If you’ve been looking for excuses to skip exercise, a predisposition to atrial fibrillation shouldn’t be one of them.
For years, the prevailing wisdom has been that exercise – at least vigorous endurance training – increases a person’s risk of atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart beat linked to the formation of blood clots that can potentially cause a stroke.
By extension, many people feared the same might be true even for leisurely physical activity.
But new research has determined that being inactive may be just as bad. Scientists recently found that light to moderate exercise appears to actually prevent this health condition from occurring in older adults.