It’s not to late to get a healthy heart!

If you’ve been putting off getting fit for years (or decades), here’s the good news: it might not be too late to rejuvenate your heart if you start exercising now.
A new study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation reveals the necessary “dose” of fitness to undo the cardiovascular consequences of an inactive lifestyle.
That dose is varied stints of mostly aerobic exercise — what you’d label “cardio” — performed four to five times a week, at moderate to high intensities, for at least a two-year period.
“That’s my prescription for life,” advised study co-author Dr Benjamin Levine, director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine, in a statement.
“This study really reinforces that [this prescription] has quite extraordinary effects on the structure and function of the heart and blood vessels,” he said. “The result was a reversal of decades of a sedentary lifestyle on the heart for most of the study participants.”
He said the “sweet spot” for starting this kind of exercise prescription is by late middle age (up to 65 years old), when the heart retains its plasticity — that is, when it can still remould itself.
The weekly exercise program that could save your heart
The researchers offered a rough outline the type of exercising you’ll need to do to improve heart health, assuming you’re an inactive person who’s otherwise healthy (a “middle-aged couch potato”, to borrow the Heart Association’s phrasing).
Of those four-to-five weekly sessions, one needs to be a high-intensity 30-minute workout structured around a “4×4″ pattern: four four-minute bursts of cardio where your heart rate tops 95 percent of its maximum, each one followed by moderate-intensity intervals of active recovery lasting three minutes.
Another session, lasting up to an hour, is a moderate-intensity activity that you’d barely think of as exercise — something like a brisk-paced walk, a game of tennis, a bike ride, or a similar activity you enjoy.
One or two other sessions should be aerobic workouts specially prescribed to each participant, performed at a moderate intensity.
And finally, the weekly program should include one-to-two sessions of strength training, using weights or exercise machines.
The workouts in the study also included warm-ups and cool-downs, and were overseen by exercise physiologists. It’s important to note the participants worked up to the more challenging high-intensity workouts over several months — they didn’t just throw themselves straight in.
How regular exercise will benefit your heart
According to Levine, committing to this dose of exercise is almost as effective at preventing heart damage caused by a sedentary lifestyle as the extreme regimens of elite athletes.
After two years, study participants who exercised four-to-five times a week significantly boosted their maximum oxygen intake during exercise (their VO2 max, to use the jargon), and they also had more elastic heart muscles — which Levine likened to stretchy new rubber bands, compared to stiff ones that sit unused in a drawer.
“When the [heart] muscle stiffens, you get high pressure and the heart chamber doesn’t fill as well with blood.  In its most severe form, blood can back up into the lungs. That’s when heart failure develops,” he said.
Other study participants who followed a different program (focused around yoga and strength training, performed two-to-three times a week) didn’t earn the same heart benefits.
Levine says the study proves everyone should incorporate exercise into their day-to-day life.
“I think people should be able to do this [dose of exercise] as part of their personal hygiene — just like brushing your teeth and taking a shower,” he said.