How ‘longevity' became the new buzzword in health

Business Times

30-05-2025

AT A time when many of us might feel powerless to influence world events, perhaps it's not surprising that our society is trying ever harder to exercise the ultimate form of personal control: over our own mortality. The desire for a long – even eternal – life is nothing new (China's first emperor and creator of the Terracotta Army, Qin Shi Huang, ordered subjects to search for the elixir of everlasting life). Now, however, this impulse is coalescing around one particular buzzword: longevity.
It's a timely topic, given that between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world's population over 60 years will nearly double from 12 per cent to 22 per cent, according to the World Health Organization. But beyond its most basic definition, the word 'longevity' has acquired myriad new associations. Now, established ways to improve your chances of living longer – such as giving up smoking, exercising more, not getting lonely – aren't as attention-grabbing as commercialised, often competitive, approaches to extending your life.
Many approaches are constructive, such as that of Andrew J Scott, professor of economics at London Business School and author of The Longevity Imperative, who focuses on 'healthy longevity', and posits that there are other markers of ageing beyond chronological age.
But increasingly, the term is cropping up in marketing speak and in the luxury and lifestyle worlds. We now have hotels such as the Longevity Health and Wellness Hotel in the Algarve; a Longevity Lounge at wellness clinic Cloud Twelve in London, with biohacking gadgets such as a space-age-looking red light therapy helmet designed to promote hair growth and reduce brain fog. And then there's the Corinthia hotel's partnership with the London Regenerative Institute, offering everything from epigenetic testing aimed at determining how fast you are ageing, to hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Dior's L'Or de Vie La Creme (£1,400, or S$2,400, for 50ml) contains 'Golden Drop Life Technology', a 'longevity elixir'; while this month, Swiss 'longevity brand' Loya launched moisturisers and serums that it says will bring 'a completely new category of wellness to the UK market'. Apparently, 'proprietary HappyFeelBoost technology' will rejuvenate skin and lift your mood. Any resemblance to the 'hypnopaedic' slogans in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is purely coincidental.
This year, Alex Hawkins, director of strategic foresight at The Future Laboratory, co-authored a report produced by The Future Laboratory in partnership with Together Group, about how luxury is embracing longevity.
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Hawkins tells me that a key character in taking the concept mainstream is super-rich biohacker Bryan Johnson, the subject of the Netflix documentary Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, and whose bid to reverse ageing has involved futuristic and dystopian strategies such as receiving blood transfusions from his teenage son.
Then there's the research around Blue Zones – global communities with a high concentration of people living to an advanced age, the subject of another Netflix documentary released in 2023.
Biohacker Bryan Johnson's bid to reverse ageing has involved futuristic and dystopian strategies such as receiving blood transfusions from his teenage son. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Hawkins says: 'Those two things open up an interesting split in the longevity conversation. On the one hand you have this high-tech, science-driven approach where someone is actively throwing quite a lot of money and technology at understanding and optimising their own ageing process; and on the other, with the Blue Zones, it's a radically back-to-basics approach to health. A lot of the reasons that we see people living longer in Blue Zones are really foundational things, like having strong community ties and eating relatively unprocessed diets.'
However, Johnson's Rejuvenation Olympics – a competition that encourages participants to measure their 'biological age' and upload it to a public leaderboard – demonstrates a competitive element to longevity pursuits. They have become a fitness flex, just like posting Insta pictures of yourself doing burpees as part of a Hyrox race. Where once people would brag about being 'crazy busy' or pulling an all-nighter at work, now, logging eight hours of sleep on your Oura ring score carries more cachet. There's been such a culture shift that it seems extraordinary now that live fast, die young was ever considered a cool rock'n'roll mantra.
Hawkins says the Future Laboratory report was exploring 'this idea that you and your quality of life are ultimately your greatest investment. It's definitely a status symbol in that way. Perhaps in the future it won't be so much about the designer handbag, it's more what treatments you have access to, what means you have to take control over your ageing.'
As consumers prioritise experiences over products, high-end fashion and beauty brands are following suit, aiming to offer what The Future Laboratory calls 'a new paradigm of transformational luxury'. Often, that might seem as much about looking younger for longer, as much as the prospect of actually living longer.
Not that it's limited to the highest end of the market. According to McKinsey's latest 2025 Future of Wellness Report, up to 60 per cent of consumers report that healthy ageing is a 'top' or 'very important' priority'. It notes that 'products and services have emerged to address these needs, including skincare products targeting long-term skin health and wrinkle prevention, supplements that claim to slow cellular ageing, epigenetic age-testing kits, virtual physical therapy solutions, and more'.
But is the word longevity really set to stay in the conversation? Or like the increasingly woolly 'wellness', will its meaning be diluted until it's used to describe random products in the outer reaches of Amazon? Anyone for a pair of marshmallow-pink-coloured Warmies, described as heatable wellness boots, scented with French lavender?
In other words, does longevity have longevity?
Anna Pione, a partner at McKinsey in New York, says: 'Where I think there is risk of a fad is in specific applications of what longevity means. Right now, like wellness, it's an extremely broad term... Do I think it will have the same prevalence in marketing language a few years from now? That's open for debate. It depends on whether some of these products and services really take hold and if consumers continue to see the value, as to whether you might see more of it.'
While longevity is predicted to be a growth area in hospitality, plenty of the major players seem measured in their use of the tag. Perhaps wanting to tap into its zeitgeisty vibes without overcommitting, should it become supplanted by another new term. The Soho Health Club, part of the Soho House Group, states on its website that facilities are 'designed to encourage performance and promote holistic wellness and longevity', via treatments such as contrast therapy (ice baths, infrared sauna) and IV drips including NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, a molecule favoured by various celebrities for anti-ageing).
However, Thiago Alves, Soho Health Club's UK manager, says: 'I don't necessarily have any member coming to me asking for longevity treatments. I think members are more curious about health optimisation, they want to live longer, they want to live better. They want to have a good time with us... we use quite a few words, but we don't necessarily use the word longevity so explicitly.'
The Dorchester Collection has revamped its spa at Coworth Park. Teresa O'Farrell, its global head of wellness and spa, who was part of the process, is also measured in her approach to namechecking longevity. 'It is something we talk about but we're not using it as a buzzword.' In fact she still talks about 'wellness' because it's 'the journey to longevity'.
'There are lots of extreme therapies, but Coworth Park is a countryside estate and we know that being in nature is good for physical and mental wellness, so that is part of longevity,' she says. 'You hear the birds, smell the fresh air the, trees, the grass, the flowers. As people walk up the path to the spa they are already reducing their stress.'
McKinsey's Anna Pione also emphasises that consumers will need to feel short-term benefits from products that promote longevity. Not everyone wants to wait half a century or more to find out if those supplements do what they say on the tin. FINANCIAL TIMES