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 the amount of sedentary time –in an age range of 11 to 24 years– and heart measurements –in a range from 17 to 24 years old–, taking into account factors that could influence such as age, sex, blood pressure, body fat, smoking, physical activity and socioeconomic status .
As a result, it has been seen that a sedentary lifestyle during childhood, in this case from the age of 11, increases the probability of suffering a heart attack or cardiovascular accident in early adulthood. This is so because the lack of physical exercise, according to the study, causes the mass of the wall of the left ventricle of the heart to increase. 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.” In this sense, Andrew Agbaje, doctor at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, argues that “children and adolescents need to move more to protect their health in the long term.”
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 7 days at 11, 15 and 24 years of age. They found that at age 11 children were sedentary for an average of 362 minutes per day, increasing to 474 minutes per day in adolescence (at age 15) and 531 minutes per day in young adulthood (age 24). ). Thus, by early adulthood, i.e. 24 years, downtime could reach 9 hours per day.
On the other hand, through echocardiography the weight of the left ventricle of the heart has been evaluated over the years. The study showed that for every one minute increase in inactivity time between ages 11 and 24, there was a simultaneous increase in left ventricular heart mass between ages 17 and 24. Knowing that inactivity is multiplied by 169 minutes in adulthood, the increase in mass in the left ventricle of the heart over those years could reach 3 grams.
An earlier study in adults showed that a similar increase over a seven-year period doubled the risk of heart disease, stroke and death. Taking these data into account, Dr. Agbaje cautioned: “Our study indicates that the accumulation of inactive time is related to cardiac damage, independent of body weight and blood pressure. Parents should encourage children and adolescents to move more. You have to take them for a walk and limit the time they spend on social media and video games.”
Doctor Manuel Anguita emphasizes that exercising increases the amount of blood that leaves the heart with each beat. That is to say: “In each contraction of the left ventricle the amount of blood that it sends to the rest of the body increases.” This means, as the SEC spokesperson maintains, that when doing physical exercise, the mass of the left ventricle wall thickness does not increase, but rather the internal diameter of the cavity and, therefore, the volume of blood that it is capable of welcoming and expelling with each heartbeat. “The heart, by sending more blood with each beat, needs fewer beats per minute to send the same amount of blood and, in this way, a greater resistance is achieved,” he adds.
On the contrary, the lack of exercise or large amounts of time in inactivity cause, as the study shows and as Anguita maintains, the thickness of the ventricle wall to increase in mass, “what is called hypertrophy,” says the doctor. . The consequences of this increase in mass can be, as the SEC spokesman lists: “An increased risk of mortality from heart attack, stroke, heart failure, sudden death, etc.” This is so because “the lack of physical activity means that the oxygen supply that reaches the heart muscle through the coronary arteries does not increase and, if the thickness of the ventricle wall also increases in mass, then the probability of suffering problems of ischemic origin heart rate is higher.
“The most worrying thing is that a young adult is not going to notice this increase in mass in the ventricle, because at that age it is possible to lead a normal life without having any symptoms at all,” says the SEC spokesman, who warns that the effects they will emerge when they are older and start to have heart disease. For this reason, Anguita reiterates that it is very important to educate children from an early age in healthy habits to prevent this type of disease: “Mediterranean diet and regular physical exercise.”
