Decoding Your TruAge: The Science of Biological Aging and How to Slow It

DunedinPACE (Pace of Aging)

This score is expressed as a rate (no units, just a number around 1). 1.0 is the reference, which means you are aging biologically one year per chronological year – essentially an average pace for your age. A "good" DunedinPACE result is below 1.0, indicating you're aging more slowly than the norm. For example, 0.80 would mean you're aging at 80% the rate of a typical person (you gain only ~0.8 years biologically in one calendar year, which over a decade could translate to looking and functioning like someone 2 years younger than your peers). On the other hand, a result above 1.0 means accelerated aging – e.g. 1.20 would be 20% faster aging (you're accumulating 1.2 years of biological wear per year of time). Most people will find their score falls in a range roughly between about 0.6 and 1.4.

The closer to 1 you are, the more "average" your aging speed. Small differences are meaningful: The developers of DunedinPACE report that even a score of 1.01 (just slightly above normal) is associated with significantly higher risk of chronic disease and mortality over time. Specifically, their data suggests a DunedinPACE of 1.01 corresponds to about a 54% higher risk of chronic disease and a 56% higher risk of death compared to a score below 1. So, the goal is clear – keep your pace of aging below 1.0. If your result is, say, 0.95, that's quite good; it means your current lifestyle might be helping you age more slowly than average. If it's 1.10, that's a sign you might want to take action (e.g. improve diet, exercise, sleep, stress) to try to dial that back. DunedinPACE is very sensitive to short-term changes, so it's an ideal metric to track over time if you implement an intervention. In fact, it's often recommended to re-check it after ~3 months of lifestyle changes to see if the needle moves.

Bottom line: DunedinPACE tells you "how fast am I aging right now?" – values below 1 are slower (good), above 1 are faster (concerning).

OMICm Age (Biological Age in years)

This is reported as an age in years, directly comparable to your chronological age. If your OMICm Age is lower than your actual age, it means your body shows characteristics of someone younger – an indicator of positive aging or resilience. If it's higher than your actual age, it indicates accelerated aging or higher burden of aging-related changes. For interpretation, many people look at the "Biological Age Gap" – the difference between biological age and chronological age. For example, if you are 50 years old and your OMICm Age is 55, your age gap is +5 years (meaning you might have the risk profile of a 55-year-old). Conversely, if you're 50 and OMICm Age comes out 45, you have a −5 year gap (younger biologically).

A "good" result is a negative or zero gap – being biologically on par or younger than your calendar age. In population studies, having a biological age older than one's chronological age has been linked to higher rates of morbidity and mortality. On the flip side, being biologically younger can indicate a lower risk of chronic diseases. One report suggests that if everyone could reduce their biological age by 7 years, the incidence of age-related disease would be cut in half – illustrating how powerful biological age is as a determinant of health.

Bottom line: OMICm Age is your overall "biological age" – compare it to your real age. Younger is better. A difference of a few years is common; a difference of 5–10+ years is significant and worth paying attention to.

SYMPHONY Age (Systemic Aging Profile)

This part of the report can appear complex at first, but it is incredibly insightful. You will see 11 separate age values, each labeled for an organ or system: Brain Age, Heart Age, Immune Age, and so on. Each of those should be compared to your actual age as well. A "good" result for a given system is when that system's age is at or below your chronological age. It means that system is aging normally or slower than expected. If a specific organ age is higher than your actual age, it indicates that particular system might be aging faster (potentially an area of concern).

For example, you might be 45 years old with a Brain Age of Forty (great!), a Heart Age of fifty (slightly high), and a Liver Age of sixty (quite high). In that case, the liver stands out as an older system – perhaps due to factors like diet, alcohol, or metabolic issues affecting the liver. The difference between systemic aging and whole-body biological age is important: OMICm Age (whole-body age) gives a single summary, but it might average out highs and lows. SYMPHONY lets you deconvolve that and see the variance. You might have an overall healthy biological age, but still have one system that needs attention – and vice versa.

Bottom line: SYMPHONY Age dissects your biological age into 11 parts. Use it to identify which organ systems are weaker links (older than they should be) and which are strong suits (younger than expected). This personalized profile helps target interventions more precisely.

DunedinPACE and health outcomes

Because DunedinPACE captures your current aging velocity, it has been shown to predict who is on track for age-related decline. In the eLife 2022 study that introduced DunedinPACE, individuals with faster pace of aging had higher rates of physical degeneration, cognitive decline, and chronic disease onset as they got older. Even in relatively young adults, a higher DunedinPACE was associated with signs of accelerated aging (for example, those who had experienced childhood adversity tended to have a faster aging pace by midlife).

Subsequent studies have linked DunedinPACE to specific outcomes: one report found that a higher DunedinPACE is associated with an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment and even dementia in later life. Another analysis showed DunedinPACE predicts incidence of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

Most tellingly, DunedinPACE has been shown to predict mortality risk – people whose pace is slower tend to live longer, whereas those with a consistently fast pace are more likely to have a shorter lifespan. It even added predictive power on top of other clocks like GrimAge, meaning it captures something critical about aging that other measures miss.

Biological age (OMICm Age) and health outcomes

Biological age measures have a strong evidence base linking them to longevity and chronic disease risk. For example, earlier epigenetic clocks like Horvath's and Hannum's showed that if your epigenetic age was older than your chronological age (often termed "epigenetic age acceleration"), you had higher all-cause mortality risk. GrimAge, a second-generation clock, was even better – one study found GrimAge was a strong predictor of time-to-death, outperforming previous clocks and even traditional risk factors.

OMICm Age is essentially a next-generation version of these, optimized to predict mortality and morbidity by integrating multi-omic data. In the study behind OMICm Age, the researchers reported that it outperformed all prior methylation clocks in associations with chronic disease outcomes and mortality. What this means practically is that if your OMICm Age is high relative to your peers, you likely have higher risk for things like cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, lung conditions, etc., and a higher risk of all-cause mortality at any given chronological age.

Conversely, those with younger biological ages tend to be those who live longer and stay disease-free longer. For instance, centenarians (people who live to 100) often have epigenetic ages that are 20 years younger than their chronological ages, which underscores the link between slower biological aging and extreme longevity.

SYMPHONY Age and health outcomes

The organ-specific ages provide even more granular connections to disease. Each organ age, if accelerated, is likely associated with conditions of that organ system. For example:

• If your Immune System Age is high, it might correlate with immunosenescence (aging of the immune cells), which could mean higher susceptibility to infections, slower wound healing, or higher cancer risk (since the immune system also surveils for tumors)
• An Inflammation Age that's elevated indicates chronic inflammatory activity – this could underpin diseases like arthritis, atherosclerosis (since heart disease has an inflammatory component), or neurodegenerative diseases
• A high Metabolic Age might align with insulin resistance or fatty liver or high visceral fat, pointing to risk for diabetes, obesity-related complications, and so on
• Heart Age higher than chronological age could reflect atherosclerosis progression, high blood pressure, or arterial stiffness – risk factors for heart attack and stroke
• Lung Age high might correlate with smoking history or air pollution exposure, and predict risk of COPD or reduced respiratory function
• Kidney Age high could hint at chronic kidney disease risk

The Yale team that developed SYMPHONY verified that these methylation-derived ages associate with known clinical markers: e.g., those with older liver ages likely had higher liver enzymes or more metabolic syndrome; those with older brain ages may have performed poorer on memory tests.