How
to avoid a ‘Broken’ Heart
Newswise, January 16, 2012 — Joseph
Libonati, PhD,
associate professor of nursing at Penn
Nursing answer’s questions about how
exercise betters your heart health. Dr.
Libonati is a cardiac physiology expert who
focuses on heart health and hypertension.
Exactly how does exercise benefit the heart?
One way exercise benefits the heart is by
decreasing its workload. Exercise improves
the ratio between the heart’s demand for
oxygen and its supply through the coronary
arteries. With exercise, the heart gets
stronger because it gets bigger and is able
to pump more efficiently.
Exercise allows your heart to push out a
greater volume of blood with every beat and
it does so at a lower heart rate. It also
improves the blood flow to the heart by
improving the heart’s ability to have its
coronary blood vessels dilate. These changes
in parallel improve both the supply and
demand of the heart.
How does exercise lower high blood pressure?
Exercise helps lower high blood pressure by
improving the ability of your blood vessels
to dilate, making the pressure on those
vessels less. Exercise also improves your
blood sugar levels and makes you leaner;
this allows your heart to pump blood at
lower pressures, thereby making your heart
work less.
What exercise is best for the heart?
Using large muscle mass repetitively is best
for heart health. Think about the acronym
FIT:
F – Frequency
I – Intensity
T - Time
That’s the general recipe for exercise
toward a healthy heart. For frequency: You
should exercise five days a week. Find
something you like so you are more likely to
stick with it. For intensity: You should do
the talk test. If you can hold a normal
conversation with little breathing trouble
while exercising, this is the right
intensity. For time: You should exercise 30
to 60 minutes per day, and it doesn’t have
to be all at once. The important factor is
that you do as much physical activity as you
can throughout the day.
Why is exercise important as we age?
Exercise is important to maintaining healthy
bones and muscles. As we age, we start to
have smaller muscles and weaker bones.
Activities that maintain muscles and bone
mass help people age with a greater ability
to function.
Resistance training or weight training is a
good way to maintain bone mass, so making
this type of exercise part of your daily
routine is important as into your 40s and
beyond. Also, maintaining muscle mass helps
the body’s metabolism and can reduce the
risk of obesity, diabetes, and high blood
pressure.
