Exercise and Atrial Fibrillation Follow a U-Shaped Curve
Graded Moderate — a meta-analysis of 37 studies with nearly 1.3 million people that describes associations rather than causes; exercise amounts were standardised after the fact.
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Exercise and atrial fibrillation showed a U-shaped link, with the disorder becoming more common again at very high endurance volumes.
In a meta-analysis, physically active people had atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm disorder, less often than sedentary people. At very high training volumes, however, the pattern reversed. The researchers combined 37 studies covering nearly 1.3 million people and converted activity into a common unit, MET-hours per week. Atrial fibrillation was least common at about 26 MET-hours, while beyond 78 MET-hours, roughly 6 to 7 hours of endurance training a week, the odds of atrial fibrillation were rising again. These associations cannot show whether very heavy training itself causes the rhythm disorder.
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