A recent Danish study suggests that you may not need expensive cardiac testing to determine your risks of heart disease. Just look in the mirror.
People who look old--with receding hairlines, bald heads, creases near their earlobes, or bumpy deposits on their eyelids--have a greater chance of developing heart disease than younger-looking people the same age.
"Looking old for your age marks poor cardiovascular health," said Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Tybjaerg-Hansen led a research study which documented the differences between biological and chronological age.
A small consolation: Wrinkles elsewhere on the face and gray hair seemed just ordinary consequences of aging and did not correlate with heart risks.
The research involved 11,000 Danish people and began in 1976. At the start, the participants were age 40 and older.
Researchers documented their appearance, tallying crow's-feet, wrinkles, and other signs of age.
In the next 35 years, 3,400 participants developed heart disease (clogged arteries) and 1,700 suffered a heart attack.
The risk of these problems increased with each additional sign of aging present at the start of the study. This was true at all ages and among men and women, even after taking into account other factors such as family history of heart disease.
Those with three to four of these aging signs--receding hairline at the temples, baldness at the crown of the head, earlobe creases, or yellowish fatty deposits around the eyelids--had a 57 percent greater risk for heart attack and a 39 percent greater risk for heart disease compared with people with none of these signs.
Having yellowish eyelid bumps, which could be signs of cholesterol buildup, conferred the most risk, researchers found. Baldness in men has been tied to heart risk before, possibly related to testosterone levels.
They could only guess why earlobe creases might raise risk.
