There is a way to know your biological age accurately

It is possible to look younger than your age – and actually be younger biologically. A team of experts from the University of Washington School of Medicine has developed a unique tool that allows you to assess how worn out your body is at the cellular level and at what rate it is aging.

This was made possible thanks to a new approach called the Health Octo Tool.
The method is based on eight indicators that a doctor can obtain during a routine checkup and from standardized tests. By combining them, the system shows not only the “age” of the body, but also how fast a person is losing physical and cognitive abilities.

One of the key design principles is the concept of “health entropy”. It reflects the damage accumulated over the years to tissues and organs and shows how this affects the functioning of body systems. The higher the entropy, the more internal mechanisms wear out, even if a person looks quite healthy outwardly.

To create the model used data from the largest long-term project to study aging – Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging, as well as the results of other large-scale observations of tens of thousands of adults. This allowed them to compare how different body systems age and to find that, for example, the heart and brain can age at different rates.

The doctors developed a whole system of assessments: the Body Clock – showing overall biological age; Body Age – the rate of aging; a special “clock” for each organ; and separate indicators that predict cognitive decline, mobility, and even walking speed.

A particularly important discovery was that seemingly minor health problems – such as high blood pressure in youth – can significantly accelerate wear and tear on the body in the future. This makes early diagnosis and prevention particularly valuable.

In the near future, the team plans to release a digital app that anyone can use with a doctor to assess how “young” their body is and how new habits, diets or drugs are affecting it.

This approach can radically change the idea of aging: from attempts to treat individual diseases to comprehensive assessment and management of the body’s age as a whole.