Study urges middle-aged women to stay active for graceful aging

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Middle-aged women need to get active – or stay active - by the age of 55 to boost their quality of life as they get older, warns new research.

A study involving more than 10,000 Australian women showed a "significant" link between regular exercise during middle-age and physical health in later life - even when the exercise routine was not started until their mid-50s.

Study author Dr. Binh Nguyen said: “Our study shows that it’s important for women to be active throughout middle-age to gain the most benefits for physical health in later life.

"Ideally, women should increase their activity levels to meet the guidelines by age 55.”

She says the evidence for an association between physical activity and health-related quality of life has been based primarily on short-term studies.

Dr. Nguyen said few studies have measured physical activity at more than one point in time and examined the long-term causal effects of exercise.

For the new study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine , the research team used figures collected at three-year intervals beginning in 1996 from 11,336 Australian women.

The participants were born between 1946 and 1951, making them 47- to 52-years-old at the start of the study.

They were classified as either meeting World Health Organization physical activity guidelines - of 150 minutes of activity a week - consistently throughout the 15-year exposure period, not initially meeting the guidelines but starting to meet them at age 55, 60 or 65, or never meeting the guidelines.

Physical and metal health was assessed using a survey of 36 questions about well-being.

On average, woman who consistently met physical activity guidelines and those who first started to meet guidelines at age 55 had a three-point higher score, compared to those that did not meet physical activity guidelines.

The effect of physical activity was "significant" - even after taking into account socio-economic factors and pre-existing health issues, according to the findings.

But there was no significant association between physical activity and mental health.

Dr. Nguyen, of the University of Sydney, Australia, said: “Combined with existing evidence, this study contributes to growing evidence of the benefits of maintaining or adopting an active lifestyle in mid-age."

She added: “An important public health message is that being active for as many years as possible, even if women start to meet physical activity guidelines in their mid-50s, could have important health benefits in terms of physical health, especially in physical functioning.”

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