Saturday coffee: "longevity expert" nonsense

How old do you have to be to be an aging expert?

Sometimes it’s okay to ignore the oat milk and go with the grass-fed 2%.

By 2030, 1 in 6 humans will be 60 or older, according to the U.N, and the global longevity industry, already worth more than $1 trillion, is projected to scale up accordingly. Which means that we’ll be reading and hearing more from people who call themselves aging or longevity experts.

Which raises interesting questions.

Can you be a longevity expert at 34? How about 50?

These questions fall into the same category as asking whether a man can be a menopause expert. If you haven’t had a first-hand experience with aging — whatever that means — how can you be an expert?

One example: Kayla Barnes-Lentz is a mid-30-something social media influencer who makes a living posing as an longevity expert on social media. Fawningly profiled by click-hungry media like Fortune, Business Insider (twice), and just about every major British newspaper, Barnes-Lentz calls herself “the world’s most measured woman” (Bryan Johnson had already claimed the mantle of “world’s most measured human”) whose goal is to live to 150.

How about first getting to 40? How much actionable insight into the messy, fraught experience of aging can someone who hasn’t aged very much actually provide?

But then, the point isn’t to be an aging expert who helps people. It’s to be an aging expert who cashes in on paid speaking engagements and lucrative sponsorships.

Another example of dubiously declared aging expertise is that of Debra Whitman, the chief public policy officer at the AARP whom the organization refers to as a globally recognized expert on aging — a phrase that should immediately raise an eyebrow because there is no such person. Whitman recently, at age 50, published a book, “The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond.”

The first big giveaway is the title: anyone who thinks midlife raises only seven major questions is not an expert. (Also: why 7? Did 8 or 10 not test as well in focus groups?)

Can a bright, accomplished 50-year-old policy executive be an aging expert? Possibly. Would I rather get my post-50 aging advice from Dr.

Eric Topol

, the cardiologist who wrote “Super Agers,” or from a 90-year-old grandmother living in a Sardinian blue zone? Most definitely. The idea of a 50-year-old being not only an expert on aging — whatever that means — but also the source of truth about life’s “second 50” strikes me as marketing more than anything else.

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So what does “aging expert” mean, then?

I’ve come to think of the phrase as nonsense.

Aging or longevity is an experience, not an expertise. Most expertise comes through apprenticeship or time spent alive, trying and failing and learning the lessons required to become a master of a craft. But nobody’s a master of aging.

A 34-year-old Instagram influencer isn’t an expert on longevity anymore than a 50-year-old public policy executive is an expert on being 51.

The false aging and longevity prophets come in many other forms, too. Dr. Mark Hyman, a 65-year-old medical doctor who started a successful business selling longevity- and performance-related products and services to professional athletes, may have undeniable medical knowledge. But he’s also promoted notorious longevity chiseler David Sinclair on his podcast — on an episode titled, “Death Is Inevitable but Aging is Not,” no less.

Also, I believe aging is inevitable — but I’m not an expert.