By Elizabeth O'Brien

1. Your insecurities have fueled a multibillion-dollar business.

Perhaps the grandparents of yesteryear wiled away their retirements in the proverbial rocking chair, sparing nary a thought for their wrinkles or gray hair. But even if that idyllic portrait is true to life, our obsession with youth isnt anything new. As a nation, we have never embraced aging, says Denise Lewis, a gerontologist at the University of Georgia.

But in the past few decades, the market for anti-aging products and services has grown into a global industry valued at an estimated $261.9 billion in 2013, up from $162 billion just five years ago, according to BCC Research, a publisher of technology market research reports based in Wellesley, Mass. (The number of botulinum toxin treatments alone rose 680% from 2000 to 2012, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.) That figure includes money spent on anti-aging cosmetics, plastic surgery and dermatology, and aspects of traditional medicine, such as anti-aging disease management.

Aging in and of itself is not an illness. But you wouldnt know that from listening to the many marketing messages that make people feel like growing older is somehow their fault, says S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Aging is not a disease any more than puberty or menopause are, he says.

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