PERSONAL TRAINER
FITNESS NEWS
Thursday August 27 12:07 PM EDT
Exercise keeps arteries young
VIENNA, Aug 27 (Reuters) -- Exercise keeps arteries ''young'' but passive smoking has the opposite effect, according to two studies reported at the 20th Congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
Dr. A. Schmidt-Trucksaess, head of Prevention, Rehabilitation and Sportsmedicine at the Center for Internal Medicine, University Hospital Freiburg in Hugstetter, Germany, reports that imaging studies reveal that physically active men have better arterial elasticity, compared with their sedentary counterparts. ``In other words, men, who for example go for a brisk walk 1 hour every day or work in the garden 8 hours per week, probably have a better vascular state with a reduced arterial stiffness than sedentary individuals,'' said Schmidt-Trucksaess.
In another study, Dr. Christodoulos Stefanadis, an associate professor of cardiology at Athens Medical School, looked at the effect of passive smoking on the human aorta -- the largest artery in the body -- in 20 healthy male nonsmokers with an average age of 32 years. The researchers used echocardiography to measure the aorta's ``distensibility,'' or its ability to stretch. The researchers also measured blood pressure before and after a 5-minute passive exposure to tobacco smoke. ``Passive smoking was associated with a significant decrease (approximately 20%) of aortic distensibility, a finding which denotes deterioration of the elastic properties, or in other words, stiffening of the aorta,'' Stefanadis said. ``The large arteries stiffen with passive smoking,'' according to statement prepared by Stefanadis. ``The impact of this deleterious effect of passive smoking may be greater in sensitive populations such as children or elderly or in patients who have heart failure, coronary artery disease, or hypertension.''
