After his father died of a massive heart attack at the age of 66, Johnjay Van Es started doing literally everything he could to keep his ticker tickin’.
The congenial Phoenix radio host shed about 160 pounds, transforming himself from morbidly obese to impressively sleek, with just 12% body fat. He also embarked on an international biohacking journey, sourcing stem cells in Mexico and canned hydrogen water from Australia.
It takes a lot of wealth for Van Es’s good health. He estimated that he drops over $100,000 annually on everything from $25,000 natural killer cells to $3,000 unlimited red light therapy sessions.
“Oh, God, that’s sick,” Van Es, 57, told The Post as we counted the costs together. “I’ve never tallied it up.”
Van Es’s latest obsession is a controversial $7,500 blood “cleansing” technique called plasmapheresis, which involves removing plasma that may contain harmful substances like autoantibodies or toxins and replacing it with healthy fluid.
Plasmapheresis is a form of apheresis, which has long been used to treat autoimmune disorders, certain cancers, blood disorders like sickle cell disease, transplant rejection and high cholesterol.
But the anti-aging benefits for healthy people are unproven. That hasn’t stopped bold-faced names like Orlando Bloom and biohacker Bryan Johnson, both 48, from sending their blood through the spin cycle.
“If we want to use the term ‘biohacking’ or ‘blood purification for lifestyle purposes’ or for ‘detoxification,’ we have to realize that there are very few evidence-based trials,” Dr. Stefan Bornstein, director of the Medical Clinic and Policlinic III at the University Hospital Dresden in Germany, told The Post.
How does plasmapheresis work?
Most biohackers have done an IV drip for a wellness boost. That’s when a needle is inserted into the arm to infuse the blood with nutrients.
Plasmapheresis, also known as therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE), is a similar concept.
Two IV lines are typically used for TPE. One line slowly draws blood from the body to an apheresis machine that filters out the plasma.
“It looks like an old-school tape recorder, but with blood spinning around,” Van Es said of the equipment.
The second line returns the remaining blood components — red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets — along with a replacement substance, like protein-rich albumin, to the body.
When all is said and spun, patients are left with a large pouch of their original, yellow, sticky plasma.
Its toxicity is up for interpretation. Johnson — who follows a highly controlled and closely monitored regimen — boasted last year that his TPE operator called his “liquid gold” plasma “the cleanest he’s ever seen.” It was so pure that he “couldn’t bring himself to throw it away,” Johnson crowed.
Who could benefit from the procedure?
Johnson probably doesn’t need TPE, but others might find it helpful.
Bornstein — whose clinic in Germany performs 10,000 apheresis treatments annually — said it has the potential to remove age-related proteins, lower cholesterol and other lipids and reduce heavy metals and microplastics, ubiquitous plastic fragments believed to harm health.
“Most of these studies show positive effects and positive associations,” he said, “but [they] are not fully showing or are not a proof of a correlation in larger outcome studies at this point.”
Dr. Keith Smigiel, who oversees Van Es’s TPE, has found through patient testing that the procedure cuts cholesterol and purges mold and other environmental toxins.
His patients are often highly educated and affluent. Lately, he’s seen a lot of married, mid-30s, zombie-like Millennials struggling with fatigue and brain fog as they raise young kids.
Smigiel typically recommends longevity enthusiasts undergo a two- to three-hour session every six months.
The $7,500 treatment is proving so popular that he’s considering getting another apheresis machine for his Scottsdale clinic, ReGen Pain & Wellness.
“When you talk about regenerative medicine or longevity medicine, I look at it in the perspective of quality of life. Are we extending patients’ lives? I’m not really sure. That’s not really my goal,” Smigiel told The Post.
“We’re just simply giving the body a chance to kind of heal itself by removing the toxic burdens out of the blood.”
What does it feel like?
Some biohacking tools are exciting and interactive — with TPE, you might feel the sharp pinch of the needles and then some fatigue as you sit still for hours.
Smigiel likened it to a “cross-country flight” with a “jet lag” sensation that subsided within two days.
Famed biohacker Gary Brecka, 55, experienced “a profound sense of clarity and calm, almost a zen-like state” after TPE.
“Colors seemed sharper, my focus improved, and my energy and sleep quality noticeably increased for several days to weeks after,” Brecka told The Post.
There are a few types of apheresis — plateletpheresis removes platelets from the blood, leukapheresis strips white blood cells, and stem cell apheresis extracts stem cells.
Besides TPE, Brecka has endured immunoapheresis to filter environmental contaminants and Aethlon hemo-detox to remove circulating viruses and cancer-promoting particles.
“It’s not a magic button, and it isn’t designed to be,” Brecka said about blood-purifying techniques.
“Think of it as an internal detox and reset, clearing the bloodstream so your immune system and organs can function at full capacity again,” he continued. “You may not walk out of the clinic feeling like a new person that minute, but you will have done something profoundly beneficial for your biology and longevity.”
Does it really work?
While discussing the potential benefits of TPE, Smigiel pointed to a major study that found that exchanging plasma with a healthy substitute significantly slowed cognitive and functional decline in people with moderate Alzheimer’s disease.
California-based health coach and biohacker Natalia Naila encouraged her Russian-native mother, Venera, to do TPE in part because she is predisposed to Alzheimer’s.
She’s also suffered the effects of inflammation, diabetes, Lyme disease, toxins and erratic biomarkers.
Naila noticed an immediate change in her 67-year-old mom after the May session — “she felt incredible, very light, clear and noticeably more relaxed.”
“I stayed with her for two nights at the hotel, and I observed that she slept much deeper and more quietly than she had before,” added Naila, host of the “Wellness is Life” podcast.
“She had previously tended to toss and turn, and her breathing used to be heavier at night, but after the procedure, her sleep quality appeared to improve significantly.”
There were some side effects — bruising where the needles were placed, increased urination and a mild itching sensation in her nose — but they weren’t enough to stop her from going again.
She’s returning in January, and Naila will get hooked up, too.
What’s next?
Johnson brought TPE to the mainstream in 2023 when he donated a liter of plasma to his father, Richard, as his son, Talmage, gifted him a liter.
He found “no benefits” to the tri-generational transfusions, but his dad experienced a “dramatic” effect.
Johnson switched to TPE with albumin instead of family juice, a procedure he was still doing as of May.
Though the plasma triangulation was a bust for Johnson, Van Es is keen to try it with his 19-year-old son.
Van Es hasn’t felt any side effects of TPE, even as one pal nearly passed out. (Bornstein said people with low blood pressure may benefit from eating beforehand and replacing lost fluids.)
“I don’t really notice that much difference,” Van Es admitted after his second TPE session, which occurred this month. “I feel, generally, pretty good.”
It’s unclear if the procedure is slowing the “pretty high” calcium buildup in his arteries, a major risk factor for heart attacks and the reason for his father’s death.
His last checkup showed his calcification was stable — good news, but it’s hard to pinpoint which strategies to credit.
Pretty much every day, Van Es works out in his home gym, meditates in his hot tub, jumps in his cold plunge, prays out loud in his car, lies in a red light therapy bed, saunas, swallows a shot glass of Johnson’s Snake Oil, downs at least one can of hydrogen water and takes fish oil, vitamins B and D3, a multivitamin and apple cider vinegar before bed, where he’s tethered to a $750 oxygen tank.
Once or twice a year, he gets an infusion of $23,000 stem cells and $25,000 natural killer cells, which destroy malignant cells.
“My doctor was like, ‘Well, you’re doing all these things,’ ” Van Es said. “‘If you want to find out what’s working, you’ve got to stop doing other things.’ I was like, ‘Forget it. I’ll just keep going.’”
