Only one in five Americans have optimal cardiovascular health, according to a new analysis from the American Heart Association.[1]
The findings, published in full in Circulation, are based on data from more than 23,000 U.S. adults and children who were free of cardiovascular disease at the time of the study.
The analysis was the first to be based on the AHA’s new Life’s Essential 8 checklist, which examines a person’s diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep duration, BMI, blood lipids, blood glucose and blood pressure. A previous version of this checklist, Life’s Simple 7, did not include sleep duration.
Study participants were all between the ages of 2 and 79 years old. Each one was given a score from zero to 100 based on how they measure up to the Life’s Essential 8 checklist. The highest possible score was 100. Scores ranging from zero to 50 suggest the person has “low” cardiovascular health, scores from 50 to 79 suggest “moderate” cardiovascular health and anything 80 or higher suggest “high” cardiovascular health.
Overall, the mean score among adults was 64.7. The mean score among children was 65.5, though data from all eight metrics were not available for these younger participants. Women had higher overall scores (67.0) than men (62.5).
Among adults, 19.6% of participants had high cardiovascular health, 62.5% had moderate cardiovascular health and 17.9% had low cardiovascular health.
Among children, 2.2% of participants had scores of 100 and 29.1% had high cardiovascular health. However, comparing younger children with older children, the researchers noted that the proportion with high cardiovascular health decreased dramatically as the children got older.
“Overall, the cardiovascular health of the U.S. population is suboptimal, and we see important differences across age and sociodemographic groups,” AHA President Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, internal medicine chair at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a statement. “Analyses like this can help policy makers, communities, clinicians and the public to understand the opportunities to intervene to improve and maintain optimal cardiovascular health across the life course.”
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Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.