Let it flow: How to age-proof your arteries

Working 24 hours a day, your blood vessels tend to stiffen with age. But there are lots of steps you can take to make them more pliable

Aerobic exercise — including walking, swimming and cycling — still holds the trump card for your arteries and should be performed as often as possible.

HOW healthy are your arteries? From our 40s and 50s onwards, our arteries are stiffening with age, changing from the healthy, pliable blood vessels of youth that reliably expand and contract for an even pulse of oxygenated blood from the heart, into stiffer, inflexible vessels through which blood flow through is more erratic. As a consequence, blood pressure rises, circulation to vital organs is affected and strokes and heart attacks, among other health complaints, become more of a risk.

But what if we could preserve our arteries with anti-ageing strategies that keep them young? A recent study in the Journal of Physiologysuggested that is possible with a simple daily step that is easily incorporated into our lives. According to the researchers from the University of Milan’s department of biomedical sciences a programme of passive stretches – the kind that require you stay in one position for a set time as in many yoga postures, using gravity (or a partner) to help you restore some of the youthful attributes of arteries making it easier for them to dilate.

After 12 weeks of tests to evaluate how the stretches affected blood flow in the legs and in the upper arms of 39 healthy participants – some were assigned to a ‘stretching group’ who performed leg stretches five times a week, others to a control group who did no stretching — the researchers found that there was increased blood flow and dilation along with decreased arterial stiffness in the leg-flexers. (See box)

“Stretching is very low intensity, but it can help prevent sore muscles after physical activity and it can help improve our flexibility,” says Tara Curran, physical activity coordinator, Irish Heart Foundation. 

“Breaking up sitting time with stretching can help relieve the muscle tension associated with long periods of sitting.”

Of course, stretching alone won’t transform won’t turn back the arterial clock – although it should be added to a healthy lifestyle – and there are other steps to younger arteries.

“The most important way of keeping your arteries young is to give up smoking if you smoke, and as well as this to maintain a healthy weight, take regular exercise, have a healthy well-balanced diet with minimal alcohol,” says Dr Angie Brown, medical director of the Irish Heart Foundation.

“But the good news is 80% of premature arterial disease is preventable with these and other healthy measures.”

Here are the means to make your arteries more youthful:

START RUNNING

As an arterial anti-ager, running takes some beating.

Aerobic exercise — including walking, swimming and cycling — still holds the trump card for your arteries and should be performed as often as possible. “In terms of keeping our heart healthy all adults are recommended to do at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity movement, five days per week,” says Tara Curran. “Walking, running and swimming can all be counted as moderate intensity.”

As an arterial anti-ager, it is running that takes some beating. That is the conclusion reached by a team of researchers from University College London who looked at the effect of running on a group of beginners entering their first marathon. 

What they discovered was staggering — in training for the event, the newcomers to running knocked the equivalent of four years off the age of their arteries during their six months of training. 

Even though they were running a relatively small volume of six to 13 miles per week, the runners’ blood pressure dropped and their arteries became biologically younger.

“The improvements were equivalent to a reduction in vascular age of four years,” says Dr Charlotte Manisty, a consulting cardiologist who was one of the study authors. “Those runners with the stiffest arteries at the outset that seemed to see the greatest changes.”

And you don’ need to train for a marathon to reap the benefits of the activity. “Any amount of running is likely to bring benefits,” Manistry says.

REGULAR EXERCISE

You need to work out at least four times a week to get results for your arteries according to Professor Benjamin Levine, a sports cardiologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre. In a 2018 study, Levine found that the major arteries of committed exercisers were more youthful and healthy than those who exercised only a couple of times a week.

In one trial involving a group of previously sedentary middle-aged men and women, Levine showed their artery and heart health improved dramatically two years after they started exercising – brisk walking, jogging and one session of short intervals – four or five times a week. 

Those who just stretched did not see the same results which underpins the advice to make stretching an adjunct to an exercise plan, not to be the sole means to anti-ageing your blood vessels.

DRINK COFFEE

Coffee-drinkers can rest easy that their favourite brew won't impact on their arterial health... in moderation, of course.

Coffee drinkers breathed a sigh of relief last year when researchers from Queen Mary University of London announced that even 25 cups of the strong black stuff is not associated with stiffening arteries. 

In their study of 8,412 people they debunked previous studies that a coffee habit led to ageing of the arteries with Dr Kenneth Fung, who led the data analysis for the study, saying “our research indicates coffee isn’t as bad for the arteries as previous studies would suggest”.

However, it wasn’t a green light to drink as much as you like. Fung stresses that “although our study included individuals who drink up to 25 cups a day, the average intake among the highest coffee consumption group was five cups a day”.

Sarah Noone, a registered dietitian at the Irish Heart Foundation, says that while some caffeinated drinks have been shown to increase blood pressure, the effect is typically temporary and is reduced over time.

“While there is often concern about the links between caffeine and heart health, a moderate amount of caffeine [the equivalent of four or five small cups of tea or coffee a day] should be fine for most of us in the general healthy population,” she says.

EAT LESS RED MEAT

Tuck into a juicy steak too often and it could accelerate ageing of your arteries according to a recent study at the University of Colorado. 

When breaking down the protein in food, our gut bacteria metabolise the amino acids it contains which are, in turn, converted by the liver into a chemical called trimethylamine N-oxide, or TMAO.

It is released into the bloodstream whenever we eat protein-rich foods, but particularly in response to red meat.

What the Colorado team discovered is that too much TMAO in adults’ blood causes accelerated age-related tissue damage of arteries, resulting in the blood vessels functioning less effectively.

Vienna Brunt, the postdoctoral researcher who conducted the study, says that everyone, including those on a plant-based or vegan diet, produces some TMAO but that, over time, red meat takes its toll.

Processed meat is out anyway for its myriad ill effects on our health, but even lean red meat should be reduced Noone says.

“The Mediterranean diet, recommended for heart and artery health encourages a dietary pattern rich in fruits and vegetables, wholegrains, olive oils, beans, pulses, nuts, seeds, and legumes in addition to oily fish,” she says.

“It also contains moderate amounts of dairy while consumption of red and processed meats, are recommended to be low.”