The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made a shocking revelation in its report. It has unveiled that average American man has a heart that is 7.8 years older than his chronological age and in the case of women, it is 5.4 years higher.

Public health experts working on the Framingham Heart Study have come up with the idea of a heart age. The concept was developed with an aim to help people know their risk of suffering from a heart attack, stroke, chest pain and another heart-related condition.

The American Heart Association shared that nearly 800,000 Americans lose their lives from heart-related condition every year. The cost of these illnesses is around $320 billion annually.

Researchers from the CDC’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention decided to estimate the heart age of American adults in order to know the ages differed according to where they live, education level, money with them and racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The researchers used data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. In this, participants have answered questions with regard to their age, smoking, body mass index and heart beats.

The researchers calculated the heart age of 236,101 men and 342,424 women aged between 30 and 74. After the assessment, the researchers found that the average chronological age of men in the study was 47.8 years, and of their heart was 55.6 years. For women, the average chronological age was 47.9 years and the average age was 53.3 years.

In the US, African-Americans have the highest heart ages, averaging 58.7 years for men and 58.9 for women. After them in the list were Latinos, whites and people belonging to different racial and ethnic groups.