How Effective Is Exercise For Chronic Disease?

Can simply being active be as effective as clinically proven drug therapies in preventing or managing chronic disease?  Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine conducted extensive research to compare the effects of exercise against those of drugs in the treatment of patients with existing heart disease, in stroke rehabilitation, in heart failure therapy, and diabetes prevention.

After analyzing the results of more than 300 clinical trials that involved close to 340,000 adult participants, they found that:

• Medications such as statins, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, and antiplatelet used for the treatment coronary heart disease reduced the risk for death in patients with coronary heart disease compared with controls. The researchers found that exercise interventions had a similar effect and that there were no statistical differences among drug and exercise interventions in regards to their effects on death outcomes.

• Exercise interventions used in the rehabilitation of stroke were found to be significantly more effective in reducing the risk of death compared to both drugs (antiplatelet and anticoagulant medications) and controls.

• Among the drugs used for patients with heart failure (diuretics, β blockers, and ACE inhibitors), diuretics were most effective in reducing death risk. These were also found to be linked to fewer deaths than exercise or control.

• In people who were diagnosed as prediabetic, neither exercise nor drugs had a significant effect on reducing mortality outcomes.

• When data for all these chronic diseases were pooled together, researchers found no significant statistical differences between exercise intervention and drugs in decreasing the odds of death.

Clinical Implications

Many health care providers advocate increasing physical activity as a part of primary prevention programs, which aim to prevent the onset of disease. However, the recent findings show that exercise can be an important part of secondary prevention programs as well.

This means that doctors can prescribe the “exercise pill” as a strategy to reduce the risk of death from chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. 

Exercise regimens may differ as to type of exercise, duration, and intensity. It is important to tailor physical activity to individual needs, with particular concern for one’s degree of mobility and disease severity. The national guidelines for physical activity advocate that all adults should avoid inactivity, and it is best to have some amount of activity to reap health benefits.

Read More: Why Does Exercise Make Us Feel Good

Aerobic exercises include walking, jogging, biking, swimming, and similar activities. Muscle-strengthening exercises of moderate to high intensity involving major muscle groups must also be done at least two days a week because these activities also provide many health benefits.

Older adults and adults with chronic diseases and disabilities who may not be able to meet these guidelines are urged to do as much physical activity that suits them. The goal is to avoid inactivity, which could increase their risk for complications and death due to chronic disease.