How old is your heart?

The age-related "calculator" for the heart allows you to predict the probability of a heart attack

Kirill Stasevich, CompulentaThe probability of cardiovascular problems can be estimated with varying accuracy, for this you only need to know what kind of lifestyle a person leads, what he eats, what he drinks, how he is doing with heredity.

That is, it is clear that smoking can provoke atherosclerosis, but it would be good to know exactly when it will start.

For such assessments, different biochemical and medical data are used, which make it possible to predict the fate of the heart for about 10 years ahead. However, firstly, the existing methods strongly depend on the age and gender of the subject, and secondly, 10 years is still not too long. In other words, if you are a 20-year-old smoking young lady who dreams of finding out what will happen to your heart at 40, then you will not get a clear answer.

Researchers from several British scientific and medical centers dealing with cardiovascular health tried to solve this problem. In the journal Heart, they describe a kind of "calculator", or, better to say, an algorithm with which you can estimate how many years a person can live until he starts having heart problems: Joint British Societies' consensus recommendations for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (JBS3). The conceptual feature of the new algorithm is that it takes into account the own age of the heart, which is naturally influenced by bad habits, heredity, etc.

Well, actually the predictions look like this: if this is a 35–year-old smoking woman with a systolic pressure of 160 mmHg (norm - 120), a cholesterol concentration of 7 mmol / l in the blood (at a norm of 5.2) and if she had cases of early cardiovascular diseases in her family, then the true age of her heart is equal to 47 years old, she herself has every chance to live to 71 years without a heart attack and heart attacks. At the same time, in the next ten years, the probability of heart problems will be low – only 2%.

However, if this woman quits smoking, reduces cholesterol to 4 mmol / l, blood pressure to 130 mmHg, then her heart will "rejuvenate" to 30 years. Rejuvenation here, of course, will not happen literally, it's just that with such parameters she will be able to live without heart attacks and seizures until 85 years old, and the ten-year risks will drop to a quarter of a percent.

Heart problems hold the first place among the causes of death, so algorithms that allow calculating cardiovascular risks are more than in demand. The advantage of this particular "calculator" is that it allows you to make such an assessment about the whole of life and from any point of it, just thanks to the emphasis on the age of the heart. Well, in addition, his predictions are very clear: a person can immediately estimate in numbers how many years he will win if he changes his lifestyle.

You can read the instructions and run the calculator (all in English) here – VM.

Based on the materials of LiveScience: Old at Heart? New Tool Calculates Heart's True Age.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru27.03.2014