To spare your heart, you have to walk a kilometer in 30 minutes every day

A sedentary lifestyle is really not good for our body. Researchers from the University of Buffalo (United States) have shown that in women, the practice of walking at a moderate pace for 30 minutes a day clearly reduces the risk of developing arterial hypertension. The results of their study were published in the journal Hypertension.

The harms of a sedentary lifestyle

Very few studies have looked at sedentary time and heart failure risk, and none have focused on older women where sedentary time and heart failure are common. Walking and moving are activities to integrate into daily life to stay healthy. The recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend walking at least 30 minutes a day. For the researchers, these measures should be good, but they suggest doing active walking, so as to complete 1 km in 30 minutes, which would protect the heart and improve blood pressure.

To establish a link between walking and hypertension in women, the researchers looked at the cases of 83,435 postmenopausal women, aged between 50 and 79 years. At the start of the 11-year experiment, none of them had high blood pressure, heart failure, coronary heart disease or a history of stroke. Likewise, they were all able to walk without any problem. The walking volume and speed of these women were measured. The researchers noted that the slowest women had a risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

The faster the walk, the more the risks fade

During the follow-up of the experiment, 38,230 cases of hypertension were identified and 1,402 women were hospitalized for heart failure. Compared to women who spent more than six and a half hours lying or sitting, the risk of hospitalization for heart failure was 15% higher than for active women. This figure even rises to 42% for those who sit for more than nine hours a day.

Women spending more than 9.5 hours sitting or lying would have a 42% higher risk of developing heart failure over the next decade. This finding remains unchanged even when attempting to account for physical activity levels and risk factors for heart failure such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity and heart attack.

“Even among women who reported levels of recreational physical activity within current guidelines, the risk of heart failure was elevated among women who also reported more than 9.5 hours per day of sedentary activity.says Michael LaMonte, professor of epidemiology at the University at Buffalo School of Public Health. This last finding underlines the need not only to promote more physical activity for the prevention of heart failure, but also to promote the interruption of a sedentary lifestyle throughout the day.”

Physical inactivity increases the risk of atherosclerosis

A sedentary lifestyle promotes lower cardiometabolic risk factor profiles, which increases the likelihood of onset and progression of arterial atherosclerosis and blood clots in the arteries. They are precursors to angina pectoris and infarction, of which heart failure is a major consequence. Physical inactivity also reduces the pumping efficiency of the heart, which is a major manifestation of clinical heart failure.

The team is awaiting the results of another study using an accelerometer to see if getting up to interrupt sedentary time is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. The researchers acknowledge, however, that their study does not allow them to know whether a sedentary lifestyle directly leads to a reduction in the efficiency of the heart’s pumping or whether it exacerbates the effect of another cause.