Stent or cycle?

Nutrition Action Healthletter, May, 2004

Just 20 minutes on an exercise bike every day protects heart disease patients better than opening partially clogged blood vessels with a stent.

A stent is a tiny wire mesh tube that's inserted during an angioplasty to prop open blocked arteries. After a year, only 12 percent of the men who completed exercise training had heart attacks or other adverse events, compared with 30 percent of the men given stents. And cycling was far less expensive.

What to do: If you have coronary heart disease, talk to your doctor about how much exercise to do.

Circulation 109:1371, 2004.