Tech millionaire Bryan Johnson’s face ‘blew up’ during anti-aging endeavor: ‘Got worse till I couldn’t see’

Tech millionaire Bryan Johnson experienced a major setback during his “Project Baby Face” therapy. His face “began to blow up” as soon as he was injected with “a fat-derived extracellular matrix”.

He shared some photos of the impact of the “allergic reaction” on his face.

“…it got worse, and worse, and worse until I couldn’t even see. It was a severe allergic reaction,” Johnson said in an Instagram post last week.

He learnt a lesson: “Building a product is one thing; being the product is a whole different thing.”

‘Project Blueprint’

Bryan Johnson began his Instagram post by asking, “Have any of your therapies gone wrong?” He went on to describe a “Project Blueprint.”

He said, “In starting Project Blueprint, I had one question: are we the first generation who won’t die?”

Johnson wrote, “To begin, my team and I evaluated all the scientific literature on longevity and aging, stack ranking the best performing health therapies with the most compelling evidence.”

He said caloric restriction was among the early selections. His daily calorie consumption had significantly dropped from 2,500 to 1,950.

“As a result, I got really lean and lost a lot of fat—especially in my face. My biomarkers were improving, but I looked gaunt. People thought I was on the brink of death,” Johnson said.

Importance of face fat and ‘Project Baby Face’

He further stated that it was discovered that facial fat is pretty important for how people perceive youth. “It didn’t matter how good my biomarkers were if I didn’t have face fat,” he added.

“So, we started “Project Baby Face,” to explore whether we can restore lost volume,” Johnson said.

The horror

He said the first therapy that was selected was “injecting a fat-derived extracellular matrix to restore volume by stimulating my body’s natural fat growth.”

“It’s possible to use one’s own body fat for this but the problem was I didn’t have enough fat on my body to extract, so I used a donor,” he explained.

“Immediately following the injections, my face began to blow up. And then it got worse, and worse, and worse until I couldn’t even see. It was a severe allergic reaction,” Johnson’s Instagram post read.

However, seven days later, his face was back to normal and “we were back in the trenches reformulating plans for our next attempt.”

“Building a product is one thing; being the product is a whole different thing,” he concluded.

‘Anti-aging endeavors’

Bryan Johnson is known for his anti-aging endeavors. In a post about two weeks ago, he posted some photos an asked, “Can my joints age backwards?”

He said he received a cutting-edge therapy aimed at “achieving age 18 joints”. The treatment was done at a clinic owned by Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake. “300 million young Swedish bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells were injected into my shoulders, hips, joints,” he said.

The aim: joints to match my total bone mineral density, which is in the top 99.8% for 30-year-olds, he said.