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During last week’s Apple Watch announcement, I let out a distinct “Noooo!” in the Steve Jobs Theater. Along with a new readiness metric and a redesigned Health app, Apple had just announced that later this year, it’d be introducing a new longevity feature called Health Age.
This is a familiar concept in the wearable and health tech world. The idea is that if you put effort into your health and fitness, your physiological age could be “younger” than your chronological age. (Or older if you’re not putting in the effort.) Whoop has “Whoop age.” Oura has a “cardiovascular age” metric. My Withings scale just introduced various “longevity intelligence” features that include separate “heart age” and “vascular age” metrics. Garmin also has a “fitness age score.” At CES, I sat in front of a so-called longevity mirror that measured the blood flow in my face from a 30-second selfie to estimate my “physiological age” and my “facial skin age.” Earlier this week, I woke up and found out that my $5,000 smart mattress topper is also estimating my “biological age.”
If you ask Whoop, I’m supposedly 42. Over the past two years, Oura says my heart has been anywhere from seven years younger to 1.5 years younger than my chronological age. (It’s currently sitting at two years younger.) Withings says my vascular age is a year older than I am, while my heart is four years younger. Garmin says my fitness age is 36.5 years old. That longevity mirror? My facial skin age was apparently 26 (sunscreen, baby!), while my physiological age was 35. My very rude bed said I’m “trending older” this week at 38.7 years old.
My actual age is 38 years old — and that’s what I’m sticking with.
I’m not trying to rain on Apple’s (or other wearable makers’) parade. Frankly, I won’t rule on Apple’s version of the feature until I can test it for myself. I bring this all up to illustrate a point about when this type of feature can be genuinely helpful — and when you should treat it with a healthy dose of skepticism. As with most metrics, it’s all in the framing.
It’s true that through a healthy diet, good sleeping habits, and regular exercise, your physiological condition might be better than that of other people who are the same age and fit within a similar demographic. Depending on how a company defines its various longevity-related age scores, your results can identify areas where you can improve. For example, my Whoop age is somewhat cursed because it heavily weights strength training workouts in the algorithm. The last time I tested Whoop, I wasn’t going super hard on lifting heavy and perhaps was a bit too into cardio. If I wanted my Whoop age to improve, lifting weights would’ve been an easy way to tilt that number in my favor.
What do you mean I will be 80.6 years old when I’m 80?! Screenshot: Eight Sleep
Objectively, recalibrating my training habits to be more balanced would be a good thing for my long-term health. If you leave it exactly at that, there’s nothing wrong with this type of feature. But culturally speaking, that’s not how these “health age” scores work.
The way I’ve seen people talk about this metric largely hews toward fluffing up your ego. If your health age is older, you probably don’t talk about it. It’s “shameful” even though, really, it’s not. That’s because culturally — at least in the West — getting old isn’t considered a good thing. If your health age is younger, it becomes something to bandy about. Apple’s vice president of health, Sumbul Desai, even says in this Instagram Reel that Health Age could be something you brag about to your friends. That explains why tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, famous for his quest to never die, would post this absurd take on X about how aliens would struggle to distinguish him from his teenage son, alongside a chart titled “Is Bryan Johnson More 18 or 49?” Johnson is 49; he looks a little younger, maybe, and his metrics might be comparable to someone much younger on average, but his current state is ultimately just what 49 looks like for him.
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