WRINKLES are big business. Around the world, people are living longer and populations are ageing. Most people can expect to make it to their 60s at least. , so does the desire to cover up one of ageing鈥檚 most prominent signs. found that consumers in the US spent $9.1 billion on anti-wrinkle creams and moisturisers in 2021 and will be spending nearly $13 billion in 2027.
That expenditure is essentially a vanity project driven by a desire or pressure to look younger. There is no shortage of options, often at astronomical prices. However, there is a growing case for that bill to be picked up by healthcare providers and private insurers.
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Wrinkles are much more than a cosmetic problem. As we report in our cover story on page 38, there is growing evidence that they aren鈥檛 just a rough indicator of our biological age, but are also a key driver of ageing. Wrinkled skin appears to be toxic, pumping out compounds that accelerate age-related changes throughout our brains and bodies.
That makes sense when you consider that skin is on the front line. Because it is exposed to sunlight, pollutants and other insults, it ages faster than the rest of our bodies, and then seems to drag the rest of our bodies with it. Ageing is also a leading cause of illness and, ultimately, death. By the time we are in our 60s, most of us have , and they accumulate exponentially from then on at huge cost to the health services. Those costs are only going to rise as the population gets older.
One goal of the recent surge in anti-ageing research is to extend healthspan 鈥� in other words, to delay the development of age-related diseases and compress their cascading onset into a few years right at the end of life. It looks as though tackling the causes of wrinkling offers a fairly simple way of achieving this, thereby saving taxpayers billions. And if we all end up looking younger as a result, then that is a wrinkle in the story worth celebrating.
