Middle-aged people who bump their weekly exercise up to recommended levels over as little as six years may significantly decrease their risk of heart failure, a study finds.
Conversely, as little as six years without physical activity in middle age is linked to an increased risk of the cardiac disorder, which affects an estimated 5 million to 6 million Americans.
Researchers analysed self-reported physical activity levels over time in more than 11,000 American adults.
“Our findings suggest that consistently participating in the recommended 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each week… in middle age may be enough to reduce your heart failure risk by 31 per cent,” says Chiadi Ndumele, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and senior author of the study.
Unlike heart attack, in which heart muscle dies, heart failure involves a long-term chronic inability of the heart to pump enough blood hard enough to bring needed oxygen around the body. The leading cause of hospitalisation in those over 65, the disorder’s risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, and a family history.
The study, which appears in the journal ‘Circulation’, doesn’t show a direct cause-and-effect link between exercise and heart failure. But the data suggest it may never be too late to reduce the risk of heart failure with exercise, the researchers say.
“The population of people with heart failure is growing, because people are living longer and surviving heart attacks and other forms of heart disease,” says Roberta Florido, cardiology fellow at Johns Hopkins.
There are drugs that treat heart failure, such as beta blockers and ACE inhibitors, but they are not preventive; they work instead to reduce the heart’s workload after dysfunction arises.
Several studies, Florido says, have suggested that in general people who are more physically active have lower risks of heart failure, but little has been known about the impact of changes in exercise levels over time on heart failure risk.
Researchers monitored participants annually for an average of 19 years for cardiovascular disease events such as heart attack, stroke, and heart failure. Researchers gathered data using telephone interviews, hospital records, and death certificates. Over the course of the study, there were 1,693 hospitaliSations and 57 deaths due to heart failure.
According to the American Heart Association, fewer than 50 per cent of Americans get recommended activity levels.
