CDC says your heart may be decades 'older' than you are, putting you at risk

Having an old soul suggests you’re wise beyond your years.

Having an old heart means you may not have many years left.

Yet three out of four Americans have a predicted “heart age” that’s older than their actual age in years, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, American men have a heart age that’s eight years older than their chronological age; women had a heart age five years older than their actual age.

“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 CDC’s division for heart disease and stroke prevention.

Study authors calculated heart age by looking at risk factors for heart disease, such as age, excess weight, smoking, diabetes and systolic blood pressure, the top number in a blood pressure reading. A healthy blood pressure reading is 120 over 80 millimeters of mercury or less, according to the American Heart Association.

While doctors have long been able to use these measures to estimate a patient's risk of having a heart attack in the next decade, study authors say that heart risk could be an easier concept for the average person to understand.

Some research shows that patients are more willing to make lifestyle changes, such as quitting smoking or losing weight, if doctors use heart age – rather than other measures – to convey their risk.

For example, a 50-year-old male smoker with an untreated systolic blood pressure of 140, without diabetes and a body mass index of 30 – indicating obesity – has a predicted heart age of 72. A woman with the same risks has a heart age of 74, the study said.

If the man quits smoking for one year, he reduces his heart age by 14 years; the woman reduces her heart age by 15 years. If the man also reduces his systolic blood pressure to 120 milligrams of mercury, he lowers his heart age by 19 years. The woman would lower her heart age by 23 years by making the same changes, the study said.

"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 the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.  "If you are 40 years old and told your heart actually is 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 to motivator for change."

While the concept of estimating an individual's heart age isn't new, authors of the new study took it a step further by estimating the increased risk for the entire country. Researchers based their findings on CDC health surveys from 2011 and 2013.

According to the new study, Mississippi, West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Alabama had the highest percentage of adults with a heart age at least five years more than their actual age, while Utah, Colorado, California, Hawaii and Massachusetts had the lowest percentage.

Blacks had heart ages that were three to four years older than whites, even when researches considered age, income and education.

The new study is hardly the first to find that many Americans have poor health.

Two-thirds of Americans are overweight and one-third are obese. The USA ranks 32nd in the world for life expectancy, behind Western Europe, Lebanon and Chile, according to the World Health Organization.

Yet Americans could do a lot better. About 75% of heart disease and strokes could be prevented or delayed through lifestyle changes, the study said.

"Changing behaviors is well known to be one of the hardest things to do," said cardiologist Cam Patterson, chief operating officer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "It's a lot easier to get someone to take a pill."

Doctors need to find better ways to persuade patients to change their habits, said Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women's heart health at the Heart and Vascular Institute at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Telling patients their heart age could help “wake up” people who haven’t really paid attention to their risk, she said.

Before people can compute their heart age, however, they need to know their blood pressure and body mass index, a ratio of weight to height. Many people don’t know these numbers because they haven’t seen a doctor or health professional recently, she said. “Knowing this information is a critical first step,” Steinbaum said.

Patterson said he's not sure that telling patients their heart age will motivate them. Doctors can use other calculators to estimate a patient's risk of dying from a heart attack, he said.

Heart age “is kind of a gimmick,” Patterson said, "They’re trying to make the case that this is more easily understood by the lay person. I’m not sure if we know that that’s true.”

To answer that question, Gulati said researchers need to conduct clinical trials to test whether heart age is really a better way to inspire patients to make changes in their lives.