Recently published study in Australia has shown that women who were less physically active throughout their adult lives were more prone to experience a fall when they reached their 70s.
The research was conducted by the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, which has been following the health of over 57,000 Australian women in multiple age groups, and was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
The study began in 1996 with “samples of Australian women born 1921–26 (aged 70–75 years at baseline), 1946–51 (aged 45–50) and 1973–78 (aged 18–23), randomly selected from the Medicare national health insurance database.”
More than 11,500 women with an average age of 54 (born between 1946 and 1951) participated in this particular study, which was conducted over the course of 18 years. The women reported how much exercise they had been getting in three-year intervals.
The focus was on three types of exercise, which included walking briskly and moderate and vigorous leisure activity. Participants were then asked about falls or injuries relating to such an experience when they were between the ages of 68 and 73.
The study found that women reporting consistently low levels of physical activity over the length of the study experienced “an increased risk of subsequent falls.”
Furthermore, the study showed a nearly 40 percent increase of falls in women who exercised around 400 minutes per week at age 49, but decreased their exercise levels to 100 minutes or less from the age of 55 onward.
The results led researchers to conclude that in order to protect against falls, exercise should be consistent, with older adults aiming for exercise of more than 150 minutes per week.
Wing Kwok, one of the study’s co-authors and researcher at the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney, told NTD in an email that these exercises should include physical activities such as brisk walking, as well as moderate-intensity activities such as social tennis, recreational swimming, and dancing.
Furthermore, vigorous-intensity leisure activities that make one breathe harder or puff and pant, such as aerobics, competitive sport, vigorous cycling, running, and swimming, should also be included.
Meanwhile, in the United States the leading cause of injury for adults aged 65 and over is related to falls, according to data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC data showed that over 40,000 deaths in that age group were caused by falls in 2021. Moreover, in the same year around 3.5 million emergency department visits were recorded for older adult falls, resulting in more than a million hospital stays.
This article has been updated