Heart

Forty not Too Old or Too Late to Start Endurance Training

Sports.Shoes.RunningWe have all heard the saying, “life begins at 40.” Now, a new study suggests that endurance exercise can, too, while still providing the same heart benefits as it would if started before the age of 30.

The research team, including David Matelot of the Inserm 1099 unit at the University of Rennes in France, recently presented their findings at the EuroPRevent Congress in the Netherlands.

For their study, they assessed 40 healthy men from France aged between 55 and 70 years old. All participants were split into groups dependent on their levels of exercise and the age at which they began.

This resulted in three groups; one group had never exercised more than 2 hours a week throughout their lifetime, another group exercised at least 7 hours a week over 5 years and started before the age of 30, while the third group exercised at least 7 hours a week and started after the age of 40. Exercise in all groups involved either running or cycling.

From echocardiography results, the team found that the left ventricle and both atria in the heart were bigger in the two exercising groups, compared with the non-exercising group. The non-exercising group also had much thicker heart vessel walls than the exercising groups.

“Despite biological changes with age, the heart still seems – even at the age of 40 – amenable to modification by endurance training. Starting at the age of 40 does not seem to impair the cardiac benefits. However, endurance training is also beneficial for bone density, for muscle mass, for oxidative stress. And these benefits are known to be greater if training was started early in life.”, Matelot says.

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Source: Medical News Today.

Unique Compounds in Oats Help Protect the Heart

Body.Heart1Ample evidence has been published that demonstrates that a diet abundant in whole grains associates with a reduced risk of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease. Most of the benefits have been attributed to the relatively high fiber, vitamin, mineral and phytochemical content of whole grains. Notably, the soluble fiber beta-glucan found in oats has been recognized for its ability to lower both total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C).

Unique compound found in oats – avenanthramides – may play an important role in protecting the heart. Oliver Chen, from Tufts University (Massachusetts, USA), reports that avenanthramides exert antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that likely contribute to the atheroprotection of oats. Further, Mohsen Meydani, from Tufts University (Massachusetts, USA), revealed that oat avenanthramides suppress the production of inflammatory cytokines associated with fatty streak formation in the arteries. In addition, oat avenanthramides appear to repress the process associated with the development of atherosclerosis.

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Source: WorldHealth.net.

Lifestyle Interventions Such as Weight Loss And Exercise Reduce Risk of Death From Cardiovascular Diseases

Body.WeightLoss.TipsMany research studies have shown that lifestyle interventions, such as exercise programmes or weight loss, in people with impaired glucose tolerance (those at high risk of diabetes) can prevent progression to overt type 2 diabetes.

The risk of death from all-causes and cardiovascular diseases among people with type 2 diabetes is more than twice that of people of a similar age without diabetes. Logically, if lifestyle interventions reduce the risk of diabetes they should also reduce the excess risk of death, particularly from cardiovascular disease. However, without proof that lifestyle interventions will lead long-term health benefits such as reducing death rates in high-risk people, it is difficult for doctors to recommend it to their patients as an effective preventive therapy.

In new research published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, Professor Guangwei Li of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing, China, and colleagues, present the results from the 23-year follow-up of the Da Qing Diabetes Prevention Study, a randomized controlled trial, which showed that people in China with impaired glucose tolerance randomized to lifestyle interventions had significantly reduced death rates from cardiovascular disease and all-causes, compared to those patients randomized to the control arm.

The investigators enrolled 438 patients assigned to intervention clinics, and 138 patients were assigned to control clinics. The study intervention lasted for 6 years, and patients were then followed up for 23 years. At the end of the follow-up period, cumulative incidence of death from cardiovascular disease was 11.9% in the lifestyle intervention group, versus 19.6% in the control group, and death from all causes was 28.1% in the lifestyle group versus 38.4% in the control group. The difference between groups for both outcomes was statistically significant.

Source: Medical News Today.

Why Dark Chocolate is Good for Your Heart

Food.Chocolate.DarkIt might seem too good to be true, but dark chocolate is good for you and scientists now know why. Dark chocolate helps restore flexibility to arteries while also preventing white blood cells from sticking to the walls of blood vessels. Both arterial stiffness and white blood cell adhesion are known factors that play a significant role in atherosclerosis. What’s more, the scientists also found that increasing the flavanol content of dark chocolate did not change this effect.

“The effect that dark chocolate has on our bodies is encouraging not only because it allows us to indulge with less guilt, but also because it could lead the way to therapies that do the same thing as dark chocolate but with better and more consistent results,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “Until the ‘dark chocolate drug’ is developed, however, we’ll just have to make do with what nature has given us!”

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Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. “Why dark chocolate is good for your heart.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 February 2014.