Tall men face a 24% lower risk of heart failure, study says
Baku, January 23 (AZERTAC).Distance between hearts and branches of arteries may decrease stress, says U.S. study.
Tall men are said to be more desirable to women, more successful and more likely to father children. And now scientists claim that tall men have yet another advantage - they are less at risk of heart problems.
Harvard researchers have found that those who are more than 6ft are a quarter less likely to suffer from heart failure than men just a few inches smaller.
They looked at the records of 22,000 male doctors in their mid-fifties who were subsequently followed over a 22-year period.
They each filled in an initial questionnaire on their height, weight and general health and then every year subsequently filled in surveys about any new medical diagnoses.
The study, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, found that 1,444 men developed heart failure which was about 7 per cent of the total.
But men who were 6ft or over (1.8 meters) were 24 per cent less likely to report having heart failure than those who were 5ft 8 or smaller (1.72 meters).
This was after their age and weight, as well as whether they had high blood pressure and diabetes, had all been taken into account.
The scientists think that one reason is that shorter men may have had childhood diseases that stunted their growth. In adulthood this could have led to the build-up of plaque in their arteries and higher blood pressure.
But they also think that the biology of taller men may put them at less risk.
They say that there is greater distance between certain points in their arteries and their hearts which puts the heart under less strain.
Heart failure affects around 900,000 people in Britain, mainly the elderly.
It occurs when their hearts are too weak to properly pump blood around the body and can be caused by heart attacks, which cause the organ to weaken.
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