Heart disease is a disease of aging. If you live long enough, your heart, the hardest working muscle in your body, will begin to show signs of wear and tear. If you don’t take good care of it, you won’t have to wait until you are elderly for your heart to give you trouble.
Heart disease is the most common cause of death among men and women of most ethnic groups. Sometimes heart disease has a strong genetic component and there is not much we can do to change our parents and grandparents. Most of the time, however, and even with bad genes, we can do a lot to keep our hearts healthy. Not only is a healthy heart good in general, it benefits all of the other parts of our bodies from the brain on down to the feet.
In 2010, the American Heart Association introduced Life’s Simple 7, a set of standards to measure cardiovascular health. There were three health behaviors (diet, physical activity, cessation of smoking) and four health factors (body mass index, blood pressure, total cholesterol, and glucose). By measuring the 7, doctors could create a cardiovascular health score (CVH score). Recently, getting good sleep was added to make Life’s Simple 8. In the ten years following the introduction of the Simple 7, many studies have verified its usefulness in identifying cardiovascular health. Studies have also shown a strong correlation between high CVH scores and good health in nearly every other part of the body.
I am not going to list all of the ways the studies found that a high CVH score benefited an organ or system, there are just too many. The link above will take you to a more exhaustive list but some of them are quite important and I have listed them here.
- Lower risk of dementia
- Better cognition
- Larger brain volume
- Lower risk of hearing loss
- Less atherosclerosis
- Lower risk for high blood pressure or venous thromboembolism
- Less arterial stiffness
- Less plaque deposition
- Lower risk of retinopathy
- Lower risk of fatty liver
- Lower risk for lung cancer and COPD
- Higher cardiorespiratory fitness
- Lower risk of obesity
- Lower cortisol levels
- Lower risk of Type 2 diabetes
- Lower risk of chronic kidney disease
- Better muscular fitness
- Lower risk of lower limb amputations
That is a long and impressive list and it is not all of the benefits of a high CVH score.
It is not completely clear exactly how the metrics of a high CVH score work their magic, but reduction of inflammation is believed to play a role. Less inflammation makes everything work better. Many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, are diseases of aging. By indulging in bad habits and avoiding good ones, however, you can develop these diseases of aging much earlier in life than you need to.
For most of us, our bodies want to work well and give us a long and healthy life. All we have to do is cooperate by eating right, being active and getting good sleep. Give your body a break. It is never too late to adopt good habits and get at least some benefit from them.
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