Anyone knows anything about this?
(RO is not to be confused with Longevity World Cup, that’s still going strong.)
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I think it was primarily a marketing tool for Bryan Johnson, set up by Oliver Zolman… and they no longer see value in it.
And it seemed that they split a year or more ago, and Oliver has gone on to focus on Longevity medicine in the UK in private practice:
and his “Longevity School”
and his insta:
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An update from Oliver. Interestingly, unlike Bryan Johnson, Oliver is still bullish (appropriately so) about rapamycin.
BRYAN JOHNSON’S DOCTOR’S LONGEVITY ROAD MAP | 081 DR. OLIVER ZOLMAN, MD
I. Executive Summary
In this clinical interview on the Soberhead Podcast, Dr. Esra Çavuşoğlu interviews Dr. Oliver Zolman, MD, the physician responsible for establishing the organ-quantification protocols underpinning Bryan Johnson’s Project Blueprint. Zolman articulates a structured, three-tiered clinical hierarchy designed to counter biological aging: Level 1 encompasses foundational lifestyle and risk factor management backed by international consensus; Level 2 aggregates non-age-related clinical domains and precision health navigation; and Level 3 targets organ-specific biological rejuvenation therapies and advanced geroprotective pharmacology.
Zolman’s central thesis asserts that biological aging cannot be treated as an amorphous, single-metric phenotype. Instead, it must be decomposed into 81 discrete organ types, as systemic aging progresses asynchronously across distinct tissues. He aggressively deflates longevity hype, labeling commercial direct-to-consumer “biological age tests” largely unscientific and vulnerable to statistical noise and selective reporting. According to Zolman, fully executing Level 1 lifestyle modifications can extend human life expectancy by approximately 10 years, which corresponds to a maximum biological age deceleration or reversal of roughly 10% to 20% relative to chronological trajectories. Achieving further rejuvenation or approaching theoretical “Longevity Escape Velocity” necessitates invasive Level 3 therapeutic interventions, including organ replacement (e.g., xenotransplantation), targeted senolytics, peptide therapeutics, and viral or non-viral gene therapy (e.g., telomerase reverse transcriptase [TERT], follistatin, and Klotho).
Addressing specific pharmacotherapies, Zolman cautions against anti-aging human growth hormone (HGH) supplementation, emphasizing that animal knockouts (e.g., Ames dwarf models) demonstrate extended lifespans under suppressed somatotropic signaling, whereas exogenous HGH in humans drives insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and accelerated epigenetic aging markers. Conversely, he frames GLP-1/GIP receptor agonists (e.g., semaglutide, tirzepatide) as pragmatic caloric restriction mimetics that require precise, low-dose titration to limit rare pancreatic risks. He further analyzes rapamycin protocols, emphasizing blood concentration monitoring at maximum concentration time (Tmax) rather than arbitrary dosing, and defends energy-based aesthetic dermatology (radiofrequency, micro-needling, lasers) as authentic cellular rejuvenation rather than superficial damage, citing localized reductions in senescent cell burden and extracellular matrix remodeling.
II. Insight Bullets
- Organ-Centric Aging Model: Aging does not occur uniformly; clinical management requires isolating and measuring the biological age of approximately 81 distinct organ types across the human body.
- Three-Tiered Longevity Framework: The framework establishes Level 1 as consensus lifestyle factors, Level 2 as non-age-related pathology and specialist navigation, and Level 3 as targeted organ rejuvenation technologies, as originally proposed in his academic paper on Longevity Escape Velocity Medicine.
- The “One-Year Rule” for Inclusion: Interventions only qualify for Level 1 status if robust epidemiological or clinical trial data demonstrate an addition of at least one full year to human healthspan and lifespan across diverse populations.
- Marginal Rejuvenation Ceiling of Lifestyle: Optimizing Level 1 lifestyle factors decelerates biological aging or yields measured tissue rejuvenation by a maximum of 10% to 20%, shifting late-life morbidity into a compressed window.
- Extremely Low Societal Adherence: Less than 0.5% of the general adult population satisfies the core foundational longevity pillars (abstinence from smoking, limited alcohol, target BMI, balanced nutrition, and structured physical exercise).
- Five-Factor Composite Sleep Metric: Sleep optimization requires satisfying five objective criteria: total sleep duration (typically exceeding 7 hours), waking refreshed at least five mornings per week, sleep onset insomnia on no more than two nights per week, sleep maintenance insomnia on no more than two nights per week, and hypnotic medication dependency limited to no more than two nights per week.
- Dietary Quality Standards: The most rigorously validated dietary paradigm for longevity is the Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010), which outperforms standard DASH or pescatarian models on epigenetic and cardiovascular endpoints.
- Diagnostic Statistical Rigor: Most commercial direct-to-consumer biological age blood panels produce volatile, inaccurate results due to poor statistical calibration; Zolman established 15 biostatistical criteria to grade biological age biomarker validity.
- High-Throughput Whole-Body MRI Scanning: Future clinical longevity diagnostics will rely on 60-minute automated whole-body MRI protocols utilizing machine learning image segmentation across organs (e.g., modeling over 200 parameters of cardiac anatomy) rather than systemic blood proxies.
- Priority Clinical Target Organs: When cost and clinical constraints prevent comprehensive 81-organ scans, surveillance must prioritize the brain, lungs, systemic vasculature/arteries, myocardium, kidneys, followed secondary by skeletal muscle, skin, and bone.
- Prerequisite “Tissue Soil” Optimization: Similar to mesenchymal stem cell therapy in severe osteoarthritis, systemic tissue environments must be cleared of chronic inflammation, acute injury, and micronutrient deficiencies (such as Vitamin D) before Level 3 regenerative biologics can function.
- Caloric Restriction (CR) Biomarkers: Translating non-human primate data to humans requires a 10% to 25% caloric deficit below the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), a range shown in the randomized CALERIE trial to significantly decelerate the DunedinPACE epigenetic pace of aging.
- Incretin Mimetics as CR Proxies: Dual and triple incretin receptor agonists such as tirzepatide and retatrutide act as pharmacological surrogates for caloric restriction, demonstrating mortality reductions in large cohorts as cataloged in systematic reviews of tirzepatide cardiovascular outcomes.
- Off-Label Micro-Dosing Strategies for Incretins: To mitigate pancreatitis and severe gastrointestinal adverse events seen at standard starting doses, Zolman suggests sub-therapeutic titration down to 0.25–1.25 mg weekly for metabolic optimization.
- HGH Pathology and Lifespan Shortening: Exogenous human growth hormone therapy represents an unsafe anti-aging modality, as systemic somatotropic axis suppression reliably extends lifespan in Ames dwarf rodent models, whereas human HGH supplementation worsens glycemic control, exacerbates visceral fat, and accelerates epigenetic clocks.
- IGF-1 Hormetic Divergence: Circulating systemic IGF-1 elevation correlates with increased cancer risk and cardiovascular disease, whereas localized, mechanical tissue induction of IGF-1 (via dermal micro-needling) drives therapeutic tissue remodeling and skin rejuvenation.
- Rapamycin Pharmacokinetic Titration: Because oral rapamycin exhibits extreme inter-individual bioavailability variances, longevity protocols require drawing serum levels exactly 90 minutes post-dose (Tmax) rather than relying on unmonitored fixed-dose administration.
- Synergistic Geroprotector Stacks: Animal survival data compiled on Zolman’s comparative research registry MouseSpan indicate that combining low-dose rapamycin with metformin extends rodent lifespan by roughly 25%.
- Telomerase Gene Therapy Kinetics: Clinical translation of human TERT gene therapy demonstrates gradual, organ-specific biological gains (averaging ~7 years of telomeric restoration per year of therapy) rather than immediate cellular resets.
- Safety Protocol for Continued Light Tobacco Use: For individuals smoking low-volume tobacco (e.g., 2–3 cigarettes daily), Zolman only foregoes immediate aggressive cessation demands if coronary imaging, spirometry, genetic profiles, and systemic inflammatory panels reflect zero early pathology.
- Aesthetic Energy-Based Devices and Senescence: Contrary to claims that radiofrequency and fractional lasers deplete Hayflick replicative potential, histological biopsy evidence indicates these modalities selectively clear senescent cells and remodel collagen without driving tissue senescence.
- Precision Health Rolodex: Level 2 longevity navigation requires establishing direct clinical access to elite, specialized medical authorities for specific non-age-related organ pathologies to neutralize regional disparities in care quality.
- Xenotransplantation and Organ Replacement Feasibility: True long-term biological survival beyond current natural ceilings will depend heavily on replacing aged tissues with bioengineered organs or genetically modified porcine transplants grown to biologically pristine baselines.
- Emerging Clinical Gene Therapy Trials in Turkey: Zolman is advising on experimental protocols deployed via the Turkish clinical entity Only Health, which is collaborating with biotechnology developer Triple Helix to test follistatin, TERT, and Klotho gene therapies (Triple Helix website unverified in live search).
- AI Acceleration of Geroprotective Discovery: Advances in generative biology models and artificial intelligence architectures are collapsing target validation timelines, rendering Longevity Escape Velocity plausible within the next several decades.
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FTR Oliver has left the competition in 2025 March, not under the best circumstances. He asked me to add this to the “history of longevity as a sport document”:
In a private exchange, Dr. Zolman revealed his departure from the Rejuvenation Olympics. He attributed his choice to step away to concerns over the leaderboard’s scientific integrity, stating, “Bryan and TruDiagnostic made the leaderboards unscientific and clinically meaningless.”
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Methylation clocks have lots of problems.
anything that can’t be fixed tho?
I am not sure it is “fixable” simply because methylation is downstream from the ageing process and all a bit random and also influenced by other factors (football matches, pregnancy, time of day etc).