Groundbreaking new tool can predict your health and even predict disability or death

Doctors have long looked at aging through a narrow lens — treating each disease as if it stands alone. But aging is more complicated than just adding up your diagnoses.

Published in the journal, Nature Communications, researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine have introduced a fresh approach that considers the whole body’s health as it changes over time. This new tool, called the Health Octo Tool, may tell you more about your real health — and even predict disability or death — better than your actual age or a list of diseases.

At the heart of the study is an idea known as “health entropy.” It’s a scientific way to describe how much damage your body’s cells and systems have collected. Over time, that damage adds up, and how your body handles it says a lot about your future health.

Lead researcher Dr. Shabnam Salimi explains, “An aging-based framework offers a new path to discover biomarkers and therapeutics that target organ-specific or whole-body aging, rather than individual diseases.” This means instead of waiting until a disease appears, doctors could take action much earlier — when damage is just starting.

To build this new tool, researchers studied thousands of people from three major studies, including the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. They tracked everything from medical tests and lab work to walking speed and disability risk.

First, the researchers created a score called the Body Organ Disease Number (BODN). This number shows how many of your organ systems — like your heart, lungs, or brain — are affected by disease. Each organ’s issues were scored based on known medical guidelines. For example, if you have high blood pressure or signs of heart disease, your cardiovascular system gets flagged.

This score ranges from 1 to 14, depending on how many systems are affected and how severe each issue is. But Salimi’s team didn’t stop there. They discovered that not all organs age at the same speed — so they developed what they call Bodily System-Specific Clocks. These clocks measure how fast each of your body’s systems is aging.

From there, they created a total Body Clock — a combination of all those organ-specific clocks. This shows your body’s overall biological age. A second measure, called Body Age, shows how quickly that biological aging is happening.

They didn’t just look at numbers either. One key sign of how aging affects the body is walking speed. It’s long been linked with how well older adults function in daily life. The researchers created two more metrics: Speed-Body Clock and Speed-Body Age, both showing how health entropy affects mobility.

Finally, they introduced the Disability-Body Clock and Disability Body Age, which predict the risk of both mental and physical disability based on a person’s health. All together, these eight metrics form the Health Octo Tool — a complete, multi-part picture of how your body is holding up.

“Collectively, these eight metrics offer a way to view an individual’s aging process using just their medical history, physical exam and test results,” Salimi says.

To build these models, researchers used advanced statistics known as Bayesian methods. They looked at disease severity across 13 organ systems including cardiovascular, respiratory, thyroid, and even oral health. This method treated the Body Organ Disease Number as a progressive scale — where more affected systems reflect greater health decline.

They found that diseases don’t just pile up randomly. Instead, illness in one organ system can increase stress on others. For example, having untreated hypertension might seem small, but over time, it can lead to serious damage to the brain or kidneys.

One of the biggest findings? Some diseases once considered minor — like early-stage hypertension — can age your body faster than expected. Catching and treating these issues early may have a huge impact on how quickly you age.

Bayesian models allowed researchers to see how each disease level contributes to health entropy. The team even accounted for how different conditions interact over time. A mild thyroid issue alone might not be dangerous, but if it happens alongside kidney problems and high blood pressure, the risks multiply.

The researchers validated their tool using more than 45,000 participants from two other large studies. Their new metrics predicted disability and death with over 90% accuracy — outperforming traditional tools like the Frailty Index.

That’s because current tools often miss the complexity of multimorbidity — the condition of having multiple diseases at once. Many systems interact in unpredictable ways. You might have one severe illness or many mild ones, and each situation can affect your long-term health differently. The Health Octo Tool captures this nuance by looking at the rate of aging across multiple systems.

The team is already building a digital app based on the Health Octo Tool. This app would let you and your doctor track your personal Body Clock and how fast each of your organs is aging. It could show how changes — like eating better, exercising, or trying new medications — impact your body in real time.

“Whether someone is adopting a new diet, exercise routine or taking longevity-targeting drugs, they will be able to visualize how their body — and each organ system — is responding,” Salimi says.

One major goal is to give people — and their doctors — a better roadmap for health decisions. Instead of focusing only on treating disease after it appears, healthcare could start focusing on slowing biological aging before bigger problems start.

The tool also offers an important advantage: it works for people of any age. It can identify signs of accelerated aging even in younger adults. This early warning could make a big difference in preventing long-term illness.

Senior study authors Dr. Daniel Raftery and Dr. Luigi Ferrucci supported the work alongside funding from the National Institute on Aging. They believe this tool could change how doctors view health, aging, and care planning.

Your biological age isn’t written in stone. And now, thanks to this new tool, it may be easier than ever to measure and change it. Whether you’re 30 or 70, the Health Octo Tool can help pinpoint where your health stands — and what you can do about it.

This is more than just a number. It’s a new way of seeing aging not as a countdown, but as a pattern. The more you understand how each part of your body is aging, the more you can do to change the outcome.

Health, after all, is more than the absence of disease. It’s how well your body holds up to the test of time — and now, there’s finally a tool that can show you exactly how.

Note: The article above provided above by The Brighter Side of News.

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