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"Walking is man's best medicine," wrote Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician. It may be woman's best medicine, too. A new study shows that regular hour-long strolls -- which do little to improve cardiovascular fitness -- can nevertheless reduce a woman's heart disease risk by boosting her blood levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), which help remove cholesterol from the body.

"We found that even low levels of activity are beneficial," says study leader John J. Duncan of The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas. "We're telling people if the shoe fits, start walking."

This is the first clinical study to show that exercise need not be vigorous to lower a person's risk of cardiovascular disease, Duncan and his coauthors write in the Dec. 18 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. Indeed, they say, the findings confirm epidemiologic evidence suggesting that HDL levels increase across a spectrum of exercise intensities.

To find out how a walker's pace affects cardiovascular health, the researchers recruited 59 healthy, sedentary, premenopausal women and divided them into four groups: aerobic walkers, who exercised at 86 percent of their maximal heart rate; brisk walkers, exercising at 67 percent; strollers, exercising at 56 percent; and a sedentary control group. The three walking groups traversed 4.8 kilometers per day, five days a week. Before and after the 24-week program, the researchers measured each woman's maximum oxygen consumption--an indicator of lung capacity and cardiovascular fitness -- and assayed her blood-lipoprotein levels.

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