Frequently Asked Questions

The Vitality Index (0-100) is calculated from two main components, each weighted based on peer-reviewed longevity research:

Behavior Score: The actions you control

• Sleep Behavior: Sleep duration and consistency
• Cardio Activity: Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity minutes
• Strength Training: Resistance exercise sessions
• Daily Movement: Step count and active time
• Mindfulness: Meditation or mindfulness practice

Physiology Score: How your body responds

• VO2 Max Percentile: Age and sex-adjusted cardiorespiratory fitness - the strongest predictor of longevity
• Autonomic Recovery: Heart rate variability and resting heart rate
• Sleep Physiology: REM and deep sleep quality
• Body Composition: BMI within healthy range

Your score updates daily based on the latest data from your Apple Watch.

VO2 Max is the single best predictor of all-cause mortality. It measures your body's maximum oxygen uptake during exercise - essentially how efficiently your cardiovascular system delivers oxygen to your muscles.

Research shows that moving from the bottom 25% to even the 25-50th percentile reduces mortality risk by 50%. synqology uses the FRIEND treadmill dataset to calculate your age and sex-adjusted VO2 Max percentile, so you know exactly where you stand compared to others your age.

How to improve it:

• Zone 2 training (conversational pace cardio)
• High-intensity interval training (HIIT)
• Consistent aerobic exercise 3-5x per week

synqIQ can provide personalized recommendations based on your current percentile.

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measures the variation in time between heartbeats. It's a key indicator of your autonomic nervous system health and recovery capacity.

Why it matters:

• Higher HRV indicates better stress resilience and recovery
• Low HRV is associated with higher mortality risk
• HRV naturally declines with age, but can be improved with the right interventions

What affects HRV:

• Sleep quality and duration
• Stress and recovery balance
• Alcohol and caffeine consumption
• Exercise (acutely lowers, but chronically raises HRV)

synqology combines HRV with resting heart rate to calculate your Autonomic Recovery score (15 points in the Vitality Index).

synqIQ is your AI-powered chat that combines your personal Vitality Index data with 12,000+ peer-reviewed studies on longevity and healthspan. You can ask about:

• Explain your score: Understand what's driving your Vitality Index up or down
• Identify weak points: Find which components need the most improvement
• Provide protocols: Get evidence-based recommendations for improving VO2 Max, HRV, sleep, and more
• Track interventions: See how supplements, habits, and lifestyle changes affect your score over time
• Answer questions: Ask anything about longevity science with citations to research

Every recommendation includes research citations. Your health data is securely stored in encrypted Google Cloud Firestore, and no personal identifiers are shared with AI services.

The Health Journal lets you track anything that might affect your Vitality Index - supplements, habits, lifestyle changes, and more. Use it to:

• Log supplements: Track what you take and when
• Run trials: Use controlled experiments with dose vs. no-dose periods to see what actually works
• Track habits: Monitor sleep hygiene, exercise routines, meditation, and other practices
• See correlations: Discover which interventions improve your Vitality Index components
• Get AI insights: synqIQ analyzes your journal data alongside your Vitality Index to provide personalized recommendations

The journal helps you go beyond just knowing your score - it helps you understand what to do about it.

Your Vitality Index improves when you optimize the behaviors and physiology that science links to longevity:

Quick wins (Behavior Score):

• Sleep 7-9 hours consistently at the same time each night
• Get 150+ minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity weekly
• Strength train 2-3x per week for muscle maintenance
• Walk 7,000+ steps daily for baseline movement
• Practice mindfulness even 5-10 minutes helps

Longer-term improvements (Physiology Score):

• Improve VO2 Max with Zone 2 cardio and HIIT
• Boost HRV through better sleep, stress management, and consistent training
• Lower resting heart rate with regular aerobic exercise
• Optimize body composition through diet and exercise

Ask synqIQ for a personalized plan based on your weakest components.

Your Vitality Index updates daily based on the latest data from your Apple Watch:

• Behavior Score: Updates each morning based on yesterday's sleep, activity, steps, workouts, and mindfulness minutes
• Physiology Score: Updates when new VO2 Max, HRV, or sleep stage data is available

Note on VO2 Max: Apple Watch only updates VO2 Max after qualifying outdoor walks or runs, typically every few days to a week. Your VO2 Max percentile uses the most recent reading.

The app also shows your 7-day and 30-day trends so you can see how your longevity metrics are improving over time.

The Vitality Index ranges from 0-100. Here's how to interpret your score:

• 80-100: Excellent - You're practicing behaviors and have physiology associated with exceptional longevity
• 60-79: Good - Room for improvement, but you're on a healthy trajectory
• 40-59: Average - Focus on your weakest components to see meaningful improvement
• Below 40: Needs attention - Talk to synqIQ about which areas to prioritize

Important: Your score depends on data coverage. If Apple Watch doesn't have certain data (like VO2 Max or HRV), your score is adjusted by the square root of coverage. This means missing data has a diminishing penalty, but complete data gives you the most accurate picture.

Focus on trend over time rather than any single day's score.

Yes, synqology allows you to export your data in CSV format. The export includes:

• Your Vitality Index history with all component scores
• Health Journal entries (supplements, habits, practices)
• Trial and control period data
• HealthKit metrics (sleep, HRV, heart rate, activity)

This feature is available to all users from the Settings menu. The exported data is yours to keep, analyze further, or share with healthcare professionals.

Trials help you determine if a supplement, habit, or lifestyle change actually improves your Vitality Index:

1. Setup: Select what you want to test and how long to run the trial
2. Trial Period: Take the supplement or practice the habit while your Vitality Index is tracked
3. Control Period: Stop the intervention to establish a baseline comparison
4. Analysis: synqology compares your Vitality Index and its components during trial vs. control periods

This methodology eliminates placebo effect and provides objective data on what actually works for your biology. synqIQ can help interpret results and suggest what to try next.

Note: While synqology provides powerful analysis, it's not a substitute for medical advice from healthcare professionals.

Yes, your privacy is our top priority. synqology uses a hybrid storage model:

• Without synqIQ chat: ALL data stays on your device - we collect nothing
• With synqIQ chat: Supplements, practices, trials, and assessments are stored in Google Cloud Firestore to enable personalized AI analysis
• Apple HealthKit data: Uploaded to Firestore to enable AI analysis of correlations with supplements and practices

Privacy guarantee:

• We do not store any personal identifiers including your email address
• Firebase Authentication for secure access control
• Firestore data encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest
• No personal identifiers shared with AI services

You can export or delete your Firestore data at any time from within the app.

Your data storage depends on which features you use: Device Storage (Always):

• All app data is stored locally on your iOS device using SwiftData
• Protected by iOS's built-in security features and device encryption
• Apple HealthKit data uploaded to Firestore for analysis

Cloud Storage (Only when using synqIQ chat):

• Google Cloud Firestore: Stores supplements, practices, stacks, trials, controls, dose logs, metric assessments, and custom metrics
• Purpose: Enables synqIQ to analyze your experiments, provide personalized recommendations, and maintain conversation history
• Security: Encrypted in transit and at rest, protected by Firebase Authentication
• Note: HealthKit data (HRV, sleep, heart rate, steps, etc.) is uploaded to Firestore to enable AI-powered health insights

AI Processing:

• When you chat with synqIQ, your Firestore data is sent to AI services (Google Gemini) for analysis
• AI processing is temporary - insights are generated in real-time and not retained by the AI provider for training purposes
• Your underlying health data remains securely stored in Firestore (encrypted at rest with AES-256)
• No personal identifiers (name, email) are shared with AI providers - only health data context

What data we access from HealthKit:

• VO2 Max: Cardiorespiratory fitness for longevity percentile
• Heart Rate & HRV: Autonomic nervous system health
• Sleep Stages: REM and deep sleep percentages
• Activity: Steps, exercise minutes, workouts, mindfulness
• Body Metrics: Weight/height for BMI calculation

How it's handled:

• Uploaded to Firestore: Required for calculating your Vitality Index and enabling synqIQ analysis
• Security: Encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.3)
• Permission Control: You choose which data types to share through iOS HealthKit permissions
• Revocable: Revoke access anytime through iOS Settings

Our use of HealthKit complies with Apple's guidelines. All data is encrypted and no personal identifiers are shared with AI services.

Yes, you have complete control over your data. You can:

• Delete individual entries (doses, assessments, etc.)
• Delete specific trials or nootropics along with their associated data
• Export your data before deleting it if you want to keep a backup
• Perform a complete data reset from the Settings menu
• Delete your account entirely, which removes all your data from our systems

All deletion operations are permanent and cannot be undone, so we recommend exporting your data first if you think you might want it in the future.

synqology offers one simple subscription:

• Pro: $9.99/month or $59.99/year - All features including full Vitality Index, Apple Watch integration, longevity analytics, Health Journal, and 1000 synqIQ chat messages per month

Subscriptions are billed monthly or annually and can be canceled anytime. Save with the annual plan.

The Pro subscription ($9.99/month or $59.99/year) includes all app features:

• Full Vitality Index with all components (VO2 Max, HRV, sleep, activity)
• Complete Apple Watch integration
• Health Journal for supplements and habits
• Unlimited trials and controls
• Advanced longevity analytics and trends
• Data export
• iCloud sync
• 1000 synqIQ chat messages per month

The Pro subscription ($9.99/month or $59.99/year) gives you full access to everything synqology offers:

• 1000 synqIQ chat messages per month for AI-powered health insights
• Full Vitality Index with all components
• Complete Apple Watch integration
• Health Journal with unlimited trials
• Advanced longevity analytics and visualizations

Save with the annual plan at $59.99/year (equivalent to $5/month).

You can cancel your subscription at any time through your Apple ID settings:

1. Open the Settings app on your iOS device
2. Tap your name at the top
3. Tap "Subscriptions"
4. Find synqology in the list and tap it
5. Tap "Cancel Subscription"

When you cancel, you'll continue to have access to Pro features until the end of your current billing period. After that, you'll lose access to Pro features, but you'll keep all your data.

If you cancel your Pro subscription:

• All your data is preserved
• You'll still be able to view all your historical data
• You'll retain access to Pro features until the end of your current billing period
• After your billing period ends, synqIQ chat and advanced features will no longer be available

You can export all your data anytime if you want a complete backup. Re-subscribe anytime to regain full access.