How well are you aging? How to discover your ‘fitness’ age.

To understand how well you’re aging, try calculating your fitness age.

Fitness age is a well-studied scientific concept that uses a few, simple health measures to estimate whether your body is biologically older — or younger — than your chronological age. If you’re 50 based on calendar years, you conceivably could have a fitness age of anywhere from about 25 to as old as 75, studies show. It all depends on what shape you’re in.

If your fitness age is higher than your chronological age, your chances of dying young from a host of diseases rises substantially, according to a burgeoning body of research.

The good news is you can find your fitness age easily using an online tool. And if it exceeds your calendar age, you can start lowering it today by exercising right.

Why you should calculate your fitness age

To learn your fitness age, you’ll need to know your height in centimeters, weight in kilograms and resting heart rate, which you can easily determine using a smartwatch or 15 second pulse test. You’ll also need an honest estimate of how hard and often you exercise. Plug this information into an online calculator and you can see right away if you’re biologically older or younger than your birth years.

The idea that we have a “fitness age,” distinct from our calendar years, first arose more than a decade ago, when studies began showing that aerobic fitness, or, more technically, VO2max, predicts longevity and health span as well as or better than more-widely used health markers, like blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and even smoking history.

Inspired by this research, scientists in Norway began directly measuring VO2max in thousands of Norwegians, aged between 20 and 90, while, at the same time, checking various markers of their general health, including body composition, blood pressure, heart rate and exercise habits, as well as eventual longevity.

Collating this data, they discovered that some of these health markers correlated closely with VO2max and could be used to estimate aerobic capacity. They created an algorithm that would do just that, cross-checked VO2max and longevity, and, finally, developed a simple, online fitness age calculator.

Full Article: How well are you aging? How to discover your ‘fitness’ age. (msn.com)