You can keep your heart young without medication, even as you age. New study reveals

Aging is something we all go through—but what if your heart didn’t have to slow down with the rest of your body? A new study published in Nature Materials suggests it might be possible to keep our hearts feeling young for longer. And surprisingly, the key may lie not in the heart itself, but in the environment around it.

The research, led by scientists at the Mechanobiology Institute in Singapore, focuses on something called the extracellular matrix (ECM). Think of it like scaffolding around your heart cells. It helps with structure, support, and healing. As we age, this ECM stiffens, which can make the heart pump less efficiently.

A Special Material That Helps Understand Aging
To figure out how the ECM affects the heart, researchers created a special lab model called DECIPHER. It uses rat heart tissue and a gel that mimics the ECM. This allowed the scientists to test how a young heart’s environment reacts to aging, and vice versa.

Here’s what they found: if you give heart cells the same “young” signals they’d get in a healthy heart—even if the ECM is old and stiff—they work better. But even young heart cells don’t do well when surrounded by old, damaged ECM.

This means the environment around your heart cells—more than the cells themselves—may play a bigger role in heart aging. Assistant Professor Jennifer Young, who led the study, said the team focused on the ECM because “most aging research looks only at how cells change.” Their research flips that idea.

Experts Say This Is Just the Beginning
Dr. Nishant Kalra, a heart specialist who wasn’t part of the study, told Medical News Today that these findings show how young tissue signals can prevent the heart from becoming stiff and weak, even when it’s aging. Though treatments based on this are years away, it opens a new door to how we might care for aging hearts in the future.

What You Can Do Today to Keep Your Heart Young
While we wait for future breakthroughs, there are things you can do right now to protect your heart:

• Move your body: Aim for 150 minutes of moderate exercise (like brisk walking) each week.
• Eat well: Focus on fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean proteins. Diets like Mediterranean or DASH are especially heart-friendly.
• Sleep enough: Try to get 7–9 hours of good sleep each night.
• Quit smoking and alcohol: It’s one of the best things you can do for your heart.
• Manage stress: Relax through hobbies, nature, or meditation.

Your birthday may come around every year, but your heart doesn’t have to feel older with each one. This new research shows that with the right environment—and smart lifestyle choices—your heart can keep beating strong, even as the candles on your cake grow in number.