ATHENS, Ga. --- Older people really can improve their chance of staying healthy and independent by walking regularly, according to a University of Georgia study.
"Our study found that walking offers tremendous health benefits," said Elaine Cress, a professor of kinesiology in the UGA Institute of Gerontology.
Dr. Cress and Trudy Moore-Harrison, a former UGA doctoral student, recruited 26 low-income adult volunteers from Athens ages 60 or older and divided them into two groups.
Each group met three times a week. Members of one of the groups walked in their meetings. The other group got education about nutrition.
After four months, the risk of disability for the walkers was more than halved, declining from 66 percent at the beginning of the study to 25 percent at the end.
The researchers measured disability by watching how well the older adults in the study performed on tasks such as balancing, walking and getting up out of a chair.
The walkers also saw a 25 percent increase in physical function, compared to a 1 percent decline in the nutrition group, as measured by how well the volunteers performed daily activities such as walking up a flight of stairs or taking off a jacket.
The aerobic capacity -- how well the heart and lungs function -- improved in the walkers by 19 percent.
"Aerobic capacity is really the engine that we draw upon for doing the things we want to do, whether it's cleaning up around the house or running a marathon," Dr. Cress said. "By increasing their aerobic capacity, the walking group was better able to perform their daily tasks and had more energy left over for recreational activities like going out dancing."
The nutrition group's aerobic capacity actually declined by an average of 9 percent, according to the study.
The researchers focused on low-income people because they are less likely to be physically active than people with money, less likely to have health insurance and more likely to have chronic health problems, said Dr. Moore-Harrison, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Walking is a low-cost way to become physically active because all the equipment it requires is a pair of shoes, said Dr. Moore-Harrison, the study's lead author.
People often drop out of exercise programs, but not one of the walkers did, at least partly because the program provided company and exercise, the researchers said.
"It gave them an opportunity to make new friends and get to know their neighbors," Dr. Moore-Harrison said.
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