Bryan Johnson discovered severe jugular vein stenosis during a routine MRI, a blockage restricting blood flow to his brain that could cause stroke or seizure. He's now doing intensive posture correction and physical therapy, arguing that standard medical care misses these dangerous conditions and that screening should be routine.
I put 15 pound weights, one on each hand, put the elbows back, roll the shoulders forward while trying to keep my neck straight, and then bring the shoulders up and out.
I invested in this company that was doing extensive health and wellness testing. There was a substantially large percentage of people who found a life threatening time bomb. And it was always such a shocking event because the people would inevitably say, I just did my full annual physical. My doctor said, I'm all good, I great. So when I started measuring myself, I wanted to know what was going to be my first time bomb. And when I did find it, how bad is it going to be? In November, I had an MRI scan done just for preventative cancer screening. I found that I had a jugular vein stenosis. And we had these two big veins on the side of our necks. They are the highways for blood. So the MRI showed that I had severe stenosis, severe cloggage, and it was causing intracranial pressures. My team and I went on this kind of code red alert. We didn't know how serious it was. Was I going to have a seizure, was I going to have a stroke at any moment? How bad was it? And so we did a bunch of additional measurements. I have an ultrasound machine at the house, in the clinic, we did ultrasound measurements looking at actual flow. We did more MRIs. We did an MRV looking at all the vasculature of my upper chest, neck and head. We did two different tests looking at my eye. Your eyes have an insight into intracranial pressure for your brain. So anyways, I did all this testing, I started going on medications and we became expert at this given thing. And meanwhile, I'm doing PT every day to try to correct my posture. So I now am obsessed with posture because it so dramatically affects the flow. But it's really, I guess, like this is not a part of normal care. Like this has existed my whole life, no one has ever found it. It's like, why don't we know more about these things? Why aren't these standard, routine things for all of us?
