Historically, anti-aging supplements have centered their messaging on longevity, emphasizing lifespan extension rather than increasing the number of healthy years lived.
That emphasis is now shifting. Since July 2024, 50% of new launched dietary supplement SKUs featured at least one healthspan claim, according to Euromonitor data.
“Healthspan is getting attention, investment and a spate of recent launches,” said Nick Stene, senior global insight manager at Euromonitor. “This is a visible growth area, and the harsh demographics of an aging society make this one of the safer bets in turbulent times.
“Our understanding of gut health, metabolism, the microbiome, cellular health and mitochondria is rising over time, reflected in new health claims, the rise of certain ingredients, spikes in investment and new launches that move the battlelines forward.”
Consumer insights: Tracking trends in the longevity space
Research from market insights firm Lumina Intelligence suggests consumer awareness of the term ‘healthspan’ is on the rise, with 57% of consumers reporting familiarity with the term.
The data, based on a survey of 3,500 consumers across the UK, China and the U.S., also indicates strong trust in anti-aging supplements, with 63% of respondents believing these products can help extend healthspan.
Nick Morgan, managing director at specialist market insights company Nutrition Integrated, says supplements targeting cellular health are among the fastest-growing categories in the longevity space. The company is currently tracking more than 150 products that claim to support cellular health, indicating rising consumer interest in this area.
“Longevity brands are trying to find ways to get to the foundational approach of aging, and probably the biggest area that consumers are driving, and the one where we’re seeing the fastest amount of product growth, is cellular health,” Morgan told delegates at last year’s Active Nutrition Summit.
Lumina Intelligence data suggests that 77% of consumers are interested in taking supplements that support cellular repair and regeneration. Other areas of interest include anti-inflammatory pathways (70%), mitochondrial health (65%) and NAD+ or sirtuin activation (56%).
However, actual usage of cellular health supplements does not appear to reflect this high level of interest, with only 20% of respondents purchasing an anti-aging or longevity supplement on an annual basis and roughly a third recognizing ingredients such as resveratrol, spermidine, quercetin or urolithin A.
This may reflect the confusion around the intricacies of cellular health, said Ewa Hudson, director of insights at Lumina Intelligence.
“The gap between very high interest in cellular repair and very low familiarity with core anti-aging ingredients shows that consumers are attracted to the promise of cellular health but don’t yet understand the science behind it,” she noted.
“A big part of this comes from cosmetics. Consumers have spent years seeing terms like ‘cell renewal’, ‘regeneration’, ‘DNA repair’ and ‘youth activating’ on skincare. Ingredients like retinol, peptides, niacinamide and CoQ10 have normalized the language of cellular repair—but only on the surface. When it comes to ingestible ingredients such as NMN or urolithin A, the familiarity simply isn’t there.”
Hudson suggests that the cellular health supplement category is still in an early education phase. While consumers recognize the benefits—repair, regeneration and anti-aging—they have not yet fully grasped the underlying internal pathways that drive these effects.
As a result, longevity brands have a challenge on their hands—they must communicate complex topics in a way that resonates with consumers while also standing out in a crowded market. Morgan added that in this space, virtually any supplement could be positioned as a ‘healthy aging’ supplement, making differentiation even more critical.
“If you take something to be healthy, I would argue anything is a longevity product,” he said at the inaugural Nutra Healthspan Summit in London in November. “So, what does a brand do if they’re going to resonate? [Often], they talk about hallmarks of aging.”
One such brand undertaking this strategy is New Zealand-based start-up SRW Labs, which claims to be the first company to bring products to the market that target the hallmarks of aging and the first to validate this strategy in human trials.
The brand is clearly resonating with consumers, reportedly selling out its entire first shipment to China in 2021, achieving a sale of $5.9 million. Southeast Asia and China are key growth markets for the company, perhaps reflecting a high level of understanding of the 12 hallmarks of aging among Chinese consumers. Indeed, Lumina Intelligence data suggests that 81% of Chinese consumers are familiar with at least one of the 12 hallmarks of aging, yet this figure drops to 53% in the U.S. and 40% in the UK.
Another strategy is to focus on the benefits of products rather than the science behind them—a strategy employed by Swiss longevity start-up Avea, which offers products containing NMN, NR, spermidine, ergothioneine, PQQ, quercetin and fisetin.
“Our customers are benefit-driven rather than ingredient-driven,” said Sophie Chabloz, founder and chief science officer at Avea. “They start with a specific challenge—fatigue, poor sleep, visible aging, cognitive decline—and then look for solutions. While they’re increasingly savvy about longevity science, what matters most is whether they’ll actually feel a difference.”
Chabloz said trust is paramount. Consumers are increasingly looking for clinical validation on finished products (not just ingredients), third-party purity testing, transparency about sourcing and dosing, and social proof through endorsements, case studies and customer reviews.
This is reflected in Lumina Intelligence data which suggests that while cost is the main barrier to longevity supplements, cited by 28% of consumers, this is closely followed by safety concerns (22%), a lack of research (20%) and doubts over claims (18%).
To overcome this hesitation, 37% said they would seek a doctor’s recommendation, 24% would look to clinical studies and 20% for positive customer reviews.
“Education remains critical, but it needs to bridge science and lived experience,” Chabloz said. “Our audience (75% to 80% women aged 40-65) responds well to expert credibility and endorsement, real customer testimonials and case studies, and clear explanations of why certain ingredients address their specific concerns.
“The key is meeting them where they are: acknowledging their symptoms and goals, then showing how our science-backed formulation delivers results they can feel,” she added.
Finding success in a challenging market
In addition to aligning product positioning with consumer understanding, brands must also traverse a complex legal landscape. Some popular cellular health ingredients are not yet authorized for use in the EU, such as NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide), which is yet to receive novel food authorization.
NMN is an NAD+ precursor which has been shown in numerous studies to suppress age-related adipose tissue inflammation, enhance insulin secretion and insulin action, improve mitochondrial function and boost neuronal function in the brain. However, product messaging such as ‘cellular repair’, ‘healthy aging’ and ‘supports energy levels’ are currently treated as unauthorized health claims in Europe.
Instead, many brands claim their products can restore NAD+ levels which naturally decline with age. This tactic often resonates with consumers, according to Stene.
“On supplements launched since July 2024, just under 6% carried some form of NAD+ messaging globally—this is one of the fastest ingredient growth rates in the sector,” he said. “For context, if 50% of supplements focus on longevity, over one in 10 such supplements carries NAD+ messaging. This is escaping niche this year, faster than many industry teams expected.”
One brand using NAD+ messaging is Vivorum, which launched its first cellular health product in October 2025. Containing nicotinamide riboside (NR), pterostilbene, ashwagandha (Sensoril), saffron extract (Affron) and PEA (Levagen), Cellular Renewal is marketed as an NAD+ booster and sleep catalyst.
Vivorum’s consumers are primarily women between the ages of 40 and 60, with men representing roughly a quarter of the brand’s customer base. Founder Balazs Farkas-Jenser said Vivorum’s consumers are shopping for improved energy, sleep and beauty outcomes.
“Customers expect longevity to cover many bases—skin health, general well-being, mood and beauty goals,” he said. “In the case of Vivorum, we see that sleep (and more closely sleep architecture) is crucially important to our customers, as well as inflammation management and cellular energy.”
Farkas-Jenser’s decision to focus on sleep as a key anti-aging benefit, as well as the decision to include NR as an approved NAD-boosting ingredient, has allowed the product to marketed widely across the European Union, with sales extending as far as Hong Kong to Uzbekistan.
Another brand that has found skyrocketing success in this market is IM8 Health, a longevity brand co-founded by Danny Yeung, David Beckham and experts from the Mayo Clinic and NASA.
IM8 offers two flagship products: Daily Ultimate Essentials, an all-in-one nutritional supplement, and Daily Ultimate Longevity, a formula comprising NMN, trans-resveratrol, quercetin, fisetin and spermidine, designed to target the 12 hallmarks of aging.
Reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue within 11 months of launch, IM8 is widely reported as the world’s fastest-growing supplement brands. Suffering repeated stock-outs during early months, Stene said even those leading this trend are clearly surprised by just how popular it is proving to be.
“In IM8’s case, it is hard to tell which message mattered the most: the link to Oxford University, the link to NASA, the link to Cedars-Sinai and the Mayo Clinic as not-for-profit medical centers in the United States, or otherwise the endorsement and support from David Beckham and Aryna Sabalenka,” he said. “This product resonated more than anyone expected and so the opportunity size for cellular health products has been reset as a result of this experience.”
The product also contains resveratrol, an ingredient which is growing quickly. This natural polyphenol is found in grapes and berries and is commonly marketed to improve cellular longevity and fight the signs of aging. Synthetic trans-resveratrol is commonly used in dietary supplements due to EU authorization.
“This ingredient is still at a lower level of presence, just over 2% of the new SKUs launched since July 2024 carry it, but this is spiking,” Stene said. “Human evidence of benefits is limited and mixed. It is at an earlier stage for testing, but this is opening up messaging around cell senescence, sirtuin stimulation, memory and cognitive function.”
