The average adult has a normal resting heart rate between 60 and 100 beats per minute. The lower it is, the better your cardiovascular fitness and more active your heart works. On the other hand, new evidence published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, shows that the higher the heart rate than the average resting heart rate can lead to a higher risk of death from all causes, and not just those related to your heart.

Researchers from the Medical College of Qingdao University in Shandong, China wanted to know if there was a connection between a person's resting heart rate, death from any cause, and death from heart disease. According to them, the relationship between the resting heart rate and the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality has nothing to do with risk factors of cardiovascular disease, implying that resting heart rate is a defining factor in the general population's mortality.

To prove this, the researchers randomly chose 46 studies that monitored resting heart rate, age, and cause of death. Among these, 40 of the 46 studies involved more than a million patients, 78,349 of whom died from any cause, 29 has more than 800,000 patients, and 25,800 of them died from cardiovascular disease.

After they analyzed the data, the researchers found that a person's chance of dying from any cause increased by 9% for every 10 beats per minute that is added to the resting heart rate, while the risk of death from cardiovascular disease rose by 8% for every additional 10 beats per minute.

The researchers also revealed that those people who have higher heartbeat per minute, they also have greater chance of dying. Those who had a resting heartbeat of 80 beats per minute, they were found to have 45% increased risk of death from any cause, while those who had a resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute were only found to have a 21% risk.