Bryan Johnson never had anemia and never felt unwell. What he had was ferritin, the body’s iron store, that stayed low for years despite diet changes and oral iron supplements. His medical team kept digging. Blood tests, an upper endoscopy and stomach biopsies eventually turned up autoimmune gastritis.
Johnson, 48, announced the diagnosis on X, along with his plan to help “solve” an incurable condition. “When AIG is discovered today, standard medical care concedes defeat, stating that nothing can be done except managing the condition, no matter how awful or lethal the effects,” he wrote. In another line he said, “Current medical standards treat AIG as something to be managed, not resolved. We want to change that.”
How it was found
Unilad reported more detail on the workup. After a colonoscopy ruled out colon cancer, Johnson’s doctors ran a bidirectional endoscopy to examine the rest of his gastrointestinal tract. His results showed elevated anti-parietal-cell antibodies, which steered them toward the diagnosis. Testing had already shown he did not have H. pylori, the bacterial infection behind most gastritis.
Johnson described the disease as affecting parietal cells in the upper stomach, which secrete the hydrochloric acid that helps break down food. He also said he believes there were early signs he failed to spot, and that he had been through years of stress, weight gain and chronic depression before an autoimmune process affected his thyroid and stomach lining. He claims only two to five percent of people have the condition.
What doctors say
Gastroenterologist Felice Schnoll-Sussman of Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian told Healthline the condition can be missed “even in someone who is getting very thorough medical care.” It is often quiet for a long time, she said, and when symptoms do appear they are nonspecific: fatigue, poor concentration, reduced stamina, indigestion. By the time anemia shows up, some stomach damage may be permanent. Her advice for unexplained iron deficiency, with or without anemia, was to consider autoimmune atrophic gastritis and run an appropriate evaluation.
Ashkan Farhadi, a gastroenterologist at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center, was more measured. “The overwhelming majority of these cases are asymptomatic,” he said, and the condition is rarely life threatening. He described care as “damage control”: replacing missing nutrients and watching for complications. Because there is a small chance of gastric cancer down the road, he said, an endoscopy every 2 to 5 years is sometimes recommended.
For Johnson, that means B12 injections or iron infusions. Unilad reported he recently received a 1,000 mg Monoferric iron infusion, and his team will routinely monitor ferritin, iron, B12, chromogranin A and gastrin.
There is no approved cure. Johnson said he will examine immune cells and inflammatory signals in his stomach to work out which pathways drive his disease, while acknowledging the evidence is “investigational preclinical evidence at best.” Schnoll-Sussman said earlier treatment, before permanent damage, is a growing area of interest, though that research is still preclinical. Anyone with unexplained fatigue or low iron should see a doctor.
Sources
- Bryan Johnson Diagnosed With Autoimmune Gastritis
- Symptoms of 'silent' autoimmune disease as biohacker Bryan Johnson reveals incurable diagnosis
