IHRSA Heart Disease Update
Greetings!
According to a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, a speedy ticker could increase your chances of suffering a fatal heart attack. But in women, regular workouts might help keep the risk low. Based on more than 50,000 healthy adults, researchers from Norway found that with each increase of 10 beats per minute in resting heart rate, a woman’s risk of dying from a heart attack climbed by 18 percent up to the age of 70 years. For men, the risk rose by 10 percent.
In the U.S., heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women. According to Javaid Nauman of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and colleagues, their study is the first to examine the combined effect of pulse and exercise on fatal heart attacks. For the analysis, they tapped into data from a large population study in central Norway, selecting only people who did not have known heart disease.
For women whose with resting heart rate was above 100 beats per minute, the risk of a fatal heart attack increased by 42 percent as a whole, and in those younger than 70 years, it more than doubled. People who exercised, however, had a considerably lower resting heart rate than those who were more sedentary. In women, those who reported higher levels of physical activity had a lower risk of dying from heart disease, irrespective of their resting heart rate. Among the most active, even a heart rate above 87 beats per minute did not lead to a significant increase in heart attacks.
‘The most promising thing that we find is that you can keep a check on your resting heart rate by engaging in physical activity,’ Nauman, an exercise physiologist, told Reuters Health, noting that this will reduce the risk of heart attack.
