NHS Tool Shows Your Heart Health

We’ve all heard that we should do this or avoid doing that in order to stay healthy, but it can be hard to see exactly how these changes will affect you. This is what the NHS’ new calculator is hoping to address by showing people the difference that certain lifestyle changes can make to their health.

The calculator allows you to input information about your heart and your habits – so long as you are over 30 – in order to compare your heart age to your biological age. This allows the tool to predict whether you are at risk of a heart attack or stroke as well as show you what your lifestyle really means for your body.

It also lets you see what a difference certain changes – such as losing weight, quitting smoking, reducing cholesterol and lowering blood pressure –  can make to the health of your heart. This gives you a real indication of what you need to do to get healthier and how these steps will make a difference, giving a more personal response.

A previous version of the tool, which was launched last year, only gave forecasts on heart health and didn’t tell people what changes they should make to improve on their results. This version came under fire by some, but now the NHS has updated the tool in order to offer more support.

Associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Dr Mike Knapton, said: “Knowing your heart age is vital to taking control of your health. Armed with this knowledge you can start to make changes to help protect yourself against cruel and life-changing events such as heart attack and stroke.

“The younger you start making small but significant changes, the greater the return on your investment in your health.”

The new calculator comes as research based on the data collected by the older tool – published by the BHF Open journal – showed that four in five of the 575,000 who used it had a heart age that was higher than their actual age, suggesting poor health. Around 87 per cent of men under 40 and 40 per cent of women were found to have the heart health of an older person, based on the information they provided.

It was also found that half of the people who used the tool didn’t know what their blood pressure was and three-quarters couldn’t say what their cholesterol levels were.

If you want to learn more about your heart health and what you can do to improve it, try using the tool.