Joe Rogan posted a photo on Instagram last week holding three bags of his own yellow plasma. He'd visited Ways2Well, a Texas wellness clinic that markets itself to "human optimisation pioneers," and undergone plasmapheresis — a procedure where they draw your blood, separate the plasma, filter out the bad stuff, and pump the rest back in.
His description: "It's basically like changing the oil in your body."
Which, if you've trained jiu-jitsu for 30 years, is not the worst metaphor.
Plasmapheresis is real medicine. It treats autoimmune conditions like Guillain-Barré syndrome and myasthenia gravis. Doctors have used it for decades. What's newer is the wellness version: plasmapheresis for healthy people who want to filter out "inflammatory proteins, toxins, and byproducts that build up over time." The cost runs around $10,000 per session. Some clinics charge up to $36,000.
Rogan, 58, holds black belts under both Jean Jacques Machado and Eddie Bravo. He's been on the mat since 1996. His spine, by his own admission, has issues "from the top of my neck, all the way down to my lower back." He already does IV drips with NAD and vitamins. The plasmapheresis is just the latest line item on a maintenance schedule that now costs more annually than most people's cars.
And the car metaphor is perfect — just not for the reason he thinks.
Grapplers treat their bodies exactly like cars they refuse to trade in. You blow the suspension rolling with the 230-pound wrestler. You strip the transmission pulling guard. The check engine light has been on since blue belt. You ignore it because the car still starts every morning.
Then, somewhere around brown belt, you discover maintenance:
Years 1-3: Epsom salts, YouTube stretching videos, ibuprofen. Years 4-7: Massage gun, CBD, chiropractor. Years 8-12: Cryotherapy, float tanks, compression boots, "my guy" for supplements. Years 13+: IV drips, peptides, hyperbaric chambers. Year 30: Paying a Texas clinic ten grand to change your oil.
BPC-157 and TB-500 are the community's worst-kept secret. Dustin Poirier admitted to using peptides with the energy of someone confessing they use conditioner: "And I feel great." Rogan's just further down the road. He's at the dealership now. Full-service flush.
"It seems very weird when you do it," he told his 20 million followers, "but the people that I know who have tried this have experienced better sleep scores and markedly better recovery."
He didn't mention what created the need for all that recovery. He didn't have to.
Nobody ever looks at the maintenance costs and decides to stop driving.
Sources
- BJJEE: Joe Rogan Tries Blood-Filtering Therapy
- EssentiallySports: Joe Rogan Undergoes $10,000 Medical Experiment
- LADbible: Joe Rogan Shares Bizarre Image From Blood Filtering
- Yardbarker: Joe Rogan Goes Through Plasmapheresis
- BJJ World: Peptides for BJJ — The Grappler's Guide
- BJJEE: Dustin Poirier Admits To Using Peptides
- SF Standard: A $36K Blood-Cleaning Treatment
- Joe Rogan Instagram Post (Ways2Well)
This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked above. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.