Weight training helps heart failure recovery
A Melbourne research team has found that weight training can help improve the muscle’s capacity to use the heart’s output more efficiently and recover from a damaged heart.
The research, just published in the US Journal of Cardiac Failure shows that a study of victims of chronic heart failure who had undergone weight training showed there was a significant increase in the number of blood vessels that connected to their muscle cells.
Those cells also showed greater efficiency in producing energy from food and oxygen. The muscles then put less stress on the heart.
The traditional view that total rest was the only way to treat a damaged heart had been ‘turned upside down’ by evidence that the heart function was closely related to the performance of peripheral body systems.
“We should be looking at the body as a whole system, rather than just the heart,” said Professor Simon Stewart from the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne.
