Episode 149 - Bryan Johnson's Disease Has Nothing to Do With Diet_1

Bryan Johnson's disease has nothing to do with diet. I know that's a bold statement, but in this episode, I wanna explain what I think was causing or caused his autoimmune gastritis. You know, Bryan Johnson spends around $2 million a year on his body. And hundreds of blood markers tracked continuously, plasma swapped out, genes edited, a laser cap for his scalp, a supplement stack in the triple digits of pills per day.

But in May of this year, at the age of 48, he's just a few years older than I am, he was diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis. Welcome to the Primal Shift Podcast. What this basically means is, or what this disease does is him- his immune system is attacking the lining of his own stomach. In his own words, he said, "My stomach is eating itself."

And within a day of him going public, the internet had it solved. You know, Bryan says it was the sugary cereal he ate as a kid, plus the stress and depression in his 30s. My side of the internet, meaning the ancestral side, the animal-based, meat-eating side says, obviously, it's the vegan diet. And honestly, that was the first thought that popped into my head as well.

But I think both sides arguing about- His diet as if he picked it at random. You know, he, he didn't. Bryan Johnson isn't vegan because of how he was raised or because he likes the food. He eats that way because a framework told him to. The same framework that told him to avoid the sun, take 100 pills a day, live in permanent-- in a permanent caloric deficit, and go to bed at 8:30 by himself.

The last part is important. So here is my argument. His genes loaded the gun before he was born, and that part isn't his fault. But something pulled the trigger, and nobody knows exactly what. But everything in between, every choice he could actually control, came down to one belief, that biology is a system to be outsmarted rather than a system to be worked with.

And I can't tell you which of those decisions did it. You know, maybe the food, maybe the missing sunlight, maybe the stress or being alone or all of it compounding. I'm not going to pretend I can separate them because nobody can. What I can tell you is that every one of those decisions raised his risk instead of lowering it.

But before we dig into all of that, I have one question for you. You know, somewhere in the last few years, being healthy turned into a job. Protocols, wearables, scores, streaks. So where is your line? What's the point where optimizing your health starts eating the life you were optimizing f- it for? Put it in the comments because I wanna know where people are drawing it.

Let's talk about some of the facts that we know for certain. You know, he's a-- he announced on June 30th, 2026, that he was diagnosed a month before in May at the age of 46. And the diagnosis was autoimmune gastritis. You know, it's his immune system is attacking the cells that make stomach acid, and those cells also make the protein you need to pull B12, vitamin B12 out of food.

So he lost both. And he actually reported that his antibodies against his own stomach cells were at 103, where over 20 is already high. So he-- his antibody count was five times higher than what would be considered high. He was also negative for H. pylori. You know, that's a bacteria behind most, uh, ordinary gas- cases of gastritis and...

But he tested negative, so that was not the case. And he did a colonoscopy. Everything was clean. You know, ev- everything was clean as far as his regular screening was concerned. But then when he finally took tissue samples, they concluded that the, the damage to his, uh, stomach was fortunately caught relatively early and limited to the acid-producing region.

The other thing that was known is that his iron storage, his ferritin, was chronically low despite having normal blood iron levels. And so what he did is he tried, you know, to bump up his ferritin levels by consuming, um, iron supplements because, you know, from his vegan diet, he couldn't get enough iron. I mean, plants have non-heme iron that very poorly converts into heme iron, which is what the body needs.

And so none of those iron pills, however, worked, and so that pointed to malabsorption. That pointed to an issue where his, his in- digestive system could not absorb the oral iron supplements he was taking, and that was because of, you know, the acids, those, those acid-producing cells that were already degrading.

So there was already a hint there that something was wrong. But I, I don't know if it's because, you know, every... you know, most vegans are low in iron and ferritin, and it was just assumed to be, well, you know, that's just what it is. Let's take more iron. But eventually, he figured it out, and he started, um, using IV iron or iron infusions to bypass the digestive system and bypass his limited absorb- absorption capacity.

The other thing that's super important to point out is that he was diagnosed with an autoimmune thyroid disease when he was 21, so he already had an autoimmune condition, and that's important to understand because that specific condition raises the risk factor of autoimmune gastritis, and it also tells you something, that there is already something fundamentally wrong with his immune system, and there is a potentially a case to be made that there is a genetic component.

You know, so those are important. And one of the things that, you know, what a lot of people have said on the internet, well, you know, autoimmunity, you know, that's a food problem. That's a, that's a diet problem. And then, you know, GI doctor said, "No, there is no, you know, there is no connection between food and autoimmunity."

And just to be very clear, there absolutely is, and the best example is likely celiac disease. You know? Gluten in people with the genes for it triggers an immune system to attack their own tissue. You know, remove the gluten, and the problem stops. Bring it back in, and the problem reappears. So- Not that gluten, you know, cause autoimmune gastritis or other autoimmune issues, but there is a, a clear connection between diet and autoimmunity.

That thing is clear. But it's also clear that without the genetic predisposition, you're not gonna have celiac. So again, genes load the gun and environment pulls the trigger. What causes b- and not to go into m- too much detail about celiac disease because that's not the purpose of this, uh, o- of this episode, but among all of the people who have the genes for celiac, only about 3% develop the disease.

What does that tell you was? Well, there are a lot of other things that, that influence whether or not the disease becomes active, and that's the environment. Those are your lifestyle choices, you know. The environment pulls the trigger, whether or not you have the genetic makeup, whether or not your gun is already loaded, and that's important, um, also in Brian's case, and we're gonna talk about that more.

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And now back to the episode. you know, to kind of back off of, you know, those saying, "Well, obviously his vegan diet caused the problem." Just from a pure scientific perspective, I have not found any study that investigated whether any given diet, doesn't matter which one, causes autoimmune gastritis.

You know, the evidence, the scientific and... the scientific evidence isn't there, but that just means, you know, there was no funding yet to come up with such a study. So lack of evidence does not mean it's not happening. You know, we just don't know. That's the honest answer. You know, we have to, we have to be clear that I cannot tell you for certain that his vegan diet caused, uh, autoimmune gastritis.

You know? I can also not tell you that the vegan diet was not a problem at all or was not a factor at all. I personally believe it was a, a factor, but I'm not confident saying that it was the root cause. You know, genes plus a trigger. That's I think what eventually or what ultimately caused the disease in Brian Johnson.

You know? There are specific gene variants that are known. If you have them, and you find then a trigger or you- design your life around in a way that causes those triggers to fire, you have the issue. You know? His existing autoimmune condition is already a big clue that there was already something going on with his immune system.

He's had that since he was 20 years old, and it's a documented risk factor for another, for a second autoimmune condition. My verdict on that, on all it is that, you know, there were genes that he didn't choose, plus something in the way he lived, and nobody can tell you which part, and that includes me. You know, maybe the food, maybe missing sunlight, maybe chronic stress, maybe isolation, maybe a permanent caloric deficit, any of them, some of them, all of that compounding.

You know, there is no experiment that separates those in, in one person. And I know that's a less satisfying, um, answer than what either side is offering, but I think it's the accurate one. But if we take a step back and elevate this whole conversation a little bit and look at it, okay, what have humans always done, or at least for a very long time, and what has Bryan Johnson been doing?

And how does that compare? I think that gives us real clues into what could have been the trigger or the triggers for the disease to finally break out. And Brian Sanders, another Brian from Food Light-- Fruit Lies, uh, made this point, uh, very eloquently, I think on, on, on Instagram or on, on Twitter, um, a while ago, you know, where he said, you know, Bryan's philosophy is to control nature, and his and mine as well is to align with it.

So if we look at it side by side, you know, what humans have always been doing or for a very long time at least, without suffering from autoimmune conditions and what Bryan Johnson is doing, I think there is a, a pattern we can identify. You know, humans have lived outdoors in the sun from first light until dark.

Bryan avoids the sun deliberately. I mean, he gets some sunlight in the morning, but then throughout the day, he avoids the sun, uses an umbrella, shades, you know, sunscreen, whatnot, just stays out of the sun. Every population we have any record of ate animals, meat, organs, fat, marrow, seafood. You know, there is no documented hunter-gatherer group that didn't, and he eats none of it.

He's on a vegan plant-based diet. Nutrients for humans have always come from food, and he takes triple-digit pills a day and roughly 50 different supplements. You know, food supply swung between plenty and scarcity based on what was available, based on the season, based on the weather patterns, you know? And people ate accordingly.

You know, he runs a fixed permanent deficit every day with the last meal before noon. You know, that strict pattern has never existed. We've always been eating based on what's available. If there's a lot of food, we would have gorged on it. If there was no food, well, guess what? We would have fasted. But it was never a regular thing where we did the same thing every single day, 365 days a year.

You know, people lived in bands, extended family, constant physical contact, you know, somewhere, someone always nearby. He's in bed by 8:30, largely alone, estranged from most of his kids, and he left his church and community. You know, and I kind of, you know, get it because if you're different, if you wanna try something different against the grain, then you are, in many cases, more alone unless you find, uh, your tribe that does the, those things, you know, in the same way or has the same beliefs You know, movement was work outdoors, carrying, walking, digging, hunting.

You know, his is a structured indoor protocol. Sleep followed the light. You know, his follows a schedule. And nobody knew a single thing about their own biomarkers. You know, he tracks hundreds daily, and he has a "don't die" score. You know, death was understood as a part of being alive. His entire identity is built around avoiding it, and that's not one bad decision.

That's a systematic departure from the conditions our biology was assembled under on nearly every axis at once, and I think that's ultimately what the problem is. You know, none of those departures are neutral, and three of them have real numbers behind them. Sun avoidance, for example, you know, there is a Swedish study, um, including 20- almost 30,000 women over 20 years, and they concluded that sun avoiders had roughly double the death rate of the highest exposure group.

You know, non-smokers who avoided the sun had life expectancies similar to smokers who got plenty of it. Let that sink in for a moment. Sun is important. You know, chronic stress obviously is a major factor that it can not only can take years off your life, but it increases the likelihood of developing an autoimmune condition.

So he was when he said, well, stress in his 30s and depression, I would argue that was probably a factor, but I don't think it was the only one. You know, isolation raises death risk about 29%, loneliness about 26%, you know? And those are just all well-established risk factors. Now, you know, put that on top of his actual situation, you know, autoimmune thyroid disease since he was 21, and genes that were already loaded for exactly this kind of problem.

You know, a man with that hand needed everything else working in his favor. Instead, he was running against the grain on sun, on food, on stress, on connection, on how much he ate, and on how much of his attention went to his own mortality. You know, I, I can't prove which of those did it, and it's entirely possible none of them did.

The disease is genetically driven, and fit, careful people can also get it, but the odds don't run on proof. You know, they run on how many things are pointed the wrong way. His were nearly all pointed in the wrong way, in my humble opinion. You know, his diet fits here, too. And obviously, you know, his diet is part of that, and it's the clearest example of the whole pattern.

You know, 11 years of low ferritin in his own data. Low iron and low ferritin in vegan is Unremarkable. Of course, it's low. You know, he doesn't eat meat, so take more iron supplements. So a reasonable sounding explanation sat on top of an abnormal result year after year, and nobody investigated it, you know?

Because his framework suggested that what he was doing was right and there was nothing, you know, else to worry about. That's just what it... I don't know exactly what went on, you know, um, what, what, what went through his head. Uh, but knowing that you cannot absorb iron, you know, is a clear indication that something is wrong, and that's been going on for 11 years.

You know, something... if someone who spends that much time investigating and trying things out and figuring things out didn't conclude that oral iron doesn't get absorbed, so there must be an iron absorption problem, how do, how do you not connect it? I don't know. You know, he had the number. He had, he had the-- he had one of the issues clearly on his list, but his-- the framework produced both the diet and the confidence that his diet was right.

You know, if he had consumed foods with heme iron, maybe his ferritin levels wouldn't be that low. Not that it would have fixed the issue or prevented the issue from occurring, but it's just one of those examples where if you're so stuck on your framework that you ignore the obvious flags that your body is trying to tell you.

So my point here really is that, you know, I, I, I cannot prove exactly what caused it, you know, but I can tell you that it doesn't surprise me that a lifestyle that goes so much against what's natural to our biology, be it food, be it community, be it sun exposure, be it, you know, exercise outside, moving your body, doing things that humans have been doing for a very long time.

If you don't do any of that, it should not surprise you that you pay the consequence, you pay the bill at some point, you know? So here is... and I've said this before, this is nothing new, but here is what I would do instead of following what Bryan Johnson is doing. You know, lift something heavy. You know, do resistance training, ideally outside, if you can.

Walk, you know, walk a lot. People have been walking for a very, very long distances in search for food and shelter. You know, get strong hands, you know, improve your grip strength, you know, eat animals, you know, don't follow a certain ideology. You don't need to be a carnivore. You don't need to be a, you know, this or that.

You just need to make animals the foundation of your diet. You need the iron, the B12, the retinol, the omega-3s, all of those good things that come from animal-based foods that the body knows how to absorb. Get outside. Be under the sun. Don't get sunburned every day. I don't mean that. Use the sun and expose yourself to the sun responsibly, you know.

Sun, all of the stuff that comes from the sun, including, you know, all of the different frequencies are incredibly important for our health, for hormone production, um, and a host of other things. You cannot... If you avoid the sun, you're gonna pay the consequence eventually. You know, the, the cool thing really is that most of those things are free or don't cost you any extra money.

You don't need to spend two million dollars a year like Bryan Johnson to be as healthy as you can and to try to avoid death, you know. A-and I'm not trying to, to dunk on Bryan Johnson. You know, he got sick with something that wasn't all his fault, you know, that runs in, in families, you know, that travels with the condition he's had since he was 21.

You know, he went public with all of that, including his own numbers, you know, and that took some guts, obviously, admitting that he has something despite of everything that he's doing. But I think his diagnosis is useful for a reason neither side of that argument is talking about. You know, it isn't proof that a vegan diet destroys your stomach, and it isn't proof that breakfast cereal causes autoimmune disease.

I have had break- sugary breakfast cereals when I was a kid for many, many years, and I don't have an autoimmune condition. You know? I, I have proper ferritin levels. The problem here really is that a framework that's not in line with nature is not going to work, and you will pay the price eventually. You know?

Your life cannot be so structured that you go to bed at a specific time instead of working with the sun. You cannot run a permanent caloric deficit because that's not how humans have been eating. You have to sometimes be in a surplus, sometimes be in a deficit. You have to model what's happening in nature.

If you do that, I think you have the best chances of avoiding chronic decisions- uh, di- diseases, including autoimmune conditions. If you try to outsmart nature, you're gonna pay the price eventually. Maybe it's gonna take you several years and millions of dollars to find it out, but you will find it out eventually.

But let me know, what do you think? What could have caused Bryan Johnson's disease? What is your take on it? Was it really only the diet? Was it a combination of factors? Let me know. I'd like to hear from you, and, uh, hope I hear you in the next episode.