I Am Testing My Biological Age Again — This Time With Methylation
I am interviewing Ryan Smith in the next few weeks. He founded TruDiagnostic, the company behind the TruAge epigenetic test.
Before we talk, I asked him to send me a kit so I could take the test myself rather than just ask him about it. I would rather interview him having actually run his test than having only read about it.
The box showed up this week: the TruAge + TruHealth combination kit. By the time you read this I have already pricked my finger and put it back in the mail.
What Is Actually in the Box
It is a finger-prick blood collection kit, and one sample runs two different sets of analysis.
TruAge reads DNA methylation — chemical marks that sit on top of your DNA and change in patterns as you age. Those patterns get run through algorithms that estimate how old your body behaves, as opposed to how many birthdays you have had. TruHealth looks at what your body is doing right now: metabolism, inflammation, nutrients, immune function.
Between them the combination kit reports more than 180 biomarkers. That is not a number I can verify myself, but it is the company's own figure and it is what I will be checking my report against.
The Four Numbers I Care About
Most of that report will be detail. Four things are the reason I said yes.
OMICmAge is their biological age algorithm, built with Harvard. It is meant to say not just whether you are aging fast, but what is driving it.
DunedinPACE is the pace-of-aging measure developed at Duke. It answers a different question than biological age — not how old you are, but how many biological years you are burning per calendar year. A score of 1.0 means you age one year per year. Below 1.0 means you are running slow. That single number is the closest thing this field has to a scoreboard for what I am doing.
SYMPHONYAge comes out of Yale and reports an age for eleven organ systems separately — brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, immune system and the rest. I am fascinated and slightly nervous about this one. An average is comfortable. Eleven separate numbers will find whatever I have been neglecting.
Telomere length, which is the one that connects this to everything else on this site.
Why the Telomere Number Matters More Than the Rest
I interviewed Dr. Bill Andrews about telomeres. He has spent his career measuring them directly and trying to lengthen them, and I take Telo-Vital, the supplement he developed, every day.
TruDiagnostic estimates telomere length from methylation patterns instead. Same biological question, a completely different route to the answer.
So I am about to get a second opinion on the one thing I have been spending money on for months. If the two methods disagree, that is a more interesting post than if they agree, and I will publish either result.
What I Am Comparing It Against
I go into this already carrying a biological age number. I am 71, and the figure I have been quoting publicly is 56.
That number did not come from methylation. It came from a different method entirely, which means this test is not a repeat measurement — it is a cross-check by an unrelated technique. There is no guarantee the two agree, and I would be surprised if they landed on the same number.
I also have twice-yearly bloodwork from Function Health, and every number I get is published on my test and stats page whether it flatters me or not. This one goes up there too.
Then I Interview the Man Who Built It
Ryan Smith is the founder of TruDiagnostic and its Director of Research and Development. Before this he founded a peptide compounding company that became one of the fastest-growing healthcare businesses in the country, and sold it in 2020 to start working on aging measurement instead.
His company holds the largest private epigenetic database in the world — more than 200,000 people tested — and has more than thirty approved clinical studies running with collaborators at Duke, Harvard, Yale, UCSF and Ohio State.
He is coming on the show, and I will have my own results in hand when we talk. That changes the interview. I am not asking him to explain methylation clocks in the abstract. I am asking him about my numbers.
What I Want to Ask Him
A few things I am already turning over.
How much can these numbers move, and how fast? If I do everything right for six months, what should I expect to see — and what would count as noise?
What does it mean when the organ ages disagree with each other? If my heart reads younger than my calendar age and my brain reads older, what do I actually do about it?
And the one I most want an honest answer to: how much of this is measurement and how much is still estimate? He runs a company that sells the test. I want to hear where he thinks the science is genuinely solid and where it is still improving.
Come Back for the Numbers
Results take a few weeks from when the lab receives the sample. When they land I will publish all of them — the biological age, the pace of aging, all eleven organ ages, and the telomere estimate, next to what I have been taking and doing.
If the news is bad, that gets published too. A public experiment where you only report the good results is not an experiment.
If You Want to Look Into It Yourself
TruDiagnostic sells these as two separate tests, and it is worth knowing the difference before you order, because they answer different questions from the same finger prick.
TruAge is the aging test. Biological age, pace of aging, the age of eleven separate organ systems, and telomere length. This is the one for the question “how fast am I aging, and can I slow it down.”
TruHealth is the current-state test. More than 105 markers across 19 biological systems — nutrition, metabolic function, immune health, inflammation, oxidative stress, neurocognitive markers. This is the one for “what is my body doing right now, and what am I short of.”
The combination kit is what I am taking. Same single blood spot, both reports, 180+ biomarkers in total, and cheaper than buying the two separately.
Which one makes sense depends on what you are actually trying to find out. If you already get regular bloodwork somewhere else, TruAge alone may be all you need, because the nutritional and metabolic side overlaps with what a standard panel already tells you. If you get no bloodwork at all, TruHealth covers more ground. I went with both because I want the aging numbers alongside the current-state numbers from the same sample on the same day, so nothing is explained away by “well, that was a different month.”
One practical note that applies whichever you pick: they accept HSA and FSA payments, so you can use pre-tax dollars. Turnaround is roughly two to three weeks from when the lab receives your sample.
Everything is at trudiagnostic.com if you want to compare them yourself.
And of course I will post my results here when they come back — every number, good or bad. That is the whole point of doing this in public. If you are trying to decide whether one of these is worth the money, you will be able to look at exactly what I got before you spend anything.
Keep Going
Everything I take is listed with its dose on my supplement stack and on my protocols page. What I do to stay strong is on my fitness page, and every blood number I publish is on my test and stats page.
Live long and prosper,
Gary
A note from Gary: I am not a doctor, and I am definitely not your doctor. I am a 71-year-old man running a 129-year experiment on himself in public. Talk to your physician before changing anything you take. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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