How Longevity Culture Is Infiltrating The Beauty Space & Transforming Skin Care

One of the things we discuss most in the beauty industry is aging: How should we approach skin care and treatments as we age? What should skin look like at various life stages, and what expectations should we set about aesthetics throughout our lifetimes? How can we support the integrity of the skin—while also getting the results we want? 

And while these are important questions to ask, the answers we’ve come up with over the decades always seemed to fall short. Honestly, I struggled with how to write about aging, as well as how to approach it myself, for many years.

But then a major shift happened in the health industries: Longevity research exploded. Not only did it seem like lifespan conversations were happening everywhere, but their practical implications became more accessible. In fact, the consultancy group The Future Laboratory noted that the future of health and beauty was intrinsically tied to what has been called “longevity lifestyle,” which utilizes science-backed, holistic, and realistic solutions for optimizing health and beauty. 

At mindbodygreen, we knew firsthand that the health and wellness industries had fundamentally shifted. And that meant skin health conversations would soon follow. Why did we predict this? Pretty simple: If people were going to live longer, they’d naturally want to look good while doing it. 

Thanks to longevity research, folks are starting to re-think what the span of their lives will look and feel like. From Netflix’s Blue Zone documentary to books (including our own!) to TikTok viral sensations (such as the Huberman Husband, a trend that has 405 million views and counting), longevity is officially mainstream. And by all accounts, it’s big business: The global longevity and anti-aging market is projected to reach $183 billion by 2028, according to business intelligence firm Grand View Research.  

More people are waking up to the fact that with the right daily habits, nutrition, movement, and mental health practices, we can live longer, feel better, and look younger. According to a report on “Advanced Aesthetics” from Longevity Technology, the future of longevity is not just about optimizing longevity on the inside, but externally as well. 

Interestingly enough, notes board-certified holistic plastic surgeon Anthony Youn, M.D., there are actually studies done that show folks who look younger tend to also live longer. He points to a study that evaluated twins1—”so genetically identical” he says—and the individuals who looked younger tended to live longer and have more vitality.  

It’s not the only research that’s made this connection: There are a myriad of studies that point to how important skin health is for overall health. One study in Social Science & Medicine linked visually estimated age with physiological age, finding that participants who looked older2 had bodies that acted older. 

Another in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that looking older than your age was associated with poor health overall.3 (In fact, in that study, they found that those who looked 10-plus years older than their age almost always had significant health problems.) More specifically, skin health and appearance can be an indicator for several health concerns, such as bone density loss in women, cardiovascular events, and it can even help spot cognitive degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s. 

Of course, there are many reasons that looking younger is linked to better health, many of which have to do with lifestyle choices. It’s not as simple as "if you look good, you’ll live longer.” 

This is not just a topic of interest in the research realm: Major beauty brands are starting to tap into not only the science of longevity, but the ethos. 

“As we live longer, research on health span and longevity will only accelerate. To meet these innovation challenges, we are thinking differently and in a manner enabled by novel science across all our global laboratories and clinics,” Lisa Napolione, SVP of global R&D at Estée Lauder, said recently in a press release. “With rapidly emerging knowledge and advancements from the dermatologic and scientific communities, skin care science has never been more important.” 

And finally, the beauty audience has become smarter and more discerning—and is clearly influenced by the principles of longevity. They’re not just interested in “fixing” aging problems, they want long-term solutions that will improve the look of the skin, without jeopardizing its integrity. Essentially: they want to look like themselves for as long as possible. 

Originally, the skin care conversion revolved around “anti-aging” (and in many ways still does). This is an approach that’s about correcting mistakes, reversing previously acquired damage, and righting past wrongs. Then it became about “preventative aging:” It was no longer about turning back the clock, but how to stop the aging process entirely—and ideally do so at some point in your 20s. 

While these approaches were well-intended and appropriate for the times, they seem a bit dated. In the pursuit of over-corrections or never aging in the first place, the beauty industry has often opted for solutions that end up putting the integrity of the skin at risk. 

“In the past, the concept of aging—and the word itself—was associated with a lot of negativity. But with what we are achieving right now with longevity, aging doesn’t have to have this negative connotation that it used to carry with it,” says board-certified regenerative dermatologist Julie Russak, M.D. “People were very scared of aging, so they were masking it by creating completely inhuman faces. And now we understand that aging doesn't have to be that. That you can age, and still have this really beautiful life.” 

Even celebrities have recently started lamenting the “anti-aging” work they’ve done in the past. Take, for example, Courtney Cox who told The Los Angeles Times that one of her biggest beauty regrets was fillers. “There was a time when you go, ‘Oh, I’m changing. I’m looking older.’ And I tried to chase that youthfulness for years. And I didn’t realize that, oh, s—, I’m actually looking really strange with injections and doing stuff to my face that I would never do now. Thinking that I was getting older when I was really young, that’s just a bummer, a waste of time,” she said.

Just like the future of health and medicine, longevity research has fundamentally shifted our expectations of lifespan and quality. I believe the beauty industry is currently undergoing a recalibration of our expectations of aging—of what we can and should look like as we get older. 

The first change we’re going to see is simply how people talk about age. Thanks to longevity research, folks have started thinking differently about the skin. And the skin, really, is an ideal place to start. 

“The most visual way of practicing longevity is through the skin. It's the largest organ and it's an organ that’s influenced by everything. And longevity really applies to every organ in your body, right? You can't really address only one organ and then not the other one,” says Russak. “But it's also on the outside. So it's very, very visual. By improving longevity, we can visually see it in front of our eyes pretty quickly, sometimes within two to three weeks.”

The second is that the products that are being developed are utilizing the revolutionary science of regenerative medicine, biotechnology, cellular health, and longevity. There are so many inspiring ingredient innovations at our fingertips—ones that work with the body’s natural rejuvenation processes. For example, peptide technology4 in skin care has innovated at breakneck speed. 

The drugstore brand No. 7 just released a collection called Future Renew that uses a “super peptide” complex (tetra-peptides, pal-GPKG and pal-LSVD) which mimic naturally occurring peptides in the skin to boost the natural self-repair. The peptide behind skin longevity brand OneSkin is called OS-01 and it boosts DNA damage repair in senescent cells, preventing them from secreting pro-aging factors. And finally, the biotech brand Ourself has a library of proprietary peptides that do everything from produce collagen, lift skin, reduce discoloration, and improve delivery efficiency. 

Exosome therapy5 uses what are called extracellular vesicles (EcVs) and are found in all living cells. These are “messengers that can really impact the body, sending cellular signals to increase collagen and other rejuvenative changes,” says Youn. 

What if the solution, all along, was to not be scared of aging—but instead embrace it with intention? What if the solution isn’t to stop or reverse aging, but to prolong it? What if skin longevity is the solution? 

In this new era of beauty—one grounded in longevity research and fueled by the hope of longer, happier lives—we’ll see beauty products that harness the body’s inner regenerative systems at the cellular level. We’ll also have a greater respect for the skin, and understand that it’s not just a superficial endeavor, but a very important indicator of overall healthspan and lifespan.