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The CDC published a new report and with it comes a new warning – three quarters of American adults have hearts that are older than they are.
Experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have discovered that three (3) in four (4) Unite States adults have a heart age that’s more advanced than their actual, chronological age. This increases their chances of suffering strokes and / or heart attacks.
The CDC experts figured out each subject’s heart age by examining their chronological age, their body mass index (or BDI), as well as analyzing several risk factors that usually make people more vulnerable to suffering strokes and heart attacks – diabetes status, high blood pressure levels and smoking status.
The team included subjects from all over the 50 states, with an age range of 30 to 74. After studying the date, the experts came to the conclusion that roughly 69 million United States adults have a heart age that’s more advanced than their actual age.
Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC’s director, gave a statement explaining that “Too many U.S. adults have a heart age years older than their real age, increasing their risk of heart disease and stroke”. And in his opinion “Everybody deserves to be young – or at least not old – at heart”.
It’s worth mentioning that there were some interesting differences between male subjects and female subjects. Dr. Frieden and his team noticed that half the men in the study had a heart age that was more advanced than their actual age, whereas only two (2) in five (5) women in the study had a heart age that was more advanced than their actual age.
Additionally, men had a heart age that was older than their actual age by 7.8 years, while women had a heart age that was older than their actual age by 5.4 years.
These patterns could be found in all racial and ethnic groups, however the CDC experts did find that African Americans had a larger number of individuals with a heart age that was more advanced than their actual age, compared to European Americans, Latinos, and all other groups.
Where people lived also made a difference as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and West Virginia had the most adults with a heart age that was more advanced than their actual age.
And Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Utah and Conversely had the least adults with a heart age that was more advanced than their actual age.
The findings were published just yesterday, on September 1, 2015, in the CDC’ Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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