At a glance:
The promise of living longer and healthier has moved into everyday conversation. Biological-age testing, supplements, peptides, infusions and longevity clinics are no longer niche topics.
They are part of a growing market built around a question many people are now asking with more urgency:
What can I do today to stay healthier for longer?
The recent ABC Four Corners episode The Race to Reverse Ageing brought that question into sharper public view.
The program examined the rapid rise of longevity-focused interventions and raised a broader issue now at the centre of preventative health:
What is supported by evidence, what remains experimental, and how should people make decisions in a crowded health marketplace?
John Hall, CEO of Executive Health Solutions by Altius (EHS), says the interest is no longer occasional.
“There is far more interest in longevity today than there was even five years ago,” Hall says.
“Executives are looking for practical ways to maintain their health, energy and performance over the long term. This is a good outcome, but the challenge is sifting through the hype and focusing on the evidence.”
That challenge is becoming harder.
Health information now comes through podcasts, books, social media, mainstream media and commercial providers. Some claims are carefully explained. Others are presented with more certainty than the current evidence may support.
Hall says many executives are naturally drawn to the language of optimisation because it mirrors how they already operate in business: measure performance, solve problems, look for marginal gains.
Health can start to look like the next frontier of performance management. And with rapid advances in wearables, diagnostics, AI and health analytics, there is more opportunity than ever to understand individual health risk in greater detail. The challenge is knowing which technologies and data genuinely improve health decisions. That is where Hall believes clinical discipline matters most.
“At EHS, our role is to bring clinical discipline to that interest,” he says.
EHS Medical Director, Dr Mark Penny, a Renal and Hypertension Physician at St Vincents says:
“We often find ourselves advising executives not to proceed with certain pathology or radiology tests. Those tests may be easy to order and profitable, but if they are not supported by evidence, they may create a risk of false positives and unnecessary follow-up, they may provide little benefit and, in some cases, cause harm.”
Dr Penny says the issue is not technology itself. New diagnostics, digital health tools, and emerging technologies have enormous potential to strengthen preventative healthcare.
The risk comes when access to more technology is confused with better medicine. More testing does not automatically lead to better outcomes.
The value comes from selecting the right tools for the right individual and understanding what the results mean in clinical context.
It is a point often missed in the public conversation. Evidence-based care does not always mean doing more. Sometimes, it means knowing when not to test.
The hidden risk in feeling well
One reason longevity resonates is that it speaks to uncertainty. Many people feel well enough to keep going yet still wonder what may be happening beneath the surface.
The Executive Health Index 2024 provides a useful lens here. Developed from 31,700 health assessments across 17 industries, the report analysed 28 clinically validated parameters, including measured clinical results, validated survey data and doctor-reviewed health information.
The findings suggest that outward performance does not always reflect underlying health risk.
“Through more than 20 years of executive assessments and data from over 100,000 executives, we see that many risks mirror broader population trends,” Hall says.
“Elevated cholesterol, raised blood glucose, abnormal liver function and blood pressure concerns remain common findings, even in high-performing individuals who may feel generally well.”
EHS has found that one in 2.5 executives undertaking a Coronary Calcium Scan had a suboptimal finding.
One in eight had elevated blood pressure, one in three had elevated cholesterol levels and one in five had elevated blood glucose levels.
The report also found that one in 16 had an abnormal stress ECG requiring specialist review and one in eight had an abnormal skin lesion requiring specialist review.
These figures matter because they highlight the importance of hands-on medicine.
The question becomes less about whether someone can access the newest longevity intervention, and more about whether measurable risks have already been identified and properly interpreted.
Hall says the results that prompt the most discussion are often the ones people did not expect.
“What often surprises executives are the findings that emerge from actual clinical examination,” Hall reveals.In this regard, clinical assessment deals with what is actually present, with early intervention being an important aspect of longevity.
“Each year, we identify a meaningful number of cardiac abnormalities through exercise stress testing, significant skin lesions, and breast or testicular lumps through the physical examination.”
When more information is not always better information
The growth of the longevity market has created a new kind of health literacy problem. People may have access to more information than ever, but that does not mean the information is easier to interpret.
Hall says the difficulty is no longer simply finding health advice. It is knowing which advice deserves confidence.
“It is increasingly difficult for executives to distinguish evidence from hype,” he says.
“There is a constant stream of information from social media, mainstream media and commercial providers, and many claims sound compelling even when the supporting evidence is limited or still emerging.”
This is where the difference between data and clinical judgement becomes important.
A test result on its own does not necessarily answer the right question. It needs context: personal risk factors, family history, symptoms, evidence quality, potential harms, likely benefit and what would happen next if the result were abnormal.
“At EHS, we apply a clear clinical governance process,” Hall says.
“Our Medical Director, Dr Mark Penny and our advisory board, review the available evidence and determine whether a test or intervention is appropriate, useful and does not cause harm to the individual.”
That process can lead to a difficult answer: no.
“Where the evidence does not support it, we explain why we do not include it and produce a position paper outlining the evidence and rationale,” Dr Penny expounds.
In a marketplace where more testing can be framed as more control, that restraint is significant.“That is central to being an evidence-based provider: we are prepared to say no to tests when they are not in the client’s best clinical interest.”
It suggests the better question is not simply “What else can be measured?” but “How can technology, data and clinical expertise work together to produce a better health decision?”
The fundamentals still carry weight
The longevity conversation often becomes most animated when it turns to what is new. Yet the factors that consistently appear in executive health data are familiar:
Sleep, physical activity, cardiovascular risk, metabolic health, alcohol consumption, stress and early detection.
“Curiosity has an important place in health,” Hall says.
“The next step is understanding what evidence supports a particular intervention and where the research is still emerging.”
The Executive Health Index found that 43% of executives reported average to poor sleep quality. It also found that one in two were not meeting physical activity guidelines, with more than 15% reporting no regular exercise. This correlated with the 23% who had poor to below average aerobic fitness.
Sleep, in particular, comes up repeatedly in Hall’s work with executives.
“Sleep is one of the most important factors we see,” Hall notes.
“It is influenced by stage of life, psychological wellbeing, workload, lifestyle habits and sometimes underlying clinical issues. Poor sleep can affect concentration, decision-making and resilience long before someone presents with a medical problem.”
That last point is important.
Many health risks do not arrive as dramatic events. They build slowly and show up first as lower energy, poorer concentration, reduced resilience or a sense that recovery is taking longer than it used to.
Hall says more executives now understand sleep matters, but awareness alone does not solve the problem.
“The encouraging shift is that executives increasingly recognise the impact of sleep on health and performance,” he adds.
“The challenge is helping them identify the cause and take evidence-based steps to improve it.”
That sentence captures a broader truth about preventative health. Knowing that sleep, movement, nutrition and stress matter is one thing. Understanding what is driving a person’s risk profile, and what action is appropriate for that individual, is something else.
What the longevity movement gets right
For the concern about hype, Hall believes the longevity movement has many positive impacts.
“It has increased awareness of sleep, resistance training, nutrition, prevention and healthy ageing.”
That matters because preventative health has often struggled to compete for attention. People tend to act when symptoms appear or when a health event forces the issue. Longevity has helped bring prevention into a more active conversation, particularly among people who want to remain healthy, energetic and effective over the long term.
The caution is that enthusiasm can run ahead of evidence.
“As the Four Corners program highlighted, not every aspect of the longevity movement is clinically sound or in the best interests of the individual,” Hall points out.
“At EHS, we are increasingly seeing executives request tests or interventions influenced by marketing, media commentary, celebrity endorsements or other providers, rather than strong clinical evidence.”
He says some of these options are expensive, may offer little benefit and can create unnecessary concern, false positives or further investigation.
That does not mean people should ignore innovation. Preventative medicine should continue to evolve as new evidence, technology and clinical capability emerge.
The opportunity is to continually assess what is new, determine where it adds genuine clinical value and incorporate useful advances into care. Some innovations may fundamentally change how risk is detected and managed. Others may generate more information without improving outcomes.Strong clinical governance is what helps distinguish between the two.
“Commercially, it can be difficult to say no to these requests,” Hall says.
“But that is exactly where evidence-based clinical judgement matters most. The goal should not be to do more testing simply because it is available, but to choose the most appropriate test based on the current evidence.”
A more useful question than reversing ageing
The science of longevity will continue to evolve.
Some interventions that are experimental today may develop stronger evidence in the future. Others may remain commercially attractive without proving meaningful clinical value.
For organisations and individuals trying to make decisions now, the more practical starting point is already available: understand current risk, interpret it properly and focus on changes supported by evidence.
Long-term health is shaped less by a single breakthrough than by the ongoing identification and management of risk across clinical, lifestyle, psychological and physical health factors, increasingly supported by technology and data that can help identify risk earlier and personalise intervention.
Hall’s final message is measured.
“The longevity conversation raises valuable questions about how we support healthy ageing,” he says.
“From an executive health perspective, the focus remains on helping people stay healthy, capable and effective throughout their lives.”
Perhaps that is the more useful question for this moment. Not whether ageing can be outsmarted. Not whether the newest intervention is worth attention simply because it is new.
The better question is whether people have the right information, interpreted in the right clinical context, to make decisions that support their health over time.
As Hall puts it: “The strongest health decisions are informed by evidence, clinical context and individual risk factors.”
Interested in the data behind executive health risks in Australia? Explore the latest Executive Health Index research based on 31,700 executive health assessments.
