The Essential 8

Back in 2010, the AHA released a list of seven metrics that can help individuals improve their heart health. In 2022, an eighth factor was added. Here’s a look at the complete list:

1. Not Smoking

2. Healthy Nutrition

3. Regular Physical Exercise

4. Healthy Weight

5. Normal Blood Pressure

6. Cholesterol

7. Blood Sugar Levels

8. Sufficient Sleep

A deeper dive into the data from the American Health Association found that patients with quality metrics in these categories:

• Were more likely to have improved brain function, lung function, vision, hearing, muscle strength and teeth quality compared to those with lower scores.
• Experienced lower levels of cortisol and stress, and lower frequencies of chronic diseases like cancer, COPD, pneumonia, fatty liver disease, depression, diabetes and end-stage renal disease.
• Had a higher self-reported quality of life and lower risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes.
• Experienced lower medical expenditures and non-cardiovascular disease costs.

So if you want to be healthier now and in the future, focus in on some of the controllable factors listed above. Stop smoking, watch what you eat, exercise regularly work towards an ideal weight and get regular sleep. If you focus on these factors, there’s a good chance that other metrics on that list like cholesterol, blood sugar levels and blood pressure will also begin to trend in the right direction.

A good house has a strong foundation, and a healthy body has quality metrics in the factors listed above. If you need help improving any of these factors or you want assistance overcoming a foot or ankle injury that is making it difficult to achieve some of your health-related goals, reach out to Dr. Silverman and the team at Silverman Ankle & Foot today at (770) 475-2710.

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According to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, working towards finishing that first marathon can have great health benefits to your cardiovascular health. More specifically, training for a long distance run can help to reduce arterial stiffening, which is one of the key predictors of cardiovascular events.

First Time Marathon Running Study

Starting the journey to finish your first marathon can seem like a daunting task, but if you give yourself enough time and work at your own pace, you can do it just like the 138 people in the study. None of the participants had ever completed a marathon in the past, and they all said that they were running a maximum of two hours a week prior to the study.

Each runner was advised to follow the marathon Beginner’s Training Plan put forth by organizers of the London Marathon, which each runner would eventually complete. This plan consisted of about three runs every week for 17 weeks leading up to the race. Each participant had their blood pressure and aortic stiffness measured prior to their training regimen, and they were again tested between one and three weeks after the marathon.

When researchers compared the measurements from before and after the race, they found that both blood pressure and aortic stiffness had reduced in the first-time marathon runners. Moreover, the changes in aortic stiffness equated to a four-year decrease in vascular age. The results were most notable in older male runners who had higher blood pressure at the outset, even though they were not running at a very fast speed.

Dr. Charlotte H. Manisty, senior author on the study who works at the Institute of Cardiovascular Science at University College London and Barts Heart Centre in London, United Kingdom, said it’s never too late to improve our heart health.

“Our study shows it is possible to reverse the consequences of aging on our blood vessels with real-world exercise in just 6 months,” said Dr. Manisty. “These benefits were observed in overall healthy individuals across a broad age range and their marathon times are suggestive of achievable exercise training in novice participants. [The study shows] the importance of lifestyle modifications to slow the risks associated with aging, especially as it appears to never be too late as evidenced by our older, slower runners.”

While the running certainly helped, study authors also said that participants noted that they also worked to improve their diets and sleeping habits while training for the marathon, and these changes also likely helped to improve cardiovascular health.

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According to research published in the journal Experimental Physiology, just 30 minutes of regular running on a treadmill can help reshape damaged heart tissue. Researchers say the findings suggest that exercise could be just as important as a healthy diet and controlling cholesterol for heart health.

Endurance Exercise Is Key

The study revealed that even a single session of endurance exercise – defined as activities that increase breathing and a person’s heart rate – increase the expression of genes that are used to repair damaged DNA and help remodel heart tissue.

“The genes that are important for genome stability are upregulated in the heart tissue after a single bout of endurance exercise. This may contribute to the protective effects of exercise on cardiovascular health,” said Stephen Roth, Professor at the University of Maryland in the US.

For the study, researchers tracked heart tissue growth in mice exposed to endurance exercises. When compared to control mice, researchers noted that those in the endurance group had increased levels of genome expression linked to healthy heart tissue growth. They believe the findings are similar in humans because the expression of these genes are regulated along a common pathway in both species.

Endurance Exercises to Consider

In order to reap the heart benefits of exercise, researchers said people need to focus on endurance exercises. Some common endurance exercises to consider include:

• Jogging
• Running
• Cycling
• Swimming
• Soccer/Basketball
• Elliptical Training

So if you want to do well by your heart, pick up one of these activities. Researchers said you can reap the benefits of exercise from as little as one session, but if you want those benefits to continue throughout your life, you’re going to have to stick with it. Strive for four-to-five sessions of at least 30 minutes of exercise throughout the week. And as we’ve mentioned before, if you can’t exercise that frequently, the weekend warrior approach also has benefits for you!

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An analysis published in the journal Circulation suggests that we might want to double or even quadruple that daily activity level if we want to keep our ticker at optimal health.

To conduct their study, researchers analyzed more than 12 studies involving over 370,000 men and women at various levels of physical fitness. Patients had a mean follow-up at 15 years, and over that duration they experienced 20,203 cardiac failure events. Study participants were also asked to self report their daily activities and exercise habits.

When looking at the data as a whole, researchers uncovered:

• Those who followed the “30 minutes a day” heart guidelines had “modest reductions” in heart failure risk compared to those who said they did not work out.

• Those who exercised for 1-2 hours a day had “a substantial risk reduction” of heart failure, by about 20 to 35 percent compared to those who didn’t exercise.

• Small amounts of exercise are beneficial, but more is actually better for your heart.

The study’s findings challenge the notion that a half an hour of exercise a day is the optimal amount for heart health. Instead, study authors suggest that physical activity and heart health may be “dose dependent,” meaning that more activity equals a lower risk of heart failure. They also believe larger health organizations need to recommend higher levels of daily exercise to help reduce heart disease.

“Heart failure is a big public health concern and in contrast to the dramatic reduction in coronary disease that we’ve seen in the population, the incidence of heart failure remains relatively unchanged,” said study author Jarett D. Berry.

Updated Heart Guidelines

Currently, the American Heart Association recommends that a middle-aged adult exercises for two hours and 30 minutes each week, but Berry said that number is a little low, especially if someone has a condition that heightens heart health risk. For example, a person with high blood pressure or diabetes should strive for more exercise, as those conditions increase a person’s risk for heart disease.

Optimally, a person will exercise for 5-10 hours each week, but between work, parenting and family activities, that can be unattainable. In these situations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that you strive for short, intense workouts. According to the CDC, one minute of vigorous activity is equivalent to two minutes of moderate activity.

Related source: Washington Post

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Researchers at the Duke Clinical Research Institute said that divorce may increase a person’s myocardial infarction (MI) risk, and getting remarried doesn’t always reverse the trend.

“Age-specific rates of acute MI were consistently higher in those who were divorced compared with those who were continuously married,” said Dr. Matthew E. Dupre, a sociologist at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham and researcher on the study.

For their study, researchers tracked 15,827 adults between the ages of 45 and 80 for a period of 19 years. All participants were either married or divorced at the time of the study. Researchers tracked their marital status and health records over the course of the study and found:

• For women, MI risk increased 24 percent after one divorce and increased 77 percent with two or more divorces.

• For men, MI risk only increased significantly when they had gone through two or more divorces.

• The adjusted MI risk was 35 percent higher for remarried women than continuously married women.

“The relative risks attributable to divorce were comparable in magnitude with other traditional risk factors,” like smoking and lack of exercise, the researchers wrote.

Although it’s clear that divorce has an impact on heart health, the process behind the increased MI risk is still unclear.

“The prevailing argument is that divorce has a negative impact on the economic, behavioral, and emotional well-being of individuals that reduces their ability to prevent, detect, and treat illness,” the authors wrote. “Contrary to expectations and existing literature, we found that losses of income and health insurance, and increases in depressive symptoms, alcohol use, and smoking did not account for the excess risks attributable to a history of divorce in men and women.”

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According to co-author Dr. Cynthia A. Thomson, the study proves that a well-maintained diet is key to improving heart health.

“Mean total cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol were reduced regardless of the amount of weight lost,” said Thomson. “Generally, the higher the baseline biomarker values, the greater was the reduction with weight loss.”

The study found that women who lost 10 percent of their starting body weight after 24 months of diet intervention saw improvements in their:

• LDL cholesterol

• C-reactive protein

• Insulin and triglycerides level

Of the 417 women who participated in the study, 70 percent lost at least 10 percent of their starting weight 24 months after beginning the nutritional regimen. In addition to showing improvements in their cardiometabolic measures, these women noticed a reduction in their BMI, weight, and waist circumference.

Although other studies have examined the correlation between body-mass index and heart health, few have tracked the long-term results.

“Our data extend the results from short-term weight loss trials and suggest that the magnitude of weight loss and baseline values for risk factors are associated with improvements in cardiometabolic risk factors even after 24 months,” the authors said.

Dr. Silverman comments

Theses results are encouraging, but we didn’t really need a study to tell us that a proper diet and exercise are good for your ticker. We’ve already documented how exercise can promote heart health in middle-aged men, and it’s safe to assume women would also benefit from regular exercise as well.

But a well-balanced diet is also crucial to improving hearth health. Being cognizant about food choices not only keeps your heart happy, but it lowers your risk for other ailments. As the study noted, women who lost weight and kept it off saw an improvement in their insulin production, which is key to the prevention of diabetes.

A healthy heart is a happy heart.

Related source: MedPage Today

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Keeping Your Ticker Happy

A study by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found that individuals that increased their fitness levels over an 8-year period, as well as those who continued to stay fit, reported lower rates of hospitalization for heart failure than those who had low levels of fitness.

“The risk of heart failure in your 60s and 70s is modifiable through sustained exercise beginning in midlife,” Dr. Ambarish Pandey said in an interview with MedPage Today.  “We have known for a few decades that a change in fitness is associated with a reduced risk of mortality. But no one had looked at the impact of improved fitness over time on the risk of heart failure.”

For their study, researchers ranked the fitness levels of over 9,000 participants.  Each individual was assigned a fitness level, 1 being the lowest level and 5 being the highest level of fitness.  The average age of a participant was 48 years old.

Researchers conducted an initial cardiorespiratory fitness test at the beginning of the study, and they ran a similar test about 8 years later.  After analyzing the results, researcher found:

• Participants who had a high level of fitness and maintained that level had a heart hospitalization rate of about 0.30%
• Participants who had low fitness but increased their fitness to a high level experienced a heart hospitalization rate of about 0.65%
• Those who went from high to low fitness had a rate of about 0.75%
• Those who had a low level and stayed at that level had a heart hospitalization rate of 0.83%

Pandey said the results confirmed the importance of exercise as we age.

“It’s important to realize that the benefit of reduced heart failure hospitalization comes from sustained exercise over time.”

Fitness Lowers Cancer Risk

Researchers at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas found that physical fitness in middle-aged men can reduce the risk of lung and colorectal cancer, and exercise can decrease the mortality rates for men who develop these cancers.

For their study, researchers examined 17,049 men to determine their fitness level and lung capacity.  The average age of a participant was 50 years old.  The study then looked at clinical data 20 years later to determine how many patients had developed prostate, colorectal or lung cancer, the most common cancers among U.S. men.

Researchers found that 2,332 individuals were diagnosed with prostate cancer, 276 with colorectal cancer, and 277 with lung cancer.  Over the time period, cancer was the cause of death in 347 patients.

After comparing the data to the previous fitness tests, researchers found that men in the highest quintile of fitness were significantly less likely to develop lung or colorectal cancer, although their was no difference in prostate cancer rates.

Dr. Susan Lakoswi, a researcher in the study, said the findings might impact how doctors prescribe exercise routines for patients.

“Physical activity and fitness are very different,” said Lakoski.

She also cautioned that simply because a person is not obese, doesn’t mean they are physically fit.

“Even if men are not obese, they still have an increased risk of cancer if they aren’t fit,” she said.

Dr. Silverman comments

These studies really highlight the importance of exercise and physical fitness as we age.  Workout out is really healthy for you, as it reduces your risk of heart disease and cancer development.

Now that winter is gone, I urge people to get outside and stay active.  Summer is here, which gives you less of an excuse to skip your workout.

It’s time we as a nation put down the remote and went outside.

Related source:  MedPage Today

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