Physical activity better for heart disease patients

A brand new study has found that moderate to vigorous physical activity is related to risk reductions of non-communicable diseases and mortality. The study published in the journal PLOS Medicine by Thijs Eijsvogels at Radboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands and colleagues has suggested that while risk reduction for healthy individuals plateaus at higher levels of physical activity, people with heart diseases have no upper limit of physical activity beyond which there is no further benefit.
To investigate how cardiovascular health status affects the association between physical activity and health outcomes, researchers used prospectively gathered data from the Lifelines Cohort Study; a population-based cohort of 167.729 individuals living in the Northern Netherlands.
They compared the association between physical activity and major adverse cardiovascular events as well as all-cause mortality across healthy individuals, individuals with elevated levels of cardiovascular risk factors, and individuals with cardiovascular disease.
Researchers found that increasing physical activity reduced mortality risk in all groups. In cardiovascular disease patients, the researchers found no evidence of an upper physical activity limit above which there is no further health benefit. The authors said, “These findings suggest that cardiovascular disease patients should be encouraged that ‘more is better’ in regard to physical activity. Physical activity recommendations should not follow a ‘one-guideline-fits-all’ approach but underline the need for precision medicine in which physical activity prescription may be dependent, amongst other factors, on an individual’s cardiovascular health status.”