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Several periods earlier, I was invited to experience a comprehensive body screening in the eastern part of London. This medical center employs ECG tests, blood analysis, and a verbal skin examination to assess patients. The company asserts it can spot multiple underlying cardiovascular and metabolic issues, evaluate your risk of developing pre-diabetes and detect questionable pigmented spots.

Externally, the center resembles a large glass tomb. Internally, it's akin to a curved-wall relaxation facility with pleasant changing areas, private consultation areas and potted plants. Unfortunately, there's no pool facility. The complete experience takes less than an sixty minutes, and includes among other things a mostly nude examination, different blood collections, a test for grasping power and, concluding, through some swift data-crunching, a physician review. Typical visitors leave with a mostly positive bill of health but awareness of future issues. During the initial year of operation, the clinic states that a small percentage of its patients were given perhaps life-saving information, which is significant. The premise is that this information can then be used to inform health systems, guide patients to required intervention and, finally, extend life.

The Experience

The screening process was quite enjoyable. It doesn't hurt. I appreciated strolling through their light-hued areas wearing their plush sandals. Furthermore, I was grateful for the leisurely experience, though this might be more of a demonstration on the state of national health services after years of underfunding. Overall, top marks for the experience.

Worth Considering

The real question is whether the value justifies the cost, which is harder to parse. This is because there is no control group, and because a positive assessment from me would be contingent upon whether it identified problems – at which point I'd likely be less focused on giving it five stars. Furthermore, it should be mentioned that it doesn't conduct radiation imaging, magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography, so can only detect blood irregularities and cutaneous tumors. Individuals in my genetic line have been plagued by cancers, and while I was comforted that none of my moles seem concerning, all I can do now is continue living waiting for an unwanted growth.

Medical Service Considerations

The issue regarding a two-tier system that commences with a paid assessment is that the responsibility then rests with you, and the public healthcare system, which is likely tasked with the difficult work of care. Healthcare professionals have noted that these assessments are more technologically advanced, and include supplementary procedures, compared with conventional assessments which examine people aged between 40 and 74.

Preventive beauty is stemming from the ambient terror that someday we will appear our age as we really are.

Nonetheless, specialists have stated that "dealing with the rapid developments in commercial health screenings will be difficult for national systems and it is crucial that these screenings provide benefit to people's health and prevent causing extra workload – or anxiety for customers – without clear benefits". While I suspect some of the clinic's customers will have other private healthcare options available through their wallets.

Wider Implications

Prompt detection is essential to treat significant conditions such as cancer, so the appeal of screening is obvious. But these procedures access something deeper, an manifestation of something you see with various groups, that vainglorious segment who truly feel they can extend life indefinitely.

The clinic did not initiate our focus on life extension, just as it's not surprising that wealthy individuals have longer lifespans. Certain individuals even look younger, too. Aesthetic businesses had been resisting the natural progression for centuries before modern interventions. Proactive care is just a new way of expressing it, and commercial preventive healthcare is a logical progression of youth-preserving treatments.

Together with cosmetic terminology such as "slow-ageing" and "preventive aesthetics", the objective of early action is not halting or undoing the years, ideas with which compliance agencies have raised objections. It's about slowing it down. It's indicative of the measures we'll go to meet unrealistic expectations – another stick that women used to beat ourselves with, as if the obligation is ours. The market of proactive aesthetics appears as almost doubtful about youth preservation – particularly cosmetic surgeries and tweakments, which seem unrefined compared with a topical treatment. Yet both are rooted in the pervasive anxiety that eventually we will show our years as we really are.

Individual Insights

I've experimented with many these creams. I appreciate the process. And I would argue some of them enhance my complexion. But they aren't better than a adequate sleep, good genes or maintaining lower stress. Nonetheless, these constitute solutions to something beyond your control. However much you agree with the perspective that ageing is "a perceptual issue rather than of 'real life'", culture – and cosmetics companies – will persist in implying that you are old as soon as you are past your prime.

Theoretically, such screenings and similar offerings are not about escaping fate – that would represent absurd. Furthermore, the advantages of timely detection on your physical condition is clearly a very different matter than preventive action on your facial lines. But in the end – scans, creams, any approach – it is essentially a struggle with nature, just tackled in distinct approaches. Having explored and exploited every element of our world, we are now trying to conquer our own biology, to overcome mortality. {