Physical Activity with Cardiovascular Disease

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Introduction to physical activity with cardiovascular disease
Why is physical activity important?
Health benefits of physical activity
How much physical activity is enough?
Who should engage in physical activity?

Introduction to physical activity with cardiovascular disease

Virtual Medical Centre Video

Maintaining appropriate levels of physical activity with cardiovascular disease is now thought to be very important. We now know that people who take up regular physical activity after an initial cardiac event (such as a heart attack), and who have stable disease symptoms, have a 31% lower risk of experiencing another, fatal cardiac event - when compared to those people who don't engage in regular physical activity. New recommendations from the National Heart Foundation of Australia have recently become available, suggesting how much and what kind of exercise might be most helpful for these people. Old advice to 'take it easy' has gone out the window in favour of new recommendations to 'get physical - in a moderate way'!

Why is physical activity important?

Physical activity with cardiovascular disease is important because cardiovascular disease is important. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Australia. This includes diseases such as heart attack and stroke. While not all of the factors that put people at risk of CVD can be helped - such things as a family history of the disease - physical activity can be changed, and is second in importance only to smoking on the list of things we can change. This makes exercise and physical activity very important if we want to reduce the number of people dying from CVD. But despite much public and media attention, more than half the adult Australian population still don't do enough exercise to receive any health benefits.

The problem of insufficient physical activity is likely to be even worse for those people who already have existing cardiovascular disease. This may be partly because they are simply continuing with the sort of lifestyle that contributed to their developing the disease in the first place. However, it may also be because of some past confusion about whether or not exercise is good for people with known CVD. Many people may have first experienced symptoms while exercising or being otherwise stressed, and are naturally cautious about any future exercise. New research, however, has shown that exercise in this group is not only possible, but very important for improving people's health. Even better, we know that the amount of activity required to attain health benefits is achievable.

Health benefits of physical activity

Improved prognosis - longer lives troubled by fewer symptoms;
Improvement in many of the risk factors that we know may lead to worsening of CVD (lower blood pressures, better blood lipids and cholesterols, improved insulin resistance and glucose intolerance - which is to say improvement in diabetic health - and less obesity);
Less angina (cardiac chest pain); and
Possibly a reduction in the occurrence of depression following a heart attack.

How much physical activity is enough?

Aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate activity on most days of the week. This is the same amount of exercise that every healthy adult needs.
The exercise doesn't have to be done all at once. Try three lots of 10 minutes every day instead - it's just as good for you as 30 minutes at once, and will be much easier to start with.

Who should engage in physical activity?

Everybody! Young or old, male or female, everyone needs to be physically active.
You are never too old to start exercise. The rate of CVD is much higher in older Australians, so it is even more important that these groups of people keep active.

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