Building a stronger torso may do more than improve posture — it could meaningfully lower the risk of a heart attack, according to new research that used artificial intelligence to re-examine routine heart scans in more than 1,700 patients.
The study, published in the journal Radiology and partly funded by the British Heart Foundation, analyzed coronary CT angiography scans originally taken between 2010 and 2014 as part of the Scottish Computed Tomography of the Heart trial. The scans, taken of patients with an average age of around 57 who were being evaluated for chest pain, were reanalyzed using AI to assess not just the arteries but the density and quality of the surrounding chest and back muscles.
Researchers, led by a team from the British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh, then tracked which patients went on to have a heart attack or die over the following decade. People with denser, higher-quality muscle — visible on scans as brighter tissue with less internal fat — had a 31 percent lower risk of heart attack and a 39 percent lower risk of death within that ten-year window, for every 10-point increase in a muscle-quality score.
Crucially, the size of a person’s muscles made no difference to their risk. It was the composition — how much fat had infiltrated the muscle tissue, similar to the marbling in meat — that mattered. “It is fascinating that people’s skeletal muscle could be linked to their risk of having a heart attack,” said Professor Michelle Williams, the study’s senior author, who told the British Heart Foundation the results inspired her to join a gym and start walking an hour a day.
Experts caution against oversimplifying the findings into “get bigger muscles.” The British Heart Foundation noted that muscle quality, not bulk, is what’s protective, and that a range of physical activity — not strength training alone — can improve muscle density over time.
Doctors say the research points toward a possible future clinical tool: since roughly 350,000 people in the United Kingdom already undergo coronary CT scans annually for chest pain evaluation, the same images could one day be used to flag patients with poor muscle quality for closer monitoring, lifestyle counseling, or preventive treatments such as statins — without any additional testing. Researchers stress that more validation is needed before that becomes routine practice, but say the signal is strong enough to warrant further study.
