Heart Health, Cardio, Genetics, & More

I recently interviewed Alwyn Cosgrove and asked him...

CB: A lot of people are brainwashed that if you don't run marathons that your heart is going to shrivel up and you'll die at age 65 from heart disease. What's the real deal about the interaction between weight training, interval training, and aerobic training and their abilities to protect against heart disease?

It seems to me that nutrition is as important if not more important than exercise method in determining the risk of heart disease - similar to how nutrition is often the deciding factor in fat loss.

AC:
There are several risk factors for heart disease; some are controllable, others are not.

Uncontrollable risk factors include:
Male sex
Older age
Family history of heart disease
Post-menopausal
Race (African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans are more likely to have heart disease than Caucasians)

However, there are many risk factors that can be controlled. By making changes in your lifestyle, you can actually reduce your risk for heart disease.

The controllable risk factors include:
Smoking
High LDL, or "bad" cholesterol and low HDL, or "good" cholesterol.
Uncontrolled hypertension (high blood pressure).
Physical inactivity.
Obesity (more than 20% over one's ideal body weight).
Uncontrolled diabetes.
High C-reactive protein
Uncontrolled stress and anger.

So exercise is actually pretty low on the list. Personally I have two of the first five (bigger) risk factors and none of the latter ones.

But the take home message is this - any exercise is beneficial for health. And any exercise that would reduce your body fat would also be beneficial.

The landmark study on cardiac health and exercise came from Ralph Paffenbarger who showed that longshoremen (dock workers) had a decreased tendency to cardiac disease when compared to (I think) crane operators. These workers were doing physical work - but it certainly wasn't steady state aerobic exercise.

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CB