Any Amount of Walking Is Beneficial

Moneylife Digital Team 07 November 2017

Life

US public health guidelines recommend that adults should do at least 150 minutes of moderate walking or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week. But surveys show only half of US adults are able to meet this norm. However, a study in American Journal of Preventive Medicine says that regular walking, even if not meeting this minimum recommended level, can lead to lower mortality compared to inactivity. Walking has been associated with lower risk of heart disease, diabetes and breast and colon cancers. While several studies have linked overall moderate-vigorous physical activity to a reduced risk of death, relatively few have examined associations with walking specifically. To learn more, investigators led by Alpa Patel (PhD), looked at data from nearly 140,000 participants in the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. A small percentage (6%-7%) in the study reported no moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity at baseline.

Among the rest, about 95% reported some walking, and nearly half walked as their only form of moderate-vigorous physical activity.

After correcting for risk factors such as smoking, obesity and chronic conditions, the study found walking-only for less than two hours per week was associated with lower all-cause mortality compared to no activity. Meeting one to two times the minimum recommendation (2.5-5 hours/week) through walking-only was associated with 20% lower mortality risk. Results for those exceeding recommendations through walking-only were similar to those who met recommendations. Walking-only was most strongly associated with respiratory disease mortality, with approximately 35% lower risk comparing more than 6 hours/week of walking to the least active group. Walking-only was also associated with about 20% less risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and with about 9% less risk of cancer mortality. With the near doubling of adults aged 65 and older expected by 2030, clinicians should encourage patients to walk even if less than the recommended amount, especially as they age, for health and longevity, suggest the study.

Fatty Liver Worsened by Sugar

Fatty liver disease affects one out of every two adults in the Western world. Fatty liver disease is the presence of hepatic steatosis, that is, fat deposited in the liver. There are two main types of fatty liver disease: non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and alcoholic fatty liver disease. Alcoholic fatty liver disease comes from excessive alcohol consumption. NAFLD is the most common liver disorder in Western industrialised countries (10%-46% in the US). It could be the cause for obesity, type-2 diabetes, dyslipidaemia, male sex and metabolic syndrome.

A recent paper in British Medical Journal argues that “data from animal and human studies implicate added sugars (e.g., sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup) in the development of fatty liver disease and its consequences. Added fructose in particular, as a component of added sugars, may pose the greatest risk for fatty liver disease.” The paper “Added Fructose as a Principal Driver of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Public Health Crisis”, by James J DiNicolantonio, Ashwin M Subramonian and James H O’Keefe, argues that considering that there is no requirement for added sugars in the diet, dietary guidelines should recommend reducing the intake of added sugars to just 5% of total calories to decrease the prevalence of fatty liver disease and its related consequences.

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