Healthy lifestyle key to halving risk of heart failure later in life

Lead researcher Dr Liana Del Gobbo, from Tufts University in the US, said: “It’s encouraging to learn that older adults can make simple changes to reduce their heart failure risk, like engaging in moderate physical activity, not smoking and maintaining a healthy weight”.

Experts tracked 4,490 men and women aged 65 and over for two decades – and found that those who broadly followed public health advice significantly reduced their risk of heart trouble.

Participants who optimized four or more of the healthy behaviors studied were half as likely to have heart failure as those with zero or one low-risk factors.

Charities said the study showed that living a healthy lifestyle was crucial to preventing heart failure.

Heart failure is a condition where the organ fails to keep a blood flow necessary to meet the body’s needs.

Researchers found that walking briskly – or at least two miles per hour or faster – and participating in leisure activities that burned more than 845 calories a week were associated with a 26 per cent and 22 per cent lower chance respectively of developing heart failure.

Walking briskly at two miles per hour, exercising away 845 calories a week and limiting alcohol to two drinks a night can halve the risk of heart failure scientists have found.

It’s not clear how active the study participants were before the age of 65, so there’s no way to know how healthy habits earlier in life affected them. During the span of 21 years, participants underwent annual physical exams and questionnaires that covered data regarding diet, walking pace and distance, exercise, leisure time, alcohol consumption, smoking, weight, and waist circumference.

“Older adults can make simple changes to reduce their heart failure risk, such as not smoking, engaging in moderate physical activity and maintaining a healthy weight”, said study author Liana Del Gobbo, a Ph.D. student with the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

Other factors that could influence heart risk, such as socioeconomic status, were accounted for as well.

Surprisingly, specific dietary pattern was not tied to heart failure risk, and exercise intensity was less important than walking pace and leisure activity.

“Physical activity among older adults does not have to be strenuous to achieve health benefits”, Del Gobbo said.

‘More than half a million people across the United Kingdom have been diagnosed with heart failure, an incurable condition where your heart has been permanently damaged, often following a heart attack, ‘ he said. Maron, director of Preventive Cardiology at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who coauthored a commentary on the new findings.

“We already know these behaviours have ample health benefits and prevention of heart failure may be an additional advantage”.

“The thing about drinking is that there are certain medications that you shouldn’t be drinking with, or conditions that also you shouldn’t be drinking with …” “It’s just an association, and doesn’t prove cause and effect”, but is still a powerful finding, he said.