3 Dangerous Heart Changes AFTER 70

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]We're going to talk about three major changes that happen to anybody's heart over the age of 70 that the medical profession doesn't really stress enough because these are very important to think about. Dr. Ben, do you want to go first? Number three.

[00:00:16]>> Absolutely. This is the structure of the valves in your heart and the muscle itself. What can happen over time is the muscle can harden and the valves and what are these? These are the areas that allow blood to flow between different chambers of the heart and the vessels.

[00:00:35]They can start leaking or they can get too small and instead of blood moving forward throughout your body, it backs up. That's a condition called heart failure. And what do you see when somebody has heart failure? They have a bunch of fluid in their legs. You've probably seen that. Maybe you've had it.

[00:00:52]I hope not. And we call that edema.

[00:00:54]Maybe that fluid goes into their lungs and they can't breathe. How does that happen? Well, some of that happens naturally with age, the hardening of these valves and the muscle itself, but some of it you can prevent. And that's by doing regular cardiac exercises as well as some strengthening exercises and avoiding things like for example cigarettes and smoking that we know lead to dysfunction of these valves.

[00:01:22]>> Exactly. And this would be one I suppose for Dr. Peter, obviously we can anybody can keep that under surveillance, but is there much to to prevent this beyond metabolic health and staying fit?

[00:01:32]>> That's that's a great topic. So, what you're hitting on is that the heart can squeeze normally, but with age, what happens is you get stiffening of the heart muscle and it just doesn't quite relax as well. So, it's really a relaxation problem that's very common in people over the age of 70. And things like high blood pressure can cause it.

[00:01:48]Prolonged increased pressure in the heart can cause stiffing of the heart muscle. some of the scar tissue can be laid down in the heart. It just doesn't quite squeeze or relax as it should. And then also with regards to the valves, especially your aortic valve, which is sort of like the front door of your house, while the blood leaves through your heart, you can have small circulating cholesterol particles. And these are bombarding not only your blood vessels where you develop coriotic stenosis. So again, having good metabolic health, checking your APOB levels is really good because that tells you how many circling and bad cholesterol particles are in your body, keeping good blood pressure, regular low impact exercise is really, really good way. These are all just great ways to help ward off these things.

[00:02:34]>> Yeah, stay fit. Absolutely. And what your thoughts, Dr. Peter, because a lot of our audience may be wondering about surveillance. I find invariably when I look through the records, people usually have had a heart echo cardiogram, an ultrasound at the heart at some stage, I don't think there's any routine recommendations, but let's just say a 65 or 70year-old who's never had an echo cardiogram before, do you see any utility for them at least having a baseline echo cardiogram to look at their valves? Very easy test to do, just an ultrasound. Of course, it's sort of like having your car serviced but never actually opening the hood and looking at the engine. I think that's kind of the best example of that. It's not often done. I think that anyone who has a family history of heart disease should have an echo cardiogram. Anyone who has a history of high blood pressure should have an echo cardiogram because remember your heart's under pressure over prolonged periods of time. Anyone who's not feeling well, who's feeling off, shortness of breath, fatigue, unexplained symptoms, an echo cardiogram. Would it be up to me to have everyone do it at a certain age, just like people have colonoscopies?

[00:03:34]Absolutely.

[00:03:35]>> Yeah. And it's a very easy test. I'm the last person to advocate for unnecessary testing, especially if radiation is involved. But a heart ultrasound scan, really easy test to do. I've had one before. You >> absolutely. It looks at the pump, the valves, how they open and close, how they leak, how they narrow. It gives you a lot of information >> on the heart.

[00:03:54]>> Yeah. in medical school and even I remember teaching a residency here. It's just to put an ultrasound probe. Very quick, easy test to do. Definitely something you might want to consider.

[00:04:01]Get a a baseline. Okay. Number two on the list, calcification of the blood vessels surrounding the heart, the great vessels surrounding the heart, including the aort actually. And why this is important, this can occur with age is that it can actually result in blood pressure readings going up. But it can also mean that the perusion pressure to the brain needs to be maintained at a certain level. And why conversely you need to be careful about lowering blood pressure too much because the blood vessels are naturally calcified. What I see a lot in people over the age of 70 is initially blood pressure can go up but then when 80 85 years old hits it can start to go down again. That's what I I see. But we have to keep that in mind. The great vessels around the heart can calcify and blood pressure readings will change but we shouldn't be too aggressive at the same time with lowering blood pressure in that age group.

[00:05:00]>> Absolutely. So calcification and circulating calcium is a natural process of aging. So those calcium depositions go into the arteries and normally the arteries are full of elastic tissue and they can expand and contract with your environment and help control blood pressure. So if you imagine if you throw a lot of calcium in those arteries, you get hardening of the arteries. You can't really adapt to your environment. So people can get upswings on blood pressure and then your arteries aren't able to relax as well or do it as efficiently as it did. So then people can get these quick downstrokes or quick drops in blood pressure. That's why as you get older, it's so important not only to stay hydrated, but also to make sure that your blood pressure is often checked standing and sitting and make sure you're not orthostatic or positional drops in your blood pressure or not be overcontrolled with medications based on one reading. We do see that a lot where the blood pressure fluctuates pretty radically in the primary care world. And this is where the danger is when you go into the office and they start aggressively treating your blood pressure and then it goes down at home and that's when people are passing out and having side effects.

[00:06:01]So you have to be very careful about aggressively treating this kind of blood pressure in patients especially we know that the blood vessels become calcified that they become stiffened and this can increase the blood pressure readings at times and make it fluctuate but again being very careful with medications and not overtreating is absolutely vital especially with the new guidelines that came that were very aggressive with treating blood pressure. We made multiple videos about how much we disagreed with that.

[00:06:28]>> Exactly. And it's so true to check your blood pressure properly. Again, sitting down, have don't have your legs crossed, have your feet on the floor, no exercise or caffeine, 30 minutes before and check your blood pressure with an arm cuff, not a wrist. And take three readings one minute apart. And then throw away the first reading and average those last two. And that's going to give you good accurate readings to bring to your doctor as well because that's really important to get those readings. But your blood vessels aren't just like a pipe. It's they're very dynamic parts of your body that are constantly moving.

[00:07:00]And so that's why your blood pressure will never be one reading all the time.

[00:07:04]And so we know that calcification of blood vessels is a natural process of aging and can affect a lot of things.

[00:07:10]Specifically, what we're talking about the most here is is blood pressure.

[00:07:13]>> Okay. So number one on our list, who else but America's best cardiologist, Dr. Peter here to tell us the number one thing that you should really think about the age of 70?

[00:07:23]>> Your electrical system. So we think of the heart as a pump per se, but actually it's electrical organ. Your heart has a really robust electrical supply. And so you have a heartbeat that generates from your sinus node, which is a collection of cells in the small chamber of your heart. And that allows electricity to flow through in a synchronized way throughout your heart through multiple different pathways to have really your heart squeeze, both big chambers to squeeze in synchrony with each other.

[00:07:50]And so we know that as you get older, you start to have calcification from circling calcium that attaches on to those wiring and can short circuit them sort of like a rusty wire in a sense and that can cause slowing of the heart rate as well. Your sinus node which is a collection of those pacemaker cells over time those cells start to dissipate and break down. And so your body is smart because you do actually have three parts of your heart that are natural pacemakers. You have your sinus node and then you have a a piece of tissue that sits between the small and big chamber that if the sinus node would give out then that would take over and then your ventricle the big pumping chamber can beat on its own if that gave out. But that's really in a case where people would require pacemaker and that's why people over the age of 70 do get a degradation in the electrical system of the heart and that is why it's so much more common to see older people with pacemakers.

[00:08:44]>> Interesting. and certain other things I suppose which can precipitate this.

[00:08:49]People have to be careful I suppose with any toxins, alcohol, we're not saying you need to to go zero alcohol, but be mindful of that. That can precipitate arhythmias, other toxins. Be careful with all medications, therapeutics, injections, dare I say anything that could cause a stress on the heart and and cause a an issue. Just be a bit careful above a certain age.

[00:09:10]>> Absolutely. And we know that long-standing high blood pressure and just aging of this small chamber can cause some scar tissue formation which breaks up the electrical pathways. And that's why AIB or atrial fibrillation is so much more common as you get older and especially with every decade and and really it's the irregular heartbeats that we see a lot more as you get older as well.

[00:09:31]>> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. We have to be very very careful. I mean I've seen stories of even people take a a shot and it can precipitate something. I mean, everybody responds differently. So, you just want to remember that anything in the body is potentially a stress on the heart. At the end of the day, it's a a foreign toxin. And there's need to always be careful. That's why we always advocate for being very, very careful with medicine, especially above a certain age.

[00:09:57]>> Yeah.

[00:09:58]>> You know, it's funny. These are the same things that are going down in my house.

[00:10:02]The pumps, the pipes, and the electrical system. Yeah, you know, go for their heart's like a house.

[00:10:08]>> Heart is a house and you have to take very good care of it. So, of course, everybody who's 70 is different. Some 70 year olds look like they're not a day over 50. Other 70year-olds, well, might be the opposite. We make these videos because we want the very best for your health and wellbeing. We want you to achieve everything as naturally as possible. We know how hard you're trying. And a summary of this would be if you really think about these three things, the valves, calcification of the blood vessels, the electrical system. No matter who you are, the very best thing you can do to minimize the risk of any of these things causing major issues is take care of your metabolic health. Make sure that you're in as good a shape as possible, your muscles are strong, your bones are strong, your vitamin D levels are are adequate, make sure your mental health is good. All of these things can can really help. So, we wish you the very best. Feel free to leave a comment down below. We really enjoy hearing from you. Also, check in the links down below. Make sure you've downloaded our free metabolic mastery guide and check out our natural health and wellbeing store, ohighwwellness.com. If you're in the USA, North America, ohighwwellness.co. If you're in the UK, Europe, we're very excited in the UK to have partnered with Holland and Barrett, one of the UK and Europe's leading natural health brand. That link is down below as well. Please take care everyone. Keep going. You're awesome.

[00:11:25]and we will speak in the next