Biohacker Bryan Johnson confesses to incurable autoimmone disease: “My stomach is eating itself”
Bryan Johnson, known far and wide across the internet for his ongoing attempt at living forever, has revealed that he has an incurable disease called autoimmune gastritis.
The world-famous biohacker shared the diagnosis with 1.5 million followers on X, confessing that his stomach is “eating itself” as a result of the rare disease.
Johnson, who went viral for injecting himself with his young son’s blood to extend his lifespan and defy the natural aging process, shared that the disease probably started earlier in his life, when he was making unhealthy choices.
“As a kid, I ate sugar cereal, drank sugary soda, and gobbled down fast food. I had a few healthy years in my early 20s but then became a young father of three and began building a business,” Johnson shared.
He added, “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.”
Despite Johnson’s claim that the disease began before his experimental health interventions, Rupert Leong, an internationally recognised gastroenterologist specialising in inflammatory bowel diseases, has cast doubt on the claim.
As per Financial Review, Leong suggested there is no way of knowing what caused the disease, and, furthermore, it’s just as likely to be his “quasi-science” life hacks that are now intrinsic to his global brand.
Johnson shared that his symptoms were masked by medication he received at 21 for hypothyroidism. He recalled that, at that time, “What I didn’t know was that something else was going on inside my body: my stomach had begun attacking itself. But there was no routine test to find out and I didn’t have any symptoms.”
The 48-year-old discovered the autoimmune gastritis in May. Around 0.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent of adults across the globe suffer from the condition; treatment can only focus on symptom relief, not fully curing the disease.
Johnson doesn’t feel defeated by the unfortunate setback. Rather, he has promised fans that he will “try and solve” his condition, including his use of experimental techniques based on “investigational and preclinical evidence at best”, such as “custom AI-designed antibodies, or synthetic proteins, that can specifically seek out and inactivate or destroy the rogue immune cells attacking my stomach lining”.