. >> reporter: at age 67, jim richardson is a typical patient who gets regular check-ups of his heartcause of a busy family and work life, he didn't begin the check-ups until he was well into his 50s. >> about ten years ago my internist listening to stuff and taking blood tests put me on cholesterol medication and blood pressure medication. >> reporter: but a groundbreaking new study from northwestern university shows how critical it is to start paying attention to heart health much earlier. almost everyone knows that smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes are the major risk factors for heart disease. but the study revealed how extremely important they are, even at a relatively young age. for example, a 45-year-old man who has none of the risk factors has only a 1.7% lifetime chance of having a heart attack. if he has two or more risk factors, that number jumps to 42%. for a 45-year-old woman, the numbers are 1.6% with no risk factors, and 21.5% with two or more. >> this study is so important because it tells us that even healthy appearing young individuals have a

. >> reporter: at age 67, jim richardson is a typical patient who gets regular checkups of his heart.ause of a busy family and work life, he didn't begin the checkups until he was well into his 50s. >> about ten years ago, my interni internist, taking blood tests, put me on cholesterol medication and blood pressure medication. >> reporter: a ground-breaking new study from northwestern university shows how critical it is to start paying attention to heart health much earlier. almost everyone knows smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes are the major risk factors for heart disease. the study revealed how extremely important they are, even at a relatively young age. for example, a 45-year-old man who has none of the risk factors has only a 1.7% lifetime chance of having a heart attack. if he has two or more risk factors, that number jumps to 42%. for a 45-year-old woman, the numbers are 1.6% with no risk factors, and 21.5% with two or more. >> this study is so important because it tells us even healthy appearing young individuals have a substantial lifetime risk for

trent richardson and the rest of the crimson tide rolling into new orleans yesterday where they'll face lsu and the bcs championship game monday night to be played in manchester, new hampshire. >> jimhei has a look at the playbook. we missed you in iowa. where were you? >> back here making sure "politico" could function smoothly. i'm still trying to get over that image you had up there of newt. >> we should've given a warning to viewers. i've got mike allen on "way too early" out there, 4:30 a.m. he's a good man, mike allen. >> you can roll that back to 2:30 a.m. >> that's coming your way in new hampshire, by the way. we've seen some of the numbers in new hampshire. talking about them on this morning's shows that mitt romney's got a huge lead over his fellow nominee. you guys at "politico" reporting that last-ditch effort to try to stop him from winning the nomination. what's going on here? >> there's a group of evangelical christians meeting in texas next week. other people who are leaders of evangelical movement, and they want to see if they can coalesce around one alternative to mitt romney. and you see this discussion taking place everywhere. i think the reason this one's impor