How would YOU like to make your patients YOUNGER!

Bio­log­i­cal Age Assessment

Method

Par­tic­i­pants were recruited by the Allicin Cen­tre in 2011 by offer­ing a free Bio­log­i­cal Age test. This was per­formed using the Car­dio­Trace tech­nol­ogy to record a mea­sure­ment of heart rate, arte­r­ial stiff­ness and blood oxy­gena­tion. A blood pres­sure mea­sure­ment was also taken with a brief med­ical his­tory. Patients show­ing a higher bio­log­i­cal age than their actual age were offered the chance to take up to 6 cap­sules of Heart­fast in one dose and to return within 1 hour to undergo another test. The table below shows the results of these vol­un­teer evaluations.

Car­dio­Trace is a pain­less, non inva­sive pro­ce­dure. An infrared sen­sor is sim­ply clipped to the patient’s fin­ger and infrared light is passed through it. The sen­sor auto­mat­i­cally scans, col­lects and analy­ses the data from the sen­sor and, from the amassed infor­ma­tion, can deter­mine the stiff­ness of a patient’s artery.

It is able to do this by ascer­tain­ing the patient’s BMI (obtained by plac­ing data, includ­ing height, sex, race, weight and age, into the machine before­hand) as well as their heart rate, blood speed (hence vis­cos­ity) and finally the arte­r­ial stiff­ness index. Fur­ther­more, Car­dio­Trace holds patients’ data obtained by pre­vi­ous exam­i­na­tions so that a trend analy­sis may be cal­cu­lated and there­fore this data is clin­i­cally validated.

Fol­low­ing data col­lec­tion, the soft­ware will ascer­tain the age of the patient’s arter­ies. This vas­cu­lar age can be com­pared to your own age to see how your car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem is age­ing in rela­tion to your phys­i­cal or chrono­log­i­cal age. Patients vary con­sid­er­ably but in our small sur­vey at the CAM show, over 53% of vol­un­teers showed an increased bio­log­i­cal age with arte­r­ial stiff­ness. Car­dio­Trace is a world leader in Pulse Wave Tech­nol­ogy which puts this valu­able test in the hands of pri­mary care screen­ers and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als. Cen­tral Aor­tic Sys­tolic Pres­sure (CASP) is one of the most pow­er­ful, early pre­dic­tors of car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk. Safe and non inva­sive pulse wave analy­sis applies the prin­ci­ples of sonar to assess the pli­a­bil­ity of the vas­cu­lar tree, includ­ing the major cen­tral ves­sels as well as the smaller periph­eral ves­sels. Cen­tral aor­tic vas­cu­lar com­pli­ance, or lack of it, is a key indi­ca­tor of vas­cu­lar health status.

Results and Discussion

All vol­un­teers, not tak­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal med­ica­tion for pre-existing heart dis­ease, reduced their bio­log­i­cal age to sig­nif­i­cantly “younger” than their actual age. All vol­un­teers showed a sig­nif­i­cant fall in arte­r­ial wall stiff­ness or Stiff­ness Index – this indi­cates a reduc­tion in car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk by improv­ing the qual­ity of blood leav­ing the heart and trav­el­ling the entire length of the cir­cu­la­tory sys­tem as mea­sure­ments were taken at the far­thest point from the heart. Two vol­un­teers showed an increase in Bio­log­i­cal Age but both were tak­ing sev­eral phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs and so mea­sure­ments are much less mean­ing­ful as the CV sys­tem is care­fully con­trolled by these medications.

Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Dis­ease still claims more lives each year than the next 5 lead­ing causes of death com­bined, which are can­cer, chronic lower res­pi­ra­tory dis­eases, acci­dents, dia­betes mel­li­tus, influenza and pneu­mo­nia. Con­se­quently any proven inter­ven­tion is likely to con­tribute to a reduc­tion in CVD risk.

Stiff­ness Index and Bio­log­i­cal Age measurements

Whilst this will always include phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal med­ica­tions for those already diag­nosed, in our sur­vey only a tiny per­cent­age of those tested had been diag­nosed even though from our obser­va­tions those undi­ag­nosed did show some degree of risk. This could have seri­ous impli­ca­tions for the long-term health of our population.

Clearly the Heart­fast for­mu­la­tion has the capa­bil­ity of improv­ing a patient’s rel­a­tive risk of CVD by reduc­ing their bio­log­i­cal age and arte­r­ial wall stiff­ness. All the ingre­di­ents are well known and gen­er­ally con­sid­ered as safe. With an extremely low propen­sity for side-effects, this treat­ment could be safely admin­is­tered to a large pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion and con­tribute to an improve­ment in car­dio­vas­cu­lar health and well-being.

*Tak­ing a num­ber of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal agents for pre-existing heart disease