Even if you’re 75, it’s never too late to be healthier

For one, it reduces your chances of heart disease or stroke, two of the biggest killers in the West.

Older men and women even if they`ve reached the age of 75 who start walking for a mile or so every day halve their risk of heart disease or stroke over the next 10 years or so. Other activities such as lawn-mowing, gardening, swimming, biking or hiking also have a protective effect.
Although older people are always told to introduce more exercise into their lives, nobody had measured what those health benefits could be, says Dariush Mozaffarian, who led a team of researchers from Tufts University to find out.

They recruited 4,207 men and women who had an average age of 73, and so included some who were 75 or older and stayed in touch with them over the following 10 years, assessing their health and physical activities. Those who regularly walked at a pace faster than three miles per hour halved their risk of heart disease and stroke, and similar reduced risks were seen in those who walked an average of a mile every day. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the study was that even those in the trial who hadn`t exercised before still got the same health benefits.

(Source: Circulation, 2015; CIRCULATIONAHA.115.018323)

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