This makes sense because muscles are metabolically active and absorb large amounts of glucose (sugar) from the blood. Building and using muscle makes your body more sensitive to insulin, helping to control blood sugar and potentially lowering the risk of developing type 2 diabetes – a major driver of heart disease.

At the same time, strength training improves the health and function of your blood vessels, allowing blood to flow more easily and helping to reduce blood pressure.

Simply put, people with good-quality chest muscles aren’t just benefiting from stronger pecs. They are likely to be spending time strengthening their muscles more generally, improving their metabolic health and supporting their cardiovascular health as a result.

If you want to strengthen your chest, simple body-weight movements such as half press-ups – where you keep your knees on the floor – or wall press-ups are a good place to start. These activate your pec muscles while allowing you to build strength gradually.

Over time, you could consider buying resistance bands to practise different exercises at home. There are lots of good exercise plans online – I often recommend this one by the British Heart Foundation to my patients.

Calves are ‘the second heart’

I often hear people refer to calves as “the second heart”. Every time you walk, climb stairs or flex your ankles, your calf muscles contract and squeeze the deep veins in your lower legs. Inside these veins, tiny valves help pump blood upwards, efficiently returning it to the heart. This calf-muscle pump is particularly important when you are standing or moving around.

In 2024, researchers at the Mayo Clinic looked at what happens when this function doesn’t work so well. In a study of nearly 6,000 patients, they found an association between those with the lowest pump function having more than twice the risk of death compared with those whose calf-pump function was normal.

The good news is that you don’t need to go crazy in the gym every day to improve your calf strength. Walking up the stairs instead of using the lift is one simple way you can work your calves.

At home, you can work the muscles by doing simple standing calf raises – hold on to the back of a chair or worktop for balance, slowly rise onto your toes, pause and then lower yourself back down again. This is a simple way to maintain calf strength and function.