Apple is building a single “how old is your body” number into the iPhone. At its September 9 event, the company said a redesigned Health app arriving later this year will include a new Longevity tab with a feature called Health Age, which shows how a user’s health measurements are tracking compared with their actual age1. The app will also let people in the US order lab blood tests directly from their phone2. A week later, a wearables columnist at The Verge argued that these kinds of age scores should be treated with skepticism3.
What Apple announced
Apple unveiled the new Health app alongside two watches, the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 42. The app is rebuilt around Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI system, and adds new Insights and Longevity tabs, lab tests in partnership with Quest Diagnostics, and movement tests4.
Health Age is the headline feature of the Longevity tab. According to CNET, it takes into account Apple Watch measures including resting heart rate, sleep, VO2 max (a measure of how well the body uses oxygen during exercise, often used as a sign of fitness) and HRV (heart rate variability, the small changes in time between heartbeats), along with any information from blood tests4. Athletech News reported that the lab values it can draw on include A1c, a measure of average blood sugar over recent months, and LDL, often called “bad” cholesterol2.
The Longevity tab will also show a picture of seven areas of health: heart health, sleep, mental well-being, movement health, metabolic health, hearing and nutrition. It pulls data from the iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, clinical health records and other companies’ apps and devices, and shows what is affecting a person’s long-term health4.
The redesigned app will come to iPhones and iPads that support Apple Intelligence, first in US English, with no specific date announced; other languages will follow4.
Blood tests from the phone, and movement tests with the camera
Apple is also reaching beyond data from its own devices. US users will be able to buy a package covering more than 50 lab measures through the Health app and complete the testing at roughly 2,000 Quest Diagnostics locations2. The visit also includes height, weight, waist and hip measurements and blood pressure4. Quest says it works with outside medical providers who review and approve every lab order, and who can discuss results at the user’s request at no extra charge; the results appear in the Health app4.
The app adds movement tests that use the iPhone camera and heart data from the Watch to assess strength, balance, flexibility, movement mechanics and VO2 max4. Apple says these run entirely on the device, so no video is recorded, stored or shared4.
On the Watch itself, the new models give a daily readiness score from 0 to 10 based on sleep, recent activity, body readings and training load, paired with one of four suggestions: recover, pace yourself, ready or go for it4. Apple said the Series 12 measures heart rate every five seconds all day and measures HRV up to 24 times more often than before, splitting it into a “recovery” version for daily stress and an “overall” version for broader health1. The update also adds tracking for perimenopause and menopause in the cycle-tracking feature2.
The evidence so far
This is a product announcement. The one study Apple describes in its press release is about the watch’s heart rate sensor, not Health Age: Apple said a study of more than 1,000 participants compared its new sensor with leading wearables and found the Apple Watch had the highest accuracy1. An analysis by the consultancy Nelson Advisors said the comparison used medical-style chest-strap heart monitors as the reference during running, cycling and interval training5. The sources do not show that this study has been published for outside review.
For Health Age itself, Apple’s press release describes what the feature shows, not how it was built or tested1. None of the materials in our sources explain how each measure is weighted, which groups of people the score was developed on, or whether a “younger” or “older” Health Age has been linked to later illness or death.
The critique: “Your ‘health age’ is fake”
Victoria Song, a senior reporter who writes The Verge’s Optimizer newsletter on wearables and health tech, said she let out a “Noooo!” in the room when Apple announced Health Age3. Her point was that the idea is already everywhere. Whoop has a “Whoop age,” Oura has a “cardiovascular age,” Withings has “heart age” and “vascular age,” and Garmin has a “fitness age score”3.
She listed what her own devices told her. Whoop put her at 42. Oura has placed her heart between seven and 1.5 years younger than her real age over two years. Withings said her blood vessels were a year older and her heart four years younger. Garmin said 36.5, and her smart mattress cover said 38.7. Her actual age is 383.
Song did not dismiss the idea entirely. She wrote that, depending on how a company defines its score, the results can point to areas to improve; her Whoop age, she said, heavily weights strength training, so lifting weights would have nudged the number down3. She also said she would not judge Apple’s version until she could test it3.
Her main concerns were about framing and blind spots. She noted that Apple’s vice president of health, Sumbul Desai, said in an Instagram video that Health Age could be something to brag about to friends3. She pointed to longevity entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who posted a chart asking whether he is “more 18 or 49,” and wrote that his current state “is ultimately just what 49 looks like for him”3. And she argued that a wearable-based age can miss the bigger picture: someone could score well and still learn at a checkup that their cholesterol is very high, and Johnson, despite his strict routine, still developed autoimmune gastritis3. Biohack covered that diagnosis in an earlier article.
How it fits the field
Single-number “biological age” and healthspan scores have become common as wellness companies try to boil complicated health information down to one figure2. Athletech News described Apple’s move as a response to companies such as Whoop and Oura, which built businesses around interpreting body data for consumers, and to blood-testing firms such as Function Health; Whoop and Oura already offer similar blood testing through their apps2. CNET noted that rivals including Oura, Whoop and Fitbit already offer readiness and longevity features, while Apple’s come without an extra charge4.
What changes with Apple is mostly scale and integration: the score combines watch data, AirPods, medical records and lab results in one place4. Nelson Advisors described the update as shifting consumer health apps from logging readings toward calculating biological age over time5. Whether that calculation tells people something their doctor’s tests do not is the open question.
What to watch next
- Release: Apple has said only “later this year” for the redesigned Health app, starting in US English4.
- How the score works: whether Apple publishes how Health Age is calculated and tested, and whether outside researchers check it.
- Hands-on tests: Song said she will judge Apple’s version once she can try it3.
- Lab results in practice: how users and doctors handle results from more than 50 lab measures ordered from a phone2.
