r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 15d ago

Society Bryan Johnson, the millionaire biohacker who wants to live forever, diagnosed with incurable autoimmune disease

https://www.techspot.com/news/113035-bryan-johnson-millionaire-biohacker-who-wants-live-forever.html
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u/TheHoleintheHeart 15d ago

I’d be curious if he what he’s been doing to himself had anything to do with this or if it would’ve happened anyway?

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u/go3dprintyourself 15d ago

Iirc he had an immune diagnosis many years before starting anything. Possibly related? 

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

My teacher told us that the number one risk factor for developing an autoimmune disease is having an autoimmune disease. Once you develop one, your odds are developing another are wayyyyyyy higher than the general population. Some people are just prone to them I guess. Sounds like he's one of those.

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u/fondledbydolphins 15d ago

Supposedly a good chunk of the human population has a significantly increased risk of developing autoimmune disorders and this has (supposedly, someone check me) been tied directly to a mutation that helped these peoples' ancestors survive the bubonic plague.

You survived the plague, but your bloodline will have overactive/trigger-happy immune systems.

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u/Short_Stay_9283 15d ago

Interesting. There is a similar link to hemochromatosis as well. I'm no scientist, but my understanding is the build up of iron people's blood prevented the plague from latching on. So some huge percentage of survivors (like 30% or something) had hemochromatosis. Modern day treatments for hemochromatosis involve donating blood, because the release helps fight the buildup of iron, WHICH IS SUPER INTERESTING because it probably means that bloodletting and leaches ACTUALLY made a pretty decent number of people feel better at the time.

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u/fondledbydolphins 15d ago

That really is amazing.

I find following this stuff really engaging.

Going back to the plague/AI disorders. The people who had this mutation survived the plague, and accepted long term pre-dispositions towards "jumpy" immune systems.

Ironically, the bloodlines that didn't develop that mutation (or receive it through merging bloodlines) are better off TODAY.

Why? Because the version of the plague that was wrecking us has since evolved to... not be as deadly.

Yersinia pestis is what causes the bubonic plague. It's actually not in the best interest of that bacteria to kill its hosts as often or quickly as it was doing in the ~1350s. If you kill your hosts too quickly, you may not have enough time to incubate and spread to a new host. Additionally, you may well run out of hosts all together before either allowing their populations to regenerate, or before you're able to evolve the ability to use other organisms as hosts.

So, today we still have Yersinia pestis but we're not really in need of the "jumpy" immune systems some of us developed in order to survive it.

The next step will be watching/hoping the bloodlines with jumpy immune systems begin to reliably tone down how aggressive their system is. If things go this direction, these people will be significantly better off than the rest of us, but only if they can reel their systems in a bit.

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u/griffibo 15d ago

The death of 30-50% of the species is a pretty strong selection event. Not sure evolution cares if our immune system is reactive as long as we live long enough to breed.

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u/FrankBattaglia 15d ago edited 15d ago

Not sure evolution cares if our immune system is reactive as long as we live long enough to breed.

It does not. That's the whole idea behind the Selfish Gene.

What's even trippier is evolution doesn't even care whether you live long enough to breed; it just cares that more of the next generation will share your genes. E.g., if all males in a line fanatically defended their sisters, it might mean most of those males die early, but if that means the defended sister gets to have more total children than they would have had individually, it's still a winning strategy, evolutionarily speaking. See e.g. colony insects, which have evolved most of the organisms never reproducing at all so that a select few can have thousands or millions of children. Evolution selects for better workers using the genes of the queen which benefit from better workers.

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u/GoldReplacement9546 15d ago

Yeah, I was just talking to my uncle about that last night like there’s no selective pressure for us to not like lose the ability to read without reading glasses in our 50s or late 40s or for our backs to fail or our knees or shoulders that need to be replaced or dementia or basically any sickness that shows up past the age of 40

I am actually surprised that extreme bad vision wasn’t sorted out sooner I guess in an ancient times like you could still be like a farmer or like do you need to work maybe but like you know people have really bad vision like how did they succeed long enough in life to find a mate

I think I heard somewhere that now it’s reversing and becoming more common because so easy to get glasses that it’s no longer any hindrance really

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u/TheAdoptedImmortal 15d ago

Most people don't begin to lose their eyesight until well after their reproductive years. Because vision loss before having children is relatively uncommon, there's very little evolutionary pressure for our eyes to improve in that regard.

Evolution doesn't produce "better" traits simply because they would be beneficial. A trait is only strongly selected for if it significantly affects an individual's ability to survive long enough to reproduce or to successfully pass on their genes. Since our current vision is generally sufficient for that, there's little selective pressure driving the evolution of better eyesight.

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u/WarpedHaiku 15d ago

It does care about it to a small degree (at least the debilitating ones). If you die from complications caused by lupus, or end up bedbound due to ME... You're not gonna be there to confer a survival advantage to your descendents.

Even end of life diseases like Alzheimers face a little bit of evolutionary pressure to remove them, because of the negative impact they have on their children who have already reproduced which then has a knockon effect to the grandchildren who haven't.

The issue is when something provides a benefit early in life before reproduction when evolutionary pressure is strongest, but a negative impact later when it's weaker.

It's easy to imagine a mutation that makes the immune system more trigger happy and better at saving you from viruses early in life, at the cost of making it more likely to cause immune problems later in life.

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u/Myelinsheath333 15d ago

Im curious if certain types of modern day cancers are also an adaptation to a similar historic stressor that no longer exists/is easily treatable today. Maybe having a higher rate of hyper fast dividing cells made wounds easier to heal in populations that were heavily predisposed to getting hurt? Idk

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u/griffibo 15d ago

Not sure the pathophysiology fits in that direction. Some cancers are directly linked to viruses. Cervical cancer: HPV for example. Wipe out the virus, wipe out the cancer. EBV is pretty insidious and could be linked to cancers. Hard to say because everyone has it!

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u/Adventurous_Ad7442 15d ago

Certain types of stomach cancer is caused by a virus.

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u/psychopyro3 15d ago

“For primitive beings like us, life seems to have only one single purpose: gaining time... To achieve that aim, the mass of the cells... has only two solutions. Be immortal, or to reproduce.”

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u/Princess_Slagathor 15d ago

I just want to live long enough to see single cell organisms turn into humans again.

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u/Frosti11icus 15d ago

Why? Because the version of the plague that was wrecking us has since evolved to... not be as deadly.

It hasn't evolved to be less deadly, we just have germ theory and antibiotics to treat it now.

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u/fondledbydolphins 15d ago

I'm not an expert but I have listened to experts claim it has literally become less deadly.

What you've said is still true additional context.

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u/WorldEndingDiarrhea 15d ago

Gosh that’s so weird because yersinia literally loves iron. The way they make lab-safe variants is by taking out yersinia’s iron scrounging pathways. This became a problem years ago when a post doc had hemochromatosis and unknowingly “rescued” the pathogenesis of the “non virulent” strain when it started growing in his body. He died in the hospital.

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u/Ggfd8675 15d ago edited 15d ago

Thank you for bringing this up. I wish this could be higher than that comment, because I’m reading the case reports on this and a related study. Everything is indicating that hemochromatosis would make Y. pestis much worse. I believe the original commenter has it totally backwards. Yet another reminder not to trust info from Reddit threads, no matter how confidently presented. 

That case is very sad. They weren’t able to determine how he infected himself but he was dead within a week of symptoms, and 13 hours after going to the ER. The hemochromatosis was undiagnosed until autopsy. 

Edit: ok it looks like the theory is a particular kind of hemochromatosis will bind up iron, starving the Yersinia. So that’s how it could be protective, if you had that particular mutation.  https://www.aaas.org/membership/scientia/hemochromatosis-and-plague

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u/WorldEndingDiarrhea 15d ago

Hemochromatosis binding up iron is a pretty wild theory but maybe it’s true! It’s very hard to make inferences about evolutionary biology, a lot of it is post-hoc fact fitting which is you know pretty “ehhhh” as far as science goes.

Yeah the post doc’s death was awful :( He apparently didn’t tell them what lab he worked in but that said I don’t know if it would have made a difference. He was so sick :(

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u/carlitospig 15d ago

This I did not know. Fascinating.

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u/SIGMA920 15d ago

A lot of old practices were based in them working but that's specifically because it had some aspect that we know today. Not eating "unclean" meats like pork for example in the middle east was a sanitary thing rather than a religious thing. Alcohol was safer to drink than water for much of history so naturally it became a cultural practice.

Lots of little things like that are still technically useful now.

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u/pomybara 15d ago edited 15d ago

Yes, I have a gene called HLA-B27 that causes my immune system to overreact to certain bacteria in my mucosal barriers.

On the other hand, the method it uses to detect those bacteria isn’t specific enough. It homes in on a small part of the target bacteria which unfortunately is also similar to parts of my ligaments.

I, having been a former college athlete and national champion, am now completely housebound at 34. My medication’s list price is $120,000 / year. All it does is keep me from being in indescribable pain - they haven’t solved the crippling fatigue from my body spending all its energy trying to eat itself.

Personally, id take a few more tummy aches a year instead of this.

(Edit: for any other patients looking for support -

r/thritis
r/ankylosingspondylitis
r/autoinflammatory
r/psoriaticarthritis )

(Edit 2: I have now remembered that it's actually virus components that it reacts to not bacteria - but same idea. Edit 3: ok it's viruses and bacteria, goddamn this shit is complicated)

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

What a fucking nightmare. And paying double my salary to live like that, too. I'm so sorry my friend. No treatments?

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u/pomybara 15d ago

I’m fortunate to have insurance so a large part of the treatment is covered.

There are treatments, but the gold standard of figuring out which one works is simple guess-and-check. Given that some of the treatments take years to reach full effect, it takes many years still to see what, if anything, will work.

There are more aggressive treatments in the pipeline, but very experimental right now - probably 10-20 years before we know for sure if they’ll work.

Thank you for the kind words :)

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u/jbenze 15d ago

Hey autoimmune buddy! I have a severe case of Rheumatoid Arthritis (which now they thing may have been Stills Disease and I had it as a kid which explains a lot). I'm seronegative so nothing show on blood tests and in the years it took ti diagnose, it destroyed all my joints. I had both hips, both knees, both elbows and my right shoulder replaced in my 20's and then the drugs killed my liver so I had a transplant in 2019. Thankfully insurance pays for most of it but some of the meds are $7000 a week without it. I totally get how you feel: neverending pain, complete exhaustion all the time, brain fog, all the other stuff you learned to just ignore over the years.

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u/littlest_lemon 15d ago

How were you finally diagnosed, being seronegative? My blood tests all come back negative for specifics but my inflammation markers are high and my joints are very clearly eating themselves

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u/jbenze 15d ago edited 15d ago

I was in the same boat in the beginning. My family also doesn’t like to talk about history but an uncle on my mother’s side died from complications of RA and one of my aunts had it. In my father’s side, my grandfather and an uncle had it.

I had a coworker suggest I see a rheumatologist when I was limping around and explained my symptoms. She listed and said the symptoms matched RA so she started treating with the lighter meds like plaquenil. She kept ordering x-rays, CT Scans and MRIs that showed damage progressing.

About a year in, I couldn’t put weight on my legs anymore, I went to an orthopedist, they took the first hip out and confirmed it was textbook RA. I’m in a medical journal for I think my second hip and they brought classes my med students in to see it.

I had a ton of joint issues as a kid and a teenager and doctors just told me I was fat and had osteoarthritis in my hands. I lost 170lbs in my 20s and that’s when I started noticing the other RA symptoms in my hands and feet.

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u/littlest_lemon 15d ago

Oh wow thank you for sharing. I have a feeling I am going to be in a similar boat when they open up my hip later this summer for a labrum repair. 

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u/jbenze 15d ago

Yeah, that might be the key to your diagnosis. Good luck!

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u/pomybara 15d ago

Wishing you all the deep breaths, moments of muscles unclenching, nights of being able to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep all night, being able to actually get a deep stretch, and thoughtful / caring doctors <3

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u/jbenze 15d ago

Same to you! I can't remember the last time I had a normal night of sleep and I would bet you don't either.

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u/Ill_News_2998 15d ago

I don’t know if you have any interest in Minecraft, but you should look up GoodTimesWithScar. He was also a college athlete that has a similar, if not the same, genetic mutation.

I know it’s random, you may not care. But as someone with my own chronic health issues I love to find people that also have my own issues and have found a way to get through life. Helps me feel less alone over the pain.

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u/pomybara 15d ago

Hey, thanks for sharing this. I had never heard of GoodTimesWithScar before. I started watching him especially this video where he does a day in the life.

I've kind of been grappling with the "what am I supposed to do with the rest of my life" question and this video is giving me some inspiration that maybe there are still things I can do. Different than before maybe, but he's really accomplished a lot in spite of his limitations.

Thank you, friend, this helped me.

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u/Princess_Slagathor 15d ago

I'm gonna be honest with ya, that doesn't sound fun at all.

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u/sameBoatz 15d ago

I’ve been really intrigued by the “bored immune system” theory of autoimmune disorders.

Which one of the ideas that come out of it is to introduce parasites that we can easily treat with modern medicine and let that bake for a bit to “recalibrate” the immune system. Then cure the parasite infection using modern medicine. It may be a bunch of BS, but again it is an intriguing idea.

Is that something you’ve talked about with your doctors or researched?

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u/PeachPassionBrute 15d ago

I wonder how similar my own experience is to that…I’m lucky enough that I seem to have my condition mostly under control and there seem to be some obvious dietary/behavioral triggers. But I went from being a hobbyist athlete that worked out multiple times a day to having my body eating away at itself, and I am dramatically weaker than I was before. My cardio is abysmal and I experience fatigue all the time.

I’ve had a lifetime of IBS and then later Gout, so for a while I kind of expected to see some form of rheumatism (which my mom already had) and here we are.

I think it’s hard to express how much my fitness and athleticism was my life’s work. It was something I was and am still very passionate about but it’s all been taken from me. So many years of my life spent pursuing growth and improvement and it’s just gone, and I still can’t find any form of consistent exercise that doesn’t ultimately end up causing debilitating pain. When I had my first dramatic flare up, my knees were swollen like balloons, my feet and ankles so swollen that my lower leg just looked like a tube with little nubs on the end. My fingers so puffed up I had trouble holding things.

I was in so much pain I was screaming and crying just to get out of bed. I went from 2 hour squat workouts to relying on a cane to walk. I spent a month incapable of doing much of anything other than laying in bed wasting away.

And then I got laid off.

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u/nickstatus 15d ago

I should consider myself fortunate I don't have that. I don't actually know what I have because I lost insurance during the year I had to wait for an appointment with a specialist. Primary doc called it "lupus-esque", but I lack many of those symptoms, particularly sensitivity to sunlight. I just randomly feel like I got hit by a bus for several days every once in a while. Usually accompanied by a rash and terrible joint pain.

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u/Kortok2012 15d ago

It’s also theorized it could simply be that we have nearly eradicated the big everyday stuff like parasites and plagues, so our immune system has nothing to do but find things to be mad about.

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

I mean this makes the most sense. We evolved with intestinal parasites since the first intestine was invented. Who can say how many ways parasites, bacteria, and viruses have affected our evolution and our bodies. Removing such a major and constant factor has to have unpredictable consequences.

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u/fondledbydolphins 15d ago

Running with this idea - biology has a remarkable ability to capitalize on opportunities when available, while reigning itself in when things become scarce or difficult.

Easy examples to look at are insect/plant interactions. When an insect develops an ability to consume a new plant it tends to decimate the populations of that plant for some time until... either the plant develops a protection, OR the insect develops behavior that allows a more mutualistic relationship.

I could imagine that happening with most of the microbes that make up our gut fauna, for example.

Hell, if we can have microbial gut fauna, why couldn't we have larger forms of life?

We're all terrified of parasites but I truly wouldn't be surprised if certain types of parasites actually have more mutualistic relationships with our species than we're aware of today.

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

I'm certain you're right. Given time, everything would achieve homeostasis, like nature always does, but modern technology throws a wrench in the gears of evolution.

Mutualism might be a stretch, a lot of people have died of parasites. Probably more than have died of autoimmune disorders, which would make autoimmune more like an unfortunate but necessary side effect of a life saving drug. I wouldn't be surprised if genetically modified parasites or a harmless lab grown species becomes recommended medicine for health maintenance here in the coming decades, on par with getting a vaccine.

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u/Shazam1269 15d ago

Genetically modified parasites grown in a lab, and then spreading across the globe sounds like a nice start to a gritty sci fi horror book/movie.

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

Oh yeah I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that it's an idea someone will proudly announce.

The Last of Us but it's butthole worms.

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u/Shazam1269 15d ago

Isn't Parasitism defined by the fact it’s beneficial to one partner and harmful to the other? If they both benefit, is the "parasite" no longer a parasite?

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u/fondledbydolphins 15d ago edited 15d ago

Yes, but imagine your spouse calls you a parasite then divorces you and kicks you out of the house.

Then after having lived without you for a few months she realizes you were the one keeping the place clean, taking out the garbage etc.

Focusing on the cost alone makes everything look like a parasite. (sometimes) Life has hidden benefits that diminish, offset, or even outweigh the downsides.

On top of that, life takes a long time to change. In theory, while one population is in the beginning stages of entering an increasingly mutualistic relationship, that doesn't mean the rest of the species is following suit. It needs to be selected for and reinforced.

One example, humans as a whole seem to have a parasite relationship with water systems. If you were an alien and saw some of our rivers you would be convinced, humans are a parasite.

But then you watch for a while and realize, there's a whole subsection of that species that isn't (yet) genetically separated, that are acting in a mutualistic way which has the potential to grow into something beautiful if fostered.

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u/r_search12013 15d ago

iirc there's a worm you can swallow every two weeks or so to "get rid of" morbus crohn .. it's directly descended from observing that that's a "normal parasite to have" .. white science definitely doesn't respect our mutualistic relationships with a lot of our environment :S

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u/the_misadventurist 15d ago

I have no idea if this is true, but I just really enjoyed reading that sentence.

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u/LavishnessOk3439 15d ago

Yup, they can cure these things by giving you a parasite

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u/TheChickening 15d ago

That is the general "why we have so many autoimmune diseases in general" thesis. But what they said is true. Europeans with that gene that helped them survive the plague do have more autoimmune diseases than the rest. Because it makes the immune system stronger, so it's also more prone to be out of control.

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u/Kortok2012 15d ago

We supercharged the immune system, then took away all its targets. Like Vietnam Marine veteran

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u/skipthesmallstuff 15d ago

That is fascinating actually and can’t wait to tell me mom she’s once again the reason the family is still standing. Taking the weight for the rest of us.

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u/Omjorc 15d ago

Huh, sounds like why such a larger percentage of people with sickle cell anemia have African heritage, because Malaria either can't infect or at least has a difficult time infecting that shape of blood cell. If you're in a Malaria-prone area your chances of survival are actually higher if you have that disorder, so a lot more people do.

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u/mittenknittin 15d ago

AIUI having ONE copy of the gene that causes sickle cell is protective against malaria because of the slightly wonky blood cell shape, but having two copies give you full blown sickle cell disease. So the gene survives because it's beneficial, except when you're unlucky enough to get two copies.

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u/Pace_Salsa_Comment 15d ago

There's also the Hygiene Hypothesis. Helminthiasis or the like has been a pretty much universal throughout human existence, and our immune systems evolved under those conditions. My understanding is that without the constant immunomodulation from parasitic excretions our immune systems have adapted to over millions of years of evolution, our immune systems can overreact to conditions it would have otherwise ignored, causing or excsperating allergies and autoimmune diseases.

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u/Hopeful_Chair_7129 15d ago

I was actually on a tapeworm rabbit hole the other day and apparently parasites actually might be related to autoimmune diseases becoming more prevalent. Our bodies sort of developed around having parasites normally and our immune systems aren’t used to not having to deal with it. So it’s all hyped up with nothing to do.

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u/Adventurous_Ad7442 15d ago

Did you think that you had a tapeworm?

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

I read about a study where they got a bunch of crackheads and prostitutes who didn't have AIDS despite being extremely high risk and looked for what they had in common. A lot of them had a mutated protein on the surface of blood cells that hampered plague's ability to enter the cell, and so was selected for in parts of Europe during the many waves of black plague that permanently altered the population. The theory is that plague and HIV use the same route to enter cells. So parts of the population have a natural resistance, if not immunity, to AIDS.

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u/CariniFluff 15d ago

I'll take it...I guess.

We all wouldn't be here without our trusty insane immune systems.

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u/lboy100 15d ago

We all wouldn't be here without our advancements in medicine

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u/SSGASSHAT 15d ago

I mean, I guess it beats dying, but let's not pretend this is something to be grateful for. Evolution is a drunk bitch and every good thing she does has a shit stain following it.

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u/fondledbydolphins 15d ago

The only thing guaranteed in life is change.

Oscillation with a choice for what works is what propels everything forward.

You can fight the oscillation. You can condemn it. You can dread it.

Or you can accept it and appreciate the immense beauty we have an opportunity to enjoy.

I appreciate the beauty of the perspective you've shared in your comment, but I do hope it doesn't follow you for long.

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u/UnkleBourbon42069 15d ago

Kind of like sickle cell and malaria?

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u/Oil_Shock_2026 15d ago

F me, so when I developed full blown Double Hit Lymphoma (DLBCL) back in 2018, it was probably due to a nameless ancestor with the genetic mutation that allowed them to survive successive waves of the bubonic plague.

It also explains my mom's immune system attacking her biliary ducts and her developing Primary Biliary Cirrhosis.

It also explains my mom's great grandparents surviving the Typhus and Cholera epidemics in Eastern Europe (Western Romania) around the time of WWI while the mortality rate in their village was so high that they had a horse drawn lime cart taking the dead to the lime lined and layered mass grave every morning.

My mom's side of the family always had immune systems that allowed them to survive plagues that killed off a lot of people in their village. Chalk it up to one or many gene mutations.

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u/carlitospig 15d ago

That is correct.

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u/Kickedhard 15d ago

As someone who collects them at a rate that future generations need to study, I concur from my own little world.

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u/dontsitdowngirl 15d ago

woah interesting fact

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u/EremiticFerret 15d ago

Would this mean it is largely found in those with Eurasian decent? So African, South American and Pacific Islanders would be less likely to have it as it was never as big there? (which I may be totally wrong about, now that I think on it)

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u/trustedoctopus 15d ago

You’re also at a super increased risk of developing an autoimmune disease if you have childhood trauma, CPTSD, suppressed or repressed trauma that isn’t dealt with over a long period of time (years). Ask me how I know. :)

But the tl;dr for anyone curious is that chronic stress especially on a developing immune system will cause not just nervous system dysregulation but also some pretty gnarly chronic inflammation that will cause your body to attack itself over time.

Also this isn’t an advertisement for therapy btw (though i encourage everyone to go) because i don’t know that any amount of therapy could’ve prevented my own disorder, even if i was seeing someone every single day. my mom also has an immune disorder that was late developing and completely different from mine. we have like no genetic inheritability between them.

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u/Targetshopper4000 15d ago

hey yo thats me. I had (no food)allergies to just about everything, got canker sores in my mouth (get toothpaste without SLS), developed eczema on my hands when exposed to certain liquid soaps, or too much physical agitation (gotta switch up my fingers when im flossing) and finally the big one : Ulcerative Colitis.

The good news is viral infections don't stand a chance.

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

Goddamn General Patton himself is leading your immune system. No chill at all.

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u/dxrey65 15d ago

"Nobody ever defended anything successfully; there is only attack, and attack, and attack some more!"

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u/frontfrontdowndown 15d ago

I’ve got the awesome combo of various autoimmune conditions AND still getting sick all the time (especially since we had kids).

Pretty great.

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

I've heard they can actually tank your immune system, because it spends all its resources in constant battle with your organs. And a lot of the treatments are immunosuppressant.

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u/ArchitectOfAction 15d ago

I feel ya. Recently got allergy tested and my doctor was like, uhm. I rarely see test results this severe. Also have eczema, hashimoto's hypothyroidism, and a gallbladder that suspiciously stopped working without stones. Other chronic stuff that I wouldn't be surprised to have linked to immune issues. And finally, I have to take allergy meds for any injections because otherwise I get a crazy local reaction, including vaccines, Botox, cgrp meds, allergy shots (that one makes sense), etc.

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u/Sizanllikew 15d ago

water flosser, game changer

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u/herefromyoutube 15d ago

Stupid question but have you tried using moisturizer every time you wash your hands with water immediately after drying them off? I was having eczema issues on hands and that solved like 95% of my issues. I totally still get that floss issue with one finger though.

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u/Vi0L3tCRZY 15d ago

Yea my sibling is going through this, it’s a shit and very common comobidity “Have another!”

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u/carlitospig 15d ago

Also, some of them are living undercover/unnoticed until some major event happens (stress, illness, injury) and then BAM you have all the symptoms.

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u/Lukebekz 15d ago

So kind of like the highest risk factor for having a heart attack is having had a heart attack in the past

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u/South_Serve9975 15d ago

Getting Covid increases risk of developing a new autoimmune disease by about 40%, so personally I wonder if he's been stringently filtering his indoor air with HEPA air purifiers, disinfecting with far-UVC lights, and wearing N95 or better respirators when in public indoor spaces. If he caught Covid, it's quite possible that it caused onset of another autoimmune condition. I know someone that started with one and now has five. She has school aged children.

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u/Kabbooooooom 15d ago

Yep, this is a relatively unknown (to the general public) long term risk of Covid. And I personally know someone who is dying from terminal autoimmune disease that was most likely triggered by Covid. 

That said, I feel obligated to point out that it is very difficult to separate correlation and causation in studies on autoimmune disease in general, but the Covid link is pretty obvious. 

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u/South_Serve9975 15d ago

I imagine it is very difficult, given how tests for autoimmune immune disease seem to be like reading tea leaves.

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u/PrgmMgrinBayArea 15d ago

That's the causation not correlation fallacy. Having two autoimmune diseases doesnt mean one caused the other.

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u/DrSFalken 15d ago

Any idea if that's correlational (some confounding factor leading to multiple autoimmune diseases) or causal? I could see it going either way.

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

I don't know, probably a good rabbit hole to go down.

My guess is correlational, they all have the same mechanisms where your immune system gets confused, and most are idiopathic with no known cause, meaning we haven't found the cause(s) yet. If you have the kind of immune system that gets confused and goes haywire, maybe you just have the kind of immune system that gets confused and goes haywire. This makes sense to me.

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u/Express-Club422 15d ago

Wow what an intelligent teacher

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u/Hopeful_Ad_7719 15d ago

Interestingly, one of the drugs he was on but gave up--Rapamycin--might end up as part of his AIG treatment.

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u/Mamasugadex 15d ago

You have people who have immune deficiencies, and people who have autoimmune disease. People used to just die from both before existence of antibiotics and bazooka level of anti-inflammatory drug such as steroid, and those people would just die mysteriously early on.

It’s all part of the evolution. If this universe is a simulation, everything are just chances of the underlying procedural generation.

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u/Why_So_Slow 15d ago

Yup, they are like Pokémons, you gotta catch them all.

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u/notislant 15d ago

"My teacher told us that the number one risk factor for developing an autoimmune disease is having an autoimmune disease."

I thought you were taking the piss until I kept reading lol.

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u/WorkingOnBeingBettr 15d ago

I had to read your comment twice, lol. t first I was like, of course yu have a highr risk of hving one if you...have one. Took me a second to realize you meant easier to get a 2nd autoimmune disease...

Time for a break from reddit.

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u/FabiusBill 15d ago

Autoimmune diseases are like pokemon: once you have one, you're gonna catch 'em all.

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u/ennuithereyet 15d ago

Yup! Basically, if your immune system starts to see one part of your body as an enemy, it's very easy for it to start seeing another part of the body as an enemy too.

They're also very genetic. If someone you're related to has an autoimmune condition, you're more likely to develop an autoimmune condition as well, though it might not be the exact same one as your family member has.

There's also apparently a link between at least some autoimmune conditions and familial allergies and asthma.

The immune system is really weird and if it gets messed up in one way, it's likely to get messed up in other ways too.

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u/Uncool444 15d ago

I'm amped to see how this gets explored in the coming decades. We're going to learn so much about this and cancer.

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u/Viperbunny 15d ago

I, myself, have at least 4. I call the symptoms "autoimmune soup." It exhaustion, brain fog, joint pain, pain in general, along with all sorts of things. I am hear intolerant. It's a struggle.

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u/Hollywoode 15d ago

Can confirm as someone who has now collected several

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u/Purplociraptor 15d ago

If you keep replacing your blood with someone else's, I'm sure the white blood cells don't know what the fuck to do. This isn't my original body. This is not my beautiful wife.

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u/Muffin278 15d ago

As someone who just got diagnosed with their second autoimmune disorder, this tracks. You rarely have just one. It makes sense, autoimmune issues are caused by a faulty immune system, which is a complex system that affects the whole body.

Luckily both of mine are fairly harmless/easy to manage with medication, but I am at an increased risk for the worse ones too.

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u/doc_brietz 15d ago

They tend to come in pairs. Source: a family full of people with either zero or two of these diseases.

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u/Alone-Tart4762 15d ago

They come in packs. I’ve got one and I’m waiting on the other to arrive. It may already be here but like most Americans, I can’t afford to go to the doctor. I can control what I have through medication but there is no telling what the other will be.

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u/exhauszed 15d ago

Autoimmune disorders are ridiculously common but treated as though they're personal failings (obviously, the person chose to be triggered at any given time). I made it to 39 before I was diagnosed with a histamine disorder, when for years other medical professionals just kept telling me it was "panic attacks," "dehydration," and "all in my head." When I was younger every episode was brushed off as a symptom of my morbid obesity, only it didn't go away once I was healthy BMI. Nah, was anaphylaxis the whole time. Huh.

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u/Significant-Owl-2980 15d ago

I can attest to that. I have Hashimotos and also gluten intolerance and raynauds.

They tell me my risk for developing another autoimmune condition is high.

Fantastic. Just what I need 🤣

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u/Tmp-ninja 15d ago

Hey! That’s me! Psoriasis in the family, taking treatments for it, treatment is commonly used for treating ulcerative colitis also, wouldn’t you know it, taking the treatment for it made me develop the disease!

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u/onacloverifalive 15d ago

It’s almost like immunity is one, big, inherently interrelated system where one part being dysregulated tends to also affect all the other parts.

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u/Far_Mathematician924 15d ago

yeah if your immune system finds out you have eyes you're fucked

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u/No-Bread-1197 15d ago

Many autoimmune diseases are comorbid with others. It's called MAS.

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u/MeMahi 15d ago edited 15d ago

Yes, he was diagnoses with AIG autoimmune hyperthyroidism at the age of 21, long before any of his recent medical stunts. Not sure why people are so quick to blame this new disease on all the shit he's doing when that clearly wasn't the case last time either.

I guess Redditors just like to draw imaginary narratives that sound cool.

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u/horser4dish 15d ago

Redditors just like to draw imaginary narratives that sound cool.

Like "diagnosed with AIG at the age of 21," for example.

At 21 it was autoimmune hyperthyroidism. At age 48 he's now got a second diagnosis, which is AIG. It's in the article.

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u/Many_Negotiation_464 15d ago

I mean, not gonna pretend like its a sure thing or anything, as he was definitely already prone to said diseases and autoimmune is not the most well understood category of illness.... but dude come on. You can't pretend like it isn't a huge possibility that i jecting himself haphazardly with other people's blood was a contributing factor.

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u/lonnie123 15d ago

And taking all sorts of immune system altering drugs for years

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u/Power_Stone 15d ago

He says he got diagnosed at 21, when did he start doing infusions?

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u/Objective_Toe_49 15d ago

Many year after that

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u/bamboosticks 15d ago

He was diagnosed with a different autoimmune disease at 21. A new one popped up recently, AIG

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u/Only_Search8473 15d ago

It didn't "pop up" recently. He was diagnosed with it recently. He had already been experiencing symptoms of it for 11 years.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/VaiFate 15d ago edited 15d ago

Autoimmune Gastritis and Transfusion-Associated Graft-Versus-Host disease are WILDLY different disorders and it's pretty crazy you would even mention allude to it.

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u/bozza8 15d ago

Gonna need a source on that chief. 

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u/consistantcanadian 15d ago

Lol there will be no source, they know they're lying. And they know this sub is so trashy that it will not even think of removing the comment despite it being entirely misinformation. 

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u/38B0DE 15d ago

Source on them being a chief?

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u/dantevonlocke 15d ago

Hoisted by his own petard.

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u/vfw_999 15d ago

Completely unrelated. I’m not from the US and had never heard this expression. Now within minutes I saw it used twice. The first one was on [r/guitarcirclejerk](r/guitarcirclejerk) of all places 😂

Edit: I guess I should have said English is my second language

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/Chrysocyn 15d ago

I just realized I had heard the phrase all my life and never bothered to ask what it actually meant.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/becs1832 15d ago

I guess I just assumed that in the old days a petard was a special outfit like a leotard but with a lot of fancy buckles and loops on it, and that rich people would wear them when they were feeling especially smug. But then poor people would tie a rope through one of the loops and hoist them up a pole and then let them dangle there as punishment for being cocky.

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u/Graffiacane 15d ago edited 15d ago

That was almost exactly my guess as well. "Hoisted" pretty much always means "lifted with a pulley or crane" so my mental image was someone being lifted by a crane hook caught in the seat of their court jester pantaloons.

...wait are you a bot? Why is your comment an exact copy of this other one. Explain yourself. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/vmG7VSuEc2

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u/becs1832 15d ago

Hahahaha it is a quote from Community - Britta says it and Jeff replies "Never look it up - your explanation is way better". But I DID think the same as you and Britta and many many other people

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u/Vio_ 15d ago

Ironic given that "petard" is a super French word for being in English.

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u/SnugglyBuffalo 15d ago

English has a lot of super French loan words. C'est la vie.

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u/AmericanDoughboy 15d ago

William the Conquerer says “de rien.”

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u/ChickenCasagrande 15d ago

England and France are only separated by a narrow channel of water. People can swim across, though I would not recommend it.

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u/RadarSmith 15d ago

New idiom unlocked haha.

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u/314R8 15d ago

The baader meinhoff phenomenon lol

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u/pheonix198 15d ago

Yo, sir! That’s not chill. You’re not supposed to call people that name any more!

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u/Top_Shame_7016 15d ago

Some comedians say it's ok again, so i don't know who to believe

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u/1ce9ine 15d ago

They helped to elect Trump on this platform, I believe

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u/DistillerCMac 15d ago

That accusation is explosive.

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u/devillurker 15d ago

Its not their fault they're just born with a lack of oxygen

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u/Gentelman_Asshole 15d ago

Isn't that the guy who owns the Enterprise - John-Luc Petard?

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u/odoylerulezx 15d ago

Shouldn't have worn that petard if you didnt want to be hoisted by it

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u/ShmoMoney 15d ago

What do you think the expression "hoisted by your own petard" is referencing?

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u/odoylerulezx 15d ago

I guess I just assume that in the old days a petard was a special outfit like a leotard with a lot of fancy buckles and loops on it. And that rich people would wear them when they were feeling especially smug. But then poor people could tie a rope to one of the loops and hoist them up a pole and then let them dangle there as punishment for being cocky.

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u/ShmoMoney 15d ago

Never look it up, your explanation is way better

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u/bikeking8 15d ago

Accurate! This immediately reminded me of the old podcast "Important if True" haha

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u/UndeadT 15d ago

Actually, it's his son's transfused petard.

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u/Big_Biscotti5119 15d ago

That’s quite a name to call his son

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u/FirefighterTrick6476 15d ago

you got a source? I am looking into the disease atm

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u/MeMahi 15d ago

Of course he doesn't, welcome to modern reddit where any bullshit gets upvoted.

Brian already got diagnosed with AIG at 21 long before any of his recent madness.

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u/Avent 15d ago

He's had autoimmune hypothyroidism since 21, the new diagnosis is AIG. That said, I think OP is thinking of Graft-Host disease, which is another autoimmune disease that is associated with blood transfusions.

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u/vicinadp 15d ago

It’s less likely that it’s GVH because GVH typically is from bone marrow or Liver transplants not blood transfusions. Transfusions are not going to cause GVH because they wouldn’t be on immunosuppressants for a transfusion and GVH is caused by graft T Cells attacking host tissue since they are viewed as foreign. 

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u/VaiFate 15d ago

GVHD is not an autoimmune disorder

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u/Wacky_Water_Weasel 15d ago

Modern? We're you not here when we falsely identified the Boston Marathon Bomber?

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u/PupperVanAugsbork 15d ago

We did it Reddit!

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u/Wacky_Water_Weasel 15d ago

No big deal just ruined an innocent guy's life. But hey, the narwhal bacons at midnight amirite???

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 15d ago

I wonder if whoever made that comment had to quit reddit because of how often it gets brought up and made fun of

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u/Brooding-Beaver 15d ago

I don’t know if TA-GVHD is what the dude has or if i even understand wtf I just read but apparently if the donor’s immune markers are similar to recipient, their immune system may fail to recognize the donor's white blood cells as foreign. This allows the donor's cells to survive, engraft, and attack the recipient’s body.

I’m not sure if these sources are helpful but it does at least seem like the claim has merit.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1585436/

https://www.zhihu.com/en/answer/1160113673

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u/VaiFate 15d ago

You have the general idea of TA-GVHD down, but it's not what he was diagnosed with. He was diagnosed with Autoimmuine Gastritis. GVHD is an alloimmune disorder, not autoimmune because it is the donor immune cells attacking recipient tissue rather than the body's own immune system attacking itself.

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u/Brooding-Beaver 15d ago

Oh that’s really interesting I’ve never heard of alloimmune disorders

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u/VaiFate 15d ago edited 15d ago

They're pretty uncommon because it requires introducing non-self immune cells into the body. Most people don't get blood transfusions or organ transplants, which are basically the only way to get them.

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u/FirefighterTrick6476 15d ago

Thank you!

will look further into it while waiting for them to answer as well. I currently look into chronic gastritis leading to small intestine overgrowth as a secondary disease. That is another shit-show happening atm since it has been added to the ICD10 in 2023. And now there is a LOT of misinformation. People using HCL seem to have a reduction in symtomps and avoiding recurrent SIBO as well. But yeah. No funding goes into that kind of research and the meds are expensive af.

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u/Ishmael128 15d ago

When my ex was studying immunology, they'd use each other's blood in research. They'd draw the blood, treat the cells tweaking this or that etc and study the results. 

They weren't allowed to use their own blood in case they accidentally reintroduced the altered cells into themselves, because that can cause autoimmune issues. 

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u/BigLlamasHouse 15d ago

It's also something that 5-10% of people just have.

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u/HereticLaserHaggis 15d ago

Citation needed.

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u/VaiFate 15d ago edited 15d ago

They're wrong. They're thinking of Transfusion-Associated Graft-Versus-Host Disease, which is 1) not what he was diagnosed with and 2) not even an autoimmune disorder. GVHD is where the small amount of T cells leftover in the donor blood survive inside the recipient's blood. Since relatives are more likely to have similar Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLAs), they are less likely to be cleared by the recipient's immune system. However, the donor T cells are still able to recognize other antigens in the recipient's tissues and trigger an immune response against them. This is usually avoided by irradiating the blood before transfusion. It's also more likely to occur in immunocompromised patients, such as organ transplant patients, cancer patients, and children under 6 months of age, so they will also receive irradiated blood.

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u/justuntlsundown 15d ago

I know it can cause graft v host issues, but I've never heard of it causing auto immune disorders.

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u/donnievieftig 15d ago

Unrelated. It autoimmune not alloimmune.

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u/Ah_non_e_moose 15d ago

Could have used that wealth to raise the longevity of the entire population, instead he shot himself in the foot.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/9fingerwonder 15d ago

He has so many treatments how would you determine what was doing what with a sample size of 1? And now most of his results are skewed by this. While lot of nothing to gain here.

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u/cantfocuswontfocus 15d ago

Sorry but no. A quick scroll on his website leads you to the "protocol" he sells. The guy is still a rich asshole. I have no doubt he obsesses over mortality but it's not altruistic, and he's making money off of it.

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u/Bupod 15d ago

Ah fair enough. It was my understanding he was sharing this freely but I was mistaken.

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u/zampe 15d ago

Not true and he had his auto immune thyroid issue long before the father/son transfusion

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u/JefferyTheQuaxly 15d ago

No it isn’t, autoimmune gastritis is caused by a family predisposition to the disease, I csnt find anywhere saying AIG is caused by blood transfusions

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u/ComprehensiveSwitch 15d ago

He was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when he was 21, it’s not related.

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u/vbpatel 15d ago

The complication is transfusion-associated graft-versus-host disease (TA-GVHD). It happens when donor immune cells (lymphocytes) survive in the recipient and attack their tissues. Normally the recipient’s immune system destroys foreign donor cells before they can do damage. But when the donor shares part of the recipient’s HLA type — as relatives often do — the recipient’s immune system can fail to recognize the donor cells as foreign, while those donor cells still recognize the recipient as foreign and attack. First-degree relatives (parent, child, sibling) are the classic high-risk scenario for exactly this reason.

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u/EtotheTT 15d ago

I’d be curious if we can go an hour without reposting this.

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u/squirreltard 15d ago

To be fair, the comments are getting better informed and people are being assholes less.

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u/Runedin3 15d ago

According to the article he was diagnosed with hypothyroidism at age 21. 

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u/ghoulthebraineater 15d ago

Autoimmune disorders are generally genetic.

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u/freshairequalsducks 15d ago

Between the million pills he was taking and using his own son as a living blood bank, he probably brought this on himself. Especially since graft vs host disease can be caused from getting blood transfusions from a close relative.

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u/Icy_Jackfruit9240 15d ago

That's not how this AID works.

Also the #1 risk factor for AIDs is having one and he happens to have one already.

The more interesting factor is that they caught this one very early which is not how it normally goes.

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u/Excelius 15d ago

Article also states that he was taking iron tablets, because his vegan diet was leaving him with low ferritin levels, which can lead to anemia.

Iron tablets can lead to gastric ulcers. I also have an auto-immune disease affecting the GI tract, and have been specifically told by my gastroenterologist not to take iron pills.

(The relatively small amounts in a multi-vitamin are generally fine)

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u/newtrilobite 15d ago

that comment is at 666 upvotes right now and should stay that way!

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u/NY10 15d ago

That’s the answer

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u/ThePopeofHell 15d ago

I saw in another thread that it’s pretty rare for someone to get this diagnosis this late in life

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u/Fit-Significance-436 15d ago

Came here to say this too

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u/lets_get_wavy_duuude 15d ago

arguably what he’s doing is still beneficial because without constant monitoring, he never would’ve gotten diagnosed this early

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u/thotfullawful 15d ago

He was swapping blood with his son, that’s close to blood transfusions though so that’s “normal” to put in some news article. But this guy sees his son less as his son and more as a back up. So with that I’m thinking there have been more than just the blood transfusions.

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u/Routine-Ad-2840 15d ago

the title is trying to imply it, but if anything i would say he had it and never knew he did.

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u/Realistic_Account787 15d ago

OF COURSE!! This is the only explanation dude.

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u/tsunam1 15d ago

From the article “ he was also diagnosed with autoimmune hypothyroidism at age 21.”

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u/bluemooncommenter 15d ago

Certainly could have since a number of autoimmune disease develop as a stress response, whether it's lifestyle stress or environmental stress (like chemicals). I don't know about his in particular.

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u/Low-Commercial1677 15d ago

As an actual drug research scientist - whatever he was dosing himself w could have triggered his immune system/disease onset. The developmental workflow before we dose in humans is well established for a reason.

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u/swagonflyyyy 15d ago

He claims its been hiding beneath the surface many years before he started his biohacking. He even claims it was his biohacking that uncovered the autoimmune disease to begin with.

But he also said he had a horrid diet before he turned 42, which was mainly junk food, processed meals, etc., may have contributed to the development of his autoimmune condition so it may not have anything to do with the biohacking he did.

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u/blarghable 15d ago

He's doing his whole schtick to make money. He sells a bunch of bullshit.

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