There’s now a new test that can predict a heart attack years — as many as seven years — before the patient has one.

Doctors don’t even look at your heart to conduct this test. They look at your fingers.

KCAL9′s Juan Fernandez spoke to Dr. Chris Renna of LifeSpan Medicine in Santa Monica to find out how the test works. “Endothelial function is the bomb. That’s the money,” he says. Dr. Renna says blood vessel health can be easily checked with the EndoPat test.

He showed Fernandez various charts showing patients with varying results. “You can see endothelial dysfunction in 30 year olds, you can prevent a potential lifetime of distress and misery by correcting that.”

Ed Murphy is being treated by another doctor. While he doesn’t have any heart disease symptoms, he did want to know if he was headed down the wrong path. “I think it’s time to keep an eye on things because after 50 everything goes down hill,” says Murphy.

During Murphy’s EndoPat test, doctors place blood flow sensors on one finger on each hand. Then a blood pressure cuff was inflated to stop blood flow to one hand. After five minutes, the cuff is deflated and the sensors then measure recovering blood flow.

In a normal patient, you see blood flow stop with the inflated cuff and then a rebound surge in blood flow. In an abnormal test, blood flow only recovers to what it was before the stoppage. This signals potential trouble in the heart.

“If the results are not normal you have to do lifestyle modifications lifestyle changes are in orders, to make them normal,” says Dr. Renna.

Simple changes in weight, diet, exercise and perhaps medication can hopefully restore normal blood vessel function and prevent possible heart attacks or strokes.