Stay active, eat fruit for a healthy heart

AN active, tutti frutti life spells a hearty, healthy heart.

While an apple a day can’t hurt, Swedish researchers say more than an hour of moderate exercise per day or more than a half-hour of vigorous exercise can keep the doctor away by reducing the risk of heart failure by 46 per cent.

“You do not need to run a marathon to gain the benefits of physical activity — even quite low levels of activity can give you positive effects,” says Dr Kasper Andersen, study co-author and researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Dr Andersen and his team observed the total physical activity of 39,805 healthy people aged 20 to 90 years old beginning in 1997. Participants allowed researchers to access their medical records to confirm hospitalisations, diagnoses and other factors that would affect results.

Lifestyle was self-reported and participants filled out questionnaires in which they were asked about tobacco, alcohol and medication use, in addition to both job and leisure-related physical activity.

The team found that the more active a person, the lower their risk for heart failure, and results indicate exercise is equally beneficial for men and women.

Those who exercised the most during leisure time — beyond the hour of moderate exercise or half-hour of vigorous activity prescribed in the study — were 46 per cent less likely to develop heart failure.

Casual walking was considered “light” leisure exercise, jogging or swimming was considered “moderate”, and competitive sports fell under the “heavy” category.

“Our research suggests that everyone could benefit from getting out there and moving every day,” said Dr Andersen.

The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Heart Failure.

Talking about apples, a seven-year study involving nearly half a million subjects concludes that daily fruit consumption cuts the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) by 40 per cent.

Dr Huaidong Du from Oxford University, Britain, presented the study at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Barcelona recently.

Participants hailed from the China Kadoorie Biobank, which covers 10 areas of China. Their sample totalled 451,681 participants with no history of CVD and who were not taking medication for hypertension.

Subjects’ fruit consumption habits were recorded and categorised as the following: never, monthly, one to three days per week, four to six days per week, or daily.

About 18 per cent of participants consumed fruit daily and 6.3 per cent never consumed fruit, with the average daily amount being 1.5 portions, about 150g.

Overall risk of CVD was reduced by 25-40 per cent for those who ate fruit daily.

Eating fruit also lowers blood pressure, according to the study.

Daily fruit consumption was associated with a 3.4 mmHg lower systolic blood pressure and a 4.1 mmHg lower diastolic blood pressure by comparison to fruit abstainers. A separate analysis looked at overall mortality relative to fruit consumption in 61,000 patients from the China Kadoorie Biobank who had been excluded from the previous study due to having CVD or hypertension.

Among this group, daily fruit consumption reduced overall risk of death by 32 per cent by comparison to non-fruit eaters.

— AFP