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Bryan Johnson, best known as the man who wants to live forever, has an incurable autoimmune disease. The internet’s most famous biohacker made the announcement on June 30th, sparking a barrage of takes.
If you’ve never heard of Johnson, the CliffsNotes are that he’s made it his personal mission to never die. That’s not hyperbole — there’s an entire Netflix documentary about how the man spends a veritable fortune turning himself into a longevity experiment with an n of 1. His protocols include over a hundred supplements, routine blood draws, wearable tracking, and some common health trends like eating a plant-based diet and following a strict sleep regimen. (Plus some less-common health hacks, like transferring plasma from his teenage son.) What Johnson has is autoimmune gastritis (AIG), a notoriously difficult condition to diagnose where the immune system attacks the cells that produce stomach acid. It results in reduced absorption of nutrients and can lead to an increased risk of stomach cancer. Normally, a celebrity or public figure announcing an incurable illness sparks a wave of sympathy. Johnson received some of that — but also sparked a schadenfreudic wave of wellness influencers preaching, “I told you so.”
“This is the guy that spends $2 million a year biohacking his way to immortality,” a wellness influencer who goes by organicbunny says in an Instagram reel while doing her hair. She goes on to characterize Johnson’s public use of Botox and GLP-1 medications as a potential cause for his diagnosis, but that’s a hypothesis based on cherry-picked studies without any real knowledge of Johnson’s actual health. “You cannot inject health into your body, and sadly this biohacker Bryan is yet another example.”
“When you are being so hypervigilant about your health, you are training your nervous system to see everything as a threat,” theorizes another TikTok influencer.
“So what can this tell us about his perfect ‘don’t die’ strategy using data, quantitative, qualitative data, the mainstream data to make decisions?” opines another TikTok influencer, pointing to Johnson’s plant-based diet and diligent sun protection practices. “I think if he doesn’t reframe the way he views health, and you know, by not eliminating key foundations such as nature and being in full-spectrum light and eating things like red meat … bad things happen, even when you’re perfect on paper.”
The reasons why people think Johnson developed an autoimmune disease range from stress and genetics to more outlandish theories — but it’s all speculation. To be fair, Johnson chronically overshares his extreme health routines and results online. In this case, he thinks the cause of his AIG is eating sugary cereals and poor diet in his youth. It’s the worst kind of Silicon Valley-bro-meets-earnestly-performative-theater-kid energy, where everything must be broadcasted or maxxed for optimal results. For example, during the Enhanced Games, he was mocked for his sun goggles and UV parasol. Recently, he also turned heads for bragging about his girlfriend’s vaginal microbiome. (I wish I were exaggerating about the latter, but alas.)
I’ve poked fun at Johnson, too. Most recently in The Verge’s annual summer in-and-out list. But in the rush to turn Johnson’s diagnosis into content, I think wellness influencers at large are missing the big reason why anyone starts optimizing their health.
I don’t relate to most of Johnson’s longevity philosophy — I look forward to one day shedding this mortal husk, thank you very much, because knowing this is all finite makes each moment more precious. That said, Johnson’s self-described journey toward diagnosis felt eerily similar to the journey I went on over the past decade trying to handle my polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And I suspect it’s a journey that many people have or will embark on as health and wearable tech adoption widens.
It starts small. You notice something is off, or maybe your doctor asks you to lose some weight because something in your annual physical isn’t optimal. Whatever the reason, a basic fitness tracker is bought. For some people, that’s as far as the health journey goes because the underlying issue is resolved. But for a ton of other people, the data doesn’t paint an obvious picture or the body doesn’t react in an expected way. At that point, finding the reason behind a health mystery can easily be derailed into a quest for health perfection.
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