Londoners love a membership, and if it’s got a waitlist, all the better. But forget about Soho House or Maison Estelle, the new must-have memberships are the ones for affordable longevity clinics in the capital. Something of a contradiction in terms. Typical clinics, like Ezra on Harley Street, cost £1,299 for an MRI scan. So when Unbound, a preventative health clinic in Shoreditch with an annual cost of £365 a year, released 100 annual memberships last month, of course they sold out in record time. Its waitlist is now open for their second round of memberships.
But can you get the same thorough testing as you would in, say, Harley Street? I signed up to find out. When I turned up at the clinic, I was greeted with a café-style reception, instead of a clinical setting, before we went through a series of tests, including blood biomarkers, cardiovascular fitness, musculoskeletal performance and even mental health. Same tests, just a different, less pricey postcode.
Unbound is about reclaiming the longevity space and making it accessible to more people
So, why launch now? Co-founder Arnold Fomété tells me that “the longevity space has been, for too long, focused on people with a lot of disposable income, which can feel alienating for those who still care about their health”. He adds that Unbound is about “reclaiming the space and making it accessible to more people”.
But it’s not just Unbound which is championing affordable health memberships in London. You may have heard the hype around Neko Health last year — a full body scan, which costs even less, at £299. The scan maps millions of health data points on your body. It checks moles, symptoms of metabolic syndrome and risk factors for stroke and heart attack, while also looking at blood fats and blood sugar levels. Its waitlist is elusive. It took me over 10 months to even get to the appointment booking stage. However, their expansion to four locations around London over the past year shows the demand for affordable preventive health in the capital.
What sets Unbound apart from Neko, though, is both its mental health testing and its community element. After the diagnostics and fitness checks, I was taken to a “calm room” for a 15-minute mental health analysis. I was on my own, so although answering some of the questions felt awkward, I was definitely more honest than I may have been with someone else there. Questions like “How often do you feel isolated from others?” are simple but confronting. “A lot of people in the UK haven’t been exposed to speaking about their mental health in that way,” says Unbound’s other co-founder, David Vioque, adding that “we find a lot of people walk out of the experience saying it was the scariest, yet the most rewarding part of the testing.”
The community side of the membership is important to them too, with the team running fitness classes, such as yoga and Pilates, as well as running clubs at no extra cost. They say the space is also designed to encourage social interaction, with events including chess nights and longevity talks.
A few days after my assessment, I received a detailed report. It covered everything from my risk of heart disease to what my grip strength indicates about my bone health, alongside tailored recommendations for both diet and fitness — everything you’d get from more expensive longevity testing. What appeals to me about the annual membership is that in a year, I can track whether those recommendations have an impact on my overall health. Vioque explains, this is one of the reasons they created it, because if you don’t have “accountability, then your behaviour doesn’t change”.
Unbound’s annual membership costs £365; unbound.living
