The American Heart Association (AHA) has created a tool called Life’s Essential 8 (LE8) to help people understand their risk for cardiovascular disease. This tool looks at 4 healthy actions and 4 health outcomes to measure overall heart health. The 4 healthy actions include maintaining a healthy diet, getting enough exercise, getting quality sleep, and avoiding nicotine. The 4 health outcomes are keeping a healthy body weight, controlling blood glucose, managing cholesterol (non-HDL), and keeping blood pressure in a healthy range.
Together, these 8 factors explain more than half of a person’s risk for heart disease. While this score is a great start, we know at Hallelujah Diet that optimizing your diet even more than what the American Heart Association thinks is OK can reduce your risk much more. But diet isn't the only thing you need to be concerned about, which is what is great about the LE8 score. Go fill out the form and find out your score. You will get output that shows you where you need to improve the most. Let’s take a closer look at some research studies that show how these 8 measures can lower the risk of major health problems like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, dementia, and even early death.
Key Findings from Recent Studies on Life’s Essential 8
Study on All-Cause Mortality
A study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2005 to 2018 followed participants for an average of 7.6 years. The results showed that people with a high Life’s Essential 8 (CVH) score had a 58% lower risk of dying from any cause compared to those with a low score. This means those with a higher score are living longer, healthier lives.
Cardiovascular Mortality and CVH
Another study of 23,110 participants found that those with high cardiovascular health (CVH) scores had a 54% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared to people with low scores. That’s a huge difference in life expectancy! This shows just how important it is to take care of heart health through diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes.
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and Life’s Essential 8
In yet another study, high CVH scores were associated with a 55% lower risk of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD). Those with higher CVH scores had a much lower risk of all-cause and cardiovascular-related mortality if they developed CKD. This highlights how good heart health impacts other parts of your body, not just your heart.
Impact on Dementia
In the UK Biobank study of more than 300,000 people, researchers found that individuals with high CVH scores had a 44% lower risk of all-cause dementia and a 71% lower risk of vascular dementia compared to people with poor heart health. So, dementia is strongly related to cardiovascular health as well. Some cases of Alzheimer's Disease have been referred to as type 3 diabetes.
Diabetes and Other Health Conditions
A study from China also found that people with optimal Life’s Essential 8 scores had a 60% lower risk of developing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (a condition that leads to blocked arteries). The research suggests that if everyone maintained a high CVH score, about half of these cardiovascular diseases could be prevented.
Improved Life Expectancy with High CVH
For those over 50, the study showed that maintaining a high CVH score adds several more years to life expectancy. For men with Type 2 diabetes, there were about 10 added years, while women could expect about 24 extra years. For those without diabetes, the benefits were also significant, with men gaining 5.5 years and women gaining over 10 years.
Check Your Own Life’s Essential 8 Score
Now are you curious about how your heart health measures up? The American Heart Association offers a simple tool to check your Life’s Essential 8 score. Visit the AHA’s website and see where you are at on this LE8 score. If you don't know the information they are asking for, you probably should work to find out these basic measurements of the activities that build your health and some basic measurements (blood pressure, blood glucose, body weight, and cholesterol levels) that show how you are doing. A bit of self-awareness goes a long way. You should strive to be above 90 out of 100. The output gives you guidance on what to focus on most to improve your score.
There are lots of people trying to sell their own special products to improve your health. But the Life’s Essential 8 score shows that the most important things to focus on are daily habits that we can change and improve on, and outcomes that are easily affected by our diet and lifestyle. Take sleep for example. You really can take action tonight and commit to getting a full nights rest 6 out of 7 nights a week. Simple changes that you commit to can slowly improve your health in a sustainable fashion. And you will reduce your risk of heart attacks, strokes, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, kidney disease and some forms of cancer according to the studies mentioned here. Which means you are much more likely to complete the mission God has given you during your time on earth. And that is what makes pursuing health worthwhile.
