Can a robust heart extend your lifespan?

Washington: A robust heart in the middle age may help extend your lifespan by a maximum of 14 years, than peers who have two or more cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, says a study. “We found that many people develop cardiovascular disease as they live into old age, but those with optimal risk factor levels live disease-free longer,” said John T Wilkins, study co-author and assistant professor of medicine and cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. [caption id=“attachment_529210” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representative image. Reuters[/caption] Researchers extracted data from five different cohorts included in the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project and looked at the participants’ risk of all forms of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular disease from ages 45, 55 and 65 through 95 years of age, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported. All participants were free of CVD at entry into the study and data on the following risk factors was collected: blood pressure, total cholesterol, diabetes and smoking status, according to a Northwestern statement. The primary outcome measure for the study was any CVD event (including fatal and non-fatal coronary heart disease, all forms of stroke, congestive heart failure, and other CVD deaths). IANS