Sedentary behavior is associated with lowering a woman’s odds of healthy aging, while light physical activity is linked to better odds of healthy aging, according to a new report.
Replacing television or screen time with light physical activity, moderate to vigorous physical activity or sleep (if you’re not getting enough, or are sleeping under seven hours a day) is linked to better aging as well, according to the report published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open.
Investigators evaluated data on 45,176 women who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study. Each participant was 50 or older (the average age was 59 years old), and didn’t have any major chronic diseases. The baseline started in 1992, and followed people for 20 years when the data was evaluated in 2022.
After 20 years of follow-up time, 8.6% of the women had achieved what the authors defined as healthy aging: living to at least 70 years old with no major chronic diseases, as well as no impairment in subjective memory, physical function or mental health.
The team defined three measures for sedentary behavior: Sitting at work, watching television or other sitting at home. They noted two measures for light physical activity, including hours of standing or walking around their homes or at work.
Each increment of two hours per day spent sitting watching television was associated with a 12% reduction in the odds of healthy aging. On the flip side, for every two hours a day of light physical activity, women had a 6% increase in odds for healthy aging.
Notably, watching television is linked to lower odds of healthy aging and specifically light physical activity at work (not at home) is associated with higher chances of reaching what the authors defined as healthy aging.
“We found that replacing watching television with either light physical activity or moderate to vigorous physical activity might promote healthy aging, and the greater the intensity of physical activity, the stronger the association,” the authors wrote.
