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Myth #7

Your heart’s age is the same as your actual (chronological) age!

False! If you do not take good care of your health, the age of your heart may be much older biologically than your actual age! 

 

Like unmodifiable risk factors such as gender, family history and ethnicity, chronological age is an unmodifiable risk factor of cardiovascular diseases. But there are still many lifestyle related risk factors that can help to tackle cardiovascular diseases and biological ageing of the heart. 

 

Modifiable risk factors such as elevated cholesterol, hypertension, obesity, use of tobacco, physical inactivity and diabetes can be controlled, treated, modified and actually preventable at an early age.

 

This is especially so with the risk factor of obesity that has been found to be associated with premature biological ageing of the heart.

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Excess fat accumulated in and around the heart can cause and sustain chronic inflammation, oxidative stress and also the dysfunction of the powerhouse of heart muscles (mitochondrial dysfunction) that can cause premature ageing of the heart, cardiovascular diseases and eventually heart failure.

Picture adapted from Cleveland Clinics and Clipart Max

As the heart muscles age and weaken, the heart is unable to pump sufficient blood out that the body requires. At this stage, our human body has the ability to make up for this insufficiency which is known as compensation. 

 

The chambers (typically ventricles) of our hearts are able to expand to allow more blood to enter and the weak heart muscles to pump out more blood to support our bodily functions. However, this form of compensation could only help our body for a short term in adjusting the effects of weakening heart or heart failure.

 

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However, in the long term, the enlargement of the heart muscles (cardiac hypertrophy) could worsen heart failure as the increased blood volume within the heart chambers increases the tension on the walls of the heart.

 

This would increase the strain on the heart and worsen the pump function of the heart muscles.

 

The enlargement of the heart can normally be visualized with the use of echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart) by your local healthcare providers. 

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Picture adapted from Vascular Health Clinics 

The diagram is for mere representation and is not representative of all forms of heart enlargement (cardiac hypertrophy).

Besides the enlargement of the heart, stretching of heart chambers, blood volume overload or injury due to the reduced/absent blood flow causes the heart to release hormones such as ANP and BNP. These hormones are released into our bloodstream in an attempt to lower blood pressure and decrease the workload of a failing heart.

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Picture adapted from Advances in Clinical Chemistry (Elsevier, 2018)

Like the elderly, these hormones, also used as biological markers which are found in the blood to assess heart failure, were also found to be elevated in young obese patients which are similar to elderly patients (obese or non-obese), hence suggesting that obesity could result to premature ageing of the heart.

 

So, the biological age of our hearts may not be the same as our actual chronological age! Besides unmodifiable factors that hasten the ageing process of our hearts, there are many modifiable lifestyle risk factors that are within our control to slow down the ageing process of our hearts and possibly prevent cardiovascular disease and heart failure!

Written by: Eric Ong

References

  • Avelar, E., Cloward, T. V., Walker, J. M., Farney, R. J., Strong, M., Pendleton, R. C., Segerson, N., Adams, T. D., Gress, R. E., Hunt, S. C., & Litwin, S. E. (2007). Left Ventricular Hypertrophy in Severe Obesity. Hypertension, 49(1), 34–39. https://doi.org/10.1161/01.HYP.0000251711.92482.14
     

  • Che, Y., Wang, Z.-P., Yuan, Y., Zhang, N., Jin, Y.-G., Wan, C.-X., & Tang, Q.-Z. (2018). Role of autophagy in a model of obesity: A long-term high fat diet induces cardiac dysfunction. Molecular Medicine Reports, 18(3), 3251–3261. https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2018.9301
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  • Left Ventricular Hypertrophy (Enlarged Heart). (n.d.). Vascular Health Clinics. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.vascularhealthclinics.org/institutes-divisions/cardiology/left-ventricular-hypertrophy-enlarged-heart/
     

  • Nadar, S. K., & Shaikh, M. M. (2019). Biomarkers in Routine Heart Failure Clinical Care. Cardiac Failure Review, 5(1), 50–56. https://doi.org/10.15420/cfr.2018.27.2
     

  • Niemann, B., Chen, Y., Teschner, M., Li, L., Silber, R.-E., & Rohrbach, S. (2011). Obesity Induces Signs of Premature Cardiac Aging in Younger Patients: The Role of Mitochondria. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 57(5), 577–585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2010.09.040
     

  • Semenov, A. G., & Feygina, E. E. (2018). Chapter One—Standardization of BNP and NT-proBNP Immunoassays in Light of the Diverse and Complex Nature of Circulating BNP-Related Peptides. In G. S. Makowski (Ed.), Advances in Clinical Chemistry (Vol. 85, pp. 1–30). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acc.2018.02.001
     

  • Sun, M., Tan, Y., Rexiati, M., Dong, M., & Guo, W. (2019). Obesity is a common soil for premature cardiac aging and heart diseases—Role of autophagy. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Molecular Basis of Disease, 1865(7), 1898–1904. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbadis.2018.09.004

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