How do you work out my Lipid Heart Age?
Your Lipid Heart age has been included in your report to give you an indication of your Heart Age in Comparison to your actual/chronological age.
Your Lipid Heart Age is similar to your BMI Heart age however it includes your cholesterol results in the algorithm and NOT you BMI.
A lower heart age indicates that your risk of cardiovascular disease is less. For health, we should all be aiming to have a Lipid Heart Age that is lower than our actual age.
The following metrics are included in the algorithm that calculates your Lipid Heart Age:
Sex, Age, Systolic Blood Pressure, History of treatment for Hypertension/High Blood Pressure, History of treatment for Diabetes, Current Smoker/Non-smoker, your Total Cholesterol and HDL cholesterol results.
Who developed the Lipid Heart Age?
The Lipid Heart Age was developed by the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute in USA. The algorithm specifically comes from the largest longitudinal cardiovascular study in the world, the Framingham Heart Study. This study has tracked thousands of people over the last 70+ years, their lifestyle choices and their cardiovascular test results. With all this information they have come up with and algorithm that represents the main contributing factors to someone having cardiovascular disease (these are listed above).
Obviously you cannot change your age or sex (from birth) however all the other factors you can.
How can I improve my Lipid Heart Age?
Lifestyle factors that will help improve your Lipid Heart Age and thus decrease your statistical risk of developing cardiovascular disease include:
Stop smoking, lower your cholesterol, increase the amount of daily exercise/movement you are doing, improve other lifestyle factors such as stress, sleep, water and vegetable intake etc.
Improving your blood pressure, decreasing your total cholesterol (or increasing your HDL/Good cholesterol) and decreasing your weight will be a positive step in the right direction.
Additional Resources
If you are interested in exploring the Framingham Heart Study further or working out your risk (as a percentage) of obtaining cardiovascular disease in the next 10 years, please check out this link here
*If you are trying to work out your percentage risk, you may need to use the cholesterol conversion website to convert your cholesterol units from USA to NZ metrics. You can easily do this here
If you need assistance to stop smoking, please check out these resources:
Contact Quitline for free on 0800 778 778
Smokefree NZ https://www.smokefree.org.nz/help-advice/stop-smoking-services
Learn more about your Cholesterol here
Book an appointment with our Nutrition Team here
Book a 1:1 Exercise Programming session with our Director