It turns out that following the American

It turns out that following the American Heart Association’s seven steps for heart health – dubbed  Life’s Simple 7 –  can also ward off cancer, according to a new study.

Following six of the steps can even cut  cancer risk in half, said Laura Rasmussen-Torvik, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She said she and her colleagues just had a hunch that following healthy-heart guidelines would also decrease the risk of cancer.

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And their findings confirmed that hunch. Adhering to four of the  steps in Life’s Simple 7 resulted in a 33 percent cancer risk reduction, and following  six or seven led to a 51 percent cancer risk reduction, according to the study, which was  published today in the journal Circulation.

“We just wanted to test that hypothesis,” Rasmussen-Torvik said. “We hoped the information would provide extra motivation for the public to check out  Life’s Simple 7.”

The American Heart Association developed the seven steps in 2010 with the goal of reducing heart attack and stroke deaths by 20 percent by 2020.

Rasmussen-Torvik and her fellow researchers examined two decades of data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, looking at the health records of 13,253 patients from 1987 to 2006. They found that the more steps patients followed, the less likely they were to develop cancer.