A middle-aged person with a slow walking pace is at higher risk of developing heart disease as compared to those who at a brisk pace. The researchers have found in their recent study. This indicates that a middle-aged person’s walking pace is an independent predictor of their heart health.
"This suggests that habitual walking pace is an independent predictor of heart-related death," said Professor Tom Yates, Reader at the University of Leicester in Britain.
Further, walking pace was strongly linked to an individual's objectively measured exercise tolerance, and a good measure of overall physical fitness.
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"Thus, walking pace could be used to identify individuals who have low physical fitness and high mortality risk that would benefit from targeted physical exercise interventions," Yates added.
The study also found that handgrip strength is a weak predictor of heart-related deaths in men and shouldn’t be taken into consideration for the population as a whole. For the study, published in the European Heart Journal, the team analysed 420,727 middle-aged people across Britain.
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In the following 6.3 years, after the data was collected, there were 8,598 deaths out of which 1,654 were causes by cardiovascular diseases while cancer accounted for 4,850 deaths.
(With IANS Inputs)
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