Anti-Ageing Influencer Bryan Johnson Ditches 'Longevity' Medicine Over Health Concerns

Bryan Johnson, the 47-year-old tech entrepreneur who has spent millions on his quest to reverse his biological age, has ditched taking a medicine that he had been taking for years to increase his longevity. To live 'forever', Mr Johnson had been consuming 13 milligrams of the immunosuppressant rapamycin for the last five years but gave up on it after finding that side effects outweighed the minuscule advantages of the medicine.

Rapamycin is usually taken by transplant patients to help prevent organ rejection. However, some physicians prescribe it off-label as certain studies have shown it to extend the healthy lifespan of mice. Mr Johnson, who undertook the "most aggressive rapamycin protocol of anyone in the industry", said it may have done more harm than good.

"On September 28th, I decided to stop rapamycin, ending almost 5 years of experimentation with this molecule for its longevity potential," said Mr Johnson who is featuring in a new Netflix documentary about him, "Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever".

"Despite the immense potential from pre-clinical trials, my team and I came to the conclusion that the benefits of lifelong dosing of Rapamycin do not justify the hefty side effects," he added.

The former Silicon Valley executive said preclinical and clinical research indicated that prolonged rapamycin use can disrupt lipid metabolism and induce insulin and glucose intolerance.

"Longevity research around these experimental compounds is constantly evolving, necessitating ongoing, close observation of the research and my biomarkers which my team and I do constantly."

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Anti-ageing process

Mr Johnson spends $2 million a year on medical diagnostics and treatments combined with a meticulously crafted regimen of eating, sleeping, and exercising to see if he can slow, and perhaps even reverse, the ageing process.

A few months ago, Mr Johnson revealed that he had undergone a total plasma exchange in which his body's fluid had been replaced with pure albumin, a protein found in a person's blood plasma. He highlighted that the process was different from when he swapped blood with his teenage son, who he bizarrely called "blood boy" in 2023.

Notably, Mr Johnson is committed full-time to stopping the ageing process, having made a massive fortune in his 30s when he sold his payment processing company to eBay.