Terrifying Mummies Should Watch Their Diet To Avoid Heart Disease Risks

Scary mummies in museums are not so different than you, experts say, because even the most hideous dried-up corpse from thousands of years ago suffers the same mundane risks for heart disease as people still shuffling along today: hardened arteries.

Bored researchers did a “stress test” on 137 mummies from around the world and found a third of the monstrosities were suffering from atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

The heart condition is commonly believed to be associated with modern lifestyle errors such as smoking cigarettes and eating so much bacon and thinking that’s funny, but this new research suggests mummies have been suffering these heart problems since the good old days when this was considered an honorable way to conclude your life.

The research brings into question the common modern belief held by many successful young people that they could somehow avoid the clenches of death if they “could emulate pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural lifestyles,” the BBC reports. But that is unlikely.

As mummies were usually members of the elite 1%, it is possible that they engaged in poor health choices beyond the means of most of the population.

Photo by Gary Lynn Moseley via Shutterstock.