Is your body the same age as you?

SHARE Is your body the same age as you?

You know your age, but what if the body that contains you is much older?

Inside Tracker, a health analytics company, wants to measure what they call your Inner Age — the age of your body’s functions — to motivate you to get healthier.

The company developed a list of biomarkers, or chemical indicators of health, and measures their customers’ in a blood test. The results are tabulated and sent to the individual, along with recommendations to get your biomarkers to their optimal levels.

Biomarkers come from categories like energy and metabolism; bone and muscle health; minerals; brain and body function; strength and endurance and more.

The recommendations focus on food and nutrition, said Gil Blander, a systems biology researcher and co-founder of Inside Tracker.

“What we are trying to do is use nutrition as a drug of choice,” Blander said. On your report’s nutrition page, you would see “20 food items you should either eat more or less to optimize a specific biomarker,” he said. Scientific evidence informs the selection of these items, and you’ll be given links to peer-reviewed scientific articles that show the correlation between the biomarker you want to change and the food that will help you do it.

Additional recommendations involving lifestyle and supplements may be made as well.

They sell packages that vary in the number of biomarkers tested for and the specificity of recommendations given. Inner Age, which launches in January, focuses on five biomarkers that experts on aging like Harvard geneticist David Sinclair have identified as the strongest indicators of the body’s wear and tear.

The measurements of these factors, like glucose, testosterone and Vitamin D, are put into an algorithm to determine your body’s age. You might be 35, but your inner age could be older or younger, Blander said.

“We are not claiming to say you will live longer or shorter, we are trying to give you a shock,” said Blander. As always, you’ll get recommendations for what to eat and do to improve your biomarkers. The shock serves as a significant motivator to improve your health, Blander adds.

Some of your biomarkers could indicate your body is younger than you, of course — or that you are exactly where a person your age should be. The recommendations could then be used to get your body even younger, so to speak– to improve your biomarkers even further, or maintain them.

Triathletes and marathoners have been big users of Inside Tracker’s technology, though it also appeals to people who are trying to lose those last few stubborn pounds or are trying to improve their focus at work, Blander said.

The packages range from around $500 for the most intensive testing and recommendations to $99 for Inner Age.


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