When Older People Walk Now, They Stay Independent Later

NPR reports:

Millions of older people have trouble walking a quarter of a mile, which puts them at high risk of losing their mobility, being hospitalized or dying.

But it's hard to get people who are already sedentary to become more active and stay that way.

In an attempt to solve that problem, researchers got people in their 70s and 80s to walk and do simple exercises in social groups. The people who did that were less likely to become disabled than those who attended classes on successful aging, according to a published Monday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.

The people in the study had to be able to walk one-quarter of a mile in 15 minutes, using no aid beyond a cane. But 24 million Americans have trouble walking that far, according to according to Dr. Marco Pahor, director of the Institute on Aging at the University of Florida, who led the study. And 13 million can't walk a quarter-mile at all.

Be like Caine in Kung Fu.