While heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death around the world, the news is not all dismal when it comes to heart health. A recent study looking at heart disease mortality in the US over the last 5 decades shows that deaths from heart attacks have dropped substantially (close to 90%), and heart disease death rates more generally are down by 66% in Americans. However, other causes of heart-related mortality are on the rise, including arrhythmias, heart failure, and hypertensive heart disease. Deaths related to these conditions have risen dramatically, due to such causes as obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, poor diets, insufficient physical activity, and other unhealthy life choices. Strong prevention measures can lessen the likelihood of these conditions if you understand your risks and make changes to your circumstances accordingly.

Perhaps a good place to start is to understand your risks and how your heart is aging, separate and apart from your chronological age. There’s been a movement afoot in recent years to examine how individual organs in your body are faring as you get older, including your heart. Brand new research out of Northwestern University (the PREVENT equations), and published in JAMA Network, reports that for most, one’s “heart age” is actually several years older than their chronological age, not a good sign for your heart health. The gap between “heart age” and chronological age is wider among men (averaging about 7 years for men) than among women, and also wider among those with less education. Northwestern has published its online heart age calculator (available without charge) so that if you plug in some test results you may have received with blood work, along with other health information, you may be able to determine your own “heart age.” So grab your medical records and click here. 

While this test will not automatically tell you what to do to improve your cardiovascular system, it should be the reason to start a dialogue about what changes you could make to prevent some of the riskier conditions that could afflict your heart. It’s anticipated that finding out your heart age may spur you on to make healthier lifestyle decisions, such as treating your hypertension or beginning a statin if your cholesterol levels are creeping up. There are other ways to determine your heart “age” (one recent study found promise in using MRI scans to determine “functional heart age”), but ultimately, the goal of all of these tools is to give you a “fighting chance” to improve your heart disease outlook. The American Heart Association has published its “Life’s Essential 8” checklist to help guide you to better heart health lifestyle choices, including recommendations on exercise, diet, alcohol and smoking, stress, and sleep. Similarly, cardiologist Eric Topol (who just published a book on super agers and longevity) recently wrote a column in The Washington Post with his evidence-based recommendations to his cardiac patients, touching on many of the same lifestyle factors. Ultimately, just as lifestyle choices can make a significant difference when it comes to brain health risk factors, so too may your lifestyle choices mean the difference between good cardiac health rather than succumbing to heart conditions that may diminish your quality of life or even end your life prematurely. 

One more possible way to measure your heart health: You may have seen a recent post by Paula Span, published in both The New York Times and by Kaiser Family Fund Health News, about the cardiac calcium scan. This is a quick and painless CT scan that can identify the amount of calcium and plaques lining your arteries, which could lead you to have a heart attack or stroke. While not every cardiologist believes this test is useful (Dr. Topol does not recommend the test to his patients), for patients falling into the right categories- aged 40-75, with no cardiac symptoms and not yet on a statin- the test may provide valuable information and facilitate such preventive and important measures as starting a statin regimen to lower cholesterol. For patients who have not been proactive about their cardiac health, or who are reluctant to consider a statin, this test may be just the information needed to initiate preventive measures. However, it’s important to note that not all insurance plans cover this test, which can run about $100. While heart attacks are down in numbers, that does little to quell your individual fate if you are at risk. To find out more, schedule an appointment with your primary care doctor and read here.