# Life's Essential 8 Care topic · id `cardio:lifes-essential-8` · Cardiovascular Atlas · release `73130c34862e2d06` (public) > General information from published sources, not medical advice, and not reviewed by clinicians. Check the cited source before relying on anything here. The atlas's own text and curation may be reused under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/): credit the atlas, and do not use it commercially. See the atlas About page. Text quoted from a source stays under that source's own terms, given as the source's reuse\_basis. The atlas's reuse terms do not cover it. The downloads list each quotation with its source in third\_party\_quotations. Browse, organ or system: Heart Browse, condition area: Risk and prevention ## In plain language Life's Essential 8 is the American Heart Association's way of scoring heart health. It looks at eight things: diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep, body mass index, blood fats, blood sugar and blood pressure. Each gets 0 to 100 points, and the average of the eight is the overall score, also 0 to 100. It updates the AHA's earlier Life's Simple 7, adds sleep health, and is meant for people across the whole life course. This page describes the score as the AHA defines it; it does not record how well the score predicts outcomes. ## Technical summary AHA presidential advisory (Circulation, 2022; PubMed 35766027); only the PubMed abstract was read (the PMC copy is not in the open-access subset). The abstract says diet, nicotine exposure, blood lipids and blood glucose were updated, sleep health is new, and the age spectrum was expanded to the entire life course. The composite score is the unweighted average of the components. The advisory also discusses social determinants of health and psychological health as foundational contexts and methods for implementing assessment; none of that detail is recorded here. ## Claims, with the population each applies to ## Context: Whole life course, American Heart Association's cardiovascular health score Recipient: Mixed recipients; Population: Individuals and populations across the whole life course (the advisory abstract says the age spectrum was expanded to include the entire life course).; Care setting: Not stated in the source: the abstract mentions policy, public health, clinical, institutional and community settings for implementation.; Geography: Not stated in the source.; Life stage: Whole life course; Gestational age: Not reported; Postnatal age: Not reported; Follow-up: Not stated in the source. ### The American Heart Association's presidential advisory introduces Life's Essential 8 as an enhanced approach to assessing cardiovascular health. Its components are diet (updated), physical activity, nicotine exposure (updated), sleep health (new), body mass index, blood lipids (updated), blood glucose (updated) and blood pressure. Each metric has a new scoring algorithm ranging from 0 to 100 points, and the unweighted average of the components gives a composite cardiovascular health score that also varies from 0 to 100 points. The age spectrum was expanded to include the entire life course. - Category: Description - Evidence stage: Guidance - Certainty: Certainty not assessed - Applies to: Recipient: Mixed recipients; Population: Individuals and populations across the whole life course (the advisory abstract says the age spectrum was expanded to include the entire life course).; Care setting: Not stated in the source: the abstract mentions policy, public health, clinical, institutional and community settings for implementation.; Geography: Not stated in the source.; Life stage: Whole life course; Gestational age: Not reported; Postnatal age: Not reported; Follow-up: Not stated in the source. - Limitations: This is the American Heart Association's definition of its own score. The abstract gives no data on how well the score predicts outcomes. Only the PubMed abstract was read; the PMC copy is not in the open-access subset. - Last checked: 2026-10-15 - Sources: 1. Supports: Life's Essential 8: Updating and Enhancing the American Heart Association's Construct of Cardiovascular Health: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association (Publication, edition PubMed record (abstract and bibliographic data) from NCBI E-utilities. The full text and the version of record were not fetched.) Locator: Abstract, paragraph 1, sentences 5 to 9. Retrieved 2026-10-15T13:48:15Z. Source state: Current. Snapshot hash: 8bdb4a57234216d39ecfe9513273a4e389dcafc78b879acf61a96ecf5988874c. How it applies: Components, scoring and age spectrum. ## Connected pages - A scoring construct for the steps in heart-healthy living: Heart-healthy living (`cardio:heart-healthy-living`) - AHA presidential advisory: American Heart Association (`core:aha`) - Filed under this front: Prevention and lifestyle (`cardio:front-prevention-and-lifestyle`) ## Provenance Content hash: ddfa89c9b6c173fd4755f464d9836a0f02fd74010c18807548da3a8a25125b43 Last substantive edit: 2026-10-15 Evidence last checked: 2026-10-15