Slow walkers are likely to die through heart disease


New research suggest that slow walkers are twice as likely to die from heart disease than their faster-moving counterparts.

Scientists in the UK set out to determine whether habitual walking pace could serve as a predictor for an individual's long-term health, following 420,727 people over a period of six years to reach their conclusion.

The findings

After taking external risk factors such as smoking, BMI and diet into account, it was found that slow walkers were between 1.8 and 2.4 times more likely to die of heart disease over the course of the study.Participants (both male and female) with a low BMI were the most 'at-risk' group. Lead author, Professor Tom Yates, said that walking pace could be viewed as a strong indicator of overall fitness.

"Self-reported walking pace was strongly linked to an individual's objectively measured exercise tolerance, further suggesting walking pace is a good measure of overall physical fitness. Therefore, self-reported walking pace could be used to identify individuals who have low physical fitness and high mortality risk that would benefit from targeted physical exercise interventions."
The authors had also hypothesised as to whether walking pace could be connected to cancer, but no link was found.

These findings mirror a previous study conducted by MIT, which concluded that fast walkers could expect to live up to ten times longer than those who amble from A to B.

Heart disease – often caused by high blood pressure, high cholesterol or obesity – is the leading cause of death in the US, and second only to dementia in the UK. Time to take up power walking!

The study was published in theEuropean Heart Journal.

Source: netdoctor

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