A lesser known but important benefit of REGULAR MODERATE EXERCISE !

My 60 year old friend, a doctor himself,  has a daily habit of walking for half an hour in the morning. One day while walking he felt discomfort in his upper abdomen. He thought it was gas and continued walking. But the ‘gas’ did not go away and started spreading upwards in the chest as some tightness. He stopped, came home and took some antacids. Since he was alright through the day, he didn’t bother and went for a walk again the next morning when the symptom recurred. Now he felt something was amiss and went for a stress test which was mildly abnormal. That was when he consulted me.

Listening to his story, I promptly put him on medications (aspirin and statins) and did his coronary angiography the next day.  And what did it show ? ! It showed a 99% narrowing of a major artery (picture). This narrowing is called a “widow maker” because, if it occludes totally, it can cause a large heart attack or sudden death. Of course, we opened the narrowing with a balloon and stented it.

The moral of the story is that if our friend did not have a habit of walking regularly, he would not have had the warning symptoms and the narrowing in the artery would have worsened silently and announced itself suddenly with a large heart attack or even sudden death.

Hence a lesser known but probably the most important benefit of regular moderate intensity exercise like walking, swimming, aerobics, cycling etc is that coronary disease may be identified early before any of its devastating consequences  occurs.

To quote actor James Cagney again : “I try to dance at least once a day because I don’t want to take my heart by surprise!”