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 Researchers examined data on 3,196 adults age 50 and older to see
how their odds of what’s known as vascular aging - reduced
elasticity in blood vessels - was influenced by seven risk factors
for heart disease: high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, high
blood sugar, inactivity, poor diet, obesity and smoking.
Older adults who avoided at least six of these problems were 10
times more likely to have flexible, properly functioning blood
vessels than their peers who managed to avoid no more than one of
these risk factors, the study found.
“Especially staying lean and avoiding diabetes seemed to be very
important,” lead study author Teemu Niiranen of Boston University
School of Medicine said by email. “This association is thought to be
mainly caused by the excess inflammation and neurohormonal
imbalances associated with obesity and diabetes.”
In young, healthy people arteries are like soft rubber tubes that
easily absorb the shock each time the heart muscle contracts and
ejects blood into the vessels. But with age, the artery walls
usually get thicker and lose elasticity, eventually leading to high
blood pressure as they become less shock absorbent.
None of the participants had cardiovascular disease when they joined
the study, but after researchers followed half of them for at least
9.6 years, 391 people developed the heart disease including 207
events like heart attacks. People with healthy arteries were about
55 percent less likely to develop heart disease compared to the
rest.
Overall, 566 participants, or almost 18 percent, had healthy
vascular aging. This included about 30 percent of people in their
50s, and 7 percent of individuals in their 60s but just 1 percent of
people 70 and older.
In addition to avoiding diabetes and obesity, maintaining healthy
cholesterol levels was also a main contributor to healthy vascular
aging, researchers report in the journal Hypertension.
Some other risk factors for heart disease, including smoking, diet
and exercise, weren’t independently associated with healthy vascular
aging.
The study isn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove how
individual risk factors for heart disease directly influence
vascular aging.
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Limitations of the study include the predominantly white
participants, which may mean the results don’t apply to other racial
and ethnic groups, the authors note. Researchers also lacked
complete data on nutrition and physical activity for all of the
participants.
Still, the findings suggest the combined effect of many lifestyle
decisions may be able to help some people maintain healthy arteries
even with advanced age, the authors conclude.
Increased vascular stiffness, however, is just one aspect of the
progression of cardiovascular disease, noted Dr. Christian Delles of
the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the
University of Glasgow in the UK.
Other aspects, such as narrowing of the vessels in certain places or
the presence of plaque can’t be assessed by tests of vascular
stiffness, Delles, who coauthored an editorial accompanying the
study, said by email.
But patients who still have healthy arteries may take the study
finding as a road map to try to maintain that health as they age,
Delles added.
“Controlling risk factors can keep your arteries healthy and it is
worth addressing the well known risk factors,” Delles said. “This
includes lifestyle measure such as weight reduction, physical
exercise and smoking cessation but in most cases also medication
such as blood pressure lowering drugs and lipid lowering drugs.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2r8IJtf and http://bit.ly/2sjm4s1
Hypertension, online May 30, 2017.
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