Heart Disease; Can Exercise Help?
Coronary Heart Disease is the UK’s biggest killer and is responsible for nearly 74,000 deaths each year, around 200 deaths a day. If that wasn’t frightening enough UK citizens suffer from around 103,000 heart attacks each year. According to the British Heart Foundation there are nearly 2.3 million people currently living with the disease. The big shame is it’s preventable in some cases and I want to discuss whether exercise can help.
Firstly let’s look at the biggest causes of heart disease:
- Smoking
- Obesity
- Poor Diet
- High Cholesterol
- High Blood Pressure
- Stress
Smoking being the biggest; smokers have a 60% greater chance of dying from heart disease than non smokers. That’s a quick win right there, quit smoking and your chances of skipping HD altogether are greatly increased. Exercise has proven time and time again to reduce obesity or prevent it entirely, reduce cholesterol and blood pressure, and regular exercise is a particularly effective tool for managing stress. So with exercise and a little will power to eat clean and stop smoking you would significantly reduce your chances of developing HD.
So what about the 2.3 million people that already have HD? Can exercise be used as a potential treatment? While the vast majority of studies ‘clearly demonstrate significant clinical outcomes: reduced all-cause and cardiac mortality, non-fatal re-infarction and reduced hospitalization rates’. Some studies suggest the evidence for exercise as an effective treatment for HD are unclear and require more testing. While others suggest ‘moderate to hard exercise can induce heart deterioration or even death in extreme cases’ although typically little or no adverse affects were witnessed during tests.
So it would seem exercise is a significant preventer of HD, but must be managed much more closely alongside other lifestyle factors such as diet, stress and most importantly smoking for people that already have HD. Exercise education would play a key role: ‘findings suggest that health education improves exercise behaviour for heart disease patients. Health professionals should reinforce health education programs for them’ (I believe this is where I come in). Other benefits include increased workout frequency and reduced risk of injury. Thai Chi, Yoga, Pilates, or other forms of gentle exercise could be ideal options for HD sufferers with limited exercise tolerance, whereas hard gym sessions or competitive contact sports such as rugby and martial arts most probably are not.
References
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Ng, Siu-Man, Chong-Wen Wang, Rainbow Tin-Hung Ho, Rainbow Tin-Hung Ho, Tat-Chi Ziea, Eric Tat-Chi Ziea, J. He, et al. “Tai Chi Exercise for Patients with Heart Disease: A Systematic Review of Controlled Clinical Trials.” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 18, no. 3 (June 2012): 16–22.
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Pavy, Bruno, Régis Barbet, François Carré, Christine Champion, Marie-Christine Iliou, Patrick Jourdain, Yves Juillière, et al. “Therapeutic Education in Coronary Heart Disease: Position Paper from the Working Group of Exercise Rehabilitation and Sport (GERS) and the Therapeutic Education Commission of the French Society of Cardiology.” Archives of Cardiovascular Diseases 106, no. 12 (December 2013): 680–89. doi:10.1016/j.acvd.2013.10.002.
Takken, T., A. Giardini, T. Reybrouck, M. Gewillig, H. H. Hövels-Gürich, P. E. Longmuir, B. W. McCrindle, S. M. Paridon, and A. Hager. “Recommendations for Physical Activity, Recreation Sport, and Exercise Training in Paediatric Patients with Congenital Heart Disease: A Report from the Exercise, Basic & Translational Research Section of the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, the European Congenital Heart and Lung Exercise Group, and the Association for European Paediatric Cardiology.” European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 19, no. 5 (October 2012): 1034–65.
Tutarel, Oktay, Harald Gabriel, and Gerhard-Paul Diller. “Exercise: Friend or Foe in Adult Congenital Heart Disease?” Current Cardiology Reports 15, no. 11 (November 2013): 416. doi:10.1007/s11886-013-0416-9.
Zaidi, Abbas, and Sanjay Sharma. “Exercise and Heart Disease: From Athletes and Arrhythmias to Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and Congenital Heart Disease.” Future Cardiology 9, no. 1 (January 2013): 119–36. doi:10.2217/fca.12.81.
Zhu, Li-Xia, Shuk-Ching Ho, and Thomas K. S. Wong. “Effectiveness of Health Education Programs on Exercise Behavior among Patients with Heart Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine 6, no. 4 (November 2013): 265–301. doi:10.1111/jebm.12063.