Active Women Associated With Lower Risk Of Heart Diseases, Blood Clots And Stroke, Study Finds

Women who are active at least a few times each were are at a lower risk of heart diseases, blood clots and strokes, according to the findings of a new study.

The study was conducted by researchers from the American Heart Association. Participants for the study included 1.1 million women in the United Kingdom with no history of cancer, heart disease, stroke, blood clots, or diabetes who joined the Million Women study in 1996-2001. At the start of the study, the average age of the participants was 56 years.

For the study, the women were asked to report their level of physical activities each week at the start of the study and three years later. To get the most accurate results, researchers also examined hospital admissions and deaths in relation to participants' responses. A follow-up study was conducted nine years later.

The researchers found that the women who reported performing strenuous physical activity -- enough to cause sweating or a faster heart beat -- two to three times per week were about 20 percent less likely to develop heart disease, strokes or blood clots compared to participants who reported little or no activity.

The higher the frequency of physical activities, lower was the risk of such conditions and diseases.

"Inactive middle-aged women should try to do some activity regularly," Miranda Armstrong, the study's lead author and a physical activity epidemiologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said in a press statement.

"However, to prevent heart disease, stroke and blood clots, our results suggest that women don't need to do very frequent activity as this seems to provide little additional benefit above that from moderately frequent activity."

Physical activities reported by the participants included walking, cycling and gardening. The UK Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK and the BHF Centre of Research Excellence in Oxford funded the study. Findings were published online in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

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