Bryan Johnson has spent tens of millions of dollars on a highly publicized quest to reverse the aging process. The tech millionaire follows a strict diet and fitness regimen, stacks multiple dietary supplements, obsesses over sleep hygiene, and subjects himself to a litany of medical tests to track his biological data. Harnessing his newfound celebrity, Johnson has become a false authority in the wellness space, touting supplements and alternative therapies and selling his own brand of olive oil.

This article isn’t about Bryan Johnson. Rather, it’s about how Johnson could easily have been the muse for a new longevity initiative recently launched by luxury fitness chain Equinox. Their Optimize program, a liteversionof Johnson’s vision, harvests biological data from its clients (via blood tests, fitness and strength assessments, and wearable sensors) and uses it to create personalized fitness and nutrition programs. The program has been described by Equinox as “the definitive approach to health optimization” that’ll “unlock the peaks of human potential.” But priced at $42,000 a year, the program is making headlines for the wrong reasons. Is Equinox’s ultra-premium service worth the membership fee, or is it another cash grab in a wellness industry that’s made longevity its latest plaything?

Off the Beaten Track

If it wasn’t obvious from the price, the program is for people who are serious about their health and fitness (and who are extremely wealthy). Credit where it’s due; by encouraging better consideration of diet and exercise, there could be tremendous benefits for people who are inactive and poorly nourished. And it’s good to see the program sidestepping the promise of rapid results that’s become the scourge of the wellness industry. “We don’t believe you can just hack yourself out of bad habits like poor sleep or lack of quality exercise,” said Julia Klim, vice president of Strategic Partnerships at Equinox. “So, you commit to a program to achieve your personal goal, which could be to get leaner or stronger, have more energy, or lower your rate of aging.”

However, you don’t need to dig far beneath the surface to unearth a bunch of red flags. For instance, the blood tests that are the lynchpin of the program are outsourced to Function Health—a testing agency cofounded by physician and noted poster boy for functional medicine Dr. Mark Hyman. Function Health, in turn, outsources medical tests to independent third parties so they can partially absolve themselves of clinical responsibility. It’s only in the small print they admit that they’re “not a laboratory or medical provider.”

Optimize is also in danger of creating unrealistic expectations for their clients. Klim compares the program to the level of support and team-based approach typically afforded to Olympic athletes. “We want to bring that notion to the everyday human and high-performing human, which is the Equinox member.” But the average Olympian trains two to three times daily, twisting and tearing at their bodies in pursuit of optimal performance, competing in a world where success and failure can be snatched in a hiccup. Like an F1 race car, high-performance machines need a lot more maintenance.

As is all too common, the real whitewash is in the marketing. While results derive from hard work, patience, exercise, and healthy eating, it’s the window dressing—the blood tests, fitness tracking, Aura rings, one-to-one consultations, and other bells and whistles that are front and center. The website is slick, featuring fit bodies exercising in futuristic environments, and the press releases comprise all the commercial health-related buzzwords that imply so much but mean so little: fitness, longevity, immunity, wellness, and so on. And it’s all been generously covered by major news outlets such as the New York Times and Forbes, who, in their failure to offer any objective scrutiny, have done little more than promote the product on Equinox’s behalf.

In an interview with CNBC this month, Klim described the company’s “four pillars” of longevity: “movement, regeneration, nutrition, and community.” The four pillars sound a lot like a corporate rebranding of exercise, recovery, and healthy eating—the basic tenets of a healthy lifestyle that people have been largely ignoring since Ancient Greece. It’s basic lifestyle advice given a new coat of paint and a price tag that, for most people, is incomprehensible.

The paradox is that Equinox doesn’t emphasize the simplest and most powerful aspect of the program—regular physical activity. Retired Olympians live, on average, five years longer than the general population. It’s a similar life expectancy to Roger Bannister and his contemporaries who were the first cohort of runners to break the four-minute mile. And Bryan Johnson’s doctors claim he’s already slashed five years off his biological age. What’s the common denominator here? It isn’t superb genetics, Olympic levels of exercise, or bottomless pockets; it’s regular physical activity, pure and simple. Just meeting the conservative physical activity guidelines confers a 30–40 percent reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, equating to around four to five years. But physical activity alone can’t be marketed with a $40k/year price tag.

Big Data: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Function Health analyzes blood samples for up to 100 different metabolites, including cholesterol, blood sugar, and metrics of heart, liver, and kidney function, among others. Private clinics and exercise labs have been doing this for decades, only on a smaller scale, and mobile technology has distilled the premise into smartphones, smartwatches, and other wearable devices. The premise is that, when it comes to data, more is better.

            Tracking biological data can be beneficial for identifying and monitoring health conditions and for complementing a patient’s symptoms. But there’s no guarantee that more data will yield more insight. Many physicians argue that collecting unnecessary health data could cause more harm than good, eliciting expensive, invasive, and potentially harmful procedures, not to mention additional stress and anxiety for the client. A commentary in the British Medical Journal suggested that while all screenings can do harm, some do more good than harm at a reasonable cost. Rather than dichotomizing biological testing into an all-or-nothing approach, the real challenge for clinicians is to engage the patient in shared decision-making to record the right metrics for the right clients at the right time.

If we try and distill the secret to longevity into a formula, it’s hard to find a better one than that espoused by the Ancient Greeks: emphasizing a good diet, exercise, moderation and balance, and the cultivation of virtues. Despite my reservations about Equinox’s program, I’m hesitant to dismiss it outright as a waste of money. Undoubtedly, health, longevity, and an improved quality of life are accessible for everyone at a fraction of the cost. However, for individuals with disposable income, the significant price tag and resulting investment bias may provide the accountability they need to embrace lifestyle changes they might otherwise overlook.

Dr. Nick Tiller is an exercise scientist at Harbor-UCLA, a writer, author, and fellow of CSI. Join him, Timothy Caulfield, and Rina Raphael at CSICon 2024 for their panel discussion: Longevity, Lies, and the Fountain of Youth.