A new study reveals the vital importance of excercising and it’s very interesting.
By vital importance the researchers refer to the proven fact that people who are fit are more likely to survive their first heart attack. In add to this theory, they came to the conclusion that low fitness training may pose a risk of death following a cardiac arrest.
What are the grounds of this new theory? Well, the findings were based on medical records data gathered from 2,377 men and women with an average age of 62 by researchers at Johns Hopkins and the Henry Ford Health System.
The medical records used in this study were taken from individuals who had completed a treadmill stress test before suffering their first heart attack.
The team of experts used patients’ metabolic equivalent score (MET score), differing from 1 to 12, in order to assess the body’s energy consumption. The two energy consumptions situations were: one, for when the individual is at rest and the other one, for when the individual is participating in physical activity.
Even though this way of measuring might not be the ideal measure of energy, the higher the MET score, the fitter an individual is considered to be. Therefore, the results show that if a patient presented a high MET score, the level of fitness was as high as that score or even higher.
All in all, as a conclusion of this study, the researchers noticed that a good fitnness score implies a much lower risk of death after a first heart attack.
After putting together all the data and figuring out the results, the team declared that their research had also limitations, such as not looking into the sevrity of the heart attacks as being a factor in the rate of survivals.
However, the interesting thing about this theory is that this is the first time an association has been made between the level of fitness and survival rate after a first heart attack.
Knowing all the facts that prove that the study is right, what is there left to do? Doctors have analyzed this questions.
Clinton Brawner, physiologist and researcher at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, US firmly sustains that doctors working with patients who have cardiovascular risk factors should adivse their patients to work out more often.
When being questioned how he would advise a patient, Clinton Brawner answered that the solution is being straightforward: ‘You need to start an exercise programme now to improve your fitness and chances of survival, should you experience a heart attack.’
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