There is a lot of focus put on the effects of excess weight on heart health. Yet being physically active is just as important in protecting against heart disease, especially once a woman gets beyond 30 years of age.
How a person chooses to live their life has the biggest impact on their long-term health. Excess weight, smoking, poor diet, too much alcohol and little physical activity are all featured in the ‘Top 10’ factors linked to chronic disease in Australia.
As people get older, different aspects of their lifestyle can affect their health in different ways. Knowing at what stages in life it may pay to put more focus on one positive lifestyle change over another is invaluable in helping to cut chronic disease risk.
Using health information collected from Australian women over many decades (from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health), University of Queensland researchers were able to calculate how each of a range of lifestyle habits contributed to heart disease risk at different stages in life.
Heart disease is the single biggest killer of Australian women. Women are almost three times more likely to die of it than breast cancer.
The two most striking findings from this research was that for women in the age bracket of 22-27, smoking was the biggest determinant of poor heart health. For women over the age of 30, it was physical inactivity that had the biggest influence on heart disease risk; even greater than excess weight, smoking and high blood pressure.
What it all means
The findings of this work have important public health implications. It points to greater focus needing to be put on quit smoking campaigns for younger women, and a greater effort on getting women more active across all ages. For all women, being active all throughout life is where the biggest health gains can be made.