Study – Elderly women who did household chores are less likely to develop heart conditions

Results of a new study are in favour of the elderly women who are often busy cleaning and doing household chores. The study has shown that women who washed the dishes, cooked meals and cleaned the house had healthier hearts compared to those who opted to sit back and take it easy. The researchers of the study from the University of California had followed nearly 5,500 women. These women were asked to wear movement-tracking gadgets for a week. The results showed that women who did four hours of everyday work cut the risk of death from stroke or a heart attack by nearly two thirds.

The daily life moment that was followed by the women was performing simple routine activities that included gardening, cooking, cleaning and showering. Some of the other studies have also shown that regular exercise and brisk walking is also a way to maintain a healthy heart. However, the new research has shown that even the less demanding activities that are performed by women would help them to remain healthy and would also give them the potential to live longer. Some of the earlier research has mentioned that heart disease is one of the biggest causes of death among women in the United Kingdom and has killed nearly 24,000 per year that comes to nearly 66 in a day.

Heart issues is also responsible for the cause of death for women in the United States as well. The physical activity of nearly 5,500 women aged between 63-97 was measured. These were the women who did not have any heart disease at the beginning of the study. The participants of the study wore an accelerometer for seven days between May 2012 and April 2014 that helped to measure the kind and physical activity that they were doing.

The participants were followed up to the end of February 2020 and by that time 616 women were diagnosed with cardiovascular conditions, 253 of them suffered from a stroke and 268 developed a coronary heart disease while 331 died of cardiovascular disease.

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