If physical activity is beneficial for everyone’s health, it would prevent the risk of disability among seniors according to the results of a study by Northwestern University, published in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health.
The researchers monitored and analyzed the state of health of 2,300 sexagenarians. Volunteers wore sensors for a week during this three-year study. This accelerometer made it possible to measure the time spent sitting and moving. For this study, disability was defined as a limitation in the ability to perform everyday actions: eating, dressing, washing, getting in and out of bed, crossing a room.
Sitting for 12 hours increases the risk of being disabled by 6%
To highlight the impact of physical inactivity on people’s health, the authors of the research cite the example of two 65-year-old women with the same health profile.
“If one is sedentary twelve hours a day, she has a 6% risk of becoming disabled. For those who sit for thirteen hours a day, their chances of being disabled are 9%,” explains Dr. Dorothy Dunlop, professor of medicine, co-author of the survey.
The results of this study also reveal “that the elderly need to reduce the time spent sitting, whether in front of the television or the computer”. According to Dr. Dorothy Dunlop “if these people spent less than three hours a day sitting, they would gain an average of two years of life expectancy”.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), physical inactivity is the 10th leading cause of death in the world. 15,602,777 French people are over 60 years old and this elderly population is now divided into 3 groups: healthy or “robust” people, fragile individuals, and dependent people. Bad newsaccording to a survey carried out for the Federation of Home Health Providers, 42% of people aged 60 and over do not practice any sport regularly and a third of them say they devote barely 5 hours to a sporting activity per week.
