American Heart Association guidelines recommend that middle-aged adults engage in at least two hours and 30 minutes per week of exercise such as brisk walking.
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The study was published October. 5 in the journal Circulation.
The 12 cohort studies in the meta-analysis included 370,460 participants (53.5% women) and 20,203 heart failure events over a median follow-up of 13 years (Jan. 1, 1995, through September 24, 2014).
According to the American Heart Association, heart failure occurs when a weakened heart can not meet the body’s blood supply needs, resulting in “fatigue and shortness of breath and a few people have coughing”.
Physical activity was measured by self-reported levels of activity by study participants using standard questionnaires. They saw a 20% reduction of heart failure risks, whereas participants, who confessed that they normally exercised for at least two hours a day had a 35 percent decline in coronary disease risks.
In the USA and United Kingdom, the recommended dose of physical activity is 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week or 30 minutes per day. “The findings from the present study suggest that higher levels of physical activity may help combat this growing burden of heart failure”, said fellow researcher Ambarish Pandey.
“Walking 30 minutes a day as recommended in the US physical activity guidelines may not be good enough”, said Dr. Jarett Berry, a senior author of the study and an associate professor of internal medicine and clinical sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. The study noted that decreasing heart problems with increasing physical activity was consistent across all age, sex, race, and geographic location based subgroups studied. There are lots of reasons why you might be diagnosed with heart failure, with the most common cause being damage left behind after a heart attack.
Berry also adds, “If you look at the general population, we’ve had tremendous success in reducing coronary heart disease over the last 30 years”. “That counts as occupational”. The heart is a muscle, it has concluded, and the more it is exercised, the better it keeps.
The research may not be enough to modify the current guidelines for heart failure patients. Plenty of research shows that lower amounts, even microbursts of intense 10 to 15 minutes of activity, can be beneficial.
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Vigorous aerobic activity is defined as a something that makes you breathe hard and fast and that pushes up your heart rate pretty high.
