No official count of longevity clinics exists, but estimates range from roughly 50 to 800 in the U.S., longevity researchers, doctors and analysts say.
Medical clinics are popping up across the country promising to help clients live longer and better**—**so long as they can pay.
Longevity clinics aim to do everything from preventing chronic disease to healing tennis elbow, all with the goal of optimizing patients’ health for more years. Clients pay as much as $100,000 a year for sometimes-unproven treatments, including biological-age testing, early cancer screenings, stem-cell therapies and hair rejuvenation.
The centers capitalize on Americans’ obsession with living longer and desire for personalized medical care, even if it comes from outside the mainstream, say industry investors and analysts.
The biggest problems with “longevity clinics” is that they usually even don’t prescribe Rapamycin - I had a visit in Longevity Center in Poland and although the doctor knew something about Rapamycin (not a lot - but he heard about Rapamycin which is better than 99% of doctors), he still didn’t want to prescribe it - the most he could do was prescribing Metformin and saying “eat a lot of antioxidant food” - he didn’t even hear about Acarbose studies for longevity - he only said “Metformin is better because it lowers glucose more”
They usually want to do something like Bryan Johnson - spend as much money as possible to do 1000 tests to measure everything in your body and do as many scans as possible - but without any science based medicine
11 Longevity Retreats Around the World to Explore Now
Longevity retreats, which differ from longevity clinics, have exploded in popularity with many destinations booked out until 2025 and beyond.
Yes, many guests want a relaxing and therapeutic experience, but there’s another reason for the high demand: education.
Whether it’s personalized nutrition, functional fitness, high tech therapies, or even epigenetic screening, longevity retreats offer their guests an amazing experience with valuable information that can be taken home.
Longevity retreats are also BIG business with many destinations charging eye-popping amounts for (potentially) life changing experiences. Despite these high price tags, demand seems to be outpacing supply.
With global demographics aging and more awareness on personal health, are these retreats a catalyst for the longevity industry? We think so, which is why the Spannr team is working on something now that we’ll be sharing later this year.
If you think about this the science behind these clinics is variable in its reliability, but we have the regulatory system we had. If there was no regulatory system at all and it was purely caveat emptor I wonder what claims would be made.
Longevity clinics for the ultrawealthy can cost $50,000 a week. Here are the world’s top 6 destinations.
These days, cadres of well-heeled and health-obsessed clients are flocking to longevity clinics: centers that offer everything from genetic testing to cocktails of supplements to personalized treatment plans that purportedly help people live longer.
“The best longevity advice is something only the rich have access to today,” Matt Fellowes, an advisory council member at the Stanford Center on Longevity, and cofounder of health insights platform, BellSant, told Business Insider by email.
I think the difficulty is that you need to live all year round in a manner which supports good cellular health (mitochondria etc). A week now and again will not fix that although there can be interventions (such as mitochondrial transplant) that make a material improvement.
On Monday, the high-end gym chain Equinox introduced a longevity program with a $40,000 annual membership fee.
According to a news release, Optimize by Equinox is “designed to unlock the peaks of human potential” through personalized nutrition, sleep and fitness coaching “based on members’ unique biodata.” The program is being run in partnership with the lab test startup Function Health, which was co-founded by Dr. Mark Hyman, an influential functional medicine physician. Function sells direct-to-consumer blood tests that assess cardiovascular, metabolic, liver, kidney and thyroid health, among other things.
According to Function’s website, its aim is to help people “live 100 healthy years.” Equinox doesn’t put a number on its goal.
So I’ve actually been considering this as a business idea. I believe there’s a huge market for gyms that provide science based training for adults looking to optimize their healthspan. While that is geared towards high net worth individuals I confident that if you offered science backed training and comprehensive measuring you could build programs that most people could afford. It’s a no brainer really and a great way to build communities.
Interestingly they actually launched something at the other end of their pricing spectrum today it seems (have not looked into it):
Fountain Life CORE provides a recurring, comprehensive, longevity-focused blood panel paired with expert analysis and ongoing guidance from a Fountain Life longevity physician and health coach.
LAKE NONA, Fla., May 7, 2024 — Fountain Life, an advanced diagnostics, longevity and preventative health company, today announced Fountain Life CORE, its new membership package that provides an entry point to longevity and proactive health optimization for millions of Americans.
Its interesting… I wonder how the market will evolve. You have healthspan / lifespan online training services like Early Medical, and how you have these more scientific fitness programs like the Equinox one and the Peter Attia 10 Squared…
I see lots of people in my gym using Apple Fitness on their phones to guide them, or the “Future” exercise app with coaching. There are a wide array of approaches.
The good news is there are more and more options for us, and yes I think its a fast-growing market:
The 10 Squared squad are like fitness precogs in Minority Report, connecting clues in the present to prevent a bad event before it happens in the future. They will triangulate the results from the 30 drills I do for stability, strength, and cardio; factor in my body composition from a DEXA scan; then prescribe a fitness plan to power me for the next five decades. That’s not a typo; this program is not 7-Minute Abs! or Great Shape in 4 Weeks! It’s a training blueprint for your whole life.
“At $2995 per year, the Fountain Life CORE membership provides a pathway for new members to prioritize their health and get started on a proactive journey toward optimized health and longevity. CORE includes quarterly blood tests that analyze dozens of biomarkers, uncovering deep insights about a member’s cardiovascular health, metabolic health, hormonal balance, inflammatory response, and nutrition levels. Each test is followed by a televisit review with a Fountain Life longevity physician who creates a customized optimization plan based on the member’s biomarker results, lifestyle, environment, and genetic factors. Between physician visits, CORE members work with a Fountain Life certified health coach to achieve the goals laid out in the customized health plan. Fountain Life’s approach is rooted in the principles of functional medicine, which includes a balance of treating symptoms while also uncovering the underlying root cause of health issues.”
Reality pricing.
The race for market has started.
*“longevity physician,”*appears to be the new “description”
I’ve been in this space for a loong time as a founder, advisor and clinician Here are some insights from an insider: - There are two reasons people use these services:
1- relief from anxiety about having a ticking time bomb they didn’t know about (most commonly, cancer)
2- they start to feel older and realise they should do something about it (usually men in early 40s with young children or premenopausal women)
Number 2 is the better reason IMO but provides lower perceived value because results take a long time (vitamin)
Number 1 is more of an irrational fear as it is extremely unlikely that you have cancer if you are a healthy person in your 40s or 50s but if you do detect something early it may be priceless (painkiller) Just know that it’s meaningless to do a full body screening MRI or multi-cancer detection blood test if you’re not committed to doing them yearly for the rest of your life Even then, there is a significant chance that you will detect something that would have never bothered you and you end up having unnecessary surgery or procedures/anxiety (not all cancers end up being harmful without symptoms)
To make this business work, it needs to be high margin (therefore, expensive) or highly automated lower margin (what we are bullding at @NumenorHealth).
High end is very trust dependent. This is why it’s dominated by big names (such as Mayo Clinic) or highly trusted influencers (such as Peter Attia) - There are two main products in this service:
the test and
the follow up recommendation/interventions
The test is what’s more valuable to the consumer but the follow-ups are what is higher margin for the business (unless you build proprietary tests which is what some co’s are trying to do-this is difficult for obvious reasons) - in general, it is a difficult business if you are thinking of the VC-backed route, because differentiation is difficult (everyone can do the same tests and use the same marketing buzz words) but it can be a good cash flow business. Why? Because it is restricted by regulatory approvals/expertise which puts up enough of a moat to make it viable but not big enough to make it very difficult to emulate
Show Notes:
(0:00) Shaan’s billion-dollar idea: Executive Check-ups
(2:12) Mayo Clinic’s $100M proof of concept
(12:58) $15K/mo lead gen arbitrage
(17:25) Pizza intelligence
(19:41) Shaan’s Mount Rushmore of indexes
(24:54) The most profitable companies in the world
(26:32) Why stock exchanges have the best business model
(33:20) “Shoot your old idea in the head” - Eric Ries
(41:20) Hustler of the week: The Female Pieter Levels
(43:30) “Marketing is the tax you pay for an unremarkable product”
The Longevity Center is a high-end (i.e. expensive) but very science-oriented company started by Joanna Bensz, that first opened a center in Warsaw, Poland and is now expanding in Germany. They plan to open over 20 clinics around europe over the next 5 years.
