Healthy diet, healthy heart

Healthy Aging

Heart health for all ages

A couple of newsletters ago, we talked about how science and medicine are increasingly expanding beyond the role of reactively treating disease to proactively promoting health. As part of that expansion, the American Heart Association recently published eight health tips in the journal, Circulation. We are dedicating the next round of newsletters to Life’s Essential 8.

What is Life’s Essential 8?

Instead of defining whether or not you have heart disease, Life’s Essential 8 is used to define whether or not you have heart health. Meeting these essential 8 goals can help us have healthier hearts and enable us to live longer, healthier lives.

I’m in. What’s on my heart health to-do list?

While this list may sound redundant, there is a reason. All of the steps above can help us live longer, healthier lives – and less than 1% of individuals meet all eight of the steps above. That means 99% of us have something real we can do.
Just as importantly, the definitions of these tips have been evolving. This week, let’s start with an updated take on “healthy diet”.

A new approach to a healthy diet

The Mediterranean diet has been shown to improve our overall health, but it is pretty difficult to just say, “Start eating as if you lived in Greece.” Because of this, a new way to score our individual diets is being recommended. It is called the Mediterranean Eating Pattern for Americans (aka, MEPA).

What is your MEPA Score?

Take out your pen, and give yourself 1 point for each of the following healthy diet criteria that you meet:

Okay, now add up your points. If you had 12 points more, congratulations! You meet the MEPA criteria of a healthy diet. If you were under 12 points, check off one or two new habits that you can try to add into your new healthy diet routine.

Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter on the latest scientific studies around exercise recommendations!