A short walk once a week can reduce the risk of death: study

According to a statistical study of nearly 90,000 people released Tuesday, a quick walk once or twice a week is enough to reduce the risk of death from heart attack, stroke or cancer.

People walking or gardening between 10 minutes and one hour each week had 18% less risk of death, regardless of the cause, compared to table potatoes, researchers said in the newspaper. British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Two to five and a half hours a week of such "moderate physical activity" – divided into segments of not less than 10 minutes – has resulted in a 31% risk reduction, they discovered.

And those who have accumulated at least 25 hours have almost halved the risk.

However, the authors recognized that not everyone has a lot of time to devote to recreational exercises.

Activities that stimulate the heart and accelerate the pulse, such as cycling, running and competitive sports "are more time-efficient than moderate-intensity activities," they said.

"Acting on cardiovascular disease alone, obtaining a five to 25 hour degree did not present any additional benefit," they noted.

Researchers led by Bo Xi, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Shandong University in northern China, reviewed data collected annually from 88,140 people in the United States between 1997 and 2003. 2008 in the context of national health surveys.

These exercise data were then compared to deaths recorded up to 2011.

The authors cautioned that the study was observational, which means that no firm conclusion can be drawn about the cause and effect. The fact that the exercise data was self-reported was also a potential weakness.

But the large number of people covered by the research largely contributes to compensate for these methodological limitations, they added.

© 2019 AFP