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Religious Older Women are More Likely to Exercise
and Enjoy Active Lives
The same does not hold
true for older men or younger adults
Feb. 24, 2006 - As a group, older women lead the
ranks of "too-sedentary" Americans, but a new study suggests that those
who are religious are also more observant about keeping active in old
age. Interestingly, this does not apply to older men.
Older women who attend religious services
frequently are more likely to participate in leisure-time physical
activity, according to the study from researcher R. Frank Gillum, M.D.,
a physician with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s
National Center for Health Statistics.
That association between physical activity and
devotion did not hold true for older religious men or religious younger
adults, the study said.
The study, which analyzed data for 11,820 people
from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, appears in
the February issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. It is
the first national examination of the link between religiousness and
physical activity, Gillum said.
The analysis did not explore what makes older
religious women more active. But Gillum said his work uncovers some
interesting possibilities, considering that social scientists know that
older women — age 60 and upward — are the most religious group in the
United States, and health experts say older women are among the least
active American adults.
“If the older women are more internally committed
to religion, maybe they consider more what their religion says about
physical activity,” Gillum said.
Religious beliefs like “the body is the temple of
the spirit” may encourage older women to adopt health-promoting
behaviors — like exercise — that are in line with that value, Gillum
suggested.
The findings may also reflect an increase in
church-sponsored, health-promotion programs, he said. But obesity and
health researcher Karen Hye-cheon Kim, Ph.D., said that trend may not be
widespread enough to influence the new study.
“I think there’s been a growth of faith-based
programs in health in general, but the majority has been targeted at
primarily African-American congregations,” said Kim, an assistant
professor with the College of Public Health at the University of
Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Gillum’s study is drawn from national
data, and is therefore a largely Caucasian sample.
The survey, which was conducted by the federal
government, asked respondents about their “leisure-time physical
activity,” which includes exercise as well as other pursuits like
gardening or biking for fun. Gillum reports results only for the
respondents with no mobility limitations.
Scientists haven’t found a universally accepted
measure of religiousness, but in Gillum’s study, people who reported
that they attended services at least one a week were grouped together as
one gauge.
Among older women, “infrequent attenders” were
about 40 percent more likely to report that they had not participated in
any leisure-time activity in the last month. And within every ethnic
group of older women, a greater percentage of infrequent attenders said
they’d had no leisure-time physical activity compared to the frequent
attenders.
Many scientists are skeptical and cautious about
promoting links between health and religion, fearing that those
associations will alienate non-religious people or cause them to feel
they are unable to access health.
But Kim said: “religion is not proposed to be this
black box where it magically affects physical activity. There are very
concrete links and proposals of why religion affects health. One is
social support.”
“For those who are not as religious, they can find
social support in different avenues,” she said. “So that’s why I don’t
think it has to be as threatening as some people conceptualize it to
be.”
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