Exercise preserves, builds heart muscle

Consistent lifelong exercise preserves heart muscle in the elderly to
levels that match or even exceed that of healthy young sedentary
people, a surprising finding that underscores the value of regular
exercise training, according to a new study. The first study to
evaluate the effects of varying levels of lifelong exercise on heart
mass was presented on Saturday at the annual scientific meeting of the
American College of Cardiology in New Orleans .
It suggested that physical activitypreserves the heart's youthful
elasticity, showing that when people were sedentary, the mass of their
hearts shrunk with each passing decade .
By contrast, elderly people with adocumented history of exercisingsix
to seven times a week throughout adulthood not only kept their heart
mass, but built upon it -- having heart masses greater than sedentary
healthy adults aged 25 to 34 .
" One thing that characterizes theaging process by itself is the loss
of muscle mass, particularly skeletal muscle," said Dr. Paul Bhella, a
researcher from John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas who
presented the study at the conference .
" But we are showing that this process is not unique to skeletal
muscle, it also happens in cardiacmuscle," he said. "A heart
musclethat atrophies is weaker ."
The study enrolled 121 healthy people with no history of heart
disease. Fifty nine were sedentarysubjects recruited from the
DallasHeart Study, a large multiethnic sample of Dallas County
residents .
Some 62 lifelong exercisers, all over age 65, were recruited mainly
from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, which had documented
their exercise habitsover a period of 25 years .
In the new study, exercise was assessed by the number of aerobic
exercise sessions per week, rather than intensity or duration.
Subjects were broken down into four groups: non-exercisers; casual
exercisers (two to three times a week); committed exercisers (four to
five times a week) and master athletes (six to seven times a week) .
Heart mass measurements, takenusing MRIs, showed that sedentary
subjects had diminished heart mass as they aged, while lifelong
exercisers had heart mass expansion with increasing frequency of
exercise .
" The data suggest that if we can identify people in middle age, in
the 45 to 60 year range, and get them to exercise four to five times a
week, this may go a very long way in preventing some of the major
heart conditions of old age, including heart failure," said Benjamin
Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who
headed the study .
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