Researchers at John Hopkins Medicine have used data from a national survey representing more than 19 million U.S. women with established cardiovascular disease, and they concluded that more than half of women with the condition do not do adequate physical activity and those numbers have grown over the last decade. These results imply that targeted counseling to exercise more could reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease as associated health care costs over their lifetimes.
According to the study, these results suggest that women diagnosed with such disorders as coronary artery disease, heart failure, stroke, heart rhythm disturbances, and peripheral artery disease should talk to their physicians about how to increase their physical activity levels to maintain optimal cardiac health and decrease health care costs associated with cardiac disability.
The number one killer of American women is heart disease, according to the American Heart Association (AHA) and the condition affects more than 43 million of them. In the new study published in the issue of JAMA Network Open, it noted that total health care cost among women with cardiovascular disease who met AHA recommended physical activity guidelines were about 30 percent less than cost among those who did not meet the guidelines.
A former John Hopkins Medicine research fellow and now an internal medicine resident at East Carolina University, Victor Okunrintemi, M.D., M.P.H., said that physical activity is a known, cost-effective prevention strategy for women with and without cardiovascular disease. Their study reveals worsening health and financial trends over time among women with cardiovascular disease who don't get enough physical activity. Okunrintemi said further that they have more reason than ever to encourage women with cardiovascular disease to move more.
The recommendation of physical activity by AHA is to reduce a woman's chance of developing cardiovascular disease (so-called primary prevention) and to advance and maintain recovery after a heart attack or stroke (so-called secondary prevention).
One hundred fifty minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week is the standard recommendation, which works out to at least 30 minutes of brisk movement per day, five days a week. Previous studies have shown that throughout a lifetime, men are on average more physically active than women.
Also discovered by the researchers was that women ages 40 to 64 were the fastest growing age group not getting enough physical activity, with 53 percent reporting in 2006 to 2007 not getting enough exercising and 60 percent in 2014 and 2015.
The team pointed out that there is a need to tailor specific interventions to the most-impacted groups, including older women, women of lower socioeconomic status as well as minorities, and to encourage physicians who care for them to be more consistent in promoting cardiac rehabilitation referrals and safe exercise tips.
