Key Highlights
- Regular exercise may do more than strengthen the heart.
- It could also reprogram the nerves that control how the heart beats, new research has found.
- The discovery could eventually help doctors better treat common conditions such as irregular heart rhythms, chest pain, angina and stress-related "broken-heart" syndrome, according to scientists at the University of Bristol in the U. K. The study, which looked at lab rats trained over 10 weeks, found that moderate exercise does not affect the heart’s nerve control system evenly.
- Instead, it produces distinct and opposing changes on the left and right sides of the body.
- a split researchers say has gone largely unnoticed until now.
