Benedict Smith
A multimillionaire who made it his life’s mission to defeat death has been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease.
Bryan Johnson, the self-declared “biohacker” who used blood transfusions from his teenage son in his quest for eternal youth, has revealed 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 healthy stomach-lining cells, but admitted it was incurable.
Symptoms include anaemia, caused by a shortage of vitamin B12, and an increased risk of cancer in the inflamed tissue.
Johnson said he had been diagnosed with the condition in May. Although he was unsure when it developed, he claimed it had happened some time between childhood – when he ate sugary cereals and fast food – and when he let his health “slip” and gained weight after his early 20s.
“AIG causes irreversible damage: nutritional deficiency, anaemia, and over a long horizon, elevated cancer risk,” the Silicon Valley mogul wrote on social media.
“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.”
The 48-year-old later said he was undergoing blood testing to decode “1 million immune cells” and work out which were attacking the lining of his stomach.
Once they had been identified, he said, “we know what therapy path to pursue to shut them down”.
Johnson sold his payments-processing company for $US800 million ($1.15 billion) in 2013, and has used that fortune in pursuit of his ambition to stop ageing.
He is said to employ a team of medical experts whose job is to measure the state of his blood and organs, at a cost of around $US2 million a year, turning himself into a human guinea pig to fulfil his “don’t die” philosophy.
He has claimed to have 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 has claimed he wears goggles every night for two hours to filter out blue light, wakes at 5am for an hour-long workout involving 25 exercises, takes dozens of supplements and rinses his teeth with tea tree oil.
In 2023, he used blood transfusions from his teenage son, Talmage, in an attempt to reverse cell damage, although he later said the experiment had been unsuccessful.
Not all of it has been plain sailing. In November 2024, to counteract the gaunt appearance of his strict 1977-calorie diet, he had fat injected into his face which caused a severe allergic reaction.
He later admitted “Project Baby Face”, which left him virtually blind as his face swelled, had been a failure.
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