It was his life’s mission to defeat death. Multimillionaire biohacker diagnosed with incurable disease
Benedict Smith
The multimillionaire, who has made it his life’s mission to defeat death, has been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease.
Bryan Johnson, a self-proclaimed “biohacker” who used a blood transfusion from his teenage son in his quest for eternal youth, has revealed that he suffers from a condition known as autoimmune gastritis (AIG).
“My stomach is eating itself,” he wrote on social media.
Johnson said he hoped to “solve” the disease, which occurs when the body’s immune system attacks cells in the healthy stomach lining, but acknowledged it was incurable.
Symptoms include anemia caused by vitamin B12 deficiency and an increased risk of cancer in inflamed tissue.
Johnson said he was diagnosed with the condition in May. Although he is unsure when it developed, he claimed that it occurred sometime between his childhood (when he ate sugary cereals and fast food) and when he allowed his health to “fade” and gained weight after his early twenties.
“AIG causes irreversible damage: nutritional deficiency, anemia, and a high long-term risk of cancer,” the Silicon Valley mogul wrote on social media.
“When AIG is discovered today, standard medical care admits defeat by stating that nothing can be done except manage the condition, no matter how dire or fatal its effects.”
The 48-year-old man later said he had a blood test to decode “a million immune cells” and determine which ones were attacking the stomach lining.
Once these are identified, “we know what therapy path we need to take to close them,” he said.
Johnson sold his payment processing company for US$800 million ($718 million) in 2013 and used his fortune to pursue his ambition to stop aging.
He is said to have employed a team of medical experts whose job it was to measure the condition of his blood and organs, and to have transformed himself into a human guinea pig to fulfill his “don’t die” philosophy at a cost of approximately US$2 million annually.
He claimed that he had the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, the lung capacity of an 18-year-old and the gums of a 17-year-old.
He claimed he wore glasses for two hours every night to filter out blue light, woke up at 5 a.m. for an hour-long workout of 25 exercises, took dozens of supplements and rinsed his teeth with tea tree oil.
In 2023, he received a blood transfusion from his teenage son, Talmage, in an attempt to reverse the cell damage, but he later said the experiment failed.
This wasn’t all plain sailing. In November 2024, he had fat injected into his face to counteract the skinny appearance of his strict 1977-calorie diet, which caused a severe allergic reaction.
He later admitted that his “Baby Face Project”, whose face swelled and left him nearly blind, was a failure.
