Step 5: Exercise

Just Move It

Too Many Of Us Miss Out on Exercise Benefits

Exercise causes your skin to flush, your heart to race, you to get sweaty and feel short of breath. It must be an allergic reaction, right? It’s actually very similar to the reaction I see in my kids when I ask them to mow the lawn, except I hear words like “why?” and “not fair!”

Current guidelines suggest a weekly goal of 75 minutes of vigorous activity or 150 minutes of moderate activity. However, only 33% of people achieve this weekly. Even worse, only 5.4% of heart attack patients complete cardiac rehab – a lifesaving medicine if there ever was one.

Exercise Is Medicine

Of course exercise is NOT dangerous. People who regularly exercise live on average six years longer than people who don’t. In fact, the distance one can walk in six minutes is one of the most powerful predictors of heart attack, heart failure and time to death.

Exercise Delays The Aging Process

The ends of our DNA strands have protective “caps” called telomeres. The longer these telomeres are, the longer one lives. One insightful study showed that the more sedentary the individual, the more likely they were to have shorter telomeres.

Likewise, the age of our blood vessels can be determined by the amount of vessel wall calcium. One study looking at the amount of calcium in blood vessels has shown that the more sitting time during the day, the older one’s blood vessels become.

Couch Potatoes Have More Heart Attacks

Said one couch potato: “I never thought I’d be the type of person who would get up early in the morning to exercise. I was right.” Actually, it does beg the question: how did potatoes get such a lazy reputation? Regardless, one study of over 150 thousand people followed for nine years showed that the more couch “potato-ish” someone was, the more likely they were to have a heart attack.

Exercise Prevents Heart Attacks

The data that exercise prevents heart attacks is overwhelming. In fact, NOT regularly exercising has been shown to be as dangerous to the heart as having untreated high blood pressure. This same study showed that regular running reduces your chance of a heart attack by 45%. In newly diagnosed diabetics, one heart attack in every eight people was prevented by eating a heart healthy diet and doing 150 minutes of vigorous exercise weekly. In folks who’ve had a heart attack, regular exercise is as effective at preventing another heart attack as the best medicines we have such as statins, aspirin, and blood pressure medications.

Exercise Has Other Heart Benefits

Regular physical activity has been shown to delay the normal aging processes that cause heart stiffness which then causes shortness of breath and fluid retention. Even walking or biking 20 minutes a day reduces your chances of developing heart failure and atrial fibrillation.

Moderate Activities List

Brisk Walking (1 mile every 20 minutes)
Ballroom Dancing
Bicycling <10mph
Water Aerobics
Gardening
Housework/Chores
Doubles Tennis

Vigorous Activities List

Speed walking, jogging, running
Swimming laps
Singles Tennis
Disco Dancing
Bicycling >10mph
Jumping Rope
Heavy gardening (digging)
Uphill Walking

Good Rule: Vigorous exercise is any activity in which you can’t speak a full sentence without needing to take a breath.

Even Small Doses Are Worth Taking

You don’t (and shouldn’t) have to be a marathon runner to get the benefit of exercise. Even an hour of jogging in a week caused people to live longer – that’s doing vigorous activity for ONLY nine minutes a day.

One Idea To Get Moving

Wear a pedometer. Simply putting one on has shown to increase walking distance by a mile more every day. (I’m not a fan of cheating but for those of you who compete with friends on daily step counts, I’ve heard you can throw the pedometer in the dryer before you leave the house and start out the day with 4,000 steps.)

Born To Walk

I gave up running in my 20’s – too many injuries and now my knees are 30 years older than the rest of me. Does walking give you the same heart protective benefits of running? One study says yes – it just takes you twice as long to achieve the same results. So walking 20 minutes is as good at preventing a heart attack as 10 minutes of jogging.

The “Right Amount” of Aerobic Activity

Here’s the great news: The “right” amount of VIGOROUS exercise to prevent a heart attack seems to be exercising about three times a week for a weekly total of about 1 to 2 hours as seen in these studies here and here.

You Really Can Do Too Much Exercise

Unless you’re training for a gold medal, there’s really not much more benefit of exercising beyond that to prevent a heart attack. For a prior post on the possible harmful heart effects of too much exercise, go here. One Danish study showed that those who exercised more than four or more times per week benefited less than those who ran three times a week. Women who do daily, vigorous exercise are actually at a higher risk of getting heart attacks, strokes and blood clots compared to those who exercise three times weekly.

Heart Attack Patients Should NOT Do Daily Vigorous Exercise

You only get so many heart beats in your life, so don’t waste them on too much exercise. Heart attack patients who exercised vigorously every day were twice as likely to have a heart attack as those who exercised 3-4x’s/week. Running an average of more than 4.4 miles/day made one more likely to have another heart attack.

Strength Training Also Prevents Heart Attacks

If all you did was strength train, you would also prevent heart attacks. One study showed that adding strength training to your exercise is better at preventing heart disease than doing say jogging alone. A recent study even suggests that strength training may be MORE effective at reducing heart disease risk factors than walking or cycling.

The “Right Amount” Of Strength Training

Strength training 1 to 3 times a week for about 60 total weekly minutes significantly reduces heart attacks. More than that did not seem to be any more effective. Another study also showed a similar finding that two hours of strength training weekly was not better at preventing heart attacks than lifting for less than two hours.

One Can Probably Do Too Much Weight Lifting

I’m often accused of looking like I do too much weight lifting by people who have taken a lot of sedatives or are hallucinating. That being said, doing over 2.5 hours a week of strength training has been associated with more heart attacks.

My Exercise Program (Yes, you too can look as weak as me doing this 2 to 3 times a week!)

“A” Day:

30 minutes elliptical