Want to add 14 years to your life? Do what you can to maintain heart health during your middle years. That’s the advice of researchers at Northwestern University, who pulled data from five different cohorts included in the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project and looked at the participants’ risk of all forms of fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular disease from ages 45, 55 and 65 through 95 years of age. A Northwestern news release reports that the researchers found that peoppe with optimal heart health in middle age lived up to 14 years longer, free of cardiovascular disease, than people who have two or more cardiovascular disease risk factors. What risk factors? The researchers looked at blood pressure, total cholesterol, diabetes and smoking status. Read more from Northwestern University.