Adding sleep to seven established metrics of heart health could create a stronger tool for predicting heart disease risk among middle-aged and older adults, new research shows.

The preliminary findings, presented Thursday at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions in Phoenix, recommend changing the AHA’s Life’s Simple 7 measure of cardiovascular health to the “Simple 8 or Essential 8” to incorporate sleep metrics.

“Sleep, like diet and physical activity, is a health behavior we engage in every day,” said lead author Nour Makarem, an associate research scientist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. “Increasingly, it is linked to not only the risk of heart disease but also to the risk factors that lead to cardiovascular disease. Despite this importance, unlike diet and exercise, sleep has received less attention and is not currently included in guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention or as a measure of cardiovascular health.”

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