Advisory Highlights:
- American Heart Association’s checklist to measure cardiovascular health is updated, now called Life’s Essential 8™, adding healthy sleep as essential for optimal cardiovascular health.
- Other health and lifestyle factors in the checklist, which were part of the previous, 7-item scoring tool, are nicotine exposure, physical activity, diet, weight, blood glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure.
- The new sleep metric suggests 7-9 hours of sleep daily for optimal cardiovascular health for adults, and more for children depending on age.
- The updated scoring can now be used for people ages 2 and older, and four components are measured in new ways: a new guide to assess diet; nicotine exposure replaces cigarette smoking to include electronic cigarettes (vaping) and exposure to secondhand smoke; non-HDL cholesterol is suggested instead of total cholesterol; and the blood sugar measure is expanded to include hemoglobin A1c levels.
- Life’s Essential 8™ is assessed by the online My Life Check tool, which has an updated scoring system to give users a score of up to 100 points based on an average of scores for each health and lifestyle factor.
Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT / 5 a.m. ET Wednesday, June 29, 2022
DALLAS, June 29, 2022 — Sleep duration is now considered an essential component for ideal heart and brain health. Life’s Essential 8™ cardiovascular health score replaces Life’s Simple 7™, according to a new Presidential Advisory, Life’s Essential 8—Updating and Enhancing the American Heart Association’s Construct on Cardiovascular Health, published today in Circulation, the Association’s flagship, peer-reviewed journal.
Other updates to the measures of optimal cardiovascular health, now for anyone ages 2 and older, include a new guide to assess diet; accounting for exposure to secondhand smoke and vaping; using non-HDL cholesterol instead of total cholesterol to
