The American Heart Association is updating their guidelines on how you can keep your heart healthy. 

If you want to improve your heart health, the American Heart Association has a list of eight keyways, and that number used to be seven.

What they've added now is the duration of sleep that people have, because it turns out that sleep is such an important factor for cardiovascular health.

The recommendation is that most adults get seven to nine hours of sleep each night.

The organization says that adequate sleep promotes healing, improves brain function, and lessens the risk for chronic diseases.

"So when you don't sleep, there is an overdrive of your sympathetic system and so, what is happening when you are awake is that your blood pressure never gets to go down. Your heart rate does not ever get to relax," cardiologist Pamela Rama said.

The other habits on the life's essential eight list are: eating a healthy diet, getting two and half hours of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity a week, stop smoking, keeping a healthy weight, and managing cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure levels.

There's also a life's essential eight for kids.

They include living a balanced life of exercise and healthy eating, consuming less sugar, the importance of clean air, finding ways to relieve stress, and getting a good night's sleep without distractions.

To find the complete list, you can go to the American Heart Association website.