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Published 12:15 23 Jul 2026 GMT
One of the most controversial figures on the internet at the moment, self-proclaimed biohacker Bryan Johnson, claims to have “cloned” himself “as a newborn”, but has no intention of raising or nurturing the baby.
Instead, the man who aims to live forever says that he will be using the clone as his own “blood boy” to test and develop new treatments. The bonkers announcement comes just days after Johnson revealed that he has been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease, Gastritis.
Shockingly, building a baby of himself is perhaps not the most outlandish method Johnson has used to try and “de-age” himself or live forever. Along his journey to eternal life, he has injected himself with his son’s blood, eaten magic mushrooms and even tracked his erections.
Describing how he would use the lab-made baby to treat his illness, Johnson said it would be used to “grow organs for transplantation”, and “inject young cells”.
In the X post announcing the ominous news, Johnson explained: “This baby-Bryan lives in a petri dish for now.
“This may be scary to some people…a dystopian future. But, for others, they will see it as the inevitable future of health.
“Clinical trials are already using this technology to restore dopamine neurons for Parkinson's, heart health and eyesight.”
In the same bizarre post, he outlined the process of creating the embryo from his own genetics, claiming that he drew blood, then had his cells extracted and exposed to “Yamanaka factors" and resetting the epigenetic age, before restoring the cells to an “embryonic-like state”.
Despite Johnson’s proclamation that he has created a “clone” of himself, according to the International Business Times, the process seems to be how pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are made. These stem cells are effectively early stages of cells which can then adapt into many different types of specialised cells, which yes, can help treat numerous diseases, defects or deficiencies.
Therefore, Johnson’s harebrained scheme is not as terrifyingly dystopian as it seems at all, as scientists and doctors have used stem cells for many years to repair all manner of damaged tissue.
So, by creating his own stem cell farm, the biohacker would be able to “rebuild” his body and do things like repair his eyesight or hearing, or be used to restore liver and kidney function, as well as repair damaged skin.
Johnson explained: “As cells age, they accumulate epigenetic errors compounding into dysfunction and disease. This technology gives us a path to reverse aging.”
“I mentioned getting diagnosed with an incurable disease is one of the best things that has happened to me in a long time,” he concluded.
“It’s opened up a frontier of new paths to repair and strengthen the body. This is the first example.”
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Published 10:47 06 Jul 2026 GMT
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."
Published 16:19 27 May 2026 GMT
Biohacker Bryan Johnson has revealed the reason he was spotted at this weekend’s Enhanced Games carrying an umbrella, despite the fact that it wasn’t raining.
The man who claims he wants to live forever is well known for being… eccentric, and this story is absolutely no different.
Bryan Johnson is obsessed with his quest to ‘live forever’ - to the extent that he has tried some very strange things.
The 48-year-old, from Utah, has spent an estimated $2 million per year on his quest to stay forever young, and has experimented with plasma injections, injections of blood from his teenage son, and a gruelling workout regime that he rigidly sticks to.
Then there’s his wife, who he claims has a ‘top 1% vagina’ after having had it clinically tested and checked.
He claims to have the ‘heart of a 37-year-old’ and the lung capacity of an 18-year-old, and avoids all direct sunlight for the most part.
Told you he was a strange cookie.
Anyway, Johnson was recently spotted at the Enhanced Games, a sort of Olympic Games of Doping that allows competitors to use any performance-enhancing technique they want.
While the games itself didn’t yield too much in the way of world records, it certainly generated some interest and intrigue, though not always for the sporting action.
One moment that captured the public imagination saw Johnson interviewed while carrying an umbrella, seemingly unwilling to let the sun catch his skin for even a few seconds.
On a real one, if that is the constraint that you have to operate within to live forever, is it worth it?
Rhetorical questions aside, Johnson did actually explain why he carried the sun shade with him in the hot Las Vegas light.
"90 per cent of visible skin aging is from the sun," he explained.
“So this is a UV umbrella protecting me from the sun.”
Strangely, it’s not the first time he’s discussed this.
In a 2024 YouTube video, he said: “A tan is a sign your skin is damaged,
“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.”
He’s right, of course, but he’s wrong about his ability to completely ‘cheat death’ and stop the process of aging altogether.
He continued: “You’ll want to stay out of the sun between 10AM and 4PM, when it’s at its strongest,
“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.
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 but this time, his advice is refreshingly simple: skip the tan if you want to stay young.
However, that doesn’t mean carrying an umbrella at all times - like most things in life, the real success is in moderation.
Published 16:35 23 May 2023 GMT
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.
Published 10:43 28 Oct 2025 GMT
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.
Published 13:41 01 May 2026 GMT
Bryan Johnson, a billionaire biohacker, has once again found himself at the center of controversy after posting intimate health details about his partner.
The 48-year-old, who is known for spending millions in an effort to reverse aging, took to X to share what he described as a vaginal microbiome report about his partner, Kate Tolo, claiming it ranked in the "top 1%" globally.
On April 30, the tech entrepreneur wrote on X: "Just gave Kate oral sex. Goodnight everyone."
He later followed up with another post, stating: "This is her vaginal microbiome report. 100/100 score. Top 1% of all vaginas."
He went on to explain: "Only about 25-30% of reproductive age women globally are L. crispatus-dominant, and 'dominant' usually means above 50%. Kate is at 98.7%.
"The lab found nothing bad to report. (no gardnerella, Candida, STIs, opportunistic pathogens, aerobic vaginitis markers, etc.)," he added.
Johnson linked the findings to wider health benefits, telling followers: "This is linked to lower risk of BV, UTIs, yeast infections, HPV persistence, HSV-2 and HIV acquisition, preterm birth, and improved IVF outcomes.
"A vaginal microbiome is downstream of everything: sleep, glucose control, stress, gut health, sexual health, immune function, what you eat, and what you put in it," he added.
The posts quickly triggered backlash, with many urging him to tone down the level of detail he shares online.
One user wrote: "You're weird."
A second slammed: "I can tell this dude seeks attention because why on earth would you gloat and boast about something like this online."
And a third added: "This is just creepy as [hell]."
Despite the criticism, Kate publicly supported Johnson and used the moment to highlight what she described as overlooked health risks.
"I know this seems unhinged, but oral sex isn’t talked about enough. Oral sex carries genuine risks. HSV-1 (oral herpes) can be transmitted to the genitals and vice versa," she said. "HPV passed through oral sex is now the leading cause of oropharyngeal cancers in the US (surpassing tobacco). And oral gonorrhea in particular is becoming antibiotic-resistant at alarming rates.
"The bacteria in saliva can also disrupt the vaginal microbiome, and studies have linked receptive oral sex to higher rates of bacterial vaginosis. Oral sex is great… the problem is that we don’t treat it seriously.
"People who would never skip a condom will go down on a new partner without a second thought. People don’t get tested for oral STIs…. or talk to partners about dental health, recent illness, or when they were last screened.
"It’s a public health gap. I’m grateful I have a partner who takes my health, his health, and our collective health seriously. Be safe lovely humans," she concluded.
Johnson is no stranger to criticism over his extreme approach to health tracking.
The biohacker, who made his fortune after selling Braintree to PayPal for $800 million, now spends around $2 million a year on his anti-aging efforts.
He has previously claimed his "Project Blueprint" is helping him achieve the biological age of 18, describing himself as the "world’s most measured human".
That reputation has led to other bizarre moments, including when he shared detailed data about his son’s overnight erections. The post included metrics such as duration and frequency.
"His duration is two minutes longer than mine," Johnson wrote at the time, alongside the caption: "Raise children to stand tall, be firm, and be upright."
The reaction online was swift, with users expressing shock. One wrote: "There’s still time to delete this king," while another added: "I don’t even want to know how you measure this."
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