Name: At Home Tests Offer to Tell You Your ‘Real’ Age
Uploaded: 2023-10-31T21:56:00Z
Duration: 6 min 39 s
Description: Are at-home tests that reveal your "biological age" useful? WSJ reporter Dominique Mosbergen joins host Zoe Thomas to discuss her experience. Photo: Cam Pollack

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Are at-home tests that reveal your "biological age" useful? WSJ reporter Dominique Mosbergen joins host Zoe Thomas to discuss her experience. Photo: Cam Pollack

https://m.wsj.net/video/20231031/901525ef-14bb-4211-a541-af4ddbf6668b/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

At Home Tests Offer to Tell You Your ‘Real’ Age

Zoe: Welcome to "Tech News Briefing" and happy Halloween. It's Tuesday, October 31st. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street Journal. How old are you? Really? I'm not talking about the number of years you've been on the planet, I'm talking about your biological age. That's a measure of your health that can be more or less than your chronological age. Scientists have been trying to find a way to measure biological age, they say it could help us better understand the aging process and maybe even slow it down. Now, several companies are offering tests that for a few hundred dollars, they say can predict that magic number and possibly help change it. But is this information really useful for individuals? Our reporter, Dominique Mosbergen, and tried out some of these tests and is here to talk about that. Dominique, before we get into the tests, can you explain a bit more about this concept of biological age?

Dominique: So there's this idea that the age of our cells and our organs are different from the age on our driver's license. You may have heard someone say like, "Oh, you look so much younger than your age." Or, "Oh, that person looks older than their age." And there's a sense that maybe some of that might be because our biological age might be different from our chronological age, as it were.

Zoe: So there are these tests to figure out the biological age. How do they work? What are they looking at to determine if your organs or other parts of you are older or younger?

Dominique: Right now scientists are pretty excited about this one kind of test called a DNA methylation test. And DNA methylation is a type of genetic modification that changes genes and impacts gene activity without changing the underlying DNA sequence. And DNA methylation seems to change with age and also seems to become more random with age. And so scientists think that by tracking these changes and better understanding these changes, we might be able to better understand aging, but also maybe predict someone's biological age.

Zoe: So you tried out a few of these different tests that range in price from $299 to $349. Can you tell us about your experience?

Dominique: Yeah, so I took three tests in the end from three companies, Tally Health, Elysium Health, and NOVOS Labs. And these three companies sell these biological age tests, though they do sell slightly different tests that are based on different algorithms. I got the tests in the mail and the cost varied, but they were all about a few hundred dollars. And the way that you send in your samples are a little different. One requires a cheek swab, one requires spitting into a tube, and one requires you to use this little pricking device to prick your finger and then dab some blood onto like this little piece of paper. And each of these companies also provides slightly different results. Tally Health gives you your biological age, overall age. Elysium provides a biological age plus individual ages for different organs and biological systems like your immune system, for example. And then NOVOS Labs provides three different results. They provide your overall biological age, your rate of aging, which NOVOS says is their most accurate measurement. And then they also provide your telomere length. Telomeres are basically these DNA segments at the ends of chromosomes, which seem to shorten with age.

Zoe: And what were your results?

Dominique: My results were varied. One of the companies said that based on my test, I was 33, another one said that I was 34. But that particular test offered different ages for organs and biological systems, and so I had a wide range there. My heart was 32 and my brain and liver were 43. And then the last test that I took gave three different results. One was my rate of aging, which according to the test was pretty good, it was below the average, which means that my rate of aging is slower than an average person of my age. But my overall biological age was 41 for that test, and I'm 36, or at least I celebrated my 36th birthday earlier this year.

Zoe: Okay, so varying results, and none of them are your chronological age. Can you tell us a little bit more about these companies? Do they do anything else apart from selling these biological age kits?

Dominique: Yeah, so these companies also sell supplements that they say can fight or slow aging, and some of them also sell supplements for brain health, for skin health and other things.

Zoe: How useful are these tests?

Dominique: So the scientists I spoke to seem to agree that these tests are really interesting as research tools and could really help scientists better understand aging in large groups of people. But scientists did say that whether or not these tests are ready for individual consumers to be using them to monitor or to improve their health, that's really an open question, and there's still a lack of evidence that that's the case. The scientists I spoke to also said that, if people are willing to spend say $300 to find this information out, and are interested in just generally measuring these different aspects of their health, then there might not be any harm in that. But some scientists also flagged a concern that some people might get stressed out with the results that they get.

Zoe: Alright, that's our reporter, Dominique Mosbergen. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much.

And that's it for "Tech News Briefing." Today's show was produced by Julie Chang, with supervising producer Melanie Roy and Fella Patterson. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow, thanks for listening.

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