Benefits Of Endurance Training

Endurance exercise and coronary heart disease

Endurance exercise is the sports therapy in cardiovascular patients and helps prevent heart disease and improves the symptoms in individuals who already have coronary heart disease.

Endurance exercise, which is also called aerobic exercise, are activities that increase heart and breathing rate. These exercises include walking, jogging, swimming, and biking. Endurance exercise keeps the heart, lung and circulatory system healthy (AHA, 2019)

Table1: shows how endurance exercise increases oxygen uptake (Vo2), heart rate, cardiac output stroke volume and blood pressure decreases. These effects are very beneficial in a patient who has heart disease

Improves coronary heart disease

In a study with 1286 participants (NCBI, 2016), participants had to perform endurance exercise at a moderate to high training intensity for 60-90 minute per week for a duration of 12 weeks. The control group did not participate in endurance exercise. The results showed that there was significant reduction in resting systolic blood pressure (MD: -3.8 mmHg, p = 0.01). Results also show that endurance exercise had positive effect on oxygen consumption (MD: 3.47 mL/kg/min, p < 0.001) and ventricular ejection fraction (MD: 2.6%, p = 0.03). During the 12 week there was other changes seen in participants such as decreased body fat by 1.4% (P<0.001) and increase in HDL cholesterol by 0.032 mmol/L−1 (P<0.05). Positive effects on these factors, due to performing endurance exercise, will reduce the symptoms of coronary heart disease.

The Aerobics Centre Longitudinal (BCMJ, 2016) study shows how runners has low risk of heart disease than non-runners. The study involved 55137 adults. The adults had to run for 2 hours and the results show that adults who run have 45% (HR 0.55; 95% CI, 0.46-0.65) lower risk of Coronary Heart disease compared to those who don’t at all.

Improvement in high blood pressure

People with High blood pressure level are at higher risk of heart disease or further damage to the heart. Endurance exercise lowers blood pressure in people with hypertension by reducing total peripheral resistance within the artery which, as a result, improves the elasticity of the smooth muscle cell in blood vessel wall (PT direct, 2019).

Medicines that is used to treat heart disease does the job by lowering blood pressure (NHS, 2017) which means endurance exercise will help individuals with heart disease. A study looked at endurance exercise on blood pressure (NCBI, 2018). The study involved 3936 participants and each one performed an endurance exercise for 4 weeks. The results show that there was a reduction in blood pressure (−6.9/−4.9) mm Hg (p<0.001) after the endurance exercise.

Another study (Hindawi, 2016) was also looking at the effect of endurance exercise on hypertensive patients. There were 112 participants involved in the study. The participants had to exercise for 30-60 minutes for 5 days a week. The duration of the study was 8 weeks. The control group did not participate in exercise. The results show that there was a decrease in blood pressure, 5.38 mmHg (95% CI: −2.99 to −7.77) in participants.

Strengthens the Heart Muscle

Endurance exercise helps individuals who had heart attack to maintain a good quality of life (springer. Link, 2011). This is because endurance exercise has the potential to partially reverse the damage that coronary heart disease has done to cardiac, vascular and skeletal muscle. Endurance exercise increases aerobic power and has positive effect on cardiovascular system.

Studies has shown (NCBI, 2018) that endurance exercise causes the heart muscle to adapt to the pressure overload and volume overload by increasing the ventricular wall thickness. This is very beneficial for patients with heart disease which, overtime, will help them easily carry out their daily activities.

Written by: Sadaf Akbari (17821282)

 References:

  1. The American Heart Association (2018). Endurance Exercise (aerobic). [online]. Available at: https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/fitness-basics/endurance-exercise-aerobic [Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
  2. Chen YC1, Tsai JC2, Liou YM3, Chan P4. (2017). Effectiveness of endurance exercise training in patients with coronary artery disease: A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. [online]. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28565969 : [Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
  3. Andrea K.Y. Lee, Barbara N. Morrison, Brett Heilbron,  Andrew D. Krahn, . (2016). The Impact of Excessive endurance exercise on the heart. [online]. Available at https://www.bcmj.org/articles/impact-excessive-endurance-exercise-heart : [Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
  4. P. (2019). Cardiovascular Adaptations to Exercise. [online]. Available at https://www.ptdirect.com/training-design/anatomy-and-physiology/chronic-cardiovascular-adaptations-to-exercise :[Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
  5. Matthew A. Nystoriak* and Aruni Bhatnagar. (2018). Cardiovascular Effects and Benefits of Exercise. [online].Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172294/ :[Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
  6. Naga Meka, Srikanth Katragadda,Biju Cherian and Rohit R.Arora P. (2008). Endurance exercise and resistance training in cardiovascular disease. [online]. Page.116. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1753944708089701 [Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
  7.    Sonu Punia Sivachidambaram Kulandaivelan, Varun Singh and Vandana Punia, P. (2016). Effect of Aerobic Exercise training on Blood Pressure in Indians: [online] . Available at:   https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcd/2016/1370148/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
  8. Jonathan Myers, Steve E. Selig, Itamar Levinger, P. (2012). Resistance Versus Aerobic Exercise Training in Chronic Heart Failure. [online]. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11897-011-0078-0 [Accessed 10 Dec. 2019].
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