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A man seeking eternal life claims he now ages slower and could celebrate his birthday every 19 months.
Brian Johnson, 47, has been spending an estimated $2 million a year on this quest since selling his company, Braintree Venmo, to PayPal in 2013 for $800 million.
Aware that the maximum human lifespan is approximately 120 years, he aims to eventually reverse his age and become 18 again.
Johnson claims to have reduced his “epigenetic” age by 5.1 years in just seven months, making it the fastest anti-ageing achievement on record.
Many experts are skeptical of Johnson’s approach.
He says he takes a holistic approach to halting aging, following a 1,977-calorie vegan diet and taking a variety of supplements and medications.
The tech entrepreneur has also undergone more invasive procedures such as MRIs, ultrasounds and colonoscopies, and has published his stats online to let others know what can be achieved in this field.
In an Instagram post on June 18, he claimed that his latest experiment, carried out in September 2023 using something called follistatin gene therapy, extended the lifespan of mice by 30 percent.
Simply put, the treatment aims to increase the body’s production of follistatin, a protein involved in muscle growth, inflammation, and fertility.
Since undergoing treatment, Johnson claims his rate of aging has slowed to a “personal best” of 0.64, meaning he’s only aging one year every 19 months.
“Muscle mass increased by 7 percent (already in the 99th percentile),” he wrote, adding, “Follistatin levels increased by 160 percent (2 weeks after injection).”
But he stressed that more traditional ways of living a healthy lifestyle remain important in his approach.
“Sleep, diet and exercise remain fundamental,” he explained. “These next-generation treatments make it even more likely that we will be the first generation to have the choice to say yes to continuing into the future.”
Johnson previously said, Independent He spoke about his previously unhealthy lifestyle, which he admits he had, and decided to change after feeling “very unwell at a time in his life.”
“I was regularly engaging in self-destructive behaviors, especially at 7pm, where I would eat to relieve stress,” Johnson recalls. “This led to rapid weight gain, poor sleep, and a lack of satisfaction in life.”
“I basically stopped taking care of myself and built a system that took better care of me than I did myself,” he said.
“The data is compelling that if you do these things properly, you can slow down the rate of aging,” he said. “It can have a dramatic effect on the body. This is just to say that it’s worth doing the basic things that we’ve all been told, and if you do it rigorously, you can expect meaningful results in the rate of aging and overall health… At this stage of the project, it’s really about slowing down the rate of aging.”
Brian, who heads a team of 30 doctors and describes himself as “a mad man trying desperately not to die”, says he “loves” the process but acknowledges “a lot of it is very painful”.
“I enjoy the discipline, I enjoy what this project demands of me, the ability to tolerate pain,” he said. “I treat my body like LeBron James does. That’s the most important thing to me.”
