Exercise and the heart: unmasking

As physicians, we often face patients with cardiovascular risk factors or different kinds of heart disease. We prescribe statins, ACE inhibitors or β-blockers, but also (should) encourage our patients to engage in regular physical activity to reduce cardio-vascular disease burden. Physical exercise, as a part of cardiac rehabilitation or a primary prevention programme, is seem-ingly one of a kind. ‘For most health out-comes, additional benefits occur as the amount of physical activity increases through higher intensity, greater frequency, and/or longer duration’.1 No other known therapy offers such advantageous character