Curation for Longevity 🧬🛍 3 - Aging, Anti-Aging, Life-Extension, or Longevity.
Hello 👋 and welcome to Curation for Longevity by Laura Minquini. I am the founder of MYKIGAI - a platform to try new science-backed longevity brands.
In this newsletter, I look into what could help make longevity the next big DTC (Direct To Consumer) category. 🚀
We all want the same thing 💙
We all want quality of life, especially as we get older.
So I am not sure why the aging and longevity industries can’t work closer together.
I won’t get into the argument of “aging as a disease” because that’s the most obvious point of contention and it is heavily rooted in science and regulation.
I am going to however venture to make a point in how we need to separate aging - the societal context, and aging - the biology.
The aging space influencers seem to conflate ageism, social labels, and the value the western world has placed on youth, (in particular women’s youth) with the science and biology of aging.
Longevity science ultimately is about extending healthy years. How can we reverse damage or put off the damage? However there seems to be a serious aversion to the science because they see it as a negation of aging - something I keep telling my friends and experts in the longevity world - most of the people over 50, are very comfortable with. If anything, this is the era of age-proud and pro-aging.
Exhibit A
I love Paulina Porizkova, the famous 90’s model is back on the covers of magazines (German Vogue, NYT Magazine). We need more of this: women 50+ are being shown in the media in all their glory. She is very open about her journey into aging and has expressed very publicly how it is women who shame her the most, telling her not everyone is a model, or not every in their fifties looks like this, to put her clothes back on. Yeah but, how come we do not complain about Kim Kardashian on covers or taking her clothes off? Not everyone can have those body dimensions, not everyone can redo their face.
50+ is looking different these days and we need to show it.
Sadly, the day after she did a great IG post on strength training, she put a photo of herself in a bikini looking more radiant than some 30-year-olds, going on a rant about not fighting aging and how tired of “potions” (yes there is a snake oil supplements industry out there), and how we need to unite to fight the fight against aging…I hate to break it to her but by the fact that she is working out and taking care of her health, she is actively fighting the biological process of aging and extending her longevity. I say sadly because,by her logic, we sit in different spectrums of the issue, and we don’t.
Her points on the anti-aging and labels, and the ageism that women experience is a real problem, and I wholeheartedly agree with her, but the fighting of the biological process is something different because this is correlated to our quality of life later.
Who cares if anyone thinks you are hot or not (though if you have good genes, you clearly are), what matters is that you have your motor and cognitive functions for your entire lifespan. That’s what fighting aging is about.
All I am saying is that we are on the same side. You can be pro-aging (celebrating your chronological life and experience) and still be for longevity.
And Paulina is hilarious and right, the only way to stop aging right now is dying.
We do need to continue to refine the branding of Longevity
Paulina’s post has 61k likes, lots of articles written about it, and scores of women celebrating her, so please take note than if we want to appeal to the 55+ who have 60% of the wealth in America, and who are very much pro-aging, we need to have better labels.
“Life extension”, “living to 150 years”, is not making people dream.
We can’t cure cancer or figure out climate change but hey these people here want to double our biological lives, sounds, and looks as ludicrous as the scene in Blade Runner 2049 science fiction movie where a replicant (fictional bioengineered being) is visiting a character at an old-age care facility. Really? We bioengineered beings but can’t figure out age reversal? #fail
I say this with the caveat that this is one of my favorite movies, alongside the original, and that I do believe the second revolution of life extension will happen one day, or it technically already happened if you consider transplants are literally extending life.
Exhibit B
Chip Conley, who I can equate as the Aubrey de Grey of the aging space, dislikes longevity science and the “Tech intelligentsia”, as much as Aubrey likes crypto and fighting aging.
I respect him a lot, and I know that not fawning on the idol of the aging space is probably not making me new friends, but I don’t get his dislike for the industry that made him a lot of money, and famous for having been at Airbnb. There is a weekly barrage in his newsletter of how terrible fighting aging is, at this point I want to ask “Hey Chip, what’s the chip on your shoulder?”.
Again, another case of conflating fighting the societal aspect of aging vs the biological one.
Conley is wealthy, charges 5K to 10K to take a course on how to cope in midlife, I am sure his speaker fee is high, given that he did work at Airbnb, that famous company from that awful place Silicon Valley…If he gets sick he will have medicine, care, and the comfort that his extremely privileged life afforded him. What about all the people who are getting to 60 without enough for retirement? Would it not be better for them to age healthier to have yet more opportunity, and not end up sick and destitute? Again, reversing or repairing the damage of aging is going to help us all, most of all if we can stop Alzheimer’s and/or dementia.
Aging is not a zero-sum game where there is such a thing as the right way to age.
You want to go grey and wrinkled. Great!
You want to work out all day, do blood transfusions, Botox and facelifts. Great!
Your body, your aging process.
Vive la difference! (Taken from the saying of French women celebrating their being different than men.)
The real Boogie Man ☠️
Senior living and long-term care is the only service industry that charges astronomical fees and treats people like prisoners. I am so good at making enemies on today’s newsletter!! But hey, don’t ask me, ask the adult children of parents in the facilities in Ontario, Canada who paid private LTC thousands of dollars to see their parents neglected, and some of them ending up dead.
Airlines are unionized, flight attendants start at $26 dollars an hour. They do an incredible amount of training, I know because I was one in university. But while we value someone who could save us in an unlikely flight catastrophe; most care workers do not have contracts, they work in agencies, and starting and staying at $16/hr. They are the people taking care of our parents. To me, it is shocking how little we value caregiving.
The companies that own the facilities are something else. In Ontario, they managed to give out dividends and get government grants, while facilities were understaffed and people were dying.
The real boogie man is not a scientist figuring how we can live longer with health, but the industrial care complex. Look into it, it will scare you enough to want to fight for a different paradigm of aging.
The Look of Longevity 👀
Let’s end on a high note. The World Economic Forum had a great study come out on Healthy Aging and Longevity, sadly they used the cliché of the wrinkly hands photo to speak of better outcomes. I say no, no, nooo like Amy Winehouse did one day.
We need to do better, call me and ask me for ideas if you want, but please: it needs to be aspirational. For society (younger and older) to believe there is a vibrant version of aging, people need to see other types of images, and how good chronological age can look these days.
Thank you
Thank you for all your comments and shares. I am still figuring out the best format, date to send, and relevant content. Please feel free to send me typos, corrections, or suggestions! I will master the art of Grammarly and my slight dyslexia.
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