A study by Chinese researchers has claimed that high heart rate may increase risk of early death. The faster an individual’s hearts beats are, the higher the chances of early death, as per the researchers from Qingdao University in China.

The study suggested that death risk rises by approximately 9% for every additional 10 heart beats every minute. These extra heart beats a minute could increase the risk of stroke or heart attack by 8%, the study revealed.

The researchers found that individuals with heart rate during resting state of 80 beats every minute have about 45% chances of dying in next 20 years than individuals with about 45 heart beats a minute. The researchers think heart rate could be considered as ‘death test’ to learn how quickly an individual is going to die in next two decades.

The new study has suggested that previous researches proving individuals with low heart rate live longer than people with high heart rate were right. It is the first study which has presented exact numbers.

Dr Dongfeng Zhang, the lead author of the study, said, “A high resting heart rate may signal a poor health status. Most people’s hearts have between 60 and 100 bpm, while athletes’ heart rate is somewhere at 40 bpm”.

In the study, the researchers included data from about 46 studies which included about 1 million people who were tracked for over 20 years. More than 78,300 participants died before the studies ended. It was found that approximately 25,800 people died of cardiovascular disease.