Jay Novella

How many cardiovascular events were there?

And they found 1,233 cardiovascular events in these 17,000 plus people.

So that included mostly atrial fibrillations, 874 of them.

That was kind of the biggest thing.

But they also found 156 myocardial infarctions or heart attacks.

They found 111 heart failures and 92 stroke events in these 17,000 people over about roughly eight years.

So this is kind of all the data.

This is the data that they all, they correlated it into something like a cardiovascular risk map.

Steve and Kara, I'm curious if you've heard of this before.

They used something that piqued my interest.

They used Mendelian randomization.

The idea behind Mendelian randomization was that, as we know, nature randomly deals everyone a different set of genetic cards, right?

You have a genetic hand, right?

So some genetic markers that people have are associated with being more active or having higher fitness or just more fit, higher cardiorespiratory fitness.

If people dealt those cards also have a lower heart risk, that makes the fitness heart health connection look more causal, not just a lifestyle coincidence, right?

So they're correlating these markers and trying to show the connection between lower heart risk and greater fitness.

Because if they can show that the fitter you are, the better your heart health is, then that kind of makes it more of a causal relationship instead of just like,

Oh, it could be explained by other confounding factors.

I don't know if I'm describing this.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.