After walking about a mile, every additional 400 meters walked is associated with a 14% lower risk of heart disease and stroke for those over 70
Only three days ago, an article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine effectively ruled a counter-order: they would be enough 11 minutes a day of brisk walking to prevent one in 10 premature deaths caused by heart disease, strokes and a number of cancers. The study is the result of a review of 196 articles involving more than 30 million participants. But what can the elderly who generally find it more difficult to move and above all to carry out high or moderate intensity activities do?
The extra 400 meters
A new study presented by the American Heart Association has found that for those over the age of 70, walking an extra 500 steps a day (approximately 400 meters) is associated with a 14% lower risk of heart disease and stroke
. “Steps are an easy way to measure physical activity, and walking more steps per day has been associated with a lower risk of a cardiovascular disease-related event in older adults,” he said. Erin E. Dooleyprofessor of Epidemiology at the University of Alabama who followed the work and points out, however, that most of the studies have focused on adults up to middle age with daily goals of even 10,000 or more steps, difficult to reach for elderly individuals.
How did the monitoring take place?
Hence the need to give walking goals even to older people to safeguard their health. The researchers analyzed data from 452 participants, part of a larger group recruited for the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study. All volunteers wore a hip accelerometera kind of pedometer that measured their daily steps. Participants had aaverage age of 78 (59% women). The devices were worn for three days or more, for ten hours or more, and on average the number of steps covered was an average of 3500 per day. During the three-and-a-half-year follow-up period, 7.5 percent of participants experienced a cardiovascular disease event such as coronary artery disease, stroke, or heart failure.
The results
But what did the step analysis reveal in association with cardiovascular events? Compared to adults who took fewer than 2,000 steps a day those who did 4,500 had less than 77% risk of suffering a cardiovascular event. Nearly 12% of seniors who walked fewer than 2,000 steps per day experienced a cardiovascular event compared with 3.5% of participants who walked approximately 4,500 steps per day. In conclusion, every 500 extra steps a day is associated with a 14% lower risk of cardiovascular disease, starting from a minimum base of two thousand.
Better little than nothing
“It’s important to maintain physical activity even as you age, but daily step goals should also be achievable. We were very surprised that every 500 extra steps of walking had such a strong benefit for heart health» underlined Dooley who adds: «We do not want to downplay the importance of higher intensity physical activity but encourage small increments in the number of daily steps because significant cardiovascular benefits are evident.
It’s never too late
“Even for those who have led a substantially sedentary life – he says Gianfranco Beltrami, professor of motor sciences at the University of Parma and vice president of the Italian sports medicine federation – it is never too late to start undertaking a physical activity which, if performed correctly, will certainly give important benefits to your health. For the human organism movement is vital. It is no coincidence that the characteristics shared by the longest-lived populations on the planet and with the highest number of centenarians are a correct diet combined with a very active lifestyle, with lots of physical activity until very old age”.
What to do
«Physical activity, especially for the elderly – adds Beltrami – represents a true and proper drug capable of preventing almost all pathologies and delaying aging. Like any drug, physical activity must also be carefully dosed and personalized taking into account the degree of training, the characteristics of the subject and any pathologies present. However, walking or doing an aerobic activity is not enough, but you also need to do exercises to
keep strength which is the athletic quality that drops faster, the dexterity ,l’equilibrium and the correct posture following the guidelines which provide for at least 150 minutes a week of aerobic activity, two weekly sessions of at least half an hour of strength exercises and about ten minutes after each session of physical activity to be dedicated to stretching and posture”
And limits
The study, on the researchers’ own admission, has limitations: the device worn on the hips fails to record activities alternative to walking that can still be useful for heart health, such as cycling or swimming; the starting general sample of mostly white women was more likely to have a college education; finally the steps were measured for a short time.
March 3, 2023 (change March 3, 2023 | 11:14 am)
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