Dementia Risk and Life’s Simple 7

Do the seven simple lifestyle metrics for heart health from the American Heart Association also tell us about dementia risk?

Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash

The Simple 7

In 2010, the American Heart Association developed the Simple 7, an easy checklist of 7 items that would give you a reasonable indication of your cardiovascular health.

Higher score → better cardiovascular health.

The Simple 7 checklist was developed by a task force of over 170 scientists who combed through data from both clinical trials and epidemiological studies.

For each of the 7, you get a score of 2 (ideal), 1 (intermediate), or 0 (poor). hence, the top score is 14.

Let’s see how we do.

• Smoking

Never or quit over a year ago (2 points), quit less than a year ago (1), still smoking (0).

• BMI

<25 (2 points), 25–30 (1), >30 (0)

• Physical activity

≥ 150 min/wk moderate or ≥ 75 min/wk vigorous (2 points), 1–149 min/wk moderate or 1–74 min/wk vigorous (1), or none (0).

• Healthy eating index