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sarchertechyesterday at 10:55 PM4 repliesview on HN

Do short people have much lower risk of heart disease?


Replies

pandamantoday at 1:31 AM

The mean height for men at 20-29 is 69.2" and 80+ is 67.1" (measured in 2015-2018, the last data I've found) [1], which could be interpreted as shorter people having lower risk of all mortality. One could say that people are just getting taller over time and 80+ y.o. were shorter at their 20-29, but we also have the median height for 20-29 fro 1970s, when 2018's 80+ were 20-29 - it's actually 69.7" [2], men in the US are getting shorter over time, so unless people naturally shrink 2" with age the data points to shorter people having lower risk of death.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf

2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf

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plorkyeranyesterday at 11:45 PM

Some are more common in short people and some are more common in tall people. Hypertension is one of the ones more common in short people and is significantly more common than the rest combined, so your overall chance of having some form of heart disease goes down as you get taller. However, the forms of cardiovascular disease more common in tall people (e.g. atrial fibrillation) are more likely to actually kill you.