Women want proof their health spend works. A genuine health ROI is what comes next.
The anti-ageing industry has always sold appearance. Savvy women are starting to ask for something else: evidence their spend will actually work.
Ask a financially switched-on woman what matters most for her future, and money comes out on top. 37% name financial security as their single biggest priority for the next five years - more than three times the number who name how they look, according to LYMA data.
That gap matters - it’s a clear indication that future-proofing, not appearance, is what women care about most. Health spending just hasn’t caught up - it’s still being sold to them on how they’ll look, not on what they’ll actually get back. The women driving health spending aren’t primarily looking for products that make them look younger. They want an actual return on the money, time and energy they put in - the same test they’d apply to any other investment.
The indulgence-investment gap
The market hasn’t caught up to that instinct yet. LYMA’s own research found that nearly three-quarters of women aged 35 to 54 rank health as their top priority - ironically they then treat it as the first thing to cut when life gets busy.
Women are nearly twice as likely as men to call the exact same spend on health and wellness an ‘indulgence’ rather than an ‘investment.’ Only a third of women will use the word ‘investment’ at all. And when asked to name the single best use of their money, just 18% point to their health.
That’s the gap this journal explores. A woman can rank her health above her career, her home and her holidays, and still not believe it’s where her money is best spent, not because she’s wrong about its value, but because no one has shown her the return.
A stock comes with a P/E ratio. A bond comes with a credit rating. A business decision comes with a return on capital. Health spending has never had an equivalent. A £100 face cream, a £400 supplement stack, a £2,000 diagnostic panel and a £10,000 longevity clinic are four completely different stories, each one asking to be taken on faith rather than checked. That’s not a gap in her financial literacy. It’s a gap in the tools she’s been given to use it.
Why financially literate women won’t accept that gap
If you already know how to judge whether your money is working for you, you don’t switch that instinct off the moment you’re buying a supplement or a facial. You bring it with you. And the health and wellness industry is starting to feel the pressure of this benchmark.
Some 72% of consumers say the industry focuses too heavily on the next exciting innovation rather than products with genuinely proven results (Future:Poll™), and 56% of women say they find it hard to tell products with real science behind them from those that simply borrow the language of science (LYMA data). That scepticism has nothing to do with wanting better health. It’s about being handed a claim where proof should be.
McKinsey’s Future of Wellness research shows the scale of that mismatch: 84% of consumers say wellness is a top or important priority, yet only 13% say they’re actually achieving their wellness goals.
That’s not down to information, access or motivation. It’s down to culture: what health is actually allowed to be spent on, not just thought about. A genuine ROI standard closes that gap by turning a vague priority into a decision you can actually judge.
What a genuine health ROI actually means
A genuine health ROI isn’t about a single purchase paying off in the mirror. It’s closer to how a financial adviser would define return: does this specific investment change something real, and does it keep paying out if you make it again. That’s the logic behind two of the five pillars in the LYMA Power Index. Outcomes asks whether a product delivers on the specific result it’s actually selling, not a nearby one that sounds better. Return asks whether repeating that choice, again and again, builds towards something that keeps paying out years from now.
As Dr Florence Comite, endocrinologist, founder of the Comite Center for Precision Medicine & Healthy Longevity, and one of the expert contributors to the LYMA Power Index, puts it: “I believe there are atomic habits of longevity, where you compound change over time by making small changes. You don’t have to radically upend your life. You can own those small steps that compound. Just like a 401(k) [a US retirement savings plan], where you’re steadily putting money away for retirement, you can build your own health portfolio over time - making small, consistent investments that ultimately help you live a better quality life.”
Dr Stephanie Kuku, surgical oncologist, Chief Regulatory & Science Affairs Officer at Conceivable Life Sciences and a fellow contributor to the Index, frames the same shift from a different angle: “Women already know the foundations of good health. The real opportunity is helping them turn that knowledge into actions they can sustain, in doing the due diligence in a crowded market.”
A genuine ROI standard is what makes that due diligence possible in practice - turning knowledge women already have into decisions they can actually stand behind, rather than one more thing to take on faith.
The appetite is already there
Women don’t need persuading on this. They’re already choosing how they feel over how they look.
Given a choice between confidence that comes from how they look and confidence that comes from knowing their body is in excellent health, over two-thirds (67%) choose the latter - rising to almost three-quarters (73%) among Gen X women, according to LYMA data. Asked to choose between a treatment that changes how others see them and one that changes how they see themselves, 72% choose the latter too. The appetite for a genuine health ROI isn’t something brands need to manufacture. It’s already there, waiting for proof it can trust.
There’s a commercial upside to meeting it. Consumers with a stronger preference for science-led beauty and wellness already spend significantly more: an average maximum spend of $284 on a single product in the past 12 months, compared with $234 among more lifestyle-led consumers (Future:Poll™). Proof isn’t a brake on health spending. It’s what unlocks more of it.
What does the future hold?
So what’s really shifting now is not new products, but women finally being handed the tools they already use everywhere else with their money: something to check a claim against, rather than a story to take on faith.
By 2030, the gap between brands that can show their workings and brands that can only tell their story is likely to widen sharply. The ones left standing won’t be the ones with the best before-and-after photo. They’ll be the ones who can say, in specific and provable terms, what a woman actually gets back for what she puts in.
That’s the real shift underway. Not wellness becoming more expensive, and not anti-ageing becoming more scientific-sounding - but health finally being judged by the same standard as everything else a financially literate woman spends her money on: what this actually returns. The 37% of women already prioritising their financial security over the next five years don’t need convincing that returns matter. They need an industry that can finally show them one.
