Can physical activity accelerate risk of heart attacks?

Physical activity may increase coronary atherosclerosis (artery narrowing) through mechanical stress and vessel wall injury and through the physiological responses it prompts, such as increases in blood pressure and parathyroid hormone.

Seoul: While there are numerous health benefits of exercise, physical activity may paradoxically also hasten the build-up of calcium deposits (plaque) in the coronary arteries, the amount of which is used to measure potential risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), finds a research.

However, the study does not outweigh the numerous health benefits of regular exercise that can help ward off obesity, diabetes, heart attack/stroke, and death, among other things.

Physical activity may increase coronary atherosclerosis (artery narrowing) through mechanical stress and vessel wall injury and through the physiological responses it prompts, such as increases in blood pressure and parathyroid hormone, said an international team of researchers from Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland, US.