Eli5: why does your heart, a muscle, stiffen over time and become increasingly inefficient while exercise of other muscles throughout the body over time strengthens them, and increases their longevity?

Question

Eli5: why does your heart, a muscle, stiffen over time and become increasingly inefficient while exercise of other muscles throughout the body over time strengthens them, and increases their longevity?

In: 8

Answer 1

The heart doesn’t get a rest and never stops beating. This makes heart muscle remodelling particularly hard. Generally when the heart tries to remodel, it does it pretty poorly. Over your lifetime, that remodelling can lead to problems like abnormal heart rhythms or leaking valves.