5 Heart Numbers You Need to Know
Featured Expert
Updated February 9, 2026
Call it a health numbers game. Knowing just a few key metrics can provide a pretty accurate picture of your current cardiac fitness—and give you ongoing motivation to maintain healthy heart numbers and improve less healthy ones.
“It’s important to remember that all of these numbers fall on a continuous scale,” says Johns Hopkins cardiologist Seth Martin, M.D., M.H.S. “It’s not enough to say you have high or low blood pressure—your doctor is looking at how high or how low". We usually think of these values as falling along a range, but in practice there are specific cutoff points that guidelines use to help clinicians make decisions.
Five key things to track to know your numbers:
How many steps you take per day
Moving a lot improves every other heart-health measure and disease risk, says Martin. You may have heard of the benchmark of walking up to 10,000 steps a day, or almost five miles. He stresses that while 10,000 is a common and valid goal, this may be a far reach for some people who are starting at a low step count. If starting at a low number, adding 1,000 extra steps to whatever one is currently doing can help get you started while gradually work up to more steps per day. Recent research shows that 7,000-8,000 steps per day could also be a lower, more achievable goal, and while benefits can still stack up above this, the incremental gains may be smaller. Another goal is to exercise 150 minutes per week.
Your blood pressure
High blood pressure, or hypertension, has no symptoms; it can only be detected by being measured. A score of 120/80 is optimal, and for someone with hypertension the basic goal is <130/<80 and ideally <120/<80. Higher readings mean that arteries aren’t responding right to the force of blood pushing against artery walls (blood pressure), directly raising the risk of heart attack or stroke.
Your non-HDL cholesterol
That’s your total cholesterol reading minus your HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, a measure of fats in the blood that can narrow and clog arteries to the heart. Lower is better: Aim for less than 100 mg/dL as the standard safe zone but extra caution is needed in higher risk patients who could have a goal of <70 mg/dL or even <55 mg/dL for maximum protection.
Your blood sugar
High blood sugar ups your risk of diabetes, which damages arteries. In fact, type 1 and type 2 diabetes are among the most harmful risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
How many hours of sleep a night you get
The recommendation is an average of 7-9 hours per night to lower the risk of heart disease, Martin says.
Medically reviewed by Seth Martin, M.D., M.H.S.
What the Experts Do Pay Attention to the Numbers
“I have been using a fitness tracker for years,” says Johns Hopkins cardiologist Seth Martin, M.D., M.H.S. “It’s changed my habits, because I check the numbers every day.” When he started tracking, Martin typically hit 5,000 steps per day. “That was illuminating,” Martin says. “Sometimes it would be as low as 2,000.” Since he started checking his number at the end of the workday, he meets or exceeds his goal—10,000—almost every day. He holds walking meetings with colleagues or just takes a walk when possible, and he skips the elevator. If he’s short of his goal after work, he makes a concerted effort to get there by hitting the gym, tennis court or golf course, or by simply going for a walk outside. “Watch your numbers and take action,” he says. “It’s motivating. It works.”
