A flourishing community of online influencers is attracting adherents – and millions of dollars from paying subscribers – with the promise of ‘lifehacks’ and ‘biohacks’ that they claim can turn back the clock on aging.
From extreme dieting and exercise to swallowing cocktails of supplements and pills or undergoing regular blood transfusions, they espouse experimentation with a range of treatments that they say could help them not only live significantly longer – but forever, maybe.
Discerning fact from fad isn’t hard in many of the cases; regular exercise, good nutrition and plenty of sleep, which are regularly prescribed by these digital influencers, are scientifically proven to improve health and increase the chances of extending lifespans, and just as importantly, health spans.
But is the behaviour that these online gurus are encouraging likely to attract the attention of actuaries looking for signals into future longevity and mortality rates?
Unlikely – at least, for now.
“Many of the various treatments that you find in longevity clinics, and in certain longevity-related gyms, do not have a lot of hard clinical evidence behind them,” said Guy Coughlan, Chief Operating Officer of corporate finance advisory firm Clota Varde.
“Some of them have some anecdotal evidence that they deliver positive benefits, but others are completely unproven and experimental.”
A research paper written in October 2024 by academics including noted longevity expert Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois stated that unless humans are able to markedly slow the process of biological aging, they are unlikely to be able to radically extend their lives.
The study examined life expectancy trends through past decades, highlighting how progress in medicine, nutrition and public health initiatives, such as the drive to end smoking, had helped to extend life expectancy with some impact on overall longevity, and in turn, actuarial models.
While the paper argued that progress has slowed and that the great strides made in the past are unlikely without new treatments, it does say that there might be a possibility of ‘radical life extension’ – and therefore, an impact on the all-cause mortality curve – in improving the health of low- and middle-income populations.
Stuart McDonald, Partner at Lane Clark & Peacock, agrees.
“Quite simply, if you want to drive up gains in life expectancy at a population level, at a macro level, then we would need those who are in those more deprived groups to start living lives that are a little bit more like those in the more affluent groups,” he said.
“It means eating a healthy diet. It means regular exercise. It means avoiding smoking. It means limiting alcohol.”
Even if the regimes suggested by online lifehackers were life extending, considering the cost of some of these treatments, however, it’s likely that they would be out of reach of the populations whose longevity improvements would affect actuarial models, and hence, make little to no impact overall.
“You’re not going to make a big population impact by increasing the life expectancy of the people who are already living longer lives,” added McDonald.
The possibility that a human could live significantly longer isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem. The paper co-written by Olshansky suggests that more humans could live to 100 if the biological aging process could be slowed, and exercise, diet and sleep all have an impact on the biological markers of aging. However, because aging impacts the body in many different ways, slowing it down requires a comprehensive strategy.
“The aging process has many manifestations – there are multiple hallmarks of aging,” explained Coughlan.
“If you really wanted to attack the ageing process, you’d need either multiple treatments or a single highly efficacious treatment that would target a broad set of these ageing hallmarks. Those treatments include lifestyle factors, such as diet, exercise and sleep.”
Scientific trials of drugs and other treatments show some indication they can slow the progress of some markers.
Rapamycin, a drug used to prevent rejection of transplanted organs, has been found to improve some physiological parameters associated with aging in the immune, cardiovascular, and integumentary systems of healthy individuals or individuals with aging-related diseases.
Similarly, senolytics – molecules that attack senescent cells that accumulate in the body over time – have displayed therapeutic promise for some aging-related diseases, such as respiratory and inflammatory conditions.
Another candidate for reducing the aging process and offering the potential to extend the lives of insured populations is gene therapy.
Gene therapy seeks to change the levels of so-called transcription factors, molecules that drive the aging process. One prominent lifehacker, Bryan Johnson, underwent a course of such treatment, but the concept is still largely in the trial stage.
The criticism frequently levelled against online lifehackers is that they cloud any real research into the efficacy of their activities by continuing a multiplicity of “treatments” simultaneously.
With so many interventions happening at once, it is difficult to identify which pill, which activity, or which combination of either, is responsible for any gains the lifehackers may experience in longevity.
“If they happen to live a longer life, firstly, you won’t know whether that was just random… and secondly, even if you believe that there is a genuine signal there – that the person has lived a lot longer than we might have otherwise expected – you won’t know which of the many interventions they’re trialling on themselves was the one that actually produced the benefit,” said McDonald.
Only rigorous scientific trials can make those determinations. Even if a means of extending life is found, the impact could be devastating if additional longevity isn’t accompanied by a longer health span.
“Let’s say we did gain 10 extra years, if they are 10 extra years in ill health, that is economically very destructive,” added McDonald.
In the meantime, experts stress that the one piece of advice from lifehackers that could conclusively make a difference to actuarial assumptions is living a healthier lifestyle. That can have an impact on individual insured lives and, if successfully promoted by public health authorities, wider populations.
“If, through education and encouragement, the government could achieve these changes to lifestyle in the same way that it succeeded with the big anti-smoking campaign, that could have a significant benefit on the health of the nation,” said Coughlan.
