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 While that's been shown before for middle aged and older adults,
less was known about whether exercise would make a measurable
difference for younger women, the authors wrote in a July 26 online
paper in Circulation.
“However, it is worth emphasizing that it doesn't matter if the
exercise is moderate or vigorous, if you do it 6 days per week or 3
. . . every little bit counts,” lead author Andrea Chomistek at the
Indiana University School of Public Health in Bloomington told
Reuters Health by email.
“Also, exercise lowers risk of heart disease whether you’re normal
weight, overweight, or obese,” said Chomistek.
The researchers studied 97,000 women in the Nurses Health Study who
were 27 to 44 years old in 1991. Every two years, the women filled
out questionnaires about their leisure time physical activity.
By 2011, there had been 544 cases of coronary heart disease,
including 254 among women under age 50. Regardless of body weight,
women who reported doing moderate intensity activity such as brisk
walking had lower risk of heart disease than those with little or no
exercise.
Overall, women who spent a total of 2.5 hours per week being
moderately active were about 25% less likely to be diagnosed with
coronary heart disease than those who were not active at all.
Though apparent benefits were seen even in overweight and obese
women, researchers found the greatest benefit among normal-weight
women. Those who were active for 2.5 hours a week had half the heart
disease risk of obese, inactive women.
“There are now many, many studies that have shown higher levels of
physical activity to be linked with lower rates of heart disease,
stroke, cancers, diabetes, and many other chronic health
conditions,” said Dr. Erin D. Michos of Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine in Baltimore, who coauthored an editorial accompanying the
new study.
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But this observational study can’t prove exercising causes a
reduction in heart disease risk, Michos told Reuters Health by
email.
“Women who are more active might be doing a whole-range of other
health-promoting behaviors such as eating healthier diets, getting
regular sleep, managing stress, and so forth,” she said. “Which
means to say greater active time might simply be just a marker of a
better health state overall.”
Frequency of activity didn’t seem to matter as long as cumulative
time per week reached a significant amount.
“Young women should engage in whatever form of exercise they enjoy
and are most likely to stick with, whether it be moderate or
vigorous activity,” Chomistek said. “We also found that frequency
did not matter once we controlled for total amount of exercise,
which means that women can achieve the recommended 150 minutes per
week of moderate exercise in as many or as few sessions as they wish
or their schedules allow.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2aspDXx and http://bit.ly/2af9ELx
Circulation 2016.
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