Even A Little Bit Of Exercise Could Help Your Heart

Amanda L. Chan
Updated

Here's another reason to take the stairs: Justgetting a little bit of exercise-- even if it's not the full U.S.-recommended 150 minutes a week -- still helpsward off heart disease, especially in women, according to a new review of studies.

Researchers examined 33 studies and found that even people who exercise fewer than 150 minutes a week have alower risk of coronary heart diseasethan people who don't exercise at all.

"The biggest health benefits we saw were for those who went from doing nothing to those doing something small," study researcher Jacob Sattelmair, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, toldUSA Today. "Even alittle bit of activitymakes a significant difference," where a "little bit" means 10 to 15 minutes a day of exercise.

But of course, the heart-protection benefits increased with more time spent exercising: people who exercise 150 minutes a week have a 14 percentlower heart disease riskthan people who don't exercise at all, and those who exercise 300 minutes a week have a 20 percent lower heart disease risk than people who don't exercise, the review said.

Researchers also found that women seemed to benefit more from theselittle moments of exercisethan men, but "we did not have a good explanation for why this is," Sattelmair toldUSA Today.

However, some possible reasons include that women are less likely in the first place todevelop coronary heart diseasethan men, and that other factors -- like diet -- could be at play, LiveScience reported.

Exercise helps the heartbecause it lowers blood pressure and the resting heart rate, HealthDay reported. It can also help to prevent diabetes by increasing the body's sensitivity to insulin, and it also boosts "good" HDL cholesterol.

Exercise has also been shown toward off premature agingin mice, researchers found earlier this year.

And past research shows that heart patients could actuallybenefit more from exercisethan from having a surgical procedure (angioplasty).

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.