Exercising benefits people with heart disease more than healthy people: Study

People with heart or blood vessel problems benefit more from having a physically active lifestyle than people without cardiovascular disease (CVD), suggests a new study.

The study published in the 'European Heart Journal' was presented at the 'ESC Congress 2019 and World Congress of Cardiology.'

Increased physical activity reduced the risk of dying during a six-year follow-up period for people with and without CVD, but the researchers found the greatest reduction in risk was in people with CVD and this continued to reduce the more exercise they did.

Researchers led by Dr Sang-Woo Jeong, a cardiologist at Seoul National University (Seoul, Korea), looked at data from a total of 441,798 people enrolled in the Korean National Health Insurance Services Health Screening Cohort.

 

The participants were aged over 40 years, and the average age was 60. A total of 131,558 had CVD and 310,240 did not; 53.5 per cent were men. The participants were followed for nearly six years..

The survey on physical activity asked them to remember how much physical activity they had undertaken in the past seven days and this information was converted into units of metabolic equivalent task (MET) minutes per week (MET-mins/week).

By the end of the follow-up period, the researchers found that people with CVD benefited more from physical exercise than did those without CVD; for every 500 MET-mins/week the risk of death was reduced by 14 per cent and 7 per cent respectively.

The risk of death among the totally sedentary was 27 per cent higher than among those who performed the most physical activity (1500 MET-mins/week or more).

It fell to an 8 per cent increased risk for those doing 0-499 MET-mins/week of exercise and after that the reduction in risk was much smaller and levelled out above 1000 MET-mins/week.

Among people with CVD, although the greatest benefit was seen in those who did 0-499 MET-mins/week, the reduction in the risk of death continued to improve beyond 500 MET-mins/week.

Compared to people without CVD who did the most exercise, the increased risk was 87 per cent and 45 per cent for people with CVD who had a totally sedentary lifestyle and for those who did 0-499 MET-mins/week, respectively. Among people with CVD who did 1000 MET-mins/week or more of physical activity, the risk of death fell further to a 14 per cent increased risk.

"Doctors should emphasise the importance of a physically active lifestyle for patients with cardiovascular disease. They should be encouraged to maintain as much physical activity as possible," said Dr Si-Hyuck Kang study's co-author.