Too late to exercise?

• April 25, 2024

People who are obese or not in shape and who have already reached 40 or 50 years of age may think it is too late to start getting in shape, but new research revealed that doing it in middle age reduces the chances of failure cardiac in later years.

And, in addition, the risk reduction is independent of other factors such as smoking, hypertension and high cholesterol, the researchers said.

"It's never too late to get in shape," said the principal investigator, Dr. Ambarish Pandey , resident of internal medicine in the Southwestern Medical Center at the University of Texas, Dallas.

"Physical preparation is a significant risk factor for heart failure," Pandey said. "But if someone who is not fit at middle age improves their physical condition over the years, the risk of heart failure decreases."

The results of the study were presented on May 15 at the scientific meeting of the American Heart Association, in Baltimore.

Heart failure (when the heart can not pump enough blood to the rest of the body) increases as the number of people who survive heart attacks and who live longer with heart disease increases. More than 5 million Americans suffer from the disease, and the number could increase by 25% by the year 2030, according to the American Heart Association.

Heart failure is the most common cause of hospitalization and re-hospitalization in the elderly, informed the spokesman of the American Heart Association, Dr. Gregg Fonarow.

"One in five adults will suffer heart failure throughout their lives, and 670,000 men and women in the United States will suffer this year," said Fonarow, director of the Cardiomyopathy Center of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

To conduct the study, Pandey's team examined the fitness level of over 9,000 middle-aged men and women, averaging 48 years of age, and who were examined twice more with a difference of eight years.

After an 18-year follow-up, the researchers matched the results with Medicare's claims about hospitalizations for heart failure.

They found that people who were not in good physical shape at the start of the study had a higher risk of heart failure after 65 years of age; but those who improved their physical fitness on the tests had a lower risk of heart failure later on than those who continued to be without fitness.