The American Heart Association has added healthy sleep as essential for optimal cardiovascular health.
The American Heart Association adds sleep to the cardiovascular health checklist.
- The American Heart Association has updated its checklist for measuring cardiovascular health. It is now called Life’s Essential 8 ™ and adds healthy sleep as important for optimal cardiovascular health.
- Other health and lifestyle factors on the checklist that were part of the previous 7-point assessment tool were physical activity, weight, nicotine exposure, diet, cholesterol, blood glucose and blood pressure.
- The new sleep indicator suggests that 7-9 hours of sleep a day are optimal for cardiovascular health for adults and more for children depending on age.
- The updated assessment can now be used for people aged 2 and over, and four components are being measured in new ways: a new diet assessment guide; nicotine exposure replaces cigarette smoking, including electronic cigarettes (vaping) and exposure to secondhand smoke; non-HDL cholesterol is available instead of total cholesterol; and the blood sugar measure is expanded to include hemoglobin A1c levels.
- Life’s Essential 8 ™ is rated by the online tool My Life Check, which has an updated rating system to give users a score of up to 100 points based on an average rating for each health and lifestyle factor.
The Life’s Essential 8 ™ image of the American Heart Association is in the shape of an 8-wedge wheel, representing the 8 elements that are essential for cardiovascular health. Credit: Copyright of the American Heart Association 2022
Sleep duration is already considered a key component to ideal heart and brain health. Cardiovascular Health Result Life’s Essential 8 ™ replaces Life’s Simple 7 според, according to a new presidential council, Life’s Essential 8 — Update and improve the design of the American Heart Association for Cardiovascular Health, published today (June 29, 2022) in Circulation flag , The Association, a peer-reviewed journal.
Other updates to optimal cardiovascular health measures, now for anyone aged 2 and over, include a new guide to diet evaluation; reporting of exposure to passive smoking and evaporation; use of non-HDL cholesterol instead of total cholesterol to measure blood lipids; and extending the blood sugar measure to include hemoglobin A1c, a key measure for assessing the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the United States and worldwide. According to the Association’s 2022 Update on Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, approximately 121.5 million people in the United States have high blood pressure, 100 million are obese, more than 28 million have type 2 diabetes, and only 1 in 4 adults reported that they had achieved the physical activity and exercises recommended in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Physical Activity Guidelines, 2nd Edition. Various studies over the past two decades have shown that more than 80% of all cardiovascular events can be prevented through a healthy lifestyle and the management of known cardiovascular risk factors.
“The new sleep duration indicator reflects the latest research: sleep affects overall health and people who have healthier sleep patterns manage health factors such as weight, blood pressure or risk of type 2 diabetes more effectively.” said President of the American Heart Association Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, Sc.M., FAHA, who heads the writing advice group and is chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Eileen M. Foell, professor of cardiac research and professor of preventive medicine, medicine, and pediatrics at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. “In addition, advances in sleep measurement methods, such as wearables, now offer people the ability to reliably and routinely monitor their sleep habits at home.
The association first defined the 7 cardiovascular health indicators in 2010 to identify specific health behaviors and health factors that lead to optimal heart and brain health. Brain health in relation to cardiovascular health has been defined by the Presidential Council of the American Heart Association since 2017. In addition, it was recognized as an important component for optimal cardiovascular health in the Association’s January 2021 Scientific Declaration on the Mind Connection -heart-body. The findings of both documents are included in Life’s Essential 8 ™.
After 12 years and more than 2,400 scientific papers on the subject, new discoveries in heart and brain health and in ways to measure cardiovascular health have made it possible to review each health component in more detail. Four of the initial indicators have been redefined for compliance with newer clinical guidelines or compatibility with new measurement tools. Also, the scoring system can now be applied to anyone aged 2 and over.
The Life’s Essential 8 ™ components for optimal cardiovascular health are divided into two main areas – healthy behavior and health factors. Healthy behaviors include diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, and sleep. Health factors are body mass index, cholesterol levels, blood sugar and blood pressure. “The idea of optimal cardiovascular health is important because it gives people positive goals to work on at every stage of life,” said Lloyd-Jones.
Life’s Simple 7 serves as a proven, powerful tool for understanding how to achieve healthy aging and ways to improve cardiovascular health while reducing the risk of developing heart disease and stroke, as well as cancer, dementia and more. chronic diseases, ”he said. “Given the evolving research, it was important to pay attention to some limitations of the initial indicators, especially in terms of the ways in which they were applied to people of different racial and ethnic groups.”
Lloyd-Jones explained that some of the previous indicators, such as diet, were not as sensitive to differences between people or as sensitive to changes over time within an individual. “We felt it was the right time to conduct a comprehensive review of the latest research to refine existing indicators and look at all the new indicators that add value to the assessment of cardiovascular health for all people.
Life’s Essential 8 ™ includes:
- Diet (updated): A new guide for assessing the quality of the diet for adults and children at the individual level (for individual health care and dietary counseling) and at the population level (for research and public health purposes).
- At the population level, the assessment of the diet is based on the daily intake of elements of the nutritional model of the nutritional approach to stopping hypertension (DASH). The DASH-style diet has eight components: high intake of fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes, whole grains, low-fat dairy products and low intake of sodium, red and processed meats and sugary drinks.
- For individuals, the Mediterranean Nutrition Model for Americans (MEPA) is used to assess and monitor cardiovascular health. MEPA is a DASH-style diet model that can be measured with 16 yes or no questions about the weekly frequency of consumption of olive oil, vegetables, berries, meat, fish, dairy products, cereals, etc. MEPA screening does not include the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, so clinicians are encouraged to ask during the evaluation.
- Physical Activity (Unchanged): Activity is measured by the total number of minutes of moderate or intense physical activity per week, as defined in the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd Edition. The optimal level is 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or more per week or 75 minutes per week of intense physical activity for adults; 420 minutes or more per week for children 6 and older; and age-specific modifications for younger children.
- Nicotine exposure (updated): The use of inhaled nicotine delivery systems, which includes electronic cigarettes or vaping devices, is added because the previous indicator only observed traditional, combustible cigarettes. This reflects use by adults and young people and their impact on long-term health. Life’s Essential 8 ™ also includes exposure to secondary smoke for children and adults.
- Sleep duration (new): Sleep duration is related to the health of the cardiovascular system. Measured by average hours of sleep per night, the ideal level is 7-9 hours per day for adults. The ideal daily sleep intervals for children are 10-16 hours per 24 hours for ages 5 and younger; 9-12 hours for ages 6-12 years; and 8-10 hours for ages 13-18.
- Body mass index (unchanged): The writing group acknowledges that the body mass index (BMI) is an imperfect indicator, but is nevertheless easy to calculate and widely available; therefore, BMI continues to be a reasonable measure for assessing weight categories that can lead to health problems. A BMI of 18.5–24.9 is associated with the highest levels of cardiovascular health. The Writers Group notes that BMI ranges and the associated health risks associated with them may differ in people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds or backgrounds. This is in line with the recommendations of the World Health Organization to adjust BMI ranges for people from Asian or Pacific islands, as recent data show that the risk of conditions such as CVD or type 2 diabetes is higher at lower levels. BMI.
- Blood lipids (updated): The blood lipids indicator (cholesterol and triglycerides) has been updated to use non-HDL cholesterol as the preferred number to monitor, not total cholesterol. HDL is the “good” cholesterol. Other forms of cholesterol, when high, are associated with the risk of CVD. This change was made because non-HDL cholesterol can be measured without prior fasting (thus increasing its availability at any time of the day and applied to more appointments) and reliably calculated among all people.
- Blood glucose (updated): This indicator has been expanded to include the option for indications of hemoglobin A1c or blood sugar levels for people with or without type 1 or type 2 diabetes or prediabetes. Hemoglobin A1c may better reflect …
Add Comment