Bryan Johnson spends $15,700 on 'techno tampon' to track his girlfriend's 'erections'

Biohacker Bryan Johnson is sometimes accused of sharing too much information online, and with the man who wants to live forever once again turning his attention to a very intimate part of his girlfriend, he’s back in the news.

As well as being the focus of Netflix's Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, Johnson has grabbed headlines for trying to de-age his penis, attempting to remove microplastics from his semen, and revealing how he ices his testicles before hitting the sauna. His work hasn't been limited to himself, with Johnson controversially injecting his own son's plasma as well as measuring his nighttime erections.

As Johnson's girlfriend, Kate Tolo has experienced her own viral fame after he claimed her vagina was in the top 1% of all in the world. The pair have also opened up about Tolo's endometriosis diagnosis, vowing to put their heads together with the hopes of solving the chronic disease that affects some 190 million people around the globe.

Why are erections important to heart health?

Again aiming to break the internet, Johnson posted a somewhat cryptic October post that simply said: "I am measuring my girlfriend’s erections."

A follow-up referred to male erections being considered a tier-one health marker. Johnson notes that erectile dysfunction can be a potential early indicator of heart conditions in men, appearing between two and five years before a formal cardiovascular diagnosis. Saying that erections are one of the best signals Johnson has for his own health, he reminds us that women have them too.

Although he thinks this might be news for most women, Johnson explained: "The clitoris is erectile tissue, same as men. During REM sleep, blood flow spontaneously increases. This is a non-sexual, normal sleep function."

Boasting about his own nighttime erections that supposedly number between four and five every evening (averaging over three hours), Johnson says his latest experiment is to see how many Tolo has and what they could mean for her health.

Johnson's setup seems pretty simple, with an erection device costing just $275 and scoring each erection on his phone. With women's erections being more complex, Tolo requires a 5cm probe and a light fitted with a sensor, coming in at $15,723.68.

Reiterating the importance of tracking women's sexual health, Johnson concluded: "Nighttime erections are downstream of whole body health including blood vessels, nerves, hormones, sleep stages, stress, glucose, and cardiovascular health. This is one of 1,900 biomarkers she’s tracking across her menstrual cycle."

Women get nighttime erections too

In a separate post, Tolo showed off the device and expanded on female erections being a non-sexual part of normal sleep as she wrote: "The clitoris contains erectile tissue. When blood flow to the clitoris increases, it can become enlarged and firm."

Studies suggest that women get a spontaneous increase in genital blood flow during REM sleep, serving as the female version of a man's nocturnal erection and dubbed 'nocturnal clitoral tumescence'.

It's unclear whether men or women get more sleep erections, and as men's nighttime erections have been studied for decades, she's keen to learn more.

Showing off the device that she's 'lovingly' called her 'techno tampon', Tolo is looking into this unknown field of science with Johnson. Tolo is tracking 1,900 biomarkers and collecting 14 million data points on her menstrual cycle, promising to keep us updated with the results on X.

Proving that there's a big difference between the fields of female and male genital health, the fact that Johnson can conduct his nighttime erection experiments with a device that costs just $275 and Tolo's costs 57 times more is quite shocking.