There are now tests that show your arteries are stiffening long before you have symptoms or any heart disease appears. Apparently, many people in middle aged and older who once thought they were healthy are not so healthy. That is not good news because the evidence shows that changes in an aging circulatory system, even among those who don’t have outward symptoms, are at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. The greater these changes the bigger the risk.

Here are 3 changes to consider:

High blood pressure. When your arteries are stiff, your heart has to work harder to pump the blood out. This condition can lead to heart failure particularly if the person has high blood pressure.

Ninety percent of people develop high blood pressure if they live long enough. Most of this is systolic hypertension which is due directly to your stiffening arteries.

Systolic pressure, the maximum pressure on the arteries when the heart contracts and pushes blood out, is the top number in a blood pressure reading. Not that long ago the systolic high blood pressure was though to not matter. Now it’s recognized that increased systolic blood pressure with age is linked to blood pressure change that’s often the cause of premature death in adults over age 50.

Heart attacks & strokes

Based on several studies, including  17 international studies that tracked nearly 16,000 men and women for eight years, those who entered the study with the stiffest arteries were twice as likely to later die from a heart attack even though they had no sign of heart disease.  The consensus is that arterial stiffness is as good a predictor of future cardiovascular disease as cholesterol.

Cognitive decline.

If your arteries can’t expand and contract easily because they are stiff they can’t shield your smaller blood vessels from the regular burst of blood that the heart puts out. The thinking that this  may damage your brain was confirmed by the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging which reported that those who entered the study with stiffer arteries were more likely to show declines in verbal learning skills and memory.

What makes matters worse is there’s no way you can tell that your arteries are in poor shape.  More on what you can do about arterial stiffening in my next post.

To your success at healthy aging.

Ruthan

Ruthan Brodsky

Content Marketer & Copywriter

http://ruthanbrodsky.com

http://fromretirementtocareerchange.com

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