Exercise is known to have innumerable health benefits. A latest research says that working out helps treat heart diseases just as much as medications.
Researchers at London School of Economics, Harvard and Stanford Universities studied the effects of exercise on coronary heart disease, stroke rehabilitation, in treating heart failure and diabetes prevention.
They analyzed 305 studies that involved at least 340, 000 participants. The study observations showed that exercise was more effective than drug treatment for stroke rehabilitation.
However, the researchers did not find any statistical differences between exercise and coronary heart disease and diabetes prevention.
"In cases where drug options provide only modest benefit, patients deserve to understand the relative impact that physical activity might have on their condition," researchers Huseyin Naci of Harvard University and John Ioannidis of Stanford University wrote in the study.
Even though exercise did not have a major impact on type 2 diabetes patients, researchers said that people with heart diseases should consider physical activity as a doable option. Exercise can increase life expectancy in heart attack patients.
"We are left with the same message we had before: Exercise therapy works. Drug therapy works. The combination of the two is the most reasonable approach," a New York-based cardiologist Richard Stein told USA Today.
In the U.S. health professionals predict that by 2030 half of the country's adults will be obese unless they follow a better and healthy lifestyle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that less than 48 percent of U.S. adults work out daily. Heart related problems cause nearly 17 million deaths yearly across the world, reported Reuters .
According to the World Health Organization, physical inactivity leads to at least 3.2 million deaths globally and is the fourth leading risk factor of deaths around the world.
