The Longevity Business Is Booming, But Is There a Limit to Our Lifespan?
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Longevity is big business.

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According to industry research and media company longevity dot technology, there's been roughly forty three billion dollars in global investment in this space in the last decade. Why is the longevity business booming? A few reasons. For one, there are simply more offerings from the esthetic to the medical. There are many treatments promising to combat aging, and a lot of people are buying them. According to a recent machinery survey, more than sixty percent of consumers considered a very or extremely important to purchase products or services that help with healthy aging and longevity, and roughly seventy percent of consumers in the us said they've purchased more in this category in the past year than they had before. But can these treatments and services actually help us live longer?

The longevity business is built on the idea that there are already things you can do to extend your lifespan and that there are already things you can do to extend your health band. That has a question mark on IT.

That's W S. J. Health and science reporter amy doctor Marcus. She's been reporting on the longevity field for a long time.

And SHE says when IT comes to the technology and medicine that claim to further extend life, these things are under debate from the well street journal. This is the future of everything. I'm Charlottenburg today. We're looking at the business banking on extending lives, the limits of longevity and the science behind IT. All that's after the break.

The products and services promising to keep us looking Younger and living longer have multiply in the past few decades, as have the number of people interested in buying them. To find out more about the breath of the longevity business, I spoke with W. S. J. Personal health and wellness reporter alex jane, I asked term what's included in the lung heavy business.

So there are sort of two groups, I would say, the lifestyle side and on the medical side of this industry, both are growing and they're increasingly overlapping on the decide. This is our sort of small hotel wellness gym space. Increasingly, they are broken.

Mortal longevity clinics popping up that offer a lot of the services you might have seen its paws. So we're talking about red light therapy, trio therapy, I V infusions for N A D boosters. What are N A D boost? N D boosters are supplements.

Often they are injected, intervened, sly. So through I S N D supplements are also sold in pills, and they prompted to contribute to longevity. The science, as far as I know, is sort of, if he, as to whether or not they can really do that for all of these things. The science is, except for the last bucket, which a lot of these places are now starting to offer personalized exercise and nutrition counseling with the specific purpose of longevity or extending lifespan and health span. So all of these things that maybe once were marketed as just like feel good wellness are now being marketed as longevity treatments.

okay. So that sort of the beauty and wellness side, but then it's moving into the medical end of things.

yep. And on the medical side, you've got concierge sh medicine, longevity doctors, experimental treatments like stem cell therapies that you can get both at some of these hotels and gyms that I mentioned, they're starting to offer some of these medical treatments or medical tourism. You can go to the bahamas or the cabin in this medical longevity economy, you can get off label drugs.

A lot of biohackers who are interested in living longer or experimenting with taking drugs like G, L, P. Ones met four men, which is the diabetes drug grab. Amissing and immune present off label in the hope that I can extend their health span and lifespan.

great. What's a bio hacker? This is enough of a trend that IT has a name. Can you explain what a bio hacker is?

A biohacker is somebody who is experimenting often with medications, supplements, lifestyle changes, in pursuit of health optimization or in pursuit of an extended lifespan. So some biohackers are really focused on just, how can I maximize my health awareness today. Others are really focused on how can I live as long as possible, some combination to.

So everything we talked about so far is for anyone with the dollars to do IT. But there is also scientific research trying to push the envelope. How long can we live? Can you tell me about that?

There are ongoing trials for cellular rejuvenation therapies.

Um what is cellular rejuvenation? What is like? I'm going to give myself a face left.

It's a little scientific than that, but basically the idea is that we can reprogram or rejuvenate cells in our body, which, as we age, wear out and start to male function, and we can restore their youthful function, thereby slowing, stopping, or depending on who us, even reversing the aging process. So scientists artistic various chemicals and other tools to do this.

And there are companies that investors have poured billions of dollars, billions A B, billions with a bee of investment dollars into, and the hopes that this will be the big blockbuster thing. And mostly it's being done with cells in this x vivo state so outside the body. But sam are testing IT inside the body too, that's called in vo. Some of these companies are targeting clinical trials as soon as next year, meaning they will be testing these therapies in people.

We but how will they know that IT works?

Yeah, that is a harder question to answer because a lot of them are looking at specific regions of the body like the eye. So cells from a particular area or tying IT to a particular condition as opposed to looking at like how can we rejuvenate all the cells in your body to see if you live longer? So lifespan trials, especially in humans, that's gonna take a long time to do.

If you want to look at a group of humans and see is an intervention going to help them live longer, think about how long that trial needs to be. So it's gonna really expensive and it's difficult to do. And maybe the person that started .

the trial isn't going to be around for the end of IT.

Well, exactly. yeah. So there are people who make the argument that you can conduct life span trials in twenty or thirty years, rather obviously, would be ideal to follow people throughout the course of their entire lives. But that research is expensive. There is more research being diverted to specific age related conditions, like alzheimer is a big one. But in terms of the underlying aging process, which sort of encompasses all of these diseases, that is an area of research that the scientists who were going on that field would say there's just not enough funding going to this and it's expensive and IT is hard to do in people. So a lot of IT is being done in mice and east and flies and worms because it's hard to do .

on people because of how long the study would take and how expensive the study would be. So how do you test in flies and worms and .

and in dogs? In some cases, there's more um dog aging research being done because dogs are actually pretty similar to humans in terms that we have to share the environment. The benefit of looking at these other species that I mentioned in a lab setting is that they just don't live as long.

You can do a lifespan trial in much less time. You just can't translate the findings from those species directly into humans because we're not the same and we don't have the same environments and the same diseases all the time. But there have been trials done of certain compounds in these species that appear successful.

But a lot of IT is still conflicting and it's early. So the people that are taking these off label drugs, for example, there's been a lot of research on metformin on repairs them in non clinical trial, so not in humans. There has been some preliminary clinical trial research in terms of lifespan in those drugs, but biohackers are willing to bank on the animal research because they're like, well, this looks promising enough and they're willing to take more risk ultimately.

That was our reporter, alex janine. Next, despite the efforts of some scientists and biohackers, the evidence may not be pointing to a future full of healthy centenarians. Stay with us.

How do you start to lay the foundation for responsible AI in your organization? Here's fator born aeris IBM consulting global leader for trust, or the ai IT .

starts with asking the question, what is the kind of relationship that we ultimately want to have with A I? The purpose of A I is not meant to display human beings. That is meant to all meant human intelligence. Soon, as you have a glimmer in your eye about how you think you might want to U A I then asking the questions like what would be required in order to earn .

people's trust in such a model.

Life expectancy has been increasing. According to the most recent stats from the C. D. C, life expectancy in the U. S. Went up to seventy seven point five years in twenty and twenty two in one thousand nine hundred and seventy two IT was seventy one point one years.

And between these demographic trends and hope for continued scientific breakthrough, some believe more and more of us will live longer and longer. But is there a limit to how lone we can live? Amy doctor Marcus is A W.

S. J held in science reporter who writes a lot about lunch. Evy, hi amy, level with me based on your reporting. Could I possibly live at least past one hundred years old?

Well, i'm not one to be able to predict what an individual is going to do based on my reporting. You'd be in the category of people who have a good shot because you are educated and you have access to health and you follow your doctor's advice. Oh, that's a big .

assumption on me following my doctors' advice.

If you do want to live a healthier or longer life, the time tested remedies for which there still there is good data are exercise, good diet, not smoking, sleeping well, all those types of things that your doctor probably does tell you. The question is, does that guarantee that you're going to live to be a hundred IT? Doesn't there is an ongoing debate about how far we can go. And there is many scientists who think we've reached star biological limits.

Let's start with the perspective that we can keep pushing the envelope.

For a long time, our average life expectancy kept going up. We were able to do that through a combination of factors. Some were public health reasons. We have antibiotics, we have vaccinations, we have clean water, we have clean air, we have Better food, we have access to Better health. So that was making us have some improvements overall.

And there are those who are optimistic and who believe, because we've always been able to develop new medicine, because we've always come up with creative new ideas, we can keep going. And there are groups, scientists who are working on techniques, they're hoping they're developing therapies and gene therapies where they could reprogram some cells that would restore functions you lose over time as you age. And they believe if they can do that and they can keep doing that, they might be able to keep you going longer and longer and that the future looks rosy.

R, but you found a scientist who's been part of this debate for a really long time, and through his research, he doesn't really agree that the sky is the limit. What did you find?

Well, I was talking to jail shanky when he's been, as you said, a meron this debate for many years. He's studied a lot of demographic data and mortality charts, and he looked at data from a thirty year period of one thousand nine hundred ninety to twenty nine, and he found that life expectancy was slowing. He argued that if you look at newborns today, less than ten percent of them are gonna make IT to one hundred based on the way the data looking the data butters is what he's saying, but he has reasons for saying what he's saying, which is he believes that our bodies were not built to last forever and that our bodies will eventually stop.

I mean, I guess you can't care deaths, but just kim ming, the demographics you might say, but there is all these people who are reaching a hundred that's sort of missing the whole picture. How does old and sky answer people who are like, look how where people were living to one hundred yeah.

he would say that he's not gonna argue with you that there's gonna be a larger number of people who are one hundred and twenty forty six, the hundred university of when the baby boom started he would say, yeah, there is gonna be more people who a hundred, but that's due to the fact that there was a population burst. But what he is saying is, if you look at the average life expectancy that is slowing down based on the way he looks at the trans. okay.

So he's looking at a trend and finding that we're plat towing when IT comes to the average life expectancy. But is anyone pushing the upper limit? Like what about that woman in france who lived to one hundred and twenty two john hall mall?

There's always an outlier. But on that note, there are scientists who have also looked at this problem from a different angle. They've looked at what they call maximum verified age.

What does that mean? They get all the data from all these different countries on. What's the oldest? Someone has died that we can verify, that we have data for.

We have records that we can really feel comfortable that this is correct. What's the maximum verified age when people have died? And they've said that is platov also. So you mention this person who live to be a hundred and twenty two. This woman in france, SHE, died in one thousand ninety seven and we haven't had a person going beyond one hundred and twenty two yet.

So they're saying they think that that's also platov, that maybe there's going to be someone who gets to like one hundred and two twenty three someday or one hundred and twenty four. I mean, who knows? But this notion that the vast majority of us are going to reach these upper limits, these scientists say it's incorrect.

Why do we have a limit according to these scientists? Why can't I live forever, amy?

Because cells and tissues accumulate damage over the years, which gets harder to repair them. And there are a lots of genes that affect your lifespan, and it's hard to tease them all out. And you know, if you change one or fix one, IT could have impact on other ones. Essentially is just a very complicated process and they don't really understand the aging process scientifically and biologically speaking.

yet fair everything ages. I'm wondering if you could give me though, a little bit of hope. You did say that I might live to one hundred.

I'm wishing you the best. I mean, look, I go to a lot of longing vy conferences now. And one of the things that i've really been struck by is that even among people who feel very optimistic that science is going to keep us going and that there's gonna medicines, or there's going to be technologies or there's going to be techniques that can break the barriers, what i've really been struck by is the main message of everyone is, if you really want to try to live a longer, you know, you should adopt healthy habits. Because even if you don't live longer, you'll live in a Better way, a healthier way. And that involves exercising and eating ride and maintaining a healthy body weight and not smoking and taking the medicines that you need to take all these sort of practical steps. Like I think that is hopeful, actually, that there are things you can do to improve your health and hopefully it'll improve your lifespan as well.

Well, here's hoping we'll find out.

Thank for me. Thank you.

The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. This episode was produced by me charlock garden burg, mixing in sound design by Jessica fenton. Like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform. Thanks for listening.

Earlier, we discuss what responsible AI looks like in practice. Here's fator going to dear us from IBM consulting again on why that begins with data.

My favorite definition of the word date up is an architecture, the human experience. A I is like a mirror that reflects our biases back towards us.

But we have to be brave enough, and in respective enough to look into the mirror and decide, does this reflection actually line to my organization values? If IT allies betrays parent about, why did you pick the data that you did? If IT doesn't a line that when you know you needed to change your entire approach.

learn more about IBM artificial intelligence consulting services and IBM dot com flash consulting.