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If you could, would you wage to unrecorded forever? Some Silicon Valley billionaires aren't conscionable making tech products – they've set their sights connected immortality.
Social media is flooded with influencers promoting peptides, "functional" mushroom powders and different (often non-evidence-based) hacks said to maximise your lifespan. Some adjacent assertion to reverse your "biological age".
The quest to unrecorded longer, look younger oregon conscionable unrecorded one's "best life" has go a booming industry, encompassing treatments arsenic divers arsenic ice baths, saunas, cryotherapy chambers and adjacent red airy therapy.
Related: The Time of Day You Eat successful Later Life Could Foreshadow an Early Death
But down overmuch of the selling and social media posts are commercialized interests consenting to cater to a colonisation fearful of ageing and dying.
Nobody lives forever
The cardinal crushed humans aren't immortal hinges connected evolution. This process favours genetic traits promoting palmy reproduction and adaptation implicit those promoting unlimited lifespan for individuals.
The past Greeks told cautionary tales astir beingness extension. Those who reached for immortality mostly recovered this came astatine a unspeakable cost. The mythical Tithonus, for example, was doomed to endless ageing and decline aft being granted eternal beingness without eternal youth.
Fast guardant to today, the longevity manufacture has the backing of venture superior funds, celebrity investors and pharmaceutical companies.
But overmuch of this wealth is being funnelled into products and services with small oregon nary grounds for however they really amended wellness oregon lengthen lifespan.
In his well-publicised quest for beingness extension, US task capitalist Bryan Johnson reportedly spends millions and undergoes changeless aesculapian investigating with the impossible purpose of ne'er dying.
Johnson's longevity regimen includes a hyper-controlled diet, hundreds of regular supplements and strict slumber and workout routines. He has adjacent received transfusions of his ain son's humor plasma.
We spot 3 large problems with the longevity manufacture that are a origin for concern.
Profit earlier evidence
Innovation is cardinal to the longevity industry, attracting an influx of Silicon Valley investors seeking to "hack" the ageing process. Yet, these innovations are infrequently backed by high-quality evidence.
For example, full-body MRI is marketed arsenic a mode to place cancer and different abnormalities aboriginal earlier they are harder to treat. Yet, determination is no grounds these scans amended wellness outcomes. Medical colleges astir the satellite do not urge full-body MRI successful steadfast individuals.
Tests similar these tin pb to "incidentalomas" – unexpected findings that whitethorn punctual unnecessary follow-up procedures, costs and anxiety.
The longevity manufacture pitches itself arsenic a disruptive alternate to mainstream wellness care. But it inactive depends connected that strategy to function. Scans, humor tests and experimental treatments inevitably travel back into hospitals and clinics for follow-up, specializer consultations and interventions.
This puts added strain connected already stretched services – some financially and successful presumption of workforce – portion arguably delivering small payment to colonisation health.
Unnecessary tests tin divert precious resources from a health-care strategy already nether strain. (Towfiqu barbhuiya/Pexels)Test and you shall find
Despite wide public enthusiasm for screening tests, experts person long warned much investigating does not ever pb to amended health.
One of the clearest risks is overdiagnosis – erstwhile an abnormality oregon illness is diagnosed that volition ne'er interaction a person's wellness during their lifetime. The much you test, the much you'll find – overmuch of it clinically irrelevant. This creates a self-affirming cycle.
Unnecessary investigations tin effect successful overdiagnosis, incidental findings and perchance cascades of further unnecessary procedures oregon tests.
Longevity isn't the aforesaid arsenic prevention
Marketers of longevity assertion their services and products are portion of "preventive" medicine: spotting illness earlier it strikes and keeping radical healthier for longer.
But the longevity question differs drastically from the nationalist wellness rule of prevention.
Prevention, in mainstream medicine, is astir simple, evidence-based measures. This includes immunisations and screening for crab astatine the close ages.
But there's nary wide grounds galore of the exhaustive tests and treatments the longevity manufacture promotes amended semipermanent outcomes for different steadfast people.
They simply outgo a batch of money, are assets intensive and whitethorn pb to further unnecessary testing.
Why this matters
By medicalising ageing, the longevity question is simply a classical illustration of disease mongering. It besides risks embedding ageism into mundane commerce – pathologising mean ageing alternatively than accepting it arsenic portion of life.
It besides risks diverting attraction and resources distant from important and basal nationalist wellness strategy functions that tin amended prime of beingness for millions arsenic we each gracefully age.
The hype astir galore unfounded longevity claims distracts america from what we already cognize works: regular exercise, steadfast food, dependable sleep, meaningful relationships and just entree to evidence-based aesculapian treatment.
Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate successful Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney; Brooke Nickel, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, University of Sydney, and Sean Docking, Research Fellow, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
This nonfiction is republished from The Conversation nether a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
