Ona the age of its arteries, says the formula. We still need to be able to ask them… This is what more and more American start-ups are offering which, for an online payment of 200 to 300 dollars, send a kit to collect a little saliva, urine or a few drops of blood which will allow, a few weeks later, to know its biological age based on the health of its cells.
These tests delight those obsessed with longevity, to whom all kinds of books, podcasts and food supplements are already aimed. At the time of “quantified self”, they already have a whole battery of tools. We understand that once we have followed intermittent fasting, a keto diet, counted our steps, calculated our sleep hours, taken different pills… we want to measure our results, a bit like members of WeightWatchers want to get on the scale. The objective is of course to obtain a biological age much lower than that of one’s marital status. Some even publish their results on social networks, as others show off their pectorals: the inside is as fabulous as the outside.
Most of these tests claim to use a “epigenetic clock” formed by comparing changes in DNA methylation to those of a large sample of people of all ages. Not all using the same clocks and the same methods, they do not give the same results. This is why Suresh Nirody, a former healthcare executive in Cincinnati (Ohio), was tested by several of these companies.
Take a test… every quarter!
The Elysium Health Index test established his biological age at 58 but that of his brain at 73! “It was a shock! I immediately paid attention to sleeping better and exercising more…” And above all, he immediately searched the Internet for references from other test brands. He has already received the results from Thorne which sets his biological age at 69 years and 9 months and his kidneys at 74 years and 8 months. To know what to think, he is waiting for the figures from a third test, myDNAge. Until then, he is still 64 years old, or between 40 and 80 years old, like most people who get tested, according to Robert Brooke, co-founder of Clock Foundation, an epigenetic clock site that sells kits on myagingtests.com.
Robert Brooke is not surprised by the number of people testing their age with kits from different companies. “In fact, they want to test the whole idea of the test. » He wouldn’t tell me his biological age, just told me he was “a little younger” that his real age, “unfortunately not dramatically younger”, in other words a result in the average of people who test themselves (which is not surprising since those obsessed with longevity are more likely to have already adopted a favorable lifestyle). But he assures that the result does not matter in itself, “the point is to do it regularly to measure the impact of a treatment we are taking, for example”.
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