This article deals with how moderate and vigorous exercise can reduce cardiac age.
Introduction
In a recent post, Discover Your Cardiac Age with This Free Calculator. It shows if your heart is older or younger than your stated age.
Afterward, I posted Heart-Healthy Workouts And More: The Ultimate Guide to Reducing Cardiac Age. It shows how moderate to vigorous exercise and a healthy lifestyle prevent expensive-to-treat conditions like diabetes, heart attacks, and strokes.
This article will appeal to curious individuals. It explores how exercise can change the structure of the heart and arteries. Exercise makes them more elastic. It helps them work better.
Cardiac Age
When people discuss “age,” most of us think about how many birthdays we’ve celebrated. But there’s another way to measure aging—called “cardiac age.” This term refers to the efficiency of your heart. It functions compared to a typical heart of someone your chronological age.
Our hearts can sometimes be “older” than we are. This happens due to factors like a sedentary lifestyle, high blood pressure, or being overweight.
An older cardiac age means a greater risk of heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular problems later in life. Thankfully, moderate-to-vigorous (especially high-intensity) exercise can help slow or reverse many changes that make the heart age faster.
Cardiac Age Versus Chronological Age
How Can My Heart Be “Older” Than I Am?
- Lifestyle Factors: Constantly sitting, eating unhealthy foods, drinking alcohol, or smoking, our heart and blood vessels can show wear.
- Medical Conditions: Conditions like high blood pressure can accelerate damage to blood vessels. Prediabetes or type 2 diabetes can also damage the heart muscle.
- Stress and Inflammation: Chronic stress elevates certain hormones and inflammatory markers. This can harden arteries and strain the heart over time.
A common source of inflammation is air pollution and secondhand smoke.
What An Older Cardiac Age Means
- Higher Risk: If your heart is “older,” you’re more likely to face heart attacks, heart failure, or stroke. These events can occur sooner than in someone whose cardiac age aligns with (or is younger than) their chronological age.
- Preventive Opportunity: Recognizing your heart is aging faster opens the door to lifestyle changes. Exercise, in particular, can slow this process and keep you healthier.
How Exercise Turns Back the Clock on Your Heart
1. Improving Diastolic Function
The heart has two main phases. One is systole when it contracts and pumps blood out. The other is diastole when it relaxes and fills with blood.
Over time, the heart muscle can become stiffer, making it harder to fill properly—this is known as diastolic dysfunction. This results in smaller amounts of blood getting pumped. This means the heart has to beat faster to make up for the required amount of blood needed.
Diastolic dysfunction creates a vicious cycle. If not corrected, it worsens with age. It can lead to heart failure and cause shortness of breath and easy fatigue. Many will say it is because of age, but mainly, it is from lifestyle.
Diastolic dysfunction is commonly observed in middle-aged individuals. It is almost always found in older people who underwent an ultrasound or 2-D heart echo.
Solution
Moderate-to-vigorous exercise includes brisk walking, jogging, cycling, or interval training. Many exercises help the heart muscle stay flexible and improve its ability to relax between beats. This ease of filling leads to more blood being pumped by the heart.
In medical terms, this is called better cardiac output and ejection fraction. It results in a decreased workload on the heart.
2. Better Arterial Elasticity
Arteries can become stiff with age, high blood pressure, or other factors, forcing the heart to work harder. Here is what happens when we exercise:
- Better endothelial function: The cells lining your arteries are called the endothelium. They produce nitric oxide. This nitric oxide helps blood vessels relax (dilate).
- Healthier Vessel Walls: Over time, consistent physical activity helps limit the excess buildup of collagen. Collagen is the structural protein that can become rigid. It also helps preserve elastin, which gives arteries their elasticity.
- Reduced Blood Pressure: Exercise lowers blood pressure, making the arteries flexible. The result is less pressure that the heart has to overcome. It decreases the work of the heart. The heart is like a person; if you make him work less, he will not get tired quickly and can do more work.
3. Added Health Benefits
- Increased Insulin Sensitivity: Regular exercise lowers blood sugar. It lowers the risk of developing or helps manage type 2 diabetes.
- Decreased Oxidative Stress: Workouts trigger mild, short-term increases in free radicals. In the long run, your body develops stronger antioxidant defenses. It is like vaccination. Only this time, the antigen is the antioxidant. Thus, chronic inflammation and oxidative damage to cells—including those in your blood vessels—can decrease. Inflammation contributes significantly to disease formation.
- Weight Management: Cardiovascular workouts help burn calories and a balanced diet can help keep a healthy weight. This is another key factor in keeping your cardiac age low.
- Lower Stress Levels: Exercise releases endorphins (feel-good hormones). They help counteract the adverse effects of chronic stress, which can age your heart.
Which Exercises Are Best To Make the Heart Younger?
- Moderate-Intensity Aerobic Activity
- Examples: Brisk walking, recreational swimming, dancing, or light jogging.
- Aim for 150 minutes per week if you’re an adult in generally good health.
- Vigorous-Intensity or High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
- Examples: Running, interval cycling, or circuit training that pushes your heart rate higher for short bursts.
- Aim for 75 minutes per week if you prefer higher-intensity exercise.
- Strength Training
- The goal is to strengthen or grow the muscles. Lifting weights a couple of times weekly improves insulin sensitivity. Regular bodyweight exercises (like push-ups, squats, and planks) also do the same. They complement each other
This article will help you know if your exercise intensity is moderate or vigorous. Unlock Your Fat-Burning Zone: Calculate Your Target Heart Rate Now!
You can find sample exercises in this link. Heart-Healthy Workouts And More: The Ultimate Guide to Reducing Cardiac Age
Take-Home Message
Your heart can “feel” older or younger than you guess. To keep your cardiac age in sync with your chronological age, include moderate-to-vigorous exercise in your weekly routine. High-intensity exercises are also beneficial.
By doing so, you’ll support:
- Diastolic health: A flexible heart that fills efficiently.
- Arterial elasticity: Lower blood pressure and less strain on the heart.
- Overall well-being: Better insulin sensitivity, reduced oxidative stress, and improved weight control.
Remember: Check with your doctor before starting or intensifying an exercise program. This is especially important if you have existing heart conditions, high blood pressure, or diabetes.
Related:
- Understanding Heart Failure Treatment
- How to Get Physically Active
- No Time to Exercise? Let’s Fix That
- Sarcopenia: The Scourge of Aging
- 21 Benefits of High-Intensity Interval Training
- Are You Ready for High-Intensity Life Situations?
- Big Heart Benefits From Small Efforts: Discover VILPA
- Cancer Prevention Made Easy With VILPA: Transform Your Daily Routine
- Crush New Year’s Resolutions With These Realistic Health Tips!
- Exercise promotes new heart muscles
- Exercise alone can induce autophagy
- Meta-analysis shows exercise improves neuropathy
- Exercise releases myokines from skeletal muscles
- Exercise Can Stop Tumor Growth
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References:
- American Heart Association. “Recommendations for Physical Activity in Adults and Kids.” Heart.org, 2023,
https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/fitness-basics/aha-recs-for-physical-activity-in-adults. - Seals, Douglas R. “Habitual Exercise and Arterial Aging.” The Journal of Physiology, vol. 587, no. 23, 2009, pp. 5541–5549, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18583377/
- Morris JH, Chen L. Exercise Training and Heart Failure: A Review of the Literature. Card Fail Rev. 2019 Feb;5(1):57-61. doi: 10.15420/cfr.2018.31.1. PMID: 30847247; PMCID: PMC6396064.
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