Feeling old? Talk to your heart. Factors like height and weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol can tell you how old or young your ticker is compared to your actual age. And, according to new Spanish research, knowing this number could be the kick in the pants you need to fast-track your health.
In a study, people who used a "Heart Age tool" to assess heart disease risk were more likely to make healthy lifestyle changes compared to people who used the Framingham score--which calculates your 10-year risk as a percentage--or were simply given medical advice.
For example, a year after receiving the information, the "Heart Age" group had hearts that were 1.5 years younger than at the beginning, compared to the Framingham group, whose tickers were 0.3 years younger. The group given only medical advice? Their heart age increased 1.2 years.
But Eric Topol, M.D., chief academic officer at Scripps Health and Men's Health cardiology advisor, cautions this method: "Heart Age" is easy to understand, yes, and if seeing that your heart is worse off than you thought helps motivate you to make healthy lifestyle changes--exercise, a healthy diet, quitting smoking, and reaching a healt hy weight--then that's a good tool, he says. But simply knowing this number isn't a defense against heart problems.
Besides, experts aren't sold on the validity of the test: It hasn't been around a long time or tested on a wide group of people to test its accuracy, says Dr. Topol.
To see changes--and reduce your heart's "age"--you have to act. There were more than 200,000 preventable deaths from heart disease and stroke in 2010, according to the latest research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Two easy habits to adopt: Eat breakfast and avoid late night eating. Men who skipped the morning meal and were midnight snackers had 27 and 55 percent higher odds of heart disease, according to a recent Harvard study.
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