Your heart is a muscle, and like other muscles in your body, it gets weaker as you age unless you exercise to strengthen it. Exercise directly affects your likelihood of developing heart disease and, at the same time, improves other risk factors such as cholesterol (
51), blood pressure (52), weight (53), and diabetes (55). Work up to doing thirty to sixty minutes of exercise (aerobic and strength) on most days of the week. Can’t squeeze that much into a single session? Research shows you’ll still reap heart benefits by breaking up your activity into ten-minute bursts throughout the day. By making physical activity a lifelong habit, you can stave off future heart problems and keep your heart young, healthy, and functioning its best for years to come.
There’s a reason aerobic exercise is often referred to as “cardio.” Aerobic exercise dilates your blood vessels and keeps them flexible, combating age-related stiffening, improving blood flow, and making it easier for your heart to pump blood throughout your body. Any kind of activity that raises your heart rate is good—dancing, rowing, skating, tennis, basketball, jogging, skiing, and cycling, to name a few—but walking is perhaps the most popular. Walking is easy and inexpensive, and you can adjust your speed to your fitness level. A 2002 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that brisk walking for just two and a half hours a week cuts your risk of heart attack and stroke by nearly a third. And in this case, more is better—exercising five hours a week slashes your risk in half!
Exercise can also help you recover from heart trouble and reduce the risk of further problems. A 2004 study in the journal Circulation followed a group of one hundred men diagnosed with heart disease. Researchers directed some of them to do twenty minutes of cycling per day, and the others received an angioplasty (surgery to clear a blocked artery and prop it open with a tube called a stent). The exercise group had a 90 percent chance of being free of heart problems one year later, compared to only 70 percent of those who got the procedure. What’s more, the exercise group had fewer trips to the hospital and cut their treatment costs in half.
Convinced you should lace up your sneakers? Pick up the pace for better heart health; to get the cardiovascular benefits of exercise, you want to reach 65 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. To find that range, subtract your age from 220. Next, multiply the answer first by 0.65 and then by 0.85 to get the bottom and top numbers you should aim for. Track your pulse using a heart rate monitor or by stopping to check periodically (press your fingers against the artery on the side of your neck under your jaw and count the number of beats for six seconds, then multiply that number by ten). A simpler way is to perform the “talk test.” If your breathing is somewhat hard while you’re exercising but you can talk without gasping for air, you’re in the target zone. Always end your workout with a cooldown, gradually slowing your pace until your heart rate falls below 65 percent of your maximum, to prevent a dangerous drop in blood pressure.
Strength training also keeps blood vessels young and flexible while increasing blood flow. It can help your heart work more efficiently and reduce cardiovascular risk factors as well. A 2009 study found that patients with mild heart failure who did strength training three times a week for eight weeks improved several markers of heart function compared to those who received standard care. And researchers at the University of Maryland found that regular strength training reduces your resting blood pressure over time.
Since resistance training can spike your blood pressure while you’re performing the exercises, if you have hypertension or are at risk for heart problems, check with your doctor before starting a strength program. Some research indicates that training at a low intensity (40 to 60 percent of your maximum capability) with more repetitions only modestly raises blood pressure while working out. For most people, with or without cardiovascular disease, the benefits of strength training far outweigh the risks.
