Heart HealthHigh Cardiovascular Health Score Adds Nearly 6 Years of Disease-Free Life
Researchers scored over 130,000 adults from the UK Biobank and NHANES on Life's Essential 10 (LE10), an expanded cardiovascular health metric that adds alcohol consumption and mental health to the existing Life's Essential 8 framework. People with high LE10 scores had dramatically lower risks of dying from any cause, developing or dying from cardiovascular disease, and developing cancer. At age 50, high scorers could expect roughly 5–6 extra years of total life and 4–4.5 additional years free of both heart disease and cancer compared to low scorers. Achieving more favorable health metrics was associated with up to 9.73 projected years of extra life expectancy. The findings were consistent across both cohorts and suggest that broadening cardiovascular health targets to include mental health and alcohol intake could meaningfully extend healthspan.
