If you’re reading this, then it’s safe to say that you’re interested in not just learning more about heart health, but also ways to keep your ticker strong for many years to come. While everybody is different, there is an idea that your heart has an age that’s not always correlated with your real age.
A “heart age” refers to the level of risk that an individual has for a stroke or heart attack. Your heart age is generally affected by factors including chronological age, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and lifestyle habits.
“The [New York City Health Department’s] Heart Age Calculator is a tool that can help people understand their risk of a cardiovascular event by assessing known cardiac risk factors to estimate a person’s risk compared to a defined healthy range,” said Dr. Joy Gelbman, a cardiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. “If the heart age is older than a person’s current age, it indicates that there is elevated modifiable risk” for a cardiac event, she said.
According to the National Institute on Aging, some signs that your heart may be aging are chest pain during physical activity, lightheadedness, fatigue, headaches and confusion. If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, you’ll want to be sure to meet with a cardiologist to make sure your heart function is up to par.
That said, there are ways to turn back the clock on your heart age with some lifestyle changes and preventive measures that you can implement at any stage of life. Here are a few ways to keep your heart young, according to cardiologists:
1. Lower Your LDL Cholesterol
First and foremost, you’ll want to keep an eye on your low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol.
According to Dr. Norman Lepor, a Los Angeles-based cardiologist, the higher your risk, the lower you want your LDL cholesterol (or “bad cholesterol”) to be.
“For most people, we like LDL levels to be lower than 100 mg/dl [milligrams per deciliter] to prevent heart attack and/or stroke,” Lepor said. “But in patients who have known heart disease, we now recommend LDL cholesterol levels to be lower than 70 mg/dl.”
Unsure of what your LDL cholesterol level is? Next time you go to the doctor, you can ask for a coronary calcium scan to find out. This type of blood test is also fairly standard during routine physicals.