What is my biological age, and how is it different?
Your biological age is an estimate of how worn your body is, rather than how many birthdays you have had. It is worked out from habits and numbers that long-term studies link to living longer or shorter, so a 50 year old who moves daily, sleeps enough and keeps blood pressure in range can score younger than a sedentary 35 year old.
Two different things go by the name. Lifestyle estimates, which is what a free calculator gives you, score the habits that drive most of the preventable difference in lifespan: smoking, movement, sleep, blood pressure, weight, alcohol, diet and how connected you are to other people. Epigenetic and blood-marker tests measure biology directly and cost money, and they usually tell you to change the same habits.
The number is only useful as a direction. One result means very little; the same test repeated after a month of real change is what tells you something, because every factor behind it is one you can move. The biggest single lever is stopping smoking, then going from no exercise to regular brisk walking, then treating untreated high blood pressure, then fixing chronically short sleep.
See a doctor promptly if
- Any longevity product promising to reverse aging, extend life by a specific number of years, or replace medical care: no such product currently exists
- High-dose supplement stacks taken without a doctor who knows your medicines, which cause real interactions
- Skipping evidence-based screening because you feel great: early detection is the one longevity intervention with decades of proof
What your health age result means
| Result | In short | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 5 or more years younger | Well ahead | The habits behind the score are already where the evidence wants them. The useful move now is holding it, and adding strength work twice a week if that is the one missing. |
| 1 to 4 years younger | Ahead | Most things are in the right place and one or two are not. The result page names which factor cost you the most, and that is the one worth changing first. |
| About the same | Average | Typical for your age, which is not the same as good. Average life expectancy already includes the smoking, the sitting and the short nights that most people do. |
| 1 to 4 years older | Behind | Usually one or two factors carrying the whole gap rather than everything being wrong. Fixing the largest one moves the number more than fixing three small ones. |
| 5 to 9 years older | Clearly behind | At this size the gap is almost always smoking, no exercise, untreated blood pressure or sleep under six hours, alone or in combination. Each of those has evidence that risk falls after people change them. |
| 10 or more years older | A long way behind | It is worth taking to a doctor rather than to an app, because a gap that size usually includes a number that has never been measured. A blood pressure and an HbA1c are the two that change the picture most. |
This is an estimate from what you have entered, not a laboratory measurement. Its value is in watching it move, not in the single number. Check it against the guidelines.
Try the eight habits, scored2 min, free, nothing to installEight habits carry almost all of the evidence on living longer. This one scores them against numbers you have already taken here and names the weakest.
The eight habits, scoredEight habits carry almost all of the evidence, scored against numbers you already have
Look up another result
A result is rarely the only one on the page. Each of these gives the bands, in both unit systems, and what happens next.
- Fasting triglyceride result4 bands
- Ferritin result6 bands
- HbA1c8 bands
- HDL result6 bands
- How late is late?6 bands
- How long it usually lasts, by cause5 bands
- How to tell how dehydrated you are5 bands
- Is this a fever?8 bands
- LDL result5 bands
- MCV number3 bands
- Median grip strength after 50, by age and sex8 bands
- Morning readings, and what to do with them6 bands
- Platelet count6 bands
- Potassium result6 bands
Answered by the AskDoc Medical Team · Medically reviewed under our Medical Director, MBBS · How we review
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