HOW often a man shaves is an index of how likely he is to have a heart attack or stroke, according to a study in Wales.

Men who do not shave every day are 30 per cent more likely to die of heart disease and nearly 70 per cent more likely to have a stroke.

The reasons are partly related to lifestyle and partly to hormonal factors, the researchers believe. Men who choose not to shave daily probably neglect themselves in other ways, contributing to ill-health. But those who do not need to shave daily may be suffering from hormonal imbalances which affect the growth of their beards and chances of developing diseases.

A team led by Professor Shah Ebrahim of the University of Bristol followed 2,438 men from Caerphilly between the early 1980s and the end of 2000. They were aged between 45 and 59 at the start of the study, designed to investigate a range of factors that may influence heart disease and stroke. The group were questioned about their lifestyle, diets, and daily habits at the start of the study. By the end, 835 of them — 34.3 per cent — had died.

Among those who did not shave daily, 45.1 had died, while among those who did, only 31.3 per cent were dead, the team reports in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Men with beards were not included in the analysis.

Stubbled men were more likely to smoke, were shorter, less likely to be married and more likely to do manual jobs. But even when the figures were adjusted for social and class differences, an unexplained gap remained, especially for stroke.

Professor Ebrahim said: “The association between infrequent shaving and death is probably due to underlying smoking and social factors. However, the relation with stroke events remains unexplained.”

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