forehead wrinkles
According to biomedical researcher Yolande Esquirol, forehead wrinkles could be the first sign of heart disease.
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  • According to new research, a creased brow can be a sign of something more sinister than fading youth.
  • A study carried out by biomedical researcher Yolande Esquirol suggests forehead wrinkles could be the first sign of heart disease.
  • The research went as far as concluding that those with deeper lines on their brow had a higher risk of dying from heart disease than those without.

There's certainly no shortage of advice online on how to avoid or get rid of wrinkles. Most of the time, however, it's all about looking as young as possible — yet there's a more worrying concern for those who have more pronounced furrows in their brow than is usual for their age, which could indicate a serious health problem.
It's well known that the risk of heart disease increases with age but, according to biomedical researcher Yolande Esquirol, forehead wrinkles could be the first sign of heart disease.
Medical interventions and lifestyle changes can significantly reduce the risk, but the most difficult part is the early detection of high-risk patients.

A creased brow can be an early sign of heart disease

"You can't see or feel risk factors like high cholesterol or hypertension," Esquirol noted in a press release from the European Society of Cardiology. "We explored forehead wrinkles as a marker because it's so simple and visual. Just looking at a person's face could sound an alarm, then we could give advice to lower risk."
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Those with forehead creases have a slightly higher risk of dying from heart disease than those without.
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Previous studies have already investigated the extent to which age characteristics can be relied on as indicators of heart disease. For example, wrinkles on the outer corners of the eye showed no connection with an increased risk of heart disease.
In male hair loss, earlobe wrinkles and xanthelasma (yellowish or reddish cholesterol deposits under the skin), however, a correlation with increased risk of heart disease was found.

Link found between forehead wrinkles and higher mortality risk

In their current study, the researchers examined 3,200 adults aged 32 to 62 over a period of 20 years.
They concluded that people with forehead wrinkles had a slightly higher risk of dying from heart disease than those without wrinkles. Participants with very strong forehead wrinkles even had a risk of death almost ten times higher than those who did not have wrinkles.
doctor patient talking medicine physician medical
Esquirol thinks using forehead lines to identify heart disease could be practiced in physicians' offices and clinics.
 Lazarenko Svetlana/Shutterstock
"The higher your wrinkle score, the more your cardiovascular mortality risk increases," Esquirol concluded.
The researchers don't know why exactly this is the case, but suspect it may be related to atherosclerosis, one of the causes of heart attacks and other heart disease. "Forehead wrinkles may be a marker of atherosclerosis," Esquirol said.
While forehead wrinkles are certainly not a safer method of detecting cardiovascular risk compared with existing methods, they could be an early warning signal.
"This is the first time a link has been established between cardiovascular risk and forehead wrinkles so the findings do need to be confirmed in future studies," noted Esquirol, "but the practice could be used now in physicians' offices and clinics."