DALLAS – A staggering 80 percent of the U.S. population has low to moderate cardiovascular health, meaning only one in five people has a heart in excellent shape, according to a new study.
Using the American Heart Association’s new Life’s Essential 8 checklist, the researchers found that only 19.6 percent of the country has a cardiovascular health score that the list considers “high”.
Meanwhile, the study of more than 23,400 American adults and children found that 62.5% have only “moderate” cardiovascular health and 17.9% have “low” cardiovascular health.
How does the heart health checklist measure?
Life’s Essential 8 analyzes eight essential components that combine to give someone ideal heart and brain health. Measurements include diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep duration, body mass index, blood lipids, blood glucose, and blood pressure. The new scale is an update to the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7, which did not measure sleep health.
If you use a scale of 0 to 100, a score of 100 means that someone has the highest or healthiest cardiovascular health score. Scores below 50 are in the “low” cardiovascular health range, while scores between 50 and 79 indicate “moderate” heart health. Anything over 80 indicates “high” cardiovascular health. According to the new study, less than 20 percent of Americans met this healthy standard.
“These data represent the first glimpse into the cardiovascular health of the U.S. population using the AHA’s new Life’s Essential 8 scoring algorithm,” says the study’s lead author, Dr. Donald M. Lloyd -Jones, president of the American Heart Association, in a press release. . “Overall, the cardiovascular health of the U.S. population is suboptimal and we see significant differences between age groups and sociodemographies. Analyzes like this can help policymakers, communities, physicians, and the public understand the opportunities to intervene. to improve and maintain optimal cardiovascular health throughout life “.
The results come from health information from U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination surveys conducted between 2013 and 2018. The survey included approximately 9,900 children under the age of 19.
Americans are trapped in the 60s
Overall, the average American adult scored only 64.7 on the Life’s Essential 8 checklist. Children scored 65.5 out of 100. For children, the checklist adjusted the scores to suit their needs. age-related differences in diet, physical activity, and BMI.
Women scored slightly higher (67) than adult men (62.5), with both groups posting their lowest scores in the categories of diet, physical activity, and BMI. Overall, scores also went down as the adults got older.
When observing the differences between the country’s racial and ethnic groups, the study finds that Asian Americans have the best average cardiovascular health scores. Non-Hispanic white individuals had the second highest health scores, with Hispanics (not including Mexicans), Mexicans, and non-Hispanic black individuals following in that order.
Worryingly, the children’s diet scores averaged just 40.6 and a tiny 0.45 percent of the entire study group achieved a perfect score of 100.
The findings are published in Circulation, the flagship magazine of the American Heart Association and peer-reviewed.