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Exercising
for Fun Better for the Heart
Excerpt
By Janice
Billingsley,
HealthScoutNews
Engaging in exercise in your leisure hours can decrease your risk
of a heart attack by as much as 60 percent, a German study has
found.
If your exercise comes in the form
of physical strain at work, however, the opposite is true -- your
risk of heart disease goes up.
These are among the findings of
a study at the University of Ulm Medical Center in Germany, that
studied 781 middle-aged men and women, 312 of whom had heart disease.
"The study provides additional
evidence that leisure time physical activity (LTPA), but not work-related
physical strain (WRPS) is associated with a decreased risk of
coronary heart disease," the authors write.
The findings appear in the May
26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
By asking participants to fill
out questionnaires about their physical activity during the summer
and winter, both at work and at leisure, and taking blood samples,
the researchers found nonwork-related physical activity was associated
with a lower risk for heart disease.
Also significant was that those
who reported more leisure time activity had lower levels of various
biomarkers in the blood that are involved in the inflammatory
response, which is thought to be involved in the buildup of plaque
in the blood vessels.
"This study was well done
for the completeness of the inflammatory markers. The authors
looked very carefully at more markers," says Dr. Richard
Stein, a spokesman for the American Heart Association and chief
of cardiology at Brooklyn Hospital Center.
Stein says this is important because
these inflammatory markers -- such as C-reactive protein (CRP)
and interleukin 6 (IL-6) -- could be increasingly important in
determining the causes for heart attacks.
"Coronary events are not due
to how much coronary disease you have, but to the fracturing of
the plaque that blocks the heart vessel," he says, and while
you can't say now that having high levels of inflammatory markers
can predict coronary events, research is suggesting the likelihood
of these events are associated with these markers.
In the study, there was a clear
relationship between leisure time physical activity and a decrease
in risk of heart disease, with the benefits accruing dramatically
as the amount of exercise increased. Those who exercised for an
hour or less a week reduced their heart disease risk by 15 percent
compared to those who did no leisure time exercise.
People who exercised between one
and two hours a week had a 40 percent reduction in heart disease
risk, and those who exercised for more than two hours weekly reduced
their risk for heart disease by 61 percent.
"The single, most proactive
thing you can do for yourself to reduce the risk for heart disease
is to exercise regularly three or more times a week," Stein
says.
Conversely, study participants
who reported work-related physical strain (WRPS) had a much higher
risk of heart disease, from a doubling of the risk for those who
reported light WRPS to more that four times the risk for those
who had heavy WRPS.
One reason for this difference,
the authors suggest, could be that work-related physical activity
is probably long-lasting and static, while leisure time activity
is mainly short-lasting and dynamic in nature. But, they add,
it also may be due to other, unknown risks.
Stein says that previous studies
report the same discrepancy between different types of exercise
but that the cause for the differences is unknown.
"It may be a mind-body connection,
but it's not clear," he says.
More information
Get suggestions for increasing
your physical activity from the American
Heart Association. An article explaining the biomarker C-reactive
protein (CRP) can be found at the National
Library of Medicine.
Reference
Source 101
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more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
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