Overdoing exercise may harm heart attack survivors

This is one thing you must avoid if you are a heart attack survivor. Stick to the basics, do brisk walking and jogging at your pace and do not overdo physical activity.

Researchers have found clear evidence of an increase in cardiovascular deaths in heart attack survivors who exercise in excess.

They studied the relationship between exercise and cardiovascular disease-related deaths in about 2,400 physically active heart attack survivors.

The study confirmed that the cardiovascular benefits for walking and running were equivalent as long as the energy expenditures were the same.

"We found a remarkable dose-dependent reductions in deaths from cardiovascular events of up to 65 percent among patients who were running less than 48 km or walking less than 73 km per week," said Paul T. Williams from life sciences division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Beyond this point, however, much of the benefit of exercise was lost, he noticed.

"Results suggest that the benefits of running or walking do not accrue indefinitely and that above some level, perhaps 48 km per week of running, there is a significant increase in risk. Competitive running events also appear to increase the risk of an acute event," William suggested in a paper appeared in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

For patients with heart disease, almost all should be exercising and generally most should be exercising 30-40 minutes most days.

"But from a health stand-point, there is no reason to exercise much longer than that and especially not more than 60 minutes on most days," said Spanish investigators in an another report involving over 42,000 top athletes (707 women) in the same issue of the journal.