The Longevity Market Has Discovered Ageing. Has It Discovered Older People?

Longevity has become a major industry.

Biological age, epigenetic clocks, inflammation, supplements, sleep scores, protein targets, hormone optimisation, strength training, cold plunges, red-light therapy, fasting windows, brain scans, personalised medicine, to name just a few interventions associated with longevity that is expanding our vocabulary.

There is real science in some of these.
A longer, healthier life is a serious human good.

But I am uneasy when longevity becomes confused with commercial opportunity, rather than understood as a commitment to the lives, dignity and wellbeing of older people.

Industry talks to those with the disposable income to buy tests, memberships, devices, coaching, supplements, private scans, and customised protocols.

But they are not the whole story of ageing.

Where, in the longevity conversation, is the eighty-six-year-old woman waiting for home care after being discharged from hospital? Where is the man with Parkinson’s whose life is constrained by stairs, inadequate transport and appointments he cannot reach? Where is the older migrant woman who spent much of her life in low-paid care work and now cannot afford the health care she needs?

The industry is fluent in the fears of those who do not want to grow old. It has much less to say about those who already have.

You can pay for a blood test that tells you your “biological age”. But when an older person is becoming frail and needs a geriatrician, the system can leave them waiting for months.

A wearable can record every restless hour.
It cannot give an exhausted husband one uninterrupted night while he cares for his wife with dementia.

An app can tell us what to eat.
It cannot put decent food in the fridge of an older person living on a pension.

This is where the promise of the longevity boom begins to ring hollow.

Ageing is lived through the conditions around us. Whether we have enough money, somewhere safe to live, people to help, services close by, and policies that recognise care as essential.

The longevity industry talks about optimisation, prevention and extending life.

But a longer life means very little if we refuse to invest in the conditions that make it possible to live that life with dignity.

Ageing is biological. But it is never only biological.

The body ages inside a world.

This is why the most important longevity interventions may not look like the ones being sold to us.

A wheelchair-accessible apartment is a longevity intervention.

So is paid family leave.
So is a home care worker who is properly trained and decently paid.
So is a community centre that knows who has stopped coming.
So is transport that does not disappear at the edge of town.
So is hearing care, dental care, falls prevention, vaccination, continence support, pension adequacy, social connection, and protection from financial abuse.

None of these sound as exciting as reversing biological age.

But they keep people connected to life.

And that is where the conversation has to mature.

I worry that longevity is becoming something available mainly to people who can afford it.

Of course we want people to live longer and in better health. But I struggle to call it progress when the benefits are available mainly to those who can afford them, while so many others grow old without enough money, care or support..

For me, the question is whether we are prepared to make longer lives worth living for everyone. Longevity science cannot remain separate from the realities of ageing. It has to connect with housing, social care, disability, gender, community and the conditions in which people actually live.

I want to be excited by innovation. And I also want us to ask harder questions. Who will benefit? Who will be left behind? And will this genuinely improve people’s lives?

That is the longevity conversation worth having.

Not one that treats older age as a defect to be outrun.
Not one that turns fear of ageing into a subscription model.
Not one that celebrates longer life while ignoring the people already living it.

The longevity market has discovered ageing.
Now it has to discover older people.