High Life's Essential 10 scores link to longer disease-free life
Compared to low scores, high cardiovascular health was associated with lower all-cause mortality hazard ratios of 0.43 in men and 0.34 in women.
European Heart Journal Quality of Care & Clinical Outcomes
In a prospective study of 110,806 UK Biobank participants aged 37 to 73 and 20,031 NHANES participants aged 20 and older, researchers evaluated cardiovascular health using the Life's Essential 10 (LE10) framework. The metric adds alcohol consumption and mental health to Life's Essential 8, categorising health scores as low, moderate, or high.
Over a median 13.8-year follow-up in the UK Biobank, high cardiovascular health was associated with reduced risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer incidence and mortality. At age 50, high cardiovascular health conferred projected life expectancy gains of 5.47 years in men and 5.85 years in women compared to low scores, with disease-free gains of 4.02 and 4.40 years, respectively. Having more low-risk metrics was associated with up to 9.73 projected years gained. These associations were replicated across 7.2 years of follow-up in NHANES.
Why it matters
Expanding cardiovascular health metrics to incorporate mental well-being and alcohol consumption helps quantify lifestyle contributions to healthspan. The findings demonstrate that maintaining optimal behavioral and metabolic targets correlates with extended years lived free of major age-related chronic diseases.
Caveats
The observational design establishes associations rather than causal relationships. Additionally, estimated gains in overall and disease-free life expectancy rely on flexible parametric and multi-state survival projections rather than directly observed lifetimes.
The paper
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Feiran Yang, Qing Ye, Ray W. Squires, Thomas Patrick Olson, Jeffrey William Ripley-Gonzalez, Xinyin Wu,Mayo Clinic · Central South University
European Heart Journal Quality of Care & Clinical Outcomes · 1 Oct 2026