Should you get certified in longevity medicine?
Industry Buzz
More and more patients are approaching their doctors with questions about biological age testing...products that have advanced beyond what is typically covered through medical school education regarding prevention and behavioral change counseling.
—Rick Marasa, MD, MBA
On Reddit, one user described finding a local physician offering “primary care with longevity/healthspan focused” care for $1,000 out of pocket, with blood and urine testing, cardiometabolic biomarkers, dementia risk assessment, biological age determination, body composition analysis, and diet, exercise, and supplement advice.
The question from the user was blunt: “How can I determine if this is a justifiable cost vs just trying to learn on my own?” []
Another user asked about what should matter most in a longevity practice “vs. just paying for a brand name,” citing comprehensive diagnostics, a dedicated team, and on-demand access as the draw. []
A third Reddit user captured the problem physicians know well: “You can order all those yourself for far less than [$10,000] but if you aren't a doctor and don't know how to interpret the results then that can get hairy.” []
Discussions like these make it clear that the longevity movement is taking off. Physicians who are interested can obtain certification in longevity medicine, earning a certified longevity doctor (CLD) credential.
Longevitydocs, founded in 2024, offers “the world's first credential dedicated to the emerging discipline of longevity medicine,” built for licensed MD, DO, and MBBS physicians. Tuition is listed at $10,000, with a 100-hour online curriculum over 6 to 9 months. []
Physicians already field questions about biological aging and longevity. “Patients are starting to ask about things they just weren’t even aware of a decade ago," says board-certified emergency medicine physician Thomas Allen, MD.
Board-certified physician Rick Marasa, MD, MBA, further elaborates, “More and more patients are approaching their doctors with questions about biological age testing, wearable devices, GLP-1 medications, lipid particle analysis, inflammatory biomarkers, VO2 max optimization, and supplement stacks. They often come in with fragmented, commercialized ideas about these products that have advanced beyond what is typically covered through medical school education regarding prevention and behavioral change counseling.”
But many clinicians were trained before geroscience entered mainstream CME. So, is this certification relevant? Or even necessary? ABMS lists 24 member boards across recognized specialties and subspecialties, and longevity medicine is not listed as an ABMS specialty. []
Related: Can you become board-certified in lifestyle medicine? Yes!The upside
A 2025 NPJ Aging paper stated that aging biomarkers need standardized collection across trials before they can guide clinical decisions at scale. [] Certified training in longevity medicine could homogenize this process.
The first publicly named CLD graduate, dermatologist Naana Boakye, MD, CLD, MPH, says the training felt like “a natural fit.” She enrolled in the longevitydocs program in October 2025 and completed the program in 6 months while running a dermatology practice. []
“What I perceive to be the biggest difference here is not that physicians do not want to provide ’lifestyle’ type services—they just don't know how to integrate them into standard of care when it comes to risk stratification, patients using new biomarkers, and providing recommendations based on clinical evidence,” she says.
The downside
The cost is high, and the evidence base remains uneven across interventions. “The value comes down to the quality of the curriculum, the strength of the evidence being taught, transparency around conflicts of interest, and whether the education improves patient outcomes," says Paul Gross, MD, a physician at LIV3 Health.
He continues, “A certification becomes less credible when it relies heavily on hype, expensive testing with limited clinical utility, or interventions that outpace the available evidence. Physicians should evaluate the content itself rather than assuming credibility based solely on the existence of a credential.”
The bottom line
Longevity certification could make sense for physicians already building a prevention-heavy practice, who find themselves fielding longevity questions daily and who feel they need a clinical framework.
For physicians in conventional insurance-based care, lower-cost CME might be the better first step. Some platforms, like Longevity Medicine 101 and 201 provided by the Longevity Education Hub, are CME-accredited courses that are free. []
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