No doubt about it, your heart is one of the most important organs in your body. Keeping it healthy, or improving the condition of a diseased heart are always top priorities in medicine.
At the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, research confirmed the benefits to the heart of a lifetime of exercise, while another study investigated an intriguing treatment for hearts that aren’t so healthy.
Let’s start off talking about the healthy hearts and how to keep yours that way. It seems there is a reward for a lifetime of fitness – as a senior your heart will hold onto more youthful characteristics than aging hearts typically do.
The study involved healthy subjects over 65 free of chronic diseases (things like high blood pressure or diabetes) who’d been recruited from a project known as the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study that called for participants to keep track of their weekly activity over a period of 15-25 years.
Upon joining the new study the subjects took cardiopulmonary stress tests, had ultrasounds of the heart and blood vessels as well as an echocardiogram, all so the team could get a clear picture of the health of the subjects’ hearts.
Exercise was measured by the number of days each week the person participated in exercise training.
Here’s what the team found: the more exercise a subject had done over the years, the more likely they were to have held onto the youthful characteristics of their hearts.
Those who exercised 4 to 5 times a week over a lifetime had about 54% of the benefits seen in “master” athletes. Those who exercised 2 to 3 times per week saw significant benefit as well – an impressive 42%.
Earlier work had identified those who could be considered “master” athletes – seniors who had exercised 6 to 7 days a week over the preceding 15-25 year period were able to preserve 100% of the youthful characteristics of their heart – they had hearts to equal to those of 30 year olds.
Now to the hearts in need of help. The Orlando, Florida meeting of the American Heart Association also saw the presentation of some promising new research that found stem cell therapy improves heart function, ability to exercise and overall outcomes in patients with severely enlarged hearts.
In this work, patients underwent a procedure where bone marrow derived stem cells were delivered to the injured part of their heart. Measurements of the patients’ heart dimension and function, exercise capacity and markers of heart failure were taken before the procedure and every 3 months following the stem cell therapy.
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The Latest News In Heart Health Continued…
One year later, the survival of those treated with stem cells was 93%, while it was 70% for patients who didn’t have the stem cell therapy.
The subjects who did have the stem cell treatment also had better heart function, increased capacity to exercise and a reduction in the markers for heart failure progression. All encouraging signs to be sure.
Of course these results are preliminary, so further study to confirm them will be needed before this therapy becomes widely available.
The good news is that the findings do suggest that stem cell therapy may be a solid, viable treatment option for those who have advanced heart enlargement due to dilated cardiomyopathy. Certainly something to discuss with your healthcare team if you, or someone you love, has this condition.
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