What is biological vs chronological age?

He is a brain tumor survivor and founder and CEO of a leading consumer longevity platform called Novos . Chris has reduced his biological age by more than one-third , according to dozens of biological age tests and relevant biomarkers , which he shares on his blog , slowmyagecom .

More importantly , through the public benefit corporation , novos , chris has been able to help everyday Americans reduce their biological rate of aging by levels previously unseen , with multiple customers ranking in the top 10 globally for biological age reduction and catching the attention of publications like Fortune , business Insider and the Wall Street Journal .

Let's go ahead and jump on in . Hey , chris , welcome to the program . Hey , rob , thank you . I'm so excited to get into this today . Some fascinating topics , so let's dive right in . So what ? We hear a lot about chronological age and biological age . So what's the difference ? So what are those two things ?

But biological age is essentially how old we are biologically , which means things like our morbidity risk , so our risk of a chronic illness , of aging , our mortality risk , the chances that we're going to pass away at any given point in time , as well as our quality of life metrics .

So this is how old we are on a biological , cellular level and this is ultimately what's most important to us , right ? We all know some people who are old for their age , so to speak , like a , say , 50 year old who looks like they're 60 or 65 . And they function that way .

And then we also know that that 50 year old who looks and acts young for their age , they're like on the dance floor . You would , you would guess that they were in their late 30s and they're actually 50 , right ?

So I think most of us , if not all of us , want to be that person on the dance floor , depending on how well you dance , but we all want to have that energy and that vigor and that health and so that's the way it manifests in the real world is people who kind of seem to be older and seem to be younger , people who kind of seem to be older and seem

to be younger . There is some truth to that , and researchers are now using advanced tools to be able to measure how old it literally is , or how old an individual literally is .

Okay , so now what you're saying is that there are tests available for biological age to measure that . Yeah , tell us about that . What's going on there ?

Right , so we all have our genes , we are familiar with our DNA , but your epigenome is which genes are turned on and off , and as we age , certain genes turn on that maybe shouldn't be and others turn off that shouldn't actually be off .

And there are patterns that emerge from this , and so researchers are able to take this large amount of data and then they're able to correlate it with biological age .

So , again , like the risk of having a chronic disease of aging , like Alzheimer's or cancer or heart disease and so on , the risk of mortality , and , in some clocks known as the third generation clocks , which we can talk about the generations , if you'd like , the third generation clocks actually even look at quality of life metrics , so you know your gait speed and

your sit-stand test and if you need assistance to stand up from the floor and so on . All of these things go into that algorithm . So that's on the blood level . Those are the most advanced clocks out there and , again , third generation clocks are going to be the most accurate and precise .

There are many other clocks out there that are using first generation or second generation clocks , which are not as ideal , but then you can go even beyond that , and we at Novus we haven't announced this formally yet and we haven't launched it yet , but we're looking at probably early April we're going to be coming out with a biological age test that's 100% free

for the general public , based on survey data . Now , this is based off of a scientific study that was overseen by world-renowned researchers like Dr Matt Kaberlein , and this is just based on survey questions and answers . It uses the UK Biobank and the NHANES data sets .

So these are very large data sets of people and based on that it was trained off of their epigenomes .

But now we can actually get quite accurate with just questionnaires Not as accurate as a third generation blood test that I referred to earlier , but more accurate than the first generation tests , like the Horvath test , and so , as part of our commitment to bring longevity to as many people as possible , make it as accessible and achievable for everyone .

We want to bring this test to people for free . And then , of course , if people want to get even more accurate and precise , they can then progress on to a blood test .

You talked about biological age and then about epigenome measurements and , just to be clear , the this , this genetic measurement , is than , uh , let's say , genotyping with 23andme or ancestrycom or even gene sequencing , so it's , we're not looking at the actual genes but , as you said , I think , the epigenome .

So it's a it's , it's a different type of way of looking at it , and maybe , maybe , you could expand upon that a little bit and , like you said , tell us the difference between the first , second and third generation , because it's a fascinating story of how they kind of were discovered and then evolved .

So that's , even though the genes are still the same , the piano is still the same . The way that someone's playing . It is kind of off as you're starting to age . And that would be the analogy for the epigenome .

So the first generation test , through the third generation test , the first generation test came out just over a decade ago . The main researcher behind it the name everyone's familiar with in the industry is Steve Horvath , and originally these clocks were trained based on chronological age .

So they were trying to predict how old you were chronologically based on your epigenetic data , and they got pretty accurate with this .

But as they were building it , they then , after they published that , they realized that what's actually more important is not to predict how old you are chronologically , but seeing the differences across people and different health statuses at any given age , they realized it was more important to try to figure out how old someone is biologically Once again the risk

factor for disease and mortality , and so they then started to train it against morbidity and mortality . And that's where second generation clocks come in . For example , the pheno age clock is a second generation clock . The grim age clock , which is grim age , is literally looking at like likelihood of passing away . That is a second generation clock .

The third generation clocks the ones that we're most excited about at Novus and we offer directly to consumers . There's one specifically created out of Columbia and Duke University called the Dunedin Pace Clock , and this is a really novel clock because it's a longitudinal analysis .

In other words , it looked at the same people over a lifetime and saw how their aging progressed over that lifetime , and they then were able to encode that , integrate that those results into the algorithm that they built , so they could see how different people were aging at different rates , while also looking at this epigenetic data , and so they trained this clock

based on that , along with the lifestyle , the quality of life metrics that I mentioned earlier , things like gate speed and sit-stand test and grip strength and so on , and they built all of that into this algorithm . So what's a little bit different about this third generation clock versus the others is . It doesn't give you specifically a biological age .

It gives you a biological pace of aging , and we think that this is particularly important because that tells you what you are doing right now in your lifestyle . Is it accelerating your aging , in other words , are you aging faster than the average person , or is it decelerating your aging and you're aging slower than the average person ?

For example , I'm aging at 0.69 right now , which means I'm aging 31% slower than the average 40 year old . We have customers who are achieving fantastic results following the guidance and the supplementation that we provide at Novus , slowing down their biological age , which I'm happy to talk about .

But we look at this as like the trajectory you're on From this point forward , if you continue your lifestyle , this is what you can expect , and that number is correlated again with disease likelihood and mortality likelihood . So the lower you are , the lower the risk of morbidity , mortality and that your quality of life is going to decline in the years ahead .

But if you wanted to see your rate of change with a second generation clock , you'd have to get two of them and then look at the difference and what you're saying . The third generation clocks will do that with one measurement . Essentially , it's the first derivative of the of the yes .

That's a great way to put it and , and you can get it with one clock like that . So , um , well then the obvious question what will fourth generation clocks be ?

There's what's called the multi-ome , and within the multi-ome you've got your , as you know , your genome and your epigenome , like we talked about , but then you also have your transcriptome , your proteome , your metabolome , um , and then get into the gut microbiota as well , and all of these are being researched for predicting how old we are , even the lipidome , for

example . Our head of R&D just co-published a paper it's in review right now looking at the lipidome and building a clock based on that right .

So there's all of these different ohms that we can leverage to try to kind of triangulate on figuring out exactly like what different health risks are and propensities for diseases and essentially , how old we are biologically .

In other words , someone was doing coronary calcium scores which increase statistically over age , and then , based on your coronary calcium score , you can create your age , how you relate to the average population calcification , you know what age that is , or something .

So , yeah , so all sorts of different things , but the the nice thing about your dna methylation , epigenetic methylation clocks , is this they're sort of holistic and they give this , this whole , this whole integrated uh pattern with it , I I guess . Then the $64,000 question is okay , we've got our chronological age , we've got our biological age .

What could we do to change our biological age ? Are there things that will improve it ? Because if I'm at a certain age , I'd like to get my biological age younger . I can't change my chronological age , but is it possible to change your biological age ?

I've looked at metabolomic clocks , I've looked at telomere length , I've looked at physiological markers like VO2 max and so on , and all of these are basically pointing at me being in my mid to late twenties , biologically speaking , even though I am soon to be 40 in a couple of months , and so that doesn't mean that I literally think of myself as being in my

late twenties . But back to the earlier points , like my morbidity risk , my ability to perform athletically , cellularly and so on , uh , seems to be that of an average person in their mid-20s , which I'll take it . So I'm not the only one . We have many customers of ours who are globally ranked for their ability to slow down their pace of aging .

Essentially , there's something called the Rejuvenation Olympics that I believe more than 4,000 people at this point have submitted to , and we have the number two ranked person in the world . Her name is Julie Gibson Clark . She's been covered by business insider fortune magazine and so on . Uh , we have Amy Hardison , who I believe , is ranked number five .

We have Rick Rick Keogh , keogh Varely , who's ranked number seven or eight . Uh , we named Lil Esky , who's also on that board . So we've got four people on this Rejuvenation Olympics in the top 10 for their leaderboards , and we're the only company that is an over-the-counter , simple , inexpensive , relatively speaking , like accessible solution out there .

The only other companies that are up on that leadership board next to us are longevity clinics , for example , right , where it costs a lot of money . They you have to visit the doctor and they're going to give you a very custom prescriptive approach to your longevity . And so what are the things that I'm doing , that our customers are doing ?

In other words , if I have 0.69 , which I do at 40 , and then somebody else has that score at 70 , they're actually performing better than I am , because it's harder for them to achieve that at 70 than it is for me at 40 . So they correct for that , and that's one of the leaderboards .

The other leaderboard is relative change or improvement in biological pace of aging , and we have multiple customers on both of these leaderboards in the top 10 slots , and so that would be someone who goes , for example , from 0.8 to 0.65 . That is their improvement in biological pace of aging , pace of aging and so and so that's pace of aging .

But they were going to look at the absolute reduction in that rather than the pace , which is a little different . I like the pace of the aging on this .

On the Rejuvenation Olympics , now you mentioned that you had high ranking , that Novos had high ranking people in this Olympics and , to be clear , these are people who are not necessarily using the Novos test for their biological age , but they're actually using Novos products to reverse their age right or to lower their rate and pace of aging Is that right so how

do they do that ?

I do want to just quickly mention that Peter Diamandis is also on the Rejuvenation Olympics leaderboard , and so he's really into longevity as well , but I would also like to add that our customers have outranked him , so there's something special that our customers are doing , and just wanted to mention that , and I'm sorry . Your question was .

They haven't updated the list yet . But between us , unless other people are entering the list and knocking them out , we have some customers who have fantastic results that should also be added to that top 10 .

So the customers I've mentioned there's actually many more that we expect are going to be added and for those additional ones , many of them did purchase our test kit . But what I will say about that is that we are not administering those kits , so we work with a third party lab .

That lab directly ships it to the customer and then the customer ships it right back to that third party lab . So we have no , we don't touch that product whatsoever . What we do touch is the formulations that we sell . So we have Novus Core , novus Boost and we just launched Novus Vital last week .

The results that these customers of ours are achieving is not inclusive of Novus Vital , yet it was because Novus Vital is brand new . It was Novus Core , and sometimes Nova's core plus boost that people were taking to achieve these results .

If you think of it as a pie , there's different slices , and the slices I tend to think of , um , just off the top of my head I might be missing one or two , but it's activity , diet , sleep and recovery , stress management , relationships , your environment .

That includes the air quality and how close you are to like green areas or blue areas , being the ocean , nature essentially . And then supplements and or prescription drugs . Prescriptions can , in more cases than not , probably hinder your progress , but in some cases there are specific prescription drugs that are shown to potentially extend longevity for humans .

So those are the slices . So to your question , I would say is taking the supplements better than doing nothing at all ? Yes , just like exercising is better than not exercising , even if you're eating an unhealthy diet .

The best thing is to incorporate healthy lifestyle practices in all of these different slices of the pie , but if you are really good at just a few of them and not so good at the others , you might be able to kind of counteract the negative effects , right , as we see in scientific studies , where someone might be living a relatively unhealthy life .

But if you can get them to be active for , say , you know , 150 minutes a week , so about 21 minutes a day , they're just , you know , walking briskly , like their risk of heart attack goes down very significantly , their risk of all cause mortality goes down very significantly , and that's just one slice of it , right .

So we think of supplements in a similar way .

For Novo specifically , or for longevity and joke or the whole , the whole thing , every , the whole space , that yeah I would say for the whole space

.

You can stretch it in one direction or the other , and obviously we want to stretch it in the direction of slowing down the passage of time or the effects that passage of time has on our bodies , so making people aware that it is scientifically proven , it is a fact that you can accelerate aging , in animals and humans included , and you can decelerate it , and

these are the things that we know as of now .

The science has elucidated that these things can slow down aging and these other things can accelerate it and empower people with this knowledge so that they can start taking aging into their own hands and , by extension , the quality of life can potentially increase , the risk of age-related diseases can decrease and lifespans and health spans can increase as a result of

people being knowledgeable about this . That's the most exciting thing for me is knowledge is power , and it was life-changing for me when I came to realize this fact about a decade ago , when reading a scientific paper called the hallmarks of aging .

And then the second point related to that is , just then , making longevity as accessible and achievable for as many people as possible . It's not about that $30,000 stem cell treatments . It's because that's not accessible for most of us , right Like .

It's about doing something that you know maybe adds up to $500 or $1,000 a year , something that if you prioritize health , you can find a way to fit that into your budget .

In that , um , there's very strong evidence that how people conceptualize aging and their own mindset about aging , if they think that , you know , 60 year olds are old and 70 year olds should be in a wheelchair and 80 year olds it's time to die , that's what will happen , it's almost self-fulfilling . And , on the other hand , the person who thinks , man , I'm 90 .

I want to see my great grandchildren and I want to play with their great grandchildren when I'm a hundred , those people will have a much , much greater chance of visualizing that and becoming that and that the mindset you know , for all the , all the wonderful stuff we're doing with testing and drugs and supplements and exercise mindset .

I think is has to be one of the underappreciated power tools that we all have and maybe even one of the most powerful tools .

So you can argue what percentage , but the fact is that studies range from 75% to the more recent studies saying that 90% or more of aging is based on lifestyle and environment , and that implies less than 10% is based on our genetics . Now , people disagree with this all of the time .

They'll cite examples of family members who , like , live an unhealthy life and then still live a long life . There's many different reasons why that may happen , but my question is well , what if they didn't live an unhealthy life ? How much longer would they have lived Right ? Much longer , and so .

So that's empowering , realizing that it is really the decisions that we're making that can ultimately add up to how long we're going to live that healthy life .

We have different tools on our website , called , for example , novos Face Age , you can search for , which is actually a biological age clock that just looks at a photograph , a selfie of you , and can tell you how old you look biologically All completely free . And then me personally , I have slowmyagecom , and I'm on let's see Instagram X and TikTok as slowmyage .

All Remember that Chris is giving us a bonus to our VIP Pass members , so if you haven't claimed your VIP Pass to access the recordings , transcripts , mp3s and our must-have bonus package , then you can get it now by clicking the button on the bottom of the page to upgrade before it's too late .

Remember , when the event's over the recordings , all the bonuses go away , so make sure you claim your VIP Pass before it's too late .