Walking regularly can extend your life. Women who walked two or more hours a week or who usually walked at a brisk pace (three miles per hour or faster) had a significantly lower risk of stroke than women who didn’t walk, according to a study reported in Stroke, a Journal of the American Heart Association.
The risks were lower for total stroke, clot-related (ischemic) stroke and bleeding (hemorrhagic) stroke, the researchers found.
Benefits to women who walk
Women who usually walked at a brisk pace had a 37 percent lower risk of any type of stroke and those who walked two or more hours a week had a 30 percent lower risk of any type of stroke.
Women who typically walked at a brisk pace had a 68 percent lower risk of hemorrhagic stroke and those who walked two or more hours a week had a 57 percent lower risk of hemorrhagic stroke.
Women who usually walked at a brisk pace had a 25 percent lower risk of ischemic stroke and those who usually walked more than two hours a week had a 21 percent lower risk of ischemic stroke — both “borderline significant,” according to researchers.
“Physical activity, including regular walking, is an important modifiable behavior for stroke prevention,” said Jacob R. Sattelmair, lead author and doctoral candidate in epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Mass. “Physical activity is essential to promoting cardiovascular health and reducing risk of cardiovascular disease, and walking is one way of achieving physical activity.”
More physically active people generally have a lower risk of stroke than the least active, with more-active persons having a 25 percent to 30 percent lower risk for all strokes, according to previous studies.
“Though the exact relationship among different types of physical activity and different stroke subtypes remains unclear, the results of this specific study indicate that walking, in particular, is associated with lower risk of stroke,” Sattelmair said.
The women who were most active in their leisure time activities were 17 percent less likely to have any type of stroke compared to the least-active women.
Stroke is the third leading cause of death and a leading cause of serious disability in the United States, so it’s important to identify modifiable risk factors for primary prevention, Sattelmair said.
The American Heart Association recommends for substantial health benefits, adults should do at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity or a combination.
