It's never too late to start exercise
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-07-18 09:12
It's never too late for couch potatoes to start exercising and cut their risk
of heart disease, according to research on Tuesday.
Neither does it have to be strenuous activity - even just walking can make a
difference.
"You don't have to go to the gym. Just get off the couch," said Dr Dietrich
Rothenbacher of the University of Heidelberg in Germany. "It is never too late
to start exercising," he told Reuters.
The researchers studied the impact of physical activity on patients with
coronary heart disease (CHD) and a group of healthy volunteers of the same age
and sex.
They found that people who exercised throughout their lives had the lowest
risk of the illness, which is one of the biggest killers in industrialised
countries.
"But we also found that people who changed their physical activity patterns
in late adult life also reduced their risk for coronary heart disease," added
Rothenbacher, an epidemiologist at the university.
The scientists re-evaluated data they had previously collected on patients
and volunteers ranging in age from 40 to 68 who had been questioned about their
habits and exercise patterns.
Smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure, which are risk factors for heart
disease, were more common in the patients with the illness than in the healthy
volunteers.
People who said they had been active throughout their lives had about a 60
percent lower risk of being diagnosed with coronary heart disease.
Couch potatoes who changed their ways and began exercising after the age of
40 were about 55 percent less likely to be diagnosed with the illness than
people who had always been inactive.
"Our results suggest that a more active physical activity pattern is clearly
associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, and that changing from
a sedentary to a more physically active lifestyle even in later adulthood may
strongly decrease CHD risk," Rothenbacher said in the study published in the
journal Heart.
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