Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
If you're a healthy adult and only your 'good' cholesterol is low—but your 'bad' cholesterol and triglycerides are already low—this might not actually raise your heart disease risk much.
In a health check in Jordan, lots of people at high risk for high blood pressure didn’t actually have it yet — so there’s a real chance to stop it before it starts.
In a health check in Amman, Jordan, adults with a high chance of getting high blood pressure were more likely to be older, overweight, inactive, or have family history of high blood pressure or diabetes.
Almost half of adults in a study from Amman, Jordan had slightly high blood pressure, which means they might be at risk for full hypertension — but simple lifestyle changes could help stop it from getting worse.
In a health check in Amman, Jordan, about 1 in 5 adults who didn’t know they had high blood pressure actually did — and this was found just during one screening visit.
A simple health checklist used in Jordan can spot high blood pressure in adults pretty well — people who score 17 or more on it are nearly 20 times more likely to have high blood pressure than those with lower scores, and it rarely gives false alarms.
In young Asian men, smoking doesn’t seem to be linked to high blood pressure.
If doctors start using a lower blood pressure number to decide when it's too high, a lot more young Asian guys with no symptoms would be told they have high blood pressure — jumping from 1 in 20 to more than 1 in 4.
Young Asian guys who are overweight or obese are way more likely to have high blood pressure, even if they feel fine — especially if their BMI is 27.5 or higher, where the risk jumps over 50 times.
In young Asian guys between 16 and 25 who feel fine and have no symptoms, only about 4 in 1,000 actually have high blood pressure when checked properly over 24 hours — so it’s pretty rare in this group.
For healthy young Asian guys between 16 and 25, the top normal blood pressure is almost the same as the high blood pressure cutoff for adults — so the adult rules might work for them too.
People with a sudden heart problem who don’t have usual risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking might actually be more likely to go into dangerous heart shock than those who do have those risks.
People who have a heart attack but don’t have typical risk factors like high cholesterol or smoking are less likely to get the usual heart medications when leaving the hospital — even though they’re actually at higher risk of dying.
People who have a heart attack but don’t have common risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking are actually more likely to die in the hospital than those who do have those risks — about 57% more likely, according to this study.
A lot of people who have heart attacks don’t actually have the usual risk factors like high blood pressure, smoking, or diabetes—so our current ways of predicting heart problems might be missing something important.
Some heart attacks don't feel like the usual chest pain — they're silent. And even when people have signs, they might ignore them because their mind doesn't want to believe something's wrong.
Your blood vessels get damaged slowly over many years if your heart health isn't in the best shape, and we can only really see how this happens by tracking people over time — not just checking them when they have a heart problem.
People who have a sudden heart problem but don’t show typical risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking are more likely to die soon or go into shock — and one reason might be that doctors are less likely to give them the standard preventive treatments.
If researchers use doctor's diagnosis codes to track heart disease risks, they might miss people who have the condition but haven't been diagnosed yet — so the problem looks smaller than it really is.
Heart disease risk from clogged arteries is more about how many bad cholesterol particles are in your blood — counted by a protein called apoB — than about how much cholesterol is inside them.
Keeping your 'bad' cholesterol really low—below 55 mg/dL—might give your heart and blood vessels the best protection against clogged arteries and heart problems.
Most people who have their first heart problem already had several risk factors like high blood pressure or cholesterol for years before — not just one.
Lots of people have high blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar without knowing it because they haven’t been checked — and that means we’re probably underestimating how common these health risks really are.
Even if your blood pressure or cholesterol isn't high enough to be diagnosed as a problem, having them a little elevated over time can still quietly damage your blood vessels.