“Be active!” is not a message that we hear for the first time. Health care providers and not only have long recommended physical activity as a way of relaxing, forget about stressful days at work, and finally yet importantly as a way to maintain ourselves fit and healthy. Recent research has shown that regular exercise helps prevent a range of health problems such as obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, breast cancer, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and the list could go on.

Now, researchers say that heart failure patients, once told to take it easy in order to avoid possible negative events, can safely exercise. They say that exercising for 30 minutes three times a week didn’t raise the risk of heart attacks, erratic rhythms, chest pain or fractures.

“This is the largest and most comprehensive study of exercise training in patients with heart failure. It supports a structured exercise training program for patients with reduced left ventricular function and heart failure symptoms, in addition to evidence-based therapy,” said study lead author Dr. Christopher O’Connor, director of the Duke University Heart Failure Program in Durham, N.C.

The findings were presented at a Tuesday news conference at the America Heart Association’s annual scientific sessions in New Orleans.

More than 2,000 patients with moderate to severe heart failure were involved in the study. Half of them were randomly selected to receive standard medical therapy plus advice on how to exercise. The other half received supervised exercise training before a transition to home-based exercise, usually a treadmill. The goal was to work up to 40 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise at home five times a week for two-and-a-half years. The second group also received follow-up phone calls monitoring exercise progress.

The study found significant benefits in quality of life. However, no reduction was seen in hospital visits or deaths.

“The most important finding was the exercise was safe,” Dr. O’Connor said.

Heart failure is a chronic disease, which occurs when any part of the heart muscle weakens and the heart can’t supply the body’s cells with enough oxygen and nutrient-rich blood. The condition makes daily activities harder to deal with due to fatigue and shortness of breath. Nearly 5.3 million Americans live with heart failure and 660,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, according to estimates of the American Heart Association.

The bad news is that heart failure hospitalization rate has risen dramatically among seniors in the United States in the past 3 decades, according to another study presented this week at the same conference. For women, rates rose from 13.95 hospitalizations per 1,000 members of the population to 19.58 in 2006. For men, rates rose from 16.57 hospitalizations per 1,000 members of the population in 1980 to 22.87 in 2006. Moreover, patients ages 75-84 had twice the risk of being hospitalized for heart failure than those 65-74, while those age 85 or older had four times more risk of hospitalization for heart failure than those ages 65-74.