Spirometry gives you an FEV1, the liters you can blast out in one second, but liters mean little to most people. Lung age translates it into something visceral, the age of the average person whose lungs work like yours.
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Scientific references
A number people actually feel
Telling a 45 year old smoker that their FEV1 is 82 percent of predicted rarely moves the needle. Telling them their lungs are functioning like those of a 60 year old lands differently. Morris and Temple created the lung age concept in 1985 by inverting the standard spirometry reference equations, solving for the age at which a given FEV1 would be exactly average for someone of your height and sex. The result turns an abstract pulmonary number into a personal one.
Where to find your FEV1
Lung age needs real spirometry, the breathing test where you blast air into a tube as hard and long as possible. The machine prints FEV1 in liters on the report, usually alongside FVC and predicted percentages. Many people have old reports sitting in clinic portals from preoperative checks or asthma workups. Enter that value above along with your height and sex.
The smoker wake up call
Lungs age naturally, but smoking accelerates the decline two to three fold. A long term smoker in their forties commonly carries a lung age in the sixties, and randomized trials show that handing smokers their lung age meaningfully raises quit rates compared with standard advice. The good news runs the other way too. After quitting, decline returns to the normal pace, and lung age effectively freezes its advance even if lost ground does not return.
Honest limitations
The equations were built on Caucasian reference populations, and applying them across other ethnicities adds error. Lung age also flattens the spirometry picture into one dimension, ignoring restriction patterns where FEV1 and FVC fall together. Treat it as a powerful communication tool riding on a real measurement, not a diagnosis in itself.