ATHENS, Ga. - Older people really can improve their chance of
staying healthy and independent by walking regularly, according to
a University of Georgia study.
"Our study found that walking offers tremendous health benefits,"
said Elaine Cress, a professor of kinesiology in the UGA Institute
of Gerontology.
Dr. Cress and Trudy Moore-Harrison, a former UGA doctoral
student, recruited 26 low-income adult volunteers from Athens ages
60 or older and divided them into two groups.
Each group met three times a week. Members of one of the groups
walked in their meetings. The other group got education about
nutrition.
After four months, the risk of disability for the walkers was
more than halved, declining from 66 percent at the beginning of the
study to 25 percent at the end.
The researchers measured disability by watching how well the
older adults in the study performed on tasks such as balancing,
walking and getting up out of a chair.
The walkers also saw a 25 percent increase in physical function,
compared to a 1 percent decline in the nutrition group, as measured
by how well the volunteers performed daily activities such as
walking up a flight of stairs or taking off a jacket.
The aerobic capacity - how well the heart and lungs function -
improved in the walkers by 19 percent.
"Aerobic capacity is really the engine that we draw upon for
doing the things we want to do, whether it's cleaning up around the
house or running a marathon," Dr. Cress said. "By increasing their
aerobic capacity, the walking group was better able to perform
their daily tasks and had more energy left over for recreational
activities like going out dancing."
The nutrition group's aerobic capacity actually declined by an
average of 9 percent, according to the study.
The researchers focused on low-income people because they are
less likely to be physically active than people with money, less
likely to have health insurance and more likely to have chronic
health problems, said Dr. Moore-Harrison, a post-doctoral fellow at
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Walking is a low-cost way to become physically active because all
the equipment it requires is a pair of shoes, said Dr. Moore-
Harrison, the study's lead author.
People often drop out of exercise programs, but not one of the
walkers did, at least partly because the program provided company
and exercise, the researchers said.
"It gave them an opportunity to make new friends and get to know
their neighbors," Dr. Moore-Harrison said.
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