Home exercise may aid heavy heart failure patients
A home-based exercise program for overweight or obese patients with advanced heart failure results in significant weight loss after six months, researchers in California report.
It’s well established that exercise is important for long-term weight control for overweight people, Dr. Lorraine S. Evangelista, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues point out. “However, little evidence exists confirming such findings in patients with advanced heart failure.”
To look into this, the researchers assigned 99 heart failure patients, classified as at least overweight, to a low-level, home-based exercise program or to a comparison “control” group. The participants’ average age was 53 years, and most were male, white and married, according to the report in the American Journal of Cardiology.
Those in the exercise program were asked to walk for 45 minutes at least four times a week at a speed that raised their heart rate to 60 percent of maximum. After six weeks, a light resistive training component was added to the exercise regimen.
Compared with individuals in the control group, those in the exercise group had significant weight reduction after 6 months, with a weight loss of 14 pounds versus a bit more than half a pound among the controls.
Moreover, significantly fewer hospital admissions occurred in the exercise-group patients compared with the control-group patients—average 0.63 versus 1.07, respectively.
Modest weight loss of 5 percent or more was associated with higher exercise levels at 6 months, as well as decreased levels of depression and hostility, Evangelista and colleagues report.
Nonetheless, the authors note in their article that others have found that being overweight doesn’t seem to raise the odds of heart failure patients dying, and that involuntary weight loss in severe heart failure is a poor sign. They therefore conclude that the benefits of deliberate weight loss are uncertain.
SOURCE: American Journal of Cardiology, March 15, 2006.
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