New research led by Dr. Sadiya Khan has revealed that most adults in the U.S. have a heart age older than their actual age - on average 7 years older for men and 4 years older for women . To help individuals evaluate their cardiovascular health, her team developed a free online tool - the PREVENT Risk Age Calculator - based on equations published in JAMA Cardiology .

The tool asks ten basic questions - such as age, sex, blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking and diabetes status - and outputs a “heart age,” offering a more relatable alternative to traditional percentage-based risk scores (turn0news11, turn0search3). In tests on over 14,000 adults aged 30–79 without prior heart disease, the calculator revealed widespread disparities: men, people with lower education, and Black or Hispanic individuals were most likely to have older heart ages .

Dr. Khan emphasizes that PREVENT is not a substitute for clinical diagnosis but a powerful motivation tool for early prevention. If your heart age is older than your real age, adopting lifestyle habits - like better diet, regular exercise, quitting smoking, and managing blood pressure - can help reverse the gap.