The AHA’s NEW Checklist for Heart Health
I knew that America’s heart health was not doing well.
After all, heart disease is still the number one killer, claiming the lives of nearly 700,000 people every year.
Even knowing that, I didn’t realize just how bad things had gotten.
Based on a new checklist put out by the American Heart Association, it turns out that only 1 in 5 Americans can be classified as having excellent heart health.
This new checklist—called Life Essentials 8—has eight components that combine to give an accurate picture of heart health.
Take a look at this checklist to see how you rank.
The checklist includes the following eight components that incorporate both health behaviors and health factors into an overall picture of heart health:
- Diet
- Physical activity
- Nicotine exposure
- Sleep duration
- Body mass index
- Blood lipids
- Blood glucose
- Blood pressure
This is an upgrade from Life Essentials 7, which did not include the sleep component.
I’m glad they added sleep to this list. Not enough people understand how critical it is to your heart health.
In fact, people who routinely sleep less than seven hours per night have a 20 percent higher risk of having a heart attack.
Lack of sleep also affects other items on the list, like body weight, blood pressure, and even blood glucose.
On a 100-point scale, here’s the breakdown:
- 80-100 = high cardiovascular health
- 50-79 = moderate cardiovascular health
- Under 50 = low cardiovascular health
The average American scored a 64.7, putting them in the moderate category.
And 80 percent of the population scored either moderate or low.
The older the people got, the lower their score tended to be.
I’m not telling you this to scare you, but to give you an important wake-up call. There’s a lot more to your heart health than monitoring cholesterol levels and taking statins.
(In fact, most people don’t need to be doing either, but that’s an issue for another day.)
The system isn’t perfect, but it’ll give you a good general picture of where you stand—and whether you’re in the elite 20 percent or not.
More importantly, it’ll show you if you need to do something about it.
If you want to take the test for yourself to see where you stack up, visit www.heart.org/lifes8.
P.S. I recently shared 13 ways to protect your heart. Some are obvious, but many are ones you may not have realized have anything to do with heart health. Click here to read about them.
SOURCE:
Melore, C. (2022, June 29.) “Cardiovascular Crisis? Only 1 in 5 Americans Has Excellent Heart Health.” Study Finds. https://www.studyfinds.org/1-in-5-americans-heart-health/
