How do I lower my heart age?

Lowering your heart age uses the same levers as lowering your heart-attack risk, because under the hood it's the same calculation — heart age is just a friendlier way of expressing your cardiovascular risk.

The highest-impact moves: get your systolic blood pressure toward 120, lower your LDL cholesterol (and raise protective HDL through aerobic exercise), quit smoking if you smoke, and trim central/abdominal weight. Quitting smoking and dropping blood pressure tend to move heart age the fastest.

What makes heart age satisfying to work on is that it's sensitive and responsive. Unlike a slow-moving lab, improvements in your inputs show up as years coming off your heart age, which is a genuinely motivating feedback loop — you can watch yourself getting 'younger.'

Use Calqulate.net's free Heart Age Calculator to see where you stand, then the Heart Age Tracker in Calqulate Vitals to watch the number fall as you make changes and to see which single change moves it most for you.