Owning a car, TV ups heart attack risk 27%

Mumbai:Owning a car or television set could be injurious to health. 

    A new study mapping people's possessions and physical activity against their risk for heart problems found a 27% increase in heart attacks among people who had a car and/ or TV in comparison to those who didn't. 
    But the INTERHEART study spanning 52 nations and 25,000 people holds out the heartiest 
promise ever: the risk of heart attack can be neutralized with the mildest of physical activity. The study was published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday. 
    Said Dr Aashish Contractor, a preventive cardiologist who is medical in-charge of Sunday's marathon, "The study is heartening because it makes it clear that people don't need strenuous exercises to reduce the risk of a heart attack. Even mild physical activity can be useful.'' 
    The INTERHEART study is a long-running global study (from February 1999 onwards) on heart attacks that includes data from India as well. A couple of years back it showed that Indians got heart-attacks a decade before their Caucasian counterparts; part of this study was done at Parel's KEM Hospital. 
    The new study was undertaken for obvious reasons: rising urbanization has led to a sedentary lifestyle across the world. 'Mild exercise can cut heart attack risk' 
Mumbai: The INTERHEART study shows the link between a sedentary lifestyle and heart problems. 
    "A sedentary lifestyle has become common in many developing countries, and with it, the incidence of metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular disease has also risen,'' said the study's main author, Claes Held of Uppsala University in Sweden. 
    The team identified various factors leading to illhealth: increasing urbanization, mechanization at work, more motorized transportation, "a societal structure that discourages walking but encourages the use of physical activity limiting devices (cars and elevators), and the widespread availability of appliances that promote sedentary behaviour such as the television and computers''. 
    The researchers began mapping possessions—a TV at home or car to work—versus the risk of a heart attack among people. After comparing the possessions of people who have undergone a heart attack against those who hadn't, the association was clear: while people with a TV or car or both had a 27% greater risk of a heart attack, people who had none of these machines or owned cattle had the lowest risk. 
    Incidentally, a Mumbaicentric study done by Lilavati Hospital's endocrinologist Dr Shashank Joshi, who is the editor emeritus of the Journal of Association of Physicians of India, had shown a similar association. "This study ties in with our study that showed that for every gadget a family acquired it also put on eight kilos,'' said Dr Joshi. "People put on ectopic fat (fat that gets deposited in cells and tissues that are not meant to store it). Considering that Indians have more body fat and less muscle than their Caucasian or African counterparts, this results in obesity that could lead to development of heart problems,'' added Dr Joshi. 
    But all is not lost. Said Dr Prafulla Kerkar, who heads the cardiology department of KEM Hospital, "The West went through this a few decades back. Their growing realization has led them to shed sedentarianism. Some European buildings have lifts available only from the second floor onwards, forcing people to climb stairs." 
    The INTERHEART study in fact focuses a lot on physical activity at leisure that can help control heart problems. "The study shows that people doing any activity can reduce their heart attack risk (compared to those who don't do any activity at all) by almost 50%,'' said Dr Aashish Contractor, who is attached to the Asian Heart Institute in BKC. 
    "The study says that people who do 30 minutes of activity per week in their leisure time could reduce their heart attack risk by 21%. Those who do 210 minutes of activity per week can reduce the risk by over 44%,'' he said. Those who pursued activity for 60-180 minutes per week could reduce their risk by 40%. "The INTERHEART study shows that one need not do fabulously hard work to stay fit. Even small steps—just 30 minutes per week—will help keep your heart healthy.''