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Many Factors Lead Older Women to Sedentary Lifestyles

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Scripps Howard News Service

By By DONALD H. KAUSLER

Thursday, October 7, 2004

The health benefits of being physically active have been well established in recent years, and exercise is especially beneficial for older adults. Even moderate daily exercise, or its equivalent in other physical activities, has important positive effects on physical and mental health.

Nevertheless, a majority of American adults are not active enough at a regular basis to acheive these health benefits.

Inactivity is especially prevalent among middle-aged and older women. These women give many reasons why they don't exercise regularly _ they could injure themselves, too many time-consuming responsibilities, etc. Even when they do join an exercise program, many of them become dropouts in a short time.

An important objective in gerontological research is to understand why these women are inactive. That could lead to interventions that increase the frequency and amount of physical activity.

Several factors have been identified as contributors to inactivity by middle-aged and older women. They include personal characteristics (such as self-consciousness about physical appearance) and environmental factors (such as poor shape of neighborhood surroundings).

Dr. Abby C. King of Stanford University School of Medicine and associates conducted a comprehensive study of these factors.

The participants in their study were more than 2,900 women 40 and older, of equal numbers of whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indian-Alaskan natives. The presence of different racial-ethnic participants enabled the researchers to determine if there are racial-ethnic differences in physical inactivity, if the reasons for the inactivity differ.

In a telephone interview, the participants were asked to identify the level of leisure-time or household-related physical activity they had engaged in during the previous two weeks. Based on the information given, they were assigned to one of three activity level groups: active, underactive, and sedentary.

For the entire sample, only 9 percent met the criteria of being physically active. The American Indian-Alaskan Native and African American subgroups had the largest percentages of women who were sedentary (59 and 57 percent, respectively) and the smallest percentage who met the criteria for being active (8 and 6 percent).

For the entire sample, and for most of the racial-ethnic groups, caregiving duties and lack of energy ranked among the top four most frequently reported personal contributors to physical inactivity. Frequent environmental contributors included a lack of a neighborhood sidewalk (61 percent to 41 percent of the racial-ethnic groups) and a lack of streetlights (64 percent to 36 percent).

For the entire sample, age and education were key factors. The older the women were, the less activity they reported, and the less education they had, the less active they were.

For some racial-ethnic groups, self-consciousness about physical appearance was associated with greater inactivity, along with fatigue and poor health.

Because there were so many contributors to inactivity, it seems that changing the activity level for older women would be virtually impossible. However, we know that many of these contributors will change in the future. For example, future generations of older women will have better health and higher levels of education than the present generation.

(Dr. Donald H. Kausler, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is author of "The Graying of America: An Encyclopedia of Aging, Health, Mind, and Behavior." E-mail him at dkausler2(at)aol.com.)



Copyright 2004 Scripps Howard News Service

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