Apple Health Age: the seven petals, supported devices, and the science

VO2 max, resting heart rate, HRV, A1c, LDL: understanding your health can feel like learning another language. Apple’s Health Age translates those measurements into something much more intuitive: years. But how do you turn cholesterol, sleep, and cardio fitness into an “age”?

One scientific approach starts with how mortality risk rises as we get older. If you estimate how someone’s health measurements change that risk, then you can calculate the age difference. This is how Whoop’s health age feature works.

Apple’s’ Health Age score relies on seven areas of health: heart, sleep, mental, movement, metabolic, hearing, and nutrition. Each area is represented as a petals in the Health app’s new Longevity tab. Let’s start with those areas and the measurements Apple names, then look at how WHOOP turns risk into years and what would make an age score useful.

What is Apple Health Age?

Health Age compares your health measurements with your chronological age in the redesigned Health app’s Longevity tab. Apple names VO2 max (cardio fitness), resting heart rate, sleep, and heart rate variability (HRV) as potential inputs. Optional blood tests include A1c, a measure of average blood sugar, and LDL cholesterol.

In Apple’s demo, a 30-year-old has a Health Age of 26.1, shown as 3.9 years younger than their actual age.

What are the seven petals?

The seven petals represent broad areas of health in the Longevity tab (Apple hasn’t said whether all seven contribute to Health Age). Here’s a guide to those categories and related measurements:

Longevity category	What it covers
Heart health	Heart and blood vessel health, including LDL cholesterol, resting heart rate, and cardio fitness.
Sleep	How long and how well you sleep, including patterns in core, deep, and REM sleep.
Mental wellbeing	Emotional health, including symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Movement health	How much you move and how well you function, from daily steps to strength, balance, and mobility.
Metabolic health	How your body processes and uses energy, including blood sugar measured by hemoglobin A1c.
Hearing	Hearing ability and exposure to loud sounds.
Nutrition	What you eat and how it affects cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar.

The seven petals in Apple’s Longevity animation. Image credit: Apple.

Which Apple Watches and iPhones support Health Age?

Apple’s comparison table lists Health Age for Series 6 and later, all Ultra models, and all SE models:

Device	Published compatibility
Apple Watch Series	Series 6 through Series 12
Apple Watch Ultra	Ultra, Ultra 2, Ultra 3, Ultra 4
Apple Watch SE	SE, SE 2, SE 3
iPhone	Apple Intelligence models: iPhone 15 Pro / Pro Max, and iPhone 16 models or later
iPad	iPad mini with A17 Pro, and iPads with M1 or later

Health Age requires an Apple Watch and the redesigned app on an Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhone or iPad with the latest software. Some features are iPhone-only, according to Apple’s compatibility footnote.

Older Watch support deserves a launch-day check. Apple’s table includes models that won’t get watchOS 27, whose support starts at Series 9, Ultra 2, and SE 3.

When will Health Age be available?

The redesigned Health app is coming in late 2026, initially in U.S. English. Apple hasn’t given a specific launch date.

Apple Health Age vs. WHOOP Age

Both products express health measurements as an age. WHOOP has published a methodology paper explaining how it turns those measurements into years, providing a worked example of how an age score can be built.

Product examples from Apple and WHOOP, showing different users. Image credits: Apple and WHOOP.

Feature	Apple Health Age	WHOOP Age
Wearable inputs disclosed	VO2 max, resting heart rate, sleep, HRV	Nine contributors: sleep duration, sleep consistency, steps, time in heart-rate zones 1–3, time in zones 4–5, strength activity, VO2 max, resting heart rate, and optional lean body mass
Blood tests	Optional A1c and LDL named	Blood tests aren’t among the nine published contributors
Time window	Not disclosed	Six months for WHOOP Age; recent 30 days for Pace of Aging
Reference point	Not disclosed	Health targets based on guidelines and expert recommendations

Sources: Apple’s announcement, WHOOP’s feature guide, and methodology overview.

How can a health score become an age?

WHOOP maps measurements to published associations with death from any cause, then translates the estimated risk into an equivalent age:

WHOOP’s illustration of the conversion: higher estimated mortality risk maps to an older effective age (left); lower risk maps to a younger age (right). Image credit: WHOOP’s methodology paper.

Using an approximate 10% annual increase in adult mortality, its paper derives an age adjustment:

$$\text{Age adjustment in years} = 10 \times \ln(\text{hazard ratio})$$

A hazard ratio compares death rates between groups; ln is the natural logarithm. For example, a ratio of 0.8 gives −2.2 years; 1.2 gives +1.8 years. These express a difference in risk as an age. They don’t measure years of life gained or lost.

WHOOP also adjusts for correlations between inputs, such as resting heart rate and VO2 max, to limit double-counting.

Translating risk into years is one way to construct an age score; another is to estimate the age of people with similar measurements. The approach and reference population affect the result, so a lower Apple Health Age than WHOOP Age wouldn’t establish greater accuracy.

What has WHOOP validated?

In WHOOP’s early evaluation, people reporting excellent health averaged 5.05 years younger than their chronological age; those reporting poor health averaged 5.96 years older. This compares people at one point in time. It doesn’t show that lowering the score prevents disease. The paper identifies validation over time as future work.

Has Apple Health Age been scientifically validated?

As of September 10, there is no Health Age validation paper in Apple’s research reports, feature-validation library, or the medical literature. However, Apple’s 2021 VO2 max report tests cardio fitness estimates against lab exercise tests; its September 2026 heart rate study compares wearable readings with an ECG chest strap. Those studies assess the measurements that could feed the score.

What would convincing Health Age validation show?

The central test is whether Health Age predicts future health better than chronological age and standard risk factors alone. An evaluation would need to answer four questions:

Question	Evidence we’d want to see
What does the age represent?	The calculation, its inputs, and the reference person.
Does it predict future health?	Whether it predicts disease, disability, or death in new participants better than age and standard risk factors alone.
How reliable is it?	How much scores fluctuate, how accuracy varies between groups, and what happens when data is missing.
Does lowering the score help?	Whether changes predict better outcomes, and whether acting on the score improves health.

When a score changes from 42 to 39, users should be able to tell whether their measurements improved, a missing lab result arrived, or the algorithm changed.

Health Age’s promise is making complicated health data easier to understand. To fulfill that promise, the number needs to tell you something useful about your future health and help you understand which changes matter. The seven areas organize the measurements; the age score’s value depends on what it adds to them.