Apple just announced Health Age, a new feature for the Apple Watch that tells you how old your body thinks you are. It joins a crowded field of wearable gadgets that already measure your “health age,” “cardiovascular age,” “fitness age,” and more. Senior reviewer Victoria Song, who writes the Verge’s weekly Optimizer newsletter, heard the announcement and let out a distinct “Nooo!” in the Steve Jobs Theater.
The Numbers Behind the Announcements
Song’s complaint is simple: these metrics are subjective, inconsistently defined, and often more performance signal than health insight. She runs down the full market:
- Whoop offers a “Whoop age” that weighs strength training workouts heavily in its algorithm.
- Oura tracks a “cardiovascular age” metric, with her heart currently sitting two years younger than her chronological age.
- Withings just introduced “longevity intelligence” features, including a “heart age” and “vascular age” split.
- Garmin offers a “fitness age score.”
- A CES longevity mirror measured blood flow from a 30-second selfie to estimate “physiological age” and “facial skin age.”
- Her $5,000 smart mattress topper now estimates her “biological age.”
The results are all over the map. Whoop says she is 42. Oura’s heart age has ranged from seven years younger to 1.5 years younger over the past two years. Withings puts her vascular age a year older than her actual age, while her heart is four years younger. Garmin puts her fitness age at 36.5 years old. The mirror estimated her physiological age at 35 and her facial skin age at 26. Her mattress told her she is “trending older” at 38.7 years old.
Her actual age is 38 years old. She is sticking with it.
What the Metrics Actually Measure
Song’s point is that these numbers are framed as self-improvement tools, but they often function as ego-fluffing devices. If your health age is older, you probably don’t talk about it. If it is younger, you bandy it about.
Apple’s vice president of health, Sumbul Desai, even promoted the idea on Instagram Reel, saying Health Age could be something you brag about to your friends. Tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, famous for his quest to never die, posted an 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; his metrics might be comparable to someone much younger, but his current state is just what 49 looks like for him.
The cultural framing matters. In the West, getting old is not considered a good thing. A younger health age becomes a talking point; an older one is shameful, even when it is not.
The Limits of Wearable Data
The problem goes deeper than vanity. These metrics often miss the whole picture. You could game the Whoop Age algorithm perfectly, get your annual physical, and still find your cholesterol through the roof. A reader told Song exactly this story.
You could optimize all the controllable lifestyle health factors — diet, exercise, and sleep — like Bryan Johnson and still end up with autoimmune gastritis. Some health is encoded in your genetics, and your ultimate fate is not always something you can decide. We all know someone who was healthy as a horse and died tragically young because of a freak accident.
Even Song’s own numbers, which have generally indicated she is younger than her chronological age, are not an accurate picture of how she is aging. She is definitely fitter now at 38 than she was at 18. As a teen, she couldn’t even run a mile nonstop; in her 30s, she has multiple half-marathons under her belt. But her bones snap, crackle, and pop more. She can’t pull all-nighters without caffeine like she used to, even though she eats much healthier. The grays keep coming despite whatever potions or supplements she slathers on her hair.
She was fitter last year, and her wearables all praised her consistent training to the point that she kept getting injured. She is less fit this year. She has lost roughly 5 pounds of muscle, according to her smart scales, but her metabolic biomarkers are much, much healthier. Earlier this week, her doctor patted her on the back and said she saw all the effort she’d put in over the past year.
Why the Framing Matters
Song is not trying to rain on Apple’s parade. She wants to test the feature herself. But she brings this all up to illustrate when these metrics can be genuinely helpful — and when you should treat them with a healthy dose of skepticism. It is all in the framing.
It is true that through a healthy diet, good sleeping habits, and regular exercise, your physiological condition might be better than that of other people 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, her Whoop age is somewhat cursed because it heavily weights strength training workouts in the algorithm. The last time she tested Whoop, she wasn’t going super hard on lifting heavy and was a bit too into cardio. Lifting weights would be an easy way to tilt that number in her favor.
Objectively, recalibrating her training habits to be more balanced would be a good thing for her long-term health. But culturally, that is not how these “health age” scores work.
The Verdict on Health Age
The key facts are worth keeping straight:
- Whoop age: 42
- Oura heart age: two years younger than chronological age (range: seven years younger to 1.5 years younger)
- Withings vascular age: a year older than actual age; heart age: four years younger
- Garmin fitness age: 36.5 years old
- Longevity mirror: physiological age 35, facial skin age 26
- Smart mattress biological age: 38.7 years old
- Actual age: 38
Song’s conclusion is blunt. Her age is her age. The metrics are fun, but they are not a proxy for how you are actually aging. They measure effort, not outcome. They capture lifestyle, not destiny.
The smartest approach is to use these tools as feedback, not as a trophy case. If a metric tells you to lift more weights, that is a reasonable adjustment. If it tells you you are “younger” than your peers, great — but do not confuse that with being immortal. Your actual age is the number on your driver’s license, and nothing a wearable can measure will change it.
Song’s “Nooo!” in the Steve Jobs Theater was a moment of recognition. Apple is not inventing a category; it is entering one that already runs on hype. The category has a name: it is fake.
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