Vertically challenged people more likely to have heart problems?

Really? WTF...

Like not being able to reach for stuff or being discriminated against by heightists wasn't enough.

When I saw this headline last week I had to take a closer look: Short people may be more susceptible to heart problems.

Being shorter and has never really been linked directly to increased health risk, until researchers in Finland looked at 52 previous papers with data on height and heart problems in more than 3 million men and women.

On average, short people were under 161 centimetres (5 feet 3 inches) and tall people were at least 174 centimetres (5 feet 9 inches). The study was paid for by the Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research and others. It was published online Wednesday in the European Heart Journal.

So what does this mean for short people?

“We don't want to scare short people, but perhaps they should be extra cautious about their lifestyle,” said Borge Nordestgaard, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Copenhagen. He was not connected to the study.

Is this going to mean short people are going to feel even more pressure to exercise. I say, whatever gets anyone, short or tall, young or old, frail or fat, working out more and taking better care of themselves, it's all good folks.

Height's impact on heart disease was still less important than things like smoking, which increases the chance of a heart ailment by up to four times, he said.

But really why would being shorter have an impact on heart health I wonder?

Experts suggests there could be a biological explanation, such as a hormone imbalance that hurts the heart or possibly that shorter people have smaller arteries that could theoretically get clogged quicker with cholesterol and be more easily damaged.

Is this correlation something we should really be worried about?

Experts think it's too early to consider height as a risk factor for heart disease.

Smoking, nutrition and exercise habits are still going to have a bigger impact on heart health. But really, if someone who is working with a little less vertical progression reads this and feels motivated to finally get off their butt and leave it behind, then the time spent writing this post was worth it.

Over and out folks.