An hour’s moderate exercise ‘can reduce heart failure risk’

Spending an hour each day performing moderate exercise can reduce a person's risk of developing heart failure, according to a new study.

Swedish researchers have looked at the health data of 39,805 people between the age of 20 and 90, examining how their leisure time activity was related to their subsequent risk of developing heart failure.

More than an hour of moderate or half an hour of vigorous exercise per day was shown to lower the risk of heart failure by 46 percent, with more active lifestyles generally correlated to an even lower risk.

Physical activity was equally beneficial for men and women. Those with the highest rates of heart failure were older males with low levels of education, a higher body mass index and waist-hip ratio, and a history of heart attack, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Dr Kasper Andersen, study co-author and researcher at Sweden's Uppsala University, said: "You do not need to run a marathon to gain the benefits of physical activity – even quite low levels of activity can give you positive effects."

Heart failure affects more than 750,000 people in the UK and is associated with a number of other conditions, including coronary heart disease, heart attack and high blood pressure.