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Stroll
Your Way To a Healthy Heart
(HealthScout)
-- A leisurely nine-minute stroll once a day can nearly halve
a woman's risk of coronary heart disease, Harvard epidemiologists
report.
A five-year
study of some 40,000 women found that a little exercise, such
as walking one hour a week, reduced the risk of heart disease
by half compared with women who didn't have even that low level
of physical activity. Even women with other risk factors, such
as smoking, high cholesterol levels and obesity benefited. The
findings are reported in the March 21 Journal of the American
Medical Association.
That minimum
activity is substantially less than the current recommendation,
which calls for 30 minutes of physical activity four or five days
a week, says lead researcher I-Min Lee, an epidemiologist and
associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
And Lee says
it is much lower than the 1970s recommendation which called for
vigorous exercise at least two days a week.
That "no pain,
no gain" philosophy was modified substantially in 1996 by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College
of Sports Medicine, which recommended a "train, don't strain"
regimen of a brisk 30-minute walk daily as an alternative to the
old rule.
Both activities
burn the same amount of energy, 1,000 calories per week. "The
newer recommendation does it with moderate exercise over a long
period," Lee says.
Lee says the
her study should encourage the 30 percent of women who have no
leisure-time physical activity. "Higher goals can discourage women,
make them say, 'I can't reach that goal,'" she says.
Based on data
from the Women's Health Study, Lee's team focused on women aged
45 and older who reported the time they spent each week on recreational
activities, including walking and stair climbing. "First we looked
at the total amount of energy expended, without defining how they
did it," Lee says. "Then we looked at different kinds of exercise,
such as jogging and walking. Those who walked at least an hour
a week had half the risk of coronary heart disease of women who
did not walk at all."
It was the
amount of time spent walking, not the pace, that counted, the
study found. Women who strolled benefited as much as those who
bustled along.
That latest
study supports a previous Harvard finding about exercise and women,
based on the long-running Nurses' Health Study. It found that
a brisk, one-hour walk every day reduces the risk of adult-onset
diabetes by at least 25 percent and that the benefit increased
as physical activity increased.
"A brisk walk
is more effective, but any kind of walking will be beneficial,"
says Dr. Frank B. Hu, the Harvard assistant professor of nutrition
who lead that study.
Exercise is
not a one-size-fits-all thing, Hu says. "It really has to be individualized.
People have different preferences and they must individualize
their activity, depending on their preferences."
While a nine-minute-a-day
stroll is good, it should be just the start, Lee says. "I would
recommend that women start off with that goal in mind, and, as
they reach an hour a week, they should be encouraged to do more."
One hour a
week is a starting point in more ways than one, Lee says. Because
it is less than the current recommendation, she says its benefits
should be confirmed by other studies before the rules are relaxed.
"A conservative
approach is to endorse current guidelines recommending moderate-intensity
physical activity for 30 minutes per day most days of the week,"
says the journal report.
Men with heart
disease get most of the headlines, but heart disease also is the
leading cause of death for American women. The rules to reduce
the risk are unisex: no smoking, weight control, a diet low in
cholesterol and high in fruits and vegetables, and a minimum of
physical activity.
The
American Heart Association has more on exercise, and the
National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has a heart-exercise
quiz.
Reference
Source 101
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