Heart Disease: Exercise and the heart

hi guys my name is Sanjay Gupta I am a consultant cardiologist and today I wanted to talk to you about exercise and the role of exercise on the heart you know a ton of people ask me about exercise and a lot of people worried because as you know when you exercise you're placing more demand on the heart you're asking more of your heart and a lot of people worry about whether by exercising they could be doing some damage to their heart particularly if they have been diagnosed with a heart condition or if they have symptoms which they which they worry may be coming from the heart okay so the first thing to say is when we look at medicine there are really two things you hope to achieve as a doctor you want to make your patient feel better I improve their quality of life and secondly you want them to live longer I approve their length of life and when we look at all the technological advances all the amazing expensive medications out there there are very few that do both make you live longer and make you feel better some make you live longer but they also come with side-effects others make you feel better but they have no real role in terms of making you live longer so when you have some kind of strategy which allows you both and in in terms of exercise it's certainly regular exercise undoubtedly makes you feel better and undoubtedly makes you live longer and to a large extent the benefits are greater than the majority of medications available okay so exercise is extremely good for the heart all right and that that's true for people who have healthy hearts and it is also true for people who have diseased hearts exercise is always good however there are a few caveats the first thing is that if you find that you have symptoms which get worse with exercise then it's important to listen to your symptoms and not to continue exercising if you're getting symptoms and then to seek medical advice to get checked out to try and identify what the problem is and hopefully once you've gotten it sorted out there's no reason why you can't go back to exercising okay that's the first thing so if you're getting chest discomfort on exercise then it's a good idea not to do those exercises that cause your chest discomfort equally well if you're doing something and you're you get chest discomfort then it's better to try and stop and listen to your heart so your heart has a way of telling you if you're doing too much or if the exercise could be harmful to it you simply won't be able to do it to people who have angina i narrowings in their heart arteries they will often come to me and they'll say I walk a certain distance I get the discomfort then I have to stop well that's their heart telling them don't exercise anymore because I'm not getting as much blood as I want similarly people who are breathless they'll say I can walk a certain distance but after a certain distance I get profoundly breathless in those people again I would say well get checked out because you know if you are getting your symptoms on exertion if you're getting your symptoms on exercise then it's better to get them checked out and in some ways exercise can be very useful in those people because it can be the first time when they start noticing their symptoms if you're sedentary things have to get really bad to start affecting you when you're not doing anything but if you have something subtle going on in the background the first time you'll notice it is during exercise and that's why exercise can be extremely useful because it can give you a clue of something going on and if you get that clue then you can seek help and get that sorted out okay similarly a lot of people I see have palpitations you know and they say oh you know can I exercise would I do any harm to myself by exercising well if your palpitations are more noticeable the next sighs and okay addressed then obviously get checked up people were their topic beats often say to me am i doing myself hard by exercising do you think I'll drop down dead and I'll say to them well are you getting your rec topics on exercise a lot of people say no I get the fluttering or the ik topics or the missed beats at rest I don't notice them so much an exercise in which case there's no reason why you shouldn't exercise in fact exercise is good so that's the first thing to say if your symptoms are worse on exercise it's better not to exercise but only temporarily until you get checked out and get treated for okay the second thing I would say is that it is never a good idea to do unaccustomed exercise okay so if you haven't ever now or if you've been not doing any exercise then I think it's the wrong thing to try and run a marathon first time out I think you have to build up okay you have to do some exercise build up and train yourself and then there's no reason why you can't do a higher level of exercise like a marathon but you have to build up it is the wrong strategy to just suddenly wake up on day and say I'm gonna go to the gym and start lifting 200 kilos because that's where unaccustomed exercise can be dangerous but accustomed exercise exercise that is gradual and that you have trained for ever a number of days or weeks is generally very good the third thing I'd like to say is that everything is good in moderation okay so while sits not good not to exercise it's equally good not to go completely berserk so there are some people for example who like to run ultra marathons some people who do like you know crazy crazy exercise because you know fell running and people will want for 4050 miles and there and that becomes their life and I can understand why because they enjoy it and that's fine but in those people the heart can over a period of time start weakening it can start misbehaving with heart rhythm disturbances sometimes the heart can't slow down and people require pacemakers so if you're doing crazy levels of exercise then in the long run that's not a great thing to do but exercise in moderation exercise that makes you feel refreshed it makes you feel healthy and happy is always good let's talk about what the benefits are of exercise okay well it makes you feel better and - it definitely makes you live longer why we know this because for example if you had a heart artery narrowing let's say you have your heart artery and you've got a 90% narrowing we know that if you can do nine minutes of the treadmill okay without having to stop then in general you will do far better in the long run compared to someone who can only do three minutes or four minutes so nine minutes is considered the magic mark and if you can do more than nine minutes you fall into a low risk category in general despite what you may have so someone who's got a 90% narrowing in one artery and can do nine minutes is going to be generally at a lower risk compared to a person who's got the same disease in the artery but can only do three minutes or four minutes okay so being able to do nine minutes on the treadmill and being able to do that on a regular basis the really good sign because it tells you that huge heart is generally healthy and it is generally able to cope we also know and that one of the important thing is for examples you you're a fit man and suddenly you know you you you're told you need an operation because you've got some heart condition or something like that how well you do after your operation how well you do during and after your operation it's a highly dependent on how well you were before your operation okay so if you can do regular exercise if you had good exercise capacity regardless of how big the operation is in general you would do better than someone who is sedentary who is unable to you know do a good level of excess and that's why that's another benefit of exercise okay so I always say to my patients you know if you can do nine minutes of the treadmill yeah that is a really good sign in general regardless everything else you can do nine minutes that's really good and there happens some studies looking at survival of the fittest and testing the survival of the fittest theory and there is no doubt that people who are able to do more do better than people who are able to do less so it's always a really good idea it gives you a just by exercising and by being able to do more than nine minutes continuously day and day out on a treadmill for example is a very good sign number two if there is anything wrong the first time you'll pick it up is during exercise and that can be very helpful because someone can do something about it number three you know at the end of the day what does the body want what is health about the health to my mind is about getting lots of oxygen to its destination to your vital organs without much work that's what you want you want you you want your heart to be able to pump blood round you want there to be lots of oxygen and you want that oxygen to get you where it needs to be ie your vital organs with minimal effort now if you are having to apply lots of effort or if you're not able to get enough oxygen around then you get into a condition called inflammation because the Librium of the body starts getting disturbed okay and we know that the majority of conditions in the Western world are in some way related to inflammation so we know diabetes is an inflammatory condition we know hypertension can be an inflammatory condition we know heart disease is an inflammatory condition we know heart attacks are related to inflammation we know heart failure is an inflammatory condition we know heart rhythm disorders like atrial fibrillation are an inflammatory problem now even sometimes extract beat topics lots of ectopic can be a manifestation of inflammation and exercise is the most wonderful anti-inflammatory natural anti-inflammatory agent out there okay it reduces inflammation so if you if you are generally you know rundown for example with the flu or something like that you watch you go out for a run run for about 20-30 minutes when you come back you'll feel better sometimes you shake it off just by going for a run and that is the anti-inflammatory effect of exercise and very few other man-made compounds have that much of a beneficial role on the body so in terms of anti-inflammatory effects exercise controls you allows your blood sugars to be controlled better it reduces obesity it reduces depression it reduces your blood pressure it reduces your risk of having an acute sudden heart attack people who have heart failure if they exercise some of them can actually come off the waiting list will heart transplantation it can be that effective regular exercise can be so effective the people who are deemed suitable or who are deemed meeting of a transplant can sometimes come off the transplant list just because the exercise has helped them to that extent okay arrhythmias on atrial fibrillation if you have h or fibrillation you exercise regularly your atrial fibrillation will get less prevalent compared to someone who doesn't you will lose weight if you have underlying sleep apnea by losing the weight you your sleep apnea will get better which will then have a beneficial role on your arrhythmia like atrial fibrillation it topics atrial fibrillation X is xperia x ur size is extremely good for our topics it takes your mind off their topics it reduces your inflammation levels and it will make you feel so much better so there are tons of really beneficial effects and exercise that I would always urge people to start exercising if you have symptoms that come on an exercise that is your clue go get them checked out but then don't stop exercising get them sorted and then go back to you exercise and as I think do it in moderation and remember try and avoid unaccustomed exercise but just doing regular daily exercise particularly cardiovascular exercise particularly things like going on the treadmill are exceptionally good so I hope this was helpful my name is Sanjay Gupta and this is my website and this is my Facebook page so I'm really grateful to you all for listening to my videos for your complimentary remarks I really really appreciate it and if you enjoyed this video please don't hesitate to share it with the economy with your friends and please do send me a message because I'll try my hardest to reply all the best ok take

Channel: York Cardiology

Views: 241,717

Keywords: #hangoutsonair, Hangouts On Air, #hoa, heart disease, heart attack, heart health, exercise, yorkcardiology, dr sanjay gupta, heart disease symptoms, signs of a heart attack, coronary artery disease, cardiovascular disease, heart conditions, ischaemic heart disease, healthy heart, signs of heart problems

Id: sxQIAcJMv50

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2016