Centuries before bacon cheeseburgers, cigarettes and couch potatoes, people had clogged arteries that can lead to heart attack and stroke.

How do we know this? Mummies told us.

No, not the groaning, wrapped-in-gauze, walking-with-arms-straight-out mummies that come to life in scary movies we'll be watching this Halloween season.

For more than a decade, experts have been using modern medical technology to examine mummified remains of people who lived and died thousands of years ago. They've found atherosclerosis, a cardiovascular disease linked to unhealthy modern lifestyles.

The American Heart Association talked to Dr. Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute, who has been studying atherosclerosis in mummies through performing CT scans.

Read the full American Heart Association News article: The Mummies' Message: Take Steps Against Heart Disease