Billionaire who injected son’s blood plasma to live forever has incurable disease

Billionaire biohacker Bryan Johnson, the man determined to live forever, has revealed he has an incurable autoimmune disease.

The American entrepreneur, 48, has made headlines for his outlandish anti-ageing techniques, spending millions of dollars in a bid to extend his life and reduce his biological age to that of an 18-year-old.

Johnson refers to his Benjamin Button-esque ways as ‘Project Blueprint’, meticulously taking 54 supplements a day, eating every meal between 6am and 11.30am, and following a strict exercise regimen.

In 2023, he even underwent six monthly one-litre plasma transfusions, one of which was donated by his son.

Despite his efforts, Johnson has now discovered that immortality may not be in reach.

‘Bad news #1: I have an autoimmune disease. My stomach is eating itself,’ he wrote on social media. ‘Bad news #2: 2–5% of people have this, too. Likely more, because it hides.’

Johnson was unaware of his condition, but he is now trying to find a cure. Currently, it only has treatments to manage its symptoms.

‘I’m going to try and solve it. Will share all,’ he promised.

In his lengthy X post, he explained that, as a child, he ‘gobbled down fast food’ and consumed sugary drinks.

After ‘a few healthy years’ in his 20s, he found that ‘juggling the stress and grind’ of building a business and becoming a father saw his health ‘slip’.

‘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 added, sharing the condition’s name, called autoimmune gastritis (AIG).

After being diagnosed with hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid) at 21, which he ‘successfully managed with common treatments for nearly three decades’, Johnson noticed signs that ‘something else was going on’.

But it was only in May this year that he was told of his AIG, a chronic, immune-mediated, inflammatory condition.

‘I’m unsure how long I’ve had it. AIG causes irreversible damage: nutritional deficiency, anaemia, and over a long horizon, elevated cancer risk,’ Johnson wrote.

In retrospect, he attributes various matters to the condition, such as low ferritin (a protein that stores iron) levels for 11 years. However, he did not have anaemia, and when continuously trying to raise his iron levels with food and vitamins, ‘nothing would work’.

He found that such issues were ‘explained away’ while other stones were left ‘unturned’.

The businessman went on in his post, saying he only received a diagnosis when he ‘overhauled’ his personal medical team to ‘lay the groundwork’ for a $1million-per-year longevity scheme called ‘Immortals Care’.

‘With greater capacity, we revisited everything.’

He underwent numerous tests, including a colonoscopy, which, to his ‘surprise’, came back clear. He called his colon ‘perfectly healthy’ and the results ‘better than 95% of colonoscopies of men, according to the gastroenterologist’.

‘That ruled out the first concern and worst possible outcome: slow continuous bleeding from colon cancer, or pre-cancerous polyp.’

Then, a bi-directional endoscopy, a procedure that examines the entire intestinal tract as well as blood biomarkers, raised concerns of elevated levels of anti-parietal-cell antibodies, which are an indicator of AIG.

Subsequently, a stomach biopsy revealed his stomach had a weakened lining, confirming his autoimmune disease.

Still, the man who wants to cheat death remains optimistic, adding that he and his team are going to monitor his condition closely and perform additional tests to further understand AIG.

Emphasising that there is not a cure right now, he believes it can be found.

‘Modern medicine has normalised too many conditions that erode our health, function, and comfort, shrinking the goal to monitoring and management while a cure is rarely even attempted,’ his essay concluded.

‘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.’

He signed off on a more personal note, reminding his followers how health can be ‘easily forgotten’ in the ‘noise’ of everyday life.

‘I wish all of you the very best. Care for yourself, care for others, care for the planet and care for our animal friends. Care for life as it’s the most precious gift there is.’

What has Bryan Johnson done to try to live forever?

The founder and former CEO of Kernel, a company creating devices to monitor and record brain activity, has fascinated the internet with his investments in trying not to die.

He spends roughly $2m (£1.5m) a year on his anti-ageing protocols, including his medical staff, tests, treatments, and therapies.

With a strict vegan diet, he eats approximately 1,977 calories a day in a compressed window (the recommended average daily amount is 2,500 calories a day for men), curating his intake based purely on biomarker data, not taste or preference.

He goes to bed at 8:30pm, during which period he tracks his sleep quality and other medical data and has regular MRIs and ultrasounds, overseen by around 30 hired physicians.

Does science support it?

Of course, several elements of Johnson’s lifestyle are scientifically supported for basic healthy living – objectively. These include a consistent sleep schedule, daily physical activity, stress management, and calorie control.

However, his more experimental efforts, such as injections and other therapies, are not yet scientifically supported.

Johnson has also been criticised by experts, who say that science may not yet be capable of providing the results he is seeking.

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