Moving More Made Easy: Everyday Activities For A Healthy Heart

This is one of four videos in the Be Well Heart Health series. To see them all, consider subscribing to ideastream's YouTube channel. 

Ever since I got my first job in an office, I’ve had this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me to get up and move more. But do I listen to it? Most of the time, I hate to admit, I don’t. And it’s not like I didn’t know that all this sitting around wasn’t good for me. But recently I learned just how bad it really is.

-To see how I enlisted a personal trainer help me and two colleagues learn some unintimidating ways to get moving, watch the video above. -

When I started doing research for this series on heart health, I learned that a sedentary lifestyle is actually one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease. And according to the World Health Organization, heart disease is the biggest killer in the world. More people die of heart disease every year worldwide than from any other cause.

The other side of the coin is also true: People who exercise more have a lower risk of heart disease. According to a 2016 review in the World Journal of Cardiology, “Three-quarters of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases could be prevented with adequate changes in lifestyle, including increased daily physical activity.”

I spoke with Dr. Deborah Kwon, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, who told me that exercising more doesn’t have to involve wearing workout clothes or going to the gym. Instead, she said the key is to make lifestyle changes that add up to more physical activity throughout the day.

Major medical groups and organizations have documented the enormous impact there would be on the healthcare system if people just started exercising more, according to Dr. Jonathan Meyer. Or started exercising at all. That’s because the greatest gains in health outcomes are seen when sedentary people take that first step to becoming moderately active, and people can see health benefits even if they wait until midlife to exercise more, Dr. Meyer said. 

But what does it mean to be ‘moderately active’?

The American Heart Association says that to keep our hearts healthy, adults should get a minimum of 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise, like walking or easy biking. That breaks down to 30 minutes/ 5 days a week. If you choose more vigorous forms of exercise, like running or speed walking, you can meet the minimum recommendation in 75 minutes a week, or 25 minutes/ 3 days a week.

Source: American Heart Association

Experts say both moderate and vigorous activities can provide great benefits. A recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine showed that taking regular walks at anything faster than a slow pace could reduce your risk of dying from any cause, including heart disease, by 20 percent or more.

For people who want to become less sedentary, Dr. Kwon suggests getting up and walking around every couple of hours at work, and engaging in more active leisure pastimes instead of sedentary ones.

“Spending thirty minutes at the gym but being sedentary the rest of the day is not as good as being constantly on the move,” she said.

And if you don’t think you have time to move more during a busy workday?

Kwon’s response: “Get a desk cycle!”

-Dr. Kwon was kind enough to lend me her desk cycle for my project; to see it in action, click the video above.-

While the greatest reductions in mortality occur when sedentary people become moderately active, when it comes to exercise, more actually is better. Another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that people with higher exercise capacity had a reduced risk of dying from any cause, despite having other risk factors. In other words, a person’s fitness level was a more important predictor of death than established risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes.

Relative Risks of Death from Any Cause Among Subjects with Various Risk Factors. MET refers to ‘metabolic equivalents’, which is a measure of peak exercise capacity. The darker bars represent higher exercise capacity. Source: NEJM.

The bottom line is that exercise is preventative medicine. The old adage that says, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” seems to apply when it comes to exercise.