Is The Pandemic RUINING Your Heart?! (Surprising!)
COVID-19 comes with a lot of risks—and not always the ones you might think.
Social distancing might be keeping you away from the Sars CoV2 virus, but it’s also keeping a lot of people inside.
Unfortunately, that means too much sitting, and not enough activity.
And that could be doing more damage than COVID-19 ever will.
Here’s why.
If there are two simple steps you can start doing today to improve your heart health, it’s this:
Sit less, and move more.
Two studies highlight these two important actions.
The first study showed the benefits of getting more movement.
Researchers followed more than 80,000 postmenopausal women from 50-79 years old for an average of 11 years.
After adjusting for other factors—including other types of exercise—the researchers determined that the women who walked the most were 11 percent less likely to develop hypertension.
And the women who walked the fastest had a 21 percent lower risk of hypertension.
In fact, the speed had a bigger impact on heart health than the amount of time they spent walking, or even the distance they walked.
Brisk walking was defined as 2 miles per hour, something very doable for most healthy people.
The second study showed the dangers of sitting too much.
It followed more than 80,000 postmenopausal women for about 9 years. After accounting for other known risk factors, the researchers found that compared to people who sat no more than 4.5 hours per day, the women who sat 4.6-8.5 hours had a 14 percent increased risk of heart failure.
But people who sat more than 8.5 hours during the day had a 54 percent increased risk of heart failure.
It seemed that no amount of physical activity could counteract the heart failure risks of sitting more than 9.5 hours per day.
And that brings me back to the two-step plan I mentioned at the start of the article. For better heart health:
Sit less, move more.
