Find out if your health age is older than your actual age

Drinking too much alcohol, not sleeping enough, doing too little exercise could mean your health age is older than your actual age.

Exclusive: Australians are so physically unfit their health and wellbeing age is up to nine years older than their actual age, a shocking new wellbeing calculator has found.

Even superfit sportspeople such as former Hawthorn footballer Shane Crawford have been stunned to find they don’t meet the grade.

The Vitality Age Calculator developed by insurer AIA asks participants a range of questions about their exercise, diet, smoking, alcohol consumption and mental wellbeing – to produce an average “health and wellbeing” age which it compares to the user’s chronological age.

The idea is to prompt people into taking small steps to improve their wellbeing and get their health age back in step with their chronological age.

AIA CEO Damien Mu said the calculator was based on 30 years of science research

“You may be more susceptible to an earlier death, and health issues that affect people that are older may actually affect you earlier because your health and wellbeing age is actually older,” Mr Mu said.

Former Hawthorn player Shane Crawford whose biological age is two years older than his actual age.

Using Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data, AIA Vitality has also generated an average health age profile of the nation which shows that women have better health and wellbeing than men.

Gen X (40-54 years) was the worst performing generation, with a health age up to nine years older than their chronological age. They were also found to consume the most alcohol.

Millennials (18-39 years) were the best performing group; however, their health age is still up to three years older than their actual age.

Millennials did the most exercise, had the best BMI, they drank the least alcohol but had the highest distress score for mental health.

Baby Boomers (55-74 years) were the worst performing when it comes to their BMI. They did the least exercise but they ate the most fruit and vegetables and had the highest mental health score.

You can test your health and wellbeing age by using the AIA calculator here

Former AFL player and Gen Xer Shane Crawford who loves to exercise “wasn’t happy” to find his wellbeing age was 48 - two years older than his actual age of 46.

AIA Australia CEO and managing director Damien Mu, which developed the calculator and discovered his biological age is two years older than his actual age. Picture: Supplied

After retiring from football Crawford had to adjust his eating habits because he was no longer training as hard and his work on a television travel show saw him eat more than he should.

“I travel to beautiful places and, and I’ve always said to myself, try everything, you know, give it a go,” he said.

He plans to trim back what he eats and drink more water in a bid to get his health age down to 42.

Millennial Laura Henshaw who runs online health and fitness business Keep it Cleaner found her chronological age of 28 matched her health age, but she discovered she needed to eat more fruit and vegetables.

Social Influencer Laura Henshaw from online Fitness and wellbeing business Keep it Cleaner who has measured her biological age and found it is the same as her actual age.

“Being back in the office after Covid I was ordering my lunch, a little bit and probably not getting as many veggies in as I could, if I made it myself,” she said.

She hopes the test will act as a wake up call for people to improve their health but said it was important not to aim too high.

“If you think that you need to make 100 changes by Monday then it’s going to be so hard. Don’t think you have to go from zero to 100, ” she said.

Her top tips would be to incorporate a 20-minute home workout into your routine, drink more water, eat more fruit and vegetables and reduce alcohol intake.

AIA provides both health and life insurance and Mr Mu said the fund would not use any data from the calculator to increase the premiums of people it insured.

“We may reduce the premiums because you’ve engaged more in the program but no way do we use the program to, to increase premiums,” he said.

The data collected is not de-identified and when asked whether but the company would sell the data to others he said “definitely not”.

“We’ve got very strict rules on what we can use that for,” he said.