Lower Heart Failure Risk with Exercise

Routine physical activity may help lower a person’s risk of developing heart failure, with more activity equating to a greater protective effect. Kasper Andersen, from Uppsala University (Sweden), and colleagues studied 39,805 men and women, ages 20 to 90 years old, without heart failure at the study’s start 1997. Researchers assessed subjects for their total- and leisure time activity at the beginning of the study and followed them to see how this correlated to future subsequent risk of developing heart failure. The team observed that the more active a person was, the lower their risk for heart failure.  Specifically, the group with the highest leisure time activity (more than one hour of moderate or half an hour of vigorous physical activity a day) had a 46% lower risk of developing heart failure. The study authors write that:  “Leisure-time physical activity was inversely related to risk of developing heart failure in a dose-response fashion.”