A few weeks back we blogged about the Journal of the American Medical Association’s new guidelines for physical activity being raised for women. The study suggested that for women to be successful in maintaining normal weight and gaining fewer pounds, they need to exercise for about 60 minutes per day of moderate-intensity activity (1). That’s a whopping 420 minutes per week! It always seems like the more chaotic our lives get, the harder it becomes to implement guidelines like this within it.
The good news is that it doesn’t take as much activity or even the same moderate intensity to reap the benefits of lowering your risk of chronic disease.
A study published this month in the Journal Stroke involved 39,315 healthy women who took part in Women’s Healthy Study. It examined their activity levels and risk of stroke. Over an average follow-up of approximately 12 years, 579 women had a stroke. Although there was no association between vigorous physical activity and stroke risk, there was an inverse relationship between walking time and pace with the risk of having a stroke (2). For women who walked more than two hours per week at a brisk pace (3 to 3.9 mph), there was a significant reduction in their risk of suffering a stroke (3). Almost twice as many women in the United States die of heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases than from all forms of cancer (4). This becomes something simple women can do to lessen their risk and can even be broken up into 10 to 15 minute increments a day to make it more realistic to implement. 
References:
- Lee IM, Djoussé L, Sesso HD, Wang L, Buring JE. Physical activity and weight gain prevention. JAMA. 2010 Mar 24;303(12):1173-9.
- Sattelmair JR, Kurth T, Buring JE, Lee IM. Physical Activity and Risk of Stroke in Women. Stroke. 2010 Apr 6.
- Brisk Walking Reduces Stroke Risk.
- Women, Heart Disease and Stroke.
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