Just three hours of vigorous exercise a week could reduce an adult male's risk of heart attack by 22 percent, the findings of a newly published study suggest.

Adult males who perform vigorous exercise three times a week were found to have a much lower risk of having a heart attack in comparison to those of the same age group who did not, according to researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health who collected data from an earlier study conducted between 1994 and 2004.

In an abstract, the authors wrote that "The effects of physical activity on risk of myocardial infarction (MI) are well documented and may include beneficial changes in blood lipids, inflammatory markers, and insulin sensitivity. The degree to which these and other traditional and nontraditional cardiovascular biomarkers mediate the inverse association between physical activity and risk of MI in men remains unclear."

With that in mind, the study gathered data on activity levels and biomarkers from adult males from an earlier effort, known as the Health Professional Follow-Up Study (HPFS). Included in these data were the amounts of vigorous exercise each week, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol levels and markers of inflammation. The new study chose to measure the results of vigorous exercise due to its stronger association with coronary heart disease, the authors wrote.

Between 1994 and 2004, 454 of the 18,225 men who participated in the HPFS research suffered either a nonfatal heart attack or died from coronary artery disease. The study included 1,239 men in the HPFS effort who furnished information on their weekly amount of exercise. Among this number, 412 men were compared to a control group of 827 with no known heart problems and matched in terms of smoking status, age and the dates on which they donated blood. 

Using a self-reporting method, participants were asked to answer a questionnaire twice each year that indicated how long each spent each week on leisure-time physical activity during the HFPS study. Based on these responses, researchers determined the association between average hours of vigorous-intensity activity and heart attack risk. This amounted to three hours each week of vigorous-intensity activity with an associated 22 percent lower risk of myocardial infarction.

The results of the study, “Vigorous Physical Activity, Mediating Biomarkers, and Risk of Myocardial Infarction” published in an October 2011 edition of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, found that the men in the earlier study who suffered nonfatal heart attacks or who had died as a result of coronary heart disease had comparatively less HDL cholesterol and more LDL cholesterol. In addition, these men were more likely to have high blood pressure and diabetes.

The researchers wrote that this inverse association between lower risk of heart attack and comparatively higher amount of vigorous exercise "can be partially explained by the beneficial effects of physical activity on HDL-C, vitamin D, apolipoprotein B, and hemoglobin A1c.," adding that, "Although the inverse association attributable to these biomarkers is substantial, future research should explore benefits of exercise beyond these biomarkers of risk."

This call to action echoes statistics compiled on the incidence rate of heart disease among adult males: Heart disease causes more premature adult male deaths in the United States than any other single illness or condition, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). In addition, between 70 percent to 89 percent of all sudden cardiac events in the United States occur among men.

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