IF you’ve ever wondered how likely it is you will suffer a heart attack or stroke, a short quiz can tell you.
Using information about your health and daily habits, the test will give you odds on the worrying event happening in the next 10 years.
It’s particularly useful for those who may be worried about their heart health, but who have the opportunity to improve their lifestyle.
The test takes just five minutes and also gives you a ‘cardiovascular age’, which determines if your heart and arteries are ageing faster than you are.
Take the My Health Checkup test here.
My Health Checkup asks you for your age, gender, height, weight and waist size.
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It then requests your cholesterol levels, blood pressure levels and glucose levels – but if you don’t know these, you can select “I don’t know” – and how much you exercise.
Also taken into consideration is if you have heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, or if you or your parents have diabetes.
Once you receive your cardiovascular age – the lower the better – you find out your 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease.
The Sun ran the test for a 66-year-old male who is 6ft, 180lbs and with a 40-inch waist.
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He has bad cholesterol and blood pressure, and smokes.
However, he exercises for three hours a week.
His cardiovascular age is 70.2 years and he has a concerning 43.9 per cent chance of a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years.
But the experts say he has three modifiable risk factors that, if improved on, could lower his odds to 19.3 per cent.
The biggest change he could make is to stop smoking.
While some things that contribute to cardiovascular disease risk are unchangeable, such as your genetics, thankfully there are many that are.
Your heart health largely comes down to keeping blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels in check.
It’s no shock that regular exercise, preventing obesity with your diet, not smoking and limiting your alcohol are key.
In terms of diet, low-fat, high-fibre is recommended.
Unsaturated fat, such as avocados, nuts and oily fish, are good for you.
But lay off the unsaturated fats, such as meat pies, sausages, hard cheese, cakes and biscuits, which will do nothing for your cholesterol.
Salt and sugar in the diet should also be closely watched to keep blood sugar and blood pressure in check.
But many Brits find it hard to keep on top of healthy habits.
Scary stats
Cardiovascular disease is a huge killer, with around a quarter of deaths in the UK caused by heart and circulatory diseases.
That's more than 160,000 deaths each year (the size of the city of Oxford) or 460 each day, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) says.
Stroke is the cause of around 34,000 of those deaths, and 1.4 million others are living in the UK who have survived a stroke, many with disabilities.
High blood pressure is the leading modifiable risk factor for heart and circulatory disease in the UK, BHF says, with almost three in 10 people affected.
But half of those don't even know they have the condition, which has no symptoms.
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Around 50 per cent of heart attacks and strokes are associated with high blood pressure.
Meanwhile, adults with diabetes (more than five million in the UK) are two to three times more likely to develop heart and circulatory diseases, and are nearly twice as likely to die from heart disease or stroke.
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