Source: Radio New Zealand
Bryan Johnson, the billionaire biohacker, stands next to his son. He has reportedly infused blood plasma from his then-17-year-old son in an effort to live longer. Bryan Johnson
We’re all getting older – but we’re not all happy to admit it. The longevity trend has taken off, with some people paying six figures for protocols that promise to make them live longer.
The numbers on old age are only going in one direction, fuelling a global longevity industry worth billions of dollars as people search for more and more extreme ways to live longer.
“We are now realising that there are as many people over 85 as there are under 14,” says Dr Ngaire Kerse, GP and University of Auckland’s Joyce Cook Chair in Ageing Well.
“In the over-65 age group, it’s heading for one in five. So, older people are more prevalent and they’re more obvious and we have a very ageist society. Of course we want to avoid those negative stereotypes of ageing and we want to be the healthy, positive older person.”
But at the extreme end of obsession, people are paying tens of thousands of dollars or more for intense intervention from experts like Dr Peter Attia, a star of longevity medicine who has a best-selling book, a podcast with millions of followers and charges patients six figures.
Now there’s a backlash against Attia because of the content of his damning email exchanges with Jeffery Epstein. Attia has denied any criminal wrongdoing but apologised for the content of his “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible emails”.
It’s not just Attia and the Epstein link. There’s been a growing wave of distrust in the messaging of many longevity influencers lately, including the likes of Bryan Johnson, the billionaire biohacker who wants to live forever.
He is reported to have chosen three people from 1500 who applied for his Immortals programme. The three are paying $1 million for access to the “longevity protocols” that he’s been following for the past five years.
Johnson’s pursuit of eternal life has included a plasma exchange between his teenage son, himself and his 70-year-old father.
But even Elon Musk, who declared at Davos that there will be a cure for old age, says there is a limit on our lives.
Kerse agrees and has the statistics to back that up.
“I don’t actually want to be 150. I almost have seen enough now,” she jokes.
“It’s challenging to me to think that people would want to live forever, you know, [to] 200 years. And there’s several novels written about what that might be like, challenging whether it’s a good thing or not.”
She says there’s a biological end point at 110 years, when “our cells run out of puff”.
“The maintenance and repair mechanisms don’t work any more and so they get clogged up with stuff and you get diseases that are associated with ageing.
“We’re pushing up against being healthy for as long as you can. It’s ideal to live a fulfilled and healthy and contributing life and then drop dead. Wouldn’t that be lovely.”
Kerse is more concerned with finding ways to make lives better for all old people. She has co-led a world-leading longitudinal study, called Life and Living in Advanced Age, which started in 2010 with groups of Māori and non-Māori born between 1920 and 1930.
Hundreds of people in the cohort were interviewed about their lives every year for five years and again at 10 years.
“Now we’re at 15, 16 years follow-up, most of them are gone of course, because they’d be over 100.”
Kerse sets out the study’s findings and the factors behind participants’ long, healthy lives in today’s podcast.
The Detail also talks to 89-year-old Garth Barfoot of the real estate dynasty about his passion for running and what keeps him healthy, happy and alert.
In 2024 he was the oldest runner to finish the New York Marathon and still takes part in events with his grandchildren.
Listen to the podcast to find out what he believes is the main reason for living long and well.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
