2023-09-01 07:52:32
The left ventricle gains weight because of a sedentary lifestyle. Research finds this link even in people with normal weight and blood pressure.
Lack of physical activity during childhood can lead to heart attacks and strokes in early adulthood, even in people with normal weight and blood pressure. This is confirmed by an investigation by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). The study, carried out as part of the Children of the 90s, one of the largest cohorts in the world, has focused on investigating the association between sedentary time –in an age range of 11 to 24 years– and measurements of heart, taking into account factors such as age, gender, blood pressure, body fat, smoking, physical activity, and socioeconomic status.
As a result, it has been seen that a sedentary lifestyle during childhood increases the probability of suffering a heart attack or cardiovascular accident after the age of 24. This is so because the lack of physical exercise, according to the study, increases the mass of the wall of the left ventricle of the heart. As Dr. Manuel Anguita, spokesman for the Spanish Society of Cardiology (SEC), points out: “By increasing the amount of fat in the ventricle wall, the heart weighs more.” Andrew Agbaje, PhD at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, argues that “children and adolescents need to move more to protect their long-term health, and their parents should limit their screen time.”
The study has been carried out through smart watches that measure the cumulative effect of sedentary time. These watches were placed on 766 children (55% were girls and 45% were boys) for seven days at 11, 15 and 24 years of age. With them it was seen that at 11 children were sedentary an average of 362 minutes a day, rising to 474 minutes a day in adolescence (at 15 years) and 531 minutes a day in young adulthood (24 years). Thus, by early adulthood, at age 24, downtime could reach nine hours a day. Echocardiography has evaluated the weight of the left ventricle of the heart over the years.
Anguita stresses that exercising increases the amount of blood that leaves the heart with each beat. That is to say: the mass of the thickness of the left ventricular wall does not increase, but the internal diameter of the cavity increases and, therefore, the volume of blood that it is capable of receiving and expelling with each beat, thus you get more resistance. On the contrary, a sedentary lifestyle can trigger hypertrophy by increasing the thickness of the ventricle wall and, with it, a greater risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure or sudden death. L.D.B. (SyM)
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