How to age healthier
What would happen if we could eradicate disease and live longer? This is exactly what scientists are intensively researching and investors are pouring billions of dollars into supporting.
DW – Business
Imagine this. Your annual physical with your health care provider will also include a full body scan and more extensive blood tests. Make sure you are 100% fine and have no problems. You don’t have to worry about your health anymore and you can just move on. Or even if it’s a small one, you’ll be able to fix the problem before it gets worse.
Perfect, right? That’s the future many of us envision, thanks to a culture of healthy longevity full of innovations aimed at keeping us healthy for longer.
“Even if you’re living a great lifestyle, sometimes it’s important to get a baseline because we don’t really understand,” says Andrew Lacey, founder and CEO of whole-body MRI company Prenuvo. “Everyone’s genetics are unique. And some people can be healthy and have liver problems, and some people can be healthy but have something like inflammatory bowel disease. And knowing this is really helpful.”
Although it seems exciting, others in the medical community are skeptical, especially about whole-body MRI. “Whole body MRI is in its infancy clinically. Although non-invasive and sensitive, it lacks the large-scale, long-term data needed to prove that it saves more lives than complications caused by overdiagnosis,” said Dr. Manjiri Digh, professor of radiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Due to low availability and high cost, it remains a luxury for the general public and not an “evidence-based medical necessity.” The cost of the test varies depending on which part of the body is scanned, but can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, and is not covered by insurance.
Research shows that while these tests often find something, they rarely find the actual disease. A 2020 study found that 95% of asymptomatic patients had some kind of “abnormal” finding, but only 1.8% of these findings were actually cancerous. Studies have shown mixed results regarding the extent to which these tests cause incidental findings.
Prenuvo’s recent Polaris study followed 1,011 patients for at least one year after a whole-body MRI scan. Of these patients, 41 underwent biopsy. More than half of the 41 people were diagnosed with cancer. Of these cancers, 68% did not undergo targeted screening tests, and 64% were local at the time of detection. The company says it has found potentially life-threatening symptoms in 1 in 20 people.
What should a normal person do?
Full-body MRI results are all about the situation
Dr. Daniel Sodikson, chief medical scientist at Function and adjunct professor in New York University’s Department of Radiology, has been researching MRI and other imaging technologies for nearly 30 years. Over the past five to 10 years, he has increasingly asked himself: Why do these wonderful machines that he and his colleagues have spent their lives building and improving only help sick patients?
“They are great tools for guiding treatments, making diagnoses, and so on,” he says. “But by and large, we use them after people show symptoms or other signs of illness, and all too often it’s too late.”
He changed his mind to focus more on active medicine and began advising the MRI company Ezra (later acquired by Function, where he now works full-time). At Function, in addition to preventative whole-body MRI screening to detect early-stage cancers, aneurysms, and abnormalities, patients also have access to an extensive panel of blood tests to ensure all results are interpreted in the proper light.
“It’s all a matter of context,” he says. “And I think that addresses a lot of the concerns about false-positive rates and downstream testing.” That’s where a lot of the criticism of preventive testing lies. How often do we perform unnecessary tests on low-risk people when what we find shouldn’t lead to anything serious? And how much does it cost someone financially and emotionally over time?
Fear of “missing out” is often felt to be greater than the actual risk.
Andrew Vickers, a research methodologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, knows that some people have serious problems with whole-body MRI. But is there evidence that it’s doing more harm than good? “You’re discovering things that have never been a problem in your life. In the case of cancer, that’s called overdiagnosis,” Vickers says. The harder it is to find cancer, the more we will overdiagnose it. And if someone is overdiagnosed and gets a biopsy and develops an infection, that’s a direct harm.
“These unnecessary additional tests and treatments will further burden an already overburdened health system,” Deeg added. “For the general asymptomatic population, the statistical probability of a false positive is significantly higher than the probability of finding a curable life-threatening cancer.”
Humans seek a sense of security. And if social media algorithms give you that peace of mind, it’s easy to see why it might be wise to try these tests.
According to a JAMA study published in February 2025, more than 87% of influencer posts on social media about such tests (including whole-body MRI, multi-cancer early detection tests, etc.) had positive opinions. About 84% were overt promotions.
Dr. Mina S. McCurry, associate professor of radiology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, cites a 2025 European Radiology study that says a closer look at the numbers shows that “confirmed cancer detection rates in the general screening population are approximately 1.6%, and when including both malignant and benign disease requiring intervention, 11% are treated based on whole-body MRI findings.” “The fear of missing out is often felt to be greater than the actual statistical risk,” McCurry added. “You also need to be aware that it can give you a false sense of security. A negative scan does not mean you don’t have the disease. Some cancers and conditions may simply not be visible yet or cannot be reliably detected with a single full-body MRI.”
Lacey argues that if there is indeed something in the early stages, this test “just gives us a lot of runway and options to influence the trajectory of that disease.” He remembers handing out free scans at the hospital. The winner was a 38-year-old nurse. The machine detected lung cancer. She had never smoked.
In medicine, more information is not necessarily better.
Sodixson envisions a future in which our health is better monitored through blood tests, imaging, and wearables. It has a built-in early warning system that lets you know what’s wrong before symptoms occur. For now, he is not recommending getting scanned. “Then you scramble all the data yourself and try to make sense of it. The important thing to consider is to get into the habit of repeating this more and more.” Ideally, the cost of this type of testing would continue to decline over time. Maybe someday it will be covered by insurance.
“Once you get a second test and see that your situation hasn’t changed, most of the things that might cause you anxiety will go away or become less of a concern,” he added. “So most of the anxiety that someone has can be addressed by just taking a different point in time and looking at trends, rather than looking at a snapshot.”
These tests can also serve as warning signs for less serious but still concerning conditions, such as spinal degeneration. “Just being able to say to someone in their 20s, ‘Hey, we need to be careful here, because there’s no way there’s this level of degeneration at this age,'” Lacey says. This forces them to be more mindful and mindful of their posture.
Sodixon has had multiple MRIs, including an Ezra scan and a function blood test. A surprise awaited him too. However, “I feel like there are people who actually care about me now, rather than just going through life blindly and waking up one day and maybe having a disease that I didn’t know I was susceptible to.”
While these tests can be lifesaving for patients with certain diseases, many clinicians would expect cost-effectiveness and a true improvement in mortality rates before they would be widely recommended, Digg said. “In medicine, ‘more information’ does not necessarily mean ‘better information.'”
Lacey is betting on the future. “Health systems can and will adapt to early detection. I think it’s sad to suggest an alternative. We don’t know how to deal with this and we don’t know if we can adapt. So patients shouldn’t be able to get any more information about their health status.”
Whatever you decide for yourself, please consult a qualified medical professional for advice.
