IF YOU DO ONE THING THIS WEEK . . . TAKE STEPS TO REDUCE RISK OF HEART DISEASE
Want to stamp down your likelihood of developing heart disease and other chronic conditions? Then boost your everyday activity levels by walking.
A US study tracked the number of daily steps taken by individuals and classified them into three groups: sedentary (5,000 steps or less), low-to-somewhat active (5,000 to 10,000 ) and active-to-highly-active (more than 10,000).
They knew that of the 1,446 subjects, 523 of them had "metabolic syndrome", or multiple risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
People in the low-to-somewhat active group were 40 per cent less likely to have metabolic syndrome than the sedentary folk, while those who took more than 10,000 steps a day were 72 per cent less likely to have multiple cardiovascular risk factors.
The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, reckoned that taking an extra 1,000 steps per day was associated with an 8-13 per cent reduction in the odds of having a large waist circumference and high levels of heart-unfriendly triglyceride fats.
- CLAIRE O'CONNELL