BC Business
The Jevitty app gauges your lifestyle to predict how long you should be able to live.
Last week, I went to get a body composition scan in Vancouver. Although I was greeted by relaxing spa music, I was acutely aware of why I was there: to have my body—and everything it’s been through for 20-odd years—explained to me in plain science.
I was nervous. The dual-energy x-ray (DEXA) scan took six minutes, at the end of which I got a detailed breakdown of my bone density and fat content (fun fact: I have more muscle in my right arm than my left. Guess which hand I use to slam bugs on my desk.)
The analysis—offered by local healthtech company Jevitty Life Sciences in partnership with personal training studio Innovative Fitness—isn’t a lone service. The Jevitty app (which took a million dollars to make and launched earlier this month), uses an actuarial algorithm to gauge your lifestyle and then stacks your body’s ability to process oxygen (i.e. VO2 max) to give you a score. Whereas the scan specifies areas for improvement, your score on the app is a ‘best-case scenario’ expiration date to work towards.
“The higher your VO2 max is, the more likely it is that you’re healthier,” says CEO Jerry Kroll. Good habits like eating clean, sleeping well and exercising often will add points, while bad ones like smoking and drinking are bound to knock a few off.
“Based on what your VO2 max is, where you live, your educational background, your income, all kinds of different parameters, the app will give you an estimate, that we gamify, that says, Based on what you’ve told us about yourself, and what your health device is telling us about you, you should be able to live from today on to an age of 119 or 89 or 134,” Kroll explains.
Jevitty Life Sciences. An example of the Jevitty app’s questionnaire
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I wonder what Kroll’s score is, because when asked where he grew up, he declares: “I never grew up.”
At 61 years old, Port Coquitlam-born Kroll still feels like a teenager. After founding Vancouver-based one-person electric car company Electra Meccanica Vehicles Corp., he incorporated Jevitty in 2021 to help others feel that way, too: “What Jevitty is working on is the biggest adventure in human existence, which is to work on the science, technology and lifestyle to help people live healthy and happily beyond 200 years of age.”
Kroll isn’t just pulling this out of thin air. Longevity science suggests that humans can live beyond 200 years, and Kroll believes that the “human being that lives to 200 years is already born.”
In fact, he claims to be planning ahead with similar-minded people to figure out how to help people make choices today that will enable them to run a marathon at 100. “Somebody’s going to be the last person to die before we figure out how to cure aging and you don’t want to be that person,” Kroll maintains. “When I talk to people in the medical industry, they go, Of course we’re going to cure aging. It’s a matter of fact that we will cure aging.”
He compares the theory to how “bizarre” and “unreal” electric cars or laser eye surgery once used to be. “When you’re physically aware of who you are, what you are and what you’re doing to yourself to make yourself healthy, the third stage is where we get into the science with mRNA technology, stem cell or gene therapies to actually cure aging and stop you from getting older,” he says. “I promise you, 20 years from now, you want to look and feel like a 22-year-old, and that’s what Jevitty’s mission is.”
All I know is, at 119, I might just be looking over at Earth, sipping my space kombucha and scrolling through Twitter (a company that Elon Musk will probably still be considering buying out).