14/02/2023

Happy Valentine’s to you all! It’s the official day of love, which means hearts will be racing! That is obviously a positive thing in more ways than one. It is unquestionable that the just about the best gift you can give your heart on Valentine’s and every day of the year is….. (drum roll please)  Exercise. So let’s chat about what the benefits of exercise are for the heart and how to do it on a sustained and regular basis. 

The Benefits:

Perhaps the most well known benefit from regular exercise / activity, that increase the heart rate, is the significantly lower risk of developing heart disease, having a heart attack or other heart related event, such as a stroke. This lower risk comes from the improvement in a number of health related factors, which occur when we increase our heart rate for sustained periods.

As we know the heart is a muscle, and therefore when you work it harder it adapts and becomes more efficient at pumping blood around the body. This results in a slower heart rate at rest or during lower levels of activity. In turn a slower heart rate lowers blood pressure, which is a main risk factor for heart disease, heart attack or stroke. 

Inflammation is another risk factor for the aforementioned conditions. Exercise that increases the heart rate targets inflammation in two ways. Firstly, exercise reduces inflammation through various hormone responses. Secondly, we know that exercise is fundamental in maintaining a healthy body weight, and that excess body fat is strongly linked to increased inflammation in the body. 

Research has also shown that exercise increases the so called “good” cholesterol (high-density lipoproteins – HDL), and assists with the control of triglycerides (type of fat) which means a lower risk of plaque build up in the arteries. In addition, exercise reduces the risk of developing diabetes by supporting the control of blood sugars. As diabetes is known to contribute to the risk of developing heart disease, there is a double benefit by ensuring blood sugars are controlled through heart rate elevating activity. 

There are of course many other benefits directly and indirectly to the heart from exercise, but I hope this gives you a good idea of some of the reasons why we should aim to prioritise exercise in our lives. 

Ideas on How to Approach Sustained, Regular Exercise:

Before we delve into what the guidelines advise on how much, how often, how intense etc. to exercise, I think it’s vital to consider some basics or the practicalities of life, lets say. Firstly, in order to achieve the above benefits, exercise should be sustained over years and years rather than a few weeks or months. Therefore it must be enjoyable and feasible within your life’s circumstances. 

Whenever I have a conversation with somebody about their activity levels enjoyment and feasibility are the areas I aim to discuss. If you don’t like running or swimming because they’re more solitary, than what about an exercise class, 5 aside football, tennis or golf. If you feel you can only manage 45 minutes 3 times a week for the gym, but the nearest one is half an hour away, then what about investing in some weights for a home programme. 

Now onto the guidelines, which recommend 30 minutes of aerobic exercise that feels moderate in difficulty 5 days a week and 2 days a week of strength exercise that involves lifting weights for all the main muscle groups. If that amount is feasible for you, that’s fantastic! However, if it may be difficult to achieve 150 minutes of aerobic exercise and up to 60 minutes of strength exercise, you could consider some other approaches:

• Less days in the week but slightly longer times (3 days of 45-50 minutes aerobic)
• More days in the week but slightly shorter times (7 days of 15-20 minutes aerobic)
• 10 minutes everyday of 2 or 3 strength exercises

There has also been quite a bit of research suggesting that people will achieve the necessary benefits even by doing less than the recommendations, particularly if you are just starting out. So you could do 3 days of 25 minutes aerobic exercise and 2 days of 15-20 minutes of strength exercise. 

The other aspect to consider is how hard you are exercising. It’s recommended that you work to a moderate level, think of 4-6 out of 10, with 10 being the most demanding exercise. How challenging you perceive the exercise to be, has been shown to be a very good measure of your heart rate and thus how hard your heart is working. There are many versions of this scale available online, I like the one in this blog. You can and should of course work at higher ranges of intensity, but this will be for shorter periods of time, depending on what your goals are, of course. 

I hope that has given you some good food for thought on how to show your heart all the love it deserves with a good helping of exercise regularly!!

Till the next blog, stay active and stay well!

Lonan Hughes

Chartered Physiotherapist