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If you want to stay heart healthy, ask your doctor to do an electrocardiogram at your next physical. This quick, noninvasive test that measures the electrical activity of the heart is routinely used on people already known to have heart disease. But a new study of more than 14,000 postmenopausal women reports that EKGs can also predict future heart problems in those women with no history of heart trouble—exactly the ones who wouldn’t normally be offered the test.

For this study, researchers reviewed the medical records of women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative to see whether abnormalities in their EKGs were associated with future heart problems. To the researchers’ surprise, even mild abnormalities-such as low blood flow to the heart or a premature heartbeat-were signs of future trouble.

If you’ve never had an EKG, it’s worth asking your doctor to run one, says study author Pablo Denes, MD, professor of medicine at Northwestern University. Even results that are. a tiny bit out of the norm should be a heads-up to do further testing.