The fresh snow on the North Shore mountains this past week is a welcome sight for the leisure industry, and it brings health benefits, too.

According to Kenneth Madden, UBC assistant professor of geriatric medicine, “winter sports are fantastic” for people with cardiovascular issues and those simply looking to do more exercise in winter.

“I mean, they are also low-impact, so you don’t injure yourself as much, unless, of course, you fall off your skis,” Madden told the Georgia Straight. “I think the more winter sports people do the better, because classically people will sit on the couch all winter. That is what people tend to do. They become more sedentary, based on the season. So the more winter sports the better. It is easier to get out and bike and run when it’s summer. In the winter, especially in a place like Vancouver, there really is no excuse [not to go out].”

As a geriatric-medicine specialist, Madden researches exercise intervention in older adults. When his subjects come in to be a part of the studies he undertakes—right now he’s working on a study of older patients with Type 2 diabetes—he quickly tells them the various benefits, calorie-wise, of winter activities such as snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

“Cross-country, for your average 70-kilogram person, burns about 500 to 550 calories per hour,” Madden said. “Snowshoeing is about the same at a moderate level. The only difference is, what people think of as moderate-level snowshoeing is not [moderate]. You have to be moving to be moderate.”

Madden said he acquired the calorie count from a sports-medicine manual. According to the numbers he has, even light snowshoeing—burning about 300 or 400 calories per hour—burns slightly more calories than general walking, which Madden sets at about 300.

“That’s still pretty good, and there is still nothing wrong with that [lighter exercise],” Madden said. “I am not putting it down.”

Winter activity is “more important” than fair-weather exercise, Madden reiterated, because people tend to stagnate in the colder winter weather.

“I think it is more important, because the biggest benefits of exercise are people going from nothing to something—going from sedentary to a little bit of exercise,” he said. “People normally are doing nothing for four or five months of the year. Any winter sports are going to benefit a lot.”

The Web site of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of B.C. and Yukon (www.heartandstroke.bc.ca/) correlates with Madden’s message.

“Regular physical activity is a great asset to keeping your heart healthy and leading a healthy lifestyle,” the site’s section on physical activities states. “But if you’re not active now, don’t worry that you suddenly
have to embark on an Olympic-worthy training schedule. As far as your heart is concerned, a little activity goes a long way.”

Tom Gies, the foundation’s marketing and communications manager, told the Straight he’s still waiting for updated statistics based on findings from Census 2006 on heart-related illness and its effects on the Canadian population. However, previous statistics are disconcerting. Cardiovascular disease claims the lives of more Canadians than any other disease. In 2002, it accounted for 74,626 Canadian deaths, according to Statistics Canada.

In addition, 32 percent of all male deaths in Canada in 2002 were due to heart diseases, diseases of the blood vessels, and strokes. According to a 1998 Health Canada report, cardiovascular diseases cost the Canadian economy more than $18 billion a year.

What the foundation suggests is activities that contribute to three major areas: endurance, strength, and flexibility. These can range from volleyball (light activity) to cycling (moderate) to jogging (vigorous).

Over at the Langara Family YMCA, general manager Vinh Truong told the Straight that he has about 60 members signed up for the association’s Healthy Heart program at that South Vancouver branch. The program is a community-based, medically supervised testing and nutrition service. It is designed for people with a history of angina, heart attack, heart-bypass or valve surgery, angioplasty, stabilized congestive heart failure, and/or poor circulation. Participants have all been referred by their physicians.

“We are the very last stage of their rehab,” Truong said by phone. “Everyone is finished with their doctors, and this is kind of a maintenance program to prevent, hopefully, further heart attacks.”

Debbie Clavelle, fitness and health manager at Truong’s centre, told the Straight that winter sports are very beneficial for improved heart performance.

“In terms of those able to sustain aerobic activity, absolutely, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing are both aerobic sports, and both are low-impact and easy on the joints,” Clavelle said by phone. “So they are additionally beneficial in that way for the older adult, and most of our cardiac participants are older adults.”

Clavelle added that cardiac activity gets our heart rates into what she calls the “training zone”.

“That is the zone where all of our heart rates should be during exercise in order to gain some aerobic benefit,” she said. “The training zone is generally considered to be around 60 to 95 percent of our maximum heart rate.”

People of all ages can find their maximum heart rate by logging on to www.actnowbc.ca/—the Web site of the provincial government health initiative—and checking the calculator. It is based on subtracting one’s age from 220, and then gauging the ideal training-zone percentage of that rate.

Winter sports may be the long-term answer for all-round strengthening of the heart, as UBC’s Madden calls the seasonal fluctuations in activity “pretty serious”.

“Less so in Vancouver, because we don’t quite get the snow and ice,” he added. “But certainly in the eastern states and eastern provinces there is a huge swing. People are more willing to walk in the spring, even people who don’t consider themselves serious exercisers. But in the winter, people just sit and watch TV.”

Yet according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s recommendations, just 30 to 60 minutes of daily physical activity for an adult can “have significant health benefits and may reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke”. Go on—you can do it.