Reading · Test 9

RealAge

RealAge, Inc. is an American media corporation that provides health information to consumers, primarily through a website also called RealAge. The company's stated mission is to encourage consumers to maximize their health and wellness by making their "RealAge" younger.

The basic concept of RealAge is that a person's true biological age is not the same as his or her chronological age. In other words, you may be 35 years old but your body may work like a 25-yearold's or a 50-year-old's depending on a number of factors. The heart of RealAge is a website offering a test that asks 132 questions about family history and lifestyle to determine a person's "RealAge" by adjusting their current age based on how they answer the questions. In the RealAge test, for example, smoking increases your age by 8 years, but taking an aspirin every day will make you 2.2-2.9 years younger.

RealAge has undeniably been profitable for its founder, Dr. Michael Roizen. It was sold for an estimated $60-$70 million in 2007, and as of 2009, was still reporting a profit. In spite of the sale, RealAge.com serves as the official online home for both Dr. Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, MD., co-authors of the best-selling YOU book series. Indeed, the RealAge website has fueled five New York Times #1 best-selling books, including RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be?, which has been promoted by Oprah Winfrey. The test has been taken by more than 27 million people since 1999.

RealAge is clearly a very popular website, but is the "RealAge" it generates real? That is less clear. Longevity science is challenging. The RealAge test is based on life expectancy research; Michael Roizen claims that he has pored over more than 33,000 medical studies, but that claim is rather hard to believe. If he spent one hour per medical study for 8 hours a day, it would take him over 11 years to finish. And even if he had, researchers cannot do studies to prove that John Doe would have lived 8 years longer if he quit smoking. Either he quit or he didn't. We don't have two John Does to compare. Researchers must rely on statistics like averages to determine the impact of lifestyle behaviours, which gets very complicated. In short, we can't really know the impact of all the lifestyle factors in the level of detail presented in RealAge. Each lifestyle factor interacts with other factors in a complex way. RealAge does try to address this, adjusting some of the factors for age (for example aspirin reduces age by 2.2 years at 55 and 2.9 years at 70 ). The bottom line, however, is that we cannot know our 'RealAge' with the precision suggested by the test.

On top of this, RealAge, unfortunately, is not transparent about how it uses information from the tests. Users' health histories, which they provide while taking the test, are used by the website to generate personalized content, including health tips, but also including highly targeted advertisements and marketing messages which are sent to members by e-mail. As a result, the website generates a great deal of revenue from pharmaceutical companies paying to advertise their drugs to individuals who have taken the test and become members. This is not specified to those who become members, and critics say that this amounts to a clever way of skirting the strict regulation of pharmaceutical advertising.

So is it a moneymaking scam, or does it offer something worthwhile? The test can be a fun way for people to learn about the benefits and dangers of various lifestyle choices, and by linking behaviours to increasing or decreasing age, the approach lets people compare different lifestyle factors and prioritize their effort. If they adopt some of the lifestyle suggestions, they will probably be healthier and better off for it. They just need to watch out for advertising, be careful about what boxes they check if they don't want to receive e-mails, and certainly talk to a doctor before taking any sorts of pills or supplements the site might recommend.

Ageing Populations

In the past Australia was a relatively youthful country. In 1970, 31 percent of the population was aged 15 years or younger, while by 2002 this proportion had dropped to 22 percent. Likewise, the proportion of Australia's population aged over 65 years grew from 8 percent in 1970 to 13 percent in 2002. It is expected that by 2040, the proportion of the population over 65 years will have almost doubled by around 25 percent. At the same time, growth in the population percentage falling within the traditional workforce age parameters of 18 to 65 years is expected to slow to almost zero. The population is ageing rapidly.

This is not an indecental pattern unique to a particular time and place. 9 Barring an unprecedented change in fertility rates, the age structure of the population is likely to stabilise with a far higher proportion of older Australians. This phenomenon is not unique to Australia either. 10

Ageing populations are caused by two factors. Firstly, families are having fewer children. 11 Low birth rates largely reflect the increased choices available to women, including access to birth control, access to education and employment, and higher living standards. For the last 20 years or so the birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate in Australia - meaning that without migration, the population would eventually begin to fall. The second factor contributing to ageing populations is that people are living longer. For example, in 1960 life expectancy at birth for Australian males was around 68 years. 12 Similar increases have occurred for females. With fewer babies being born, and more people living longer, it is inevitable that the population will get progressively older.

These changes are definitely a cause for concern. The decisions that are made today will affect future generations. Societies will, unavoidably, look quite different to how they do today. To stay with the Australian example, the number of people aged 65 and over, which was around 2.5 million in 2002, is projected to increase to 6.2 million by 2042; that is, from around 13 percent of the population to around 25 per cent. At the same time, growth in the number of people of workforce age is expected to fall from the 1.2 percent per year that has occurred over the last decade to almost zero in the same amount of time. In 2002 there were more than five Australians of working age to support every person aged over 65. 13 Who will pay the increasing cost of the ageing population's healthcare, among other things?

Governments have several options about what to do about this problem. They could elect to do nothing now, and raise taxes in the future to cover budget deficits as they occur. Some argue in favour of this position, noting that in 40 years average incomes will be substantially higher than they are today due to continuing economic growth. However, we are not talking about a minor tax increase. For this method to work, an increase in personal income tax collections of over 40 percent would be required. 14 But again, the dimensions of such spending cuts are enormous. For example, the sorts of expenditure cuts required in Australia could include the entire amount now allocated to health, or over half the social security and welfare budget. Clearly neither of these options could ever seriously be contemplated. 15 But this is not a sustainable or responsible solution, as it merely passes the problem on to our children's children. Interest payments on debt would grow at an everincreasing rate, reducing the money available to pay for pensions and health care. It is not a solution that any responsible person would be prepared to contemplate.