A NEW report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that three out of four Americans has a “heart age” that is older than their actual age.
The findings, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Tuesday, Sept. 1, indicate that the average American man has a heart that is 7.8 years “older” than his chronological age, while the average American woman’s heart is 5.4 years more than her actual age, the Los Angeles Times wrote.
“Because so many U.S. adults don’t understand their cardiovascular disease risk, they are missing out on early opportunities to prevent future heart attacks or strokes,” said Barbara Bowman, director of the CDC’s division for heart disease and stroke prevention, according to USA Today.
In obtaining its findings, the authors of the study examined data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which indicated participants’ age, body mass index, whether or not they smoke, and whether or not they have diabetes or use medication to control their blood pressure, according to the Times. Other risk factors considered included heart disease, excess weight and systolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart beats.
Researchers calculated the heart age of 236,101 men and 342,424 women between the ages of 30 to 74 and found that the average chronological ages were 47.8 and 47.9 years, respectively. However, the average heart age for men was 55.6 years, while that number was 53.3 for women.
Among findings by the study authors was that the heart age gap was lowest in Utah, with men at 5.8 years and women at 2.8 years; the highest gap was found in Mississippi where men had a heart age of 10.1 years higher than their actual age, while women were at 9.1 years.
The study also found that heart ages varied across ethnicities. For instance, among men, African Americans had the highest predicted heart age at 58.7 years, followed by Hispanics (55.7 years), whites (55.3 years) and others (54.7 years), the authors wrote. For women, those numbers were 58.9, 53.5, 52.5 and 52.3 years, respectively.
Other contributing factors included education and household income, which, when taken into consideration, bring the average heart age for African Americans three years higher than white men and four years higher than Latinos. For women, the factors boost the average heart age for African Americans by five years compared to whites and seven years compared to Latinas.
Each year, approximately 800,000 Americans die of heart-related conditions that cost nearly $320 billion annually, according to the American Heart Association.
And while heart age “is kind of a gimmick,” cardiologist Cam Patterson told USA Today, the concept helps people comprehend their risk for heart disease and conditions, the Times wrote.
“If your heart age is older than your actual age, obviously you are at higher risk,” said Martha Gulati, director for preventive cardiology and women’s cardiovascular health at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, according to USA Today. “If you are 40 years old and told your heart is actually 60 years old, that can grab your [attention and] make you ask, how can I change it? What can I do? If your odds of having a heart attack or dying from heart disease is that of someone 20 years older than you, that might be [a] motivator for change.”
Researchers wrote that a 50-year-old male smoker, for instance, without diabetes, a body mass index of 30 and a systolic blood pressure of 140 mm Hg, has a predicted heart age of 72 years. If he adopted a healthier lifestyle and stopped smoking for one year, his heart age would drop by 14 years to 58.
