Tech millionaire who wants to live forever discovers his “stomach is eating itself”

Bryan Johnson, who has gone as far as to swap blood with his teenage son, has revealed he now has an incurable disease.

In an X post, Johnson revealed his current health status and a diagnosis that might be a shock to the public.

Johnson is known for trying unconventional anti-aging methods to help him achieve eternal youth and live as long as possible.

The 48-year-old has previously swapped blood with his teenage son, undergone blood transfusions from healthy anonymous donors, taken an abundance of medications, and meticulously monitored his health markers, including the frequency of his erections.

But “the world’s healthiest man” isn’t immune to illness.

Bryan Johnson’s autoimmune disease

Johnson announced that he has been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called autoimmune gastritis (AIG).

The condition is characterized as a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the stomach lining.

AIG forces antibodies and autoantibodies to attack acid-producing cells that comprise the stomach lining, according to the Global Autoimmune Institute.

This means that proteins produced by the immune system (antibodies) and faulty antibodies (autoantibodies) attack the organ instead of repairing it.

As Johnson puts it, AIG is where the stomach begins to eat itself.

"My stomach is eating itself."

Bryan Johnson via X

The millionaire who once claimed to have the “best biomarkers in the world” has been diagnosed with a disease that affects hundreds of millions of adults across the globe.

Between 2% and 5% of people have AIG, but there are likely more sufferers due to the nature of the disease, said Johnson.

Early symptoms aren’t unique to AIG, making early detection difficult, as patients may be misdiagnosed with other conditions before they’re diagnosed with AIG.

While AIG is incurable, it doesn’t affect a person’s life expectancy and can be managed with micronutrient supplements and lifestyle changes.

However, the risk of developing stomach cancer is significantly higher in people with AIG.

"My body began developing an autoimmune process affecting my thyroid and then my stomach lining."

Bryan Johnson

Did Bryan Johnson’s blood transfusion cause the disease?

Johnson had previously been diagnosed with hypothyroidism during a routine blood test when he was 21-years-old.

This condition affects the small butterfly-shaped gland in your neck, causing it to become underactive, meaning it doesn’t produce a sufficient amount of hormones.

Johnson said that he began “proactive management, supplementing levothyroxine and Armour Thyroid…the hormones my body should be producing on its own, but wasn’t.”

One of the main causes of hypothyroidism is an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s.

While Johnson didn’t specifically say that his hypothyroidism was caused by Hashimoto’s, the risk of developing AIG in people with pre-existing autoimmune diseases is much higher.

Johnson’s medical team acknowledges that “thyroid and stomach autoimmunity often travel together, so often that the pairing has a name: thyrogastric syndrome.”

Which led them to believe that Johnson’s “own immune system was attacking (his) stomach.”

So, In short, no.

Swapping blood with his 17-year-old son didn’t cause the autoimmune disease.

What’s Bryan Johnson going to do about it?

The biohacker isn’t going to take the “incurable” diagnosis lying down.

Instead of accepting that the disease can only be managed and not reversed, Johnson is planning to beat AIG.

“Modern medicine has normalized too many conditions that erode our health, function, and comfort, shrinking the goal to monitoring and management while a cure is rarely even attempted,” Johnson said.

“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.”

Johnson believes that technological advancements like AI and designer DNA procedures will allow his team to “try and solve (his) AIG” through various monitoring regimes.

“To be clear: there's no approved cure for autoimmune gastritis today. Medicine treats it as something to manage, not solve,” but Johnson has declared war on AIG, in a continuation of his pursuit of eternal life.

"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."

Bryan Johnson