I Spent a Day at the Latest “Longevity Clinic”
Illustration by Mark Pernice
Would you want to live to be 100? It’s a question John Mackey likes to ask people. The founder and former CEO of Whole Foods (he and his partners sold the company to Amazon in 2017 for more than $13 billion) has moved on to his next work chapter with the opening of Love.Life, a sprawling longevity-focused health center in Manhattan Beach, California. The answer most people give Mackey to his question is no, and he has a theory why: We’ve been conditioned to think that to be old must come with a certain degree of decrepitude. So, sure, hitting triple digits is something that many, if given the option, wouldn’t look forward to. But, what if, posits Mackey, those final years of our life weren’t marked by health, mobility, and cognitive issues? Cue The Substance voice: What if you, in your 90s, could feel as good as you did in your 60s? “If you go back and say, would you want to live to be 100 if you could be of sound mind and healthy body until that period of time, then the answer usually changes to yes,” says Mackey.
Longevity—which literally means the ability to live longer, though most of the messaging in this space focuses more on being “well” for longer—is currently the fastest-growing sector of an already booming wellness industry. A 2024 report by global consulting firm McKinsey analyzing the $1.8 trillion wellness market found services and products geared toward longevity to be rapidly on the rise. Of the consumers surveyed (a group that spanned generations and locations), more than 60% considered these longevity services and products to be extremely important and, in 2024, 70% of those in the US purchased more in this area—things like longevity-targeted vitamins, supplements, and nutritional powders; healthy meal kits; and at-home diagnostic kits—than in previous years. According to analysts at Bank of America, the global longevity market is estimated to reach $610 billion this year.
Part of that growth has been the emergence of destinations branding themselves as longevity centers and clinics, where your current health state is measured via diagnostic tests and machines, and a host of treatments—from cold plunges to NAD drips to hyperbaric oxygen chambers—are offered to improve it. The longevity conversation isn’t a new one: Take China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who was so obsessed with living forever that he went hunting for immortality potions and may have died of mercury poisoning. In 1889, acclaimed French neurologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, age 72, began injecting himself with testicular extracts from dogs and guinea pigs for the purposes of rejuvenation. He died five years later, though it’s difficult to say if his experiments were a contributing factor.
What’s different now is that regular people are more open to what might have been previously considered alternative approaches to health than ever before, says Jonathan Leary, a doctor of chiropractic and alternative medicine and the founder of Remedy Place, a “wellness club” with locations in LA and New York. You might have a very good idea why: “Before social media, there was no way to get information about acupuncture or meditation or ice baths in front of so many people’s eyes,” says Leary. Now searches for that information are trending on TikTok (type in “cold plunge” and you get more than 80 million hits). Social media platforms have indeed enabled direct-to-consumer health education, says Andrew Ahn, MD, a physician researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Harvard Medical School. But just because you saw someone raving about a treatment online doesn’t mean it actually works. “While this democratization of health information has allowed for greater accessibility, it has also introduced misinformation and trends that have not been entirely born out of rigorous evidence,” says Dr. Ahn.
COVID only accelerated the public’s collective interest. “It didn’t matter how much money you had or what your ethno-socio-political background was, COVID set a light bulb off that health trumps everything else in terms of importance,” says Richard Chang, COO at Extension Health, a longevity clinic located in New York City’s West Village. (Of course, there was, and still is, plenty of misinformation and trends not entirely born out of rigorous evidence being spread about COVID under the guise of “alternative medicine” and “wellness” too.) A 2024 NIH analysis confirmed a surge in interest in so-called “complementary health approaches,” like acupuncture and meditation for pain management. Dr. Ahn says he has certainly noticed an uptick in patients inquiring about wellness practices that were once considered “fringe” and secondary to conventional medical care. “I am honestly taken aback by how mainstream integrative treatments have become,” says Dr. Ahn. “Practices like red-light therapy, microbiome [treatments], and psychedelics were once dismissed as lacking scientific credibility. Now they’re widely discussed even in research circles.”
At Love.Life, those who are already fluent in modern wellness-speak have been the earliest adopters, but Mackey thinks that word of mouth will be a powerful tool for broadening their customer base. A few months ago, that customer base also included me. It seems that my journey to Love.Life and into the world of longevity diagnostics came at the right time. A recent study by Stanford Medicine found that biological aging doesn’t necessarily happen in a gradual, linear fashion, but that we experience two periods of rapid change: one around age 44, and the other around 60. And if that’s true, at 46, I’m coming down from the first crest.
What those Stanford researchers found was that among men and women in their 40s, the significant shifts in the body’s molecules were related to cardiovascular diseases; alcohol, caffeine, and lipid metabolism; and skin and muscle. I have felt palpable shifts in some of those things since turning the corner on 40: What I eat and drink has a more immediate impact on me (spice, sugar, gluten, caffeine, alcohol, a.k.a., all the good stuff, does not, shall we say, process as seamlessly as it once did). My skin has started a downward slump, ditto for my energy, focus, and libido. My sleep is erratic and my body shape has morphed, picking up some extra padding that refuses to budge. Which is all to say that I was more than ready to offer myself up for a diagnostic reckoning.
Love.Life’s flagship center is located a few doors down from a Whole Foods on a commercial stretch of El Segundo. The unassuming strip mall location, the bright, airy space, and the cheerful greeting you’ll get from every person there made Love.Life seem refreshingly accessible. The cost of a membership, however, is decidedly not. When I arrive, Christina Miller, MD, who is board-certified in emergency medicine and also happens to be Mackey’s longtime personal physician, asks how I do with blood draws. I’ll be kicking off my visit by giving them 20 vials that they’ll use to evaluate more than 120 biomarkers including blood sugar, metabolic, hormone (thyroid among them), immune, micronutrient, and inflammation markers.
After my bloodwork, we sit in one of Love.Life’s exam rooms which has that modern, muted Instagrammable design (minus the usual monstera plants) and go deep on my medical history before Dr. Miller asks me to identify my goals. I resist the urge to “yes” all the options (which run the gamut from treating health markers to specific medical challenges or illnesses) and settle on increased strength and mobility, more energy, better sleep, higher libido, and, of course, living longer. A tall order, I think, but Dr. Miller is optimistic about my chances.
Next, I’m led down a circuitous path into a darkened circular chamber with a James Turrell feel where I’m plopped into a plush reclining zero-gravity chair; my legs are elevated and a gas mask-like contraption (really, a VO2 max mask) is strapped around my head. I’m told to lie back, enjoy the silence, and chill (no looking at my phone which, for me, is absolute bliss!) for 45 minutes so my resting metabolic rate can be measured. If this is the path to longevity, I’m all in. A DEXA scan—like an X-ray, but checking bone density—requires little more than a few minutes of lying down while a contraption hovered above my body, humming as it went. Then Love.Life’s resident physical therapist and exercise physiologist carted me off to the largest gym I’ve ever laid eyes on with cutting-edge equipment. I test my grip strength, I farmer’s carry, I wall sit, I plank, I deadlift, I benchpress. The full range of my balance and flexibility is closely scrutinized on an OxeFit machine where you work out in tandem with a digital avatar (who, be warned, doesn’t blink) on a screen facing you. Watching your computer-generated form and seeing the real-time data is meant to make your workouts more efficient.
By then, I was hungry. Love.Life’s on-site café is open to all, no membership required, and on the day I was there many curious people were wandering in to grab a smoothie (get the Golden Hour, a blend of orange juice, coconut water, banana, turmeric, pollen, and lion’s mane). While the offerings center on plant-based and vegan options (Mackey is a long-time vegetarian and has been a vegan for over two decades) and position food as fuel, flavor is not skimped on. I’m still thinking about a Smurf-colored concoction called an Ocean Bowl with blue majik coconut yogurt, banana, pistachio butter, and chia seeds, and an improbably good vegan bone broth made with mushrooms and sea roots.
Refueled, I cruised past the row of indoor pickleball courts and the expansive Pilates and group fitness studios to a small room where I laid down and was zipped into a Ballancer Pro suit (an FDA-cleared form of lymphatic compression therapy which gained extra attention when Jennifer Aniston posted her experience in one on Instagram last year). With the tap of a button, this sleeping bag-like onesie inflates you to Stay Puft proportions and methodically squeezes. The contractions are designed to reduce swelling (really, every airport lounge should be outfitted with these babies) and they may also, as was my case, lull you to sleep.
Then it was on to a PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field therapy) session, which feels like light, repetitive tapping on the body and is believed to stimulate cell function. “It’s exercising and giving energy to the cells to help them repair, recover, or reduce inflammation,” says Michael Robertson, Love.Life’s regional president (who does not have any medical training himself). Dr. Ahn says there is robust evidence that PEMF therapy, which has been around since the 1970s, is effective for bone healing but, beyond some anecdotal experiences, solid research remains sparse for other conditions.
I can’t speak for my cells, but I certainly felt relaxed, even more so because I opted to have a red light lamp positioned above my face for supposedly collagen-stimulating beams. (Love.Life also has red light beds if you want head-to-toe benefits.) Finally, I made my way to the saunas for a circuit between the private infrared chambers and the immense dry cedar sauna, before stretching myself out like a seal—drenched, contented—across a slab of heated marble modeled after a Turkish hammam.
At Love.Life, all of the above (plus many more treatments, classes, and onsite specialists across a vast swath of disciplines from TCM to integrative medicine) exist under one roof: a one-stop longevity shop. Mackey’s first seed of an idea for the center came 40 years ago in 1984 when he started working on opening a “consciousness center” called “Lifework.” Then, during his tenure at Whole Foods, he helped create a program called “Total Health Immersion,” which involved free, weeklong retreats focused on checking biometrics (like blood sugar and inflammation), nutrition, and exercise that employees could apply to attend. “The thing that blew me away was how much progress people could make in just one week,” says Mackey, who adds that he saw many employees stick to their programs and lose significant amounts of weight or reverse their type 2 diabetes.
But Whole Foods faced public blowback for incentivizing employees to hit certain health goals. In 2010, the company started offering additional store discounts for those who could avoid nicotine and maintain low blood pressure and cholesterol and a BMI under 24. That BMI has been shown to be a problematic and inaccurate measure of overall health was a big source of the criticism. Mackey points out that they also used the hip-to-waist ratio as an alternative, saying that it better reflects levels of abdominal, including visceral, fat. Whether this is a more accurate measure of “health” or not, the fact remains that certain benefits were available only if you met prescribed criteria—which is troubling.
The health-based discount was eliminated in 2023, but Whole Foods continues to offer immersion programs. It all begs the question: Should your employer be privy to your health data and, moreover, use it as a means of reward? Mackey says that it was voluntary and that employees’ results were viewed only by a designated individual for the sole purpose of discount eligibility and weren’t stored internally. He believes that the dramatic health benefits people experienced outweigh the concerns raised about the approach. And in 2022, Mackey started thinking about how he could scale that idea—and Love.Life was born. “I want to nourish people, heal them, and help them to thrive and that’s our motto,” says Mackey.
“Helping people thrive” certainly sounds good, but as things stand now, it’s only those with a certain amount of disposable income who get to benefit from these full-service wellness ventures. At Love.Life, an Optimize membership grants you full access to testing services, fitness and recovery, nutritional and health coaching, and five doctor visits for $790 a month or $9,000 per year. It’s a yearlong commitment because they piggyback all the testing with on-site treatment plans and wellness protocols to treat and track over the course of 12 months. While there are clients who, like me, have less pressing concerns to address, Love.Life also treats those with more complicated chronic conditions like autoimmune and thyroid issues.
For people who don’t want to commit to an annual membership, there is also a baseline assessment with lab work, a DEXA scan and musculoskeletal assessment plus one physician and one health coach appointment for $1,500. But Love.Life’s white-glove, 24/7 all-access Unlimited membership? That will run you $50,000 annually. Since opening, “a number” of people (the company declined to share exactly how many) have signed up for this top tier. (My own one-day visit was gratis with the understanding I’d be writing about the experience. The total cost would have been $2,370.)
At Extension Health, the price for a comprehensive diagnostics package, including popular tests like a DEXA scan and VO2 Max, is $999, while Function Health, the new longevity venture by physician and author Mark Hyman (who has also been on the receiving end of some criticism, mainly for peddling pseudoscience and his alignment with RFK, Jr), offers their diagnostic assessment for $499 per year. Comparatively, it’s a deal—though that’s just for labs and virtual tracking.
Part of the reason that avowed biohackers like tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Bryan Johnson have garnered so much attention is not simply because of their lofty longevity goals (chronologically 47, Johnson wants to reverse his biological age to 18 by any means necessary), but the financial and physical extremes to which they will go to achieve them: Johnson’s grueling routine—which includes infusing himself with his teenage son’s blood—sets him back $2 million a year.
It’s hard to ignore the fact that the most vocal longevity seekers and founders creating and profiting from these ventures are mostly white, male, and wealthy. Libertarian billionaire PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel has repeatedly shared his mission to fight death, while Amazon titan Jeff Bezos (who bought Mackey’s Whole Foods for over $13 billion in 2017) has funneled billions into biotech cellular aging startup Altos Labs. The New York Times recently reported that Hyman’s various wellness business ventures (including a successful supplement company) pulled in close to $30 million in revenue in 2023. “These Silicon Valley tech leaders and biohackers benefitted from a confluence of factors that uniquely positioned them to advance this movement,” says Dr. Ahn. “They had a predilection toward breaking old paradigms and were rewarded for having a ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude. They were savvy with data and naturally gravitated to novel technologies. And they came into substantial financial success early in life, leading to ample resources.” In other words: While evidence is scant about the effectiveness of many of the treatments these rich men are offering patients, what is clear is that selling them is making at least some of these rich men richer.
But you can’t blame the patients who are buying into these treatments that come with lofty promises. One reason more (non-billionaire) Americans are seeking out these longevity wellness solutions is that our medical system is broken and people are sick, says Hyman, adding that 6 out of 10 Americans have a chronic illness and men and women in the US will spend half their lives taking prescription drugs. “We don’t have a proactive, preventative approach to health. It’s reactive,” says Hyman. According to their well-to-do founders, ventures like Function, Love.Life, and Extension are just trying to identify the transitions from illness to wellness so they can help flip that script before you end up with a disease.
The argument that our current health care system is often more akin to disease care is certainly not invalid, and it’s one that has continued to gain traction in recent months. “The new future of health requires a system designed to not only treat illness but to cultivate wellness and empower individuals,” says Mackey, who has called himself a “conscious capitalist” in the past. He articulated his views against universal health care—arguing for less government control and more individual empowerment—in a 2009 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. When asked, he says his position hasn’t changed.
I can’t help but wonder though if the more conscious way to capitalize on a broken health care system is to make that proactive and preventative approach to our well-being universally accessible. Dr. Ahn’s patients, particularly those juggling chronic conditions, are already overwhelmed with managing their medical needs and don’t have the luxury, time, or financial resources to engage in wellness optimization, he says. Plus, as breast cancer survivor Sue Williamson recently wrote for Allure, people who are already sick can have a hard time finding a “wellness” provider that will treat them.
But if you can afford to splurge on these longevity clinics, you will undoubtedly learn things about yourself. My hour-long follow-up appointment with Dr. Miller to assess the results of all my testing revealed some things about my health that I already knew but plenty that I didn’t and was far more in-depth than any visit with my general practitioner in New York.
I was aware that my cholesterol was elevated, something that mirrors my family history, but Dr. Miller shared that both my lipoprotein (a) and ApoB, a protein that helps carry fat and cholesterol through your body, were high (these tests are usually not part of routine bloodwork and not covered by my insurance), which raises the risk for cardiovascular disease. After a period of severe anemia last year following a stretch of heavy periods and fibroid surgeries, I assumed my iron levels were back to normal, but she pointed out that my ferritin reserves (ferritin is a crucial protein that helps your body store and release iron) weren’t. Many women in my age range (mid to late 40s) are osteopenic says Dr. Miller, but my bones got a good score as did my muscle mass (in the top percentile for people my age). In my gym assessment, other than a confirmation that I have a weaker left side, I aced all their longevity markers (high grip strength, farmer’s carry of your own weight, extended wall sit and plank). Dr. Miller gave me a protocol full of simple tools and suggestions like taking 500 mg of bergamot twice daily to address my cholesterol and making sure I’m squeezing lemon on all my leafy greens to increase iron absorption. All straightforward and also affordable.
Is all this worth the price of entry? Would I fork over $1,500 of my own money to have access to this level of information about my health? A few years ago I would have said hell no, but becoming a parent has shifted my perspective. I’m now thinking more about my lifespan (and yes, in longevity-speak, healthspan, too) simply because I want to be around for as much of my daughter’s life as possible. I’d also venture that if I were to tally how much I spend weekly on coffee alone living in New York City (the land of the $10 latte), I could make a case for earmarking $1,500 yearly for my health.
Despite the less encouraging stats about my cholesterol, hearing about my bone and muscle mass was gratifying because for the past year I’ve been working hard, lifting weights with my trainer Veerle at Breuckelen Athletic in Brooklyn. The diagnostics showed that my bones and muscle mass are strong and that does motivate me to keep going and to even try to keep testing. For an already health-conscious consumer, streamlined longevity ventures like Love.Life serve as reassurance that they are on the right track, offering proof positive of their diet and lifestyle choices. “We’re often passengers in our own health and this is going to allow you to be an active participant,” says Robertson. For some, like myself, that participation may just have to happen offsite. On a writer's salary, I can’t swing a Love.Life membership. However, at $12, that Ocean Bowl is in my budget—and I’ll be back for it.
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Originally Appeared on Allure
