You have a healthy, balanced diet, are blessed with good metabolism, and are not at all overweight. And you certainly don't smoke. So who cares that you're a couch potato? Like most Americans, you don't think you're at risk for heart disease.
But new research published in the January issue of the American Journal of Hypertension suggests that being thin alone is not enough to protect your heart. You need to be active too. The benefits of being physically active go well beyond burning calories.
Rachel Mackey and a team of scientists at the University of Pittsburgh studied 356 men and women over 70 years of age to see if physical activity can slow down one effect of aging, hardening of the arteries, an important risk factor for heart disease. The researchers found that the active older people had less hardening than the inactive younger people in the study.
Regular exercise protects your arteries in at least two important ways. First, it conditions your heart, allowing it to do its job with fewer beats. The fewer beats, the less stress on your arteries. Further, elevated blood sugar levels can also cause arteries to harden, and as we know, exercise helps control blood sugar levels for all of us, not just those with diabetes.
So even if you are thin, exercise plays an important role by allowing you to function more efficiently, putting less stress on your body as you age.
"The point is that you could probably eat pretty well and not be a fat person but be very sedentary and still end up with diabetes and stiff arteries," according to Mackey in an interview with Reuters.
There's more to health, in other words, than what you can see on the scale or in the mirror. You're going to have to get up off the couch and move.
Jeff Stier is Associate Director at the American Council on Science and Health.