Bryan Johnson, in his quest for eternal youth, has been dealt a mortal blow.
Last week, the longevity-obsessed tech investor revealed that he had been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease in which his “stomach is eating itself.”
But, true to his mission, Johnson believes he can biohack his way out of this gut-punch, too.
“I’m going to try and solve it,” he wrote on X. “Will share all.”
The disease Johnson says he was diagnosed with is autoimmune gastritis, a condition in which the immune system’s antibodies go rogue and start attacking stomach cells. It often manifests without noticeable symptoms, and can lead to cancer.
Johnson famously claims to spend millions on his health each year, which goes towards keeping a personal army of doctors on hand who constantly monitor his biomarkers, and help carry out more unorthodox health interventions like swapping his blood out with his younger son’s and monitoring his nighttime boners (though he’s seemed to pare things back as of late). It’s pretty stunning, then, that the autoimmune condition went unnoticed until now.
Johnson placed some of the blame on unhealthy habits he had when he was younger, such as eating too much sugar as a kid, and a high amount of stress he had in his 20s that led to him gaining weight. He also said he was diagnosed with hypothyroidism when he was 21 years old, a condition in which the thyroid gland doesn’t release enough hormones into the bloodstream.
The alarm bells started ringing when his medical team noticed he was chronically iron deficient, despite not appearing to be appear anemic. Johnson, 48, then got an “overdue” colonoscopy, which came back clean and ruled out culprits like cancer and unnoticed blood loss. Other tests, like an endoscopy and several biopsies, confirmed the diagnosis of early stage autoimmune gastritis, in which the atrophy is contained to his stomach lining.
By Johnson’s own admission, the prognosis isn’t great.
“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,” he wrote.
There will be questions over the efficacy of Johnson’s biohacking in light of the diagnosis, or indeed if his fussy longevity-centric lifestyle — which also includes a vampiric avoidance of sunlight, on top of the other stuff we already mentioned — may have had a role in it. Responding to some of these questions, Johnson defended his rigid immortality routine.
“This is a diagnosis of a condition that started in my body over 20 years ago. Had I not taken care of my body during the past few years, it would be a lot worse,” he wrote in response to one critic. “Health issues will always pop up, no matter how healthy one is.”
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