Depression, Inactivity A Risk For Heart Patients
Posted on: Wednesday, 26 November 2008, 10:33 CST
Heart patients who are inactive may be adding to their risk of developing more heart problems in the future, according to a new study reported on Tuesday.
Previous research has shown that depression is three times more common among heart patients than in people who have had no previous heart complications.
Researcher Mary Whooley of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco and colleagues studied 1,017 patients with heart disease. They found that 20 percent who were depressed were at significantly higher risk of cardiovascular problems.
Patients were divided into six categories depending on level of physical activity. They answered questions about whether they had done 15 to 20 minutes of brisk walking in the past month, swum, done general conditioning or participated in recreational sports.
Those who were depressed were also almost one-third more likely to have an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or other cardiac event. But the higher risk disappeared after adjusting for patients' lack of physical activity, increased smoking rates and their tendency to stop taking medications properly.
"It's really difficult to tease out where the independent effect of depression is happening and where the other effects of cardiac disease are ending," said Whooley.
"But the message is that once you account for those health behaviors the patients would not longer have this excess risk of cardiac events. The risk would go from one in 10 down to one in 15," she said.
Whooley said patients who are depressed tend to become less motivated, causing them to be sedentary which adds to their depression.
Researchers concluded that doctors should spend more time discussing the physical effects of depression and patients could be counseled to exercise more and adopt a healthier lifestyle by stopping smoking and adhering to a heart-healthy diet.
Findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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