Biological Age: PhenoAge Calculator

You can do your PhenoAge testing at Melbourne Functional Medicine. Book a kickstart with one of our practitioners to get started.

You need five standard panels that most Australian pathology labs can run together: a full blood count (FBC), urea and electrolytes (UEC), liver function test (LFT), fasting glucose, and high-sensitivity CRP. Ask your doctor to request high-sensitivity CRP specifically, as standard CRP is less precise at lower ranges.

Ideally, yes. A PhenoAge below your chronological age suggests your biological systems are ageing more slowly than average for your age group. A higher result does not indicate disease, but it does suggest elevated biological stress across the markers the algorithm measures, and is worth reviewing with a practitioner in context.

A PhenoAge result higher than your chronological age suggests your biomarkers are collectively tracking older than expected, which the algorithm associates with increased long-term mortality risk in population data. It reflects the combined state of your inflammatory, metabolic, kidney, and liver markers at the time of testing rather than any single condition. A high result is most useful as a prompt to investigate which specific markers are driving it.

The nine biomarkers are weighted differently in the algorithm. CRP (inflammation), white blood cell count (immune activity), and glucose (metabolic function) are among the more influential inputs, particularly because they are sensitive to lifestyle and can shift meaningfully over relatively short timeframes. Albumin, which reflects nutritional status and chronic inflammation, also carries significant weight. Understanding which of your markers are out of range helps prioritise where to focus.

No. PhenoAge is a mortality risk estimation tool derived from population data, not a diagnostic test for any specific condition. It does not map to a clinical diagnosis and is not used as one by practitioners. Its value is in identifying a pattern of biological ageing across multiple systems simultaneously, which can prompt more targeted investigation of individual markers.

Yes, and because PhenoAge aggregates markers across several biological systems, targeted changes can produce meaningful shifts in the score over months. Reducing systemic inflammation (CRP), improving glucose regulation, supporting liver and kidney function, and maintaining lean muscle mass all contribute. The multi-marker nature of the algorithm means that incremental improvements across several markers compound in a way that a single-marker test would not reflect.

PhenoAge was validated against large US population cohorts (NHANES) and performs well as a predictor of all-cause mortality at the population level. At the individual level, a single result should be interpreted as a snapshot rather than a fixed assessment, since biomarkers fluctuate with illness, medication, hydration, and recent lifestyle changes. Trends across multiple tests over time are more informative than any single reading.

Every three to six months is a reasonable interval if you are actively working on the contributing markers. Testing more frequently than this rarely produces meaningful change in the result, since most of the underlying biomarkers take weeks to months to shift in response to lifestyle interventions. Annual retesting is appropriate for general monitoring if no specific concerns have been identified.

Yes. The algorithm itself doesn’t change between countries, it’s the same nine biomarkers and the same underlying formula wherever you test. The only real difference is units: US labs report albumin, creatinine and glucose in mg/dL, while Australian labs use SI units like g/L, umol/L and mmol/L. Our calculator automatically detects which system your results are in, so you can enter values straight from an Australian pathology report without needing to convert anything yourself.