Sustained physical exercise prevents heart failure, research shows

• Prolonged and sustained endurance training prevents stiffening of the heart, a condition associated with the onset of heart failure, according to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
• The researchers also report that a sedentary lifestyle, in addition to aging, puts older people at risk for heart failure, the leading cause of hospitalizations for patients over 65 and a condition that affects eight out of every 1,000 people older than 70.
• "It appears that lifelong exercise training completely prevented the stiffening of the heart muscle that has been thought to be an inevitable consequence of aging.
• We found that it is aging in addition to being sedentary," said Dr. Benjamin Levine, professor of internal medicine and senior author of the study.
• "If people can train and sustain it, a huge impact will be made on one of the biggest scourges of the elderly, which is heart failure with a normal ejection fraction, also called 'diastolic heart failure'.
• The overall health of the population would radically improve if a larger number of people would make exercise a part of their daily life."
• The researchers measured the function and compliance of the left ventricle (the heart's main pumping chamber) in the study participants.
• Twelve healthy but sedentary seniors (all about 70 years old), 12 Masters athletes (average age of 68) and 14 young, sedentary controls, (average age of 29) were tested.
• Sedentary participants had not engaged in regular endurance exercise throughout their life.
• The researchers tested whether left ventricular compliance decreased with aging alone, or if physical inactivity contributed equally to this process.
• A sedentary lifestyle is detrimental to one's health, but starting and sticking with an endurance-training program plays a major role in reversing the damage done to the heart, even if that program is initiated later in life, he added.