Higher Resting Heartbeat May Correlate to Increased Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Death

In an effort to elucidate the combined effect of resting heart rate and physical activity on heart disease, Javaid Nauman, from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim, Norway), and colleagues analyzed data collected during an eighteen-year long study of 24,999 men and 25,089 women, each of whom did not have cardiovascular disease at the study’s start.  The researchers found that an elevated resting heart rate correlated to an increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.   In women, however, maintaining a high level of physical activity appeared to offset the danger.  The team observes that: “[Resting heart rate] s positively associated with the risk of death from [ischemic heart disease], and among women, the results suggest that by engaging in [physical activity], the risk associated with a high [resting heart rate] may be substantially reduced.”