Pattern of vigorous exercise, housework, walking, less TV linked to lower risk for stroke
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Key takeaways:
- Physical activity patterns that included vigorous exercise, housework or walking were associated with lower stroke risk.
- Watching TV and commuting were linked to higher risk for stroke.
Physical activity patterns dominated by vigorous exercise, housework or walking lowered stroke risk, whereas patterns with greater commuting or TV watching increased that risk, according to a prospective cohort study published in Stroke.
“Prior studies have examined the relationship between activity items and incident stroke,” Zhi Cao, PhD, from the School of Public Health at Hangzhou Normal University in Hangzhou, China, and colleagues wrote. “In accordance with our findings, previous studies showed that adherence to high-level specific physical activity was associated with a lower risk of each subtype of stroke, except subarachnoid hemorrhage.”
The researchers evaluated data from 386,902 participants aged 38 to 79 years (mean age, 55.9 years; 55.1% women) with no history of stroke at baseline from the UK Biobank study, which collected demographic and medical data from more than 500,000 adults in the United Kingdom from 2006 to 2010.
Participants completed questionnaires on whether, how often and how long they engaged in physical or mental activities, with additional information gathered on sleep duration.
Researchers categorized physical activity patterns into leisure activities, like exercising for fun; job-related activities; household activities such as cleaning or gardening; and transportation-related activities, including biking or driving. Mental activity included intelligence-based activities such as attending classes; social support, including visiting friends or going to pubs; and electronic device use. Researchers then conducted a principal component analysis to identify physical and mental activity patterns linked to stroke risk.
Median follow-up was 7.7 years.
There were 6,983 cases of stroke during follow-up, including 5,426 ischemic strokes, 1,157 intracerebral hemorrhages and 738 subarachnoid hemorrhages.
When evaluating specific activities, researchers found that participants who had the longest sleep duration had a higher risk for stroke (HR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.06-1.29), as did those who watched the most TV (HR = 1.15; 95% CI, 1.09-1.22) and participated in pub or social club activities (HR = 1.25; 95% CI, 1.16-1.36).
Next, researchers identified four physical activity patterns that accounted for 52.5% of the total variance related to stroke risk.
Specifically, stroke risk appeared lower for the vigorous exercise-predominant pattern (HR = 0.83; 95% CI, 0.78-0.89), the housework-predominant pattern (HR = 0.8; 95% CI, 0.75-0.85) and the walking-predominant pattern (HR = 0.8; 95% CI, 0.75-0.86).
In contrast, the transport- and job-related pattern was associated with a higher risk for stroke (HR = 1.36; 95% CI, 1.28-1.45).
In terms of mental activity patterns, three — the watching TV pattern, computer-using pattern and family and social club visit pattern — accounted for 51.5% of the total variance, but only the watching TV pattern carried a significantly higher risk for stroke, at 43% (HR = 1.43; 95% CI, 1.33-1.53).
These associations persisted across stroke subtypes, researchers found.
“Our findings support the recommendation that adherence to vigorous exercise, housework, walking and minimizing TV viewing and transportation commutes could be a healthy lifestyle to lowering the risk of stroke in the general population,” researchers wrote.
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