Tech millionaire Bryan Johnson's face 'blows up' after he takes fat injections to look young

Bryan Johnson said the swelling caused by an allergic reaction took a week to subside. (Image credit: @bryanjohnson_/Instagram)

Tech millionaire entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who has been experimenting on himself to reverse aging, recently revealed that his face had "blown up" due to an allergic reaction after he injected a donor's fat into it to appear young. Sharing pictures of his puffy and swollen face on Instagram, the 47-year-old wrote that it took seven days for his face to return to normalcy.

"Immediately following the injections, my face began to blow up. And then it got worse, and worse, and worse until I couldn’t even see. It was a severe allergic reaction," Johnson wrote. "Seven days later my face was back to normal."

Explaining why he injected fat from a donor into his face, Johnson said that a part of his longevity process was to restrict his calorie intake but it led to him losing a lot of fat, especially from his face. "My daily calorie consumption dropped from 2,500 to 1,950. As a result, I got really lean and lost a lot of fat—especially in my face. My biomarkers were improving, but I looked gaunt. People thought I was on the brink of death," he said.

As Blueprint—his longevity project—grew into a global movement, the scrutiny increased and Johnson and his team discovered that facial fat is pretty important for how people perceive youth. "It didn’t matter how good my biomarkers were if I didn’t have face fat," the tech millionaire said.

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So, he and his team started “Project Baby Face,” to explore whether they could restore lost volume to his face. They selected a therapy that included injecting a fat-derived extracellular matrix to restore volume by stimulating Johnson's body’s natural fat growth. There was, however, one problem: "I didn’t have enough fat on my body to extract." So, they used a donor.

But, the setback has not deterred Johnson who has returned to the table with his team of experts to work on the next therapy to look younger.