Health6 min(s) read
Biohacker Bryan Johnson, who spends over $2 million a year to prevent aging, has revealed he is living with an incurable disease.
Johnson, 48, has made headlines in recent years with his quest to live forever, and the extreme lengths he goes to to prevent his body from aging.
The discovery that he has an incurable disease likely came as a bit of a blow, then - but Johnson has vowed to find a cure for himself against the odds.
Johnson told his followers on X (formerly Twitter): "Bad news #1: I have an autoimmune disease. My stomach is eating itself.
"Bad news #2: 2–5% of people have this, too. Likely more, because it hides.
"Good news: I'm going to try and solve it. Will share all."
While Johnson has dedicated many years to becoming as healthy as he possibly can, he revealed that his younger years were very different.
He admitted: "As a kid, I ate sugar cereal, drank sugary soda, and gobbled down fast food. I had a few healthy years in my early 20s but then became a young father of three and began building a business.
"Juggling that stress and grind, I let my health slip and gained 40 lbs. Within a few years I’d fallen into a deep, chronic depression.
"Somewhere in that timeline, my body began developing an autoimmune process affecting my thyroid and then my stomach lining. It’s called Autoimmune Gastritis (AIG)."
He added that he was diagnosed with hypothyroidism at just 21 years old from a routine blood draw, and was then able to proactively manage the condition by supplementing the hormones his body should have been producing but wasn't.
"By taking these pills daily, my body was able to operate as though my thyroid was functioning properly. What I didn’t know was that something else was going on inside my body: my stomach had begun attacking itself. But there was no routine test to find out and I didn’t have any symptoms," he revealed.
It would be over two decades until he got his AIG diagnosis, which was only discovered this May, and Johnson is unsure how long he has been living with the condition without having any obvious symptoms.
He shared: "AIG causes irreversible damage: nutritional deficiency, anemia, and over a long horizon, elevated cancer risk.
"When AIG is discovered today, standard medical care concedes defeat, stating that nothing can be done except managing the condition, no matter how awful or lethal the effects.
"Looking back over the past few years, I can now see the early signals we were picking up in measurement but hadn’t connected the dots.
"For 11 years, I’ve had low ferritin, without anemia. We continually tried to raise my iron levels with food and supplementation but nothing would work.
"We chased the obvious solutions first. A plant-based diet means all my iron is the hard-to-absorb, non-heme kind. Hard training, sauna, and hyperbaric oxygen all raise the body's demand for iron.
"But none of them explained the core failure: despite me taking iron orally, trialing every formulation, and using every timing trick, none of the iron would stick.
"What I didn’t fully appreciate until recently is how many stones my previous providers had left unturned. The low ferritin kept getting explained away but not fixed."
Johnson changed up his medical team earlier in the year to "lay the groundwork for Immortals Care, our $1M a year protocol", and "revisited everything" to try and discover the root cause, as he wasn't classed as anemic despite his low ferritin.
He underwent a colonoscopy as part of the diagnostics, which looked for a hidden cause of blood loss such as a polyp or bowel cancer, but this came back clear and showed a better result than "95% of men" his age.
"At the same time, they began connecting the dots. Iron absorption depends on stomach acid, so one theory was that my stomach acid was disrupted," he added. "They also knew that thyroid and stomach autoimmunity often travel together, so often that the pairing has a name: thyrogastric syndrome.
"Put against my 27+ year history of autoimmune thyroid disease, the pieces pointed to a single hypothesis: my own immune system was attacking my stomach."
He also underwent a bi-directional endoscopy, which looks at the entire intestinal tract, from above and below, as well as measuring several blood biomarkers, which showed elevated levels of anti-parietal-cells-antibodies (APCA), roughly five times the upper normal limit, confirming he was suffering from AIG.
Johnson also had five biopsies taken from three regions within his stomach which were critical to the diagnosis, as there were not visual signs of the condition in his intestines.
He added: "Two days later, the results of biopsies came in, showing clear signs of early autoimmune gastritis: early atrophy confined to the acid-producing lining, with the rest of the stomach still spared.
"We now had a formal diagnosis. I have autoimmune gastritis AIG. My stomach is eating itself."
Autoimmune gastritis affects around 2-5% of people - a number which Johnson believes is far lower than the real amount of people that likely have it, given how difficult it can be to diagnose, which also raises the risk of stomach cancer if left untreated.
He admitted: "And the earliest clue, low ferritin, is the one standard medicine waves through. Low iron stores get normalized and rarely investigated at all when anemia hasn't shown up yet. That blind spot is what hid mine for a decade."
He is now on medication to regulate his iron levels, but wants to put more research into AIG, as it is currently seen as "something to be managed, not resolved."
Johnson explained: "My team and I are going to try and solve my AIG. This is how we’re approaching it:
"First, routine monitoring keeps the disease in view: ferritin and iron, B12, the pepsinogen I/II ratio, gastrin, and chromogranin A. Gastrin is the dial to watch. If it climbs, the disease is advancing, and the risk of gastric neuroendocrine tumors climbs with it.
"Second, we’re doing advanced characterization of the disease. We’ll do a repeat biopsy to read the immune infiltrate, deep cytokine profiling, and T-cell subset analysis, to see which pathways are actually firing."
He added: "Modern medicine has normalized too many conditions that erode our health, function, and comfort, shrinking the goal to monitoring and management while a cure is rarely even attempted.
"Most of these verdicts were handed down decades ago, in an era that predates nearly all of our current tech and science, and they have gone largely unchallenged.
"We want to change that. In the age of AI, multiomics, and custom-built DNA, proteins, and cells, no condition should be presumed incurable simply because no one has yet tried to cure it with today's stack."
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Bryan Johnson, the self-proclaimed biohacker on a mission to “live forever”, has revealed the one everyday habit he believes is secretly making people age faster.
And unlike his usual high-tech anti-aging routines, this one’s surprisingly simple.
The 48-year-old tech entrepreneur, who has spent millions trying to reverse his biological age through a strict wellness program called Blueprint, says the biggest culprit behind premature aging is something many people still consider a sign of health: a tan.
In a YouTube video shared in 2024, Johnson told his followers that tanning might make you look vibrant in the short term, but in reality, it’s damaging your skin and speeding up visible aging.
“A tan is a sign your skin is damaged,” he said. “The sun is good, of course, for many reasons; it increases vitamin D, it can improve mood, and it can help with sleep. But it can cause collagen damage, and it can also lead to cancer.”
Johnson explained that excessive sun exposure can break down collagen and elastin, the proteins responsible for firm, youthful skin. Over time, this leads to sagging, wrinkles, and discoloration.
Credit: YouTube.
The biohacker, who claims his intense regimen has given him “the heart of a 37-year-old and the lung capacity of an 18-year-old,” says timing is everything when it comes to sun exposure.
To minimize UV damage, he advises going outside only when the UV index is below 3; usually early in the morning or late in the afternoon.
“You’ll want to stay out of the sun between 10AM and 4PM, when it’s at its strongest,” he said. “And that includes cloudy days, winter months, and high altitudes.”
For those who can’t escape sunlight due to work or lifestyle, Johnson recommends prioritizing protection rather than avoiding the outdoors altogether.
His go-to tips include:
“Sun protection,” he says, “isn’t just about vanity, it’s about longevity.”
Johnson’s advice isn’t just about looks. The American Academy of Dermatology warns that one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime, often due to prolonged UV exposure.
Credit: Bryan Johnson / Instagram.
Sunburn, especially repeated or severe burns, accelerates skin aging and significantly increases the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma; the deadliest form of skin cancer.
On top of that, overexposure can cause sun poisoning, which brings on symptoms like fever, chills, nausea, and blistering.
Johnson may be known for his extreme biohacking experiments (from strict calorie control to plasma infusions) but this time, his advice is refreshingly simple: skip the tan if you want to stay young.
A 45-year-old man has revealed that he spends $2 million a year to get an "18-year-old's body" and that he wants to prove aging can be reversed.
Bryan Johnson is a software developer who made his fortune in his 30s after he sold his incredibly successful payment processing company Braintree Payment Solutions to eBay for $800 million, per the New York Post.
The multi-millionaire has found an interesting way to spend his money, which included building a private medical suite in his home in Venice, California.
The 45-year-old has a team of over 30 doctors and health experts monitoring his bodily functions, in the hope of restoring his organs to how they were when he was 18 years old.
During an interview with Bloomberg News, Johnson revealed that his lifestyle has given him the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity and fitness of an 18-year-old.
He achieves this by maintaining a strict routine that sees him consume 1,977 calories a day under a vegan diet, one hour of exercise per day, high-intensity exercise three times a week, and ensuring he is in bed at the same time each night.
Johnson revealed he wakes up at 5:00 AM each day and takes his supplements before starting the day with his exercise. He then drinks green juice laced with creatine and collagen peptides before brushing his teeth with tea-tree oil.
Blue light can be a cause of eye strain, headaches, and the inability to switch off at night, so the 45-year-old counteracts this by wearing blue light-blocking glasses for two hours before bed.
So far it all seems fairly doable despite sounding hellish. But Johnson undergoes monthly medical procedures including ultrasounds, MRIs, colonoscopies, and blood tests, alongside routinely checking his vital signs.
The software developer also takes daily measurements of things such as his weight and body mass index (BMI), but more bizarrely he is hooked up to a machine that counts the number of erections he gets while sleeping.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Johnson revealed that his motivation for finding the key to eternal youth comes from a battle with his mental health where he revealed he was overweight, depressed, and had suicidal thoughts.
"What I do may sound extreme, but I’m trying to prove that self-harm and decay are not inevitable," he said.
All credit to him, but hopefully they bring out some sort of eternal youth elixir that the rest of us can drink to save us the effort that Johnson is putting in.
And it goes without saying - it'd need to be cheaper than $2 million a year...
A man who spends millions of dollars a year to reduce his biological age has made a bold revelation about his current workout regime.
Bryan Johnson is 46 years old but his biological age is allegedly around 36, after spending approximately two million dollars a year to keep himself looking fresh and youthful.
In a video update to his TikTok page, the entrepreneur-turned-social media personality opened up about how exercise plays a crucial role in maintaining his appearance, but it's not quite what we all expected.
Johnson uses a special machine to help him complete what would be the equivalent of 20,000 sit-ups in 30 mins.
That's right, despite Johnson already working out for an hour every single day, he also doubles down on his regime by using devices to keep his body toned and sculpted.
Setting the machine to 100 percent and on level 15, the star described how it feels to use it.
“What it feels like is, it’s pulling your entire stomach out. It’s like ripping it out," the tech entrepreneur said in the video.
He also explained that it uses "high frequency" to "contract your muscles."
“I thought I would be terribly sore after doing this, but actually I am not. Surprisingly. But I would say my mid-section has never felt stronger in my life and it does change how I feel athletically," he added after his routine was completed.
Johnson has done this high-frequency workout multiple times, documenting the change in his abs on his social media platforms.
Alongside this, he also sticks to a strict vegan diet to help him retain his figure.
While this might work for the 46-year-old, TikTok users were not quite as impressed.
"I reckon I look younger than him and I'm 54," commented one user, while another added: "20,000 sit-ups and you aren't sore after? What a p**stake."
A third also chimed in, writing: "Didn't [these] types of contraptions get debunked like 20 years ago??? I guess the younger folks are due for a scam if they've never heard of it before."
Yikes.
Johnson has been open about his mission to keep his biological age much younger than his chronological one.
Calling it 'Project Blueprint', the businessman previously wrote an article for Medium where he stated that he aimed to "measure all 70 organs of my body and then maximally reverse the quantified biological age of each."
"With my world-class team of doctors, researchers, and clinicians, if I am able to reverse my measured biological age by 1.01 years for every one year that passes, that is evidence that we have reached the first stage of aging escape velocity where life expectancy increases faster than passed time," he continued, before adding: "As for the magic pill, it appears that for the foreseeable future, achieving and maintaining peak wellness is just going to be a lot of really hard work."
And it seems as though Johnson is ready to put in that "hard work" - as well as a lot of money - to keep himself young.
On the other hand, I think I'd prefer to just let time do its thing.
In the wise words of Jennifer Latch, aging is cool.
A wealthy entrepreneur who has spent millions of dollars trying to reverse his biological age is dabbling in some unique methods.
Bryan Johnson is a software developer from Venice, California, who hit the jackpot in his 30s when he sold his incredibly successful payment processing company, Braintree Payment Solutions, to eBay for an eye-watering $800 million, per the New York Post.
Clearly, Johnson is using that money as part of his retirement plan - spending upwards of $2 million per year to get an 18-year-old's body -- despite being 45 years old.
I mean, what better way to spend retirement than trying to halt the effects of aging?
Johnson has an all-star team of over 30 doctors and health experts, who monitor him daily to check his bodily functions, all in the hope of restoring his organs to how they were when he was 18 years old.
During an interview with Bloomberg News, Johnson revealed that his lifestyle has given him the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the lung capacity and fitness of an 18-year-old. He achieves this by maintaining a strict routine that sees him consume 1,977 calories a day under a vegan diet, one hour of exercise per day, high-intensity exercise three times a week, and ensuring he is in bed at the same time each night.
Now, he's testing out a trigenerational blood transfusion, recruiting his 17-year-old son, Talmage, and his 70-year-old father, Richard.
Indy100 detailed that the family traveled to a clinic in Dallas, where Talmage and Richard gave a liter of their blood for it to be converted into a batch of plasma. Bryan then donated a litre of his blood to Richard, and documented the whole thing in a YouTube video.
It wasn't the first time Johnson had made the effort to get young blood transfusions though, during these prior visits, he received the blood of an anonymous donor whose profile he'd painstakingly selected based on body mass index, blood type, diet, and overall health record.
As for 'young blood' transfusions, Insider reported that some studies in rodents have suggested older mice that share blood and organs with their younger counterparts may experience a reverse-aging effect, but these studies have been controversial and the practice is not FDA-approved. In fact, there's so far no evidence to suggest that such an exchange would work in humans, and the outlet did explain that the practice could have dangerous side effects, such as a strong immune reaction.
Johnson himself is well aware of how hellish his blueprint for youth sounds. "What I do may sound extreme, but I'm trying to prove that self-harm and decay are not inevitable," he told Bloomberg.
relationships3 min(s) read
A man who has spent an estimated $2 million a year on anti-aging has revealed the terrifying side effects of a recent procedure.
Bryan Johnson is a multimillionaire biohacker on a mission to become 18 again.
At the age of 20, Johnson, from Utah, founded Braintree, a payment gateway that lets customers pay using credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, PayPal Credit, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Venmo.
In 2013, the payment gateway company was sold to PayPal for a whopping $800million. Johnson personally made around $300,000,000 from the sale.
The businessman, now 47, has taken on a new full-time job: himself, spending $2 million per year on his lifestyle and starting Project Blueprint.
The self-proclaimed "world's most measured human" took to his X (formerly Twitter) profile to share a candid post about his project.
"As Blueprint grew into a global movement, the scrutiny increased. Facial fat, we discovered, is pretty important for how people perceive youth. It didn’t matter how good my biomarkers were if I didn’t have face fat," he wrote.
"So, we started 'Project Baby Face,' to explore whether we can restore lost volume," Johnson added.
Read Johnson's thread below:
Here’s where things took a turn for the dramatic. Johnson selected "a first therapy: injecting a fat-derived extracellular matrix to restore volume by stimulating my body’s natural fat growth".
He decided to opt for donor fat as he didn't have enough, and this caused his face to swell to alarming proportions, blurring his vision and almost rendering him unrecognizable.
"Immediately following the injections, my face began to blow up," he penned in the post, outlining the unexpected ordeal.
It was a severe allergic reaction that puffed up his face to the point where he was prepared for the worst during an imminent interview with Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance.
"I called him and said, 'Hey, so that you’re not alarmed, you may not recognize me today. I think I’m ok. I hope I’m ok. If I’m not ok, are you by chance trained to perform any life-saving actions?'" he shared.
Many people were left stunned by the results and shared their reactions. "Our mission statement is to do literally everything the complete opposite of this guy," one person wrote.
"I really appreciate this guy’s efforts, but did he really just say he injected someone else’s fat in his face for purely cosmetic reasons?" another questioned.
Fortunately for Johnson, his facial features deflated back to normal after a nail-biting seven days.
Unfazed, he and his team went back to the drawing board and started "reformulating plans for our next attempt".
"Building a product is one thing; being the product is a whole different thing," he concluded in the post.
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