Testing
You are in the lowest level that still has a red box, and that box is the only thing worth working on. You do not buy your way up the levels. You earn your way up, one green box at a time.
Targets many longevity clinicians aim for, not diagnoses. Standard ranges are what most labs flag. Talk to your doctor before changing medication or if anything is far outside range.
You could measure hundreds of things. A handful carry most of the signal. Start with these, and treat the rest as context.
Pay attention to these first.
They shift your risk, usually as contributing factors.
Read them next to other results, ideally with someone who knows you.
On their own, they tell you less than they seem to.
The job isn't to measure everything. It's to find the one marker that reveals your biggest weakness, fix it, and retest.
Level 1 · Free, at home
Lean, healthy and fit.
Be lean, healthy and fit before anything else. Everything here costs nothing but a tape measure, a blood-pressure cuff and a scale. Test on day 1, retest at every monthly check.
Blood pressure
The single largest modifiable driver of stroke and heart disease, and it has no symptoms.
Waist
Where fat sits predicts metabolic risk better than weight or BMI.
Body fat
Separates fat from muscle, which weight and BMI can't.
Resting heart rate
Tracks fitness and recovery and moves within weeks of training.
Fitness map
You are only as fit as your weakest area.
Sitting-rising test
One score for lower-body strength, balance and mobility: the things that decide whether a fall happens.
Daily steps
Most of the mortality benefit of walking has landed by this point.
Sleep
Short and irregular sleep moves glucose, appetite and blood pressure inside a week.
Smoking · alcohol
Nothing else in this level moves lifespan as much.
No smart scale? Estimate body fat from a tape measure. All measurements in centimetres: neck below the Adam’s apple, waist at the navel.
Enter every measurement to see your estimate.
Fitness has five areas. Most people train the one they're already good at. Test all five, score each 1–5, and build your training around the two lowest: you are only as fit as your weakest area.
| Area | Test | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strength | Max strict push-ups in one go, scored by age and sex | Excellent | Good | Average | Below average | Poor |
| Muscular endurance | Plank hold on forearms, body straight | ≥ 3 min | 2 min | 90 s | 60 s | Less |
| Speed & power | Standing long jump, two feet, land and hold | Men ≥ 250 cm, women ≥ 200 cm | 220 / 175 | 190 / 150 | 160 / 125 | Less |
| Cardio endurance | Cooper 12-minute run/walk, metres (women −200) | ≥ 2,800 | 2,400 | 2,000 | 1,600 | < 1,600 |
| Flexibility | Standing toe touch, knees straight | Palms flat | Fingertips past toes | Toes | Ankles | Shins |
Minimum reps for each band. Below "Below average" is Poor. Excellent scores 5, Good 4, Average 3, Below average 2, Poor 1. Ages 18–29 use the 20s row; 70+ use the 60s row.
| Age | Excellent | Good | Average | Below average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men | ||||
| 20s | 39 | 26 | 22 | 12 |
| 30s | 33 | 22 | 18 | 9 |
| 40s | 27 | 18 | 15 | 7 |
| 50s | 24 | 15 | 12 | 5 |
| 60s | 23 | 14 | 10 | 3 |
| Women | ||||
| 20s | 17 | 10 | 8 | 3 |
| 30s | 16 | 9 | 7 | 1 |
| 40s | 13 | 7 | 5 | 1 |
| 50s | 11 | 5 | 4 | 1 |
| 60s | 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
Women's figures are converted from modified push-up norms, so treat them as approximate.
Bad knees, or not comfortable jumping? Do five sit-to-stands as fast as you can, arms crossed: under 10 s scores 3, under 8 s scores 4, under 6 s scores 5.
Enter your age and five results. Your last result stays on this device.
Enter your age and all five to see your map.
A balance check, not a gate. Eyes open, arms free, shoes off: aim for 10 seconds or more on your worse leg.
Once a month, in good light, with a mirror for your back. You are looking for a mole that is different from your others or different from how it looked last time.
Take the lowest red box first. the course has a chapter for each one, and the Protocols page turns it into a week.
Every box green at two consecutive monthly checks. Then book your first blood panel.
Level 2 · One blood panel
The basic blood panel.
Now that you're lean and fit, look inside. One blood panel, then again three months later.
Fasted, 10–12 hours, water only. The full reference panel is further down this page.
HbA1c
Three-month average blood sugar. Moves slowly, which makes it honest.
Fasting glucose · insulin
Insulin rises years before glucose does. The earliest warning you can buy.
Triglycerides · HDL
High triglycerides with low HDL is the classic metabolic pattern.
ApoB
Counts the particles that actually lodge in artery walls. Better than LDL-C.
hs-CRP
Background inflammation. High readings track with almost every chronic disease.
ALT · AST · GGT
The cheapest window on liver fat, which travels with visceral fat and insulin resistance.
eGFR · uric acid
Kidney filtration, and a marker that tracks blood pressure, fructose and alcohol.
Ferritin · B12
Iron stores and B12: low drains energy and training; high ferritin is inflammation or overload.
Vitamin D
Low almost everywhere north of Lyon between October and April.
Lp(a)
Genetic. It will not change, but it changes how aggressive the rest should be.
Take the lowest red box first. the course has a chapter for each one, and the Protocols page turns it into a week.
Every marker green on two panels at least three months apart, with Foundational still green.
Level 3 · Paid scans and panels
The top 1 % for your age.
You're lean, fit and your blood panel is green; now the details start to count.
Fitness map
No weak link left.
VO2 max
The strongest single predictor of all-cause mortality that you can train.
ApoB
Lower for longer is the whole argument on lipids.
HbA1c · fasting insulin
Stricter targets for someone already green at Advanced.
hs-CRP
Almost no background inflammation.
Homocysteine · omega-3 index
B-vitamin status and membrane fatty acids; both track with vascular risk.
DEXA scan
Muscle, visceral fat and bone in one scan: the three things you defend after fifty.
Blood-based clock
The steadiest read on how fast you're ageing. Read the trend, never a single result.
Useful detail, not gates.
Continuous glucose monitor
Shows which of your actual meals move you, which no panel can.
Liver fat
Fatty liver is common, silent and reversible. Seeing it directly settles what enzymes only hint at.
Thyroid panel (TSH, free T4, free T3)
TSH alone is easy to over-read. Only chase it if free T4 or symptoms agree.
Sex hormones (testosterone, oestradiol, SHBG)
They shape muscle, bone, mood and body fat, but only make sense next to each other.
Dead hang
Grip endurance at this level is rare and protective.
Farmer's carry
Real-world strength under load.
Advanced lipids
A second view on the particles ApoB already counts.
An open competition that ranks people on the gap between their blood-based biological age and their calendar age. In 2026 its professional track uses the Bortz clock and the amateur track uses PhenoAge, the same clocks as the table above. Same-day blood results are required.
Visit the Longevity World CupTake the lowest red box first. the course has a chapter for each one, and the Protocols page turns it into a week.
The goal of Optimized is to stay here for decades. Retest every 6–12 months. If a Foundational or Advanced box turns red again, that's your bottleneck, whatever level you think you're on.
Reference · Monthly
Where the weight sits matters more than what it is. A tape measure answers that for nothing.
Two people at the same weight and height can carry completely different risk. Fat around the organs behaves differently from fat under the skin, and the waist is the cheapest window onto it.
Measure on the same morning of the month, before eating, in the same place. Changes of a centimetre are real; changes of a day are not.
Waist-to-height ratio
Waist circumference
Waist-to-hip ratio
BMI
Body fat
Bone density (DEXA)
Both measurements in centimetres. Measure the waist at its narrowest point, at the end of a normal breath out.
Enter both numbers to see your ratio.
Free, repeatable to within a centimetre, and measures the thing that actually matters. Same spot, same time of day, at the end of a breath out.
Body-fat readings from a bathroom scale are heavily affected by hydration. The absolute number is close to meaningless; the direction over eight weeks is not.
The reference method: visceral fat, regional fat, appendicular lean mass and bone density. Once a year, same clinic, same time of day. An Optimized expense.
Reference · Twice a year
One number predicts all-cause mortality better than almost anything else you can measure, and you can train it.
VO2 max is the most oxygen your body can use per minute, per kilogram of bodyweight, when you are working as hard as you can. It sets the ceiling on everything aerobic, from a flight of stairs at seventy to a long walk at ninety.
Moving from the bottom quarter of the population to the middle is the single largest fitness-related change in mortality risk available to most people. Moving from good to elite matters much less. Start where the gain is.
Free, repeatable, and wrong by a few points in a consistent direction — which makes it fine for tracking. Needs a few outdoor runs with GPS and heart rate before it settles.
Run as far as you can in 12 minutes on a flat track. VO2 max ≈ (distance in metres − 505) ÷ 44.7.
Cheap and honest, but it measures pacing and willingness to suffer as much as fitness. Repeat on the same track.
Mask, treadmill, gas analysis. The real number, once every year or two. Worth doing once so you know how far off your wearable is.
Top 10 % for your age and sex is the Optimized gate. Top 25 % is a good first goal.
20–29
30–39
40–49
50–59
60–69
70+
Grip strength (dynamometer)
Dead hang
Farmer's carry, 1 minute
Push-ups
Bodyweight squat
Zone 2 volume, one hard interval session a week, and strength twice a week.
Exercise & movement chapterReference · Once or twice a year
Everything worth measuring in one place, with what most labs call normal next to what to aim for instead.
Fast for 10 to 12 hours, water only, and draw in the morning. Use the same laboratory every time — the difference between two labs is often larger than the change you are looking for.
You do not need all of this. Advanced is a short subset; the rest becomes useful at Optimized or when something specific is red.
Taking creatine? It nudges creatinine up. Tell whoever reads your results, or ask for cystatin C.
Bad bloodwork rarely happens at random. Most red markers share the same few causes: waist fat, too little movement, poor sleep, chronic stress, ultra-processed food, alcohol, low fibre, smoking and irregular days. The fix is the Foundational list, done consistently.
Glucose, lipids and inflammation all respond to the same handful of changes.
Nutrition & hydration chapterReference · Nightly
A ring or watch measures movement, heart rate, temperature and blood oxygen. Everything else on the screen is an inference from those four.
Sleep stages are the least reliable part of any consumer device, and they are the part people stare at. Total sleep time, consistency and overnight resting heart rate are the numbers that hold up, and they are the ones that respond to what you did yesterday.
Compare yourself to yourself. A score of 78 means nothing next to someone else's 85, and everything next to your own 64 last month.
Total sleep time
Sleep consistency (bed and wake time)
Sleep efficiency
Resting heart rate overnight
Heart rate variability
Deep sleep
REM sleep
Respiratory rate
Bed time, wake time and how rested you felt out of ten, written down each morning, will find your levers as fast as any ring. The journal has a line for exactly that.
Any of these outrank every number on this page.
Reference · Day 1, Day 30, Day 90
A number on its own is trivia. The same number, measured the same way, three months apart, is information.
Write your Day 1 numbers down before you change anything. Most people skip this and then spend a year guessing whether they have improved.
Re-measure at every monthly check and at Day 90 in the same conditions: same morning routine, same laboratory, same tape, same spot. The gate between levels is two consecutive green checks, which is why the monthly check exists at all.
Days
Sleep consistency, steps, resting heart rate.
Weeks
Waist, body fat, triglycerides, GGT, fasting glucose, your fitness map.
Three months
HbA1c, ApoB, hs-CRP, ferritin, VO2 max.
Six months and up
DEXA body composition, ALMI, biological age.
Anything inside about 5 % on a blood marker is noise. Two readings in the same direction beat one large jump.
Every box in all three levels, with Day 1, monthly and Day 90 columns, on one printable page. We will email it to you.
Enter your numbers once and the dashboard shows your level, your bottleneck, and how each marker is trending.