DALLAS, October 9 -- Take a brisk walk. Climb the stairs at work. Dance the polka. If you engage in these and other similar physical activities for one hour per day, you can cut your risk for stroke by nearly 50 percent, according to researchers in a report in this month's Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
In the study of 11,130 Harvard University alumni, researchers found that people who expended 2,000 kilocalories each week -- the equivalent of a one-hour brisk walk, five days a week -- had a 46 percent lower risk of stroke than those who did little to no exercise. Meanwhile, those expending 1,000 kilocalories a week -- the equivalent of walking briskly 30 minutes a day, five days a week -- had about a 24 percent reduction in stroke risk.
"Not only did we find that physical activity is associated with reduced risk of stroke, but also we have some ideas as to how much and what type of activity might work best," says the study's lead author, I-Min Lee, M.D., Sc.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health. "This finding provides additional support for the surgeon general's report on physical activity, which calls for at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity a day, most days of the week. We found that doubling that effort showed an even greater reduction in stroke risk."
Lee says that physical activity can help reduce or eliminate other common stroke
risk factors including high blood pressure, high levels of blood cholesterol,
obesity and diabetes.
She and her co-author, Ralph Paffenbarger, Jr., M.D., an internationally-known
exercise authority and professor emeritus at Stanford University, determined
that activity of at least moderate intensity had a beneficial effect on stroke
risk. The researchers defined moderate intensity as 4.5 times greater than a
person's normal resting metabolic rate, which is one kilocalorie per kilogram of
body weight per hour.
"Walking, stair-climbing and participating in moderately
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Contact: Brian Henry
brianh@heart.org
(214) 706-1135
American Heart Association
8-Oct-1998