Elderly women who sit for more than 10 hours every day and have low or non-physical activity have cells that are about 8 years older than their chronological age, compared to the ones who do exercise. The research found that anything more than 40 minutes of moderate to intensive physical activity daily would solve this problem.
The study, published Jan. 18 in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggests that more than 40 minutes of exercise daily and not being sedentary for 10 hours a day would help improve the condition of the cells in the women's bodies.
Sedentary women have shorter telomeres, which are the tiny caps at the end of DNA strands and protect chromosomes from deterioration with age. The telomeres get shorter as we grow older, and women who do not exercise and have a sedentary lifestyle have shorter telomeres.
Sedentary Lifestyle Linked To Aging Faster
The aging of a cell comes with the shortening of its telomeres. However, there are some habits and lifestyle elements that could contribute to the acceleration of this natural process, such as smoking and being obese. The shortening of these telomeres is associated with a various number of health issues, ranging from cardiovascular disease and major cancers to diabetes.
The research was conducted on 1,481 women aged 64 to 95. The women are involved in a wider program called the Women's Health Initiative, which investigates determinants of chronic diseases in women who have entered menopause. The subjects who were part of this present research completed questionnaires and were asked to wear a triaxial accelerometer on their right hip every day for a week during walking and sleeping to track the characteristics of their movements.
"Movement was captured along three axes (vertical, anteroposterior, and mediolateral) in 15-second epochs, and activity counts were provided as composite vector magnitudes of these three axes. Accelerometer wear time was identified using sleep logs and a computer-automated algorithm developed specifically for this study," the researchers explained in their study.
The researchers believe that they were the first to measure on an objective scale how the combination of exercise and sedentary time can have an impact on telomeres.
"We found that women who sat longer did not have shorter telomere length if they exercised for at least 30 minutes a day, the national recommended guideline," noted Aladdin Shadyab, lead author of the study.
The results of the research show that women who had more sedentary time as measured by their accelerometers were more likely to be older, white and obese, with a greater likelihood of high blood pressure and a history of chronic diseases. They also scored lower on physical performance.
Exercising Could Help The Elderly Recover
The benefits of exercising throughout an entire lifetime are numerous and they can be expressed in various ways, from overall well-being to the lower likelihood of suffering from different chronic diseases.
Additionally, another research has pointed out that older people who suffer from different disabilities can recover faster through exercising. It is not necessary to join a gym, but exercising regularly is a must, the researchers said. Even some simple forms of exercise, such as walking longer distances, can do the trick.
