Bryan JohnsonFounder of Blueprint and Don't Die

I had an extreme allergic reaction

28 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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1:03

In this video, Bryan Johnson explains his attempt to rejuvenate facial volume using the Renuva fat transfer procedure. He outlines the natural loss of facial fat and collagen with age—about 1% collagen loss per year, leading to a 75% reduction by age 80. Lacking sufficient autologous fat for transfer, he and his doctor opted for donor fat, which resulted in a severe allergic reaction. Due to this reaction, the treatment was discontinued, despite the technology’s promise for facial volumization.

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I had an extreme allergic reaction. We know that in our youth, we have a lot of facial fat that over time, it lessens. In fact, in your 20s, you start losing 1% of your collagen every year. So by the time you're 80 years old, you've lost 75% what you had in your early 20s. We wondered, could I rejuvenate my face so I had much more volume? We wanted to figure out if we could use legitimate rejuvenation technologies to restore volume in my face. I tried Renuva, which is fat transfer. Now, ideally, you want to use your own fat. The problem was I didn't have enough fat on my body to do a transfer. And the doctor was concerned that if we tried to extract any fat I had, I would leave an indentation in my body. And so I used a donor's fat. When I did this, I had an extreme allergic reaction. Because of the allergic reaction, we discontinued it. Now, sadly, it was a promising technology, and we thought it might be a really good path to revolumize, but because I reacted so profoundly, we just couldn't continue it.