New research has confirmed that endurance training could have the ability to protect the heart.

The findings have suggested that exercise could be just as important for your heart heath as cholesterol levels and a healthy diet.
It was found that expression of genes used to repair damaged DNA increased in response to endurance exercise, even after just a single session.

The collaboration between the University of Maryland, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, East Carolina University, the Catholic University of Brasilia and Southern Methodist University shows how physiological stressors such as exercise can remodel heart tissue.

These findings, published in the journal Experimental Physiology, are important for understanding how exercise provides a protective effect on the heart.

Professor Stephen Roth, one of the co-authors, from University of Maryland’s Department of Kinesiology, said: “The genes that are important for genome stability are upregulated in the heart tissue after a single bout of endurance exercise. This may contribute to the protective effects of exercise on cardiovascular health.”