What age is your heart?

[Ming the Merciless]

I have a BMI of 21.4 which, in my opinion, is underweight

Perfectly healthy BMI, underweight it has to be below 18 or 19 or so.

 

[cyberknight]

What a load of tosh , takes no account of activity levels just for a start

 

[Regular.Cyclist]

Perfectly healthy BMI, underweight it has to be below 18 or 19 or so.

It may be on paper but the BMI scores are outdated and need a good review.

 

[Psamathe]

It may be on paper but the BMI scores are outdated and need a good review.

(I'm no medic or anything).
I can see major potential issues where qualification for a given treatment might depend on threshold BMIs, but in a general context for people who are maybe not very "self-aware" does it still provide a useful indication eg "maybe I ought to lose a bit as I'm ..." eg a non-medical way to assess if your weight is maybe a bit high or low?

And are there cheap fast alternatives people can do at home? Something so that somebody at 13 stone has a fast way to form a view as to if maybe a bit high given their height/gender. Do things like hip to waist ratios provide the same indication? or BRI?

Ian

 

[Ming the Merciless]

It may be on paper but the BMI scores are outdated and need a good review.

Maybe but your BMI doesn’t indicate anything like underweight, unless 3/4 of your weight is in your legs.

 

[Regular.Cyclist]

Maybe but your BMI doesn’t indicate anything like underweight, unless 3/4 of your weight is in your legs.

I am under the weight I know I is my optimum. Is that better?

I have lost close to 8kg this year by a ramp up in training from last Christmas. In order to maintain that weight I needed to consume considerably more calories and struggled to do that. Having now achieved my primary aim ( good for age qualifying time for a marathon) I now have a plan to return to my optimum weight.

 

[presta]

I'm assuming it's the same one they plug your figures in to when you turn up to your five-yearly checkup

It looks like the Qrisk3 calculator to me, but with a few of the questions omitted.

I'll give a postcode from many hundreds of miles away.

Qrisk uses postcode to calculate the Townsend Deprivation Index because social deprivation affects health risks. If I change my postcode to a less privileged street about half a mile away my risk goes up.

my heart helth probably depends on medical factors like cholesterol, blood pressure, etc., etc. not by the population average for the region

Don't you think that calculation of the effects of cholesterol and blood pressure come from population averages?

It may be on an NHS website but without knowledge of how they are interpreting the data provided it’s all pretty much nonsense information in my opinion.

Development and Validation of Qrisk3

Aged 66, my heart age is 75, with a 22.7% risk of stroke or heart attack in the next 10 years. If I reduce my cholesterol/HDL ratio from 3.8 to 3.5 it reduces to 21.7%, without AF it's 13.6%.

 

[siadwell]

Yep, completely nonsensical. I'm mid-50s, weight is healthy, BP is ideal, never smoked, no heart disease. At the moment I'm exercising about 7 times a week. Estimated my heart age at 57-76! Didn't enter cholesterol results, and my dad had a heart attack under 60, so I guess that skews it.

Interestingly, putting the same values into the QRISK website directly (https://qrisk.org/index.php), gives me a heart age of 60, or 55 without taking my dad into account.

 

[Gwylan]

From heart issues?

Yes, what makes it quite so relevant.

 

[Gwylan]

Quite a few websites do that and easy ... give a postcode from somewhere else. How far away depends on what info you are seeking but personally I consider my heart helth probably depends on medical factors like cholesterol, blood pressure, etc., etc. not by the population average for the region I happen to live in. So I'll give a postcode from many hundreds of miles away.

Sometimes eg if searching for a local shop I'll give the postcode for the local council offices. Your full postcode can really narrow down who you are eg for me my postcode and my gender uniquely identifies me or my postcode and pretty well any hospital treated condition (there are only 3 people living in my postcode). Which I why I get so concerned about so much on the NHS inadequate "anonymisation" when they pass my health records to commercial 3rd parties.

Ian

I'm shocked that reputable citizens would dream of using a false postcode. That's so irresponsible, it will skew medical statistics and divert scientifically based decisions.

Herumph²
Shocking.

 

[postman]

82 or 69.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Yes, what makes it quite so relevant.

Indeed it does, since that significantly changes the heart age returned

 

[Punkawallah]

The worrying part is that it isn't "some random online test", it's the NHS website. So is this the sort of thing they are officially using to scare us shitless and push the blood pressure even higher?

This would be the same NHS that sent me a letter (years ago) that started by listing the conditions that someone of my age would be likely to die of, and would I like to come in for a check up? The first one one the list was ‘heart attacks’ - if I‘d been of a ‘nervous disposition, I might have had one :-)

 

[Fastpedaller]

The popular message (which may indeed worry many of us) is that below 40 years of age we are indestructible, but once past 40 any pain near the chest (usually digestive?) could be a heart attack.

 

[rualexander]

Result 57
Actual age 62