyone who stays on one of these programs undoubtedly blows their brains out long before the day when they “should” die. So: In ya go, Pizza Hut pizza. Your friend Jack Daniels will meet you in my stomach. I am hereby undergoing a program to raise my epigenetic age by 12 years in six months, because living my best life has turned out to be a living hell.

Photo credits: Sensory deprivation tank: Urban turf; Pizza: Yummy in the tummy blog; Bullion cube: My recipes; Eiffel tower: EPS library; Solitaire: Jan Egil Kristiansen.