NEW ORLEANS (Reuters Health) - There may not be a fountain of youth, but researchers say a daily walk plus hormone replacement therapy can restore older women's arteries to the same condition they were in when they were 20 years old.

After taking up daily walking for 13 weeks, the elasticity of arteries of 60-year-old women on HRT was "restored to the young women's level; you actually reversed the aging process," according to researcher Dr. Kerrie Moreau, of the University of Colorado in Boulder. She said the findings "could have a number of important implications for cardiovascular disease risk."

The findings were presented here Monday at the annual Experimental Biology 2002 conference.

Speaking with reporters, Moreau explained that the "springiness" in our arteries naturally deteriorates with age, declining in women by about 50% to 60% by age 60. "One of the problems is that it can cause an elevation in blood pressure," she said, as blood flow becomes cramped within more rigid vessels. This rise in blood pressure impacts the working of the heart and can contribute to cardiovascular disease.

Although the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) remains somewhat controversial, many postmenopausal women take it because replacing lost estrogen might have cardiovascular benefits.

In her team's study, Moreau compared the elasticity of arteries of 11 young, healthy women with that of 24 women over 60 years of age, all of whom were somewhat overweight and led relatively sedentary lifestyles. The older study participants had also been taking HRT for a number of years prior to the beginning of the study.

The researchers asked this group of older women to engage in a 13-week program of moderate exercise, which consisted of a 40-minute walk five times per week.

"What we found was that this 13 weeks of walking actually restored the elasticity of their vessels to premenopausal levels," Moreau said. "So you're actually showing an attenuation of the aging process, a blunting of the aging process."

The researchers also compared the arterial fitness of this HRT-plus-exercise group to that of very fit female endurance runners of a similar age, none of whom took HRT. Women in both groups had about the same springiness in their arteries.

Moreau stressed that older women who opt not to take HRT can still reap a significant cardiovascular benefit from moderate exercise alone. But only the combination of HRT and exercise restored arterial elasticity to levels seen in young women.

The bottom line? "Just get out there and become active. Get out and walk around if you're able to walk," Moreau said. "A lot of older adults think it's too late--'why should I start exercising now?' This actually shows that it's never too late to exercise. And hopefully you can improve your overall cardiovascular health."

That advice holds for men as well. Moreau said previous work done by her lab found less dramatic--but still significant--results in older men who took up exercise.

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