Exact age women need to 'get active' by in order to boost quality of life in future

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Middle-aged women are being urged to get active or maintain their activity levels by the age of 55 to enhance their quality of life as they age, according to new research.

A study involving over 10,000 Australian women revealed a "significant" connection between regular exercise during middle-age and physical health in later life - even if the exercise routine was not initiated until their mid-50s.The author of the study, Doctor Binh Nguyen, stated: "Our study shows that it's important for women to be active throughout middle-age to gain the most benefits for physical health in later life."Ideally, women should increase their activity levels to meet the guidelines by age 55." She pointed out that the evidence for a link between physical activity and health-related quality of life has primarily been based on short-term studies.Dr Nguyen noted that few studies have measured physical activity at more than one point in time and examined the long-term causal effects of exercise.For this new study, published in the journal PLoS Medicine, the research team used data collected at three-year intervals starting in 1996 from 11,336 Australian women.The participants were born between 1946 and 1951, making them 47 to 52 years-old at the beginning of the study.The participants were categorised based on whether they consistently met World Health Organisation (WHO) physical activity guidelines, which suggest 150 minutes of activity weekly, during a span of fifteen years.

Included in the categories were those who only began meeting these benchmarks at the ages 55, 60 or 65, and those who never came to meet the standards.The volunteers' physical and mental health was assessed via a 36-question survey focused on their overall well-being.As