Going to School Good for Heart Health
Going to School Good for Heart Health
April 18, 2006 -- The more years you spend in school, the better it may be for heart health.
A study in The Journal of the American Medical Association shows that among young adults, those with the highest levels of education had the lowest risk of coronary artery calcium.
Coronary artery calcium is a warning sign of atherosclerosis, in which arteries are hardened, narrowed, and even blocked by plaque.
The coronary arteries supply heart muscle with blood. Clog them with plaque, and the risk of a heart attackheart attack goes up.
What does education level have to do with the coronary arteries? Quite a bit, report Lijing Yan, PhD, MPH, and colleagues. Yan works in Chicago at the preventive medicine department of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.
Data came from a 15-year study of 2,913 young adults. When the study started in the mid-1980s, participants were 18-30 years old.
The group included 560 black men, 748 black women, 783 white men, and 822 white women. Participants lived in Chicago; Minneapolis; Oakland, Calif.; or Birmingham, Ala.
Participants' blood pressure, cholesterol level, waist circumference, smoking status, and physical activity level were measured at the study's start. Fifteen years later, participants repeated those tests, reported their highest level of education, and got heart scans using computed tomography (CT) to check for coronary artery calcification.
Yan and colleagues classified education level into five categories:
Those categories were based on spending a typical length of time at each level.
The key question was whether participants had coronary artery calcium after 15 years in the study. Participants were 45 years old, at most, at that point, but they weren't too young to have coronary artery calcium.
Overall, about 9% of the group had coronary artery calcium, the study shows. The more years of education participants had, the less likely they were to have coronary artery calcium.
Logging lots of years in school didn't get all the credit. Adjusting for participants' systolic blood pressure, smoking, waist circumference, physical activity, and total cholesterol faded the results somewhat. Still, education remained important, Yan's team notes.
A study in The Journal of the American Medical Association shows that among young adults, those with the highest levels of education had the lowest risk of coronary artery calcium.
Coronary artery calcium is a warning sign of atherosclerosis, in which arteries are hardened, narrowed, and even blocked by plaque.
The coronary arteries supply heart muscle with blood. Clog them with plaque, and the risk of a heart attackheart attack goes up.
What does education level have to do with the coronary arteries? Quite a bit, report Lijing Yan, PhD, MPH, and colleagues. Yan works in Chicago at the preventive medicine department of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.
Years in School
Data came from a 15-year study of 2,913 young adults. When the study started in the mid-1980s, participants were 18-30 years old.
The group included 560 black men, 748 black women, 783 white men, and 822 white women. Participants lived in Chicago; Minneapolis; Oakland, Calif.; or Birmingham, Ala.
Participants' blood pressure, cholesterol level, waist circumference, smoking status, and physical activity level were measured at the study's start. Fifteen years later, participants repeated those tests, reported their highest level of education, and got heart scans using computed tomography (CT) to check for coronary artery calcification.
Yan and colleagues classified education level into five categories:
- High school not completed
- High school graduate
- Some college
- College graduate
- Postgraduate
Those categories were based on spending a typical length of time at each level.
Education and the Heart
The key question was whether participants had coronary artery calcium after 15 years in the study. Participants were 45 years old, at most, at that point, but they weren't too young to have coronary artery calcium.
Overall, about 9% of the group had coronary artery calcium, the study shows. The more years of education participants had, the less likely they were to have coronary artery calcium.
Logging lots of years in school didn't get all the credit. Adjusting for participants' systolic blood pressure, smoking, waist circumference, physical activity, and total cholesterol faded the results somewhat. Still, education remained important, Yan's team notes.
Source...