From luxury longevity retreats to wearable glucose trackers, the race to slow down ageing was once mostly associated with the ultra-wealthy. But in my clinic, I’m increasingly seeing that trend trickle down to affluent professionals, and everyday people, who want to live healthier for longer.
New research from AXA Global Healthcare found that wealthy UK professionals are spending an average of nearly £10,000 a year on longevity-focused healthcare, with some investing more than £50,000 annually. The spending ranges from personal trainers and stress management through to advanced diagnostics and more specialist medical treatments, including experimental use.
While some treatments remain firmly in the luxury bracket, other elements of the longevity boom are being packaged for a wider audience. Wearable health trackers, personalised nutrition programmes and more advanced preventative health screenings are increasingly accessible outside the private clinic setting.
This matters because health, not just healthcare, is becoming something people work to manage actively rather than only address when something goes wrong. Patients are arriving at the clinic with more questions, more data from their own devices, and more interest in prevention rather than just treatment.
A shift in how people see ageing
More people now see ageing as something they can actively influence rather than simply accept. People are more aware that lifestyle and cardiometabolic risk explain a large share of premature ageing and chronic disease, and that these factors are modifiable. Longevity now feels more controllable than it did a decade ago.
Growing access to wearable technology and preventative healthcare has helped fuel this shift, giving people more real-time information about their own health. The consumerisation of health tech gives people more real-time feedback, which is motivating, but it can also create the sense that every metric can and should be optimised.
Where people are spending their money
In the AXA Global Healthcare study, fitness and personal training was the most common area of longevity spending, with 53% of respondents investing in it over the past year. Mental health, sleep optimisation and stress management followed at 36%, while nearly three in ten (29%) spent money on personalised nutrition and metabolic health programmes.
Meanwhile, 18% reported investing in continuous health monitoring such as wearable devices and glucose trackers, with smaller groups also paying for advanced diagnostic screening (15%), concierge-led medical care (13%) and longevity-directed medications and supplements, including experimental use (16%). Nearly three quarters (74%) of respondents said they plan to increase their spending on longevity-focused healthcare over the next three years.
Some people are also travelling abroad in search of newer or more specialist treatments, with almost half (47%) of respondents in the study saying they had already done so, and 37% saying they are open to doing so. Patients who travel specifically for treatments not yet approved at home are usually driven by a combination of hope, impatience and a desire to be ahead of the curve.
Do these treatments actually work?
Expensive biohacking treatments and anti-ageing interventions are not a shortcut to a longer life. More than half (53%) of the study respondents y said they expect longevity interventions to add at least six extra healthy years to their lives. That expectation may sound ambitious, but the strongest evidence still points towards relatively simple, long-term lifestyle habits.
Large-scale studies consistently show that combining core lifestyle changes, like staying active, maintaining a healthy weight, eating well and not smoking, can add around six to seven years of life, much of it in better health. The science behind some emerging treatments, however, is still developing. There’s understandable excitement around drugs like metformin and rapamycin, but the evidence in humans is still at an early stage.
We’re seeing promising signals and strong results in animal studies, but robust data on extending lifespan in people just isn’t there yet. Luxury clinics and expensive testing often dominate the conversation around longevity, but many of the most effective changes remain accessible to most people.
The unglamorous basics that move the dial
The underlying intuition, that proactive, data-driven prevention can add years of good life, is right. But the marketplace sometimes over-credits the newest or most expensive intervention rather than the unglamorous basics that move most of the dial.
For most people, this means regular exercise, good-quality sleep, maintaining social connections, managing stress, eating a balanced diet and attending routine health checks. None of these carry a price tag anywhere near £10,000 a year, but all of them can have a meaningful impact on health span, helping people stay healthier for longer without the need for costly interventions.
The longevity conversation will keep evolving as new technologies and treatments emerge, and some of them will genuinely add to what we can offer patients. But the biggest opportunity isn’t in the newest test or the most expensive supplement. It’s in helping more people access and act on the fundamentals that the evidence has supported for decades.
