Heart health score
Life's Essential 8 score calculator
Life's Essential 8 is the American Heart Association's way of measuring cardiovascular health: 8 habits and measures, each scored from 0 to 100, averaged into one overall score. Higher is better. It is a health score, not a risk estimate: it does not tell you your chance of a heart attack or stroke.
Your answers
For adults 20 and older. Use your latest checkup numbers. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
Optional. The advisory scores diet for individuals with the MEPA questionnaire (see below). Leave blank if you do not have one; the other 7 metrics are still scored.
What you will see
Points from 0 to 100 for each of the 8 metrics, and your overall score with its band (high, moderate or low) when all 8 are scored.
Educational only, not medical advice. A score of heart health habits and measures, not a diagnosis.
Source
Lloyd-Jones DM et al., Life's Essential 8, an American Heart Association presidential advisory, Circulation 2022. Points from its Table 1 (adult column) and the table notes, read in the NIH author manuscript (PMC10503546).
Validated in
A scoring system set by an AHA writing group from guidelines and research, not a model fitted to one cohort. The adult points apply from age 20; the advisory gives separate points for children, which this page does not cover. For population tracking, the advisory names the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
Limits
Measures cardiovascular health now; it is not a risk estimate and gives no chance of a heart attack or stroke. Diet needs a MEPA questionnaire score, so the overall score shows only when you enter one. BMI points do not account for muscle mass or underweight, and the advisory notes BMI ranges may differ by ancestry. The writing group calls for more research on the new scoring in diverse groups.
What Life's Essential 8 measures
The AHA introduced Life's Essential 8 in 2022 as an update of its earlier Life's Simple 7, adding sleep as an eighth part and changing how each part is scored (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). Four parts are health behaviors (diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure and sleep) and four are health factors (BMI, blood lipids, blood sugar and blood pressure) (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). Each is scored from 0 to 100, and the overall score is the unweighted average of all 8 (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)).
The advisory suggests reading overall scores of 80 to 100 as high cardiovascular health, 50 to 79 as moderate and 0 to 49 as low (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). It also reports that higher cardiovascular health is linked with better long-term health and that improving it over time is linked with lower risk of cardiovascular disease (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)).
The points for adults
| Metric | Points |
|---|---|
| Physical activity, minutes per week | 150 or more: 100; 120 to 149: 90; 90 to 119: 80; 60 to 89: 60; 30 to 59: 40; 1 to 29: 20; none: 0 |
| Nicotine | Never smoked: 100; quit 5 or more years ago: 75; quit 1 to under 5 years: 50; quit under 1 year, or using vapes now: 25; smoking now: 0. Minus 20 (unless already 0) for living with someone who smokes indoors |
| Sleep, hours per night | 7 to under 9: 100; 9 to under 10: 90; 6 to under 7: 70; 5 to under 6, or 10 or more: 40; 4 to under 5: 20; under 4: 0 |
| BMI (kg/m2) | Under 25: 100; 25 to 29.9: 70; 30 to 34.9: 30; 35 to 39.9: 15; 40 or more: 0 |
| Non-HDL cholesterol (mg/dL) | Under 130: 100; 130 to 159: 60; 160 to 189: 40; 190 to 219: 20; 220 or more: 0. Minus 20 if on treatment |
| Blood sugar | No diabetes, fasting glucose under 100 mg/dL (or HbA1c under 5.7%): 100; no diabetes, fasting glucose 100 to 125 (or HbA1c 5.7 to 6.4%): 60; diabetes with HbA1c under 7.0: 40; 7.0 to 7.9: 30; 8.0 to 8.9: 20; 9.0 to 9.9: 10; 10.0 or more: 0 |
| Blood pressure (mmHg) | Under 120/80: 100; 120 to 129 and under 80: 75; 130 to 139 or 80 to 89: 50; 140 to 159 or 90 to 99: 25; 160 or more, or 100 or more: 0. Minus 20 if on treatment |
| Diet, MEPA score (individuals) | 15 to 16: 100; 12 to 14: 80; 8 to 11: 50; 4 to 7: 25; 0 to 3: 0 |
All points as printed in Table 1 of the advisory, adult column (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). Non-HDL cholesterol is total cholesterol minus HDL cholesterol (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). When a treated value would drop below 0, we show 0; the table does not give a rule for that case.
How the calculator reads your answers
- Activity: for adults, each minute of moderate activity counts as 1 minute and each minute of vigorous activity as 2 (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)).
- Blood pressure: the two numbers can fall in different rows; we use the lower-scoring one, as the table's "or" wording implies.
- Treatment: the advisory subtracts 20 points for treated cholesterol or blood pressure because of the risk that remains on treatment (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)).
- Diabetes: the highest score with diabetes is 40, which the advisory set because of the risk that remains even when diabetes is well controlled (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). If you have not been told you have diabetes but your result is in the diabetes range, the table has no row for it, so we do not score blood sugar and suggest you talk to a doctor.
- Underweight: for a BMI under 18.5, the advisory leaves points to a clinician's judgment (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). We show the table's 100 points with a note.
- Sleep apnea: the advisory says clinicians may consider subtracting 20 sleep points for untreated or undertreated sleep apnea (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). We do not ask about it; if it applies to you, your doctor may score sleep lower. The STOP-Bang sleep apnea check can help you decide whether to ask.
The diet metric
For individuals, the advisory scores diet with a short questionnaire, a modified Mediterranean Eating Pattern for Americans (MEPA), scored from 0 to 16 (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). For populations it uses a DASH-style diet score or the Healthy Eating Index instead (Lloyd-Jones 2022 (AHA)). The questions are in the advisory's supplemental material, which we could not read, so we do not reproduce them here. If your doctor or a program has given you a MEPA score, enter it; otherwise the calculator scores the other 7 metrics and does not show an overall number.
Looking for a Mediterranean diet questionnaire you can fill in now? Our Mediterranean diet score uses the 14-item MEDAS from the Spanish PREDIMED study. It is a different questionnaire with its own 0 to 14 scoring, so its result cannot be entered here as a MEPA score.
What to do with your score
The value of the score is in the parts: the metrics with the lowest points show where change would add the most. For help with diet and activity, see the diet and exercise counseling check; for weight, the BMI calculator; for blood pressure numbers, blood pressure ranges; for smoking, quit smoking help.
To estimate your actual chance of heart disease, use the heart risk calculator, which uses the AHA PREVENT equations, and see PREVENT vs ASCVD for how the risk calculators differ.
Sources
- Lloyd-Jones DM, Allen NB, Anderson CAM, Black T, Brewer LC, Foraker RE, et al. Life's Essential 8: Updating and Enhancing the American Heart Association's Construct of Cardiovascular Health: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2022;146(5):e18-e43. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000001078. PMID 35766027. (We read the points in Table 1 and its notes in the NIH author manuscript, PMC10503546.) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10503546/
Written and maintained by the uncovermyrisk.com editorial team. We do not have a medical reviewer; every claim links to its primary source above. Last reviewed: 2026-11-01. Spotted an error? See About.