I'm not ashamed to admit that I am a big fan of the Real Housewives shows. One of the attractions for me is the opportunity to see women who are battling the effects of aging with every possible weapon modern medicine offers. Generally, I think that these efforts – which fascinating as sociology — are pointless, but a new study indicates that facial aging might be more important than we think.
Danish researchers have found that several common signs may indicate deteriorating cardiovascular health. The signs are fatty deposits around the eyelids, receding hairlines, baldness and creased earlobes.
The researchers say that people who exhibited all of these signs of aging were 39 percent more likely to develop heart disease and 57 percent more likely to have a heart attack compared to people who looked young for their age.
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association but have not been published.
The Danish researchers followed looked at signs of aging in more than 11,000 people 40 or older who took part in the Copenhagen City Heart Study, which began more than 30 years ago. They found that about 3,400 participants developed heart disease and more than 1,700 had a heart attack. Those signs of aging appear to be associated with an increased risk of getting sick.
However, there was no connection between an increased risk of heart disease and two other very common signs of aging: gray hair and wrinkles.
