Apples for Health- Exercise benefits those with heart failure

Exercise benefits those with heart failure

BETHESDA, Md., April 8 (UPI) -- Regular exercise is safe for heart failure patients and may slightly lower their risk of death or hospitalization, U.S. researchers found.

Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, said the researchers also found that heart failure patients who add regular, moderate physical activity to standard medical therapy report a higher quality of life compared with similar patients who receive medical therapy only.

The researchers tracked 2,331 patients 82 centers in the United States, Canada and France with moderate-to-severe systolic heart failure -- average age 59 -- for up to four years. About one-half of the participants were randomly assigned to receive usual care alone, which included medical and device therapy as prescribed by their physicians and educational materials on disease management. They were also asked to engage in 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days of the week.

Compared with the usual care group, the exercise training group had slightly fewer deaths or hospitalizations from any cause.

In addition, there was no significant difference in serious adverse events between the two groups, such as an abnormal heart rhythm, hip fracture, or hospitalization related to exercise, suggesting that exercise training was well tolerated and safe.

The study is published the Journal of the American Medical Association.