Activities such as running or brisk walking become multiple times more important for elderly people as they grow older. But the good news here is that there are so many other activities other than walking that can improve the quality of life by significantly reducing the risk of heart disease. Simply performing routine activities, or say daily life movements including housework, gardening, cooking and self care activities like showering can significantly help improve cardiovascular health, a recent study observed, quoted ANI.

The study, which was published in the ‘Journal of the American Heart Association’, observed the impact of daily work daily life movements to cardiovascular disease risk led by the researchers at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego.

The study revealed, that compared to women with less than two hours per day of daily movement, those women with at least four hours of daily life movement had a 43 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease, 43 per cent lower risk of coronary heart disease, 30 per cent lower risk of of stroke and, 62 per cent lower risk of deaths related to the cardiovascular disease.

“All the movements count towards disease prevention”, said first author Steven Nguyen, Ph.D., M.P.H., postdoctoral scholar at Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health. “Spending more time in daily life movement, which includes a wide range of activities we all do while on our feet and out of our chairs, results in lower risk of cardiovascular disease”.

In the study, researchers used a machine-learning algorithm to classify each minute spent while awake into five behaviours such as sitting, sitting in a vehicle, standing still, daily life movement, or running or walking. Daily life movement means all the activities occurring when standing or walking within the room or patio, such as while getting dressed, gardening or even preparing meals.

Researchers, as part of Women’s Health Initiative Objective Physical Activity and Cardiovascular Health study, measured physical activity of as many as 5,416 American women aged 63 to 97 and those who did not have heart disease at the beginning of the study.

All the women participants had to wear a research-grade accelerometer for up to seven days for the accurate readings of how much time they spent on moving, and more importantly, common life movements that largely remain unnoticed and not included in prior studies of light to moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity.

The prior studies largely focussed on intensity and duration of activities such as running and brisk walking while the current study focussed on smaller movements at varying intensities like cooking, cleaning etc.

Cardiovascular disease remains the major cause of death among both men and women with rates highest in adults aged 65 or older in the United States. The study showed that some 616 women were diagnosed with cardiovascular disease , 268 with coronary heart disease, 253 had a stroke, and 331 died of cardiovascular disease.