Lower Death Risk at Every Step Up in Heart Health, Even in the Oldest Adults

CATEGORY: HEALTHY AGING & LONGEVITY

Heart-health advice tends to stop arriving past a certain age, on the quiet assumption that it no longer changes anything. A study spanning ages 30 to 116 found otherwise. Among people who had passed 100, the healthiest cardiovascular-health scores went with roughly 55% lower risk of death than the least healthy scores, and the relationship was near-linear: each step up in score matched a further step down in risk.¹ This was observation rather than experiment, so the finding is a link.

Eight Everyday Factors, Scored as One Number

The score is Life’s Essential 8, a checklist from the American Heart Association. It rates eating pattern, physical activity, exposure to tobacco or nicotine, sleep, body weight, blood cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure. Cholesterol here means the fatty substances carried in your blood. Each person lands in a low, moderate or high cardiovascular-health group. Combining eight items is the whole point of the thing, since heart health rarely rests on one habit or one number.

31,000 People, Ages 30 to 116

The analysis pooled more than 31,000 people across that age span, joining a large general-population health study to a dedicated cohort of centenarians, meaning people who reached 100 or beyond. Each participant’s score was calculated. Deaths were then recorded over follow-up and death rates compared across the low, moderate and high groups at different life stages. Setting ordinary adults beside the exceptionally long-lived is what let the team ask whether an advantage that counts in midlife still counts at the far edge of the human lifespan. The authors say their findings challenge therapeutic nihilism in the oldest old, the view that heart-health measures no longer matter at very advanced ages.¹

Activity and Body Weight Stood Out Past 100

Two of the eight factors tracked especially closely with lower mortality among centenarians: being physically active and carrying a healthy body weight. That does not retire the other six. And healthier people may differ in ways no observational study fully captures, which is the standing limit on a finding like this. The shape of the curve is the part that travels furthest. There was no threshold to clear, just a steady gradient. A 2025 review that gathered 46 long-term studies found the same slope on a larger scale, with the healthiest scores linked to 56% lower risk of death from any cause than the least healthy, risk falling as scores rose rather than at one cut-off.² Those, too, were observational.

Key Takeaways

• Higher cardiovascular health, scored across eight everyday factors, was associated with lower death risk from midlife into the centenarian years, in a near-linear trend rather than an all-or-nothing threshold; past 100, the healthiest scores carried roughly 55% lower mortality than the least healthy.
• This is observational research, so it shows an association and not proof of cause, and among the very oldest adults physical activity and body weight were the two factors that stood out.

References

1. Chen S, Wang S, He B, Yang S, Han K, Shi Y, et al. Life’s essential 8 and longevity: the sustained impact of cardiovascular health on mortality from middle age to centenarians. npj Aging. 2026;s41514-026-00395-5. link
2. Li G, Zhang Y, Wu Q, et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the association between cardiovascular health determined by life’s essential 8 and risk of mortality and major non-communicable diseases. Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine. 2025;12:1612056. link.