The software entrepreneur who has famously splashed out millions to “bio-hack” his body and reverse his aging has hit an ugly snag.
Bryan Johnson, 47, said an attempt to inject fat into his cheeks—in hopes it’d give him a more youthful appearance—induced an allergic reaction that left his face significantly bloated and red.
The injection—nicknamed by Johnson as “project baby face”—was a failure.
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“Immediately following the injections, my face began to blow up,” Johnson said. “And then it got worse, and worse, and worse until I couldn’t even see.”
Johnson said the allergic reaction began within 30 minutes of his procedure. He shared that he was set to be interviewed by a Bloomberg reporter right after receiving the injections, so he called the journalist to ask if they were “trained to perform any life-saving actions.”
Life-saving measures, or anything close to it, were ultimately not necessary. Johnson said his severely swollen face—which rendered him nearly unrecognizable—remained for about a week before it subsided and his jawline returned.
Johnson hinted that he may try out another procedure to alter the look of his face, which he conceded himself appears “gaunt.”
“People thought I was on the brink of death,” Johnson said of his face.
Johnson regularly calls out junk food companies and unhealthy practices, and has gone to extreme measures to try and turn back the clock—like removing all of his body’s plasma last month and replacing it with Albumin.
The Utah native, who Fortune reports was worth an estimated $400 million as of last year, chalked up his most recent scary incident to the cost of challenging Father Time.
“Seven days later my face was back to normal and we were back in the trenches reformulating plans for our next attempt,” he said. “Building a product is one thing; being the product is a whole different thing.”
