You’ve probably come across it somewhere: a gym scale that spits out a “metabolic age,” a wellness quiz that tells you your body is 43 when your actual age is 37, or an app that promises to calculate your “real age” from a few health inputs. Most people notice the number, feel vaguely curious or vaguely alarmed, and move on without really understanding what it represents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Body age \u2014 also called biological age \u2014 is a genuinely useful concept. The problem is that most of the tools that introduce people to it are measuring something much simpler than what the science actually describes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real version is worth understanding, because it’s considerably more specific \u2014 and more useful \u2014 than what those quizzes deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n