The American Heart Association (AHA) lists four major risk factors for developing coronary artery disease: smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol levels, and lack of regular exercise. In other words, even if you don’t smoke and have acceptable blood pressure and cholesterol levels, you’re still at an increased risk for heart disease if you’re sedentary.
The reason why running and other aerobic exercise dramatically reduce your risk for heart disease isn’t difficult to discern. As your aerobic capacity increases, your heart becomes more efficient and powerful. By stressing it for a short time at least a few times a week, you lessen the stress on it all the rest of the time. Running also works to lower your other risk factors. Running helps to prevent or delay the development of high blood pressure, and it helps to control it in people who have a genetic predisposition to the condition.
Running also helps to lower your overall blood cholesterol level, and running is one of the greatest ways to quit smoking. In other words, if you start running, you not only remove one of the major risks for developing heart disease (being sedentary), but you also go a long way toward eliminating the others.
To top it all off, running can also help with what the AHA identifies as contributing factors toward heart disease, including obesity, stress, and diabetes. No wonder that one famous study of Harvard alumni, led by Ralph Paffenbarger, Ph.D., found that those who burned at least 2,000 calories a week in vigorous exercise (about 20 miles a week) were 64 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack than their sedentary contemporaries.
The reason why running and other aerobic exercise dramatically reduce your risk for heart disease isn’t difficult to discern. As your aerobic capacity increases, your heart becomes more efficient and powerful. By stressing it for a short time at least a few times a week, you lessen the stress on it all the rest of the time. Running also works to lower your other risk factors. Running helps to prevent or delay the development of high blood pressure, and it helps to control it in people who have a genetic predisposition to the condition.
Running also helps to lower your overall blood cholesterol level, and running is one of the greatest ways to quit smoking. In other words, if you start running, you not only remove one of the major risks for developing heart disease (being sedentary), but you also go a long way toward eliminating the others.
To top it all off, running can also help with what the AHA identifies as contributing factors toward heart disease, including obesity, stress, and diabetes. No wonder that one famous study of Harvard alumni, led by Ralph Paffenbarger, Ph.D., found that those who burned at least 2,000 calories a week in vigorous exercise (about 20 miles a week) were 64 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack than their sedentary contemporaries.
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