Exercise: Appropriate for Those Over Age 60?

Individuals over the age of 60 should do more exercise (not less) to reduce heart disease and stroke risk.Should we continue to focus on physical activity as we age? What if you are over the age of sixty years old? We recently got more answers from a study of over 1.1 million older people, published in the European Heart Journal 07 November 2019.

What Researchers Did

Researchers in South Korea looked at men and women ages 60 years or older. The subjects had two consecutive health checks from 2009 to 2010 and 2011 to 2012. The NIHS provides healthcare services for about ninety-seven percent of the Korean population. The investigators followed participants until December 2016.

The study authors collected data on heart disease and stroke from January 2013 through December 2016. They considered socioeconomic factors, age, sex, other medical conditions, medications, and lifestyle behaviors such as smoking and alcohol consumption.

The average age of the subjects was 67 years, and forty-seven percent were men. Roughly two-thirds of participants indicated that they were physically inactive at both the first and second screening periods. Twenty-two percent of inactive folks increased their physical activity by the time of the second check-in. Fifty-four percent of those who had been exercising five or more times per week at the first screening became inactive by the time of the second visit.