Millionaire biohacker Bryan Johnson has hit a major obstacle in his yearslong quest to “defeat death.”
The 48-year-old tech entrepreneur, who rose to fame for chronicling his extreme health routine curated to reduce his biological age, announced on social media last week that he has been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease.
“My stomach is eating itself,” Johnson wrote in a June 30 post on X. He explained that he has autoimmune gastritis, in which his immune system mistakenly attacks the healthy cells in his stomach lining.
He wrote that for years, he had been unaware he was dealing with the disease, but said that it was likely caused by his diet of fast food and sugary beverages in the years before he started biohacking his health routine, which included changes to his diet and sleep habits.
“As a kid, I ate sugar cereal, drank sugary soda, and gobbled down fast food,” Johnson said. “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.”
He wrote: “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.”
Despite the irreversible effects, Johnson said he plans to “try and solve” the illness by monitoring several diagnostic tests, including ferritin and iron levels. His team is also planning to conduct repeated biopsies and develop treatments depending on the results.
“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,” he said.
After selling his tech company Braintree Venmo to Paypal for $800 million in 2013, Johnson has gone to extreme financial and physical lengths — including using his teenage son’s blood plasma in hopes of resetting his body’s age to 18 — in his pursuit of eternal youth, spending roughly $2 million a year.
Johnson has adopted a holistic approach to stopping the aging process and follows a 1,977-calorie vegan diet. He also takes several supplements and medicines in his journey, some of which he sells on his “blueprint” website.
His protocol, which is available on his site, addresses everything from dental hygiene to daily exercise to sauna advice. He refers to his anti-aging philosophy as “don’t die.”
The entrepreneur has also undergone more invasive procedures including MRIs and colonoscopies. He shares his statistics online in order to remain the “most biologically measured person ever.”
He previously told The Independent: “I basically removed myself from taking care of myself and built a system in place that takes better care of me than I could of myself.”
