Tag Archives: obesity

Blueprint 1.0 Review

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I spent $343 for one month of blueprint. this post shares what I got and what my thoughts on it are!

overall I’m a fan of most ingredients and the overall composition. I came up with many of them on my own a few years ago, many of which are listed here. the doses are pretty reasonable and I trust the sourcing to at least be above average

this post is not sponsored or paid for in any way, but I’ve met BJ and think he is reasonably smart and funny. below I include images, nutritional information, and plenty of links and side notes to share what I’ve learned!

Apr 13 2024 edit: Added response comments from Bryan Johnson / Blueprint: ctrl+F “BP” to find them
May 7th 2024 edit: Blueprint now allows for the purchase of individual components. I’ve added a new Market Comparisons section near the bottom as a result

Everything I got for one month at a cost of $343

Nutty pudding

The nutty pudding mix
After being mixed with whole milk
Ingredients for the nutty pudding mix
  • mostly plant protein, giving you 26g of protein per serving
  • allulose as a sweetener is great and I’m happy to see it becoming more common (see my post on allulose for why). may want to note to consumers what it does and why they might notice it
  • cinnamon and grape seed both great inclusions
  • no opinion on pomegranate and monk fruit extract. I’m assuming the latter is as a sweetener and flavor enhancer (BP: pomegranite included to improve metabolic panel markers)
  • the taste is… alright. some people definitely like it more than I do, but I’d probably only rate it a 5/10 myself. I substituted whole milk in instead of nut milk as suggested and added the blueberry mix (below) to it to finish it. it tastes like a rather bland pudding, but a bit more dense and with little sugar or fat (BP: adding EVOO for taste may help)

Blueberry mix

Blueberry mix!
  • it’s literally just dried blueberries, macadamia nuts, and walnuts
  • tastes great no matter what do you with it really. I’d suggest adding it to the above pudding or combining it with some milk
  • blueberries are great for you and a good snack to have around
  • with that said, this mix is so simple that I’m not sure I gain much from having someone else prepare it for me (BP: mix replaces 2kg of berries and helps not having to acquire them frequently)

Longevity mix

Longevity mix powder
Longevity mix powder mixed with water and encased by glass
Nutrition info for the longevity mix
  • simple mix that you add to water
  • creatine, glucosamine, taurine, glycine, the gang’s all here
  • allulose again chosen as the primary sweetener
  • I’d increase the amount of glycine (1.5g), especially due to this being earlier in the day so it’s unlikely to be too much to disrupt sleep (this dose would be fine before bed and likely benefit sleep but the instructions online suggest to have this mix in the morning). for more information on why I’m in favor of macrodosing glycine check out the glycine section on my supplements page (hint: it extends lifespan in mice!)
  • sodium hyaluronate is an interesting choice and I wonder why they chose it + this form of it (BP: intended to reduce inflammation and restore HA levels which decline with age)
  • i’m a big fan of ashwagandha, with the note that it can cause digestive distress for some. great for lipid profile and often improves anxiety too
  • there could be a bit more creatine (2.5g) for those lifting, especially since calcium alpha-ketoglutarate was added (BP: amount chosen to be tolerable for mass market while covering omnivores average diet intake)
  • the taste is decent and comparable to most ‘vitamin’ drink mixes that you add to water. I’d probably rate it a 6.5/10, nothing to complain about but not particularly exciting

Pills!

The four bottles that I got along with what the pills from each look like. The daily suggested dosage is 3 pills from each of the larger bottles and 1 from each of the smaller, for a daily total of 8. Certainly not as bad as what was featured on my supplements page!

NAC, ginger, curcumin

Nutrition info for the NAC, ginger, and curcumin capsules
  • NAC is reasonably popular in the longevity community and pretty interesting
  • not 100% sure what the reasoning behind ginger was – I wonder if it was due to its ability to ameliorate potential gastrointestinal side effects of other supplements? (BP: intention is to improve metabolic panel, reduce inflammation, improve mood)
  • circumin is generally a good choice, although I have concerns about lower bioavailability here. does one of the other supplements included notably modify this? (BP: curcumin bioavailability 4x higher in this case due to being bio-enhanced)

Essential capsules

Nutrition info for the essential capsules
  • not going to list all the vitamins as they’re all reasonable choices
  • glad to see a higher amount of vitamin D (2,000 IU). could go even higher but the average blueprint consumer probably gets more sunlight than I do
  • I don’t know what the benefits of including e.g. iodine, calcium, manganese, and selenium are. would these be missed at all if excluded? feel free to enlighten me if you’re a reader! (BP: these deficienties are moderately common so worth including, calcium as excipient of CaAKG)
  • lithium is interesting at 1mg but I’m not sure that’s high enough to do very much (although perhaps this is the intention to keep it on the safe side)
  • I didn’t know that the body converts glucoraphanin into sulforaphane via myrosinase. good supplement!
  • fisetin at100mg daily is an interesting choice. curious how they decided daily was the correct increment and 100mg was the correct dose – I found this one hard to decide on myself (BP: dosage most studied wrt fisetin)
  • spermidine 10mg is perhaps one of the most promising supplements here due to directly improving lifespan in mice! how did they source this? see more info in the spermadine section on my supplements page
  • genistein is an interesting choice as it is pretty estrogenic. there are a lot of gender-ambiguous benefits to this, but i’m curious what the specific reasoning was and how the dose of 300mg was decided. it has affinity for α estrogen receptors, but not as much as β. if it was easier to source and include 17α-estradiol, would that have been included instead? was this included for entirely different reasons, of which there could be many? see also: does 17α-estradiol/estrogen extend male human lifespan? (BP: genistein does not increase blood estrogen levels in men, 17α generally requires Rx)

Essential softgel

Nutrition info from the essential softgels
  • nothing particularly exciting here, nice to see the better forms of vitamin k (k1, k2 mk4, k2 mk7) all included
  • astaxanthin is a nice inclusion
  • less excited over lycopene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, but I don’t know anything bad about them. would like to research them more later

Garlic, red yeast rice

Nutrition info for the garlic and red yeast rice pills
  • unsure why these are in their own pill instead of included within one of the larger mixes (from which you take 3 daily from)
    (BP: pills were grouped to reduce amount. water soluable actives went into longevity RTM, fat soluble into softgel, bitter tasting into capsules, and small amounts into essentual. RYR and NAC were separate SKUs due to regulatory concerns.
  • garlic is great if we give them the benefit of the doubt on the 12:1 exact including enough allicin
  • does the red yeast rice (500mg) actually contain a lot of monacolin k? some countries like the US dislike this due to it being bioidentical to e.g. lovastatin (BP: no, this is why CoAs are shared)
  • interesting side note: when you research a lot of natural compounds (roots, vegetable extracts, etc), it’s very interesting how many of them are bioidentical to actual pharmaceuticals. when I was young I didn’t understand why ‘vegetables’ or such should be good for me: adults would tell me they had “vitamins and minerals” in them, but I could obviously both a) test myself for vitamin and mineral deficiencies and b) supplement them if I was deficient in them. it wasn’t until many, many years later that I learned how amazingly complex everything we eat is and how many biologically active ingredients are in dishes. think of a dish with many vegetables, spices, roots, meat, etc, as basically having 20 different drugs in it, but with all of them in very small doses. many of them are also very slightly psychoactive too! just as you can get high on nutmeg and sweet potatoes inhibit α-glucosidase and are thus anti-diabetic like the drug acarbose and red yeast rice is literally the same as a statin medication and berberine found in plants like barberry is a mimetic of the anti-diabetic drug metformin, the foods we eat on a daily basis have an astoundingly large amount of downstream effects in the body which have nothing to do with the vitamins or minerals in them. the cases we tend to know about like marajuana or opium are not rare in that they have strong biological effects, but rather are only rare in the dose response curves that are common with consumption. the present epistemic milieu we reside in with respect to nutrition doesn’t talk about this much primarily because we know so little about the topic and actually learning what is going on enough to have high confidence and rigor is extremely tedious and slow

Olive oil

  • it’s olive oil. it is made from olives
  • the branding of ‘snake oil‘ is honestly pretty funny given how most supplement marketing is basically fraudulent

Marketing

  • no cards or instructions were included in the box. this is missing out on a gigantic free lunch!
  • I’d strongly suggest adding instructions, a thank-you card, and a discount code for future purchases
  • the discount code should be notable as user retention may be more challenging than other monthly supplements due to the tediousness of consumption (8 pills, one drink mix, one pudding mix, olive oil, and another mix, every single day!)
  • given the higher price point it would be great if the bags could be redone to have a high-quality zipper on them as sealing them is annoying
  • the supplement bottles should be shinier. this will increase conversion as this product is offered at a ‘premium’ price point. I’d look into making a bespoke logo for blueprint as well or otherwise refining the font and decor around it. you will be surprised how much of a return you can get by spending $0.10 more on shiny paper and branding!
  • I would move supplements with the highest probability of causing digestive distress into their own pill so that users can modulate dosage or ablate it themselves for e.g. supplements like ashwaganda and curcumin. this should be included in the instructions as otherwise users who feel unwell may simply never try blueprint again
  • current marketing paradigm likely favors a cohort of more males than females and more adolescents than the elderly. this is reasonable and likely the correct choice to make early on, but I’d consider long-term strategies on how to improve this. encouraging gifting to the elderly (e.g. one’s parents) is likely a great idea here for obvious reasons
  • (BP: agreed on much of the above, some are already being implemented)

Research and sourcing

  • most of what is included is good, but I’m not told why it was included! if there was so much money spent on research and reviewing studies, it would be great if some of it could be shared to me as a lowly and uninformed end-user
  • why does the blueprint page advertise ‘non-gmo’, and what does ‘no artificial ingredients’ mean? generally the latter means next to nothing, but I don’t actually care if something as simple to synthesize as e.g. glycine is ‘artificial’ or not as long as it is the right chemical and without contaminants or impurities! modify labels for your intended audience accordingly
  • similarly to sharing research the website states that you “test the ingredients” yourselves. I assume this means more than just eating them and making sure you don’t die, but this seems like a great thing to share more about, especially because this is very tedious to do (BP: manufacturers are asked for CoA and then we test the individual ngredients ourselves)
  • having users share metrics before and after a few months of blueprint consumption would be great (BJ told me isn’t necessary as the individual ingredients already have sufficient evidence on their own. but if you ask me, there is never enough science being done and there is never enough data, so I’d prefer we continue to learn all that we can even if it only confirms our priors) (BP: a few thousand people are on it and sharing biomarkers, we will share this data)
  • relatedly I’m concerned that some of the supplements may inhibit various enzymes that then cause unknown and/or undesired changes of bioavailability in other supplements or drugs. both curcumin and ginger inhibit CYP3A4 and this may be suboptimal if combined with other longevity drugs like rapamycin (which, similarly, could block astaxanthin which blueprint includes as well). this is challenging as we have limited knowledge on this topic for most supplements and drugs, but is worth at least being aware of
  • fortunately i’ve written from-scratch personal tracking software that I can throw all of this data into in order to solve a few of the questions (those which are easily answerable via blood tests at least), but this is costly and tedious and I am tired of getting blood tests. I may try A/B testing all of blueprint RCT-style to see if I can notice any other variables it effects that I wouldn’t have otherwise predicted

Market Comparisons

  • As of May 7th 2024, Blueprint now allows for the purchase of individual items listed above instead of only all of them as a bundle.
  • If you only buy the four pill bottles, the cost comes to $146 for a month ($139 if you subscribe)
  • I did a rough but incomplete analysis of competitors on amazon, building up the ingredients myself from reasonable sources, attempting to find a cheaper alternative to blueprint
  • I failed at this task. In other words, if I try to get everything in the blueprint pills from reasonable alternatives on Amazon, I ended up spending more money, not less
  • Because I think most of the ingredients in the blueprint pill bottles are desirable and I trust their sourcing to be at least average (hopefully above-average), I’ve decided to replace some of my supplement stack with blueprint
  • I am not publishing my full spreadsheet as it could be done with more rigor, but the numbers I got were close to break-even for the essential softgels ($49), notably over for the essential capsules (~$75 to $110 rather than $59), break-even for the nac+ginger+curcumin capsules ($27), and under for the red yeast rice and garlic capsules (which are by far the cheapest at $11 currently)
  • This is impressive for a consumer product!
  • Compared to most mass-marketed supplement products (e.g. athletic greens/AG1, blueprint basically murders them in cold blood and is probably ‘better for you’ by a factor of 5-10x. I have unusually high standards compared to the typical consumer here, but this is worth stating explicitly for those that come across this post but aren’t used to this.

Final thoughts

  • overall this is a decent purchase if you find the price range affordable. It saves you a lot of time, logistics, planning, research, and so on, and a lot of the ingredients are top-notch and actually do things that you won’t otherwise get the effects of from even a good diet. It is certainly better than the rest of what is out there.
  • with that said, there’s secondary effects to note: a) the substitution effect of having something decent rather than what you’d have had instead (this is why most ‘diets’ are always an improvement: the typical American diet is so bad that basically anything that is not insane is likely to be a net-benefit), and b) the psychological effect of causing you to consciously think more about optimizing for your health. I would strongly bet that there is a ‘healthy user bias’ among blueprint users that results in them having e.g. better lipid and glycemic profiles than non-blueprint users even if they stopped taking blueprint as they probably get more exercise than average
  • the largest benefits in longevity may still be things that we cannot easily sell in a bag or bottle, whether that is because it is intangible like exercise, or because of excessive regulation (e.g. the revolutionary weight-loss drug semaglutide requires a prescription and often insurance, although notably can also be purchased online regardless from parties which are not fans of the US patent system. even so, clinical trials for it began 15 years ago which likely resulted in the early death of millions of americans due to obesity. other longevity drugs like rapamycin are also challenging to distribute to the average consumer for similar reasons (and that one is FDA-approved too!). the FDA is excessively conservative in what they allow, with drugs requiring a decade and ~$600M to be later slowly distributed to the general public, and this is before we even bring in talk of gene therapies or anything newer
  • alpha in longevity (both personal and scientific) still remains in copious quantities for those who are willing to search for it!
  • I have currently decided to continue to purchase the pill section of blueprint, but I’m not subscribed to the other components at this time.
  • If you enjoyed this post you might like my website (see also: supplements) or my twitter
  • feedback (especially any potential corrections) is very welcome! DM me on twitter or submit anonymously here

Allulose: The Best Sugar Substitute

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Allulose (sometimes D-psicose) is by-far one of the best ways to add sweetness to home-cooked meals in a healthy and low-calorie way. As an epimer of fructose, it has been steadily gaining popularity within the last few years, and not without good reason! Allulose is not only nearly calorie-free, but also decreases blood glucose levels with meals, and seems to have a wide range of potentially beneficial effects.This post is a short summary of why allulose is so appealing over sugar and other sugar substitutes.

70% as sweet; 100% as white and crystalline

Overview of Allulose

Allulose is found naturally in wheat, figs, raisins, maple syrup, and molasses, although in relatively trace amounts. It has around 10% the calories of traditional sucrose and can be manufactured from fructose. It’s around 70% as sweet as sucrose (regular sugar), but has a similar taste and feel, which is a large factor behind why it makes a great substitute (or partial substitute) for baking or dissolving into things. The taste of Allulose has a more natural and relaxing quality than some other sugar-replacement options such as xylitol and erythritol, which are both sugar alcohols, but generally have a ‘cooling effect’ (often likened to the aftertaste of consuming mint, which allulose conveniently lacks).

Allulose is also an actual sugar (not a sugar alcohol or other compound), and has similar browning properties to sucrose via the Maillard reaction. One downside to mention is that it does seem challenging to keep some styles of baked goods crunchy with allulose as the only sugar; while it definitely seems to be one of the best options for sweetening drinks, yogurts, ice creams, cakes, and so on, it may not be the best option for super-crunchy cookies (although can make great softer ones!). This seems to be due to allulose not crystallizing when it cools, its ability to hold more moisture, and that it is more soluble in liquids than sucrose; hence it being a great fit for drinks, sauces, and spongy baked goods.

Allulose was designated as GRAS by the FDA in 2019, so is still relatively new to the market compared to many other sugar substitutes, although has been gaining significant popularity for the short period that it has been available for general usage in foods. I’m sometimes now able to find allulose for sale in a supermarket or included in a sweet good (and it is also now being used in products such as Soylent), although its usage is still a small fraction to that of sugar and corn syrups. It can easily be purchased on Amazon for around $10 per lb (regular sugar is generally closer to $1-2 per lb, so it is quite a bit more expensive if you happen to use very large amounts of sugar).

What Sets Allulose Apart

Why might we want alternative sources of sweetness from sucrose to begin with? Although much has been said about the ways sugars are (in some cases) potentially harmful, it seems reasonable to posit that there are two qualities of a diet with high sugar content (remember, this means any typical western diet!) that are undesirable: firstly, the high caloric content of sugar, which makes over-eating significantly easier and therefore contributes to obesity, and secondly, the effects of sucrose on blood glucose levels and thus insulin resistance, which contributes to diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

As we would hope from an alternative to sucrose, allulose doesn’t cause an increase in blood sugar. The reason for this is that it is not absorbed and digested by the gastrointestinal tract, but rather processed by intestinal bacteria. For the most part this is a good thing, and is what enables allulose to both be low-calorie and to not be converted to glucose in the blood stream. The downside of this is that for some people, especially if consumed in large enough quantities, it can cause mildly discomforting side effects such as flatulence, subpar digestion, and abdominal discomfort. This is much more likely to occur if you, for example, eat an entire batch of allulose cookies by yourself (who would do such a thing..!?), rather than simply use it to sweeten a drink or a snack. While I haven’t experienced anything negative myself, everyone is certainly very different when it comes to food.

But, it gets much better than this! Allulose not only doesn’t increase your blood sugar, but actually decreases it! It does this by inhibiting alpha-glucosidase (along with several other similar enzymes), which is an enzyme that breaks down starches and disaccharides into glucose (i.e. causes carbohydrates to lead to blood glucose spikes). Other well-known inhibitors of alpha-glucosidase include acarbose, a popular and simple diabetic drug which significantly extends lifespan in mice and has the exact same potential side effect profile as large allulose doses (and in my opinion is probably very good for most people to be taking, perhaps extending human lifespan via the same mechanism of action as in mice), and sweet potatoes (source, another source). Thus, adding allulose to meals that contain carbohydrates will result in less of a blood glucose spike than if allulose had been excluded.

Comparison of blood glucose area under curve for small quantities of fructose vs allulose (source: figure 1)

There’s now quite a few studies showing this in humans (and dogs and mice!), with allulose consistently attenuating the postprandial glucose levels both in diabetic and regular adults (effect sizes are often larger in pre-diabetic and diabetic individuals, as is often the case here).

Allulose blood glucose and insulin areas under the curve in comparisons with other sugars (source: figure 2)

But wait, there’s more!

Several studies also appear to show lower plasma triglyceride levels and improved lipid profiles (perhaps via the lowering of hepatic lipogenic enzyme activity, maybe involving SCARB1, but probably many others as well), decreased feeding (perhaps via agonizing glucagon-like peptide-1), enhanced fat oxidation, and a reduction in inflammation related to adipokine and cytokine plasma levels (one paper claims this is partially due to down-regulating gm12250 in mice, but if this applies to humans it may be a side-effect of more upstream metabolic changes more so than specific agonism/antagonism, although as is the case with most foods, things get absurdly complicated very quickly with the amount of pathways involved).

Allulose resulting in reduced feeding in high-fat diet obese and diabetic mice (source: figure 3)

It’s worth noting that several of the above studies (particularly ones that attempt to hone in on specific mechanisms of action) are in mice, and in fact, we could go much further if we want to look at mice; it’s trivial to find many more potentially favorable results such as “Not only metformin, but also D-allulose, alleviates metabolic disturbance and cognitive decline in prediabetic rats” or “D-allulose provides cardioprotective effect by attenuating cardiac mitochondrial dysfunction in obesity-induced insulin-resistant rats“. Although there is less (and sometimes conflicting) evidence for e.g. improved lipid profiles in humans, there is certainly more than sufficient evidence of allulose’s effect on reducing blood glucose levels and overall calories consumed, from which we would naturally expect many other beneficial effects to follow. Searching for allulose on pubmed results in a wonderful selection of studies showing very consistent outcomes in this area, and it thus seems plausible that, at the very least, we would see significant reductions in diabetes and obesity if allulose were to be more widely adopted in consumer food products.

Conclusion

In general it seems like replacing sugar with allulose will result in fewer calories consumed, a lower risk of obesity, lower blood glucose (average and area under the curve, sometimes peak) levels and thus improved insulin resistance and a lower risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome, and potentially some other beneficial effects (which may or may not apply in humans, but if allulose improves your diet and lowers your food intake, I would not be surprised to see improved lipid profiles and a reduction in inflammation, even if entirely for indirect reasons, e.g. cooking at home with allulose instead of purchasing processed foods from the store. It’s also worth noting that while some of these benefits are a direct result of allulose consumption, many are also partially from a reduced intake of sugar and calories – similar to how cutting down on your sugar intake would offer many benefits).

It’s quite possible that if a notable fraction of other sugars in our diet were to be replaced with allulose, the amount we would gain both in QALYs and dollars saved via the resulting reduced healthcare burden would be extremely favorable. Allulose is still relatively new to the market, and as it is also much more expensive than sugar or corn syrups, its future market penetration may be relatively limited by consumer preferences. Regardless of its presence in our broader food ecosystem, you can start experimenting with it yourself today! (Amazon search results page link, in case this saves you 10 seconds)

I usually use allulose to sweeten drinks, greek yogurt, and sometimes add it to sauces or baked goods in small quantities. I’m also pretty interested in glycine and think it may be something that most of us should be having a lot more of as well (some notes on this in the glycine section on my supplements page), but consider it outside the scope of this article for now. Lastly, if the idea of significantly reducing the glycemic index of your meals is appealing, I strongly suggest looking into acarbose – it is a much stronger inhibitor of alpha-glucosidase, well-tolerated, and also relatively cheap.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy my supplements page which discusses many other ingredients and drugs that I find interesting with respect to longevity. Feel free to reach out with any comments or corrections via any communication method on my about page, thanks for reading!