Walking pace may influence HF risk for older women
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Older women who walked at a fast pace at least 1 hour per week reduced their risk for HF by as much as 34% compared with similar women who walked at a slow pace, according to data published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
“We had previously shown that walking as exercise — even at moderate degrees of energy expenditure — is associated with a reduced risk for heart failure,” Charles B. Eaton, MD, MS, professor of family medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, told Healio. “Whether these benefits are related to walking pace and whether you get the same benefit walking fast for a shorter duration (hare) compared with walking at a slower pace but for a longer duration (turtle) is under-researched.”
Walking pace, duration and HF
Eaton and colleagues analyzed data from 25,183 postmenopausal women without HF or cancer at baseline who participated in the Women’s Health Initiative cohort (1993-1998) and provided self-reported information on walking pace and walking duration. Researchers examined associations of walking pace (casual 3 mph) with incident HF and the joint association of walking pace and duration with incident HF, stratified by subtype.
During 16.9 years of follow-up, researchers observed 1,455 adjudicated acute decompensated HF hospitalization cases.
There was a strong inverse association between walking pace and overall HF risk. Compared with casual walkers, women who were average walkers were 27% less likely to experience HF (HR = 0.73; 95% CI, 0.65-0.83), whereas fast walkers were 34% less likely to develop HF during follow-up (HR = 0.66; 95% CI, 0.56-0.78).
Stratified by HF subtype, researchers observed similar benefits of risk for HF with preserved ejection fraction for average vs. casual walkers (HR = 0.73; 95% CI, 0.62-0.86) and for fast vs. casual walkers (HR = 0.63; 95% CI, 0.5-0.8). Similarly, walking pace reduced risk for HF with reduced EF for both average vs. casual walkers (HR = 0.72; 95% CI, 0.57-0.91) and for fast vs. casual walkers (HR = 0.74; 95% CI, 0.54-0.99).
Researchers also found that the risk for HF associated with fast walking with less than 1 hour per week walking duration was comparable with HF risk for casual and average walkers with more than 2 hours per week walking duration.
Ameliorating the HF epidemic
“Walking at a fast pace even for less than 1 hour per week reduced the risk for heart failure similar to walking at slower pace for more than 2 hours per week,” Eaton told Healio. “Given that lack of time is frequently cited as a barrier to exercise, perhaps walking faster even for shorter periods of time might ameliorate the epidemic of heart failure seen among older adults.”
Eaton added that walking at a slow pace may identify people at risk for chronic diseases associated with aging, such as HF.
“Regular exercise such as walking, especially at a fast pace, may reduce this risk significantly,” Eaton said in an interview. “Clinical trials are needed demonstrating that walking at a fast pace is safe and improves markers of pathologic aging, such as epigenetic age acceleration, and biomarkers predictive of heart failure, such as brain natriuretic peptide and highly sensitive troponin levels among older adults that walk at a slow pace.”
For more information:
Charles B. Eaton, MD, MS, can be reached at cbeaton51@gmail.com.
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