“Ideal” cardiovascular health is one of the American Heart Association’s Strategic 2020 Goals, which aim to improve Americans’ heart health by 20 percent and reduce deaths from heart disease and stroke by 20
percent.
For this study, researchers followed more than 13,000 healthy individuals for 13 years, measuring seven “metrics” of heart health at the start and tracking any cancer th
at developed.
Those seven factors are: not smoking, normal BMI (a calculation based on weight and height), physical activity, healthy diet, and safe cholesterol, blood pressure and fasting blood glucose levels.
Between 1987 and 2006, the participants developed more than 1,800 new cancers, namely prostate, breast, lung and colon.
But, the more “ideal” fac tors people had, the less likely they were
to develop cancer.