Lifestyle Age Factors

Lifestyle Factors and Biological Age

Lifestyle factors are the second group of inputs in your Biological Age. Where physiological factors capture how your body is performing, lifestyle factors capture the daily habits and behaviors that drive those outcomes over time.

Like physiological factors, each is compared against optimal health standards for your age and sex, using hazard ratios from long-term mortality studies. They're averaged across the past four weeks, except smoking, which draws on survey data about your history, frequency, and intensity.

Nutrition Score

Your Nutrition Score reflects the overall quality of your diet, based on Bevel's nutrition scoring system built on established global dietary guidelines, including frameworks like the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) and similar evidence-based standards. It captures not just what you eat, but how well your overall dietary pattern aligns with long-term health.

The research:

• In a meta-analysis of 514,816 participants, each 2-point increase in Mediterranean diet adherence was associated with 9% lower overall mortality, 9% lower cardiovascular mortality, 6% lower cancer risk/mortality, and 13% lower Parkinson’s/Alzheimer’s risk (Sofi et al., 2008)
• Women with the highest Mediterranean diet adherence had about a 23% lower all-cause mortality risk over 25 years versus those with the lowest adherence (Ahmad et al., 2023)
• In two large US cohorts, people in the highest quintile of diet quality had materially lower chronic disease risk: AHEI-2010 was linked to 19% lower major chronic disease risk, 31% lower coronary heart disease risk, and 33% lower diabetes risk versus the lowest quintile (Livingstone et al., 2013)

In Bevel: A Nutrition Score of 50 or above → subtracts years. Below 50 → adds years.

Smoking Impact

Smoking impact accounts for both cigarettes and vaping, and looks beyond just whether you currently smoke. The model factors in:

• Years actively smoking — how long you've smoked or vaped
• Intensity — cigarettes per day for smoking; frequency and strength/dosage for vaping
• Years since quitting — the clock starts the moment you stop

This means the impact isn't binary. If you've quit, you'll see the effect gradually decay over time as your body recovers, reflected directly in your Biological Age. The longer ago you quit, the less it weighs on your score.

The research:

• Current smokers have significantly higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk compared to never-smokers
• Quitting at any age is associated with meaningful risk reduction, and the benefit grows the longer ago you quit (Mons et al., 2015)

In Bevel: Never smoked or effects fully reversed → zero years added. Currently smoking or vaping → adds years based on duration, intensity, and frequency. Quit → years added will decay over time.

Alcohol

Alcohol intake is assessed based on average drinks per week. While low-to-moderate alcohol consumption has historically been debated in health research, more recent large-scale analyses have clarified the picture: even modest regular intake carries measurable risk.

The research:

• A systematic review and meta-analysis found that drinking more than 25g of alcohol per day (~2 standard drinks) was associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality risk (Zhao et al., 2023)
• A 30-year cohort study found that the combination of smoking and drinking was associated with a 2.5–3x higher cause-specific mortality risk compared to neither habit — highlighting how lifestyle factors compound (Gall et al., 2015)

In Bevel: 2 drinks/week for women, 4 for men → no years added. Exceeding threshold → adds years.

How These Factors Work Together

Lifestyle factors are often the most actionable part of your Biological Age, because unlike fitness metrics that take months to shift, habits like nutrition and alcohol intake can begin influencing your biology relatively quickly.

They're also deeply connected. Poor nutrition affects energy, which affects how much you move. Smoking and alcohol both compound cardiovascular and inflammatory risk. Small improvements across multiple lifestyle factors tend to reinforce each other, and over time, that compounding effect is where the most meaningful changes in Biological Age happen.