(Edgar Gärtner/ European Scientist) — If you are middle-aged and overweight, you can still be fit, if you ensure your do four hours of exercise daily and/or exercise regularly. This emerges from research carried out by Dr. Klodian Dhana at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam in a study of 5,300 subjects aged 55 and over with an average age of 70. These individuals have been observed over 15 years. Overweight inactive people, on the other hand, had a one-third higher risk of heart attack or stroke. The study was recently published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
Dr. Dhana does not deny that fat deposits can have negative effects such as increasing the formation of blood clots. This is well known to increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. But regular physical activity seems to counteract this risk by reducing the number of thrombocytes and the heart’s oxygen demand. The result of his study should therefore not be interpreted as a carte blanche for a risky diet, emphasizes Dr. Dhana. Instead, it reinforces the health benefits of plenty of exercise.
This view is confirmed by a scientific paper recently published in the renowned medical journal The Lancet, which then made headlines in the international press. Between 2004 and 2015, Prof. Hillard Kaplan from the University of New Mexico/USA and his team used computer tomography (CT) and X-ray scanners to examine the health status of over 700 adult members of an Indian tribe virtually untouched by civilization, the Tsimane, in the Bolivian Amazon jungle and compared it with the health data of 7,000 North Americans. (…)