Live Younger Longer

Young at heart, literally
At Mayo Clinic, we have a new software program that uses
artificial intelligence to analyze electrocardiogram (ECG)
results. An ECG is a common heart test that records the
electrical pulses that make the heart beat. The program
compares your results with large amounts of networked
data and calculates your heart age versus your
chronological age. The healthier your heart, the younger
your ECG heart age. Obviously, you would like your heart
age to be younger than your chronological age. This would
mean that you’ve been taking care of yourself and doing all
the right things to minimize the aging process.
Among cancer survivors, heart age is typically older than
chronological age. One reason for this is that the risk factors
for heart disease and cancer are often the same — such as
smoking, obesity and older age. Also, cancer treatments
such as radiation can promote coronary artery disease if the
heart is in the radiation field, as mine was. Chemotherapy,
which I also received, can affect the heart muscle so that it
doesn’t pump and relax as effectively as it should.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention found that men who survived cancer had a heart
age 8.5 years older than the heart age of men who’d never
had cancer. Women cancer survivors had a heart age 6.5
years older than the heart age of women with no prior
cancer. For men over 60 with a history of cancer, as I am,

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heart age was likely to be 15 years older than chronological
age.
For these reasons, I was quite concerned about what my
heart age would be at age 65, more than 20 years after my
last cancer treatments. But instead of being 8.5 years older,
my heart age was actually 17 years younger — a difference
of more than 25 years compared with what was expected.
We’ll talk in the remainder of the book about what I’ve done
and what I’ve learned that can help you have a younger
heart.
OceanofPDF.com

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“IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT SO FEW
APPRECIATE FROM WHAT SMALL CAUSES
DISEASES COME.”
— cofounder of Mayo Clinic Dr. Charles H. Mayo
OceanofPDF.com

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CHAPTER 2
How do we get from healthy to
diseased?
Most of us are born in relatively good health. And unless we develop a
childhood illness, we grow into our young adult lives without too many
trips to the doctor. Most untimely deaths in those under age 45 are caused
by things that can’t be controlled, like accidents. In that sense, I was a bit of
an outlier when I developed cancer as a young adult.
As we get older, though, what strips us of our health and eventually our
lives are conditions that affect us over the long term, chronic diseases of the
heart and blood vessels, diabetes, dementia and other illnesses that are
common today.
How does it happen? How do we become ill? Or more importantly, how do
we stay healthy? How do we keep our bodies from wearing down too soon
and becoming increasingly susceptible to disease?