Don’t skip leg day at the gym; it could help save your life. Here’s how

The next time you think about skipping your leg exercises at the gym, reconsider your plan. A new study suggests that heart attack patients may benefit from having stronger legs.

If the study is to be believed then people with thin legs have a higher risk of suffering heart failure after experiencing a cardiac arrest. While some people may be self-conscious about their thick thighs, the research indicates that it may be a sign healthy sign, after all.

What are we talking about? We explain further.

Strong legs = healthier heart?

Research presented at the Heart Failure 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) has found that leg strength is associated with a lower risk of developing heart failure after acute myocardial infarction.

The researchers explained that a heart attack, medically known as a myocardial infarction, is the most common cause of heart failure, with around six per cent to nine per cent of heart attack patients going on to develop the condition.

The study tested the hypothesis that leg strength is associated with a lower risk of developing heart failure after acute myocardial infarction. For this, they evaluated 932 patients who were hospitalised with acute myocardial infarction between 2007 and 2020. The patients were of the median age of 66 and did not have heart failure before the admission.

What they found was astonishing; the incidence rate of subsequent heart failure was higher, at 22.9 per 1,000 person-years, among the patients whose quadriceps measured as having low strength, compared with an incidence rate of 10.2 per 1,000 person-years among those with high quadriceps strength. For the unaware, person-years is the measurement that represents the number of people in a study multiplied by the years following them.

The researchers then followed up with the same respondents after four-and-a-half years and it was found that 67 developed heart failure. Interestingly, “high” quadriceps strength was associated with a whopping 41 per cent lower risk of developing heart failure compared to “low” quadriceps strength.

The study further noted that each five per cent body weight increment in quadriceps strength was associated with an 11 per cent lower likelihood of heart failure.

The author of the study, Kensuke Ueno – a physical therapist at Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences – said: “Quadriceps strength is easy and simple to measure accurately in clinical practice. Our study indicates that quadriceps strength could help to identify patients at a higher risk of developing heart failure after myocardial infarction who could then receive more intense surveillance.”

He further said, “The findings need to be replicated in other studies, but they do suggest that strength training involving the quadriceps muscles should be recommended for patients who have experienced a heart attack to prevent heart failure.”

What your legs reveal about your heart?

This isn’t the first study that associates legs with the heart.

A previous study had shown that pain in the legs could be a sign of cardiovascular disease. This pain was caused by peripheral artery disease (PAD), a condition that is marked by limited blood flow to the limbs, particularly your legs, as a result of plaque build-up in your arteries.

According to a 2019 review, about 46 to 68 per cent of people with PAD also have coronary artery disease.

Doctors have also noted that in many cases of heart attacks the patient complained of numbness in the legs. They explain this is because when the blood vessel narrows down, it limits the amount of blood that is actually required for arms and legs resulting in peripheral arterial disease. This leads to poor blood supply to these body parts, as a result of which several complications arise, and the most common of them is numbness.

Also read: Can the use of marijuana lead to heart disease?

Medical experts have also found that hard, painful lumps on a person’s toes, called Osler’s nodes, could be indicative of a patient suffering from endocarditis — an inflammation of the heart’s chambers and blood vessels. Endocarditis results from a bacterial infection that spreads through the bloodstream and attaches itself to the weak parts of the heart, causing potentially life-threatening damage to heart valves.

As dermatologist Geeta Yadav told BestLife: “Osler’s nodes can appear on the fingers and toes of those with endocarditis. They’re often small and painful, with discomfort that’s felt before the bump is visible.”

Why is this significant?

The study’s findings are significant at a time when the world is seeing a steady increase in cardiovascular disease. A multinational study published in 2022 revealed that cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death across the world, responsible for more than 20 million deaths.

In fact, the Indian Council of Medical Research and Registrar General of India reported last year that the country accounts for approximately 60 per cent of the world’s heart disease burden.

In the US, new statistics predict that 45 per cent of people in the United States will have at least one issue related to the disease by 2035. That’s up from earlier predictions from the American Heart Association (AHA) of 40 per cent by 2030. The AHA also predicted that costs related to the disease will double from $555 billion in 2016 to $1.1 trillion in 2035.

Also read: How is exercise linked with cardiac arrests?

Doctors and medical experts have been flagging the issue for long and in the recent deaths of young actors and celebrities such as Nitesh Pandey, Satish Kaushik, Puneeth Rajkumar, Sidharth Shukla, KK, Raju Srivastav and Raj Kaushal in India have put a spotlight on the same.

The rise in cardiovascular diseases across the world can be attributed to a number of factors – a more sedentary lifestyle causing obesity, a spike in stress and other diseases.

Dr Michael Miller, a cardiology professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and author of Heal Your Heart: The Positive Emotions Prescription to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, told Healthline that the main factors driving the rise in heart disease are obesity and type 2 diabetes, but the real underlying culprits are moving less and stressing more.

“What we aren’t doing enough is getting up and out, spending quality time with loved ones daily, and smelling the roses,” Miller said.

What’s the takeaway from it all? Get your legs working and you might save yourself heart ache in the future.

With inputs from agencies

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