Editorial on the Research Topic: Non-Invasive Measures of Cardiovascular Function and Health: Special Considerations for Assessing Lifestyle Behaviours

In recent decades it has become clear that lifestyle behaviors such as diet (1), risky alcohol consumption (2), cigarette smoking (Wang et al.), sedentary behavior (3), and physical inactivity (4) are all factors contributing to cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence and mortality. And, as cardiovascular diseases remain the largest cause of death in the Western world, gaining further knowledge of cardiovascular dysfunction in response to these lifestyle behaviors is of paramount importance. This Research Topic which includes 14 research papers (Figure 1), has helped further our knowledge in three important areas of lifestyle behaviors and cardiovascular physiology: First, it has highlighted the importance several modifiable, behavioral risk factors associated with CVD (El-Battrawy et al.; Wang et al.; Zuo et al.), second, it has expanded our understanding of a number of biomarkers and risk scores which are related to CVD (Bo et al.; Cang et al.; Hsu et al.; Tsai et al.; Ying et al.), third it helped us to better understand and interpret markers of arterial stiffness (Elliot et al.; Lane-Cordova and Bouknight; Stone et al.) and lastly, it has allowed us to provide guidance on how to assess cardiovascular function in response to a common and biologically novel lifestyle behavior, prolonged sitting (Stoner et al.). Collectively this new information is an important step forwards in improving our understanding of CVD, and allows us to work toward the development of public health policy aimed at reducing the CVD burden