7 simple steps for heart health also prevent diabetes

New research suggests that following the American Heart Association’s guidelines for maintaining heart health can also drastically reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), there are seven cardiovascular risk factors that people can change to improve their heart health.

Dubbed “Life’s Simple 7,” these risk factors are: “smoking status, physical activity, weight, diet, blood glucose, cholesterol, and blood pressure.”

The AHA note that research has shown that maintaining a minimum of five of the seven factors at an ideal level can lower the risk of cardiovascular death by almost 80 percent.

New research, which features in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, finds that these seven modifiable risk factors can also stave off diabetes.

Coming up with new strategies for preventing diabetes is crucial as over 100 million people in the United States are currently living with the condition or with prediabetes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), untreated prediabetes can progress into full-blown type 2 diabetes within 5 years.

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