Growing new collateral blood vessels can ease chest pain (angina), limit heart attack damage, improve survival, and perhaps even offer extra time for emergency therapy in the case of a heart attack.
Exercise can boost so-called collateral blood vessels that reroute blood flow around a cholesterol-clogged artery that feeds the heart, the journal said in its early January issue.
Exercise dramatically increases blood flow through the coronary arteries. The inner lining of the arteries responds to this "stress" much as it does to the stress of atherosclerosis, by stimulating collateral blood vessels to elongate, widen, and form new connections, it says.
A little bit of exercise won't do the trick but brisk walking will do. Any activity that gets your heart beating faster will do as long as you keep it up for 20 to 30 minutes at a time and do it several times a week, the journal says.
