How Weight Lifting Can Help Your Heart

1 min

A study from Iowa State University found that less than an hour a week of weight lifting can help cut your risk of heart attack or stroke by up to 70 percent, even if you perform little or no aerobic activity. Another bonus: engaging in more than an hour of weight lifting doesn’t necessarily reduce your risks further. Duck-chul Lee, an associate professor of kinesiology, and his team, reached these conclusions after reviewing data on nearly 13,000 adults. They explored health issues such as a heart attack and stroke that didn’t lead to death, all other cardiovascular events that resulted in death, and any other cause of death, and found that resistance exercise reduced the risk of all three. The investigators also assessed the relationship between resistance exercise and diabetes as well as with high cholesterol and found that resistance exercise lowered the risk for both. The downside to these findings, Dr. Lee said, is that not everyone has access to a variety of weight machines for resistance training while many may have a treadmill or stationary bike at home for aerobic exercise.

Source:
Duck-chul Lee et al “Associations of Resistance Exercise with Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity and Mortality.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, October 29, 2018, DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000001822

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