Your resting heart rate as a biomarker

Turns out, the key is not so much what your resting heart rate is; rather whetehr it's been rising over the years, and by how much.

From the always-useful NY Times health section

A large study has found that a rise in resting heart rate over a decade may indicate an increased risk of death from coronary artery disease.

Compared with those whose heart rates remained stable at 70 beats per minute or less, those whose rates increased to 85 or more were almost twice as likely to die of heart disease. For those with resting rates between 70 and 85 beats per minute at the first test, an increase to greater than 85 was associated with an 80 percent increase in death rate.

There was no direct decrease in heart disease risk with decreasing resting heart rate, but among the 7,000 people whose heart rates had decreased from between 70 and 85 to below 70 beats a minute, risk for death from any cause was reduced by 40 percent.

Here's the original article from the Journal of the American Medical Association –

Temporal Changes in Resting Heart Rate and Deaths From Ischemic Heart Disease