Only 7% of the U.S. adults have good heart and metabolic health

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Scientists from Tufts University found less than 7 percent of the U.S. adult population has good cardiometabolic health, a devastating health crisis requiring urgent action.

The research is published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and was conducted by Meghan O’Hearn et al.

In the study, the team looked at a nationally representative sample of about 55,000 people aged 20 years or older from 1999 to 2018 from the 10 most recent cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

They evaluated these Americans across five components of health: levels of blood pressure, blood sugar, blood cholesterol, adiposity (overweight and obesity), and the presence or absence of cardiovascular disease (heart attack, stroke, etc.).

They found that only 6.8 percent of U.S. adults had optimal levels of all five components as of 2017-2018.

Among these five components, trends between 1999 and 2018 also worsened much for obesity and blood sugar.

In 1999, 1 out of 3 adults had optimal levels of adiposity (no overweight or obesity); that number decreased to 1 out of 4 by 2018.

Likewise, while 3 out of 5 adults didn’t have diabetes or prediabetes in 1999, fewer than 4 out of 10 adults were free of these conditions in 2018.

The team says it’s deeply problematic that in the United States, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, fewer than 1 in 15 adults have optimal cardiometabolic health.

The researchers also identified large health disparities between people of different sexes, ages, races and ethnicities, and education levels.

For example, adults with less education were half as likely to have optimal cardiometabolic health compared with adults with more education, and Mexican Americans had one-third the optimal levels versus non-Hispanic White adults.

Additionally, between 1999 and 2018, while the percentage of adults with good cardiometabolic health modestly increased among non-Hispanic White Americans, it went

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