The costs of Silicon Valley's quest for 'immortality', living longer

Silicon Valley personalities have become obsessed with investing in practices and technology to slow the process of aging. Yahoo Finance Health Reporter Anjelee Khemlani details this new cultural trend as medical providers question the overuse of certain procedures or lifestyle changes.

Video Transcript

- Well, modern technology is getting better every day, but is immortality possible? Well, some people in Silicon Valley seem to at least want to try. Yahoo Finance reporter, Anjalee Khemlani, joins us to tell us more. Not sure if I want to live forever, but I'm interested in hearing what's going on here.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Yeah. It certainly is. It's something that has actually been taking place for quite a number of years in the sense that we've seen a lot of investment, a lot of Silicon Valley money, and just generally the billionaires of the world invest in trying to stay healthy for longer or defy age. And so added to that, we've seen recently, the use of medical devices in that.

So rather than the next quick fix, we've seen, of course, the famous Kim Kardashian post last month in which she was promoting a full body scan. That could run about $2,500 if not more in some places. Meanwhile, we also saw the frenzy and the celebrity rush behind the GLP1 drugs in order to lose weight quickly. So it oscillates between these quick fixes and some of the more longer term, more medically relevant products.

And so what we've seen is that doctors have actually been looking at that and warning against sort of overutilization of some of these products saying that they could even result in false positives. And that's where some of the concern comes in as we see more and more investment into some of these miracle drugs or ideas on how to keep healthy and stay healthy for longer. Things like tracking your sleep, healthier diets, going sober, all of these are movements that have been recently tracked to movements in that hub of Silicon Valley.

So certainly, it has its trickle down effect, and that's why more and more you've seen that these health providers are concerned about that. And it should be an interesting sort of trend to continue to follow as it just continues to be an area of interest. And lots of discussions currently surrounding that as you can see with various reports that are out there.

- Indeed, you have to wonder about some of the costs of some of these things, whether how equitable it will be for everyone to be able to access some of these technologies. Appreciate you always getting us up to speed. Anjalee Khemlani there for us.