Bryan Johnson, The ‘Man Who Wants To Live Forever’, Quits ‘Anti-Ageing Drug’ After Years. Here’s Why

Tech millionaire Bryan Johnson, the subject of a new Netflix documentary, has confessed that he has stopped taking rapamycin — and that it may have done more harm than good.

In a new documentary about him, Bryan Johnson revealed that his rigorous anti-ageing routine includes taking over 50 pills daily.

Source : X/bryan_johnson and Pixabay

In the new Netflix documentary about him, ‘Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever’, tech millionaire Bryan Johnson, 47, shares his extreme anti-ageing routine. His methods include taking 54 pills daily and experimenting with rapamycin, an immunosuppressant used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients that is also touted as a potential ‘anti-ageing’ drug. By his own admission, Johnson’s routine is “the most aggressive rapamycin protocol of anyone in the industry”.

But not long after filming the documentary, he confessed that he had stopped taking rapamycin — and that it may have done more harm than good. Though not FDA-approved for its perceived ageing-related properties, some believe the drug extends life, based on animal studies.

Medical experts in the documentary criticise Johnson’s approach as unscientific, noting that rapamycin can cause serious side-effects due to its immune-suppressing nature. Ongoing studies aim to determine if it truly slows aging, but results are not yet conclusive.

Studies On Rapamycin

Researcher Mikhail V. Blagosklonny from the Department of Cell Stress Biology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, US, has written on ‘Rapamycin For Longevity’ in PubMed Central, a portal that publishes peer-reviewed research papers. 

Blagosklonny writes that the overwhelming evidence (after research studies on Rapamycin) suggests that it is a universal anti-ageing drug – that is, it extends the lifespan in all tested models from yeast to mammals, suppresses cell senescence, and delays the onset of age-related diseases, which are manifestations of ageing.

But he also states and highlights that although rapamycin may reverse some manifestations of ageing, it is more effective at slowing down ageing than reversing it. Therefore, rapamycin will be most effective when administered at the pre-disease, or even pre-pre-disease stages of age-related diseases.

He cites a previous study that showed how, in one short-lived mutant strain of mice, the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin (known in the clinic as Sirolimus) extended the maximum lifespan nearly three-fold. “Albeit less spectacularly, rapamycin also prolongs life in normal mice as well as in yeast, worms and flies, and it prevents age-related conditions in rodents, dogs, nonhuman primates and humans,” Blagosklonny claims.

A study published in the ‘Healthy Longevity’ section of The Lancet medical journal, titled ‘Targeting ageing with rapamycin and its derivatives in humans: a systematic review’, observed that although studies have reported that rapamycin and its derivatives can enhance learning and memory and reduce neurodegeneration in animal models, “...these effects were not observed in the human studies assessed in this systematic review”. 

“Moreover, the reported effects on ageing-related macular changes were inconsistent,” it concluded.

Dr Oliver Zolman, a longevity doctor who works with Johnson, reportedly told The New York Post that, because rapamycin suppresses the immune system, “side-effects can include very dangerous bacterial infections, things like pneumonia or cellulitis or pharyngitis”.
Dr Vadim Gladyshev, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, says in the documentary that there needs to be “properly designed experiments” to test rapamycin’s effectiveness in slowing human ageing.

“Then we could make scientific conclusions,” Gladyshev says. “What Bryan’s doing, it’s not a scientific approach.”

Johnson used to take rapamycin with his special vegetable medley and 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

Beyond rapamycin, Johnson's unusual habits include eating dinner at 11 am, undergoing plasma exchanges with his family, and using shockwave therapy. He claims his plasma is so “clean” it impressed medical professionals.

The writer is a senior independent journalist.