Wrinkles on one’s face are an obvious, unavoidable sign of aging. But your heart might be aging, too, faster than you think — and now, scientists have a way to check.
Researchers at England's University of East Anglia have developed a new MRI-based method to reveal your heart’s functional age, or a measure of how well your heart is really doing, regardless of how many years you’ve lived on this planet.
Why does this matter?
Well, for people with high blood pressure, diabetes or obesity, that number can be much higher than their actual age.
Here’s how it works: Using MRI scans from more than 500 people, scientists measured data points like the size and strength of the heart’s chambers. Then, they built a formula that calculates heart age and compared it with hearts from healthy people to verify accuracy.
For those without health issues, heart age and “real” age usually matched. But in patients with conditions like hypertension or diabetes, the heart was often five, 10, even 20 years older than expected — like a 50-year-old who is living with the heart of a 55-year-old.
That’s not just trivia. It’s a warning sign.
After all, knowing your heart’s true age could help doctors spot heart disease before symptoms appear. And for patients, it might just be the wake-up call they need to change course, eat better and move more.
With heart disease one of the world’s top killers, a tool that can identify cardiac risk early and give people time to turn things around is most welcome.
In the case of our hearts, we want them to act their age. And know if they’re precocious in the wrong way.
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