Exercise

question
I am 80 years old. Forty years ago I had a heart attack. I stopped smoking but remained very active. My blood pressure, with the help of medications, is around 125/70. I now walk 2 to 3 miles a day, work out with weights three times a week, and walk up and down 25 flights of stairs twice a week. My physician thinks I am pushing too hard and has urged me to take it easier. Is he right?
answer
I congratulate you on being so vigorous and giving your blood pressure and overall health so much attention. You are living proof that you can survive a heart attack and do extremely well for many decades. The medications and lifestyle changes you have made add up to a big reduction in your cardiovascular risk.
Your blood pressure is close to perfect, and I can only assume that your cholesterol and blood sugar are also in good shape. Obviously, stopping smoking in 1970 was a great idea.
The question of how much exercise is too much is a challenging one. Although some cardiovascular risk indicators like HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, continue to improve with extreme forms of exercise like marathon running, the risk of injury also increases. It’s safe to say that moderate exercise every day is far better for you than intense exercise followed by long periods of inactivity due to injury.
My advice is to continue what you are doing: mix it up, combining different weight-bearing activities (like walking) with weight training. Such cross-training reduces the risk of injury from repetitive stresses on specific joints and muscles. Resistance exercises like upper-extremity weight training were once thought to be bad for the heart, but experts now believe that moderate weight training is good all around — it exercises the heart and lowers blood pressure, too.