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 In the small study, researchers determined that a certain type of
heart fat, pericardial adipose tissue, was reduced in patients who
did weight lifting, but not in those who worked on increasing their
endurance with aerobic exercise, according to a report published in
JAMA Cardiology. Both forms of exercise resulted in the reduction of
a second type of heart fat, epicardial adipose tissue, which has
also been linked with heart disease.
"We were surprised by this finding," said the study's lead author,
Dr. Regitse Hojgaard Christensen, a researcher at the Center of
Inflammation and Metabolism and the Center for Physical Activity
Research at the Copenhagen University Hospital.
While the study doesn't explain why weight training would have a
different effect from endurance training, "we know from other
studies that resistance training is a stronger stimulus for
increased muscle mass and increased basal metabolism compared to
endurance training and we therefore speculate that participants
doing resistance training burn more calories during the day - also
in inactive periods-compared to those engaged in endurance
training," Christensen said in an email.
To explore the impact of different types of exercise on heart fat,
Christensen and her colleagues recruited 32 adults who were obese
and sedentary but did not yet have heart disease, diabetes, or
atrial fibrillation.
The participants were randomly assigned to a three-month program of
aerobic exercise, weight training or no change in activity (the
control group). Each person had an MRI scan of the heart done at the
beginning of the study and at the end.
Both types of exercise training reduced epicardial adipose tissue
mass compared to no exercise: endurance training, by 32% and weight
training, by 24%. However, only weight training had an impact on
pericardial adipose tissue, which was reduced by 31% compared to no
exercise.
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"The resistance exercise training in this study was designed as a
45-minute interval type, medium load, high-repetition, time-based
training," Christensen said. "Participants performed three to five
sets of 10 exercises and the sessions were supervised. This specific
exercise intervention alone was effective in reducing both fat
depots of the heart. We did not combine resistance and endurance
training, which would have been interesting to reveal their
potential additive effects."
While there are plenty of studies looking at the impact of reducing
abdominal obesity, the new study is interesting because it looks
specifically at the relation between exercise and fat (around the
heart)," said Dr. Chadi Alraeis, a staff interventional cardiologist
and director of Interventional Cardiology at Detroit Medical
Center's Heart Hospital.
Alraeis suspects, based on the new study, that the best way to
combat heart fat is to do both endurance and weight training. "Along
with the time you spend on the treadmill, you might want to add some
work with dumbbells, or some lunges, sit-ups or pushups," Alraeis
said. "It might even be enough to bring some weights to the office
so you can use them there. "
While the findings are interesting, "we don't know what the
implication of this is 10 years later," Alraeis said. "We don't know
if outcomes are really being changed. We need some long-term studies
to look at that."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2XMRXN0 JAMA Cardiology, online July 3, 2019.
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