Resistance Training Correlates with Reduced Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

As one of many continuations of recent efforts to quantify the benefits of various forms of exercise, researchers here find an association between resistance training and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. The association is fairly binary; people undertaking any meaningful degree of resistance training show the benefit, and the size of the benefit doesn't increase with more resistance training. That might make us suspicious regarding the direction of causation. If the association exists because only more robust older individuals tend to undertake resistance training, then the absence of a curve of increasing benefits for greater time spent in training is the expected outcome. The important determinant in that case is the capacity for resistance training. That said, there is plenty of other evidence to suggest that resistance training does in fact provide benefits, a situation analogous to that for aerobic exercise. Lifting weights for less than an hour a week may reduce your risk for a heart attack or stroke by 40 to 70 percent, according to a new study. Spending more than an hour in the weight room did not yield any additional benefit, the researchers found. The results - some of the first to look at resistance exercise and cardiovascular disease - show benefits of strength training are independent of running, walking, or other aerobic activity. In other words, you do not have to meet the recommended guidelines for aerobic physical activity to lower your risk; ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs