Bryan Johnson questions his quest for youth after autoimmune disease diagnosis
American biohacker and multimillionaire Bryan Johnson, known for his eccentric efforts in search of longevity and the “fountain of youth”, surprised by publicly questioning the extent of his procedures. The statement was made after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.
The 48-year-old businessman, committed to reversing his biological age to 18, shared the information on X on July 29. He revealed that he was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that, as he described it, causes “the stomach to eat itself.”
In a pointed reflection, Johnson wrote: “I’ve been thinking about this and wondering if I’ve gone too far with this whole longevity thing.”
The previous week, in another publication on the same platform, Johnson already showed growing concern by saying: “I just cloned myself… like a newborn. This might scare some people… a dystopian future.”
On the same topic: ‘Anti-aging’ billionaire Bryan Johnson diagnosed with gastritis
The expression “cloning” referred to a process in which he created a “newborn” version of himself in the laboratory, named “baby Bryan”. The objective would be to test therapies, grow organs for transplantation and obtain young cells for personal use.
Although her current health routine is rigorous, optimizing everything from sleep to fertility, her past was different. Johnson said that, as a child, he regularly consumed fast food and sugary drinks.
After years of stress, weight gain and chronic depression, the biohacker’s body developed an autoimmune process that targeted his thyroid and stomach lining, known as autoimmune gastritis (GAI). This underlying condition may have been one of the catalysts for your radical pursuit of health, an information that is not always connected to your current lifestyle.
The prognosis for GAI is considered challenging by conventional medicine, which, according to the tycoon, “admits defeat, stating that nothing can be done other than controlling the condition.” Johnson was unaware of the disease, despite it causing irreversible damage to the body, such as nutritional deficiency, anemia and an increased risk of cancer.
At the age of 21, he had already been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, an underactive thyroid that does not produce enough hormones, and used supplements such as levothyroxine and Armor Thyroid for the gland to function properly.
Despite not noticing symptoms at the time, Johnson now believes there were early signs of GAI. Looking back, he realizes he “hadn’t connected the dots,” observing low levels of ferritin, a protein that stores iron, in the absence of anemia.
More on this story: Biohacker Bryan Johnson Reveals Incurable Autoimmune Disease During Extreme Quest for Longevity
Learn more about Bryan Johnson’s career
Johnson allocates US$2 million, equivalent to R$10.3 million, annually to anti-aging protocols.
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The Utah tycoon, in the United States, accumulated great wealth after selling his payment gateway company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal for US$800 million (R$4.1 billion) in 2013.
The public figure had previously revealed on his YouTube channel that he started gaining weight after playing American football in high school.
Learn more: Billionaire Bryan Johnson reveals intimate exams of his girlfriend in cell longevity project
At age 21, he spent two years in Ecuador, where he was stricken with several illnesses and could not keep food down, which caused him to lose “a lot of weight.” He recalled to People magazine: “For the first few months, I was vomiting constantly. I had diarrhea all the time, I couldn’t eat anything, my face was full of rashes and acne, it was just horrible. I was a missionary and lived in extreme poverty in Ecuador.”
Johnson added that he felt “really compelled to want to do something that would improve the world. I didn’t know what. So the goal became to make a lot of money by the time I was 30, and with that money, find something interesting to do.” He has already been accused of forcing confidentiality agreements so that employees would not reveal his peculiar behavior at the company.
After selling Braintree in 2013, Johnson concluded that his lifestyle did not protect him from recurring health problems. He stated that he felt overweight, stressed and depressed, realizing the need to change his habits. It was then that he founded the Blueprint Project in 2021 and currently dedicates “five hours a day” to his “longevity protocol”.
Learn more: Bryan Johnson, in search of eternal youth, is diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis
He maintains that his biomarkers are at optimal levels and that his “biological age” has decreased compared to his chronological age, although experts caution that the scientific basis is still speculative.
Johnson added: “When I say I’ve never been happier in my entire life, you can understand where that comes from.”
To stay young, Bryan hired a team with dozens of professionals from different areas. One of the most controversial interventions in which the American was involved, in May 2023, featured the participation of his son, Talmage, and his father, Richard, aged 70. The procedure he called “the world’s first multigenerational plasma exchange.” During the intervention, the businessman, his son and his father had a liter of blood drained to extract red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and plasma. Two months later, Bryan abandoned the method, claiming that no benefits had been achieved.
In another procedure in October last year, Bryan posed with a bag of what he called “liquid gold.” He announced that he had undergone a process in which he removed blood plasma from his body and replaced it with albumin. According to Johnson, the technique would allow the definitive removal of “unnatural pollutants” that circulate throughout the body, such as microplastics, something that organs such as the liver and kidneys would not be able to carry out successfully, boosting his search for eternal cellular youth.
More recently, Johnson sparked controversy by disclosing intimate details of his girlfriend, 28-year-old Australian Kate Tolo, also a biohacking enthusiast. The tycoon stated that his partner’s vagina was in the “top 1%”. The American explained that a sample of Kate’s vaginal mucus “was dominated by the most protective bacterial species a vagina can harbor.”
